Protector’s Temptation

by Marilyn Pappano

  “I’d be ashamed of my pettiness if I hadn’t proven I was right.”

  “You always had good instincts.”

  “I trained with the best.”

  He shook his head. “But I missed all this.”

  “It wasn’t your case. You were grieving. You had reason to believe that your fellow detectives were doing their job the way you’d do it.”

  “You tried to tell me….”

  “You had a lot of years on the department with those guys. I had nothing but a feeling.” Decker had always counseled her to trust her gut. Even if everything pointed this way, if her gut was leading her that way, that was the way she needed to go. “Besides,” she said, forcing a lighter tone into her voice, “you were already angry with me for turning down that job offer from the DA’s office and for taking the case in the first place.”

  The glare he turned on her had stopped stronger people in their tracks. “I was a cop. Evidence is all that matters to a good cop, not someone’s spin on it. I let Kinney and Taylor and Myers tell me what they wanted me to know. I didn’t look closer, even when you tried to get me to. I should have. Damn it, I should have.”

  Masiela pushed her bowl away and rested her arms on the counter, leaning toward him. “You can blame yourself all day, Decker, and all it does is make you feel bad. There was a time when I would have settled for you being in a permanent funk, but it’s long past. Look at the evidence now. Read the interviews. Finish the video. Tell me what I’ve overlooked, where I need to go next.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Leave it in Donovan’s hands. He’s a smart guy. He’ll recognize the problems, and he’ll do the right thing.”

  “I’m smart, too.”

  “Yeah, but it’s liable to get you killed. They won’t go after the DA’s office. You’re a much easier target.”

  He was thinking the worst of his old buddies, and worrying about her. The knowledge went a long way in easing the tension that had knotted through her during the conversation. She’d waited so long for that kind of validation—and that, she realized, was another thing that had kept her investigating long after her client went to prison. She’d wanted to expose the bastards not just to the world at large, but to Decker. She’d wanted to prove to him that she’d made the right choice, that there were innocent people charged with crimes by ineffective or dirty cops, and that they needed her, an ex-cop who knew how the system worked, to get justice.

  She’d wanted Decker’s approval.

  After supper, AJ settled on the couch, the computer on his lap, scrolling through Masiela’s file. He didn’t read everything. There were hundreds of pages, along with video and audio recordings and copies of official reports. He started to page past a newspaper article, caught the date in the corner of his eye and stopped. It was from the Dallas Morning News and showed a photograph of Rodriguez’s first—only?—homicide victim. The murder had taken place fourteen months before Teri died, and the reporter had done a follow-up before-she’s-forgotten piece. He’d interviewed the victim’s family, the police, Rodriguez, his lawyer and Donovan, and he ended the story with a quote from Dave Kinney: “We’re gonna get him. We promise.”

  On its own, it didn’t look bad. Reassurance to the family that they’d be keeping their eyes on the bastard who killed their daughter and dumped her body in a salvage yard like she was just so much trash. AJ had said the words to other families himself; it was the kind of reassurance they needed, even if there was little chance of making good on it.

  Knowing what he knew now, it seemed more ominous.

  Continuing through the pages, he found photographs of the three detectives outside the courthouse following Rodriguez’s guilty verdict. They were victorious, hugging each other, grinning ear to ear, celebrating with the small group of cops around them. Only Myers seemed different. Oh, he was grinning, one fist pumped into the air, but his gaze was directed off to the side, out of the shot, and he looked smug. Threatening.

  The dishwasher rumbled to life, then Masiela came around to sit on the couch beside him, close enough to see the screen. Her nose wrinkled slightly.

  “You remember that moment?”

  “I do. I was standing right here.” She gestured in the air to screen left—exactly where Myers was looking. “I felt my skin crawling, and I glanced up and locked gazes with him.”

  “Were you scared?”

  Even now a slight shiver ran through her. “Yeah.”

  “But not enough to come to me.”

  “I was here—” she patted the air again “—and you were there.” One rounded nail touched the top right corner of the screen. “It doesn’t look like a lot of distance, but it felt like about six million miles.”

  He hadn’t noticed himself in the shot. He was apart from all the cops, standing halfway up the courthouse steps with Teri’s cousin from Kansas, the only relative willing to take Teri’s daughter. She’d come for the trial, but she hadn’t brought little Morgan with her. She just wanted to be satisfied, she’d said, that the man who’d killed Teri had gotten what he deserved.

  And AJ had assured her that he had.

  “I hate being so damn stupid.”

  Masiela, close enough that her sleeve brushed his arm when she shrugged, was philosophical. “Sometimes you know all the answers. Sometimes you can’t see what’s in front of your nose.”

  And what was in front of his nose right now was Mas—beautiful, soft, sexy, passionate, warm. The only bright light in all this crap. In all those years, he’d never gotten over losing her, had never forgotten how much he loved her, depended on her. Not in a romantic sense, though there’d been that, too. After that one night together, after she’d pretended nothing had happened, he tried not to think of her that way, but the memory had always been there. The desire.

  More desire with every passing moment.

  He closed the laptop and carefully set it on the floor. “I can’t think about that anymore.”

