by Hagen, Casey
Her father had been her rock when her mom got sick. She’d only been five when they’d diagnosed her with stage four pancreatic cancer, a cancer that even if it hadn’t been stage four would have been almost impossible to beat. With one follow-up appointment after a rigorous round of tests, they’d delivered the terrifying news and hammered it home with the devastating blow that there was no point in even attempting to slow the cancer down. It would only make her mother unable to enjoy the short time she had left.
The bastard cells had flourished, and the angels swooped in and swiped her mother from their lives just three weeks later.
Her father had been her safe haven in the storm, always putting her first, despite his own grief.
She couldn’t imagine a life without him there being her pillar.
So yes, call it wishful thinking, call it denial, but she was definitely grasping at the whole idea that this was all just a prank.
“Are you willing to bet your students’ lives on that?” Evan asked, his gaze burning a hole in her, just daring her to try to dismiss his concern.
His words snapped her out of old memories, happy times tangled with sorrow, that both tempted her to reach out to grasp them and threatened to drag her under. “What?”
“Dismissing this as a prank ultimately puts them at risk.”
Her kids. Young. Defenseless. Keegan’s smile of absolute joy flashed in her mind. “You don’t think—”
“Look, someone went through a lot of trouble to hunt down important places from your past. They got into your dad’s house. That’s a lot of work to end it all with ‘just kidding’ in the end, don’t you think?”
Blair studied him. He leaned toward her, but kept his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. Anyone looking in would think they were discussing something as innocuous as where they wanted to grab dinner that night.
But the way his shoulders bunched, his arms flexed, the muscles jumped as he occasionally shifted and darted his gaze about them while his foot tapped in a rapid staccato told a whole other story.
He’d turned into a hunter before her very eyes, giving her a glimpse into the man he’d kept buried under his stylish façade.
The man he’d seemed adamant that she never see.
And now she wondered—the man he protected her from?
Suspecting that, how was she to trust him with all she held dear after just a few dates and an awkward distance he’d put between them?
“What do I need to do to keep them safe?” she asked, knowing that it didn’t matter what he said in the next moments, that she’d follow his every instruction to the letter if it meant no harm would come to the innocent lives around her.
Even if it meant putting her heart out there in an open invitation to break it.
“Keep working, but you need to start paying attention to your surroundings. You need to be aware of anything that looks out of the ordinary no matter how innocent it might appear.”
“Suspicious of everything around me? I—”
“Cautious,” he assured her.
“I can do that.”
“I need you to go over the information your father gave me and give me your perspective. If there are people in his past that seem questionable, anyone who might hold a grudge, if anything seems suspicious, I need to know about it.”
“I don’t know much about my father’s job. I mean, I know most of the firemen he works with, but his cases—he doesn’t really talk much about them.”
“No detail is too insignificant. Friends, neighbors, acquaintances. Everything is important, especially from your perspective. Even if you heard something on the news about a case he worked—”
She shook her head. “I don’t watch the news.”
His glasses shifted as he raised his eyebrows in surprise. “At all?”
“No.”
“You should have accidentally bumped into some of these news stories. Even if on the radio…”
“I listen to satellite radio. No news.” She knew it was weird, but lately the world had been so full of yuck, and the beginning of the school year was always the hardest. She needed to put her energy where it mattered—into her students and school.
“That explains why you didn’t know about some of the more recent fires. Why don’t you watch the news?”
“There’s never anything good on the news. And some of the stories—” Her throat grew thick with emotion when she recalled some of the child abuse cases in the area that hadn’t had positive outcomes. “It hurts my heart to watch them. Plus, if my dad is on the scene of a big fire, I don’t want to know about it.”
“Fair enough,” he said, scratching his chin as he studied her. His gaze drifted to her shoulder. She glanced over and noticed his other forearm rested on the back of her seat, his fingers just a fraction of an inch from her skin.
Talk about another thing her heart couldn’t take. In a short blink of time, she’d grown to love the way he’d made a habit of absently tracing his thumb back and forth along the top of her shoulder, sometimes drifting lower toward her collarbone.
Even though she’d had lovers before and was no stranger to sexual relationships, she’d never gotten remotely close to that point with Evan.
Oh, she had wanted to. Hoped to even. But almost as soon as the fire of attraction flared in his eyes with a lingering touch, something shuddered inside of him, dousing the flame, leaving a wall between them.
Whatever haunted him and fueled his reluctance, also made his light touch, and the fact that he let himself go there, more intimate than any other touch that had come before him.
And every reverent glide of his fingers tempted her tender heart.
She leaned a bit farther out of his reach, hoping he didn’t notice and that her pulling back didn’t hurt him.
Although, why she worried about his heart after the way he had bruised hers, she didn’t know and probably shouldn’t examine too closely.
Clearing her throat, she met his eyes. “Is that all I have to do?”
