by Lexi Blake
Maybe if she was just honest with him, they could deal with it. She was so open when he was making love to her, but the minute he wanted to talk she clammed up. She turned it right back around and he found himself talking.
She was hiding something from him and it was starting to make him crazy.
He’d talked to her. Really opened up. He’d told her things he hadn’t told another person in the world, but she wouldn’t give him anything.
Was she using him? Was he just another in a string of men she played with? Would she expect him to be all buddy buddy with her after they were done? He wasn’t sure he could be friends with her.
“No, I just thought we could have dinner and maybe watch some TV. I don’t know, Derek. I’m just tired.”
And avoiding the subject. “You might be tired, but that won’t mean a damn thing to the guy who’s after you. I’m wondering how he knew about that e-mail when you seem to have forgotten it.”
She shook her head and he couldn’t help but think about how the setting sun hit her hair, bringing out the warmth of the color. It always seemed so dark, but when the light hit it just the right way, he could see some auburn in there. “I have no idea. Derek, I’m not trying to hide an e-mail from you. I really haven’t checked that account since Kevin died.”
“He died?” He’d asked her a couple of times about her marriage, but she’d put him off. Fuck, he’d been sleeping with her and she hadn’t even mentioned she was a widow. Her husband had died and she’d never even mentioned it to him.
“Yes. And he died years ago so you can see how long it’s been since I checked that e-mail.” She was so reasonable. So rational. Like it didn’t matter. Did he matter to her at all? “Hey, I’ll give you the passwords to all my accounts and then you won’t have to hack into them the way that Harris jerk did. I’ll let you look through my computer if it makes you feel better.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Come upstairs, Derek. I was thinking about lasagna for dinner. How does that sound?”
She was trying to distract him again. This was what she did. When he tried to convince her to be real with him, she distracted him with sex and food. Anything except to talk to him. “How did he die?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this. Come on. Can’t we just have a nice afternoon? You’re right. We have to work tonight. We have to go in and get it done. So let’s go upstairs and just relax until we have to go to the club.”
“What are you hiding from me?” He was sick of waiting, sick of hoping she would open up to him. He needed the truth. He couldn’t stand this. It was like walking through uncharted territory and never knowing when quicksand would swallow him up.
“I’m not hiding anything.”
He leaned forward. “I think you are.”
She pushed her finger against his chest. “Good for you, Derek. Hey, guess what? You’re a fucking cop. Maybe you should do what cops do and investigate.”
This wasn’t working. When he put her in a corner, she just fought and kicked and scratched. He needed her to talk, needed her to want to tell him. He softened his tone, his stance. He crowded her a little, but not in an aggressive way. Maybe she would respond to his honesty. “Tell me about him, Karina. Tell me your secrets. How bad could it be? Alex told me I need to see you, but how can I do that if you hide from me? This is not how this relationship is supposed to work. We’re supposed to be honest with each other.”
And he’d given her that. He’d really talked to her. She might not have liked everything she heard, but he’d opened up. He’d talked about his past. He’d talked about what he wanted for his future.
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Please, baby. Talk to me.”
“Don’t call me that.”
His jaw tightened. He’d forgotten she didn’t like to be called baby, but now he had to wonder why. “Because he called you that? I can’t call you baby because you were his baby?”
Tears glistened in her eyes, but she didn’t shed them. “I don’t know.”
His hands came up, gentle as he pushed back her hair. “I don’t know if you won’t talk to me about him because you loved him too much or because you didn’t love him at all. I’ve stayed away from this because I would rather hear the story from you. Do you know how hard that’s been for me? I didn’t even know the reason you weren’t married anymore. I thought you were divorced. I didn’t know why the marriage broke up. Just tell me about him.”
“I married him. He died. What the hell else do you need to know?”
