“They’re so sexy,” she muttered, not realizing she’d spoken out loud.
He turned in the doorway and frowned. “What?”
“The words on your back.”
He smiled. “Ah. Those.”
“Beautiful,” she whispered.
Leo shrugged and headed for the bathroom.
She heard the water come on in the shower, and then she saw him leave the bathroom and turn toward the kitchen area. How damn thoughtful.
By the time she hauled herself to the small glass enclosure, the water was already hot. She moaned as it ran down her body, not moving for long minutes.
His voice made her flinch and open her eyes. “You keep making that noise, you’ll never make it downstairs on time.” He grinned as he set a steaming cup on the vanity and left the room, still gloriously naked.
She took her time, even though she heard her damn cell ring while she shampooed her hair. It rang again when she was conditioning, and Leo brought it in and set it on the counter. “The display says Mom.”
He walked back out. This time he was wearing jeans. Nothing else. She didn’t know what was sexier, his ass encased in low-riding denim or his bare muscles open to her gaze. It was a toss-up.
When she shut the water off and reached for a towel, she finally turned around and twisted her head to see her butt in the mirror on the back of the door. Pink, but not too bad.
“I’ll put more lotion on it.” He leaned near her in the doorjamb, sipping coffee.
She nearly jumped out of her skin. He was so quiet and stealthy. She hadn’t bothered to shut the door. What difference did it make at this point, but her place was so small that from any given spot on the floor, anyone could see nearly every corner. “I can do it.”
“I’m sure you can.” He leaned in and kissed her shoulder. “But you don’t have to.” He took the towel from her and rubbed her dry, blotting her sensitive butt as he made his way down her body. And then he took her hand and led her back into the bedroom.
Still controlling.
Still keeping that ball of desire knotted in her belly.
“Lean over the bed. Put your hands on the mattress.”
She turned around, unable to stop herself. It seemed so much more taboo in the light of day, and yet she enjoyed his commanding voice. Would he take over her life until she followed his every direction day and night?
She moaned as he nudged her legs apart and flinched when she heard the lid of the lotion pop.
“Relax. It’s lotion.” His hand landed high on her ass and smoothed over the skin. The cool ointment felt amazing. When he was finished, he pulled her to standing and kissed her soundly. “Better?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t keep this up. She needed to go downstairs and start working. If they stood here any longer, she would turn into a ball of arousal that would once again consume her.
He frowned. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
She hedged, but she needed to speak. “Are you going to boss me around constantly?”
“You mean during the day?”
“Yes.”
“Nope. Won’t even be here. I have to go to the gym.” He smiled too widely and then chuckled. “I’m teasing. But no. Of course not. Told you, I’m only bossy in the bedroom.”
“I beg to differ. You’re pretty bossy outside the bedroom too.” She emphasized the word bedroom in a sassy tone.
“Well, that’s a different kind of bossy. This is the sexual domination kind. When we go outside, it’s the protect-my-woman-from-danger kind.” He nodded at the door.
She licked her dry lips. His woman. Three days ago she would have slapped a man who used such a Me-Tarzan-You-Jane tone with her. Now? God almighty, she liked the sound of it. “You haven’t been to work in days. I thought you usually worked on a construction site?”
He nodded. “Finished a job last week. Haven’t started another one yet.” He nodded toward her dresser. “Get dressed. I’ll hop in the shower.” He turned and headed out of the room, stopping at the doorway to turn back. “And for god’s sake, woman, call your mother.”
She saluted him, making him roll his eyes and putting her world slightly back together. This was day. She would go to work. He would go to the gym. Normalcy.
Or not.
The phone rang again as she finished putting her scrubs on, and Leo stepped back into the room, his short spikey hair covered in drops of water. He turned around, snagged it from the bathroom counter, and slapped it into her hand. “Answer it.”
She hit Accept. “Mom.”
