by Nikki Duncan
“What do you want?”
Dad returned to being Captain Riley, so Kyle attempted to return things to a professional footing. “I’d like to call in the FBI on this case.”
“Why? This case isn’t federal.”
“No, but if I talked to Trevor’s friend Breck… Fresh eyes can be the difference between stopping the invasions or not.”
“Is that the only reason?” Dad was always harder to convince as Captain Riley.
“Their labs can process the evidence faster.”
“You said you were closer than ever before last night.”
“It’s not enough.” Close hadn’t been good enough for Gisella.
“Last night’s victim is out there right now working with an artist. We’ll have a rendering of both perps to get out, which will give homeowners a better chance at staying safe. A tip line is being set up now.”
“It’s not enough. It’s not enough when they strike with greater precision and violence each time. It’s not enough when a woman is beaten and gets her throat cut because I wasn’t able to stop her attackers.” Kyle leaned forward and chewed on his lip. “It’s not enough if one more person suffers, because these assholes may not stop on this side of murder next time.”
“I’ve never heard you use so many words at one time.” Dad almost smiled. “I want to see what you do with this passion.”
“You’re making this one of your tests?”
“I’ve also never seen you doubt yourself,” Dad said. “Someone you care about became a victim, and you’re being forced to face emotions you can’t easily categorize. Calling in the FBI for a consult isn’t going to change that or make it easier. You’ll lose more time catching them up than you can afford. If I thought you couldn’t do it I’d call Breck’s team myself.”
Kyle hated sound logic when it worked against him. “Let me ask for more help.”
“You have all the help you need in the bullpen.”
His next request crossed his lips as fast as it formed in his mind. “I need access to every tip coming in on the tip line.”
“There may be a lot to wade through.”
Kyle shrugged. “Reassign my other cases. Let me work this one full-time.”
Dad sat back and crossed his arms. His index finger tapped an elbow. “No. I will get you an access code for the tip line recordings though. Find what distance you can from her and work through it.”
Annoyance faded beneath the anger of having his hands tied. Kyle chose not to fight. He nodded and left. He hadn’t expected to get his way, with Dad or Captain, but he’d needed to try.
He hated doing it, because it meant giving up control, but he took Dad’s advice to ask for help. Unfortunately, Blake was the only detective around who didn’t look to be swamped. Kyle sucked it up and asked him to take Gisella home when she was finished with the sketch artist. With her taken care of, he grabbed what he needed from his desk and left the precinct.
The faster he solved her case and caught the assholes responsible for cutting her, the sooner he could explore the idea of sex. The prospect of sex with Gisella was arousing.
* * * * *
Gisella wasn’t ready to face her friends, but she was less ready to face her home without Kyle and the protection he offered. And now, awake and very aware of what she’d asked him for last night, she wasn’t ready to analyze her feelings. Only one thing offered her an escape from thinking about things she’d be better off ignoring.
Baking.
“Detective Blake,” she said when he slid behind the steering wheel of his car, “would you mind driving me to my office instead of home?”
“Not at all. Tell me where I’m going.”
Detective Blake was unimpressive as far as men went, at least in her opinion. He was handsome and nice enough, with nothing special jumping out at her. Nothing about him encouraged her to open up and talk, so she left the conversation to giving him her office address.
“You work at Blue Chip Technologies?”
“In the building. You know it?”
“Everyone knows Blue Chip.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Gisella hadn’t known about them until she’d gotten into business with Lori Mullins as the cake designer for Tulle and Tulips Designer Weddings. Now she knew some of the people from Blue Chip, but not many, and she couldn’t go into any specifics on what the company did. Her technological prowess began and ended with tools used for cake baking and decorating.
His following silence suited her. The silence allowed her to formulate a few plans on how to deal with her friends, at least the ones in the office on a Saturday morning. Being a rare weekend without a wedding to work, the group would be smaller.
Detective Blake pulled up to the curb outside the front of the building.
“Thank you.” Gisella reached for the door.
“Let me walk you in.”
“I’ll be fine.” Brad, one of the main security guards, would be on duty at the security desk, and no one got past him without proper credentials. There was a rear entrance to the building, but it had a keypad that required individual codes for anyone entering.
“Thanks for the ride.” She got out and headed to the building before Detective Blake could argue or make insistences.
Each step closer to the entrance had Gisella wishing she’d worn a scarf to hide the bandage on her neck. She would have if she’d planned on going anywhere other than the precinct with Kyle.
Brad was at the door, holding it open with an I’m-ready-to-kick-some-ass look on his face, before she reached it. “Gisella. What happened to you?”
“Kitchen mishap.” It wasn’t a complete lie; she had been cut in the kitchen.
“You should be more careful.” His stance relaxed to his more amiable one as they headed toward his desk. A benefit to keeping their conversations very limited was the quick end to this encounter. Her friends would be tougher.
“I will be.” She waved goodbye to Brad. He went to the chair behind the front desk; she headed down the hall.
Brad may fall for the explanation, but her friends wouldn’t be as easily fooled. Spending enough time for people to become experts at reading her hadn’t been a problem before. She’d never considered it could possibly become one. Until now, when she approached her office, her friends, and their insights.
