by Eve Devon
The sense of easiness left him immediately. And was that the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, or the distant sound of an army of tension marching double-quick to get to him?
Honeysuckle held out her hand, and he realized it was to take her bag. His gaze moved up to her face to find empathy.
He tightened his grip on the linen tote hanging from his hand and walked determinedly toward the elevator.
She said nothing as she pressed the button and waited next to him. Not that he was certain he would have heard her if she had been talking to him. He was too busy concentrating on not breaking out into a cold sweat. Too busy doing the stupid rationalization thing. Too busy fighting the pathetic panic.
The doors to the elevator opened, and Honeysuckle stepped inside. She put her hand out to hold the doors open and said, “Night, then.”
It was the softness in her voice that propelled him through the doors to stand at her side. He didn’t need her making allowances for him. Didn’t need this to be yet one more thing she knew he didn’t like. He was pretty sure Edward could get in a damned elevator and go up a few floors without putting a crease in his suit.
The first thing his gaze alighted on was the alarm button, before shooting straight up to the camera situated in the corner.
Honeysuckle reached out to punch the button for her floor, and he tried to reassure himself that in seconds, he would be checking out where she lived.
Maybe if he got a damn hold of himself and concentrated on something…
He inhaled, deep to the bottom of his lungs, preparing to release the breath in a slow, controlled manner but, wow, she smelled good. Really good. He wondered if it was honeysuckle to match her name. Probably not. That would be too weird. Wouldn’t it? What the hell did he know?
He lost track of what he was supposed to be concentrating on, his thoughts spilling into the black hole his brain had become.
Turning his head to look at her, he hoped she hadn’t been attempting conversation with him. But as if she knew he wouldn’t want her to see him struggling, she was looking fixedly ahead at the elevator doors.
It was quite incredible, he thought, what you could take in about a person when your senses were on full pinging-off-the-scale alert and the choice was either to direct all that energy on to one thing or risk letting the panic consume you.
He noticed that at some point during the long hours she had put in at the office that day, some of her luscious hair had tried to make a bid for freedom. Wisps had escaped pins and curled in the damp night air. Out of nowhere, he had such a need to reach out and tuck the tendril resting against her cheekbone, back behind her ear.
He wrenched his head around to stare at the alarm button.
Christ, was he thinking about pushing it—stopping the elevator, stopping time, breaking all his rules and reaching out to touch her?
Then the elevator stopped, and the doors sprang open.
He stepped out only a half step behind Honeysuckle.
Once again, she started rooting around in her purse to get her keys out.
Stopping before the last door on the left, she said, “Well, this is me.”
She looked up at him, and the first thing he knew about taking a step closer to her was the fact that he’d now got close enough he could see her pupils dilating.
Was that for him?
Beautiful.
He stepped closer still, the rush of being out of the elevator making him forget he was supposed to stop, not pursue, a connection.
“Um, the stairs are to your right for heading back down.”
That huskiness he found so enticing was back in her voice.
“Thanks, but I’ll probably take the elevator.” He stared down at her. Damned if he could get his feet to move. Damned if he could get his mouth to shut up. “So I don’t even get invited in for a coffee?”
“You just want to see my burlesque costumes,” she joked with some of that spark he loved thrown in.
He couldn’t help himself. “Are you offering to put on a private show for me?”
The spark caught flame, and fiery heat flashed in her eyes and reached out to ensnare him. “Wow. Okay…are we…?”
“Flirting with each other?” he finished, his eyes searching hers. His gaze dropped to her lips and watched in fascination as they parted a little.
Bewitching.
Made him want to taste.
Made him need to taste.
To steady himself, his hand came up to rest against the door beside her.
When the door gave under his touch, he frowned and looked away from her to where the door was ajar.
She jerked toward him, and with his other hand he automatically pushed back at her to stop her walking through and into God knows what.
Pushing the door open wide, he took a better look.
Damn.
Chapter Six
Honeysuckle peered over Adam’s shoulder to look in through the door of her apartment, and the cloudburst of attraction she’d been drowning in seconds before went MIA.
Nausea rose in her throat. Stuff was everywhere.
Her stuff.
She inhaled a ragged breath and tried to put voice to what she was seeing, but then Adam was laying his fingertips gently against her lips, and she could feel herself being backed up against the wall beside the open door to her apartment.
Whispering in her ear, he ordered, “You do not move from this spot while I check things out.”
She looked up at him, amazed that he could be staring back at her so calmly. So in control. Until, there—between blinks, she detected an expression that said if he found the person responsible still inside her home, he wouldn’t think twice about ripping out their heart.
Fear twisted through her, sly and dreadful. What if this was a carry-on from what had been happening? Another of Lou’s little warnings?
She’d thought she’d been overtired. Stressed. Paranoid.
But now?
