Protector’s Temptation

by Marilyn Pappano

  Instead of answering the question, she’d turned it back on him, and he’d given the same answer she would have: AJ Decker.

  “What do you think of the town?” Donovan asked as he started the engine. “Think you can manage here for a week or so?”

  “It’s not a cave in the woods, but it’ll do.” Masiela knew from Donovan’s action that Decker must be ready to leave, but she resisted the urge to turn around and look for him. She would have to face him soon enough.

  A big white pickup passed behind them, and Donovan backed out, then trailed it to the street. All she could see of Decker was the back of his head and his broad shoulders. He was still keeping his head damn near shaved, she noted bittersweetly, and she would bet he still looked damn good that way.

  They followed him through downtown Copper Lake, then a neighborhood with grand old homes, into blocks with smaller houses. When Decker turned into the driveway of one, she was momentarily surprised. He’d always preferred apartments in Dallas—didn’t want the maintenance or expense of a house, didn’t want nosy neighbors or noisy kids running around. Owning a house, he’d once told her, was the kind of commitment that followed marriage and babies, and he had no desire for either.

  Oh, God, was he married now? Were there little Deckers running around Copper Lake? And what would a Mrs. Decker think of a woman from his past showing up in his present?

  As Donovan shut off the engine and unfastened his seat belt, she bit back the impulse to tell him she’d changed her mind, that she’d rather take her chances in Dallas. Instead, she slowly climbed out, focusing narrowly on the house instead of the man climbing the steps.

  It was Victorian in style, though lacking most of the frills. The colors were muted—peach, with cream trim and deep green accents, and the door was framed on top and both sides with stained glass. It was so not Decker that she was convinced he must have a wife who’d chosen this house.

  And why shouldn’t he have married? It had been six years since he’d left Dallas. People moved on. Their lives changed. And it wasn’t as if there had been anything personal between the two of them.

  Not on his part, at least.

  Nothing that had extended past one night.

  She and Donovan reached the bottom of the broad steps. The front door stood open, but there was no sign of Decker in the long hallway. She took a breath, forcing herself up each step, across the porch and inside the house. It smelled of wood and paint and dust, a fragrance explained when she stepped into the double doorway of the living room. Drop cloths covered the floor, bare studs were exposed and window and door casings were missing. A glance through another wide doorway showed the dining room in the same state. The house might be a showplace on the outside, but inside it was getting a whole new remodel.

  Noise came from the back, and she and Donovan moved toward it. Decker was in the kitchen, getting a beer from the refrigerator. He popped the top off the bottle, took a swig, then leaned against the countertop and simply looked at both of them, no emotion whatsoever on his face.

  She kept her arms limp at her sides. The most nervous she’d ever been in her life was the first time she’d faced a jury. She hadn’t eaten anything all that day, for fear she wouldn’t keep it down, and had still thrown up minutes before walking into the courtroom.

  That was exactly what she wanted to do now, but she’d had a few years’ experience since then in hiding her nerves. She smiled faintly and said, “Hello, Decker.”

  “Mas.”

  She’d always liked the way he said her name, all soft sounds in his gravel-rough voice: mah-see-A-luh. The fact that he’d used the nickname that belonged to only him and her family gave her brief hope that everything wasn’t irrevocably ruined between them. The fact that he’d said it with an icy, hazel stare and all the warmth of a glacier kicked that hope back down.

  A moment of uncomfortable silence settled, broken at last by Donovan. He went straight to the point. “Can I leave Masiela here with you?”

  Decker continued to stare at her as if the sheer hostility in his look might reduce her to ash. “Rodriguez killed Teri.”

  He’d been convinced of that years ago, and Masiela had been just as convinced that he was opting for the easy choice. Better to believe that the abusive pimp had thrown Teri Riggs off a five-story building than that his cop buddies might be involved. But not all cops were as honest as Decker. The Brat Pack wasn’t even as honest as the average criminals.

  “Donovan has his doubts,” she said evenly.

  His gaze flickered to Donovan, then back again, but he didn’t argue. He respected Donovan’s judgment. He respected everyone’s judgment except hers. Why? She’d been his partner for three years. He’d listened to her, asked for her opinion and advice. They’d worked well together. But when it counted, he’d dismissed her. Why?

  He took another long drink. “I don’t have time to babysit anyone.”

  “I don’t need babysitting,” she replied. “Just a place to stay, where Kinney and his buds won’t find me.”

  “What makes you think I won’t tell them you’re here?”

  The only answer she offered was a snort.

  Though his gaze remained on her, AJ’s next words were directed to Donovan. “You could just stick her in a motel somewhere.”

  “People would know. Clerks, housekeeping, pizza delivery guys. I don’t want her under the radar. I want her off of it completely. And you have to admit, this little burg is pretty well off the radar.”

  After a long, stiff silence, AJ drained the beer, opened the cabinet under the sink and set the bottle inside a bin there. “A week. No longer.”

  Donovan looked relieved. Masiela felt it right down to her toes. Where she would go from there was anyone’s guess, but for a week at least, she was safe. “I’ll get her bags,” Donovan said, leaving the kitchen before Decker could change his mind.