The double glass doors etched with the Tulle and Tulips logo loomed closer with every elevator she passed. Most days the sight brought pleasure and a sense of ownership, the thrill of having control over her life. A new perspective tinted the thrill today.
She had no more control over her life than anyone else, however much she didn’t want to admit it.
She pushed a door open and entered. While all the planners didn’t always work on the weekend, the place was oddly quiet for a Saturday morning. Jenny, the main receptionist, and Sheree, Tabatha’s assistant, stood at the desk talking quietly. A couple of clients sat in the waiting area flipping through catalogs.
Gisella turned toward her office, thankfully located toward the front of the space, and hoped to avoid detection.
“Gisella,” Jenny called out.
Gisella stopped and dropped her head the slightest bit before angling toward Jenny. She’d almost made it to the door to her front office space. She’d almost avoided discovery, because if she’d made it to the bakery behind her meeting room no one would have thought to look for her.
“Yes?”
“You have a message.” Jenny hesitated, but there was something in her tone that said she was pausing for effect.
Gisella kept her face averted as she approached the desk. Both Jenny and Sheree trained their gazes on her neck.
“A Kyle wants you to call him.”
“Thank you.” Wishful thinking had Gisella turning toward her office. It had taken no time at all for Detective Blake to tell Kyle
where she was, and then for Kyle to make sure she got a message.
“You going to tell us about that bandage? Or the man?” Sheree challenged her with a look. “Or do I need to go get Lori?”
As threats went, it was a powerful one. Lori wasn’t the oldest of them, but she was the primary owner of Tulle and Tulips and no one doubted she was the woman in charge. Her in-chargeness wasn’t limited to work. No one kept secrets from Lori.
“I’m not talking about it while there are clients here.” They would have a hard time arguing with professional logic, and she wasn’t too ashamed to use it. “I’ll talk about it later, and only once.”
Jenny and Sheree measured her with their stares, before finally nodding. Jenny, not the one to generally be the serious one, spoke. “Can you promise you’re okay?”
Sheree picked up where Jenny left off before Gisella could answer. “We’ll know if you lie.”
Of course they would. The trouble with friends who knew how to read you was they knew when you lied. “I’m fine. It’s a small cut. Didn’t even need stitches.” Real ones with thread anyway.
Taking their nods as acceptance and agreement to hold their questions, Gisella turned and headed toward her bakery behind her office. Regardless how temporary the reprieve might be, why tempt the Fates when they were in favorable moods?
The same principal applied to Kyle, but she wasn’t ready to talk to him, to think about what she’d attempted to do the night before or how amazing it had been to fall asleep beside him, so she sent him a text message.
At work. Surrounded by people. Safe.
A text came back quickly. Let me know when you leave. Don’t go home alone.
If she asked anyone for a ride home it would be Lori. As a former government agent, the woman had training. Most importantly, she knew how to balance protection and privacy.
Gisella’s wish for privacy wavered a few minutes later when Izzy, their resident expert on hair and makeup, swirled into the room. Gisella angled her face away from Izzy, knowing she would see the bruise. Questions would follow.
“What is this I hear about you cutting yourself? And please tell me the doctor was a sexy one.”
Izzy embodied romance from her everything-is-rosy outlook to her Renaissance-style clothes. Her hopeful view on life was infectious and had Gisella laughing. “You’re just like the rest of them.” Their friends. “Always looking for the hot guy.”
“Are you telling me there wasn’t one?” Izzy hopped onto the counter Gisella normally worked at when decorating a cake and pointed toward Gisella’s bandage. Fortunately, she was on the side opposite the bruise. If she kept her head down, Gisella might get lucky. “A man would make that less sucky.”
“Less sucky?”
“You have another way to describe it? And why aren’t you telling me about the man?”
Sucky was one way to describe the night she’d had. At least until Kyle had climbed into her bed and kept her fears at bay. Sucky had not been the feeling of his hand on her hip or his fingers drawing unseen circles over her. No, his touch had been delicious. Hot.
“I know there was a man.” Izzy wiggled a little, her grin growing wider. “You may as well confess everything. You know we’ll all find out.”
“Not until I’m ready.”
“But if you tell me, I can tell everyone else and then you wouldn’t have to retell your story.”
“Always so magnanimous.”
“Call it helpful.”
Izzy wanted to have the scoop first. She always wanted to get the scoop first. She should have been a journalist. “You want the story?” Gisella asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ll wait like everyone else.”
“Gisella.”
“I will tell you one thing,” she went on as if Izzy hadn’t spoken. “There was a man.” Five actually. “Now go away. I have work to do.”
Izzy hopped off the counter. “I’m going to know it all.”
“Not until I’m ready.” And not before she’d spent more time getting to know Kyle.
* * * * *
Standing on Gisella’s porch, the sun sank low in the sky, the shadows grew longer and the view of her door became more obscured from neighbors. Feeling no closer to an arrest, despite the work he’d put in, Kyle couldn’t stay away. He knocked. His heart sped with each following moment. With each moment he couldn’t help wonder what she was doing inside.