Please say that’s all. Then I can get out of this car and not smell the musky scent of your cologne that I’m pretty sure I’ve smelled before, but never as intoxicating as it is coming from your skin.
He eyed her with that hooded gaze, the one she imagined him using to force people to bend to his will.
Yeah, she was in trouble.
“One more thing…get your guest room ready,” he said.
* * *
Blair’s jaw dropped, her eyes shooting wide open. “Oh no. No, no, nope,” she said with a hard shake of her head as she grabbed for the door handle.
He leaned around her and put his hand over hers before she could pull the latch. She stilled, the rise and fall of her chest as she sucked in gulps of air expanding her lungs so much that with each inhale, her breasts brushed against his chest.
Her panicked breaths fluttered from her soft mouth and fanned against his lips hovering just inches above hers.
“It’s non-negotiable, Blair.”
Dark lashes fluttered and fanned out, the tips reaching the delicate skin just below her eyebrows. Her eyes locked on his. Despite the fact that he’d kissed her a few times before, he realized he’d never quite studied her this close.
He’d always closed his eyes before he could see the yellow bursts that shot out from her irises, the small freckle under her right eye, and the faint, one-inch scar on her forehead.
Details meant intimacy. Scars meant stories.
Stories meant sharing.
Yeah, he’d mastered the art of shutting that shit down early.
When it came to Blair, he’d shuttered himself from this intimate view of her because it set his heart racing with a pounding that shook his ribs from the inside out. Blood surged through his veins in a whole different way than it did when he went into protection mode.
He coveted.
And the hunger terrified him.
She licked her lips, leaving that plump bottom lip slick and shiny. It
had been almost a month since he’d tasted the hint of honey and lemon, a flavor he’d forever think of as Blair.
“Evan, I can’t have you in my house. It’s my safe place. There are no memories of you there. I’d like to keep it that way,” she whispered, putting distance between them with her words as she swayed a fraction toward him.
“I had planned to never see you again. Looks like neither of us are going to get what we want,” he said, unable to steal his focus from the fleeting glimpses of her damp tongue.
Or maybe they’d both be honest and take exactly what they longed for, destroying them both.
“If I let you in, when you walk away, you’ll break my heart this time,” she said as her fingertip drifted across his chin, tempting him to suck the digit into his mouth.
“Protect your heart, Blair, and I’ll protect you,” he said as he touched his forehead to hers and closed his eyes.
He’d never get closer than this, in this moment. He let her warmth seep into his bones, taking the sting out of the frigid cold inside him.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” she asked.
“That’s all I have to give.”
“Then just let me go,” she said in a broken whisper, the sound sticking a barb into his atrophied heart.
He took his hand from hers and sank back into his seat. His palms itched to meet her warm, soft skin. He clenched the steering wheel to keep himself from reaching her.
This was why he had maintained a distance.
This was why they could never manage to be friends.
Because one day, his willpower would run out and he’d take.
He’d do so without offering anything in return.
She sighed, and in that moment, he knew he had her, and in turn, condemned them both.
“You can follow me to my place. I just need to get my things first,” she murmured, staring straight ahead, a look of longing in her eyes as though the school were her salvation.
“Where are you parked?” he asked in an effort to get back to the case and as far away from matters of the heart as possible.
“In the side parking lot. When I get back, I’ll direct you,” she said, pushing her door open.
“If you show me now, I’ll check out your car first.”
She tossed a look at him over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“It’s been sitting unattended all day. You’re not getting into it until I search it.”
“Wasn’t I in danger yesterday? No one looked over my car then.”
“You just said you’d do anything I said so why are you fighting me on this? Especially if it keeps you safe.”
“I don’t know. I guess it just seems overkill. And I don’t want my coworkers to know what’s going on just yet.”
“Then let’s do this. Show me where your car is and while you run in, I’ll wait by it. When you get back, pretend it won’t start. I’ll pop the hood as if I’m jumpstarting it. That should take care of the curiosity.” And make something that should have been easy a whole lot more complicated, but if it eased her worry over how it would look to her coworkers, he’d suck it up. He needed to get her home and access the information likely filling his inbox, and he needed to find out what information she might have, if any.
He seriously doubted she would have anything valuable considering how detached she seemed to be from her father’s everyday work.
“What about when you have to look underneath the car?”
“What makes you think I have to do that?”
“That’s what they do on TV shows and in the movies when they’re looking for C-4, right?”
Evan let out a laugh that banished the last of the tension between them. This is what he loved about spending time with her. In her world they could veer from, “Hey, isn’t it overkill to look over the car?” to C-4 in a matter of sentences and all of it with the same casualness that came with talking about the food offerings at a church brunch.
How did she do it? How did she take a tense situation, the kind of situation that would bring a mere mortal to their knees, and talk about it as matter-of-factly as she might when dropping off her dry cleaning?
