by Julie Miller
Over the years she’d proved to be a perfect partner. In exchange for a little sex and a lot of money, she took care of any problems that came up. She knew how to entice reliable help to work for them and how to dispose of unreliable ones.
And any time she began to think that he was becoming an unreliable partner, she only had to remind him that she knew as much about his illegal activities as he did about hers. Killing her for real had never been an option because she’d hidden clues about him on two different continents. If something ever happened to her, he didn’t doubt that some mysterious package would show up on Interpol’s doorstep, naming names and pointing the finger straight at him.
But he’d never thought about killing himself before.
The ruse had worked so well for her, why not for him? It was his turn to disappear, to leave this life behind. To take his money and be rid of her and finally find some peace.
But first, he had to get her on that plane.
“You’re awfully quiet.” She picked up the tickets and read the first-class schedule for a flight to Rio de Janeiro. She’d like the heat there. “It makes me nervous when you spend so much time thinking, dear. Makes me wonder if you’re up to something.”
Realizing that his cover was slipping, he plucked the tickets from her fingers and pulled her into his arms. Her curves settled against him in that familiar decadent fit, and he reminded himself that the sex between them would have to end. He kissed her lips. “I’m just worried you’ll change your mind about going. Life as Senhor and Senhora Smith is going to be a lot less exciting than what we’ve been used to.”
And then he reached for the zipper of her dress. She reached for his zipper, making it hard to focus on his plan. “You’re not thinking that a hundred grand is enough for us to live on, are you?”
“I told you, it’s just spending cash for the trip. I’ll take care of setting up our new home in Brazil, I promise. But I can’t just write a check for seventy-five million dollars without making my accountants suspicious. Don’t worry. I’ve set up a charitable trust that will pay us on a regular basis.”
“Good.” She pushed him back on the bed beside her luggage and climbed on top of him. “Because just ‘spending cash’ will never be enough for me.”
It was sometime later, after she’d had her way with him and he was drifting off to sleep that Bill remembered the most dangerous part of his plan. It wasn’t staging a fatal car accident while she waited for him at the airport.
It was getting out of the country with a woman he could really love.
Irina wasn’t the only one who hated to be alone.
THOUGH EDWARD’S RUSTIC CABIN was devoid of any Christmas decorations whatsoever, Holly felt cozy and warm and curiously at home as she explored the kitchen and main rooms.
Maybe it was because the place felt so much like the man who owned it. The masculine style of the exposed wood beams and leather furniture reminded her of Edward’s dark hair and earthy scent. The quiet, isolated location and unyielding strength of the rock walls fit, too.
And inside the spare, forbidding exterior, she’d found glimpses of tenderness and sentimentality and love.
Like the sweet, handmade doll she’d put in a place of honor on the mantel above the fireplace where she’d lit a small, warming fire. Obviously made by a child’s hand, the rag doll angel was crafted of ticking and yarn and glue. The crooked design of its eyes and mouth made her think of a fresh-faced smile, and she wondered if it reminded him of his daughter. Or was the dusty ornament a treasured memento from his past life?
Holly had already dumped the beer down the sink and tossed the bottles into the trash. Whether he believed it or not, he’d made her feel safe here. She wanted him to feel safe, too.
After hanging up their coats, Edward had checked the locks on every door and window and headed straight for the shower. He hadn’t said more than five words on the drive back from the midnight AA meeting. But it wasn’t the moody, brooding quiet of a man dealing with internal demons. It had been a silence of inevitability, an acceptance that something had changed irrevocably between them. She’d broken down walls tonight by practically confessing the love that was growing in her heart. He was dealing with that. Maybe deciding what his own feelings were, maybe deciding he wasn’t ready to deal with feelings yet.
She’d give him the time and the space to let him deal.
But she wasn’t walking away from him. He couldn’t scare her off with his grouchy tempers or his dire words about somehow failing her. Edward Kincaid didn’t need someone to love him in order to heal and believe in himself again.
He needed to give love to someone else. He needed to learn that he could love again.
And she was here to volunteer for the job.
“Cold?”
Holly startled at the deep, gravelly voice behind her. But it was a welcome sound. She held her palms out toward the fire, warming away the hint of goose bumps that lingered on her skin. “A little. I haven’t been around a real fireplace in years. I’d forgotten how wintry and festive it makes me…” Oh, man. “…feel.”
She caught a delicious whiff of spicy shower gel and steamy male skin a heartbeat before Edward’s broad bare shoulders came into view. He walked past her to the woodbin next to the hearth, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue jeans, unsnapped at the waist and riding low around his hips. With shameless fascination, Holly watched the flexes and swells of muscle along his shoulders, arms and tapering back as he pulled aside the fire screen and added a couple of large logs to the flames. “That should keep things burning all night.”
Holly felt that double entendre all the way down to her toes, though he’d been talking temperature, not lusty surges through the blood. She licked her lips, feeling a sudden thirst. Beat-up, as he’d described himself, looked mighty good on him. “Aren’t you cold?”
He shrugged, shifting the muscles and her hormones all over again. “I’m used to it.” He proceeded to stir the fire and secure the screen. He combed his fingers through his still-damp hair and then he made yet another trip around the cabin, rechecking the double lock on the front door and making sure the windows and shutters were all locked up tight.
