by Docter, K. L
Suze tilted her head and considered him in that too grown up way he knew so well, as if she could see truth lodged deep in his soul if she looked long and hard enough. “What’s a whore, Mr. Patrick?”
The unexpected question sideswiped him. Disturbed by how much Suze overheard, he picked her up and set her on his lap. “That’s one of those words you can forget, Suze.”
“Like the bad words in the naughty jar?”
Thanks to exposure to her mother’s drugged out friends before Susan died last year, the child understood entirely too much for a five-year-old. He refused to add to her education so he’d created the naughty jar to teach his crews to watch their profanity in the office. At ten bucks a pop, it hadn’t taken long for the men to learn. These days, the jar tended to fill up on its own and Patrick banked it in a college fund for Suze. “Yeah,” he said, “like those.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. Patrick could practically hear the gears turning in her head. He’d learned from experience to brace himself when the little girl got that look in her eye.
“If Grandma says she’s sorry, do I gots to live with the animals at the zoo?” She gave a half-hearted shrug. “Monkeys are fun, I guess. But lions are real mean. Can’t I be your Suze-Q no more?”
A band tightening around his throat, he hugged the little girl close. “You’ll always be my Suze-Q, munchkin,” he said. “No matter what.” She snuggled into his shirt, which alternately made him feel ten feet tall and terribly inadequate. After a few moments, he cleared his throat. “Don’t you worry about this grown up stuff. Grandma’s not going anywhere but home with you.”
He glanced across the desk at Jane, who nodded her acceptance to postpone their discussion. “She’s not feeling very well. Do you think you can take care of her?”
Everything right with her world again, Suze nodded vigorously. “I can make scaphetti in a can if I climb on a chair. I watched Grandma lots of times.”
He shook his head. “No climbing and no cooking. You can tuck Grandma into bed and give her the remote. How about if I come with you and cook some of those dinosaur pasta things you like so much?”
“Dinosaurs are yucky.” She made a face and jumped off his lap. “I like space ships and stars.”
“Patrick,” Jane said, slowly rising to her feet. “An escort isn’t necessary. I promise we won’t go anywhere but home so you know where to find me.”
“That’s not why I’m offering, Jane. You might need,” he paused and downplayed his concern about her health for the little girls listening to him, “something.”
“I’m already feeling better,” Jane assured him. “I’ll take it easy for the rest of the day.” She smiled wanly and shrugged. “I-I’ll call Jack when I get home.”
He didn’t think she could handle much more stress. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Don’t worry, Patrick. I’ll make it right.”
The funny thing is, despite her confession, he trusted she would make it right.
Suze tugged on his hand. “Can ’Manda come, too? We forgot our cookies.”
Rachel scowled at Patrick so he had no illusions she’d been distracted from the real reason Jane was going home before the children had their afternoon snack. “Grandma can use your help, sweetie,” she said. “How about I put your cookies in a plastic bag so you can take them with you? Amanda can share with you another time.”
Problem solved, Suze nodded. “’kay.”
~~~
Ten minutes later, Jane and Suze headed home, which left Patrick alone in the house with Rachel and Amanda. He was grateful to see the little girl return to the playroom upstairs while Rachel took over Jane’s office and the crews radioing in for the second shift. He took the time alone to wrap his thoughts around the day’s revelations, figure out what he was going to do to recover from this latest assault on his carefully constructed world.
Sitting in his office chair with his elbows on the desk, he rested his forehead in his palms. He closed his eyes. He was a drowning man. One more descent below the surface and he might never come up again.
He’d lost a project that would have secured his bottom line. His office manager sold him out. A competitor was out to destroy him, and he felt betrayed, shocked, and angry. The weird part was he wasn’t as upset about the loss of the Schubert contract or Jane’s part in its loss as he was by the fact that Rachel had questioned Jane’s decision to tell him what she’d done.
What was wrong with him?