  She rested one hand on the countertop, on a four-inch tile of milky green. It was cool and stilled the trembling in her fingers. “Do you need to clear this with anyone?”

  “Like who?”

  She shrugged. “Your wife?”

  His gaze narrowed. “Don’t have one.”

  So he’d chosen the Victorian all on his own. She would have smiled at the idea if he hadn’t looked so forbidding.

  Once he’d gotten the green light, Donovan was quick. He brought in her suitcases, gave Decker his cell phone number, issued a few warnings and was gone all in a matter of minutes. She listened to the front door close, followed by the sound of an engine revving, then silence.

  “Well…” She sounded too cheery, too phony. “Can I put my stuff someplace?”

  “My bedroom is the only one that’s livable. You’ll have to sleep here.” Decker gestured to the other end of the room. “The couch folds out. There’s a bathroom down the hall, but you’ll have to shower upstairs.”

  She gazed at the space. Where a breakfast table and chairs should go, sat a brown leather sofa flanked by two stone-topped tables, with a longer matching table in front. Pushed against the opposite wall was a flat screen television on a steel-and-glass stand. Once the sofa was made into a bed, there would be just enough room to squeeze past both on the sides and at the foot.

  So she’d traveled all those miles from Dallas to sleep on a fold-out in the corner of AJ Decker’s kitchen. Wonderful. Not that she was complaining. The Brat Pack would never think to look for her here.

  Her shoes echoing on black-and-white tile that looked original to the house, she carried her larger suitcase to the couch, opened it and removed her .40-caliber pistol from the top of a stack of shirts. She clipped the leather holster onto her waistband in back and immediately felt a hundred percent safer.

  “How did you get a gun on the airplane?” Decker asked.

  “We didn’t fly commercial. Donovan’s got his own plane. It makes it harder for anyone to track where he goes.”

  “You really think Kinney and the others killed Teri?”

 
; She fixed her gaze on him. “Do you really think they’re not capable?” They were considered good cops. They made a lot of arrests that resulted in a lot of convictions. But there had been whispers of impropriety for as long as she’d worked with them. Questions about how their success was achieved. Hints of wrongdoing.

  “Of murder? No,” Decker said flatly. “I don’t believe it.”

  Loyal to his friends—maybe to a fault—but not loyal enough to her. If the victim had been someone other than Teri Riggs, if she had been a stranger to him, would he still have reacted the way he did? What role had grief and guilt played in forming his response?

  “Then why the phone call?” Masiela asked. “I assume Donovan had to play the message to get your help.” She saw by the slight shift in his expression that he had, indeed, heard the tape. “If everything in the case was by the book, why did Kinney find it necessary to threaten me?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you’re screwing with his reputation. Because you have a knack for creating doubt where there isn’t any.” His sarcasm faded into flatness. “They put together a good case. The DA’s office bought it. The jury bought it.”

  “They were wrong.” The first time she’d argued for Rodriguez’s innocence with Decker, she’d been fueled purely by instinct. This time she had evidence. Not that Decker would ask to see it. If he did see it, he would be forced to set friendship aside, to acknowledge the ugly truth about his buddies.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” he challenged. “The jury believed the prosecution instead of you. You never could stand to lose.”

  She laughed. “Right. I became a defense attorney so I’d never have to face the possibility of losing.” Sure, she had a competitive streak. She’d pushed herself hard to meet Decker and the other cops she’d worked with on their level, whether it was in the field, the interrogation room, the courtroom, the gym or the bar. It had been the only way to survive in their male-dominated field. But her ego wasn’t so monstrous that losing threatened it.

  “What I can’t stand is my client sitting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. What I really can’t stand are cops whose job is to uphold the law, who have a moral obligation to live to a higher standard, breaking that law for their own benefit. And I really, really can’t stand cops who murder to keep their dirty activities secret. Who leave a little girl without a mother, without a home, without anyone who gives a damn.”

  Her last words struck a response, as she’d known they would. Teri Riggs had been a lot of things: prostitute, drug addict, petty thief, daughter, sister, lover. And her two most important roles: Decker’s informant and Morgan’s mother. The girl had been six when her mother died, a big-eyed waif surrounded by a sense of loss too huge for her to grasp. It had broken Decker’s heart to see her at the funeral with no one but a social worker to turn to for comfort, and that had broken Masiela’s heart.

  His gaze darkened and a muscle twitched in his jaw, but he didn’t argue. Instead, after a moment, he turned and stiffly walked away.

  Grateful for the reprieve, she sank onto the sofa, eyes closed, and let the trembling inside her run its course. This wasn’t going to be easy. But as her grandmother used to say, “That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

  She was going to be damn near invincible when she left here.

  Chapter 2

  Climbing the stairs was a slow and painful process, but AJ did it the way he did everything else—one dogged step at a time. When he reached the top, he allowed himself a grunt of relief, as much for the distance between him and Masiela as for reaching his goal. He passed two bedrooms that were currently serving as storage, and the remodeled bathroom that he’d finished just a week ago, to reach the master bedroom. It was the first room he’d tackled—his learning experience—and had taken way longer than it should have, but it had turned out okay. At least that was what Cate said the first time she’d slept over.

