by Cynthia Eden
Maybe they should just put everything out in the open. She pulled in a deep breath, hoping it would cool the sudden tension, the fever, that she felt. “You know there’s…something between us.”
He just stared back at her. Did his pupils widen a bit? Maybe so.
“You want me.” There, she’d said it. Just tossed those words out there. All loud and proud.
His smile came again. Half of it, anyway, as his lips hitched a bit. The danger flashed on his face then. “You’re used to men wanting you, aren’t you, Sophie?”
Yes, she was. She was also well versed in using that desire against men. They didn’t care about who she was, not beneath the careful surface she presented to them.
She realized he hadn’t answered her question. That was fine. Maybe it was her turn for some honesty. She put her hands on his chest. Tipped back her head. Even in her heels, she was woefully small compared to him.
The bigger they are…
“I thought you should know,” Sophie said, “that I want you.”
He blinked and she saw shock slide across his face.
Satisfaction trickled through her. His hands lifted, to curl around her shoulders, but Sophie pulled back. “Now, let’s get this over with. The sooner we’re in and out of this place, the better.” Her heels snapped over the sidewalk. It hadn’t snowed in over a week, so she didn’t have to worry about slipping. A plume of cold air appeared before her mouth when she paused to open her door. It took her a few moments to disengage the locks, and she was aware of Lex standing behind her. A strong, silent shadow.
Not like the shadow that loomed over me last night.
Her heartbeat quickened as she pushed open the door. The brownstone’s main door actually led inside into a small foyer. Two other doors were in that foyer, one on the left and one on the right. The brownstone could be split in half and have two perfectly equal living areas. When she’d first purchased the place, she’d had plans to rent out one side of the large dwelling. Only her plans had derailed a bit. She lived in one side of the brownstone, and very slowly, she was working to have the second side renovated.
When she headed for her door, Lex hesitated. She saw him glance toward the other living space. “Nothing is in there but a mess,” Sophie said.
“Maybe…”
As soon as she unlocked her door, Sophie’s alarm immediately started beeping and she punched in her access code. When she turned back around to face Lex, a furrow was between his brows.
“You didn’t have your alarm set last night?”
“Actually, I did.” She always set it now. Thanks to Daniel. “I set it right before I went to bed, but it didn’t go off.”
He slid past her and examined the alarm box.
“It should have gone off,” Sophie muttered. That had been bothering her. “If any windows or doors were disturbed, the alarm should have started shrieking.”
He grunted and looked back at her. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“That my alarm is shit?”
He shook his head. “Maybe he was already inside when you set the alarm.”
Sophie felt her heart stop. “What?” No, that just wasn’t possible. For him to have been inside the house. It-it couldn’t be—
“It makes sense. If he didn’t break in last night, then that means the guy had to already be inside your place. Waiting. Watching.”
Nausea churned within her. “Are you trying to scare me?” Because, if so, his strategy was totally working.
“I’m telling you what I think.” His eyes gleamed at her. “Now are you ready to show me your bedroom?”
She was ready to get out of that place, ASAP. Sophie intended to stay in a nice, wonderfully luxurious hotel while her place was rewired for security. Again. But for the moment, she straightened her shoulders and headed for the stairs. The bottom stair creaked beneath her foot. Before she could take another step, Lex had wrapped his hand around her wrist, stilling her.
He’s so warm.
She hadn’t realized that she was still cold.
“You didn’t hear that squeak last night, did you?”
Had she? Sophie shook her head as she struggled to remember. “I don’t know what woke me up.” Something had, luckily. “One minute, I was asleep, and the next…he was standing right above me.”
He gave a grim nod. “Then it wasn’t the stair that you heard. He was already up in your bedroom. Something in there must have tipped you off.”
She looked down at his hand, still holding her. As a general rule, Sophie wasn’t so much for touching others. But she liked it when Lex touched her.
She rather liked too many things about him.
Because she did, Sophie pulled her hand from his and she headed up the stairs. She was incredibly conscious of him following closely behind her. He made her nervous, and Sophie heard herself start to talk as she quickly said, “I was at the top of the stairs when he caught me. He grabbed for me, but I-I slipped away—I hit the stairs and tumbled down.” That crazy tumble had probably saved her ass. “I rolled down the stairs in a blink and managed to rush out of the house.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
Yes, she knew that. “I’m lucky he didn’t kill me,” she retorted flatly.
Silence. The thick, uncomfortable kind.
She didn’t pause at the landing. She could almost see that SOB standing there, lunging for her. Beneath her coat, Sophie was sure that she had goose bumps rising on her body. She hated being afraid. Fear made her remember her past, and Sophie couldn’t stand going back to those terrible days.
She opened her bedroom door. Stepped inside. Light filtered through her thin curtains. The room was just as she’d left it that morning. The four-poster bed was fixed. Her books were perfectly arranged on her shelves. No clutter was out on her dresser or her chest and—
“You like being organized, don’t you?” Lex murmured.
No, actually, she didn’t.
