“Does it have a bed?” he asked. She nodded. “Then it sounds perfect to me.”
“Then let’s go,” she replied.
Amazingly all of the bullets that had flown had been specifically targeted at the motel window. Her car parked in front had no damage, which made her think that the shooter or shooters had been proficient with their automatic weapons.
The minute Jackson slid into the passenger seat, she caught a whiff of his cologne, and her brain exploded with the tactile memory of lying beneath him.
His body had been hard and had seemed to completely surround her in a cocoon of safety, of warmth, that she’d never felt before in her life. Despite the situation, there had been something erotic about his weight on top of her as their hearts beat a frantic rhythm.
“We’re going to have to figure out how in the hell this happened,” he said once they were in her car and headed to her house. “Who knew where I was staying?”
“Me, of course, and my director and probably a few other people at headquarters.” She tried to focus on the conversation and not the thoughts of how she’d felt beneath him. Be a professional, she told herself. Obviously Jackson was in agent mode, as she should be, as well.
“The only people we spoke to about this case were agents who had worked with Amberly in the past and they all said she was having no personal issues with anyone. I find it hard to believe that somebody inside headquarters was responsible for what just happened.”
“Maybe, maybe not. The only other possibility is that we shook up somebody’s cage in Mystic Lake today and we made them damned uncomfortable. If that’s the case then we were followed when we left there to head to the motel.”
Stricken, Marjorie cast him a quick glance. “I didn’t even think about the possibility of anyone following us from there to here. I didn’t pay attention to the cars behind us.” She squeezed her fingers around the steering wheel, mentally beating herself up for being so careless.
“Don’t worry your pretty head,” he replied easily. “I didn’t think about it, either. But we have now been warned, and we have to proceed from here with caution. We’re poking somebody and they don’t like it.”
Proceed with caution. The words whirled around in her head. Somehow she felt as if she was already abandoning that idea by inviting him into her home.
Chapter Five
She’d told him her home was small, but when she pulled into the driveway of the cracker box–sized place, Jackson was a bit shocked.
He was by no means a snob, but the size of the house reminded him of his earlier thought that she was making sacrifices to keep her mother happy. The entire house would fit into the living room of his apartment.
As they walked through the front door and she flipped on a light in the living room, the aura of sacrifice continued. The room was furnished with a cheap futon, two end tables and a bookcase that looked as if it had been thrown out on somebody’s lawn for trash pickup. A small television sat on the top shelf, and he would bet his next month’s salary that she didn’t even have basic cable.
“It isn’t much, but it’s home,” she said, as if seeing the room through his eyes.
“It’s just fine,” he assured her. “If you could just show me to my bedroom I’ll stow my things away and then we’ll talk and see what our next move should be.”
“Follow me,” she said. She led him down a hallway that was little more than a few steps and stopped at the first doorway. “This is the guest room, and the bathroom is across the hall.”
Jackson stepped into the room, which was just big enough to hold a double bed, a single nightstand and a chest of drawers. The room was painted a light shade of blue and the spread was a geometric design of light and dark blue. Nothing fancy, just functional. He would have expected nothing more from her.
“This is perfect,” he said as he tossed his duffel bag on the bed. “Do you have a computer and internet connection here?”
“I do. I have an area in the kitchen where I keep my laptop. You’re welcome to use it until you get something to replace your own.”
“I’m not doing anything tonight, although I think maybe a cup of coffee might be in order. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got adrenaline firing through me, and there’s no way I can go to sleep right now.”
“Why don’t you get settled in and I’ll go make half a pot of coffee,” she replied. She got halfway out of the doorway and then turned back to look at him, her eyes simmering with emotion. “Jackson, thank you again for saving my life tonight. When those bullets slammed through the window I couldn’t even process what had happened. If you hadn’t grabbed me...” Her voice trailed off.
He smiled at her. “Darlin’, it was my pleasure.”
Her cheeks dusted with color and she quickly disappeared from his sight. He turned to his duffel bag and unzipped it to begin to unpack.
As he stowed underwear, jeans and T-shirts into the drawers, his mind whirled. Somebody had tried to kill them. Faces of the people they’d interacted with since his arrival in town flew through his head. Had they already made contact with the person or persons responsible for Cole and Amberly’s disappearance, or had small-town gossip let the perp know they were in town and asking questions?
He’d flung Marjorie down and covered her to save her life, and yet as the bullets had flown all around them he’d been far too conscious of the press of her full breasts against his chest, of the sweet scent of her that made him want to press his lips into the hollow of her throat.
He hung the clothes he’d managed to get from the motel closet in the much smaller closet in the bedroom. He then grabbed the small leather bag that contained his toiletries and carried it into the bathroom.
Staring at his reflection for a moment, he forced himself to change the track of his brain. He couldn’t think about Marjorie as a desirable woman now—he had to think like an FBI agent who had just nearly been killed.
