by Nikki Duncan
“Ha.” Aidan laughed the idea off. “Lana Quinn and vulnerable don’t coexist in the same stratosphere, let alone the same moment. Now, I’m taking her home, and we’re all getting back to work on this case.”
“All of us?” Liam jerked his head toward Lana who sat watching them from the front seat. “Or is it just you from this point?”
“I know better than to go it alone, but yes, she’s going to have a less involved role.”
He shouldn’t be having this conversation with Liam. That he was, that his brother felt the need to call him out on something, meant Aidan was getting too close. Damn if this didn’t happen every time a case involved Lana. She got under his skin and he lost objectivity. It was precisely why he’d avoided her since the Valentine’s Day case. The woman pushed him to a dangerous edge.
“She’s not going to take that announcement well.”
No shit. “I’m being watched on this one. Her feelings can’t be a priority.” Can’t. He’d said can’t instead of aren’t. Another sign of his conflict, because part of him wanted to put her first.
“Watched? By who?”
“Someone I need to worry about.”
Liam’s brow knotted with curiosity, but rather than press for answers he stepped back with his hands up in surrender. “Call when you need us.”
Aidan nodded then moved to the driver’s side. The lull in the hospital had lured him into a false comfort zone. For a brief time he’d forgotten why he shouldn’t be with Lana. He’d allowed himself to forget who she was and what she did for a living. He’d thought more about her recovery and how she made him feel.
That he had been content thinking about her, worrying about her, staying at her side rather than chasing down leads should bother him. It should worry him that he hadn’t missed being with his team to work the case and be the one to find the killer. The goal was still there, but the identity he gained from his job wasn’t as clear-cut as it had been before this case. Before allowing himself to enjoy Lana.
“Back to life. Back to reality.”
“What?” Aidan asked. He’d gone into his thoughts and missed what Lana said.
“Nothing. Just telling myself it’s time to refocus on my story.” She faced the window and sniffed quietly. Her hand, with only traces of a rash left, lifted as if to wipe away a tear.
His chest compressed, squeezing his heart. The idea that he’d somehow done something to make her cry…
She’s vulnerable right now.
He’d laughed at Liam’s warning. Or maybe he’d laughed at the idea of Lana’s strength being shakable. It didn’t matter. For all he knew she was teary over the idea of losing time on the story. Yeah. That had to be it. They both needed to get back to work.
“Speaking of the story, what were you working on yesterday?” How could it only have been yesterday evening that she’d been attacked? It seemed like so much more time had passed. “Who did you talk to? Where did you go?”
“Are you asking so you can find another way to shut me down?”
The return of her contention restored his balance. This Lana he knew how to deal with. He felt more himself with the hard-edged woman bracing for a fight. “I’m asking so I can figure out how you landed your ass in the killer’s crosshairs.”
“I wish I could trust that, Aidan, but you have this habit of taking small bits of information and finding ways to use them against me.”
“I already told you the story would be yours if you let us work it first.”
“No, actually. You never agreed to give me everything I’ll need for a full story.”
“Well, the story is yours. You don’t have to worry about us talking to another reporter.”
“Ah.” She turned in her seat to face him fully. Any hints of vulnerability had vanished. “A carefully worded response that still doesn’t offer a guarantee you’ll share information.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Honesty.” She didn’t hesitate in answering or continuing. “And a little trust. You seem to handle…this…” She waved her hand between them before dropping it back to her lap. “This whatever it is we have when we’re not talking about the story. You change, though, the instant you might have to really trust me.”
“Change?”
“You shut down.” She shook her head. “Hell, I’d have thought if you were going to shut down you would have done it after meeting my father. I actually expected you to draw a clichéd line in the sand that wasn’t to be crossed.”
“Should have,” he muttered.
“Instead, you shared the bed with me, held me and then made love to me.”
He strangled the steering wheel as arousal roared through his body. In his ears. It took no more than a verbal reminder of their morning in her hospital bed to have him yearning for more. To have him wanting another chance to explore her curves, allowing his senses and fingers to lead the way in darkness.
“Shouldn’t have.” He instantly wished he could recall the muttered words. They hadn’t been what he meant. He meant them, just not the way she would take it.
“Really?” She leaned against the door and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “So what was the biggest mistake? Holding me or having sex with me? Or has everything we’ve done and shared been one giant ball of shouldn’t have?”
Holding you was the biggest mistake. Holding you and caring. “Lana, you’re misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think I am.” She unfolded her arms and relaxed her entire approach as they pulled up to her apartment complex. “I will, however, make this very easy for you.”
He studied her cautiously, waiting for a word bomb to detonate.
“I’ll play along with the dictates you no doubt intend to make. I’ll accept that you’re likely to report back to my father for the sake of keeping your job. I’ll even keep you up to date on what I’m doing in regards to the story.”
He turned off the car, never looking away from her. Calculation colored her eyes, as if he was missing a part of her master plan. “But?”
“I expect to have access to your case file as it pertains to this story. All of it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. “Then I can’t share the information I find with you. We’ll see who gets to the end first.”
