Dangerous Kisses

by Trish Milburn

  ****

  Sydney flipped through the packaged chicken, looking for the best combination of freshness and price. She tossed her choice into the cart, then consulted her grocery list. When she was stressed, she cooked. By the looks of her cart, she was darn near ready to have a heart attack.

  Well, it couldn’t hurt to feed the officers who evidently would be watching her day and night. She knew the kind of crap those guys ate while on duty. She wouldn’t be responsible for the hamburger that sent one of them into cardiac arrest.

  She added milk and yeast rolls to the cart, then headed for the checkout. Along her route, she passed the candy aisle. She turned down it, searching the hanging bags for the butterscotch candies she liked so much. She deserved a treat. And every time she ate them, she thought of her dad and smiled.

  He’d started giving her these candies when her mom wasn’t looking when she’d barely been old enough to know what candy was. Her mother would always scold him, but she never sounded too serious about it. How she missed them both. Her dad had been gone two years now, but at least she’d had time to tell him all the things she’d never been able to tell her mother.

  When she found the candy, she lifted onto the tips of her toes to reach them.

  "Here, let me get those for you," a man said from beside her.

  "Thanks." She stepped back to allow him access. Then she saw the three bags of chocolate kisses in his hand. Her heart battered against her chest, and her breath shuddered. She fought the urge to run. Had he followed her here? Would he dare get this close and taunt her?

  "Here you go."

  Sydney tore her eyes away from the bags in his hand to see him extending the butterscotch to her.

  "The kids will like those," he said.

  "What?"

  "The butterscotch. I always liked those, but my daughter said trick-or-treaters really want chocolate." He raised the chocolate kisses in his hand and nodded toward the bags of individually wrapped candy bars in his cart. A bright-eyed girl of about seven or eight smiled shyly at her. Sydney offered a weak smile back.

  Of course, trick-or-treaters. Her body relaxed, and the relief helped slow her frantic heartbeat.

  She’d forgotten Halloween was only a few days away. The farm where she’d grown up had been so out of the way they’d never gotten trick-or-treaters, and none of her various apartment complexes had been favorite stopping spots either.

  Sydney accepted the candy from the man who was now looking at her with a strange expression on his face. He was probably wondering what in the world was wrong with her.

  "Thank you," she said, then hurried toward the checkout.

  He was just a guy buying Halloween candy, nothing more. But her hands shook so badly she dropped her money while paying the cashier and then bumped into the cart of another customer. She mumbled a "sorry" and nearly sprinted for her car. Thank goodness the sun was shining in a bright blue autumn sky. It helped alleviate some of her fear. That and the fact she knew there was an officer nearby.

  She loaded the groceries into the trunk of her car, then sat in the driver’s seat for a few seconds until she got her heart rate and breathing under control. This was crazy. Even with her police protection, she’d watched the surrounding cars on the way to the grocery as if the Grim Reaper had been driving each one. She glanced around the parking lot. Nothing out of the ordinary, no reason to believe she was in any danger here. She couldn’t let the threats render her so fearful she couldn’t function. One seemingly unconquerable fear was quite enough.

  Sydney took a deep breath, vowed to remain calm and headed back toward her apartment.

  When she arrived, she found Jake sitting outside her door. He waved at a passing car, thus evidently completing the shift change. Damn, why was she so glad to see him? He came as close as any man ever had to making her lose her mind and the power of speech, and yet she couldn’t get enough of seeing his face and the buzz she felt when he was around. He was a drug, one to which she could easily become addicted.

  Time to don the armor.

  "You’re tonight’s babysitter, huh?"

  He rose and took the bags from her hands. "So it seems." He peered into the bags. "You stocking up for Thanksgiving early or do you have a superhuman metabolism?"

  "Keep it up and I won’t offer you a plate."

  "You’re going to feed me?" The teasing was back in his voice, and she could have kissed him for it – except kissing him wasn’t a good idea.

  Still, the teasing, the acting as if she wasn’t a fragile flower was what she needed. No coddling, no tiptoeing.

  "If you’re not too annoying. And if you carry in the rest of the groceries."

  "There’s more?"

  She gave him what she hoped was a look of warning laced with humor. From his amused expression as he descended the steps, she succeeded. Lord but that man made her skin burn and her heart perform remarkable feats of beating.

  As she worked to prepare pan-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans, she even managed to relax a little as the last rays of twilight waned and the kitchen filled with familiar, welcoming smells. Jake talked on his phone and worked on his computer. His comments were just vague enough to make her wonder if he was talking about the serial killer or another case altogether.

  Her nervousness returned when she placed the meal on the table and they sat down to dinner. While preparing the meal, she’d been able to keep her back to Jake to avoid the impossibly sexy way he moved, his piercing gaze. With him across the table, she’d have to stare at her plate to keep from watching him. Lord, how much sense did it make that a killer wanted to add her to his list of victims and what occupied her mind was the crazy attraction she felt toward a man she barely knew?

  Despite her earlier hunger while she cooked, she only nibbled at her food. Every time she dared to look up from her plate, she found Jake watching her. He watched her so closely she imagined he could see straight through her clothes. For a moment, she wished she possessed that power so she could explore what lay beneath Jake’s plain white dress shirt and khakis.