“Good grief, child. Where the hell have you been? I’ve been calling forever. And last night too.”
“I’m here now.” She didn’t bother to explain herself. It was none of her mother’s business.
“And Marshall? He’s with you?”
“What?” Katie’s voice rose, and her gaze darted to Leo, who lifted a brow. Her mother was so damn loud anyone in the room could easily hear her.
“Marshall? You know, your boyfriend? I assume he’s with you. That’s why you haven’t been answering my calls?”
“Mother, I’m not with Marshall. I’m not dating Marshall. I don’t ever see him except when he stops by to harass me. I don’t even like him.”
There was a brief silence. “You’re thirty years old, Kathryn. I’m well aware you would be sleeping with your boyfriend. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”
Katie stood taller and nearly shouted into the phone, sarcasm dripping. “For your information, Mother, I am sleeping with my boyfriend. Not that it’s any of your business. But my boyfriend is not Marshall Pierce.”
Her mother gasped. Loretta Jean Schwan was finally shocked speechless. It was about time. When she spoke again, it was in a softer tone. “So you aren’t with Marshall?”
“For the love of God, Mom.” Katie threw her free hand in the air.
Leo sat on the bed, the strangest look on his face. He probably thought the woman was certifiable. Katie would tend to agree.
Her mother rushed to continue speaking. “If he’s not with you, where is he?”
“How the hell should I know? I’m not his keeper.” She rolled her eyes, but something in her mother’s tone made her stiffen finally.
“His parents haven’t been able to reach him. He’s not at his apartment. He’s not answering his phone.”
Leo stood, nearly jumping up.
Katie didn’t see the urgency. “Maybe he has a girlfriend too? Did anyone think of that?”
A pause. “Maybe… I need to call Carmela back.” She hung up.
“Who’s Carmela?” Leo asked.
“Marshall’s mother.”
“I see.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “You think this is weird? I mean, that they can’t reach him?”
“Do you?”
“Well, how is it different from not being able to reach me? I didn’t take any calls from a soul for the last day, either.”
“Yes. But I bet you do that often, especially where your mother is concerned. Does Marshall?”
“No.” She lowered her shoulders.
Leo closed the gap between them and pulled her into his arms. He kissed the top of her still-damp hair. “Let’s not rush to conclusions. Like you said, he’s probably with a woman.” He tipped her head back. A smirk lit up his face. “You just told your mother you had a boyfriend.”
She shrugged.
So did he, imitating her. “Just saying. I feel almost outed.” He tweaked her ear with his fingers.
“Yeah, don’t get excited. I hardly gave her a résumé.”
“Still, it’s a step.”
She met his gaze again. “You want me to tell my parents about you?”
“I couldn’t care less,” he lied.
“I will.” She pulled her eyes together. “I’m not ashamed of you, Leo, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t give two fucks what my parents think of who I date, or anyone else for that matter. However, for your sak
e, and to give us some temporary peace, it would behoove us to keep it under wraps. If you think my mother calls often to bitch at me now, wait until she finds out I’m dating an enormous hunk of male flesh who can slay dragons with the touch of a finger.”
He stared at her funny. “That’s how you describe me?”
“How else would I?” She shrugged out of his embrace and left him standing there mulling over her choice of words. If he thought for one moment she would hide him from her mother because of some misdirected sense of social status, he was in for a shock.
Hell, if anything, she would relish the idea of seeing the look on her mother’s face when she met Leo. A little too much.
Nope.
Better to keep him to herself a bit longer.
Chapter Eighteen
Leo followed Katie downstairs twenty minutes later. Her clinic wouldn’t open for another forty-five minutes. He was still pondering her choice of words. Maybe he’d misjudged her before. She seemed to have a spine of steel and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.
That didn’t mean it was okay for him to allow her to give up her debutante status for him, but it was endearing to think she would even consider it.
He disarmed the alarm rigged up to the front door and unbolted the door. “I’ll call someone to come replace the door today.”