With her resolve stiffening her shoulders, Lana exited the car and headed to her apartment. Aidan watched her stride confidently up her walk, battling himself. Sharing their files could put her in danger, but so could keeping them from her. He needed to keep tabs on her. Needed to know what she knew, because he’d bet his home she knew a ton more than she’d let on. The only way he’d get her cooperation was to give her some.
“Shit.” Aidan pulled his keys from the ignition and ran after Lana. When he caught up to her his blood froze.
She stood five feet from her door. Her body had gone rigid and shook violently.
“Lana.” He slowed and spoke calmly. She didn’t seem to hear him. He reached out, touched her shoulder.
She screamed, grabbed his wrist, stepped back into him and flipped him over her shoulder. Training had taught him how to fall and quickly regain his footing, but no amount of training made smashing into a concrete walk with his gun holstered at his back less painful. When he jumped back to his feet, she had retreated several feet and stood staring at him.
“Lana.” Her eyes had gone so wide he wasn’t sure if she saw him or saw him as an attacker. He was sure he’d underestimated her ability to take care of herself, because even in a moment of panic she’d taken him down. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She nodded. Shook her head. Nodded again. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
“Lana.” He moved toward her, closing the distance as if he wasn’t worried she’d panic or try to flip him again. “Let’s go inside.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head. Whispered. “It’s happening again.”
“Can’t what? What’s happening?” Hyper-alert
, he scanned the area but sensed no one out of the ordinary. It was the same quiet, seemingly safe courtyard they’d walked through before. And then she’d been hospitalized.
“Can’t face it. Again.”
The quiver in her voice, the fear in her unblinking stare, the shake in her shoulders. They made sense. And they revealed an insight into her as a woman. She had a weakness, and though he’d seen it he hadn’t recognized it.
“This isn’t the first time work has followed you home.” Knowing her, it wouldn’t be the last, but he didn’t need to put that on her at the moment.
“This last attack wasn’t an invasion,” he continued as he edged her closer to her door. “They never crossed your threshold.” Unlike The Killing Cupid. But if she moved every time a shadow of her job followed her home, especially if she continued pursuing stories like a few of her more recent ones, she’d run out of places to live.
Her stare latched on to him. Her trembling eased a fraction. “Is it wrong that I’m scared?”
“Only if you run away.” And he’d have expected more from Lana Quinn even before knowing who her father was. Now, he was actually surprised she’d moved the first time.
“I don’t think I’m as brave as you think I am.”
“Then be as brave as your father would want you to be.” He took her keys from her hand, opened her door and stepped back. “Use what’s happened to become safer.”
After a protein-heavy, mid-afternoon breakfast and a hot shower, Lana curled into the corner of the couch mentally rehashing the events of yesterday. The longest yesterday in her history. She tried to come up with where she’d gone or whom she’d talked to who could have alerted the killer to her investigation.
Aidan wanted answers, but no more than her. He insisted she knew more than she remembered. So did she, but whatever it was it wasn’t coming to her. It did impress her he hadn’t accused her of holding out on him intentionally. Yet, the more she thought about the day before, the more confused and tired she became.
She’d only talked with her boss, Darla and Maria Walker—an herbologist.
Tall pots, short pots. Skinny pots, fat pots. Pots with holes in the sides. Whether they sat on the ground or on multi-leveled tables or regular-looking benches, potted plants lined Maria’s front walkway and then circled the house. Aromas ranging from soft and sweet to sharp and spicy drifted on the gentle breeze that helped ladybugs flit from one plant to another.
That anyone would have the patience to nurture so many plants and keep them all as healthy as they appeared to be was a mystery to Lana. She could kill a cactus in the desert as easily as she could slaughter a lily pad with water.
Unsure if she liked the scents or if there were too many warring with one another, she approached the leaf-green door of the small-frame house. A sprite of a woman in vintage-type clothes answered almost immediately after Lana knocked. Her ponytail was haphazard and her smile was kind. The kindly appearance was contradicted by the hard set in her eyes.
“I’m quite busy. Can I help you?”
“My name is Lana Quinn.” Lana offered her hand, but the woman didn’t accept it. “Are you Maria Walker?”
“Yes.”
Undeterred, Lana dropped her hand to her side. “I’m a journalist working on a story about using herbal remedies in lieu of traditional medicines. I’ve heard you’re the expert herbologist to see and hoped I could ask you some questions.”
Maria regarded her for several long minutes before stepping aside in invitation. “Talk while I work. Touch nothing. Some are poisonous.”
The house more closely resembled a greenhouse than the home it was. Or that it seemed to be judging by pictures of family on the walls and needlepoint pillows adorning soft ivory sofas and chairs with books and magazines and a Kindle on the nearby tables.
“They’re not all herbs, are they?”
“No. Some regular plants and flowers have medicinal qualities without them being an herb.”
“Right.” Lana held her phone up, ready to engage the recorder app. “Do you mind if I record this?”
