by Nina Bruhns
He held her gaze. “That had to be difficult.”
“Early on, I was so dazzled by the city, by the sparkles, I barely noticed anything else. Later….” She pressed her lips together. “Having no voice, no choice in even the most personal things became difficult. Others controlled the color and length of my hair, the makeup I put on, and the clothes I wore.”
Her career had never been her own, not from the moment she’d signed on the dotted line at age sixteen, next to her mother’s signature as guardian.
“My career belonged to the agency. My time belonged to the customer. My body wasn’t my own. Even my fears weren’t my own. I was asked once to pose naked, wrapped in giant snakes. I just had to suck it up and do it.”
She folded her hands on her lap. “Big boo-hoo, right? Being a model and living on the top of the world. People would kill for a chance like that. It’s not like doing shift work in a factory. I was lucky.”
His face remained expressionless. “You were a kid. All that had to be scary.”
Sometimes it had been. Other times, the city and the job were exhilarating. “I met Keith in New York.”
He waited a beat. “How old were you then?”
“Eighteen. He was older, educated, sophisticated. He knew about wine and could quote black-and-white art movies.” She’d thought Keith was her knight in shining armor. “When he walked in on a client manhandling me in the hallway, Keith put the man in his place and threatened to rip off his head if he came near me again.”
Keith had been her protector. He’d been a real man, not like the boys her age she’d been partying with.
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-four.”
“He seduced you,” Joe said in a flat tone.
“It wasn’t like that. We were friends first.” He’d been kind back then, interesting, exciting. “Apartment prices being what they are in New York, I rented with three other models who were more into the party scene than I was. Drinking, some light drugs, bringing home strange men.”
She made a face. “When Keith eventually offered his plush apartment, it was like a Cinderella story come true. He wooed me, and I fell for it.”
She’d been so incredibly happy for a while. The happiest she’d ever been. But then he told off more of her clients. And then he told off her agent. He went behind her back and canceled photo shoots that he didn’t think were appropriate.
“Eventually, my agency dropped me. At around the same time, Keith’s company was opening a new office in Wilmington, and he was transferred to a more senior position here. He asked me to come with him.”
The New York fashion world was for airheaded whores, he’d told her. In a smaller city, she’d find more family-centric work. They could spend more time together. He tossed the word family around until she was dreaming about white weddings.
But that wasn’t what she got after they’d moved from New York to Wilmington. Keith became more and more controlling, and she didn’t have her New York friends for support. She had nobody she could go to for help.
Joe turned off the TV, although the news wasn’t over yet. “When you met him, you were so used to others controlling every aspect of your life, it seemed natural to give him control over everything.”
Her first instinct was to deny that, but she couldn’t. Honestly, she was just trying her best not to cry, because, by some miracle, Joe seemed to understand. Not only did he know that she’d been weak, stupid, had let herself be abused, but somehow he didn’t judge her for it. She pressed her lips together.
He pushed to his feet and strode to the window to look out, his face inscrutable. “I’ll go check on things outside.”
Okay, just because he understood her, it didn’t mean he was interested. He was probably bored with her silly story. Of course he was. This was nothing but babysitting for him. He probably had a lot better things to do, with people a lot more interesting than her.
“Won’t your girlfriend miss you tonight?” she asked from her desk. “You can go. Seriously.”
“No girlfriend. That’d interfere with my hordes of other women,” he said in a dry tone.
Oh God. He probably thought that she’d been fishing for information. “None of my business,” she rushed to say, but he was already through the door and she didn’t think he heard her.
Great. Now he probably thought she was after him.
Deathblow: Chapter Five
Joe closed the door behind him and stood on the front stoop for a minute. So there. He could be in the same room with her, want to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to bed, and he could still remain professional and walk away.
The street was quiet, no cars. The sky stretched clear over Broslin, its onyx bowl dotted with stars. He loved his town, loved every damn thing about it.
Wendy took him for a small-town jock. So maybe he was. He liked beautiful women. Frankly, he didn’t see the crime in it. Her opinion of him shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter.
He checked his gun, then walked around in the cold night air. He’d spent too much time on work lately, especially with the undercover gig. He needed to go out and have some fun. He hadn’t been out with a woman in a while. Since that night with Wendy.
That can’t be right. He squinted his eyes, turning his face up to the sky. Had it been that long? Huh. It had been.
A couple of weeks ago, the new waitress at the diner had asked him out for coffee, but he’d been busy. Then there’d been that old high school flame who’d been looking to rekindle things. He’d put her off too, had wanted to do extra research on the Brant Street Gang.
Which wasn’t right. A person had to make room for fun in his life, or it wouldn’t be worth living.
He walked around the house again, leaving Wendy to her online class inside, checked up and down the street, but saw nothing suspicious.
His thoughts kept circling back to Wendy.
She’d been eighteen when she’d met Keith—living alone in a big city, without her parents, only her agent to watch over her. And her agent had probably only been concerned about how much money she was making him.