Sure, the week since his parents’ return from the Virgin Islands had been challenging. When he’d told Rachel their lovemaking was a mistake, he’d wanted to reclaim some distance between them. But then, he’d turned right around and made love to her again. He hadn’t thought about anything but the feel of her skin, her scent and taste filling his senses, the pleasure of making love to every inch of her.
When his parents walked through the kitchen door into the house that night, it could have been her ex-husband. If it had been an hour earlier, Bishop would have been up the stairs at the bedroom door and it wouldn’t have impinged on Patrick’s lust soaked brain in time.
Worse, after a discussion with Jack about the note found after Rachel was pushed into the elevator shaft, he was no longer certain the first threatening note he’d found in his truck was from her ex-husband. If they were right, Rachel had become his saboteur’s new weapon against him. The thought of the Angel Killer setting his sights on Rachel terrified him more than Bishop or losing his business.
He didn’t dare let his guard drop again.
How was he supposed to keep that resolve, though, if his first thought when he spotted Rachel standing in the file room wasn’t about what stood between them? No. His first impulse was to march into the next room, strip her naked, and bury himself deep inside her. No words. No preliminaries. Pure desire demanding release. Just thinking about it made his hands sweat and his balls ache.
The woman drove him crazy. He couldn’t sleep, his dreams haunted by the feel of her beneath him, her sighs whispering across his skin. Since learning she’d never climaxed until that night, there was nothing he wanted to do more than make her cry out her own satisfaction, over and over. He woke each morning with a raging hard on and a voracious hunger to claim all of her searing caresses and lush kisses for himself.
It was worse in broad daylight when he was forced to watch her interact with his crew at the job site. He was tempted to post a “Keep Off” sign on her. Wherever she went the crewmen, single and married, gay and straight, became grinning Lotharios. They carried her tools around, bought her meals off the roving food truck, and generally tripped over their work boots to accommodate her…while he was left with her watchful silence. The only time they spoke to each other these past few days was when she was forced to confer with him about the Southgate landscaping project before she headed to the hospital to be with her father.
He tried to remind himself he’d locked down his desire for a reason. But then she’d smile at his parents over the breakfast table like she had this morning. He’d get a whiff of her lilac scent on the air. They’d accidentally touch hands reaching for a piece of toast or salt shaker, and he’d spring into a state of aching readiness. He longed for her touch. If he thought he could simply drag her off to bed for one more night and get her out of his system, he’d do it. But he was afraid it was too little, too late. He craved…everything.
He wanted to talk to her, and bounce new ideas off her quick mind so he could see the spark of excitement lighten her eyes. He missed her smiles. He missed her arguing with him. Somehow, she’d burrowed under his skin and become an itch he might never scratch out.
“The second shift supervisors have checked in so I’m leaving.”
Rachel’s curt announcement from the open doorway caused an unexpected surge of alarm in Patrick’s chest. He pushed it down and lifted his head. “With Jane gone,” he said, “I need you here to cover—”
“I don’t care what you need,” she
said, marching into his office. She stopped in front of his desk and glared at him, clearly waiting for him to say something. When he said nothing, she snorted with obvious disdain. “If you throw that poor woman in jail, Patrick Thorne, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Her confrontational tone set his back up and his response was layered with too much of his frustration. “Then, before you stop talking to me altogether,” he said, sitting back in his chair, “explain why you were encouraging Jane not to tell me Standish was blackmailing her.”
Rachel snorted indelicately. “I wasn’t encouraging or discouraging her. She was upset, and I didn’t want her to do or say anything rash until she’d had time to calm down.”
“Were you planning to keep her secret, if she’d asked you?”
“What do you want me to say? She’d just told me. I didn’t have time to process anything before you came back with her tea.”
“Well, sweetheart, let me process it for you.” He leaned forward over the desk. “Blackmail isn’t a secret you keep to yourself. It’s a criminal offense, and you can go to jail, too, for aiding and abetting. What were you thinking?”
“I told you. I didn’t have time to think. Then.” She glared at him. “Want to guess what I’m thinking now?”