For an instant, the lid she kept closed on her memories vibrated and she heard a familiar roar in her head. “Sophie, I’ve told you too many damn times…clean up your mess!” Her hand lifted, brushing over her cheek, as she remembered the blow that always followed that refrain. She swallowed back the memory. “My father thought it was always important to keep a clean home.”
But he was long gone. So why did she keep letting him haunt her? Sophie’s hand moved to rub at the back of her neck as she felt the tension thicken there.
“Nice bed,” Lex murmured.
Yes, it was. Her gaze cut toward him, but Lex wasn’t looking at her. He was carefully walking around her bedroom, moving slowly on the hardwood. There were no creaks beneath his feet. The boards in her room had never creaked.
So that didn’t wake me.
He paused in front of her closet. His fingers lifted, curled around the knob, and when he opened the door, the hinges gave a low, long squeak.
For an instant, her heart seemed to freeze. No, no, the intruder couldn’t have been inside the whole time. That was…worse, somehow, than him breaking in and coming straight to attack her. The idea that he might have been in her home, watching her all along, when she thought she was safe—no!
Lex turned on the light in her closet. She found herself creeping toward him. It was a big, walk-in closet. Shelves for her shoes were on the right. All of her clothes were carefully arranged on the left, put in order by garment type. So neat. So perfect.
Why do I still do that? She shouldn’t be letting a ghost control her. Rage built within Sophie, twisting with her fear, and she wanted to grab those clothes and toss them onto the floor.
Instead, she held her body perfectly still.
Lex started pushing her clothes to the side, examining the wall behind them.
She cleared her throat. “You don’t really think he’s still here, do you?” He’d better not be.
Lex paused in front of a small door, one that had been concealed by her clothes. The door onl
y rose halfway up the wall.
“That’s attic access,” she said quickly. “Storage space.”
He opened that little door. A yawning darkness waited inside. Lex stared into that darkness, then said, “It would have been easy enough for him to wait in there, then come out when he knew you were asleep.”
Her cheeks burned red hot, then turned icy cold. Inside with me, the whole time?
Lex crouched and headed into that darkness.
“No!” Sophie grabbed him. “Let’s call the cops, let’s—”
“This is why you hired me.” His voice was low. So confident. Too confident. “If the bastard is still here, I can handle him.”
His fingers slid over her cheek in just the briefest of caresses, warming her cold skin. And then he turned away and slipped through that narrow opening.
Hell. She went in right behind him.
***
Sophie had been a busy woman.
He stared at her house. At the car that didn’t belong near her curb.
He’d known that she could come back, sooner or later. He just hadn’t realized she wouldn’t be coming alone. She was in the house now, with that blond guy who’d touched her far too intimately. What were they doing? Who was he?
Sophie, if you’re scared, come to me.
She’d misunderstood last night. Her fear had been so strong. Too strong. She hadn’t listened to him. He hadn’t been there to hurt her. He’d just needed to make sure she was all right.
Sophie made the wrong choices in life. She always had. She lived too dangerously.
She picked the wrong lovers. Men who were twisted, no good.
She trusted the wrong friends. Friends who would leave her if they ever found out her dark secrets.
She needed him, so very much. And she didn’t even realize it.
But that was okay. Soon enough, she would. He knew it was time he stepped from the shadows. Her near-death had terrified him far too much. Now was his time of action.
Sophie would soon appreciate all he’d done for her. She’d be overwhelmed. She’d forget the lovers—those fools who should never have been with her—and she’d turn to him.
Finally.
He stared at the brownstone.
But…
Who is that blond bastard with my Sophie?
***
A light flashed on in the attic space, and Lex glanced over his shoulder. Sophie had followed him inside, and she’d just pulled the cord to turn on that overhead light. As he watched her, Sophie wrapped her arms around her waist, shivering a bit. It was much colder up in that attic, but there sure was plenty of space.
Plenty of room for the jerk to hide.
It infuriated him to think that the perp had been in Sophie’s house all along. Just waiting, biding his time until he waited for the perfect moment to strike.
“I don’t see any sign that someone’s been up here,” Sophie said, her voice sounding a little too sharp.
She was nervous, afraid. She should be. Because if she had a stalker who’d actually been so confident as to go in her house and stay there while she slept…
And then he’d made the move to approach her, with a knife…
Not fucking good. Those kinds of actions spoke of a serious, dangerous obsession. A fixation that would not end well.
He glanced around the space. There were some old boxes up there. They didn’t look disturbed. Nothing really seemed out of place there, at least, not on first glance.
“I don’t think he’s been here,” Sophie said, “and it’s cold, so let’s just—”
“Is that your gown?” Because he’d just seen the small scrap of red silk that lay pooled near another attic door—a second exit. Another small door that only reached up to the middle of the wall. A door that led—where, exactly? To the other side of the brownstone? The side that Sophie had said she was slowly renovating?
Sophie hurried forward. The attic had been floored so he didn’t have to worry about her falling through the ceiling. Before he could stop her, she grabbed that red silk.