“Go ahead. I have no secrets.” Maria led Lana into a brightly lit sunroom that spanned the width of the house. More plants filled the room and the backyard beyond the glass.
“How long have you been an herbologist? How did you discover your gift with plants?” Some interviewees needed to be coaxed with flattery. With Maria the flattery wasn’t needed. Only honesty.
“As a child I had a skin condition that made it impossible for me to be in the light. Even the light from the dullest light bulb was too intense.” She rubbed the back of her hand unconsciously. The move drew Lana’s attention to healed blisters that looked remarkably like slightly misshapen cigarette burns.
“My parents researched what some doctors called my vampirism, but no treatments worked.”
Lana glanced around the sunroom and back to the smooth-skinned Maria as pieces trickled into place. “Someone found you an herbal remedy.”
“My father’s college friend was the son of an Indian healer. He brought us a series of plant extracts. Some I bathed in. Others we slathered on like lotion and then wrapped me in Saran wrap or warm towels.”
“How long before you were cured?” Lana had been to acupuncturists and believed in the idea of alternative treatments, but she’d never met anyone with such a story. Maria’s quality of life had altered exponentially because of some plants.
“I’m still waiting.” She moved around the plants, petting them and tenderly bending their stems, explaining that each plant’s potency and strength could be determined by how well it could bend under pressure without breaking. It also proved their resiliency.
“If you’re not healed…” Lana allowed her question to remain unfinished, certain the nudge would be enough to get Maria back on the track they’d been on.
“My time in the sun is limited to a few hours at a time, but as I get older and continue to use the ointments, I build up more resistance.”
“How long?”
“I lived in the dark for seven years. I studied with Mr. Grayson until I was twenty-two. The last fifteen years I’ve been on my own.”
“Grayson?” Lana schooled the excitement from her voice. The name couldn’t be a coincidence. “There is an allergist in town named Grayson.”
Maria’s face softened. Even the mysterious reserve in her eyes softened. “Yes. Dr. Mike Grayson. He’s Mr. Grayson’s nephew. We studied together.”
“Yet you chose different paths.”
Maria shrugged. “I had a greener thumb. He had a gentler hand with patients.”
“I’ve heard he prefers a holistic approach. I guess with an uncle as an Indian healer that makes sense.”
“You see the logic quickly. Mike’s still trying to justify his decision to his family.”
Fond affection slowed Maria’s already easy speaking pace. If she and Grayson weren’t involved it wasn’t from a lack of desire on her part.
“How does he handle their disappointment?”
“With grace.” Maria smiled as if she understood and the understanding seemed to extend to Lana.
She’d thought after winning her dad over to the idea that she’d never go into law enforcement she’d gotten over her desire to please people. Gotten over the discomfort deep in her heart when someone she cared for didn’t value her choices. Aidan revived that discomfort.
“You look like you know something about Mike’s situation.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. A little.” Lana could taste the understatement on her lips.
Two hours later, Lana had walked out of Maria’s home with a healthy dose of information on growing and blending plants recorded on her phone app, along with confirmation that Maria supplied Dr. Grayson. She’d also found a woman she genuinely enjoyed and had been gifted with a hybrid plant Maria had created and promised that Lana couldn’t kill.
Her mind blurred for a moment. When it cleared, Lana was at her door facing a small person shrouded in a hood
ie. A touch on her hand, little more than a sweeping brush, kicked off an instant panic. Her throat closed. Her hand swelled. Pustules bubbled up and spread with an itching fire that gripped her mind.
Her visitor—no, attacker—said something but she couldn’t hear. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything more than watch the pustules spread.
Lana jerked awake with awareness sharp in her mind. She’d have bolted off the bed, but strong arms locked her down.
“Shh.” Aidan’s purring hum in her ear soothed away the top layer of fear. “You’re safe.”
She settled into his hard warmth. Fiber by fiber, tissue by tissue, the fear eased away to make room for clarity. A little too much clarity.
She wanted to fight against him, to rip free of his hold, but damn if her contradictory side didn’t want to linger against his body. Hot then cold. In then out. The song that was always on the radio could’ve been written about them. Neither of them seemed like they could get off the rapidly spinning Merry-Go-Round any more than Lana could ignore the latest truth she’d seen in her dream.
She felt for Aidan the way Maria felt for Dr. Grayson. Worse, it had to have been her conversation with Maria where she’d captured the attention of the killer. She’d either spoken with them or endangered someone else. More concerned with the possibilities than with how she’d gotten to her bed and why Aidan had stayed to hold her, Lana pulled away and turned.
“You need to have your team check into some more people.” She named Lance Keys’s girlfriend and the herbologist. “One of them either is or knows the killer.”
Aidan didn’t question her as he pulled his phone from his pocket—he never seemed to be without it—and sent a text message. Hopefully it was to his team asking them to check on Darla and Maria. “What makes you think that?”
His question confirmed that while he was beginning to trust her, he still needed verification. Maybe it was so he had clarity on the angles of the case. She doubted that would be all of it though. Part of him couldn’t help but resist trusting her blindly.