by Julie Miller
“That’s not true.”
She flattened her palms against his shoulders and squirmed in his lap, trying to push away. But her attempt to escape, to ease his guilt, had an immediate effect on his body.
Mac held her still, closing his eyes and enjoying the rush of awareness between his thighs. This woman blew his cool reticence, his need to think before he acted, right out of the water.
He wished he could see her expression now, wished he could know if she was feeling any of the same emotional and physical response he was feeling. Without thinking, he moved his fingertips to her face and began to explore.
He tried to picture that frightened teenager she’d once been, but quickly lost himself in the delightful sensations of the grown woman. Smooth, cool skin. Freckled, she’d said.
“Funny,” he murmured his thoughts out loud, tracing his fingers across hills and hollows of her face from sculpted brows down to the tiny dent beneath her nose, “I can’t feel freckles.”
“Mac—” He smiled with the delight of discovery as he felt heat creep into her cheeks. He let his thumbs join the exploration. Her soft gasp matched his own when he found her lips, soft and full, with no trace of braces to mar their beauty now.
Maybe he could see her expression. Maybe he could know her reaction to him. He could certainly feel it. He could identify different sounds and interpret how they reflected her mood. He could absorb her scent and let its freshness heal his troubled soul.
The only way he hadn’t discovered her was through taste.
An instant hunger sparked in his mind and tightened deep in his belly. He desperately wanted to taste her. To complete the picture of his grown-up Julia, he rationalized. He needed just one little taste.
With the corners of her mouth framed between his thumbs, he pressed his lips to hers. It was just a touch, really. Not even a nibble. A chance for their breaths to mingle. An opportunity for the ultrasensitive skin of his lips to learn the goddesslike contours of her sultry, pliant mouth.
A moment for every nerve ending in his body to sit up and take notice of the beautiful woman he held in his arms.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she whispered, moving her lips against his as she spoke, rewarding him with an unintentional caress. She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt. But she pushed with her fists, sending a mixed message that echoed his own turbulent thoughts.
“Well, if I haven’t lost my faculties completely, I think I’m kissing you.”
“Mac—”
“Shh.” He pressed the pad of his thumb against the quivering arc of her bottom lip. “And I think I’m going to do it again.”
Chapter Seven
“You shouldn’—”
Julia’s protest was cut short beneath the heady persuasion of Mac’s mouth.
He shouldn’t be kissing her, she thought, as the pad of his thumb abraded a gentle trail from the fullest part of her lower lip to the dimple at one corner. His lips followed the same path, embarking on a leisurely mission to drive her mad.
She was the healer here. She shouldn’t attach any significance to the warmth pouring into her body through the touch of his hands and mouth. She shouldn’t notice how those hurtful memories scattered and faded and were absorbed into the solid strength of his broad shoulders and the unhesitating sense of purpose in his kiss.
She caught her breath at each foray of his tongue, each gentle nip. She didn’t know whether to breathe in or out, and it was suddenly very hard to hear herself think above the sound of her heart pounding in her throat.
And then his tongue dipped inside the seam of her lips and stroked the moist heat there, asking for something she wasn’t sure she could give. She breathed his name on a fearful sigh, but her doubts were lost in the wonderful demand of his mouth opening over hers.
Julia lost all sense of herself as she dared to meet the soft friction of Mac’s tongue mingling with her own. He slid his hands around to cup her head and tilt her face to an angle that allowed him to claim her completely. The tips of his long, dextrous fingers sifted through her hair and held her a willing prisoner to the plundering force of his mouth.
Comfort had long evolved beyond curious interest into a blazing passion that pulsed between her legs and left her fingers clutching handfuls of soft cotton sweatshirt and the hard muscle beneath.
Patients didn’t kiss their nurses like this. Old family friends didn’t kiss like this.
She didn’t kiss like this.
She should make him stop. But she didn’t want him to.
This was way better than any schoolgirl fantasy. Warmer than her pillow. More responsive than the back of her hand.
This was real.
This was Mac.
Cradled in his hands. Cherished by his mouth.
And Julia answered back in every way she knew how. She unclenched her fingers and pressed her hands into the hard strength of his chest. Her palms tingled at the heat and shape that made him so uniquely male. With a curiosity of her own to match the scientist’s himself, she skimmed her hands along his chest, down his arms, across his flanks.
The raspy moan in his throat touched off an echoing vibration in her own vocal cords. The vibration shivered down her chest, making her breasts hot and achy and heavy with want. Her body yearned for something she couldn’t name. She wanted to touch his face, to explore his mouth as he had hers, but with the position of his arms and the angle of their bodies, she couldn’t reach him. Frustrated by the lack of contact, her body compensated.
She simply leaned into him. Her nipples puckered and hardened into tight, tiny beads as his heat seared through her. The almost painful friction sank like a heavy weight deep in her most feminine core. She curled her hands up behind his back and latched on to his shoulders. She was falling. Falling too fast beneath the awakening gift of his mouth and hands.
“Jules—”
His long thighs shifted beneath her bottom, tilting her off balance. A tiny whimper of despair escaped as she fell away from his mouth. But with something like a heavy gasp for air himself, he snaked his arm around her waist and caught her.