Though she stayed by the fire’s warmth, Holly’s curiosity seemed to have a mind of its own, taking in several quick observations. Edward worked out—not to any sculpted pretty-boy extreme, but he was healthy and fit and more nicely put together than she’d expected for a man who’d most likely been bedridden or confined to a wheelchair for months. The scars that lined his jaw and neck peppered down across his torso as well, creating tiny voids in the coffee-dark curls that sprinkled across his chest and tapered down to disappear behind the open snap of his jeans. His limp was still there, but barely discernible as he moved with the efficiency of a trained guard dog, making her feel, ridiculously, more secure than she’d felt standing at precinct headquarters, surrounded by cops.
When he came back to her side, one final observation revealed a round, puckered scar on his chest, up near his right shoulder, that she recognized from too many autopsies. Scientific curiosity became a woman’s concern and she lifted her fingers to gently trace the badge of honor on his skin. “When were you shot?”
His skin pulsed beneath her touch and she quickly drew her hand away, singed by a heat far more seductive than the warmth of the fire. “André Butler shot me…that morning.” His words were low and precise, yet laced with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. “He incapacitated my arm, nicked a lung. That’s why I had to use my truck to run him down. I didn’t have any other weapon I could use when he fired on me again. Smacking into a row of cars and a tree did the rest of the damage.”
“Oh, my God. Edward.” Holly automatically reached for him again, feeling the pain of all that was left unsaid in his clinical report.
But the instant her hand touched his shoulder, he pulled away, as though a shock had passed between them. He splayed his hands at the flat of his stomach, modestly covering himself
as he faced her. He’d revealed too much, and it had nothing to do with bare skin. “Sorry. I don’t own a robe. I usually just go straight from the shower to…Ah, whatever. I’ll go put a shirt on.”
“No, don’t.” She grabbed hold of his arm to stop him from leaving. His skin seared her, hot from the heat of the fire, hotter still from the man within. But this time, Holly didn’t pull away. “I mean, don’t change your routine on my account.”
“Holly…” He reached over to free himself from her restraining touch. But his hand slid over hers and remained in place instead. His gravelly voice dropped in pitch, creating the most seductive of whispers. “Asking for your help on Dad’s murder has already turned my life upside down. I don’t think adjusting my wardrobe is a big deal at this point.”
Holly frowned. “Is that a joke, Lieutenant?”
“It’s a statement of fact.” With the hint of a smile curving his lips, Edward released her and stalked across the room to a hall closet. “I set up my weight-training equipment in the spare room, so there’s no bed. You’ll have to make do with some blankets and a pillow on the couch.”
“The couch will be fine.” Feeling an inexplicable chill despite standing so close to the fire, Holly hugged her arms around her waist. “It was good enough for you at my place. It will be good enough for me here.”
He tossed a pillow at one end of the long, wide sofa and spread a cotton blanket over the leather upholstery. “Of course, after broadcasting to a killer that you know she’s still alive and that you have the means to link her to several murders, I’d rather you lock yourself in a safe house.” He pushed a thick wool blanket into her arms, indicating her bed was ready. “But since you won’t listen to that kind of common sense, I guess my couch will have to do.”
How could she get it through his thick skull that this was where she wanted to be? That she trusted him above anyone else to protect her from the dangers of the world outside? He cared about her as a man, not just a cop doing his job. Didn’t he see that that’s what set him apart from any other bodyguard KCPD could assign to her? “Edward, I—”
“Good night, Stick.” He smoothed her bangs off her forehead and tucked them behind her ear. Holly felt the soft caress deep inside her heart. And when he leaned in, she was already bracing her hand against his chest, rising up onto her toes for his kiss.
His mouth opened over hers, tender and warm, gently demanding as he stroked his tongue across the seam of her lips and slipped inside. Hugging the folded blanket between them, Holly drifted forward, drawn to his tenderness, seeking his heat. She touched the tip of her tongue to his, and he moaned. Holly smiled against his mouth.
This man knew how to love. He knew how to care. He just had to believe that he could—
He pulled away with a determined breath, abruptly ending the kiss. “Good night.”
She watched him walk into his bedroom and close the door. Disappointment for them both left her shivering in her boots. When she was alone, she whispered, “Good night.”
Holly unzipped her boots and stripped down to her camisole and jeans before sliding under the blanket. The wool was scratchy against her bare skin but surprisingly toasty. She had the crackling sounds of the fire, its flickering light and its pervasive warmth to soothe her to sleep.
Yet, according to the time on Jillian’s cell phone, more than a half hour passed and she was still sitting up, curled into a ball beneath the blanket at the corner of the couch and feeling unsettled inside. She’d like to blame the unfamiliar quiet of the snowy rural night, but she knew it was the unfamiliar longing inside her that was keeping her awake.
She was considering searching Edward’s kitchen cabinets for tea to brew when she heard the cursing coming from his room. She heard something like a stomp and froze. Had he knocked something over? Was he having a nightmare? Should she go to him and try to wake him?
Holly jerked when the bedroom door swung open.