She’d been a magnet for a predator.
Joe rolled his shoulders. He had some stiff tension he needed to work out of his system. What were the chances that Sophie kept some weights in her basement? Probably slim to none since she wasn’t supposed to overtax her new heart.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and called in to see if Lil’ Gomez had turned up yet.
“I just talked to the chief a minute ago,” the captain said. “Nobody has seen or heard from the kid. What happened, happened. You can’t let it get to you. You did what you could for him.”
But Joe didn’t feel like he had. He was Broslin’s favorite son. He wasn’t expected to lose. He was expected to win.
His body still ached from the crash and the beating it’d taken in the river. Circling back, he stretched his muscles on the deck. He did a hundred sit-ups and a hundred squats, then a hundred push-ups, using exercise to block Lil’ Gomez from his mind, the desperate look on the kid’s face as he’d floated downriver in the night.
Then he walked around the house one last time before going in through the front.
Wendy was still studying, all rapt attention and poised grace as she sat in front of her computer.
He tried his level best not to think of her as she’d come apart in his arms three months ago. He browsed the bookshelf, rows and rows of paperbacks, but couldn’t focus on the titles. He saw her naked before him, back arched, dusky nipples drawn into tight buds as he grazed his lips over them.
The sound of her voice had him dropping the book he was holding. He caught it before it hit the floor, turned to her. “What?”
“Guest bathroom is upstairs at the end of the hallway,” she repeated, then she went back to her computer. “If you want to get ready for bed.”
That unleashed another batch of X-rated images in his brain.
He went and took a cold
shower. He knew exactly what his fascination was with her. She posed a challenge. She wasn’t easy. He reminded himself that he liked easy. Easy was fine. Better than fine, great. Who needed complications?
He pushed the images of their one night together out of his mind, spent another few minutes under the cold water, then put on a Broslin PD T-shirt and sweatpants.
At home, he slept naked. And alone. If he spent the night with a woman, he usually stayed over at her place. He didn’t have a rule about not taking women home; it just never worked out that way.
He checked in on Justin on his way downstairs, the kid all snuggled up with his plastic dinosaur as he slept. Joe’s nephew, Max, was about the same age. They were both pretty great kids.
Wendy walked up softly behind him, her steps barely audible on the carpet.
Joe shifted. “He’s a good sleeper.”
The soft, exotic scent of her perfume surrounded him. It mixed with the scent of baby powder in the room. She was incredibly hot, and a mother. He’d tried to avoid that kind of complication in the past. The fathers were always in the picture and could be a pain.
He liked his affairs hot and intense, and his women all to himself. He didn’t want to want this—playing house. This wasn’t who he was. Yet there was something here that reached him on a deeper level.
“You’re good with kids,” Wendy said, close enough that he could have easily reached her to pull her into his arms.
“I like them.” He gave a carefree grin to mask how much he wanted to touch her. “As long as they’re someone else’s responsibility.”
An unreadable expression crossed her face. “Never settling down, huh?”
He shrugged. “When you have a good thing going, no sense messing it up, right?”
She turned and walked back down the stairs without responding.
He followed and dropped to the couch while she shut down her computer, pulling the rubber band from her hair, then massaging her scalp for a second. The overhead light glinted off her long silky hair that covered her shoulders in a cascade of gold.
The soft material of her shirt outlined her breasts.
Shapely, but definitely not a rack.
There, so she wasn’t perfect. He was a boob guy, so sue him. But Wendy Belle couldn’t be called stacked by any stretch of the imagination. No reason for him to feel all that tugging all over the place.
“So, what’s going on with your ex?” he asked. “Bing was a little sketchy.”
She turned to him as she shoved the rubber band into her pocket. “Everybody is completely overreacting.” She paused. “What happened to your face?”
Okay, so she didn’t want to talk about her ex. “Rough night on the river.”
“What river? Broslin Creek?”
“Never mind.”
“Chasing someone?”
“Something like that.” He couldn’t share details of his undercover mission. “Back to the boyfriend.” He hadn’t jumped right into questioning her earlier, didn’t want to in front of Justin, but he did need as much information as she would give him. “Keith Kline, is it?”
She flinched.
The fact that the bare mention of the asshole’s name could make her flinch said something right there. “Bing said he’s turned threatening.”
“He’s going to be mad if he finds out that I was talking to the police. I don’t want to make him mad. I’m hoping he’ll sign over full custody to me.” She tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Is he using Justin to get to you?”
She pressed her lips together. “He’s been difficult.”
Violent, she meant. Joe kept a lid on the anger that bubbled up inside him. “A lot of smart women have been known to fall for difficult men.”
“He used to be different. Then I got pregnant with Justin, and Keith changed.”
“How?”
She hesitated again.
He didn’t want to push hard, but he did have to push. “The more I know about him, the more I’ll be able to anticipate his next move if he means to do you harm. Knowing more about him, about his personality, would be helpful.”