Splaying those long fingers across her bottom, he lifted, somehow making her feel light and graceful before she could give a second thought as to whether she might be too heavy for him.
He leaned back in the chair and let gravity carry her into him. Julia slid down to the juncture of his thighs and discovered his most masculine response to the kiss just as he reclaimed her mouth. He stole inside and stole her grown-up woman’s heart.
She tumbled down a vortex of sensation. Heat and hardness. Man and magic.
Ray Wozniak’s brutal kiss hadn’t been like this. Anthony Cardello’s practiced finesse hadn’t been like this. No man in between her first and last kiss had ever been like this.
“So responsive.”
Mac whispered the praise against her mouth, then left a trail of damp heat along her jawline as he followed it to the sensitive skin beneath her earlobe. She hitched her shoulders against the erotic tickle of his lips and teeth and tongue as he tested the spot again and again. He seemed to delight in the discovery of that flashpoint that had her digging her fingers into his shoulders and squirming in his lap. Something almost like laughter rumbled in his throat.
“Very responsive.” He stroked his tongue there one more time. “Very beautiful.”
That one word mocked her, ringing in her mind with the jarring disharmony of a cymbal crash. She turned her ear away from the next sweep of his tongue. His lips scudded across her cheek and moved to her mouth again. But the first shot of reality had already sunk its nasty confidence-robbing teeth into this little bit of heaven.
“Mac—”
His touch had drained her of her strength, thrown her completely off balance.
She tried to pull away, but he leaned forward and caught her lips again, stealing the protest right from her mouth.
Julia turned her clutching fingers into fists and pushed at his chest. “Mac
—”
A melodic ding-dong rang through the house, in strident discord to the panic playing inside her head.
But the sound of the doorbell was enough to finally distract Mac and break the spell. Though his arms were still wrapped around her, he tipped his head back and muttered a raspy curse. His nostrils flared as he breathed in deeply through his nose. His lips parted as he blew out the cleansing air on a sigh.
“Lousy timing, huh?”
Yes. She knew he meant the doorbell, but it was always a bad time for her to drop her guard and make herself vulnerable to a man. Humiliation always seemed to be the next step for her. And while she didn’t believe Mac would intentionally hurt her, she’d be hurt all the same.
The instant she felt his grip on her relax, she scooted off his lap and tried to stand. But her legs had lost their strength and coordination. She tangled one foot in the chair leg in her haste and pitched forward.
But two strong hands seized her by the waist. “Steady.” Mac’s husky voice still danced with the desire that had erupted between them. “Someone might think you’re anxious to get away from me.”
For a brief, traitorous moment she was glad he couldn’t see. She didn’t think she had it in her right now to cover up the wide-eyed embarrassment she knew must be written across her face.
But there was something psychic in those eyes that couldn’t see. Suddenly, the tender warmth in his steadying grasp became coolly impersonal and he released her. “Jules? You trying to get away from me?”
She backed up several steps. She needed space. She needed strength. She needed a better way to say this.
“Don’t feel any guilt or regret.” She clasped her fingers together, then pulled at them, then clasped them again. “I know that kiss didn’t mean anything. You were comforting me, and it got out of hand. I understand how things work.”
With his fingertips braced on the tabletop, Mac slowly stood. With unerring accuracy, he turned his head and faced her. “You’d better explain that.”
Julia had to look away from the harsh suspicion stealing over his expression. “It’s just that you’ve been injured and hospitalized. Your body hasn’t been able to act on its natural drives. And now that it can—”
“So I’m some washed-up invalid getting frisky with his nurse because I can’t get it anywhere else?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.” The doorbell rang a second time, followed by a polite knock. Julia looked toward the living room as a means of escape, but knew she had to finish this conversation. She tucked her olive T-shirt back into her jeans and straightened the placket of her matching shirt. It was all a stall to put off admitting that horrible truth she believed in her heart.
She was no one special.
“I’m a woman. And I was available.”
A deadly pall of silence answered. She didn’t want him to try to make up some kind of feelings for her when he’d only reacted on the spur of the moment. He’d kissed her out of kindness. And that had triggered a hormone. Or perhaps a recluse’s need to hold and be held and feel alive again. He would understand a logical explanation like that, if he’d only listen.
“Mac—”
“Go answer the door.”
“But—” He turned away, and by the cold set of his shoulders, she could tell there would be no further discussion, no chance to explain that her rejection of his touch really wasn’t a rejection at all. But he didn’t want to hear about self-preservation and shredded pride and aching wounds that had no chance to heal if she allowed herself to be hurt again.
“I should finish wrapping your eyes.”
That wasn’t going to happen, either.
He leaned over the table, knocking things aside and onto the floor until he found his dark glasses. He stood up straight, put them on and shut her out.
“I’m sorry.” She offered the apology even if he didn’t want to hear it. “This is my fault. I should have stopped it sooner. I just don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
“Detective Taylor?” The concerned male voice at the door wasn’t as deep or loud as Wade Osterman’s. The difference was enough of a distraction to allow her to walk away from Mac.
She might as well start getting used to the idea.