The scent of freshly brewed coffee drew him down the short hallway and into a kitchen that had a small table for two, a short counter and a built-in desk that was obviously her workstation. A laptop was on top along with an all-in-one printer/fax machine and phone. She’d probably spent more money on her work equipment than in the entire furnishings of the house.
She turned from the counter as he entered the room. “Coffee is ready,” she said.
Her lips pressed tight and her shoulders were tense. Her face was unusually pale. Her blouse had dirt streaks, and a button was missing, and her hair was a riotous mess of shiny red-gold strands.
She looked like a woman who had been to hell and hadn’t yet fully realized that she’d really made her way back.
He walked over to where she stood and placed his hands gently on her slender shoulders. “Sit. I’ll get the coffee.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he quickly slid his finger over her lips. “Trust me, I got this.”
She nodded and walked over to the table where she crumpled into the chair as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
Jackson turned to face the counter and opened the cabinet door above the coffeemaker, unsurprised to find the three cups nestled side by side. “Cream or sugar?” he asked as he poured the brew.
“Black is fine.”
When he turned back with the cups in hand, she was once again sitting upright, the paleness gone and her eyes glittering with a hint of anger. Good, he needed her angry and hopefully not at him. Anger channeled in the right direction would make them both driven to find answers.
He set one cup before her, then took the seat across from her and wrapped his hands around the warmth of his cup. “Tomorrow I want you to get the names of every single person here in Kansas City who knew the motel where I’d been set to stay. First thing in the morning, we’re going to check out John Merriweather’s alibi for tonight. He’s the only
person we interviewed here in the city.”
She nodded, her eyes gleaming with a steely strength he found ridiculously hot. “And then we head back to Mystic Lake and continue our interviews there, along with checking any alibis of people we interacted with there today.”
She took a sip of her coffee and her gaze remained locked with his. “Was this like what was happening in Bachelor Moon and the case you were pulled off?” She set her cup back on the table.
“Nothing like what happened tonight. None of the people working that case came under any kind of a threat. Tonight wasn’t just a scare tactic, it was attempted murder.”
Her eyes paled a bit. “I know and I darn straight want to find out who was behind that gun.”
Jackson grimaced with frustration. “I wish I would have been able to get a glimpse of the car.”
She smiled at him and for a moment he wanted to get lost in it, in her. “You couldn’t cover the window and me at the same time. I’m grateful you made the decision you did.” Her smile faded. “I just wish we knew if we’ve shaken up somebody here in Kansas City or somebody in Mystic Lake. It would be easier to investigate if we only had one place to look.”
“Shame on Amberly and Cole for living in two places and making this more difficult on us,” he said wryly. He broke their gaze, glancing around the room in an effort to stay focused on the case and not how much her smile had warmed him or how soft her lips had been beneath his fingers.
He noticed a red light blinking on her telephone answering machine. “It looks like you have some phone messages. Maybe you should check them out, make sure one of the calls isn’t from our motel visitors. It would be a boon if our perp was the chatty type.”
She took another sip of her coffee and then got up from the table and approached the answering machine. The first message was an offer for a free estimate from a siding company. She erased it and then a female voice filled the room.
“Marjorie, when are you going to come visit me? It feels like it’s been weeks. Oh, and when you come, bring some of those chocolate almonds that you know I like. I don’t know why you don’t quit that silly job of yours so you’d have more time to take care of things for me. You could easily live on your trust fund—”
Marjorie stopped the machine and took a moment before she turned back to face Jackson. “No bad guys leaving messages,” she said with obvious forced lightness as she returned to the table.
“And no trust fund,” he replied softly.
This time the smile she offered him had no heart behind it. “Stepfather number two managed to get power of attorney over my trust fund and by the time he left my mother there was nothing left.”
“And your mother isn’t aware of the fact that you have no money except a paycheck?”
“I’ve tried to keep her protected as much as possible in financial matters. Besides, it doesn’t matter. I’m not exactly the trust-fund-baby type.”
“But you could have been,” Jackson replied. His stomach twisted with a wave of grief as he saw the residual effects left behind when a con man came to town.
This time her smile was genuine. “No, I could never spend my days buying shoes and fancy dresses and attending charity events. I knew I wanted to be an FBI agent when I was fairly young. I wanted a life of rules and structure. I like having plans and sticking to them, the mundane tasks of filing reports and interviewing suspects.”
“But a little spontaneity never hurts. I mean, I’m sure you didn’t expect to be thrown on the floor and shot at tonight,” he replied.
“I know the unexpected happens on the job, but there’s not much room for spontaneity in my personal life, and that’s the way I like it. And now, let’s firm up our plans for tomorrow.”
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time they finished talking and Marjorie carried their cups to the sink. She quickly washed them and placed them on a dish drainer and then turned to look at him. “Since it’s so late, why don’t we plan on leaving here around nine in the morning?”
“Noon sounds better, but I can do nine,” he agreed.
