And then sanity suddenly returned and she realized what she was doing. That she had just overstepped some invisible boundary.
Letting her hand drop, she backed away. It took her another second to look at him again.
“I trust you, Alec,” she managed, but was surprised just how unsteady her voice was when she said it.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Alec sat at his desk. Martinez had delivered Katie’s things and Alec had shown her to the guest room, suggesting she lie down for an hour or so.
He needed some time to get himself back on track, too. She’d taken him by surprise in the kitchen. But the way he’d become aroused when she’d touched him had been even more surprising. He couldn’t allow her to distract him. No matter how desirable he found her. He needed to stay focused on keeping her safe.
He picked up two of the photographs he’d forced her to view. He couldn’t forget the look on her face as she’d stared at each of them. He hadn’t wanted to put her through any of it, but she needed to fully understand the magnitude of her decision.
And a picture had been worth a thousand words.
He looked at the photo, at the empty bed and unblemished white sheet, bisected by a trail of rose petals. Then turned his attention to the other black-and-white. Instantly his memory supplied the scent of fresh blood, and just beneath the heavy richness of it was the darker one of fear.
The olfactory sense was more firmly attached to memory than any other and he found himself suddenly back there, feeling the rage and pain and loss all over again. He’d often had to deliver bad news to a family about their loved one, had looked into the bleak eyes of those who had lost someone dear to them—a child, a wife—and allowed himself to believe that he understood what they felt. But he hadn’t.
He compared the two photos. The most obvious difference was the lack of blood and a victim in one.
No. Katie was still very much a victim. An unbelievably brave one. She’d fought back that night, and she was still doing it. Not many woman had that kind of courage.
But Jill had also fought her killer. There had been signs everywhere that she hadn’t gone quietly to her death. He’d never thought of her as a fighter. Kind and thoughtful, almost meek in some ways, but never physical. Even in their lovemaking, she’d been gentle and tentative.
And then the autopsy report had come back, and he’d understood her tenacity. She hadn’t been fighting just for her own survival, but to save the baby. Their baby. The one she’d been desperate for and the one he hadn’t even known about.
The last time he’d phoned, she’d hinted that she had a surprise for him, but he’d been distracted with his case and hadn’t allowed himself to be drawn in by her excitement. Even now, that pained him. He’d been a good provider, but he hadn’t been a good husband.
Alec laid the photos side by side on the desk, determined to stay focused on the present. There was something about the photo of Katie’s bedroom… He could feel it tearing at the back of his brain, but he couldn’t seem to force it to gel.
It would come to him. It always did. And in the meantime, he needed to nail down his plans for keeping her safe.
He glanced up when he realized Katie stood in the doorway. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I never can in the middle of the day.” She advanced into the room. She had changed into cream slacks and a pale blue sweater, and anchored her hair back into one of those sensible styles women thought made them look sophisticated and pulled together. He preferred her hair down, but didn’t have any right to voice an opinion. Nor did he have any right to be admiring the way the soft blue knit flowed across her breasts, or the way the beige slacks molded to her firm backside.
Which set of lingerie did she wear? He’d felt uncomfortable picking out bras and panties for a woman he didn’t know very well and had turned the job over to a young clerk, returning only to pick them up on his way out of the mall.
It wasn’t until he’d taken them from the store bag that he realized he should have told her the items were for his sister. They had felt cool and delicate in his hand, and had fueled thoughts that were neither.
He watched as she wandered over to the bookshelves and seemed to be scanning the titles. When she spoke, she still had her back to him. “Thanks again for buying the clothes. If you let me know how much I owe you, I’ll write a check.”
“Forget it.” He placed the photos in the top drawer.
She still had her back to him. “So you were a profiler with the FBI for nine years?”
“No. Only for the last three. I worked in the Philadelphia field office for my first six years with the Bureau. Then I was recruited to work in the profile unit.”
“So some astute higher-up recognized your gift?”
“I wouldn’t call it exactly a ‘gift.’” Some people tended to think profilers were one short step away from psychics, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“What would you call it, then? Magic?”
“Hardly. The media tends to glorify what profilers do.” He pushed back from the desk. “I don’t do anything more than what you do countless times each day. I just do it with more awareness. Each time I visit a scene or look at a photo of one, or listen to a law enforcement officer describe what he’s witnessed, I bring my experiences and knowledge into the equation, just as you do each time you get behind the wheel of a car—”
“I don’t drive.”
“But you have a license.” He knew because he’d done a background check on her three days ago. And knowing what he did, he could guess at the reason she didn’t drive. Her sister’s life had ended behind the wheel, the driver of the other car involved in the accident charged with vehicular homicide.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t drive, I just don’t.” She didn’t want to tell him. How far would she go not to talk about the accident?
“Why not?” Maybe that’s why she intrigued him so much. She was mentally and emotionally complex. Everything looked neat and precise on the surface, but there were currents swirling just beneath.
