Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She just hadn’t ever met someone who was all of those things at once. She liked talking to Wes—a lot. She liked not knowing what he was going to say. She liked that he was now comfortable enough with her to call her out or make jokes just to get a laugh out of her. The fact was, she was drawn to him in a way that she hadn’t really experienced before. Every time he touched her, it sent little shivers along her skin.

  That wasn’t okay. Jordan had a very strict policy against having feelings for any person that she might be attracted to. Attraction was fine. Feelings were not. She was definitely attracted to Wes, like every other red-blooded woman who saw him. But after last night, it felt suspiciously like she had feelings for him as well.

  Protecting him from the two assailants and dressing his wound at home, putting him to bed, and checking on him throughout the night while she worked had given her uncomfortably tender feelings towards him, and all morning after he had woken up, she’d found herself continuing to reach out to touch him or smiling fondly at the little jokes he made.

  She had even wanted to tell him about her true identity, just because she did want to trust him and be open with him.

  That was bullshit.

  That was not how she worked.

  She needed to get a grip and focus on this murder case that she had dived right into. She did not need to be thinking that Wes Moretti looked sweet when he was asleep—especially when he was asleep with his mouth slack and his face smashed against a pillow.

  Nobody actually looked sweet like that. Thinking that someone did look sweet meant feelings.

  It had to stop, and she had to get back in control of herself, and flying was the best way to do that.

  As she soared over the trees, doing barrel rolls and figure eights and swift dives, Jordan forced her thoughts away from Wes himself and focused on what she had learned during the night.

  She listed out in her mind what she knew, starting with the two assailants.

  The first one had been slight and short. The build would have been small for a man, but for a woman it was reasonably average. Her eyes had been brown, and her hair the same, but with a tint of red that made it closer to auburn. There was nothing distinguishing about her face. She was neither pretty nor plain, but somewhere in between—average. She’d worn no makeup, and she had no marks on her face.

  In fact, there was nothing about her that made her at all unique or distinguishable.

  The man who had appeared out of nowhere was a different story. He was tall—huge, really. He had to be well over six-feet tall. He was bald and muscular, with hulking shoulders that were even bigger than Wes’s shoulders. His eyebrows were thick, though, and dramatically arched, and he had a tuft of blond hair at his chin. He looked like a bodybuilder, or a wrestler, or a bouncer. If she saw him again, she would recognize him in a heartbeat.

  The woman, she wasn’t so sure she would recognize. There was something about her that made her ideal for blending in. it was almost as though she was made to fade from people’s minds. The sketch that Jordan had done of her could honestly have been a sketch of any number of people.

  What had been of real interest to her was all that she had learned about Alana. She doubted that Wes knew half of it, and she knew for a fact that once she told him, he would wish he didn’t know any of it. But there was no way around it. Alana, it appeared, was the kind of woman who made a lot of enemies and dabbled in a lot of activities that she should stay far away from.

  This wasn’t just a personal vendetta over hurt feelings or a bad relationship.

  Alana was involved in plenty that could easily make her a target, and protecting her was the right thing to do, but it also meant putting the rest of them in danger. After last night, maybe they were already in danger anyway.

  Thinking about the case had her turning around and flying back towards the spot where she had left her clothes. She had needed to clear her head, but she had done that, and now, with that clear head, she was ready to face whatever came next in this case that she had tumbled into ass-backward.

  And she needed to keep reminding herself what her relationship with Wes really was—he was her client and she was in charge of saving his life, saving his ex-girlfriend’s life, and then removing the burden of transposed thoughts.

  After that, they had no further business together, and if she could manage to remember that, then maybe she could solve this case and walk away from it without giving away too much of herself in the process.

  Chapter 16

  Wes

  Hannah seemed like a very nice woman, but Wes was glad when he heard the apartment door open again. Jordan had been gone for an hour and a half, and he had thought about her the entire time, and not just because she was the key to figuring out what had happened to him and what might happen to Alana. He also just missed having her around.

  When she walked into the bedroom, dropping an empty bag on the floor beside the door, he couldn’t help but smile. “There you are.”

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, her tone rather businesslike. Earlier that morning she had seemed a little softer than her usual self, and he had liked that. But now she was all business again.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “The meds have kicked in. The pain is manageable as long as I don’t move or breathe too hard.”

  “He’s been a very good patient,” Hannah said, standing up from the bed and going over to Jordan. The two women exchanged looks that he likely wasn’t meant to see but that he didn’t understand anyway. Some sort of communication passed between them, anyway, and Wes grew more curious.

  He didn’t know where Jordan had disappeared to and why, and he was dying to know. But he knew instinctively not to push her. She was trusting him, a little bit at a time. He needed to be patient.

  But some things couldn’t wait. “Did you get in contact with Alana?” he asked Jordan.

  “No,” Jordan said, walking over to the end table by the bed and handing him his phone again. “That’s going to have to be your job.”

  “My job?” he asked, withdrawing from the phone. “No thank you.”