He wanted the ability to do that.
“I think this might be a bit different than on TV, but you have a point. Just tell them I’m a guy and like making sure everything is in tip-top shape. Most guys are like that…they should buy it,” Evan said.
“You’re not most guys.”
He wanted to ask her what exactly she meant by that, but that would have to wait for another time, or maybe it was best left alone. “Pretend I am.”
“Hmmm, that’s the problem. I haven’t been successful at reducing you to ordinary yet.”
“Same goes, Blair. Same goes. Now tell me where I’m going.”
He led them out of the loop and onto the street just to pull into the lot to the immediate right.
“It’s that silver Toyota RAV4 right there,” she said, pointing her finger at a small SUV next to a green sedan.
“Silver? I’m surprised. I thought you’d have something with color,” he said as he turned the wheel with his palm and glided into the spot next to her.
Her brows furrowed. “Silver is a color.”
“Yeah, but it’s a dime-a-dozen color. I saw you with something a little more unique. Maybe a lime green MINI Cooper convertible or something.”
“Yes, well, I could afford an eight-year-old, silver RAV with a broken console latch. A shiny, new convertible is a bit out of my budget unless I want to move home with my dad, which I don’t.”
“Point taken. Go ahead in and I’ll wait,” he said, nodding toward the school.
“Five minutes,” she said as she ducked out the door and jogged into the school through the side door.
Evan scanned the trees and the cars surrounding hers, but nothing stood out. The sound of the occasional car door shutting drew his attention, but it turned out to be intermittent staff members cutting out for the day.
He told her he’d wait, but the familiar tingle between his shoulder blades and the way the hair stood up on his neck told him something was off. He just needed to find out what.
With his promise to be inconspicuous at the forefront of his mind, he got out of his car and made like he was examining it, all the while keeping his gaze on her car as he moved around the vehicle as much as he could.
Circling to stand between the two, the breeze drifted through the trees, and he took a deep breath.
And smelled it.
Gas.
He crouched down, pretending to look at the side of his car door and while down there, ducked his head to take a look under the RAV.
A small pool of gas soaked into the ground from where it dripped out of the leaking gas tank. A flash of blackened silver caught his eye where the muffler drooped toward the ground at an awkward angle as if it barely hung on.
Evan would bet all it would take is one bump to knock the muffler free, where it would drag against the ground, shooting sparks toward the gas tank.
Shit.
Grabbing his phone, he stood, made his way to the driver’s side of his car, and dialed Dylan.
“Everything okay?” Dylan asked.
“Not so much. We’re going to need a tow truck.”
“What happened?”
“Someone tampered with her car.”
“You sure?”
“I didn’t get a good look, but her muffler is hanging on by a thread, and her gas tank is leaking.”
“Any chance she’s shit with car maintenance?” Dylan asked.
“Not a single one. Look, there might be more happening under there, but she doesn’t want her coworkers to know what’s going on, and I don’t know if there’s someone around keeping an eye out to see the results of their handiwork so I’m not checking it out here. If you could get a flatbed to come haul it to Melvin’s to take a look, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll call him right now.”
Blair
pushed out the double doors and headed for him with a tote bag over the one shoulder and a laptop bag over the other, tearing up the pavement with each step.
“Do me a favor? Get Tex to grab the security footage from the school. FrederickElementary on Fletcher. It’s the lot facing Greenwood Avenue. Everything from six in the morning on.”
“I’m on it,” Dylan said.
For the first time, he knew what it must have been like for Dylan knowing that people he cared about, loved even, hung in the balance when his daughter had been kidnapped. A daughter he hadn’t known about. Harlow had found him, confessed to having his child fifteen years earlier, and begged for his help to find her.
Not that his history with Blair could compare, but if he were honest, the fact that he cared as much as he did is exactly why he held himself apart from her. “Thanks.”
“You really want to thank me, get dinner for everyone tonight. They’re going to drop by to go over the intel.”
His eyes darted to Blair who had just reached for her car handle. “Don’t,” he said with a scathing bite as he headed for her.
She reared back, and her mouth pinched. “What is it?”
He propped his arm against the door. “We’re bringing over a wrecker.”
“A wrecker? Why? What’s wrong?”
“We’ll discuss it in the car. Dylan, I’ve got to go. I’ll text you the address. We’ll have dinner at seven.” He clicked off the phone and met her on the passenger side. He stood between her and the RAV and reached around her to open her door.
Leaning in, he made sure to keep his eyes on hers, doing his best to look the part of the adoring boyfriend there to pick her up.
Skimming his lips over her cheek, he tasted his way to her ear and whispered over the sensitive skin there. “Someone tampered with the car.”
She titled her head, giving him more access to her neck.
Or to lean away.
He preferred to think she was just as affected as he was, evidenced by the growing problem between his legs.