It was the sound of something scratching on glass.
Goosebumps rippled across my skin.
I stepped slowly around the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, and peered through to the glass-walled sunroom. Moonlight partly illuminated the room, but it was half-dark, too, the trees outside throwing eerie shadows.
And there it was again. A brief scratching sound on glass—and a dark figure moving outside.
There was a man in my backyard.
My body froze as ice-cold fear tore through me. It was instinctual, primal. Even as my mind started racing for an explanation, my body knew there was something deeply wrong here.
All I could see was the dark form, definitely a man. But that wasn’t one of my friends out there. I knew it, even though I couldn’t see him clearly in the shadows.
People showed up in my yard all the time, for parties. But this was not that.
This was unwelcome.
Everything in me told me this was wrong.
What the hell was he doing out there? Was he looking for the key? The one in the coffee can in the bushes?
Did he know about the key?
I considered marching into the sunroom and throwing open a window, yelling at him. Maybe that would scare him away?
But the hairs all over my body were standing on end, and something made me stay right where I was. Walking into the sunroom would leave me exposed to him, even in the near-dark, with nothing but a wall of windows between us.
What if he had a weapon?
I stood frozen, afraid to move, barely able to breathe… as I watched him reach up the glass wall of the sunroom… and feel along the edges of the windows.
I set my water glass down on the bar, my heart pounding so hard that my hands shook. Then I backed slowly away. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I just backed out of the room, turned, and ran down the hall and up the stairs to my bedroom.
I ran into my room and grabbed my phone, which was charging on the nightstand… wondering all the while if the doors were locked. Did my friends lock the house when they left?
I dialed 911 as fast as I could with trembling fingers.
The whole time, I could hear the faint scuffling noise outside—the sounds of a man trying to break into my home.
And God damn, it took them a long time to answer.
“911. What is your emergency?”
“Someone’s trying to break into my house!” That’s about all I could get out of my mouth. There was a lump in my throat. I could hear the sounds, down below my bedroom balcony.
The curtains were closed over the sliding glass doors to the balcony, moonlight streaming through.
Were they locked?
I backed toward the door of the bedroom, listening to the sounds from outside, even as the operator asked me questions. I gave her my address. She seemed to be trying to calm me down, though I thought I sounded calm.
Inside, I felt hysterical. I could hardly make my legs work to get back down the stairs.
The operator double-checked my address. She assured me that the police were on their way. She felt very, very far away.
“Stay on the line,” she kept telling me, as if she thought I might hang up. “Where are you now, in relation to the suspect?”
“I’m in my living room, at the front of the house. I can see him outside, through the windows…”
He was out there, in the shadows outside the sunroom. I watched as he reached up the glass wall again… And this time, he grabbed onto the edge of the window and held.
Then he hoisted himself up and started climbing the wall.
It seemed to take hours.
Hours inside of minutes inside of split seconds… As I stood inside my dark house, watching a man climb up the wall of my sunroom… waiting for the police to arrive in a scream of sirens and the pounding of booted feet… As the operator kept asking me to keep talking, keep telling her what was happening. What I was seeing.
“He’s up on top of the sunroom at the back of the house. He’s trying to get up onto the balcony off my bedroom!”
“Do you know him?”
“What?”
“Is it someone you know, or a stranger?”
“It’s a stranger. How would I know?”
“Just try to keep calm. Tell me where he is.”
“He’s up there. I can see his feet,” I said, my voice breaking. “He’s standing on the glass roof of my sunroom. Should I leave?” Fuck, why hadn’t I grabbed my car keys? They were in my purse upstairs. I had an extra set somewhere, but in my panic, fuck if I could remember where.
“The police are on their way,” she repeated.
“How long…?”
“They’ll be there soon. You can stay where you are as long as the suspect is outside, if you feel safe. Is there a room you can lock yourself into if you need to?”
Holy Christ.
No. No, I did not feel safe.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Is he armed?” she asked me. “Can you see a weapon?”
I started to cry.
The next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, looking for a weapon, something to defend myself with. I grabbed a big, sharp-as-hell knife from the knife block on my kitchen counter, gripping it in one hand as I held the phone to my ear with the other.
“I can’t see anything,” I said, the hysteria creeping into my voice. “I see one foot. He’s climbing onto the balcony upstairs.”
“Is he getting into the house?”
“Not yet. He’d have to cross the balcony. I don’t know if I locked the doors—”
There was a soft knock on the front door, behind me, and I jumped. I almost screamed.
“Shit,” I sobbed into the phone. “I think the police are here.”
I looked through the frosted glass window beside the front door, and I could see an officer in uniform. I didn’t even hear her arrive. I didn’t hear a car approach or anything.
I opened the door, fumbling with the lock, completely forgetting the phone. There were two of them; they stood to each side of the door, hands resting over their gun belts, one female officer and one male, looking at me. They looked at the knife in my hand.