  “She’s not going to meet me,” Jordan pointed said, “and she’s not going to go meet a stranger. But if you call her and say you want to talk, then she’ll show up. It’s the easiest strategy.”

  “Easiest for you,” Wes said, under his breath, disconcerted at the thought of being the contact point for the woman that he had grown to truly dislike over the past few days. He took the phone from Jordan anyway, the lines in his forehead betraying his displeasure. “If I call her to meet me, then she’s going to have to come here. I can’t go anywhere, right?”

  Jordan shook her head. “No, you can’t go anywhere—yet. The call I did make was to a doctor that I know pretty well. I trust him. I’ve worked with him before. He understands that I sometimes have situations where I can’t draw the attention of the medical or legal community as a whole, and he’ll help me out anyway. He’s agreed to come here, and he should be here sometime this morning—as soon as he can get away. He’s going to look at your bullet wound and see what needs to be done.”

  Wes looked down at his bandaged shoulder. “Good,” he said. “Will he be able to make me more mobile?”

  “He’ll help, I’m sure,” Jordan said. “What I want you to do is call Alana and give her my address. Tell her that it’s your new place if she asks about it. Just get her over here. If we’re going to impress upon her how serious this is, then we need her to understand that you were actually shot just for being involved in it.”

  “Are we telling her about my thoughts?” Wes asked, hoping that the answer was no. “I don’t trust her.”

  “We’re going to have to edit the story,” Jordan said. “What I want you to say is that someone saw you talking to Alana and thought that you would be a good way to get to her. When you refused to cooperate, that person took you outside at gunpoint. And the story remains the same from there.”

  Wes lifted his eyebrows. “Well
, not entirely the same.”

  “No, but …” Jordan said, “if you could avoid mentioning me carrying you through the alleys, that would be great. But for now, don’t tell her any of that. Just get her here. When we have her here, we’ll convince her of the importance of her cooperation if she wants protection.”

  Nodding, Wes swiped his phone open and tapped in his code. There was no part of him that wanted to call Alana, but he did understand why it was the best option. Pressing her number felt foreign, though, and he actually felt nervous as the phone began to ring.

  It rang four times, and he began to both worry and hope that she wouldn’t pick up.

  But then her ice-cold voice came over the line. “Well. If it isn’t Wes Moretti.”

  Wes refrained from rolling his eyes at her dramatics. “I just saw you last night, Alana. You said that like I’m a long-lost friend, calling you after years of not staying in touch.”

  “I think it’s my right to feel slighted after you disappeared on me last night, leaving me standing with that new little slut that you’re apparently dating now.”

  Just as it had the night before, her attitude towards Jordan made him livid. But he clamped down on his anger and kept his voice relatively even. “Don’t talk about her that way. And she’s not my girlfriend. I want to talk to you about why I stepped away last night, actually. There’s a lot I need to tell you. Can you meet me?”

  “You have a lot to tell me?” Alana’s voice lilted upward, betraying her curiosity. “About what?”

  “About things that we can’t and shouldn’t talk about over the phone,” Wes said looking at Jordan, who was nodding to him. “Can you meet me at my new apartment?”

  “You didn’t get a new apartment.

  “Yes, I did,” Wes said. “It’s …very new.”

  “And you want me to meet you there?”

  “Yes. Now.”

  “I’m at work, Wes. You should be too, actually. What’s going on?”

  Wes forced himself not to sigh in frustration. “Alana, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t very important. You can leave your jewelry counter position to come see me, can’t you? Or are their diamonds that simply must be bought today, and on your commission sheet?”

  There was a long silence, but then Alana gave a delicate, martyr-ish sigh. “Well, I suppose that I can explain to Georgiana why I need to take off. But I’ll miss a whole day of work. I hope it’s worth it.”

  “It is.”

  “Have you missed me, Wesley?” Alana asked, her voice suddenly coquettish. “You’re so eager to see me.”

  Wes clenched his teeth, staring at Jordan as she shook her head, warning him not to react.

  “Put it this way,” Wes said tightly. “I can’t wait for you to get here. I’ll text you the address.”

  “Bye, Wesley.”

  Hanging up the phone, Wes grimaced. “God, that was painful.”

  “Does she know that nicknames are supposed to be shorter?” Jordan asked, her voice sounding off. “Wesley is your full name. An affectionate name is the shorter name. Nobody uses the full name affectionately.”

  Wes didn’t know what to say that. It almost sounded as though she was jealous, but that had to be in his imagination. Jordan was very professional, and aside from a few more tender moments they had shared, she kept him very much at a distance. There was no way she was jealous because his insane ex-girlfriend had called him by his full name in some pathetic attempt at intimacy.

  “She doesn’t work that far from here,” Wes said, choosing not to comment on Jordan’s outburst, given the disconcerted look on her face. “It won’t take her long to get here.”

  “Let’s get you out of the bedroom,” Jordan said, nodding to Hannah to help her. “It’ll be better if we can all talk in the living room instead of in here.”