“Promise me you’ll wait here,” Adam whispered more urgently.
She nodded, the movement of her head pushing the shell of her ear against his lips. Her eyes fluttered shut to savor the feel and seal her promise. Stepping to the side, Adam walked into her apartment.
Honeysuckle pressed her head back against the wall and tried to hear above the sound of her own heart pounding, to what was happening inside.
It couldn’t be coincidence, could it? Yesterday she had come home to find her closet doors hanging open when she could have sworn she had shut them after selecting her outfit for the day. The day before, when she had been getting ready for bed, her hand had automatically reached out for her jar of moisturizer, only to touch empty air. She’d looked away from her reflection in the bathroom mirror and down to the vanity shelf that ran underneath and had stared in weird fascination. All her bottles and cosmetics seemed to have been swapped around.
The bottles and cosmetics thing she had dismissed. She was so concerned with wanting to do a good job for Adam and everyone else at Steel Hawk, so shocked and drained by the news interest in her, she had managed to convince herself she’d swapped them all around the last time she had cleaned.
Coming home to find the closet doors open had been creepier. The sight of the contents in dark shadow staring back out at her had brought her up short and had her heart jumping into her throat.
Determinedly she’d made sure no one was hiding in the closet, and then she’d searched the entire apartment, finding nothing else remotely out of place. She’d nearly picked up the phone to call Sophie, but instead had opted to put a few more hours of work in to try to distract herself.
It had been bad enough telling her parents and Sophie about the book. The last thing she wanted was to make Sophie think she was getting paranoid. Or that she couldn’t cope.
Feeling useless, Honeysuckle moved
away from the wall to stand stock-still in the open doorway of her apartment.
She needed to see Adam was all right. Forgetting about her promise to stay outside, without thinking about anything other than making sure he was okay, she stepped into her hallway.
A vase her mother had given her on her last birthday had been swiped off the console table and lay shattered on the floor.
She was about to start stepping over shards of glass when Adam appeared in the hallway.
“Damn it, I thought I told you to wait outside?”
“Are you okay?” she asked, searching his face and seeing cold fury at what he’d uncovered.
“Of course.”
“Is it as bad as this throughout?” she asked, looking at the scattered debris from the rest of her console table and needing to see the worst of it for herself.
Adam’s arms shot out to hold her when she would have moved around him. “We’ll wait outside while we call the police.”
“No. I want to see. At least find out if they took anything.”
“Honeysuckle—”
“No. This is my home. Let go of me. I want to see.”
She struggled until he lowered his arms. Detaching herself, she wandered through to the living area and gasped. It was like being unable to tear your gaze from an accident scene. Looking around at the devastation, she couldn’t think of a single thing she had done in her life that could have warranted this absolute destruction of her things.
On autopilot, she headed off in the direction of her bedroom.
With her arms folded around her midriff to help control the trembling, she peeked inside.
Graffiti was sprayed in red across the wall above her bed.
Honeysuckle read the words “Raven Whore” and took a step backward, right into Adam.
She tried to feel resigned because the damage had been done and there was nothing she could do, but inside she could feel the rage building. “Why?” she questioned on a shaky breath. “Why would someone do this?”
Big, strong arms came up to gently steady her against him, and, then, as if he could feel the anger burning to get out of her, he turned her to face him, wrapped his arms around her, and held her.
That was when the first tear slipped out.
“Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
Honeysuckle felt him reach up and gently tuck her hair back behind her ears, and the gesture was so reassuring and felt so personal that she burrowed in farther, wanting more of his healing touch. Her fingers spread over the soft cotton of his T-shirt, feeling the hard pectoral muscles beneath. Her hand flexed, seeking comfort and soothing, until she felt Adam tense.
She tensed too. Because she realized. Realized that, all the while she was burying her head in his powerful chest, Adam was getting a bird’s-eye view of the graffiti sprayed above her bed.
His holding her was an instinctively kind gesture. Nothing more. She couldn’t let herself get carried away.
Straightening, she pulled away from him. “I should work out if anything has been taken,” she said, smoothing her hair back into its sleek and tidy knot because she couldn’t smooth and tidy away what was in front of her.
“You have every right to feel upset,” Adam said. “Bastards couldn’t have made more of a mess if they’d tried.”
She sniffed and walked over the threshold of her bedroom. With a shudder, she said, “Whoever did this must have been in here for a while, don’t you think? It takes time to, you know…” She lifted a hand out helplessly in the direction of her shredded bedding and looked behind her to where Adam was standing in the doorway.
Adam’s jaw clenched tight, and his hand went into his pocket to withdraw his cell phone. “I’m calling the police. This isn’t about a quick robbery. This is something more.”
She breathed in fiercely and turned her head back to the ugly written words above her bed. “This is about the book?”
“Maybe. Yeah, I’m thinking it is.”