  “It wears you down after a while,” Masiela agreed. “You have to get all that ugliness out of your head from time to time.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “I visit Yelina and her girls, or drop in on Elian and his chica of the month. I sneak my grandmothers out of the retirement home for a day of shopping and seeing who can flirt with the most men.”

  He chuckled at the thought of her competitive grandmothers putting the moves on the men unlucky enough to cross their path. “You used to run my ass off when you needed a break.”

  “Yeah. That was before you started running from me instead of with me.” She said it carelessly, but there was a flash of hurt in her eyes, gone quickly, but there long enough to make him hot with shame.

  He twisted on the couch so he faced her and touched his left hand gently to her cheek. “I really am sorry.”

  “So am I. I was so used to you taking me seriously. I thought our friendship was too strong to be threatened by my switching jobs.”

  His brows raised. “You didn’t just switch jobs, Mas. You went from hunting down murderers to trying to get them off. And you did it all on your own. You didn’t discuss it with me. One day I’m thinking you’re doing your final interview with the DA’s office, and you come to dinner that night, saying, ‘Hey, I took a job with a criminal defense firm’.”

  He’d been surprised as hell, but hurt, too. Prosecution and defense weren’t just different sides of the same legal coin; to a homicide cop like him, they were different universes. Going to work for the opposing team was like giving up everything you believed in for better pay. It had been a huge decision—a wrong one, he’d been sure at the time—and one she’d made without even talking to him.

  “It wasn’t an easy choice, and I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “Maybe if you’d discussed it with me, I could have at least tried to understand.”

  “And if I’d told you that the first big case I was looking at was Rodriguez’s…would you have tried to understand that, too?”

  Griml
y, he shook his head. “You knew what it meant to me. You knew how I felt about Teri.”

  “Yeah. And how you felt about that—about her—trumped how you felt about me.”

  It wasn’t that simple. Nothing about the whole mess was. Not even how he felt about Masiela right now. He wanted to have great handicapped sex with her. If he could keep her around long enough, he’d like to have great unhandicapped sex with her. He wanted to keep her safe, wanted Myers, Kinney and Taylor to pay for what they’d done not only to Teri and Rodriguez, but also to Mas. He wanted her back in his life, wanted to be able to turn to her whenever he needed to talk, wanted to know she had his back again, while he had hers.

  Jeez, what he really wanted right this minute was to kiss her.

  “How I felt about you,” he repeated, his voice hoarse. “I felt like I’d lost my other half. You were damn near everything to me, Mas. My partner, my best friend, my once and future one-night stand, because you know, if it happened once, it was gonna happen again. When I wanted advice or help, someone to talk to, someone to listen to, someone to make me feel better or put things into perspective, someone who understood what I needed without me having to say a word—that was you. I didn’t have anyone else remotely like you to go to.”

  He hesitated, considering those last words. “I’ve never had anyone else like you.”

  And that was as good a time to kiss her as any. He grasped her shoulder and pulled her toward him, leaning forward to meet her. She came willingly, raising her hands to his face, cupping his cheek with one hand, sliding the other around to his neck. She made a soft whimper the instant his mouth touched hers, but it wasn’t a don’t do this sort of plea. He knew, because he made the same sound.

  He slid his tongue inside her mouth, bringing back flashes of that first time. She’d had too much to drink, and he’d stayed sober to drive her home. He’d walked her to her condo, unlocked the door for her and gone inside, thinking he’d make sure she was settled before leaving again. She’d thanked him for the ride with a hiccup, and then…

  Even then he hadn’t known how it happened. One moment they’d been looking at each other, and the next they’d been kissing as if their lives depended on it. It had changed everything.

  Just as this would change everything.

  It was awkward, having only one hand to touch her with. His fingers wrapped in her hair, slid along her spine, urged her nearer until she was straddling his legs, her breasts brushing his chest. His erection swelled, hard and achy, tormented by the slight movements of her hips rubbing against it.

  His mind went dull, made hazy by feeling. Dimly, he was aware of his T-shirt being pulled over his head, of helping Mas do the same with hers. He fumbled left-handed with the button of her shorts, then concentrated instead on unfastening her bra while she shimmied out of her shorts.

  For a moment he forced a stop so he could look at her. Her hair had come out of its ponytail and hung in a tangle around her shoulders. Her eyes were dark with passion, her lips slightly parted. He touched one fingertip to her mouth, and she closed her teeth on it, a sharp ache followed by the slow stroke of her tongue. It made his breath catch and left his voice hoarse. “You are so damn beautiful.”

  Her cheeks flushed a deeper bronze. “I bet you say that to all the girls who sit naked on top of you.”

  “You’re not naked,” he pointed out, and she wiggled around, bringing a groan from him, before dropping her panties to the floor.

  He let his gaze slide slowly down, past the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse was beating rapidly. Over her collarbones to the smooth, dark skin that swelled into her breasts, her nipples rosy-brown and standing erect. Across her flat middle and narrow waist, the curve of her hips, to the nest of curls and long, lean thighs.