She looked exhausted. Her face had once again taken on a pale cast, and dark shadows rode the delicate skin just beneath her eyes. Her shoulders no longer held rigid tension but rather slumped slightly with the weight of the long day.
As they left the kitchen she turned out the lights and he checked the front door to make sure it was locked up tight. Together they started down the hallway.
“You should find everything you need in the bathroom beneath the sink cabinet,” she said as they paused in front of his bedroom. “If you need anything just let me know. Good night, Jackson.”
“Good night, Maggie.”
She turned to head to her own bedroom, and Jackson realized he couldn’t just let her go, not without doing something spontaneous and probably dangerous, as well.
He called her name, and when she turned back to face him, he didn’t give himself time to think—he certainly didn’t give her a chance to prepare—he simply pulled her into his arms and bent his head to capture her lips with his.
She stiffened and he braced himself for her hands against his chest, pushing him away, or a knee to the groin that would take him down to the carpeting.
But as the kiss continued, she melted into him, became soft and pliant as her arms wound around his neck and tangled in the thick hair at the nape of his neck. The hot, sweet taste of her, the feel of her sexy curves in his arms, was so good it was bad. He knew on every level this was a mistake, but he was unable to deny himself this moment with this particular woman.
She was like nobody else he’d ever kissed before. Her lips were sweeter, her body hotter and he recognized on some elemental level that without trying she was burrowing into his brain, into his heart, where no other woman had ever been before.
This thought halted the kiss. He pulled back and released her and stumbled back a step. She stared at him, a stunned look on her face. She raised a hand and touched her lips with fingers that trembled.
“Why did you do that?” Her voice was husky, and the sound shot a new wave of desire through him.
“Spontaneity,” he said. “It’s not always a bad thing, even in your personal life.”
He didn’t wait for her to reply, knew only the need to escape from her before he did something even more stupid. He turned and went into the bedroom and quietly closed the door behind him.
* * *
MARJORIE TOSSED AND TURNED for the next couple of hours, cold as she remembered the sounds of the bullets that might have killed them, and heated by Jackson’s kiss.
The man definitely knew how to kiss a woman so that her toes curled and desire for more pooled in the pit of her stomach.
The one relationship Marjorie had experienced in her past had lasted only three weeks. He’d been a handsome, slightly quirky computer geek. She’d found his conversation tedious, the sex adequate but nothing mind-blowing, and ultimately had decided what she’d always known: relationships were more trouble than they were worth.
But she had a feeling making love with Jackson might be a mind-blowing experience, not that she intended to allow that to happen. Tomorrow night he would be in another motel room and she wouldn’t have to worry...or want any more hallway encounters.
What she needed to focus on was who had tried to kill them and what had happened to Amberly and Cole Caldwell. That was her job, not personal interest in the very hot Southerner who, if she allowed him, just might have the ability to charm her right out of her panties.
She had no idea what time she finally fell asleep, but she awakened to the scent of frying sausage. She frowned. The only food items that had been in her fridge were half a head of lettuce, a couple of eggs and a dozen or so protein bars that helped her get through long days. There had definitely not been any sausage.
&n
bsp; She got out of bed, grabbed the clothes she would wear for the day and then skipped from her room into the bathroom for a quick shower before making an official appearance in the kitchen.
It didn’t take her long to shower and dress in her usual uniform of a white blouse and black slacks, with her identification clipped to a thin belt around her waist. She liked the fact that each morning she didn’t have to think about what to wear, that she wasn’t the type of woman to stand in front of a closet and dither about the daily couture.
Before leaving the bathroom she stared at her reflection in the mirror and reached up to touch her lips...the lips that Jackson had taken such possession of the night before.
She wasn’t sure what to make of him. She wanted to believe he was a rake, a smooth-talking scoundrel who couldn’t be trusted except as an efficient partner. And yet in the brief time she’d known him she’d seen sides to him that had confused her, made her wonder what man she might find beneath the easy charm and sweet talk.
Shaking her head, she left the bathroom, chastising herself for any thoughts of Jackson the man and determined to think of him only as Jackson her partner.
He was just pulling a tray of hot biscuits from the oven when she walked into the kitchen. “Ah, perfect timing,” he said with a quick smile. “The sausage is cooked, the biscuits are done and the gravy is bubbly hot.”
She noticed he’d already set the table as she walked to the counter with the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Where did all of this come from?” she asked.
He plucked the biscuits off the baking tray and placed them on a plate. “Hope you don’t mind but I borrowed your car to head to the nearest grocery store. Once I got up and saw the contents of your pantry and fridge, I knew I was in dire circumstances.”
She sat at the table and watched as he poured the gravy into a pitcher and then carried the food to the center of the tiny table.
“Did you know you had fourteen protein bars in there, but nothing fit to eat?” He gestured for her to pick up her fork and dig in. “Maybe you can eat those things, but I need real food, so I stocked both the freezer and the refrigerator.”
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