Patrick didn’t have to guess. Her anger with him was clear in her expression, in her stiff stance. He also knew the answer to his question. She’d have kept Jane’s secret. Aware of what Rachel had done, what she’d endured living with Bishop in order to protect her own daughter, she’d sympathize with the other woman. He understood the urge to protect the children, which took the heat out of his anger. It didn’t make her lack of trust in him any easier to take.
When he didn’t say anything, she crossed her arms in challenge. “What are you going to do about Jane?”
“I haven’t decided,” he said, irritated as much by Rachel’s persistence as his desire to kiss the scowl off her face. He already knew he wouldn’t have Jane arrested, not for selling him out at least. Jack might have other ideas. If Standish turned out to be Patrick’s saboteur, and Jane had kept it secret knowing they’d connected him to the Angel Killer, well, Patrick didn’t see a way for Jane to walk away unscathed.
Whether he’d fire his office manager was still up for grabs, too. He might understand why she’d betrayed him. It didn’t mean he could trust his business with her again. Yet, if he fired her, what would happen to her? To Suze? Dammit! When did everything get so screwed up?
Standing abruptly, he went to the plan rack in the corner behind him and chose a blueprint at random. Returning to his desk, he set Jane’s cup of untouched tea aside to the credenza so he could spread the blueprint on the file-strewn surface. Silence filled the room while he studied the diagram without actually seeing it.
He lifted his gaze. “I won’t discuss this with you, Rachel. It’s none of your business how I handle my employees.”
He didn’t remind her she was one of those employees, but saw she received the message by the way her eyes widened. “So fire me, too, because I’m speaking my mind,” she said with a lift of her chin. “Jane confessed her secret. What she did was wrong, but there were extenuating circumstances. She fixed it.”
“Try telling that to the rest of my employees with families to support.” He allowed the blueprint to roll up with a snap. “How do you propose I pay them if there’s no work? For all I know, Jane’s actions are related to all of the problems we’re having on-site.”
Rachel stared at him like he was one screwdriver short of a toolbox. “She’s not dragging Suze around after hours poking holes in your precious walls, and she sure didn’t kidnap and kill that coed. This has nothing to do with your saboteur.”
The reminder about the display of clothing nailed to his project walls turned his stomach. “Jane’s confession doesn’t address everything that’s gone wrong in recent months, but she knew Jack believes the saboteur is his serial killer. Even if Chet Standish isn’t the Angel Killer, I can’t ignore the fact she jeopardized the livelihoods of my crew.”
When it looked like she was about to argue, he cut her off. “I understand you sympathize with Jane’s troubles,” he said. “It doesn’t, however, excuse her behavior.”
With a gasp, she reared back like he’d slapped her. “I sympathize with…?” She stiffened. “Fine. Her situation isn’t that much different than my own. Do you think there’s no excuse for my behavior, too? Is that what you really think?”
“No! It’s not what I think.” He ran his hands through his hair. Unable to stand the hurt he saw in her eyes, he rounded the desk and approached her, until he was close enough to smell the delicate lilac scent that was becoming as crucial to him as the air in his lungs. “Rach, I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with you. It’s no excuse, but Jane’s news hit too close to home and I-I—”
He paused, suddenly unsure what to say or do to fix things between them. “To hell with it,” he whispered, cutting off his apology with a kiss. Closing his arms around Rachel, he showed her exactly how sorry he was for everything. His ill-considered comments. The way he’d pushed her away after his parents’ return. The strain that had grown between them since that night. He wanted to love her. Touch her. Convince her to stay so he could explore this demanding desire that haunted his nights and left him aching.
With a groan, he deepened the caress. Claimed more of her scent. Their breath mingling, hard, fast, he ran his hands up and down her arms. Stroking. Soothing. Reaching behind her with one arm, he swept everything off his desk. The noise of falling debris barely subsided before he laid Rachel back on the bare surface, without breaking the seal of their lips, and settled between her legs where he longed to be, where he belonged.