Her whole body relaxed. “Would you? I was trying to figure out how I was going to handle that and see patients.”
“Of course. Consider it done.” He opened the door and glanced around. He didn’t see whoever was watching them, but he knew they were out there, probably good guys and bad guys.
Katie’s phone rang again, and she groaned as she retrieved it from her pocket. She held it up and groaned louder. “Marshall,” she muttered.
“I think you should take it.” Instinct told him to go with his gut.
She cringed as she hit the button. “What now, Marshall?” she asked wearily. He couldn’t hear Marshall on the other end, but she frowned and then all the blood drained from her face.
When it looked like she would drop the phone on the floor, Leo lurched forward and took it from her. “Hello?”
“Well. Well. Well. If it isn’t Leo Gulin. How special. You fuck that sweet piece of ass all night? Or did you just bring her coffee and a bagel at the crack of dawn?”
Now Leo feared he looked a bit like Katie. He took her arm to keep her from falling and helped her to a chair in the waiting room. “What do you want, Boris?” He would know the man’s voice anywhere. He and Erik had worked for Yenin for years. They weren’t very good at their jobs, but for some reason Yenin kept them on the payroll. “Why do you have Marshall Pierce’s phone?”
Katie leaned forward, put her elbows on her knees, and stuck her head between her legs.
Leo kept a hand on her back.
“Funny you should ask that. Did your tiny blonde woman actually sleep with this whiney dipshit before she shacked up with you? Because I gotta tell you, man, he’s a piece of work. These filthy rich dudes are too soft.”
“Boris. Where are you? Where’s Marshall?” He tried to keep his voice calm, almost disinterested. He didn’t like Pierce any more than Katie did, but that didn’t mean he wanted the guy in the hands of the Bratva.
“I need to make a trade. You give me what I want, and I’ll give you this sniveling piece of shit.” Leo could hear Marshall sobbing in the background. It wasn’t a sound he usually associated with grown men. And he doubted Boris had cut off his fingers or something.
Boris liked to pretend he was all tough, but he was only blowing hot air. The man was inept to say the least. He and his sidekick Erik both. Leo couldn’t imagine why Yenin would give either of those dumb asses an assignment like this.
Kidnapping and ransom?
Leo had to be missing a piece of this puzzle. Something was off. “What do you want, Boris?”
“Oh, I think you know exactly what I want. Don’t play dumb. Bring me the blood samples, and I’ll trade you for this idiot with the pink polo shirt on. You have one hour. Meet me under the L at West Lake and North Albany. No cops. If you aren’t there in one hour, this rich bastard is a dead man.” He hung up.
Leo lowered the phone.
Katie was sobbing loudly, unable to catch her breath. She’d heard everything.
Leo kneeled in front of her and lifted her face. “Katie, he’s going to be fine.”
She yanked her face up to meet his. “Fine? How is this fine?” Her voice rose.
Leo blew out a breath. “Because I know this guy. He doesn’t have enough brain cells to kill anyone.”
“What do you mean you know him?” She jerked back a few inches. “You even know his name. You called him Boris. What’s going on, Leo?”
He pulled out his phone, touched the screen, and waited for his contact to answer.
“Who are you calling?” She reached for the phone, her eyes wide. “That guy said no cops.”
Leo grabbed her hand and held it in his. “Trust me.”
It took a few seconds, but the man finally answered. “Gulin.”
“We have a problem.”
“What happened?”
“Boris has Katie’s ex-boyfriend. His name’s Marshall Pierce. He was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. I doubt he’s connected. Boris demanded a trade—the blood samples for Marshall. Meeting him in fifty-five minutes at Lake and Albany under the L.”
“Got it. I’ll make sure you have backup.” He hung up.
Katie got a sudden adrenaline rush. Her eyes were wide, and she grabbed his shirt and fisted it with her small hands. “The blood samples?” She released him and turned to run to the back of the clinic.