He dropped his hands, utterly at a loss as to how to deal with her. “Fine. You’re not my baby. You don’t want to talk about your husband. I’ve got that down now. Let’s talk about what you did before you came to Texas. Were you always a PI? Is that e-mail account associated with work you did in New York?”
He’d tried to be gentle with her, tried to be intimate, and she’d shoved him back as hard as she could. The least she could do was talk about the goddamn job.
“No.” She hesitated, seeming to want to say more, her hand starting to reach out to him, but she dropped it again. “That particular account didn’t have anything to do with work. That account was one I had when I was in college. I got married young and I went to school. I went to Brooklyn College. Sociology degree.”
It surprised him, but he could see it now. Now that he’d spent time with Karina, he could see her doing social work. “How would he have known about that account, Karina?”
He would be careful. Perhaps it was time to pull back, to treat her with a professional distance. He leaned against the car next to her, but careful to keep himself apart. He couldn’t do this dance again. He’d been right in the first place. He needed a sub who needed him, who brought him some modicum of peace, not a woman who made him feel like he’d gotten kicked in the gut every time he looked at her.
“I don’t know how he found out about it.” Her voice had gone quiet and it took everything he had not to reach out and haul her close, but he’d attempted affection and it hadn’t worked. “The address had my name in it. Maybe he got lucky.”
“I don’t like it.” Something was off. “He didn’t send e-mails to the other women.” Not victims. He wouldn’t call them victims because he couldn’t put Karina in that group. No matter what she did, he couldn’t imagine her gone.
“He’s evolving. He’s becoming more intimate with his victims.” Karina didn’t seem to notice that the word made him wince. “He might be getting frustrated because I changed my habits. He’s having to learn them all over again. I’m sure I was a much easier target before you moved in with me. Maybe we should think about that.”
He huffed a little. “Now I’m supposed to leave you alone? I ask a couple of questions and you want to kick me out?”
“You’re not behaving in a professional manner, Derek. Think about this for a second. If he decides I’m too hard a target, he’s going to kill someone else. Can you live with that?”
“Fuck, yeah, I can live with that.” He knew it was wrong, but if it was Karina or someone else, he would pick someone else. Anyone else.
“I don’t understand you.” Karina got in his space, her anger obvious. “Maybe you can but I can’t. So if you can’t treat me with some professional courtesy, maybe you should be reassigned.”
Was he really having it out in a parking lot? He wasn’t this guy. He was the calm guy who talked shit out. He did not throw down with his sub in a fucking parking lot, except Karina seemed to bring out the worst in him. “I would love to see you try, sweetheart.”
“You don’t think I can? You don’t think I can get you booted right off this case?”
Anger, jealousy, all the nasty emotions he’d had churning in his gut, flashed through him. “You go ahead and make that call. Who are you going to bring in? You going to bring in O’Donnell? Maybe he can fuck you for a while since Tag’s out of town. Or hell, maybe you haven’t fucked Little Tag in too long. Their wives don’t seem to give a damn. Give you som
ething to do. I know how much you need it.”
Her hand cracked across his face, damn near twisting his head around because Karina didn’t do the polite, lady-slap thing. No, when his baby got pissed she punched and hard. And he deserved it because he’d been way out of line. Even as the words had come out of his mouth, he’d known they were wrong.
Her eyes widened and she stepped back. “Derek, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
He knew exactly why she’d done it. “Because I inferred you were sleeping with a married man?”
She nodded and backed away, her eyes shifting to the ground. Her breath came out in little panicked pants. “Yeah, the whore thing kind of gets to me. I really hate that.”
So Alex was right and he was a douchebag dickwad with infidelity issues. No woman looked that shocked when they had actually done the crime. She made him so crazy. “I didn’t say you were a whore, Karina. I didn’t even think that. I was just being a jealous idiot.”
“No, you just thought I was sleeping with my friends’ husbands.” She’d gone a nice shade of white and he would have done anything, anything to have kept his mouth shut.
