by Nika Rhone
No, when she looked at Brennan Doyle, she saw a man whose military training showed in every disciplined line of his well-toned body, whose intelligence and wit shone from gorgeous hazel eyes that could stop a girl dead with one look, whose very presence in a room could start her heart tripping in a triple-time beat no salsa could ever match. She’d racked up more sweaty dreams about the man than she cared to count, starting when she was sixteen and didn’t even understand what sweaty dreams were all about.
Doyle, her big brother? Not in a million years.
But knowing how she felt didn’t change a thing about how he felt. Or didn’t feel. That was the part that made her the craziest. She didn’t know if that spark of something she sometimes thought she saw in his gaze meant anything or if she was just being pathetic, projecting what she wanted to see into those incredible, see-through-your-soul eyes.
Thea sighed, put aside the sketchpad and turned on her laptop. It wouldn’t hurt to do an internet search for interior design firms based in Denver, Pueblo, and maybe even Colorado Springs. At least it would help to keep her mind off of the what-ifs and maybes that surrounded her turbulent feelings regarding what to do about Doyle.
Attracting men was not something she’d ever gotten the hang of. Rebuffing them, now that she had gotten down to a science by her second semester at college, right after the Dave Disaster. He had been her first, and only, lover and it had been, well, a disaster. She’d caught him cheating. He’d accused her of being frigid and needy. After that, it had been easier, and safer, just to avoid relationships altogether.
No, making men sit up and beg was more up Lillian’s alley. If only Thea could ask for her help. But that would mean admitting that she was still hung up on Doyle after four years of repeated denial. Maybe she should write to Dr. Phil instead. Dear Dr. Phil: There’s a sexy ex-Marine living in the guest house on my parents’ estate, and I dream about him every night in enough detail to make Hugh Heffner blush, but I don’t know how to tell him I want to tear his clothes off and have wild monkey sex with him until neither of us can walk straight. What do I do?
A faint shudder ran through her. Okay, what she definitely shouldn’t do was think of Doyle and wild monkey sex in the same sentence. The same paragraph. The same time zone.
With a groan, Thea saved her search results and shut down the computer. She needed help all right, and it was time to swallow her pride and ask for it. The hardest part was confessing the truth to her friends.
****
“What do you mean, you know?”
Ignoring Thea’s stunned exclamation, Lillian plucked a brownie from the plate on the kitchen table between them and took a huge bite. She rolled her eyes and gave an appreciative moan. “Rosa has got to give up her recipe for these someday. They’re just too decadent to keep a secret.” As if to prove it, she shoved the rest of it into her mouth and made more yummy noises as she chewed.
“What do you mean you know?” Thea slid the plate of treats she’d brought as a bribe out of reach. “Lil, I’m holding the chocolate hostage until I get an answer.”
After taking a large swallow of milk, Lillian gave her friend an exasperated look. “I mean, I know. I’ve always known. Just because you stopped whining about it doesn’t mean it isn’t still perfectly obvious that you’re in love with the guy.”
Heat flooded Thea’s cheeks. Was she that transparent? God, was she that pathetic?
“I didn’t whine,” she mumbled. Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, I whined. A little. But that was then. I was eighteen, a kid, and he was thirty. I get that. But I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a twenty-two year old woman, and he still doesn’t notice me. So, give it to me straight, Lil. What the heck is wrong with me?” Thea shoved a bite of brownie into her mouth and slid the plate back toward the center of the table.
She ran a finger over the indentations marking the distressed oak surface as she chewed, enjoying the tactile feature. The table had been the only hard sell when Mrs. Beaumont had let Thea convince her to redo the kitchen, but it was the perfect complement to the French country style Mrs. Beaumont loved. The cozy feel suited the family so much better than the miles of stainless steel and glass it had replaced. Every time she saw the Beaumonts using and enjoying the room, Thea got a small thrill of satisfaction. She really was good at her job, darn it.
Realizing her friend had grown silent, Thea looked up to find Lillian staring at her with the same level of assessment Thea had been giving the table. It was uncomfortable being the singular focus of that intense brown gaze. Lillian might be the least serious one of their group, jumping from job to job and interest to interest with frenetic abandon, but she was also the one who read people the best. Thea fought not to squirm.
Finally, Lillian picked up another brownie and nibbled on it as she shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Thea snorted, but she bit back her retort as Lillian’s twin brother Peter walked into the kitchen. At a few inches over six feet, he was a commanding presence in his crisp, black police uniform, complete with gun belt, handcuffs, and nightstick. The only thing missing was the gun, which Thea knew had been safely stored in his gun safe the minute he came home.
This was not a man anyone in their right mind would want to come up against, all brawny muscle and intimidating stares. Until he smiled and two huge dimples at the sides of his mouth turned his stern expression into boyish glee.
“Brownies!”
“Good to see you, too, Pete,” Thea said as he swooped down and stole a half dozen of the gooey cakes.
Having the decency to look sheepish, he dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Sorry.” The spicy scent of recently applied body spray touched her nose. Not a fashion statement, Thea knew, but a necessity to counter the amount of perspiration generated after wearing a bulletproof vest for eight hours in the early summer heat. That subtle reminder of the very dangerous and grown-up job he did never failed to sober her and make her thankful that he could still be the big goof she knew and loved.