He also planned on running a background check on the guy, although, he was pretty sure the captain had run one already. Something to check in the morning.
Wendy rubbed the heels of her hands over her knees. “He’s a top insurance broker at his company. Driven. Type A. We met at an art gala. I was modeling wearable art. His company was one of the sponsors of the event. He has a lot of powerful friends.”
Joe watched the tight set of her lips. He’d never met the man, but he could see him in his mind’s eye. “He’s good-looking, charismatic. He can put on the charm like nobody’s business. When he wants something, he pulls out all the stops. Flowers, lavish dates.”
She tensed but then gave a reluctant nod.
“Then little by little he changed.” He was familiar with the abuser profile. They were all charming at the beginning. Then they took more and more control until they had their victims trapped. “He didn’t like your friends, so your friends started staying away. He used to praise your beauty, then suddenly began telling you that you’re fat, or ugly, or stupid.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, a betrayed look flashing across her face. “What did Sophie tell you? I don’t want to talk about this.”
He didn’t enjoy the conversation either, having to strip her emotionally naked, but he had to, because admission was where healing started. “Sophie told me nothing. I worked on abuse cases before.”
He had less than three years with Broslin PD as an officer. The town saw maybe a dozen violent crimes in the average year, around a hundred and fifty property crimes. The detectives were usually assigned to the major burglaries and homicides, with the captain stepping in for high-profile cases. Other property crimes and domestic disturbances fell to Joe and Mike. He’d seen his share of abused women and kids, even men on the rare occasion. He knew what they lived through.
He wished he’d found out about Wendy’s troubles when he’d first met her. He could have helped. He could have spared her months of some asshat putting his hands on her.
He relaxed his jaw. “So the physical abuse has been going on for over two years?”
She said nothing.
“How badly does he hit you?”
Her gaze darted to him, her arms tightening around her. “He doesn’t.”
She was lying. A lot of victims did. They blamed themselves. Joe didn’t normally express his anger through hitting, but right now he would have liked nothing better than to plant his fist in Keith Kline’s face.
She stood. “I should go up to bed. I have a shoot first thing in the morning in Philly.”
They barely knew each other—if she didn’t feel comfortable enough yet to confide in him, that was okay. But she needed to know that he was committed to protecting her. “He’s not going to get through me. I’m here now. Whatever he’s done in the past, I’m not going to let him do it again.”
A long moment of silence stretched between them. She didn’t trust him yet. That was okay too. She would, before this was over.
“Where will Justin go while you’re on the shoot?” he asked.
“I have someone I usually leave him with. Ginny is another single mom who lives in the apartment building across from mine.”
“Does Keith know that?”
Her face went white as she nodded.
“Would he go there and try to take Justin to make you go back to him?”
She looked utterly miserable as she said, “I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands against the fabric of her pants. “I can’t cancel a shoot. I need the money to pay bills. And canceling at the last minute—” She shook her head. “They’ll never call me back again.”
“What if I watched Justin?” he offered for no discernible reason, regretting the words the moment they were out of his mouth. He was a police officer on an unofficial protection detail. Which did not include babysitting. But he adde
d, “I have the second shift tomorrow. My morning is free.”
She bit her lip. “He doesn’t know you that well yet. No offense, but I don’t know you that well yet either. Leaving your baby with someone is kind of a big deal.”
Of course. He knew that. “I’ll be going to the shoot with you. I can watch Justin right there. Keep an eye on both of you at the same time. I could keep him busy while you’re doing your work. Would they agree to that?”
Hope lit up her face. “The shoot manager brings her kids and the nanny sometimes.” She watched him for a second. “You’d do that?”
He flashed her a smile. “He’ll keep me from getting bored by all those models running around in bikinis.”
For a second, she smiled back, but then she turned serious again. “You can’t hit on the models. I mean it. We’ll both get kicked out.”
Annoyance shot through him. “Give me some credit.”
She did instantly look chagrined. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
Oh hell, technically, it was. If this had happened three months ago, he would have gone in and collected phone numbers. He’d been off his game lately.
She walked to the stairs. “Good night, then. Happy dreams.”
Unlikely, he thought.
“I’m pretty sure a kid died because of me last night,” he said without meaning to. And then he had to explain it. “Fifteen years old. I was supposed to protect him, and I didn’t.”
She stopped at once on the first step, sympathy flooding her face. “I’m sorry. Is that when you got hurt?”
He nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. And I couldn’t if I did. It’s an ongoing investigation.” He had no idea why he’d brought it up. Maybe because he wanted someone to lay the blame on him, since Captain Bing wouldn’t.
But Wendy wouldn’t either. “Even the best cop in the world can’t save everyone.”
“What if I can’t save you?”
She held his gaze. “We are safer with you here.”
Yeah. But what if “safer” wasn’t enough? He wanted Keith locked away. If the bastard showed up and threatened Wendy, Joe could toss his ass in jail and throw the book at him. Problem solved. Except long-time abusers were a lot cannier than that.