Not a gown so much, he realized. It was a very, very sexy piece of lingerie. Sheer in places, lacy in others. Designed to look like pure temptation.
“This shouldn’t be up here,” Sophie said as she balled the lingerie up in her fist. “It shouldn’t.”
It was. “Maybe the bastard from last night wanted a memento to keep with him.” And he’d brought it up there.
Sophie’s body had frozen.
Lex stalked toward her. “You’re sure that wasn’t up here?”
“I bought it last week, okay?” She licked her lips. “The tag is still on it—look.”
And she thrust it at him. The soft fabric filled his hands and, sure enough, a tag was still on it.
Two thoughts pushed through his mind.
You left it because you realized it had never touched Sophie’s sweet skin.
A furious thought, aimed at the perp who’d tried to terrorize her.
And…
Who the hell had she been planning to wear that lace for?
A jealous thought because he could all too easily imagine Sophie wearing something like that—for him.
He shoved the garment into the pocket of his coat and he got his control back. Sophie needed his help—not his lust or his freaking jealousy right then. “Where does that other door lead?”
Frowning, she looked over at the door. “To the second side of the brownstone. I told you, I’m still renovating it, so it’s a work in progress. But I was…I was planning to rent it out before…”
Before she’d been stalked? Or before Daniel Duvato had attacked her? Because now, her safe haven had been invaded twice. Duvato and whoever this joker was…they were destroying what should have been a secure home for Sophie. He hated that.
He tried to be careful as he opened that second door. He wanted to get a team in to search for prints up there. Not the cops, but a team from VJS Protection. Because he was betting the cops hadn’t even bothered to look up there when they’d done their sweep.
When the door opened, he found himself in another closet. He strode out and realized he was in a bedroom, a place that was a mirror opposite of Sophie’s room.
No furniture there. Freshly painted walls. The smell of new carpet.
“Is this side of the house wired for security?” he asked her.
Silence.
“Sophie?”
She was right behind him. “I should have thought about this.” Now anger hummed in her voice. “I hadn’t gotten the workers out to the place since before—before Daniel’s attack. But they were here plenty before that night. It would have been so easy for one of them to find the attic entrance. To get into my space.” She gave a rough, angry shake of her head. “I should have thought of them!”
“So…you’re saying this side isn’t wired for security?” Just to be clear.
Streaks of red flamed on her cheeks. “Not yet, but it will be by the end of the day. And those men—I thought I could trust them because they were Finn’s men.”
Finn? Her voice had softened a bit when she said the man’s name. He didn’t like that softening. “Finn? Does the guy have a last name?”
“Finn Scott. He always vets his people, so I didn’t even consider them.” Her breath expelled in a hard rush. “I should have known better.” It sounded as if she were berating herself.
“Easy,” he told her, trying to make his voice gentle. “This shit isn’t on you, sweetheart.”
Her head whipped up. Right, he’d just called her sweetheart.
Lex cleared his throat and said, “It’s not your fault some sick SOB broke into your house. You can’t do a background check on every single person you meet.”
She blinked.
“This shit isn’t on you,” he told her once more. “It’s on the freak who broke in. And I’ll find him.” He’d get Chance and Dev to interrogate every man who’d been working there. Maybe I’ll do some personal interrogating, too. Particul
arly with Finn. Once he was sure Sophie was safe for the day, he’d question the guy.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “In my house. All this time…right with me?” Her eyes were flashed with a tangle of emotions. “I guess you can never be safe, no matter how hard you try.”
She rushed past him. He could see the painter’s tape then, and the drop cloths that were lining the stairs. She hurried down those stairs. The first floor was definitely still in need of repair. The walls looked as if they were preparing to be primed.
Sophie hurried to the door. She unlocked it, then rushed into the main foyer of the building. The foyer that also led to her home on the right side of the building.
“Sophie!”
But she ran outside, glaring to the left, then to the right. The cold wind sent her hair flying around her face.
He caught her shoulders and spun her around. That was when he realized…she wasn’t glaring. She wasn’t out there because she was furious.
Sophie was…crying?
Oh, the hell, no.
He didn’t like her tears. His chest ached and he found himself pulling her into his arms, crushing her against his chest. And with her against him like that, he was reminded again of how small, how delicate she was.
She fell down the stairs. The bastard had a knife. This wasn’t some story she was spinning, it was the absolute truth. Dev had it all wrong.
“I’ll get him,” Lex promised her. Right then, he might have promised anything to stop her tears. Eyes as beautiful as hers shouldn’t ever be filled with tears. Not her. Never her.
What is happening to me?
Her head tipped back. She stared up at him. Her lips were parted and—
He just lifted her up. Lex held Sophie easily because her weight was nothing to him. And he kissed her right there. Kissed her with her held so tightly against his chest. Kissed her with the salty taste of her tears on her lips.
The kiss started easy. Gentle. Maybe it was even just a touch of comfort.
Then it changed, fast.