Honeysuckle’s stomach threatened to drop through the floor. When she saw him about to call, she stepped forward. “Wait. We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with yet.” She needed to think. If she involved the police, would Lou pay her back by accusing her of stealing from him? How would she prove she hadn’t? And how would she go about proving her innocence if the press put her on public trial? Her family didn’t need that. Steel Hawk didn’t need that.
“Dealing with?” Adam said. “I would have thought it’s fairly obvious what we’re dealing with. Someone came into your home and— Wait a minute.” Blue eyes pinned her with a laser beam. “If you think this could be about something else, now is the time to tell me.”
Her throat contracted without her permission.
If she told the police about her suspicions and Lou had nothing to do with it, she’d be giving herself a whole new set of problems.
He took a step closer to her. “Has something else happened? Something before this?”
It was impossible to evade Adam with him staring down at her like that. “Yes.” She shrugged, looked down at her hands and added, “Maybe. I’m not sure.”
He planted his feet wide, crossed his arms, and said, “Let’s go with the yes.”
She tried another nonchalant shrug, but the crick of tension shooting through her neck told her she hadn’t quite pulled it off. “I think I’ve been followed to work a few times. And…I think someone has already been in here a couple of times this week.”
Adam went very still. “And you didn’t think to tell anyone?”
She walked over to her closet and started running her hands over her accessories rail so she could avoid the disappointment in his eyes. “I thought it was the press following me…or that I was imagining it—”
“You should have—”
“Come to you and told you?” she said, repeating his words from earlier that evening. “Why?”
“What kind of crazy-ass question is that?” Adam asked in one of those bemused, self-protective, resigned tones that her family sometimes used with her.
A new frustration, one unrelated to the destruction created in her apartment, had her saying, “You’re my boss, Adam, not my friend. Or are you forgetting the whole ‘work is work, personal life is personal’ thing? Although, while we’re on the subject, what the hell was that all about out there in the corridor before?”
Silence.
Loaded silence.
Damn.
She shouldn’t have brought it up. She needed to get a grip. Him and her? They weren’t what was really happening here and now. Here and now, the book, Steel Hawk, that’s what she needed to concentrate on figuring out.
“Look, we have to tell the police, regardless,” Adam finally said, coming right up behind her and deliberately ignoring her mention of how they’d been with each other when they’d gotten out of the elevator.
Her shoulders slumped a little farther. “You’re right. I know you’re right. It doesn’t look like anything is missing. I guess I’m just—”
“Feeling vulnerable?”
“More embarrassed,” she muttered, stepping past him and making sure not to stare at the wall above her bed. “Humiliated,” she whispered.
Adam’s hand shot out to wrap tenderly around her upper arm so that he could swing her around to face him. “Hey. Do not let those words on the wall take hold. No one here is judging you. They are judging the person who wrote them.”
“You’re the only person here,” she whispered with a watery smile.
“Exactly.”
That was the second time he’d told her he wasn’t judging her. She wondered what he’d think of her if he knew she’d walked away from the club without reporting what she’d seen.
Had Lou organized this for her?
But why?
Why hadn’t he simply gone to the press and ha
d her branded a thief? Or come to her to try to extort money from her?
Not that she had any money. All the money she made at Steel Hawk went into— Oh crap.
“I need to check something,” she said.
“No more stalling, I’m calling the police.”
“I understand, but I really need to check my studio.” Whirling away from him, she ran out into the hall and into the tiny room next to the living area that she used as a workspace.
With only a glance at the contents of her desk, she crawled under the table to the plug socket at the base of the wall.
“The police are on their way,” Adam said, following her into the room. “You shouldn’t touch anything until it’s all been dusted.”
Honeysuckle ignored him and took the cover plate off the fake socket and withdrew the canister from inside the hollow opening. Peering inside, she tried counting the jewels nestled in the roll of velvet. It was too dark under the table to see properly. Muttering all sorts of promises if the contents were intact, she crawled back out from under the table and stood up on shaky legs.
“You should have had Steel Hawk install some security in here,” Adam said, watching her.
“It’s okay. I think they’re all accounted for,” she answered, mostly to herself. Thank God. She pulled out the gemstones and started counting to make certain.
Aware of the change in atmosphere, she glanced up to find Adam looking at the jewels in her hand with a mighty suspicious frown on his face. “Those look expensive.”
“Can you imagine,” she said, ignoring his words and the frown and smiling softly at the gemstones, “if I’d had something high-tech installed in here?” She closed the pouch and placed it back in the canister. “It would have looked totally out of place. Anyone breaking in would have wondered why a place like this needed high-spec security.”
“Indeed,” Adam said wryly and with a quick glance around again. “But let’s not forget that someone did get in. Several times, if your hunch is correct.”
Huh. That frown on his face wasn’t getting any more smoothed out.