“I’m sorry. God knows I’ve probably had far more meaningless sex than you have. It wasn’t fair or right for me to say something like that.” And he had to stop thinking that way. She wasn’t Maia. She didn’t deserve to pay for Maia’s crimes. “Baby, let’s go inside.”
She shook her head, stepping back from him again, hitting against the side of the car. “No.”
“I called you baby. I’m sorry.” He had to fix this. He’d made a fucking mess of it. He’d just told himself it would be best to move away from her and the instant he had a real chance to do it, he panicked. He didn’t want to leave her. He couldn’t trust her to anyone else. “I don’t call you baby.”
Something had happened to her. Her hands were shaking. He grabbed them, holding them between his. He deepened his voice because she needed something to hold on to. He needed to ground her. He’d done this to her and he had to make it right. “Karina, calm down. Listen to my voice and calm down. Let’s go home. I’ve got my kit upstairs. I’ll tie you up and you’ll feel safe and I swear I won’t ask another question. You have my word on it. I won’t call you baby and I won’t ask you anything about your past.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Her teeth were chattering like she was cold.
“You don’t have to. You don’t ever have to tell me.” He knew that look. She was scared. He’d put her in a bad place and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
This was why she needed to play. It wasn’t play at all for her. It was therapy. Some people hit the gym when the stress got to be too much. Some people drank. Some did worse. Karina played. She let the pain and the discipline center her.
“Let me take care of you.” He could give it back to her. He could spend an hour with her, giving her what she needed and then they could talk. He would talk at least. He would let her know that her secrets were her own and he wouldn’t pry again.
She looked up at him, her eyes a little wide, and he felt her start to relax.
“Karina, is this guy bugging you?”
He turned and saw a man standing at the hood of the car, a frown on his face. He was dressed in sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt despite the heat. He was sweating and his eyes were on Karina. Derek moved in front of her, putting his body in the way. He could easily make it to his gun if he needed to. “Who are you?”
Karina moved from behind him. “He’s my brother-in-law, Derek. Hi, Terry. How are you?”
“Did this asshole make you cry?” Terry pointed a finger at Derek. That was when he noticed the bright blue cast around his hand. It looked like it went all the way up to his elbow. “Is this one of those perverts? I told you to stay away from that shit.”
Derek was just about to take care of him because the last thing Karina needed was another fight. She needed to be calm.
“Terry, please. Can we go upstairs to my place?” Karina turned to Derek. “He was Kevin’s brother. Why don’t you go pick up dinner for us or something?”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I’m not leaving you alone.” Not for anything. Not even to make her happy. He’d been a fuckwad asshole and she might never forgive him, but he wasn’t leaving her alone if he didn’t absolutely have to.
Karina frowned and turned away, seemingly in control again and obviously unhappy with him. She started talking to her brother-in-law and Derek had to wonder if he hadn’t just ruined everything.
* * * *
“How are you feeling? When are you going to get that cast off?” Karina shut the door behind her, totally aware that Derek’s eyes were watching her every move. She tried to focus on Terry.
Terry sat down at her bar, glancing around to see where Derek had gone. “Does he really have to be here?”
“Where else would I go? I live here.” Derek was a grim-faced guardian who seemed intent on destroying her.
“What?” Terry turned to her, shaking his head. “You said this was casual.”
If she hadn’t promised Liam, she would have told Terry everything. She would have thrown Derek right under a damn bus, then stopped the bus, backed over him and hit him again.
He thought the worst of her. He thought she’d slept with every man at Sanctum apparently. Hypocrite.
And yet when he’d held her hands and promised to make everything better, she’d wanted to go with him so badly. She’d wanted to nod and let him pick her up because she’d believed him. She’d believed he would give her what she’d needed. He would make her safe and she could fight her urges. She’d known if she just gave over to Derek, she wouldn’t even think about using.