  Wes was a little worried to move around much, but he was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t a terrible increase in his pain as the two women flanked him on either side and guided him to the couch. They sat him down carefully, taking a lot of his weight onto them so that he could focus on controlling his movements while he sat down. It felt good to get out of the bed, and when Jordan perched on the arm of the couch and placed her hand on his shoulder, it felt even better.

  “This will help,” Jordan said, not looking at his face but intently down at his shoulder. “At least with the pain.”

  “It does help,” Wes said, covering her hand with his and pressing lightly.

  Her eyes flicked up to his, and she cleared her throat. “The touching is necessary.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t heal you without touching you.”

  “I wasn’t complaining.”

  “But it’s professional touching.”

  Wes hid his smile. He was very tempted to dip into her thoughts, to see if he was right about what she was thinking, but he had promised her that he wouldn’t try to hear her. But he could hardly help it if he accidentally heard her. And if he accidentally heard her, he thought that he might hear that she was confused about how she felt about him.

  Which was actually kind of adorable. And perfect. Because he wasn’t sure what he was feeling for her either, but it was definitely something.

  Wes rubbed her arm gently. “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

  Jordan cleared her throat again, patting his shoulder, then pulling away. “Yes, well. Superheroes must serve the public.”

  It was a light quip, delivered as she moved away from him, but Wes saw through it. She was the most delicate and strongest person he had ever met, and the fact that she was nervous around him gave him what could only be described as a sweet, tender feeling.

  He glanced over at Hannah, who was gathering up the papers that Jordan had been working on last night. She was watching him, and she had a knowing look on her face, hiding a smile of her own.

  Wes didn’t think Hannah could read thoughts, but she could certainly read Jordan, and she was picking up the same vibes that he was.

  Jordan had disappeared into the kitchen, but she returned a few minutes later with a toasted bagel topped with a cream cheese spread. “How’s this?” she asked him, setting it on his lap. “I’m sure you’re starving.”

  “It’s great,” he said, realizing for the first time that he actually was ravenous. Using his good hand, he scarfed down the bagel in a few bites, while Hannah and Jordan organized Jordan’s work. When he was done with his food, he stood up on his own, brushing off the women’s offers of help. He looked at himself in the mirror when he was done, taking in his bare chest, bandaged shoulder, beard scruff, and slightly rumpled jeans. His hair was sticking up in several directions, and he used his good hand to straighten it back into place. Splashing some water on his face, he used the hand towel to dab it off, and he felt a bit fresher. Swiping a bit of Jordan’s toothpaste and rubbing it on his teeth topped him off, and he walked back out to the couch, moving slowly.

  He was just about to sit down when there was a knock at the door, and all three of them froze, looking at each other.

  “You should get it,” Jordan said, quietly. “Get her into the apartment.”

  “That sounds like we’re kidnapping her,” he said, shuffling his way over to the door anyway.

  He opened the door, keeping his bandaged shoulder mostly hidden. Alana stood there in the doorway, looking fresh, smart, and as beautiful as always, though she held no allure for him anymore. She smiled confidently, sure that he had invited her over to rekindle their relationship.

  Wes smiled back, but it was a forced smile. “Alana … Come in.”

  Chapter 17

  Jordan

  The moment Alana stepped inside, Jordan felt a flush of anger that was irrational given the circumstances. She didn’t care. She really did not like the woman, and she was in the unfortunate position of having to save her life. Jordan didn’t want Alana to die, but she also didn’t really want to spend the next however long with her, trying to figure out wh
at was going on.

  From Alana’s reaction when she stepped into the apartment and Wes closed the door behind her, she wasn’t too keen on the idea either.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Alana asked, staring at Jordan with hatred in her eyes. Apparently, their feelings towards each other were mutual. Alana turned to Wes. “Did you invite me to your new girlfriend’s apartment? What is wrong with you?”

  “Again,” Wes said, shuffling back towards the couch. “We’re not dating. But it is significant that you focused on that rather than the fact that I am obviously seriously injured.”

  Alana turned to look at him again, sizing him up for the first time. “What happened to you?”

  “I was shot,” Wes said, starting to sit down.

  Jordan hurried to help him, bearing his weight as he sat down. His good arm snaked around her waist as she helped him, and she felt that same infuriating jump of her pulse when he touched her. “Are you all right?”

  He had grunted as he sank into the cushion. “I’m fine,” he said, looking up at her.

  She looked back at him for a moment, and even though it was only a second, Alana jumped on it.

  “Well, this is ridiculous,” Alana said, turning towards the door. “I’m not going to stand here and be made a fool of while you two make eyes at each other. I did not come here for this!”

  She started to open the door, but Hannah got there first, firmly shutting it and standing in Alana’s way. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” She had a soft heart, but she knew how to stand up for what was right, and she had no qualms about it. “Someone you say you care about has just told you that he was shot, and he is clearly in a great deal of pain. And you’re worried because you might not get what you want. I don’t know you at all, but that does not give me a good first impression of you.”

  Alana stared at Hannah, wide-eyed with shock. “How dare you?” she asked. “What do I care what you think of me? Who are you?”