  As he stripped off his clothes, he wondered what the good doctor would think if she found out about Masiela being here.

  He hung up his jacket, tossed his shirt and trousers into the laundry hamper, then dressed in a paint-stained pair of denim shorts and an equally stained T-shirt. Given the choice, he would stretch out in bed for a while, but Dave Kinney had taken away that choice.

  That damn fool. What had he been thinking, threatening Masiela on her answering machine? Even a rookie cop knew better than that. You never said anything on the record that could come back and bite you on the ass, and a recording was about as “on the record” as anything could get.

  Granted, Kinney and the others had never been real fond of Masiela. They’d thought she didn’t belong in homicide, that her promotion had been motivated more by race and gender than ability. They’d made it tough for her to fit in.

  Not that she’d tried too hard. The cop job had been a temporary thing for her, something to pay the bills while she finished law school. As soon as she’d passed the bar, she’d quit the department and, adding insult to injury, she’d immediately begun defending the people they’d arrested.

  Still, the threat had been stupid.

  Unwilling to hide out in his room—actually, willing to do it but unwilling to admit to doing it—he made a stop at the linen closet in the hall, then gingerly went down the stairs again. Masiela was in the kitchen where he’d left her, now sitting on the sofa. If he could forget the years since she’d walked away from the department, there’d be a familiar, comfortable feel to the scene. They’d been partners and friends back then, and she’d spent as much time at his apartment as she had at home. But he wouldn’t forget, even if he could.

  He dumped the things he carried on the kitchen counter—two sheets, two blankets and a pillow—then gestured. “Make yourself at home.” The invitation sounded as grudging as he felt. Hey, she had invited herself—or had Donovan do it for her—to be his guest. He didn’t have to be gracious about it.

  She nodded.

  “Okay, here’s the rules. You don’t go anywhere, not even onto the porch. You stay out of sight. You don’t answer the phone, you don’t make any calls, you don’t send any e-mails. Nobody’s gonna know you’re here.”

  She didn’t roll her eyes, but she came close. “I told you: I don’t need a babysitter. I’m not stupid, Decker. I understand the concept of hiding out.”

  “It’s not my job to entertain you. And I don’t want to hear—”

  “The truth?”

  His jaw tightened, sending an ache from his teeth up to the top of his skull. “I know those guys. We went through the academy together. Hell, Stan Myers saved my life.”

  Something flashed across her face. Regret, maybe. God knew, he had plenty of that. “You know me, too,” she said quietly.

  Not as well as he’d thought.

  With the muscles in his neck knotting, he did the easiest thing: he retreated. It wasn’t the same as hiding out, he told himself as he went through the dining room into the living room. Working on his house was what he did damn near every evening. It was his routine.

  When he’d bought the house, his only experience with power tools had been watching his dad on the occasional woodworking project when he was a kid. He’d had the Internet for guidance, though, and Russ Calloway, owner of Copper Lake’s biggest construction company, had been generous with advice.

  The original walls had been plaster and lath in sorry shape, so he was replacing them with wallboard, which his mother had offered to paint. Carol Ann lived to redecorate. His dad joked that every time he went out of town on business, he was afraid he wouldn’t recognize the house when he got home. Both of them were happy she could decorate this house, instead of changing their own for the hundredth time. AJ figured it was a fair enough deal. He wasn’t into paint or fabrics or accessories. On his own, he would paint the walls white and leave the windows and floors uncovered. If giving him something else satisfied his mom’s creative urges, fine.

  As he positioned a piece of wallboard against the front
wall, footsteps came to a halt in the doorway. Though he refused to look at Masiela, all his other senses were hyperalert. He heard the even cadence of her breathing. He smelled the fragrance she’d always worn—subtle, teasing, spicy with a hint of sweetness. He felt the weight of her dark brown gaze measuring. The look had as much substance as a touch, making his muscles tighten.

  Once the wallboard was in place, he braced it with one hand and his knee while picking up the nail gun at his feet. He shot two nails in at the top to secure it to the studs, then finished with another dozen nails before setting the tool down again.

  “What changed your mind about buying a house?” she asked as he pulled another piece of Sheetrock from the stack against the far wall.

  “It was a good deal.” True as far as it went. The elderly woman who’d lived there had moved into a nursing home up in Raleigh, and her son, also in Raleigh, had wanted to unload the house quickly. AJ had had enough money in savings to make the payment no more than his monthly rent on an apartment half the size.

  And he’d been thinking for a while that maybe it was time to settle down. To think about getting married and giving his parents a few of those grandkids they wanted so much.

  Masiela wasn’t put off by his brief answer. She moved farther into the room, crossing to the window seat of white pine and brushing away a coating of dust before seating herself. “It’s not quite the place I would have pictured for you.”

  He sneaked a sidelong glance at her. Had she done that after he left Dallas—tried to picture him in new surroundings? Wondered what he was doing? Regretted what she’d done?

  He’d thought about her for a while. Too long. It had taken a long time to get over missing her. To get past the point where his first thought when something happened to amuse or piss him off wasn’t that she would get a kick out of it.