Thank god for Terry. She could talk to him and then ditch Derek and find a meeting. She would do it tonight at some point. She could handle it. She didn’t need him. She was in control, and if he thought for one second she was sleeping with him again, he was so wrong.
“He’s sleeping on the couch while his apartment is being fumigated.” Derek would never live in a place that needed to be fumigated. She was already thinking about how to get him back. How did one get revenge on the clean freak who called his lover a whore? She wondered where she could get a dozen rats.
His lips curled up slightly. Damn, the man was sexy. Why did he have to be so awful? “Really, you’re going with that? All right. I’m sleeping on the couch because my place is horribly messy and needs fumigation.”
Asshole. “So you didn’t answer my question, Terry. How’s the arm?”
Terry turned back to her, holding up his bad arm. “Healing up but it’s going to be weeks until I can use it again. I just came from the doctor’s. I thought I would check in on you. I haven’t seen you at all this week. You have a busy life.”
Somehow he could make innocuous words seem salacious. “Not usually. I’ve just been working.”
“I haven’t seen your office yet.” He put his hands on the counter, relaxing back. “I think Kevin would be proud that you’re out on your own working.”
“He taught me everything I know.” Her hands were still shaking slightly. Derek had pushed her. When she got that into a corner, she struggled to handle it. She couldn’t break down in front of him. Maybe he thought she was a whore, but at least she was a strong one.
She needed something to do. She started making coffee. It was going to be a long night.
“Hey, has that package come in?” Terry asked.
She turned on the faucet. For once her sink was clean. Really clean. So was the coffee pot. It made her life so much easier. And she could find things, like the note from the office she’d gotten yesterday. She’d forgotten about it because Derek had shoved her over the bar and spread her legs wide. “Yes, but I’m going to have to get it tomorrow. It’s after five and the manager’s office is closed.”
Derek frowned. “I thought the office closed at six every day.”
“Saturday is early bird special at the
diner. She closes up at five.” She opened the cabinet, praying she had some coffee left, but she should have known. Derek had two cans in a neat line along with the filters and sugar. Such a freak.
A freak who had a wife who had cheated on him. Many times. How had that affected him? And it wasn’t like she’d told him anything. Every time he asked about her friendships with the guys, she’d deflected. Now she could see he’d tried to talk to her about it. And there were plenty of lifestylers she knew who didn’t have a problem with casual sex, even after marriage. None of them were at Sanctum, but it was very likely Derek knew some.
He was jealous. Blindingly jealous. What the hell was she supposed to do with that? She’d expected him to be distant with her. He hadn’t been that. He’d gotten close. He’d been open.
“I’m going to talk to the manager about that. And the security in the building. And the downstairs bathroom.” He moved to the bar. “Do you want me to go and talk someone into getting your package?”
He shouldn’t be allowed to be sweet. Jerk. He made her mad, but then maybe that was what people in love did.
Damn it. She couldn’t be in love with Derek Brighton. She just couldn’t.
Terry put his good hand up. “No, no. Karina, don’t go to any bother. I was just curious. I was in the neighborhood.”
She sighed. She’d promised him she’d look out for the package and then she’d kind of avoided it. Guilt bit her again, a feeling in the pit of her stomach. Kevin’s things were in that package. Kevin had saved her. Kevin had loved her. Shouldn’t she be waiting for anything that belonged to him? But no, she was busy in bed with Derek Brighton, who accused her of sleeping around. Who cleaned her apartment and brought her coffee every morning. Who rubbed her feet and then sucked on her toes until she laughed and tried to wriggle away from him.
She’d started out comparing the men because she’d thought Derek would pale. Derek took care of her. Kevin’s version of D/s had been different. He’d been older than her and he’d had expectations of a wife. He would never have made her a deal that she cooked and he cleaned. He made the money and she took care of the house. It had been good for her at the time. She’d been happy, but now she wondered if she would have stayed that way or if they would have fought as she found her career. Maybe they would have grown together, but she wondered.