Leo followed her. He grabbed her arm to stop her, but she wiggled free and hit several buttons on the touch pad next to the door to her small lab.
“We have to get the samples and get to the meeting point.”
Leo followed her into the lab and watched as she leaned into the small refrigerator.
“What the…?” She stared for a moment and then pushed several items to one side on each shelf.
“Katie?”
“They’re gone.” She bolted upright. “They’re gone,” she shouted. “How is that possible?” She slapped her forehead. “The room was locked. Why didn’t I notice this last night?”
Leo took Katie by the arm and stepped in front of her, forcing her to face him. “We don’t need the blood samples.”
“But that guy said…” Her eyes were frantic, darting all over Leo’s face.
Leo tugged Katie toward the corner of the room and released her as he sat on the only chair. He rolled up his sleeve and set his exposed arm on the armrest, palm up. “Katie, fill a few vials with my blood.”
She stared at him blankly for a few moments. “Think they’ll buy that?”
She was catching on. “Don’t need them to. It’s not as if they can check the validity of the swap under the L, babe. You’ll just mark the vials with all three of our names and date them whenever it was you originally drew the blood, and I’ll go make the trade.”
Her hands shook as she opened a drawer and pulled out some supplies. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice those vials missing last night,” she repeated. “My brain was focused on the drug supplies, things a dealer might find interesting. I didn’t pay any attention to the blood samples in the fridge. Who would want them?” She went through the steps of drawing Leo’s blood.
“Who else has the code to this room?” Leo asked.
“No one. Just me.” She lifted her face as she pulled out the needle and held a square of gauze to Leo’s arm. And then her head snapped up. “Oh, wait. Another doctor has the code. I had to sign off on it with another person present in case anything ever happened to me. It’s been two years. I’d forgotten.”
“Who was that?”
“Ted Christianson.”
Leo jerked in his seat. “Isn’t that the guy you sent the blood results to?”
Ka
tie nodded and began writing on the stickers she would adhere to the vials. Totally out of protocol. It didn’t matter. “Ted would never break into my clinic, though. And why would he need those samples? I sent him the results. If he wanted to see the blood itself, all he had to do was ask.”
Leo went through the possibilities in his mind. Why would Dr. Christianson want those blood samples? And badly enough to steal them instead of asking Katie to give them to him?
Leo ran a palm over his face. What was going on? He’d informed his contact of Ted’s involvement less than forty-eight hours ago. At the time, there was no indication the blood work had a thing to do with Anton and his renewed interest in the estranged fighters.
Apparently they were wrong.
Leo had always suspected Anton was involved in something far more underhanded than simply managing an underground group of MMA fighters. The man had millions. He didn’t become the leader of the Russian Mafia for the western half of the US by booking fights.
No fucking way. The man was running meth labs on the side. Or whatever he produced in those labs. Leo doubted it was simply meth. Too many feds were involved in trying to nail the man down for it to be a simple matter of drug distribution.
Anton Yenin was creating something else on the side. Perhaps a new drug. Maybe something stronger. More powerful. Less expensive to make. Who knew? But it sure wasn’t straight meth. And after the FBI brought Leo in two years ago, he had no choice but to become their informant.
And Yenin’s side arrangement made the hair stand up on the back of Leo’s neck. The man was loaded. And sinister.
Becoming an informant for the feds wasn’t simply the only choice Leo had that day. It was the right choice. The more he knew, the more he wanted to put an end to whatever Anton was hiding.
Now that he realized there had to be a connection with these blood samples, he wanted to punch a hole in the wall.
Leo stuck the vials in his pocket. He grabbed Katie’s hand and nearly dragged her down the hall to the foot of the stairs. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Nineteen
Leo turned and jogged up the stairs to her apartment. Less than half a minute later, he returned, stuffing his Springfield in the back of his jeans and tugging his T-shirt over it.
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