Before she could completely deal with the mutiny of her inner voice of reason, Daniel managed to rearrange them both so that she was on her back and he was above her, looking down.
She saw no mockery, just interest. “Why don’t you take the time to have a shower? Come down when you’re ready, and we’ll talk—both about our personal situation and the search for Mercy.”
Mercy. Good Lord, she hadn’t even thought about her missing sister yet this morning. What was wrong with her?
“Stop that immediately. I told you Rob and I were going to take over that particular worry. The fact you didn’t think about her until just now tells me that, despite whatever hard mental lecture you’re giving yourself at the moment, a part of you trusts us. I’ll see you downstairs.”
He held her gaze another moment and then got up from the bed. The man was sporting an impressive erection that his jeans couldn’t hide. She hadn’t meant to gasp.
His response was to meet her gaze again. “Yes, pet, lying next to you, while I’m fully clothed and you’re protected by a thick comforter, still gives me a hard-on. I won’t lie to you. But I’m beyond the point where I let my cock make my decisions for me.”
He didn’t say another word, just left the room.
Colleen had never been so confused in her entire life. The last time she’d felt like, acted like, herself was last night, as she’d attempted to gain entrance to that damn club and had been met by first a security guard and then the owner himself.
The last few hours she might as well have fallen down Alice’s proverbial rabbit hole.
Colleen got to her feet, taking the time to make her bed. As she headed into her personal bathroom, she pulled off her underwear. Once the water was on full blast and hot, she stepped into the spray. The ingrained routine of bathing saved her from thinking. Wash hair, rinse hair, condition hair, soap body—well, the routine saved her from thinking in words. Apparently, her mind kept working. She used part of her towel to wipe steam off her mirror then met her gaze head-on.
Colleen had a healthy opinion of herself, at least when it came to her intelligence and her talent as a surgeon. You couldn’t cut into a human body to heal it if you didn’t have a solid belief you could do so. But she’d never had a healthy opinion of herself as a woman or as a sexual being. She’d had sex and found it a bit interesting and a lot not worth the bit interesting. She had certainly never been a woman to inspire a man’s cock to stand at attention just from his holding her.
Until today.
She dried herself, her body and her hair, and went through another routine, that of getting dressed. Not a vain woman, she nonetheless took a moment to apply a modicum of makeup—mascara and lipstick. She’d chosen a pair of capris in tan and a green T-shirt. She’d chosen the shirt for comfort, not for the way it made her hazel eyes look green.
She left her bathroom, but rather than heading right downstairs, she sat on the edge of her bed. Colleen had never been one to lie to herself. She’d always faced whatever had come her way head-on. Maybe she’d been knocked off her pins temporarily a few times, but she never ran away from tough reality or hard truths.
Did she really want to start doing that at the ripe old age of thirty-eight?
“Hell and damnation.” She hadn’t done any research herself on the kind of lifestyle the denizens of Christopher Lyon’s club adhered to. She wished she had now because if there was one thing she hated it was walking into a situation with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever.
You did that already, Colleen, last night. Yes, she had. Now she had to make a decision, except it seemed to her that her inner woman had already made that decision. She’d made it last night when she’d followed every one of Daniel’s commands, even to the point of falling asleep when he told her to. She couldn’t in good conscience stomp downstairs and insist that he was way off base, that she wasn’t a submissive.
So, she’d do the only thing she could do. She would see what he had in mind, take things one step at a time, until she got a clear sense that this—whatever this was going to turn out to be—wasn’t her.
And if it is?
Oh, she hated her inner voice of reason sometimes and never more so than right then. She closed her eyes and took a cleansing breath. If this—whatever this was going to turn out to be—was her, she’d do what she could to make it work. One step at a time, one day at a time.
And she’d reevaluate the entire situation when, not if, they found Mercy.
Chapter Five
Daniel didn’t hear her footstep so much as he sensed her presence. The only time that had happened to him was a time in his life he didn’t like to dwell on. The past was over, dead and buried.
He looked up in time to see her step into the kitchen. Ellie turned from the stove, her gaze focused on Colleen.
“You look better, Colleen. Well rested.”
Colleen’s expression fell just short of chagrinned. She walked over to Ellie and laid her hand on her shoulder. “Thank you. And thanks for making breakfast.”
“You can thank me, young lady, by eating it.”
Daniel figured that the eggs and grits and ham had been made with Colleen in mind. Rob helped Ellie by making the toast and the coffee. He figured she’d let his partner into her kitchen as a kindness and not because she needed any assistance.
Ellie Johnson seemed like the sort who could handle a platoon of marines with no difficulty whatsoever.
He waited until the food was on the table and all bodies were seated. “We don’t have a great deal to report, but we’ve begun our search.”
“The detective who’s now in charge of your sister’s case, Detective Morrissey, sent me the file on what they’ve done so far, which is precious little,” Rob said. “So I’m going to get started by seeing if I can trace her cell phone. I’ll also check on the use of her credit cards. Do you have the details on her vehicle—make, model, license plate?”