Because, eventually, once she was no longer needed, he would walk away from her.
MERLE BANNING WAS every bit the electronics and computer expert his cousin Mitch had promised him to be, thought Mac.
Two months ago, he could have run these same scans, taken the hardware apart, made the same evaluations himself. But now he was no more than a consultant. And he doubted Banning even needed him for that.
The kid might be soft-spoken, but he knew what he was talking about. In a lot of ways, Banning reminded Mac of the man Jeff Ringlein should have been. Bright. Promising. But whereas Jeff had been a little too eager to please, Merle simply did the job asked of him. While Jeff’s attention was easily scattered—by his beautiful young wife or a possible promotion or an exciting new case—Merle Banning was able to focus on the task at hand.
No wonder Mac’s sister-in-law, Detective Ginny Taylor, couldn’t say enough about Banning. The kid was, after all, Ginny’s partner.
Merle typed something into the laptop computer he’d brought with him. He drummed his fingers against the plastic casing, waiting the few seconds it took for the screen to boot up the information he wanted.
“Just as we suspected,” Merle reported, reading something from his screen, then turning to talk to Mac who stood beside him at the desk. “The listening device from your phone and the one I found in your CD player are both government issue. The lot numbers match a surplus batch sold to KCPD earlier this year.”
Mac really needed to stop thinking of Banning as “the kid.” He was a natural for this kind of investigative work. “Any chance of them being issued to Internal Affairs?”
Banning typed another command into his computer and drummed his fingers. Julia had said Eli Masterson was snooping around his shelves when I.A. had paid their first visit to the house. The connection couldn’t be that simple, could it? A police plant to dig up information on Jeff’s death and the trail of missing evidence?
Wade Osterman had been in the house unobserved, as had Eli’s partner, Joe Niederhaus. Hell. Even Melanie Ringlein had had access to the house.
About the only person he wouldn’t suspect of planting listening devices and the hidden microcamera Merle had found above the front porch was his mother. Martha Taylor preferred the surprise visit approach to keep an eye on his activities.
“No, sir.” Then again, the kid made Mac feel like old news when it came to figuring out who was spying on him. “Vice squad. They were used in a casino sting on some bookies who were taking in more than their fair share of the profits.”
“Let me guess,” Mac queried. “They ended up in an evidence locker in my lab.”
A series of clicks told him Banning was scrolling down the computer screen. “Case Number 1193. Exhibit F.”
“Can you log into the D.A.’s records with that thing?” Mac wasn’t sure he had the right to pursue this hunch. He didn’t want to get the young detective into any trouble with Internal Affairs or Mitch. But since Banning seemed willing…
“Give me a second.” Mac listened to more typing, then waited in silence.
When he heard Merle’s fingers stop drumming, he asked. “What’s the status of 1193?”
“Dismissed. The assistant D.A. couldn’t prove his case.”
“Why not?”
Mac didn’t think he was going to like the answer. “Stolen evidence.”
Stolen evidence? The irony of it made Mac’s icy blood boil.
He could guess the answer to his next question. “Who put together the samples for the trial?”
“Jeff Ringlein.”
An hour later, after a cross-referenced search of the crime lab and district attorney’s databases, a disturbing trend began to reveal itself.
In the past year alone,
eleven cases had been dismissed or pleaded down to a lesser charge because the circumstantial evidence wasn’t there. He’d prided himself on running a clean lab. On average, three or four cases fell through the cracks each year because evidence went missing or was too damaged at the scene or in transport to be deemed irrefutable in a court of law.
Eleven botched cases was a high number.
And of those eleven cases, Jeff Ringlein had worked on eight.
“The next logical step is to check Jeff’s bank accounts. See if he was taking any kind of payoff.” But Internal Affairs had already beat him to the punch on that one, too. He couldn’t get that kind of information unless he had his badge and a judge’s order behind him.
“Maybe the guy was incompetent,” suggested Merle. “You said he caused the explosion that killed him.”
For a moment, Mac considered the young detective’s blind faith in his word. I.A. didn’t believe his story; they suspected him of some sort of collusion or coercion, if not actually covering up his own mistakes by staging Jeff’s death.
“You know, Banning…” Mac thought it only fair to warn off the young detective. “You could get into trouble for helping me.”
“Captain Taylor says you’re family, and to treat you with the same respect I would him.” Mac wished he could read the expression on the young man’s face. But judging by the deliberate way he shifted in his chair, Merle had already evaluated the risk he was taking by providing Mac with information. “That’s a daunting order, sir. I have no intentions of disappointing the old man.”
Mac nearly laughed. Mitch was only three years older than he. No wonder Merle kept calling him “sir.” “I appreciate the family loyalty. I’ll put in a good word for you with Mitch.”
“Thanks.”
“In the meantime, find out what you can about Melanie Ringlein. If she comes from a moneyed background, her tastes might have been more than Jeff could afford on a cop’s salary.”
“Will do.”
No way could Mitch be disappointed in this kid.
Disappointed.
As keys clacked and fingers drummed, Mac turned toward the front door where Julia had gone outside with a cup of coffee to chat with Wade Osterman.