  He groaned again. “We should go upstairs.” The couch was barely wide enough and lacked the comfort of his bed.

  “I’ll race you,” she replied, but the only move she made was to rise onto her knees and hook her fingers in the waistbands of his shorts and briefs. She peeled them both off, adding them to the pile of clothes on the floor, then leaned forward, nuzzling his throat, leaving kisses along his jaw before taking his mouth in another hungry kiss.

  His erection strained for her. Hand on her hip, he guided her back down, then arched up to fill her. She was tight, hot, and he remembered clearly what he’d thought the first time.

  Mine.

  The idea sent a shudder through him and left him too damn close to coming too damn quick. He fought it, his muscles taut, his breathing labored, and thought he’d succeeded in at least a temporary delay when she broke the kiss, moved her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Come inside me, AJ. Please.”

  How could he refuse a request like that? He did come, and she did, too, great shivers racking her body, turning her breathing to ragged gasps, raising a flush of perspiration on her skin. She sagged against him, her forehead on his shoulder, her breath soft puffs against his skin.

  Outside, thunder sounded not too far to the northwest. The air out there was probably electric with the promise of the oncoming storm. Inside, it was warm and steamy and so damn… He couldn’t think of any other word but right. Sappy, but true.

  He shifted onto his side, sliding his left arm under her, making room for her between his body and the cushions. “You called me AJ.”

  Her lashes fluttered open, and her dark eyes fixed on him, still hazy, but with the addition of satisfaction now. “I’ve called you that before.”

  “Yeah. The first day we met. The first time we had sex. The first night here, when you almost shot me.”

  “Yeah, well, calling you by your last name when we’re naked and sweaty and you’re inside me seems a little too impersonal.” She paused. “Do you prefer impersonal?”

  He moved his hips against hers. He may have come once, but he wasn’t finished. “I like being damn personal. I’d also like to go upstairs now.”

  Her smile was smug. “Am I invited, too?”

  “Don’t play dense, Mas. I may have a broken wrist, but I can still do a fireman’s carry with my left arm.”

  She scoffed. “Like you’ve ever had to carry a woman to get her into your bedroom. Back in Dallas, they were lining up for the chance.”

  “You had your share of men. I think I went to dinner with every one of them at least once, especially on the first dates.”

  “Yeah, and you didn’t like any of them.”

  “I liked some of them just fine. Just not with you.” He had always told her none of them were good enough for her, part joke, part brotherly concern. Now he wondered if it had been possessiveness masquerading as joke and concern. Even then, before their night together, had he subconsciously wanted to remain the most important guy in her life?

  “I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “The women.”

  She trailed her long fingers up his arm, then gave his shoulder a few deep squeezes. “A guy can only take so much indiscriminate sex, huh?”

  He tilted his head, giving her access to the tight muscles in his neck. “Something like that. Don’t laugh at this, but I found out I needed something more. Not just good sex and fun times, but someone to be everything you—”

  He broke off so suddenly that the silence echoed in his ears. Someone to be everything you were. Best friend, confidant, most important person in his life. He’d had the perfect relationship with Mas, except for the lack of sex, and he’d gotten that from the regularly changing girlfriends. But once Mas was gone, he hadn’t needed just casual sex; he’d needed someone to replace her.

  No wonder he’d failed.

  She swallowed hard, and he’d swear in the shadowy light that there were tears in her eyes. “Jeez, Decker,” she mumbled, then pressed a kiss to his jaw. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve never quite said to me.”

  Thunder continued to rumble as they made their way upstairs. Masiela carried their clothes and led the way, AJ a few steps behind.

  “You always
did like to lead,” he commented. “Into buildings, crime scenes, dangerous situations. Back then I used to worry. Today, it’s nice to be following.”

  She put a little extra sway into her hips as she climbed the last step. “You shouldn’t have worried. I was very careful.”

  “Yeah, but even careful cops can get killed.”

  She shrugged. It was true, but back then she’d had a mix of adrenaline-fueled ballsiness combined with utter confidence in herself and her partner. She hadn’t been scared. “There were a few times I would have happily given Dave Kinney or Stan Myers the lead, but did you ever notice that they always lagged behind?”

  “Maybe they liked watching you move, too.” Then his voice hardened. “Or they were just gutless bastards who didn’t want to be first in with a suspect who was armed and likely to fire the first shot.”

  She felt matching twinges—gratitude that he believed her now, regret that he’d had to be disillusioned to get to that point. She was saved a response, though, by reaching the bedroom. As thunder boomed again, she opened the blinds to reveal whipping tree branches and an angry sky, thin patches of blue quickly giving way to puffy black clouds.

  She pulled back the covers on the unmade bed, dumping them into a pile on the chair, then moved around to take AJ’s hand, drawing him toward the bed.

  Tugging back, he detoured to the night table, where a box of condoms occupied the front corner of the top drawer. She looked at them, mouth pursed. “Don’t you think it’s a little late?”

  “It’s never too late to decrease the odds. One time without is risky. Twice without is twice as risky. And five times…”

  A grin spread across her face. “Feeling awfully confident for a guy with a recently broken wrist, aren’t you?”