by Julie Miller
It wasn’t fair. Mac shouldn’t have to hurt like this. He shouldn’t have to suffer.
But instead of pounding her fist against the chair, she got up and put the gun away in her bag. And then she began cleaning. Though they wore plastic gloves to keep from leaving any fingerprints, she found a rag and wiped down the counters and equipment they’d used, anyway.
“Busy again?”
Julia stopped with her hand on the open cabinet door and the microscope in her hand. “Excuse me?”
Mac leaned his hip against the counter where he stood and smiled. “Whenever you’re nervous or afraid, you get busy. The world’s a cleaner place when you’re upset.”
She overlooked the obvious teasing and went straight to defending herself. “Our time’s limited, right? I want to have this place straightened up as soon as that printer spits out the information we want.”
She set one microscope on the shelf and reached for the second one.
“Do I make you nervous?”
Chapter Ten
Through a feat of gymnastic contortion, Julia saved the microscope from crashing to the floor. Mac was behind her in a second, giving her no time to recover from her startled reaction.
“Easy there.” Somehow, he had his hand over hers on the microscope and he lifted it, stretching his body along the length of her back and hips, pinning her to the counter. “Where am I going with this?”
Through the stuttered gasps of her breathing, she stretched along with him. “A little higher,” she directed. She guided him to the top shelf where he deposited the microscope and closed the cabinet door.
But he didn’t move away.
She tried to focus on the hard surfaces of steel and wood in front of her, but all she really noticed was the steely warmth of Mac’s chest pressed into her back, and how her bottom nestled against the hard trunks of his thighs.
When the long arm that had stretched above her came down and wrapped around her waist, she knew she was lost.
She tried to push away the thumb that had settled beneath her left breast, but his hand refused to budge. The web of tension in the room twisted in a new dimension, and she ended up clasping her hands together over his forearm and surrendering to the pools of frustrated heat gathering at the tips of her breasts and deep inside at her most feminine core.
With the threat of discovery making every charged moment alone a precious gift, Julia decided not to waste her time denying this contact. She didn’t understand what the rush of images, past and future, playing through her mind meant.
Mac, tall and dangerous, coming up behind Ray Wozniak’s shoulder and asking if she wanted to be there. Mac, scarred and bruised, throwing her to the ground and demanding she stay safe. Mac, bronzed and naked, rising above her and claiming her body as well as her heart.
Mac, calm and rational, telling her how grateful he was for her help, then telling her goodbye.
She must have shivered as she fought off that last inevitable image, because Mac’s hold on her tightened imperceptibly and his lips whispered against the nape of her neck. “Shh. Don’t be afraid of me. It’s all right.”
“You don’t know what I’m like, Mac.” The confession came out on an anguished sob. He should know about her shortcomings. Even if he couldn’t see them, he had the right to know. Her hands clutched tighter, willing him to free her, begging him not to let her go.
“I’m not pretty like you said. I’ve never dated very much. I’ve only had sex once, and he said…” Her hands flew to her mouth when she realized what she had just admitted out loud.
Julia curled into herself, self-consciously trying to hide from her mistake. But Mac’s shoulders seemed to fold around hers in a protective embrace. He brought his left arm up across her chest and cradled her cheek and jaw in his broad, sheltering hand.
“I can’t speak for the other men in the world who are too blind to see your beauty. But let me tell you what I know.” His lips created a moist, seductive ripple along the bundle of nerves beneath her ear. “I love your hair short like this.”
“Are you kidding? It’s practical for the hours I used to work. But it looks mannish, I think.”
His lips grazed a path along her nape and lingered on that particular spot that sent tremors along the surface of her skin. “It gives me access to your long, beautiful neck.”
Julia’s shaky voice made a mockery of her protest. “It’s not that long.”
His frustrated sigh was like a hot wind across her ear. He spread his arms out wide and stepped back, leaving her cold, bereft. Unprotected. Her knees threatened to buckle as the chilly air from the lab swept over her feverish skin. She grabbed on to the counter to hold herself upright.
“I don’t know all the pretty words, Jules, to make you believe me.”
His hoarse whisper held no trace of anger. And it wasn’t a plea. It was more—a statement of fact. She attuned her ears to that ruined voice, willing to hear more, wanting to believe.
“When a man gives you a compliment—when I give you a compliment, just say thank you. I haven’t lied to you yet, have I? Why would I lie about the wonderful things I’m discovering about you after all these years?”
She tried to come up with an argument. It wasn’t like he’d compared her to a summer’s day, or mentioned how she reminded him of a popular cover model. He hadn’t praised her charms or exalted her virtues. Her breathing slowed to a normal rate and rational thought found its way past the irrational emotions protecting that Pandora’s box inside her.
“So I have a practical haircut that allows you access to my neck.”
“Not exactly.” His fingers touched the back of her head. “You have beautiful hair.” He tunnelled his fingers down to her scalp and branded her with their heat. Then he fanned them out and sifted them through her curls, playing with them, mussing them. “It’s soft to the touch. Springy. It catches in my fingers and teases my skin.” The temperature rose as he leaned in behind her and buried his nose in a handful of hair. “And it’s the cleanest, sweetest thing I’ve ever smelled in my entire life. Believe me, this nose knows.”