“Who is it?” Gisella’s voice was quiet through the door, and he observed the smallest quiver.
“Kyle.”
“Prove it.”
His lips twitched at the slightly humorous challenge that vanished her quiver. He hated being challenged, except it seemed when the challenge came from a woman he shouldn’t find intriguing. She joked, and it made him want to laugh. “Open the door, Gisella.”
The scrape of the deadbolt shot through him with relief. Gisella captured his full attention immediately. The color that normally tinged her cheeks had faded and dark circles shadowed her eyes. A bruise announced its intention to dominate her face.
She was only slightly less stunning than normal, and she still took his breath and arrested his attention.
“Why are you back? CSI has already come and gone. They said they were through with the scene.”
“I’m back because of you.”
“What about me?” Her fingers trembled as she quickly locked the door behind him. She fidgeted with the hem of her V-neck T-shirt and then the bandage on her neck.
“Good question.”
He didn’t need to ask how she was. It was a cliché question, and the answer was on her face and in her moves. She had stopped at work for a few hours and she’d attempted to joke with him through the door, but she hadn’t regained her balance.
Without questioning her about her day, he followed her into the living room. She’d moved things around, but partially flattened pillows, a tossed back blanket and muted TV said she was only interested in zoning out until she could no longer think. She confirmed his suspicion by returning to the sofa. She curled into as small a ball as her body would allow and pulled the blanket over her knees. Kyle couldn’t leave her alone now any easier than he’d been able to last night.
Sitting beside her, close but not close enough to be threatening, he asked, “You eat?”
She shook her head again and turned her attention to the movie on TV. He hadn’t seen whatever it was before, but it looked like it promised anything other than dark emotions.
“You hungry?”
Gisella shrugged. Kyle nodded and took her silence as an invitation to take care of her. He’d have taken a blatant rejection as a plea for help, because it gave him a reason to stay near.
You’re screwed. Lisa’s voice laughed at him as if she were right beside him. It was exactly what she’d say as she forced him to deal with his emotions.
Emotions he’d spent years hiding from and ignoring and making fun of other guys for bowing beneath. Until he’d been partnered with Lisa he’d viewed women as a one-night stand who became more trouble than they were worth after a second date.
He’d known he was wrong, but Lisa had been the one to recondition him, much to his mother’s delight. It was because of Lisa he hadn’t already run away from Gisella and what she stirred in him. At the moment, she stirred a protective need to take care of her. To make sure she ate.
From her sweet smile to her curvy hips, which suggested she sampled her baking on a regular basis, Gisella made an impact. If her baking wasn’t the cause of her curves, then her pantry helped explain things.
Soft drinks, not diet, chips and dips, cookies and cupcakes, homemade and store bought alike, shared the space with cans of soup and fruit cocktail. The refrigerator was mostly empty aside from milk and sandwich fixings. The freezer offered a plethora of frozen foods that could be easily mic
rowaved.
He knew a thing or two about junk food. The premier comfort food, it could get Gisella out of her fear-inspired funk.
Kyle was smiling when he walked back into the living room with a large plate. “If this stuff can’t satisfy your tastes… I’ll have to get creative.”
Her lips twitched. Encouragement had never been more invigorating. He sat beside her again, this time close enough her feet touched his leg. With the plate in his lap, he chose a powdered donut and offered it. She barely moved, so he lifted the sweet to her lips. She opened, taking the entire donut into her mouth.
He chuckled. “I knew I liked you.” What wasn’t to like about a woman who wasn’t afraid to eat and who didn’t waste energy acting prissy?
“You like me?” She turned to face him. Her eyes cleared of the darkness haunting them. Her face softened and her skin brightened. The woman from the wedding was emerging.
Dad lectured his detectives and officers on keeping a professional distance so they didn’t get blinded and choose emotion over evidence. Gisella threatened that distance. The bigger threat was Kyle’s willingness to ignore the danger signs.
“Yeah.” He fed her a cookie and smiled. “I do.”
He liked her and wanted to accept the offer he’d refused last night. If she’d only make the offer a second time.
“Really?” She turned on the couch, facing him more directly. Her gaze met his and his body responded by freezing. His lungs, his mind, his heart. They all stopped.
The fragility he’d seen in the aftermath of her attack didn’t hold a candle to the fragility shining in her eyes as she faced him. She’d offered herself to him and he’d refused her. Now he was sitting beside her, craving her and regretting his rejection. It made sense she’d be unsure.
Kyle set the plate of food on the coffee table and turned back to Gisella.
Since action spoke louder than words, he leaned forward, braced his hands on the couch on either side of her and kissed her. A gently brushing touch at first, he restrained himself and tested Gisella.
She eased into his caress, encouraging, so he scooted closer and angled her deeper into the corner of the couch. He wanted to crawl on top of her and devour, to allow his body to live out every dream he’d had since meeting her at Vic’s rehearsal dinner. When she arched her body toward him he considered giving in. Then she rested a hand on his chest, the lightest touch of her fingertip against his nipple.