  "This is the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time," he finally said as he scooped out another helping of mashed potatoes. He nodded toward her plate. "Aren’t you hungry?"

  "Not really."

  He smiled. "You cooked a lot for a woman who isn’t hungry."

  "Guess I’m more tired than I thought."

  "Been sleeping?"

  "A little."

  Man, who was she becoming? Certainly not herself. Couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think straight.

  "Have you gotten any more leads today?" she asked. "Has the voice recording been analyzed yet?"

  "No, to both questions. We’ve gotten a couple of tips, but they turned out to be hoaxes."

  "Hoaxes? Why do people joke about stuff like this?"

  "Who the hell knows."

  Sydney shivered. Not only were there real killers out there, there were also people who got a kick out of joking about it. No wonder cops seemed to be so jaded and unfeeling sometimes.

  Jake rose and headed for the kitchen with his dirty dishes.

  "I can get those."

  "So can I. You cooked, I can clean."

  "I hardly think that’s in your job description."

  "Hey, it’s better than a lot of the stuff I do."

  Focus, Sydney, focus. She had to remember he was off limits. She and relationships were not destined to walk down the same path, no matter how tempting the light at the end of that path.

  She wandered to the couch and switched on the TV to the local news and flipped open her laptop. She tried working on a story about a string of robberies along Nolensville Road, but she’d only get two or three sentences typed before switching over to her Web browser and searching statistics about stalkers and serial killers.

  "That’s probably why you can’t sleep," Jake said from behind her.

  "I didn’t say I couldn’t sleep."

  "Didn’t have to be Sher
lock Holmes to figure that one out."

  Sydney switched back to her article and typed a new line. She stiffened, then tried to relax when Jake sank down onto the couch beside her. Not in the matching chair. Not at the dining room table where his laptop still sat. Right beside her.

  "You know, there’s such a thing as personal space."

  "You don’t say."

  Sydney kept typing, determined to prove he didn’t make her nervous – though nothing could be farther from the truth.

  Jake leaned toward her. "I don’t bite, you know."

  She glanced toward him. "So you say."

  He chuckled and slid farther down the couch. "I think I make you nervous."

  "Don’t be ridiculous."

  He slid a little closer. "Then why won’t you look at me?"

  She turned toward him. "This is going nowhere. I’m not the kind of person to sleep around casually."

  "Neither am I, though that wasn’t where I was going." He stood and crossed the room to his own computer. "It was just a little flirting, to lighten things up."

  Just as she thought. He might flirt with the best of them, but he wasn’t the sticking around kind. And against her better judgement, she’d been thinking more and more about the sticking around kind over the past few days. Each time, he had Jake’s face and sexy voice.

  "I know you’re just trying to help, but that’s not me," she said. "I’m not a big flirter."

  "Okay, I got the point."

  She didn’t think he did, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it anymore. Whether he was mad or embarrassed, she couldn’t tell, but his body language was clear – let it drop.

  After several minutes of tense silence filled only by the clicking of their keyboards, Jake snapped his shut, tucked it under his arm and stood.

  "Where are you going?"

  "To my post."

  "Just stay in here. There’s no sense in you sitting in your car when it’s in the 40s outside." What was she doing?

  "You think that’s a good idea?"

  "I think I can manage to resist your magnetic charm."

  He laughed, a single burst of unexpected amusement. "You were wrong. You do know how to flirt."

  She returned her attention to her article, hoping Jake couldn’t see the frantic beating of her heart even from the outside. If she was flirting without knowing it, she was in deep trouble.

  Though she wanted to flee, she forced herself to remain on the couch and work on her story. It took money to pay her rent and buy groceries, and money came from finished stories. She’d love for the serial killer story to be over, but it wasn’t. Until she had more information, other stories would have to earn her paycheck. The merchants who’d suffered because of the string of thefts deserved justice too, but she couldn’t summon her normal enthusiasm. In the grand scheme of things, what were a few missing stereos and cars when lives were at stake?

  ****

  After an hour in her room staring at the ceiling, Sydney conceded that sleep was going to be elusive. The sandman didn’t seem to want to visit her tonight. Maybe it was the knowledge that Jake was in the living room, sleeping on her couch. Or maybe it was that chilling message the killer had sent. The man’s muffled words kept playing over and over in her head, and still she didn’t recognize it. If he’d watched her before without her knowing it, could he even now be watching her apartment? Did he know she had protection, and did that make him angry?

  Sydney tossed and turned for another half-hour before she gave up trying to sleep. She shoved off the covers, then sat on the side of the bed for a few seconds. A frustrating anxiety prevented her from sitting still for long. She paced to the window. The parking lot was bathed in bright moonlight, making the night seem less sinister than it could have been in her current state of mind.

  Maybe she just needed some fresh air. She cracked the window and listened to the midnight mixture of insects and traffic on I-40 nearby. When she’d been a little girl, she’d loved sleeping with the window open, listening to the night music of crickets and frogs. But since her mother’s murder, she’d not been able to do so. The fear that evil would crawl in and get her had invaded her little girl brain and still hadn’t let go. Even with a second floor apartment, the open window was confined mainly to daylight hours.