“He’s out back,” I told them before they could say anything. I pointed with the knife toward the sunroom, my hand shaking. “Up there. He’s climbing onto the upstairs balcony.”
“Is there a way through there?” the male officer asked. He was already stepping into the house.
“Yes. The sliding door, straight through the back.”
The female officer followed him inside. She gently touched my wrist, guiding the knife down. Then she took it from my hand and stayed at my side as her partner headed through my living room, into the sunroom.
What happened next was beyond surreal. Something out of a movie, not real life.
Not my life.
The trees in the backyard shifted in the dark, and I saw two men dressed in black, obviously police officers, slipping from the shadows… with a police dog. The dog started barking furiously.
The officer in the sunroom opened the sliding door to the backyard, at the same time the man on the balcony jumped down to the ground. He stumbled and fell.
The officer with the dog let the dog loose.
I wandered forward, through the living room, watching, and the officer came with me; she put her hand on my arm, stopping me. The cops were fast, but the dog was faster. I watched as the man on the ground scrambled to his feet and tried to run.
For a split second, it felt like he looked right at me.
Then the dog tackled him against the sunroom wall. All I really saw of his face were the whites of his eyes, stricken with terror… But I recognized him.
I knew exactly who he was.
Chapter Three
Ronan
“It was nice meeting you,” I lied.
It was only polite.
The woman standing in front of me gazed up into my eyes, hers a
little bleary from all the wine she’d drank and the late hour. It was well past three-thirty a.m., and I was definitely gonna regret this tomorrow.
I was meeting my trainer for a morning workout in like three hours.
“It was sooo nice meeting you,” she said, and as stone-cold sober as I was, I wondered if she was gonna puke later. She pulled her keys out of her purse, and I gauged her level of intoxication. She wasn’t wavering on her feet, and she wasn’t slurring. “Well, I guess I should say good night.” She smiled at me.
“Good night.”
Then she just stood there. Her gaze drifted down to my mouth, and her lips parted. She took a little breath and leaned in.
“Want me to get the door for you?”
That seemed to snap her out of it. “Oh. No, I’ll be fine.”
“Alright, then.”
Another awkward silence, as she seemed to be waiting for something. So, I offered her a handshake. She slipped her hand into mine.
Then she actually leaned in again.
“Take care,” I said, and released her so quick, she kinda stumbled back.
She hid her disappointment with a quick smile and went inside.
I sighed.
I waited until she was safely inside her house, then headed back to my car where my buddy Andre was, unfortunately, watching. He was reclined in the passenger seat, playing it cool. He’d put on Post Malone’s “rockstar” loudly enough to send the message that he was totally cool to hang out and wait, in case I wanted to duck inside the house for a quickie.
I’d given him a lift home, too. Seemed like the charitable thing to do, since he’d been drinking all night.
Maybe I’d also hoped his presence might kill any romantic notions this woman might’ve had about how the night was gonna end.
“Fuck off,” I said as I got into the car.
“Guy, I would laugh if that wasn’t so painful to watch.”
I started the car.
“She wanted a piece of that,” he informed me. “Bad.”
I backed us out of the woman’s driveway.
“I could wait,” he informed me. “No need to rush out of here on my account…” His words faded off as I shifted gears and we took off up the street. “Guess not. Dude, you are ice-cold.”
“I was polite,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to take one for the team. Girl had legs, bro.”
“I wasn’t into her.”
“Trust me, she noticed.”
I tossed him a dark look.
“I’m starting to think you’re actually dead inside.”
I didn’t dispute that.
“So,” he ventured, “do you think that was Tam’s idea? Or Naveen’s?”
“Naveen knows better,” I muttered.
At least, I fucking hoped my partner knew better than to try to secretly hook me up with one of his wife’s friends at a dinner party.
The party was for me, a little “congrats on officially retiring as a bodyguard” thing that my partners had insisted on throwing for me. It was at Naveen and Tamara’s house, and once the kids were put to bed, the adults had some decent conversation. It didn’t take too long to figure out, though, that everyone was coupled up except for me, Andre, and the woman seated next to me, a co-worker of Tamara’s.
And that Tamara was bent on the two of us hitting it off.
We didn’t.
“Are they in trouble now?” Andre asked, snickering.
“Whatever. It’s fine.”
It wasn’t.
Granted, Naveen’s wife had tried playing matchmaker for me a few times over the years, and the woman she’d tried to hook me up with tonight—shit; I’d already forgotten her name… Rosalie? Rochelle?—was pretty. She seemed like a nice girl. Worked at the same hospital as Tam, as a nurse.
But none of that mattered when you just didn’t feel anything.
It was definitely gonna take a hell of a lot more than pretty and nice to make my cold, dead heart kick back to life.
“You really weren’t into her?” Andre pressed, like he just couldn’t fathom it. “Like… even for a few hours?”