She couldn’t help giggling at his age-old pun. He truly didn’t know about those pretty words that men like Anthony Cardello used like loaded weapons. She was glad. And whether she knew it or not, she believed him.
Needing one more step to complete the lesson, he pulled away. “Now, what do you say?”
She slowly turned, bracing her hands on the counter behind her, taking the risk—for Mac. “Thank you.”
The lazy grin that softened his expression was worth the risk. He reached out to her, with fingertips only, and found her chin. She held her breath as he tilted her face up to his. “You’re welcome.”
With his thumbs he traced the width of her mouth, finding her, holding her. She watched with awe as her hero’s mouth descended toward hers. He kissed her once, just a light bit of pressure to test her response. He kissed her again, sealing her thanks beneath his lips.
And then, because logic said she must, and because a tiny part of her really believed Mac’s words, she made herself an equal partner in this embrace. She wound her fingers into the front of Mac’s shirt and pulled herself up on tiptoe. Pulled herself closer to Mac. Pulled herself into his kiss.
With her permission granted, her invitation issued, his mouth opened over hers and her tender hero became a passionate man, claiming what had always been his. His hands swept into her hair, skimmed along her back, squeezed her bottom and lifted. She was floating on air, pinned between the counter and Mac’s strength, bound together by their hands and mouths, and a liquid electricity that flowed between them.
The Pandora’s box around her heart sprung open, and passion, need—love—flowed through her. Uncensored. Unjudged. Unencumbered by second-guessing or self-doubts.
She looped her arms around his neck and held on as her body exploded with the glorious friction of man against woman. Hard angles and softer curves. Needy hands and needier mouths. Tender str
ength and gentle demands.
“Jules—” She granted his unspoken request with a breathy moan and he slipped his hands beneath her shirt, searing her skin with his possessive touch. Like the delicate sandpapery rasp of his voice teased her ear, his eloquent fingers skimmed across her skin, tracing her spine, stroking her flanks, cradling her breasts. She cried out his name when they slipped beneath the strap of her bra and sizzled against the delicate skin there.
A storm was building inside her. Jolt after jolt of sensation turned her liquid. Turned her hot.
She drank the salty sheen of perspiration at his throat. Rubbed her lips against the sexy stubble of his beard. Clung to his shoulders and waited for the storm to overtake her. “Mac?” she called to him. “Mac?” she begged.
Beeeeep.
A breaker switch stopped her cold.
Mac’s hands stilled. His wet, wonderful mouth blew hot, steadying breaths against her ear.
Beeeeep.
Julia buried her face in the juncture between his neck and shoulder and fought her way back to the real world. “What’s that?”
Mac straightened her bra strap and pulled down her shirt. “It’s the printer. The computer’s finished its search.”
“Oh.” She fell a million miles as he set her back on the floor.
A sharp rap at the door jerked her firmly back to the Thirteenth Precinct Crime Lab and the danger at hand.
“Your twenty minutes are up, boys and girls.” Josh opened the door, ran his gaze from the top of Mac’s ruffled hair to his brother’s hands still resting at the sides of her waist. And then the son of a gun smiled and winked. “You can do that on your own time.”
Mac turned his head toward the door and frowned. “Remind me to put you in your place sometime.” When Julia would have scooted away, Mac ran his hands up her sides until he found her jaw. He pinpointed her mouth with the tips of his thumbs and dropped a hard, quick kiss on her lips. “We’re not finished with this conversation.”
“Today, folks.” Josh’s warning spurred them apart.
Mac picked up their jackets from a nearby stool while Julia tore off the printout from the computer, stuffed it into her bag and turned off the equipment.
“Hurry.” Mac had his hand on her hip, steering her toward the door while she shrugged into her jacket.
He moved his hand to her shoulder and they hugged the wall as they followed behind Josh down the hallway toward the service stairs.
As they rounded the corner, she smacked into Josh’s broad back. Mac plowed into her before she realized that Josh had stopped to listen to something.
But Mac heard it, too. “Someone’s coming.”
Like dominoes in reverse, Josh pushed them back around the corner they way they’d come. “Coming down the stairs. We can’t wait for the elevator.” He skirted around them both and shoved open the door to the men’s room. “In here.”
They scuttled back toward the empty stalls, her body still pulsing from Mac’s powerful kiss, her nerve endings shooting wild sparks like broken electrical relays.
But in a stunning moment of clarity, Julia halted in her tracks and changed course. “I left the picture in the scanner.”
She dropped her bag and rushed out the door.
“Jules!” But Mac’s hoarse warning and outstretched hands couldn’t stop her.
She glanced over her shoulder and dashed down the hall, mentally trying to calculate the distance of the footsteps on the stairs behind her and the amount of time she had to retrieve the picture and hide herself.
Her calculations got lost in the instinctive need to move as quickly as humanly possible, to simply survive without getting caught.