Which was why she waved away the apology, knowing he didn’t mean it. “I understand. Food must come before the niceties. You’re a growing boy, after all.”
“Like he needs to grow any more,” Lillian said. “He’s already a walking mountain.”
“So says the molehill.” He went to one of the glass-fronted cabinets for a glass.
Just to be perverse, Lillian emptied the rest of the milk into her glass as her brother’s back was turned, leaving only a dribble behind in the container. Thea hid a smile behind her own glass.
When Pete went to pour his milk and found the container empty, he leveled his best cop-face at Lillian. “Childish, Lil. Very childish.” He shook his head in disappointment and walked to the fridge.
“No, childish would be entering your baby pictures in that amateur photo contest The Boulder Gazette is holding this month. You know the ones I mean, don’t you? The ones with you wearing your toy police hat and holster and nothing else? And I do mean nothing else.”
Thea nearly choked on her suppressed laughter at the horror on Pete’s face as he spun around. “Mom said she burned those.
Lillian shrugged. “She may have missed a few.” In an aside to Thea she said, “He really looks adorable, you know. Three years old and proud as can be, holding his toy gun and his—”
“Lil!”
She turned an innocent look on her brother. “Hmm?”
Beginning to take on the air of a trapped animal, Pete dragged a hand through his hair, a few shades lighter than his sister’s, standing the short strands on end. “What do you want?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Jesus, Lil, do you have any idea what something like that could do to me down at the station? They’d never let me live it down!”
“Imagine that.” There was an edge of humor to Lillian’s otherwise cool voice. The teasing might have seemed cruel if Thea didn’t have a pretty good idea of what had prompted it. If she was right, then Pete
deserved ever moment of agony he was getting.
“Name your price.”
Lillian looked triumphant at the desperation in her brother’s voice. “Swear that you will never, ever follow me again when I’m on a date. Or have one of your buddies follow me, either.” Pete’s mouth set in a mulish line.
“The guy had a record, Lil. Five speeding tickets. Five!”
“And we did forty-five all the way to Denver and back, thanks to the squad car that sat on our bumper the whole night.”
Pete saluted her with his milk. “Mission accomplished, then.”
“First prize gets their pictures published in the Gazette,” Lillian said. “And all the entries will be available to be viewed on the paper’s website. For weeks. Do you know how many hits that website can get in weeks?”
Pete glared at her.
Lillian glared right back. “Swear it.”
“Dam—darn it, Lil…”
“Swear. It.”
His brow drawn into a fierce scowl, Pete was silent before he relented “Fine. No more following you on dates. But I want those pictures back.”
“Deal.”
“Well,” Thea said, “as entertaining as it is to watch you eviscerate your baby brother—”
“Only by ten minutes!” Pete held up his hands, fingers splayed.
“—maybe we can get back to my, um, difficulty with, um, you know.”
“And that’s because she was pushy even in the womb.”
“I just wanted out because you were taking up all the room, Gigantor.” Untrue, since they’d weighed within six ounces of each other at birth, regardless of their disparate sizes now, but Lillian always made the claim anyway.
Thea waved a hand in her friend’s face. “Hello, remember me? The needy friend?”
Lillian blinked and then looked from Thea to her brother, calculation gleaming in her eyes. “Pete, you’re a guy.”
A wary look crossed his face. “No good has ever come from those words passing a woman’s lips. Especially yours.”
Lillian ignored him. “Do you think there’s anything wrong with Thea?”
“Oh, my God, Lil!” She couldn’t believe Lillian had actually asked that. Bad enough for Lillian to know how pathetic she was, but Pete! That would be blackmail material to last him a lifetime, and she didn’t have any image-damaging photos she could drag out as protection.
“Well, you won’t take my word for it, so maybe you’ll listen to a member of the sex in question.” Lillian waved a vague hand in Pete’s direction. “Poor specimen that he is, he’s still the best we have at the moment. So, go on. Make use of him.”
Thea shook her head and shoved a brownie in her mouth instead.
Undeterred, Lillian asked her brother, “Well, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Think there’s anything wrong with her?”
“Wrong?” Pete’s face scrunched, as if he sensed a trap. “Wrong, how?”
“Is there anything about her that would prevent her from attracting a man?”
With a mortified groan, Thea sank lower in her chair, wondering if either of them would notice if she just slid onto the floor and crawled out of the room.
“Ah.” Peter offered Thea a knowing nod. “Doyle’s still doing the won’t-look-can’t-touch thing, huh?”
For the second time in less than an hour, Thea felt her mouth drop open. “Does everybody know about me and Doyle?” Realizing that she’d just confirmed what Pete might have only assumed, she let out another groan and squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, just shoot me now and put me out of my misery.”
“Forget who knows and who doesn’t,” Lillian said. “The only two people who matter are you and Doyle.”
With a sad laugh, Thea opened her eyes. “Too bad that one of those two is the only person who apparently doesn’t seem to know how I feel. Or how he feels, for that matter.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Pete rubbed his chin as he thought. “Doyle came to work for your father when you were what, ten…twelve?”