The scorching assault on his senses went on and on until he felt something warm and wet drop onto the back of his hand cradling her face. Lifting his head, he looked down at Rachel lying frozen and still beneath him, her blouse unbuttoned to expose the lacy bra she wore, her skirt pushed up her thighs to accommodate his hips. He saw where his five o’clock shadow had chafed the tender skin over her jaw, the bruised fullness of her mouth. Another tear dripped onto his hand. He pulled away quickly. “Rachel! Oh, God, I’m so sorry! I-I didn’t mean, I can’t believe I—”
A deep voice behind them cut him off. “Is everything all right in here?” Larsen Cook, who protected Rachel at night, stood in the doorway.
Patrick caught the time on the wall clock. Four-forty. Cook and Sprang usually changed shifts at the house after six o’clock, so they must have switched early for some reason. Stifling a groan, he blocked Rachel’s nakedness with his own, and looked over his shoulder at Cook. “Everything’s fine.”
The security consultant’s flinty gaze sharpened on the debris at their feet. “I have to hear that from Ms. James,” he said.
“E-Everything’s fine.” Rachel’s tremulous voice didn’t sound too convincing.
When Patrick turned back and tried to help her to sit up, she batted his hand away. “I’ve got it.” Blinking back tears she stumbled off the desk, her skirt falling down to hide her legs. She buttoned her blouse up to her neck with fingers that fumbled. “I have work to do,” she muttered, walking around him. “Come on, Cook.” She snatched Patrick’s truck keys off the wall rack and fled his office with Cook in tow.
Patrick listened to Rachel run up the wooden stairs and, a minute later, back down again with Amanda. They clattered past his office. The last thing he heard was a clap of thunder so loud it almost buried the sound of the front door slamming behind mother, daughter, and bodyguard. As the storm broke over Patrick’s head, he sat back on the front edge of his bare desk like a marionette with its strings cut.
What had he done?
Chapter Twenty-One
Time passed while he sat there beating himself up over Rachel’s anger and pain, his own idiocy, but he eventually became aware of the violence of the weather outside. The storm had broken with a vengeance, what his father called a “gull
y washer”. It was the kind of storm that caused six-inch thick tree branches to snap and crash through roofs like they were made out of paper-mâché. The wind drove the rain almost vertical so it slammed into his office window in sheets. With the sheer volume of water these infrequent storms dumped, it didn’t take long for the streets to overflow with water the predominately clay soil couldn’t soak up.
Rachel and Amanda are driving through those streets completely unaware of the dangers.
Larsen Cook was with them. He’d know what to do in this storm. If Rachel would take his advice. She’d accepted the bodyguard’s renewed presence in her life but, when she felt threatened, she took risks. Like the night she ran away after she received the threatening package from her ex-husband.
The memory yanked Patrick from his inertia. Rummaging through the debris scattered on the floor, he tried not to think about how it all got down there. He located his radio beneath a file folder kicked under one corner of the desk and tried to raise Rachel on it. Nothing. Several of the crew responded to his call promising to watch for her so he knew the radio worked, but he didn’t find the knowledge reassuring.
Rachel might deliberately ignore his radio calls if she were upset enough. He tried Cook’s cell number, but he didn’t pick up either. That ratcheted up his alarm.
Don’t panic. If they aren’t at the site, they probably just went home next door.
He dialed his parents’ house. “Have you seen Rachel and Amanda?” he asked his mother when she picked up.
“Not since I dropped them off at your place after our hospital visit with Dixon. Rachel said she had to pick up something,” she said. “Aren’t they there?”
“If they were, do you think I’d call?” he snapped. Pacing the floor from one end of his house to the other, he moderated his voice. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m just worried. They went out again almost an hour ago and I can’t find them.”
It was his fault they were out there in the storm. When he should have been reassuring Rachel he’d make everything right with Jane, he’d goaded her into an argument instead. Then he’d practically ravaged her on the desk without considering her feelings. He wasn’t any better than her brutal ex-husband. It would be a miracle if she ever forgave him.