“Because I don’t. I keep the license updated so that I have a valid picture ID.”
He realized that no matter what she had said in the kitchen earlier, she didn’t trust him. He’d have to work on that, because at some point it would become important that she did.
“Profiling,” he said, getting back to the original topic, having learned what he needed to know about her for the moment. “Profiling is nothing more than taking what you know and applying it to a situation.”
“Any situation?”
“Pretty much.” He walked from behind the desk. Katie immediately turned her back to him. Evasion. He wondered if she realized in that simple action, she’d given herself away.
Allowing her the space she’d asked for, he moved to the window. “Let’s say you’re standing on a curb and see a car traveling down the street. The light turns red. The crossing signal flashes it’s safe to walk, but you don’t step off that curb until the driver slows, or you make eye contact. Seems like common sense, doesn’t it? But what you have really done is profile the situation. You’ve taken the information you have—it’s dangerous to step out in front of a moving car, occasionally drivers run red lights because they’re in a hurry or not paying attention—and applied it to the situation. Only when the driver makes the appropriate response by slowing or making eye contact do you cross. Experience has said it’s now safe to walk in front of the car.”
“I suspect it’s more involved than that.”
“A bit.”
He watched and waited as she picked a book out of the shelf, seemed to study it, going so far as to open the front cover—another way of distancing herself.
“He wrote the word remember on the wall. Why?” She still didn’t look up.
“He wants me to remember something.”
“But not what he did to… What he did that night?”
“No. That’s just a bonus for him.” It would have been more comfortable not to f
orce his gaze to remain on her. “I believe he’s somehow connected to one of my cases. That he feels I wronged him in some manner and is attempting to even the score. I’m not exactly popular with the prison population. In fact you’ll find my picture above a number of toilets on death row.”
“And he sends you a postcard each month.” It wasn’t a question.
“The first one was handwritten in Jill’s blood. The rest have been typed.”
Katie replaced the book. She kept her arms crossed as she stopped in front of him. “I’m sorry about your wife,” she said quietly. “I should have said so sooner.”
He hadn’t heard those words in months and they affected him more than he would have expected. He was the one who turned away this time. Maybe it wasn’t the words so much as the woman who had spoken them.
“Are you up for a drive?” he asked, and moved toward her.
“Where to?” She turned away again, this time he could have almost predicted her reaction to the request. “Look, Katie, if I ask you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, you tell me. And asking questions is okay, too.”
Facing him again, she waited.
“The café for starters,” Alec said. He saw the look of uncertainty come over her face. No matter how hard she was trying to appear confident about what lay ahead, about his ability to protect her, she wasn’t.
“Why there?”
He saw her take a slightly deeper breath as soon as she said the words.
“Because, if we’re trying to convince him that we’re intimate, it’s going to be more believable if we show up in public looking as if we are.”
She nodded. “I just didn’t expect…”
Even though he had a fairly good idea what she wanted to say, he waited for her to go on.
“I just…” She broke off again. “I… It’s going to be hard for me to face everyone there. They know what happened. They’ll ask questions that I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle.” She looked at him directly. “I always do better coping when I don’t have to talk about things.”
Didn’t they all, he thought. “I suspect that most of your coworkers will understand that you don’t want to talk about what happened.”
She closed her eyes briefly, but not before he saw the cornered look there. Again, he didn’t let her off easy, waited for her to put into words what she was feeling. As he stood there watching her, Alec realized that they weren’t so different—they both tended to hide behind carefully erected facades.
“But they’ll still be looking at me, wondering…”
“I know it will be hard. But I’ll be there with you. And I’ll help as much as I can.”
She was worried about that, too, he realized. So was he, though. Pretending to be intimate was always tricky, the touching appearing a bit too intentional. Even the conversation was difficult to pull off. If they were overheard, if someone really watched them… Perhaps he was pushing things too fast.
And perhaps he shouldn’t have stopped the moment in the kitchen; maybe he should have allowed her to take it a bit further. And possibly he would have if he’d been certain that he wouldn’t be tempted to take it even further still. He was going to have to be careful around her. She had a knack for continually reminding him that he not only had spent the past year looking for a killer, he had also spent it without female companionship.
Alec reached out and touched her shoulder. “If you’re looking at me, they won’t be thinking about what happened that night, they’ll be wondering about what’s going on between us. What will happen between us tonight.”
Even as he said it, he realized those weren’t the words she needed to hear. “I’m sorry,” he offered and allowed his hand to drop. “Usually I’m not quite this clumsy.”
She nodded and stepped away. “Just let me a grab a jacket.”
As he watched her go, he wondered. If she was having trouble stepping foot inside the café and confronting her coworkers, how was she going to handle their second stop this afternoon?
Chapter Seven
“I guess that’s it, then,” Katie said as they left through the Alligator Café’s back door.