“Yes. I—” Colleen shook her head. “The officers who took my report didn’t ask me for any of that information.”
“The officers who took your report have been suspended.” Daniel had made a very early morning phone call. Considering Chris had also had a thing or two to say to the chief of police, he wasn’t at all surprised the man had acted swiftly.
“Good.” Ellie nodded her head once, firmly. “Texan men are of two types—the good ones and the good ol’ boys. Those two officers were of the latter group. They never took Colleen seriously.”
“It sounds like the two of you will be starting where they should have begun when I made the report four days ago.”
Daniel nodded and then put his gaze on her plate. Colleen hadn’t eaten much. But he didn’t have to say a word. When she picked up her fork and resumed eating—in small bites and chewing slowly—he smiled at her.
“Yes, actually. I understand that your sister has her own apartment.”
“She does. I have a key.”
“Good. After breakfast, you and I will pay a visit.” Daniel knew that would put a smile on her face. Colleen had been taken to the mat by worry over the last week, but he had no doubt that once she got her second wind and her legs under her, she’d bounce back and then some. “We’ll also track down some of her friends.”
“I already called all of them. No one has heard from her.”
“What’s your work schedule like today?”
“I’ve booked off the next two weeks,” Colleen said. “I turned everything over to a colleague—even the follow-up appointments with my most recent patients.”
“Excellent. Then you can accompany me as we go about finding them. Let’s try talking to her friends face to face,” he said. When she sent him a look of confusion, he lifted his coffee cup. “I know you spoke to them all, and I’m sure none of them lied to you, pet. But the key is the questions you asked. We need to get a sense of your sister’s mindset, try and figure out what she was doing, feeling, before she vanished. Was she worried? Upset? Had anything happened in h
er world recently that had jarred her or set her on a particular course? And where was she when she vanished?”
Colleen sighed. “I don’t know the answer to any of those things—at least not recently. I can tell you she lost a good friend about a month or so ago.”
“Sweet Julie,” Ellie said. She shook her head and set down her own cup. “Such a tragedy that was.”
“Julie?” Daniel had scanned the dismal police report. Colleen wasn’t the only one who hadn’t asked the right questions. Neither had those two soon-to-be out-of-work cops. Colleen had an excuse. She was a surgeon, not an investigator. Those two cops had no excuse except pig-headed chauvinism.
“Julie Armstrong,” Colleen said. “She and her parents used to live just down the street, but they moved to Austin about six years ago. Mercy and Julie had been best friends since first grade, and the move didn’t change that. They even roomed together at college.”
“How did she die?” Rob asked. He had a pad of paper beside him and was making notes.
“Sudden catastrophic myocardial infarction.” Colleen shook her head slowly. “You hear of it happening, sometimes, someone dying of a massive heart attack, without any sense there’d been any heart disease at all.”
“Like that skater years ago,” Daniel said. “Sergei Grinkov, the Olympic gold medalist? He just suddenly collapsed, only twenty-eight years old.”
“Exactly.” Colleen’s tone turned somber.
“It broke all our hearts,” Ellie said. “Mercy was especially devastated.”
“Yes, she was. I wondered if the reason she seemed so intent on exploring her…” Colleen stopped suddenly and slid a sideways look at Ellie.
That woman set down her cup and gave Colleen a direct look. “Exploring her submissive side?”
When Colleen gaped, Ellie shook her head. “I did my own research,” she said.
“You think she became more determined to ‘seize the day,’ as it were, in light of her friend’s sudden death?” Rob asked, his question directed to Ellie.
“Yes, I do. That’s a natural response to that kind of devastation, isn’t it?”
“What made it all the worse for Mercy, in my estimation, was that just a few weeks before she’d been so happy for Julie,” Colleen said.
“And why was that? Did something change for Julie?” Daniel asked.
“Oh, yes!” Ellie nodded her head. “The poor girl had suffered with horrible migraines for years. But recently she’d found a new medication. She didn’t tell Mercy about it until she’d been six months headache free.”
“My sister suffers from migraines,” Rob said. “I’ll have to find out what kind of medication Julie took. Let Pam know.”
“I don’t know if I ever knew the name of that drug,” Colleen said. “But I can look into it.”
“Thanks, love.” Rob grinned at Colleen.
Daniel noted that the two of them had already found a level of comfort with each other. He’d thought that might happen because Rob appeared to be so much more laidback than he could ever even pretend to be.
He’d do his best, while he and Colleen were out and about, to establish a bond between them. He didn’t think it would be all that hard. Whether she knew it or not, Dr. Colleen Duncan was already attuned to him. They’d make as much headway in investigating Mercy Duncan’s disappearance as possible.
And then they’d see what they could do about establishing something, the three of them, on a more personal level.
* * * *
The apartment wasn’t cold, but Colleen shivered anyway. She looked around the small, neatly kept space, seeing her sister there, seeing her the day she’d brought Colleen over to visit for the first time, to show off her new home.
Getting her own place had been a watershed moment for Mercy. Had Colleen celebrated it sufficiently with her sister? Had she told her sister how very proud she was of her? Somehow, she doubted it.