“No. She was way too… eager. Needy? Something.” Honestly, the woman stank of eau de desperation, which was even more off-putting given the fact that she clearly had a lot to offer.
Red flags all over the place.
I was done with needy.
Been there, done that. And been sucked dry by it way too many times.
“Christ, you’re an asshole,” Andre muttered. “She liked you.”
“I know. It was awkward.”
He snorted.
“Think I need to put the word out to my friends,” I grumbled, “and their wives, that I’m not looking to get fixed up.”
“I don’t mind getting fixed up. As long as she’s hot. And that Roshana chick was hot.”
Right. Roshana.
“Then how about you have dibs on the next one.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m fucking tired of everyone thinking I need to get fixed up just because I’m thirty-five and single.”
Andre laughed. “The only reason they’re setting you up is because they think you’re a catch, and they want to see your cold ass melt. They can’t wait to introduce you to their hot single lady friends. I’d love to get that kind of endorsement.”
I looked at him.
Andre was a big dude, fit, gainfully employed, and he wasn’t ugly. He wasn’t winning any beauty contests either, objectively speaking, but he was a great guy. Warm-hearted, fucking brave, and always good for a laugh.
He was a hell of a lot nicer than I was.
“You don’t get hooked up?” I asked him.
“Not like you do, fucker. And not with women who look like that.”
Huh.
“You think I should go back,” I said, just to be an asshole, “give Roshana another chance?”
“Fuck, yeah. You serious?”
I shook my head. “Not happening.”
“So, life’s just one giant, gorgeous-woman buffet for you, huh Ronan Sterling?”
“You know, it really is,” I said, just to piss him off.
Andre coughed, and muttered something that sounded distinctly like Eat a dick.
My phone rang through the speakers in my car, and a name popped up on the screen on my dash.
Brody Mason.
I glanced at Andre, who raised an eyebrow.
I answered the call. “Brody. This is Ronan. I’ve got you on speaker here with one of my guys.”
“Hey, Ronan.” Brody’s voice filled the car. “Sorry to bother you in the middle of the night.”
“No problem. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a situation with one of my musicians. The police are at her house right now with a canine unit. Some guy tried to break in. I’m on my way over there from North Van, and I have one of my guys responding. Wondering if you can put a body on the house for me tonight, and we can talk in the morning about a possible ongoing situation?”
“Yeah. Of course.” I let off the accelerator, slowing down. We were on a residential street, a few blocks from Andre’s place. “Where?”
“Arbutus Ridge. I’ll text you the address so you can put it in GPS. I’m just getting in my car.”
I stopped my car in the middle of the dark street. We must’ve been close to the scene. “I’m in Dunbar right now, just off sixteenth.”
“I’ll see you there, then?”
“Yeah,” I said, making the decision on the fly. “I’ll be there when you arrive.”
“Perfect. See you soon. And thank you.”
“You got it.”
The call ended.
“You’re going in?” Andre asked.
“Guess so.”
He studied me, as I input the address Brody sent into my mapping system. Granted, I didn’t usually respond to random calls into the field in the middle of the night; I’d normally call in one of my gu
ys. But Brody Mason was a highly valued client.
And besides that, the house was literally three minutes away. It wasn’t like I was getting much sleep tonight anyway.
“Hey, whadya know,” Andre said, looking at the map on the screen. “I’m neighbors with a rock star.”
“Imagine that.” I glanced at him. “You want me to drop you off first?”
“Naw. I’ll come with. Too much booze in my system to pull a shift tonight, though.”
“Believe me, I know.”
I backed into a driveway and turned us around, and we took off back up the hill.
As we drove up the road to the house, we passed a police squad car, probably departing the scene. Then we passed the K9 unit’s SUV, which was just pulling away from the curb.
About a block later, we arrived at the address; a house on the ridge, overlooking the city.
Most of the lots up here were close together and minimal on trees, to maximize the view of the city and the mountains beyond. This one was lined with tall, old trees, concealing the house from the road. A wooden fence in the trees surrounded the property, but there was no gate on the drive.
We pulled in behind a Harley and parked. The motorcycle was the only vehicle in the dark driveway.
The police had completely cleared out.
We got out and I looked around into the dark. Took a look at the Harley as I walked past it; held my hand near enough to the pipes that I could feel the heat. It hadn’t been parked long, maybe arrived just as the police were leaving.
Brody’s guy, maybe.
There was a small amber light glowing over the front door, a few lights on in the house, but only a single motion-activated light went on over the driveway as we approached the house.
It was maybe a mid-century build, a basic bungalow, but large, with a partial second story over the garage. I was no architectural expert, but it looked like it had been completely remodeled and modernized.
The two-car garage was closed, and I glanced in through the window on the door. I could just make out the shape of a single car in the dark, and the distinctive hood ornament. Mercedes-Benz.
I approached the front door first, Andre at my back. I knocked on the door, not too loudly, and waited.
Sweet Temptation: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 3) Page 3