It was just past one in the afternoon. In the past thirty-five minutes, while they’d been inside, the temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees and cloud cover had moved in ahead of a predicted cold front.
Wrapping his hand around Katie’s upper arm, Alec scanned the alley as they walked toward his SUV. Businesses on two parallel streets used the paved area for deliveries and employee parking. There had been fourteen cars when they arrived, but only twelve of those original vehicles remained. A small silver Buick and a beat-up green Ford truck were both missing, and the only new addition was a yellow Mercedes that belonged to the owner of the antique shop across the way.
A sharp breeze gusted, pushing an empty plastic bag toward them, but he ignored the movement, focusing instead on the Dumpster just ahead.
They’d stayed at the restaurant only long enough to drink a cup of coffee and for Katie to get her work schedule for the rest of the week. He’d planned to linger, perhaps ordering lunch, but had realized shortly after they’d sat down that they were going to need to work on the couple thing. With any luck, this time at least, anyone who had observed them would take her stiffness to mean that she was angry with him.
Still ten feet from the car, Alec used the remote to unlock the black Explorer, again scanning the length of the alley for movement. He opened the door at the same time he released his hold on Katie.
She stepped around the door, but instead of sliding in, she met Alec’s gaze. The breeze tugged her dark hair forward so that it sifted across her cheek and along the line of her jaw, the ends playing at the corner of her full lips. He’d been watching her mouth more and more, and even now wondered what it would feel like beneath his own.
She scraped the hair away. “Do you think we fooled any of them in there?”
“No. I think we’re going to need to work on it a bit more. At least the touching in public part.”
The wind shoved her hair across her cheek again, and Alec reached out, intending to push it back. He saw in her eyes the moment she realized his intent. Her own hand shot up before his fingers could make contact. Instead of withdrawing his hand, Alec let it settle over hers.
“You’re going to have to get accustomed to my touching you, Katie.” And he was going to have to learn how to control what he felt each time he got near her. “You’re not much of an actress.” Her fingers trembled beneath his.
Her lips were softly parted, and, as he watched, her tongue moistened the bottom one. He could feel the tension in her, tension similar to what they’d both experienced in the kitchen this morning.
He closed the distance between their bodies, his other hand coming up to frame her face. Her eyes were dark and deep, the kind of eyes that could suck even an unwilling man into their depths. He may not have been an unwilling man, but he was a cautious man. Far safer to take this next step where there was no possibility of it going any farther.
Alec lowered his mouth toward hers. “I think we need to get this behind us,” he said just before his lips settled over hers. He felt her go still, and perhaps he would have drawn back, but several of Katie’s coworkers had exited the back door and watched them. He deepened the kiss, and after several seconds she relaxed, her lips opening beneath his, her fingers fisting into his shirt.
How long would it take before she noticed that, while he could control many things, he was still a man?
She suddenly stiffened. When she ducked her chin to end the kiss he let her go and stepped back. His own breathing was uneven, and he suspected his eyes would reveal pretty much what hers did at that moment—sexual hunger.
“That should dispel any notions your coworkers might have about our relationship.”
Katie glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the rear door of the café close. She looked back at him, her lips void of their usual pink gloss, her eyes still di
lated. “Yes.” She offered a tight smile just before she turned away.
KATIE WATCHED out the side window for several minutes after they pulled onto Alligator Creek Road.
She could still taste Alec, could still feel his warm, male lips moving on hers. At the memory of his tongue sweeping the inside of her mouth, she felt a wave of desire build low in her body, similar to what she’d felt this morning in the kitchen.
It was just sex, though. Her hormones kicking up their heels. Though she’d contemplated the possibility before the attack, she had no intention of getting involved with Alec now. And she suspected Alec felt pretty much the same way. They shared a very important common goal, and allowing anything to get in the way of that goal would be foolish. Especially something as fleeting as physical desire.
But that didn’t change the way the kiss had affected her. The way the man affected her.
“Perhaps I should apologize for the way I handled that back there,” Alec said.
“So that’s not standard operating procedure for the Bureau?”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to glance across at her. “Not when working with a victim.”
The word hung there between them. Maybe he’d used it because he knew how it would affect her. Or to remind her of the real reason he’d just kissed her—to convince a killer to come after her.
“No apology required,” Katie said and glanced out the window. The honest truth was she didn’t know if she was ever going to be at ease around Alec. Even now, there was a low hum of awareness that seemed to arc between them. At least for her. Other than the kiss, he seemed to be completely comfortable around her.
Katie rested her head back and closed her eyes.
Not too many moments later, the Explorer’s tires vibrated across railroad tracks.
Katie’s eyes shot open, and seeing the canopy of ancient oaks sweep across the moon roof, the pit of her stomach dropped like a basketball through a hoop.
She straightened. “Where are we going?” But she already knew.
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