She grabbed the picture and started to bolt. But a light in the hallway flipped on, and the image of her unknown pursuer silhouetted itself in the smoked glass of the door.
Too late to run.
She spun around but saw nothing bigger than a cabinet, nothing more closed in than a cart.
No place to hide.
This was an emergency.
Julia knew how to think in emergencies.
After a two-second search, she found what she wanted. She pulled a manila envelope out of the trash just as the door opened, and stuffed the picture inside.
“Who are you?”
This short, unassuming, middle-aged man in a plain brown suit could be her worst enemy if she wasn’t careful.
“Courier.”
When he adjusted his black-framed glasses to get a better look, Julia flipped up the collar of her jacket and looked down at his shoes. “We send our packets to the front office to be delivered.”
She started chomping on an imaginary piece of gum and shrugged her shoulders. “I know. But it wasn’t there. They said to check back here. But nobody’s here to help me. So—hey, you don’t know anything about some printouts headed for the D.A.’s office, do you? No? Well, thanks, anyway. I’ll just go back to the office and call in. Thanks.”
Without giving the man a chance to speak, she scooted past him and out the door. She resisted the urge to stop and catch her breath and made herself walk—not run—down the hallway. The door never opened and she never looked back.
When she turned the corner, a pair of hands grabbed her and shoved her into the wall. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
She stifled a yelp and glared up at Mac’s harsh growl. The glasses might mask his eyes, but they didn’t hide the grim set of his mouth.
And they could never see the fear quaking through every cell of her body.
“Here’s your stupid picture.” She shoved the envelope at his chest, shoved him away, and stalked on past. She took the stairs two at a time, letting Josh and Mac follow more slowly behind.
By the time Mac climbed into the green truck beside her, she could almost listen to reason again.
“I’m sorry.” His quiet rasp was a far cry from the aching fury he’d used a moment ago.
Her only answer was her measured breathing as she consciously tried to take charge of her fears.
And then he reached out, with an open hand across the seat. Palm up. A gentle beseechment for her to either accept or ignore.
She stared down at his hand. Noted the elegant length of fingers and thumb. The sinewed strength. The calloused tips.
The fine little tremors that echoed her own.
Unable to resist his silent request, she reached across the seat and laid her palm over his.
He folded his hand around hers, squeezed it tight, and repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“READ THAT AGAIN.”
Mac paced the length of the room and paused at the foot of the bed. He knew exactly where he was. He’d memorized the number of steps an hour ago.
Plus, he had Julia’s presence to steer by. Her sunny scent had imprinted itself on his brain the first day she walked into his house. She was sitting in the middle of the bed right now, surrounded by the papers they’d confiscated from the crime lab.
“Lawrence Munoz. Forty-two-year-old Hispanic male. Dead on scene. 42100 North Walnut. Up All Night Liquor Store holdup. Cause of death—”
“Skip that part.” Mac stuck his thumb and index finger up beneath his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “I know that name.” He scanned his memory like a computer database, cross-checking and backtracking until…
He snapped his fingers and pointed toward Julia. “Sanchez’s chauffeur.”
“Arnie Sanchez?”
“He was supposed to be a prosecutorial witness in the trial. Sanchez used him as an alibi for the night his son was kidnapped.”
“I was in Chicago during the kidnapping. Don’t you mean a defense witness?”
Mac shook his head, seeing the story in his mind as if he was reading it straight from the headlines. “Arnie Sanchez said he went for a drive in the country to ‘think’ after his import deal with Caracas Industries fell through. But his chauffeur said he was changing the oil in the limo that night.”
The mattress shifted and papers
crunched atop the bedspread as Julia moved. Sitting up higher on the bed, on her knees, perhaps, according to the change in her vocal position. “But then Munoz was killed in the crossfire at that holdup.”
“Lucky for Sanchez, his man was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Before the D.A. could subpoena him to testify against his boss.”
“And the officer who owned the gun that shot him was…?”
“Wade Osterman.”
Man, he loved it when answers clicked together.
Mac sat on the edge of the bed. Bouncing ideas off Julia was almost as efficient as cataloguing and analyzing them on his own. And it was a hell of a lot more interesting. Doing anything with Julia made his life more interesting.
With her, his world was less about cold, hard facts, and more about warm, soft laughter. Though finding the link between the missing evidence and Jeff Ringlein’s death was imperative to his freedom, he was equally, if not more, interested in solving the mystery surrounding Julia.
How could she kiss him like that in the lab, let him kiss her like that, and not think she was pretty? Gorgeous? Dynamite?
She was a catalyst to his dormant male sex drive. No woman had ever excited him the way his science did. Until now. Until Julia Dalton walked through his door with her ample curves and velvet skin and state-of-the-art hands and refused to let him sulk in his room and wallow in his guilt.
But something had happened to her in Chicago. Something that put her back in that alley with Ray Wozniak. Something that kept her from believing in him. Something that kept her from believing in herself.
Mac pushed himself back onto his feet. He didn’t belong in the same bed with Julia. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Even if he could break through her self-doubts, even if she was willing to explore their feelings for each other, he had no business being there.