“Thirteen.” A very young, immature, tomboyish thirteen, who had tripped and fallen straight into hero-worship at Brennan Doyle’s boot-clad feet the second she’d laid eyes on him. “So?”
“So first impressions are hard to shake.”
“But I was a kid!”
“Exactly.”
Thea’s shoulders slumped as defeat set in. “Great. So basically I could strip down in the middle of his office and dance on his desk naked, and he’d still never see me as an adult.”
Pete made a small choking sound, although Thea wasn’t quite sure if it was a laugh or not. “I didn’t say that,” he finally managed to get out. “But that might just do the trick.”
“What trick?”
“Of shaking up that first impression,” Lillian said, catching on to her brother’s train of thought. She beamed at him. “Maybe you’re not such a rock-head, after all.”
“And maybe I am,” Thea said, “because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Lillian turned her smile on Thea. “We’re talking about giving Mr. Brennan Doyle a hard enough shake to make him see the real you. All of the real you.”
Thea felt herself pale. “I was kidding about the dancing naked thing.”
“We’ll save it as a last resort.”
Thea gulped. “Maybe I should just go with Plan B.”
“And what’s Plan B?”
“I move to South America and start decorating huts in the Amazon.”
With another of those dismissive waves that she seemed so darn good at, Lillian said, “You’d hate it. The constant humidity would make your skin peel like a snake.”
Well…eeuuw. “Alaska, then.”
“Frostbite. You’ll walk funny when you start losing toes, and I don’t think Manolo Blahnik makes an orthopedic pump.”
Hmm. No Doyle, no skin, no toes, no clothes. Eeny, meeny, miney…
“Guess it’s moe,” Thea muttered. She forced herself upright in the chair, dreading her next question. “So, what do I need to shake, and how hard do I have to shake it?”
****
“Kiss off from a woman or a summons to a tax audit?”
Doyle’s head jerked up at the voice, annoyed with himself that he hadn’t heard the other man come into his office. He’d been too sunk in rage as he read the note in his hands. “What?”
With a tip of his head, Charlie “Red” Fields, Doyle’s second-in-command on the Fordham security team, indicated the paper in Doyle’s hand. “From the way you were scowling at that, I figured it had to be one or the other.”
Doyle dropped the paper onto his desk and fought the desire to go wash his hands despite the latex gloves he wore. “I’d have preferred either.”
The other man’s weathered face tightened in sudden comprehension. “Shit.”
“That about sums it up.” Doyle watched as Red took a latex glove from the box on the corner of the desk before picking up the paper by its edge and scanning it. He knew exactly when Red got to the worst part by the way his mouth thinned into a bloodless rope; he knew it because the words still churned his own guts into a tight knot over the picture they’d painted in his mind.
Love and devotion laced with anger and madness, all wrapped into a disgusting mélange of pain and sexual violence. Try as he might, he knew it would take quite some time before he could push those unwanted images away.
“Same son of a bitch,” Red said in a flat voice.
Doyle nodded. There was little doubt. Even if the tone of the letter hadn’t been the same as the others, the small, cramped handwriting that filled the page was unmistakable.
“Fucking hell.” Red let the paper flutter back to the desk. “How did this one come?”
“With a box of chocolates that found its way into the groceries that were delivered this morning. It’s on its way to the lab,” he said, knowing it would be Red’s next question. Red grunted. “I already sent Sam and Kirsten to question the staff
at the grocers, but I’m not expecting much. Whatever else this guy is, he’s not stupid.”
“It would make me feel better if he was.”
Silently seconding that, Doyle put the offending missive into a plastic sheet protector with its envelope and locked them away in his desk. The sender had been careful to keep fingerprints or any other identifying marks from the six previous notes and letters, so there was little hope that he would have screwed up this time, but he’d still send it to the police lab and have it checked out. Sometimes one dumb mistake and a little blind luck were all you got. At this point, he’d take either.
Disposing of the gloves he’d worn to handle the letter, Doyle poured two cups of coffee from the machine on the credenza behind his desk. There was a bottomless communal pot always brewing in the kitchen area of the small bungalow that served as the security office. But, in a concession to the grumblings about the strength at which he preferred his coffee—sludge was one of the kinder phrases used—Doyle had installed his own personal coffeemaker. Everyone had been happier since.
Except Red, who, as a former Navy SEAL preferred the sludge.
“That’s two in a week, both with gifts.” Red swallowed a mouthful of the steaming black brew as if it were ice water. “He’s escalating.”
Doyle nodded, his expression dark and brooding. The letters had been arriving by mail over the past two months, starting not long after Thea arrived home from college. The fifth arrived just over a week ago. But it was these last two that had Doyle worried.
The one before this had come pinned to a bouquet of flowers delivered by a local florist. The order had been taken over their website. So far, tracing the computer that had been used to do it and the account the payment had been wired from had proven fruitless.
The note that had been mailed to the florist to be sent with the flowers had had a California postmark, but that had been of little help since each of the other notes had been postmarked from different places around the country. No two were the same, and they followed no pattern that anyone had been able to discern. For now, the postmarks were a dead end.