Her breath came in deep, stuttering gasps as Edward stopped in the archway leading to the other rooms. The oranges and golds of the fire glimmered off his chest—his breathing was deep and uneven as well. His face was wreathed in shadows but she could feel the intensity of his gaze focused solely on her.
“I can’t fall asleep, woman.” Like a leviathan emerging from the shadowy deep, Edward stalked across the room, heading straight toward her. A surge of base female awareness heated Holly’s blood and opened her pores. But an equally instinctive reaction—fight or flight—had her twisting to uncurl her legs from beneath her and get to her feet before he came close. But it was too late. “Scoot over.”
“Edward?”
He came down on the couch beside her, his arms wrapping around both her and the blanket as he pulled her onto his lap.
Was this safe? Was she safe? She flattened her palms against his chest and pushed.
But he easily overpowered her and fell back onto the cushions, stretching her out across the top of him. With her arms trapped between them, she couldn’t catch herself. Her breasts pillowed and beaded against the impact with his harder muscles. Her legs tangled and fell on either side of his, opening herself to the press of a rock-hard thigh. As she helplessly rode the rise and fall of his chest, her blood turned to liquid heat and pooled at the tips of her breasts and deeper within.
He pulled the blanket loose and spread it across her back, capturing the nape of her neck and curve of her bottom in his hands as he rolled onto his side, spilling her between the back of the couch and the heat of his body. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” he growled against her ear. “Because it’s what I want. I can’t sleep a lick, knowing you’re out here by yourself, closer to the doors, the windows, the danger.”
“Sleep? You’re talking sleep?” Holly wedged her arms between them and tried to give her body some room to recover from the leaping, needy impulses that made her want to snuggle even closer.
“Shh.” He hushed her with his voice and stroked his fingers through the hair at her temple, trying to soothe her. “For now, Stick. I can’t relax, knowing that falling asleep would leave you unguarded.” He threw one heavy leg over hers, emphasizing his point. “But if I can hold you, touch you, keep you close—then some part of me will know you’re safe. Is that okay?” He tipped her chin, asking her to read the sincerity in his eyes. “I need that to be okay.”
What she read in his face instantly calmed her. The cells in her body were still simmering with an untapped awareness of every texture, every temptation of his body molded to hers. But she felt something deeper, more profound, that allowed her to take a deep, steadying breath. “You want to hold me?”
He nodded, his callused fingers gently moving against her face again. “If I don’t get any sleep, I won’t be any good to you.”
Holly reached up and matched the subtle caresses across his cheek and jaw. She smiled, gently soothing the unsettled beast inside him. “Holding me would be very okay.”
With a deep sigh, she felt him relax. He rolled onto his back, keeping his arms around her as she snuggled against his side and used the jut of his shoulder for her pillow.
They lay in comfortable silence for a few minutes longer before Edward spoke. She heard his voice as a rumble in his chest beneath her ear. “I see you already made yourself at home. I guess I like that there.”
She turned her head to see him looking at the rag doll ornament on the mantel. “Did your daughter make that for you?
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about her.”
She felt a tension come into his body as he began to talk. “Melinda was a special little girl, blond and beautiful like her mother.” Holly didn’t move as he began to stroke his hand up and down her back. “We found out while Cara was pregnant that she was going to be a Down’s syndrome baby and that we wouldn’t know what kind of mental or physical handicaps she might have until she was born.”
Holly’s arm went around his waist and she hugged him with her whole body. “I imagine you were given options
about her birth.”
“Terminating the pregnancy or giving up the child was never an option for us. If any woman was ever meant to be a mother, it was Cara Fitzpatrick. I wasn’t sure a tough guy like me was up to the task, but from the moment I held Melinda in my arms, I became a daddy.”
His hand stopped at her waist and tears burned in Holly’s eyes. She blinked them away and pressed a kiss to his pectoral, urging him to continue. Edward’s hand began to stroke her again, this time sliding beneath her camisole to maintain skin-to-skin contact, as if he needed that human touch in order to speak. Each brush of his callused fingertips was like the kiss of a cat’s tongue, stoking the heat simmering inside her.
“Melinda was the embodiment of love. Had her grandpa wrapped around her finger, gave my mom a little girl to play with that she’d never had before. She accepted everything and everyone. The terrible hours and dangers of my job, the fact she was behind other kids her age in school. Cara was wonderful with her. She kept trying to turn her into a little lady, but I made her a tomboy. We practiced for Special Olympics events together—the preliminary events, she wasn’t quite old enough or coordinated enough to compete at the regional meets. She played a mean kickball and loved her art classes. She was always a happy, intuitive little girl.”
“Intuitive? How do you mean?”
He tunneled his fingers into Holly’s hair and kissed her forehead. That’s when she realized hers weren’t the only eyes that had filled with tears. “Melinda could read my moods. She knew when something at work was weighing on my mind. She knew when something bad had happened and I needed to snap out of it and have some fun. Sometimes…” His arms tightened almost painfully around her before relaxing. “I still hear her voice in my head. Encouraging me when I can’t see the daylight. Telling me the right thing to do. Lecturing me when I’m being stupid.”