Faced with this neat and tidy living space, the smaller rooms, the single bedroom and the bathroom that could have used a good updating, Colleen began to feel uncomfortable with the realization that she’d let Mercy down.
“Does your sister have a computer?”
Daniel’s question pulled her out of her own personal morass. “Yes, a laptop. She’s a reporter for a new online newspaper called No Slant News. Her laptop is how she makes her living.”
And she was making a living at being a reporter, which had been Mercy’s dream since high school. No, Colleen reminded herself, it had always been her dream. She’d dressed up as Lois Lane for Halloween how many times?
Colleen couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t wanted to be a doctor, like her dad. It had been her dream, a dream she’d seen come to fruition, despite having to slog through those last couple years of residency being the sole guardian for her little sister.
So, if it’s okay for you to have achieved your dream, does that make Mercy’s dream any less worthy? Colleen felt guilt wash through her. A part of her had thought being a reporter a less-than-noble endeavor than, say, being a doctor. My God, when did I become such a snob?
“It doesn’t seem to be here.” Daniel’s words brought her attention back to the moment. “Did Mercy take her laptop with her whenever she left her apartment?”
Colleen focused on Daniel and the reason they were currently in her sister’s home. “Not always. If she was thinking of working, if she was going to spend some time writing, or was planning to interview someone, for example, then yes, she would take it with her. But if she left here to go hang with her friends, then no, she’d leave the laptop behind, locked in her desk drawer.” Colleen walked over to the desk and pulled on the drawer handle. It opened easily, showing only emptiness within.
“I assume you have her email address. Do you happen to know any of her passcode information?”
Colleen nodded. “As a matter of fact, we each have that information for the other. Not just email passwords, but we both back up our computers to an online storage facility.” There must have been something in her expression that got Daniel’s attention. He came over to her and set his hands on her shoulders.
A tear tracked down her face. She felt it and cursed the fact that she let it fall at all.
“Let me guess. Because you lost your parents so suddenly, and likely had to navigate the aftermath of that loss, you made a point of making certain your affairs were in order at all times and that you each had access to all of the other’s information.”
Colleen nodded, and when Daniel eased her into his arms, she went. “Yes. J-just in case.”
He wrapped his arms around her and used one hand to rub up and down on her back. “Your mistake was in thinking this ‘just in case’ scenario would only come in handy in case of death. If one of you had been injured, or had been flooded out during the hurricane, then the other having that information in a safe place would be a blessing. Just like it’s a blessing now because that information is going to help us a great deal.”
“How so?”
Daniel eased her back slightly and then used his thumb to wipe away the track of her tear. “Looking at her computer files and her emails might be a way for us to know what she was up to in the days leading up to her disappearance. That information could help us track her movements.”
“I guess I never thought of that. I never thought of looking at her computer files.”
“So, see? We’ve made some good progress already. Let’s start tracking down Mercy’s friends now.”
They locked Mercy’s apartment, and Colleen nearly sighed when Daniel took her hand in his. He led her to his car and saw her seated then got in and started the engine.
He didn’t head right out but let the car idle. “It must be difficult, the balancing act you’ve had to master with your sister. On the one hand, she is your sister, and under normal circumstances, you’d likely be close, but you wouldn’t necessarily be pivotal to her—or to each other. However, reality handed you something that wasn’t normal, and you ha
d to step in and become her mother and her father, as well. That more or less put an end to the sister role, for both of you.”
He stopped speaking, and Colleen realized that he was looking at her. She turned to look at him, and he met her gaze.
“So, pet? Don’t beat yourself up over whatever perceived failures you were just thinking about in there. You were a twenty-five-year-old young woman on the cusp of beginning her own life, and you stepped up and took care of your ten-year-old sister. You took that responsibility seriously and likely did more than many would have to see to it Mercy had a solid foundation and a stable life. You weren’t perfect, and no one would have expected you to be.”
“How did you know…”
“I knew because I can see your emotions on your face, and I can feel your tension radiating from you. I knew because I am paying attention to you.”
She felt there was more he could have said but didn’t. She appreciated his diplomacy, but she needed to know more. “Because…you’re a Dominant and I’m a submissive?”
“No, because I’m going to be one of your two Dominants, and you’re going to be my—our—submissive. You need us both, not because we’re ineffective but because you are a very complex woman.”
Every moment she’d already spent with Daniel, and Rob, was etched into her memory. It had barely been twelve hours, yet she felt as if she’d somehow always known them. The conversation she’d participated in last night, at the club and later at home, was all still fresh in her mind because she hadn’t processed it all yet.
Daniel put the car in gear and headed for an address that Rob had looked up for them, an address that would hopefully find them face to face with Anna Marsh, the editor of No Slant News.
Colleen’s mind returned to the assertion Daniel had just made about her. She already had plenty of evidence that she was a submissive. She needed to know more. “You said that Mercy was a submissive, too.”
“I did.”
“And that she went to the Lyon’s Den in order to explore her submissive side with someone she trusted.”
Collaring Colleen [Tales from the Lyon's Den 2] Page 5