  Anger welled up inside her. How many times had she slipped out at night during childhood to play beneath the moon’s light, to explore the shadows and the magic of the night? But whoever had killed her mother had robbed her of that type of innocence. After that horrible night, the darkness had held no more magic for her. And now, with her own evil stalking her, the night threatened to take on an entirely different level of fear. She hated them – the men who stole not only life but also so much more. Peace of mind. Dreams. A normal life.

  The fat, hot tears surprised her. Why was she crying? It would accomplish absolutely nothing. Just as she sniffed, footsteps outside her bedroom door sent a shot of pure, undiluted fear to her heart until she remembered Jake was in the apartment.

  "Sydney?"

  She tried desperately to stop the tears. He couldn’t see her weak like this again. His protector act would only intensify, stifling her control even more. But why did part of her not care? Why did she have to fight the urge to walk into his arms and let him take care of everything? That impulse belonged to another woman, another time, not self-sufficient, in-control Sydney Blackburn.

  Lonely, tired, scared Sydney Blackburn.

  "Sydney?" Jake said with more insistence she respond.

  "I’m okay." Her voice broke on the end of the "okay", prompting Jake to open the door and step into the room. It took him a second to detect her by the window.

  She couldn’t control the jolt that shook her body when she saw him. Warmth flooded her face, her entire body, at the sight of his muscled chest lighted by the pale moonlight filtering through the blinds.

  "What’s wrong?"

  "I..." She was going to say "nothing" like she always did when someone suspected weakness on her part, but she couldn’t force the words past the lump in her throat. All that came out of her half-opened mouth was a strangled sob.

  Without further questions, Jake crossed the room and pulled her into his arms, cradled her against his chest. She tried to pull away, to hide her embarrassment, but his gentle hold prevented her retreat. And so she gave in and cried. Despite having her feelings exposed to someone who was virtually a stranger, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. At least her tears flowed silently, and her deep shuddery breaths didn’t come out on great wracking sobs. At least she retained a little of her carefully crafted control.

  Jake rubbed his hand over her braided hair, telling her without words that he wasn’t going anywhere, that she could cry as long as she needed. Refusing to question the sanity of doing so, she wrapped her arms around his waist and sank more fully against his powerful frame. It felt so good to have someone to lean on.

  Perhaps what pried the crack in her heart a little wider was the fact that Jake didn’t say anything, simply stood there and gave her what he instinctively knew she needed — time and no delving questions. She closed her eyes against the tears and breathed deeply of Jake’s scent, a combination of soap and coffee and a tinge of her own detergent from the quilt he’d been using. It drugged her like no man-made substance ever could.

  After a few minutes of standing in the moonlight soaking Jake’s skin, she pulled away, hating to leave his warmth and comfort. "I’m sorry I blubbered all over you."

  "It’s okay."

  "You’re probably cold now." She tried not to look at, not even think about, his bare chest.

  He lifted his hand to the side of her face, skimmed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. A shiver that had nothing to do with the chilly fall night hurried along her skin.

  "Right now, I’m warmer than I’ve been in a long time."

  Her breath caught in her lungs, but he broke the moment by dropping his hand to hers and leading her to the couch
. He must have sensed she wasn’t ready for the look that had been in his eyes. A look of desire, need. He pulled her down beside him and guided her head to his shoulder. For several moments, he remained silent.

  "You want to tell me what’s bothering you?" he finally asked.

  "You mean other than a killer seems to want me dead?"

  "Yeah. I don’t think that’s why you were crying. You’re too tough for that."

  He thought she was tough. Her heart swelled. He couldn’t know how much the compliment meant to her. She almost made an excuse about being tired, overworked, but for some reason she wanted to tell him the truth.

  "I miss my mother. Sometimes I forget she’s gone. I keep expecting to hear her voice or smell one of her apple pies."

  "How long ago did she die?"

  "Twenty-one years. I know it seems crazy, but it seems like it was only yesterday. I mean, my dad died only a couple of years ago and I miss him, but I’ve lived so long with missing Mom."

  "You must have been young when she died." Jake offered comfort by rubbing her upper arm.

  "Eleven."

  He was a cop through and through, so she expected him to continue his line of questioning until he knew every detail about her childhood. But he surprised her again by remaining quiet, letting her decide how much to share. She took a deep breath that reached to her soul, to the depth of where she buried the feelings she didn’t want to examine too closely.

  "She was murdered."

  Jake’s body stiffened, and for a moment it was as if he’d stopped breathing. Had she said the wrong thing? Had he not bargained on having her dump her life story in his lap?

  Her mind raced back over her words, and suddenly she felt like biting off her tongue.

  His father had been murdered, too. And from what his mother had shared with Sydney, Jake hadn’t dealt well with his father’s death, perhaps hadn’t dealt with it at all.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could take back her words. It figured that when she finally confided in someone, all it accomplished was hurting her confidant as well. As if she’d needed any more proof, Jake’s reaction added to her belief that opening up was way overrated.