SAM STOOD IN front of the couch. He was going to remain standing as he gave Bloom the latest development, answered her questions, assured himself she was as fine as she could be and then excused them both to bed. His plan was firm.
And then she didn’t let go of his dog. Or Lucy didn’t let go of Bloom.
He moved toward her, took her hand, sat on the couch and pulled her down next to him.
Then he didn’t know what to do with himself. He knew his job. What to relay. Questions to ask. He just wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. Or with the rest of his person when he found it sitting so closely beside her.
To jump up—which was what he wanted to do—felt...wrong.
So he sat.
“We need to talk,” he said again. And then, giving her no time to react, or comment, relayed his entire conversation with Chantel.
“So what we need to know immediately,” he continued on without pause, “is which of the clients you’re currently seeing is staying at The Lemonade Stand.”
She opened her mouth and he cut her off.
“Make whatever phone calls you need to make, get whatever permissions you need to get, but we need those names, Bloom. Whoever it is could be in danger. Life and death danger. This guy...he’s going after you, after the shelter, and he’s serious.”
She was shaking. Sitting as close as he was, he could feel her.
Odd, he’d never noticed that reaction when it was herself they were talking about.
“And if you can...it would help me to know your opinion as to who you’d guess might be behind this.”
He tripped over his tongue and felt like a complete idiot. He still didn’t move.
She shook her head. He took a breath, ready to start in again, and she stopped him. Not with words. Her hand was on his arm.
She could have been touching him elsewhere. Privately elsewhere. Completely, 100 percent inappropriate.
And he shook his head. His mind was on the case. So focused he was already formulating plans, hearing questions in his mind as he interviewed potential suspects. And his body had just grown hard again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BLOOM COULDN’T GIVE him what he was asking. But she could ask her clients to do so. She could speak with them, in private, by phone or in person, give them her impressions and talk to them about speaking to Sam.
She couldn’t force them to do so.
And would not coerce them. Or even suggest that she thought they should. But she could inform them.
Thinking of the twenty-two women she was currently counseling from the Stand, she couldn’t think of one who wouldn’t meet with Sam.
She was about to tell him so when his phone went off again. It vibrated against her hip. “What’s up?” he was saying into his phone, still right beside her.
As close as she was sitting, she couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line. And Sam was only listening, saying nothing. So she waited and petted Lucy who was on her other side.
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be in first thing.”
Bloom had just about talked herself into believing the phone call was about another case, something completely unrelated to her, and then Sam said, “That was Chantel.”
And she knew it wasn’t good.
“What’s going on?” she asked. He was going to tell her anyway; might as well be proactive.
Because she was going to stand up to anything that confronted her from then on and for the rest of her life.
She’d promised.
And she didn’t make promises she couldn’t possibly keep.
“Lila McDaniel’s car was broken into tonight. The guard who’d been attacked was guarding the back lot at the Stand. Where employees park.”
Where Bloom parked. But she didn’t say so. What she did say was, “There are security cameras back there.”
“They were disabled.”
“The ones at my building weren’t.”
“I’m guessing this guy’s getting smarter.” Only it wasn’t just one guy. And it wasn’t all guys.
“So they’ll get fingerprints. Or a hair with DNA or something, right?”
“Forensics will go over the car, but real life isn’t like on TV, Bloom. There’s neither the money nor the facilities to tie up for a vandalized car.”
She wanted to lie down and cry. “Is this because of me, too?”
“No!” He took her hand. Held it. And she slid softly back to reality, remembering who she was. A good woman. Intelligent. Capable. Well intentioned.
“This is a sick bastard who, like your ex, is reacting to his loss of control. He’s attacking, and we’re going to stop him.”
“How?”
“He left a note in Lila’s car. A warning.”
Feeling his warmth seep through her entire body, she held on to his hand, looked into those serious brown eyes and was okay as she asked, “What did it say?”
“That she better learn to mind her own business or more than her car would be hurt.”
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t her fault.
It’s not your fault.
“Bloom?”
Sam’s voice was different. He was different.
“It’s not my fault,” she said aloud. “Ken’s text...it was just a coincidence. Still meant to mess with me, but not because of the attack on Gomez...”
“That’s right. Gomez, the other night, it wasn’t because of Ken,” he told her.
But she could help.
“I need to get to the Stand in the morning. To talk to my girls.”
She knew the way out of hell. And had the professional tools to share it with them.
“I’ll talk to them, Sam. And then they’ll talk to you. I can pretty much guarantee it.”
He nodded and the look in his eyes changed.
Which changed everything inside of her.
“Sam?”
“Shhh.” His finger touched her lips. And she knew.
It was happening to him, too.
* * *
HIS ARM FELT weak as Sam stood and pulled Bloom up behind him. She wanted him. He knew it. Without doubt.
By God, she wanted him.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the attraction between them. Wasn’t just a workaholic cop harboring unwarranted desires for a beautiful woman.
Lucy looked up at him as she jumped down to join them. He didn’t say anything to her. Or to Bloom, either.
He just walked. Down the hall. To his bedroom door. She’d left it closed, as she generally did.
He opened it. Saw her inside, and told her good-night, closing the door without taking a breath.
* * *
BLOOM SPENT THE first half of Wednesday night listing the reasons why she was glad Sam had rejected the opportunity to explore a personal situation between them. Knowing she was lucky that he hadn’t taken advantage of her vulnerability.
Respecting him more than ever.
And the second half was spent diagnosing herself. Clearly there was more of a transference thing going on than she’d realized. With Ken back in the picture, she was turning to Sam, her protector, so that she didn’t fall back into the fear-based woman she’d been.
She was seeing Sam as her own personal savior.
And...maybe...a replacement for the father figure she’d found in Ken. He’d been fifteen years older than she and she’d realized, sometime shortly after the end of the marriage, that she’d been particularly vulnerable to his charms because of her own lack of a father figure. Her lack of any true parenting guidance.
Sam wasn’t as old as Ken. He was maybe only a few years older than she.
But still, there was merit to the theory. Clearly it c
ouldn’t be any more than her emotional upheaval prompting her feelings for him. He had one failed marriage under his belt because he was married to the job. He made promises he couldn’t keep.
And she’d already been fooled enough.
She slept a little. But woke up feeling ready to tackle whatever the day would bring. She was healthy.
Capable.
And was in control of all of her own choices.
Thanks to Sam.
* * *
BLOOM HAD REALLY come through. All but one of her clients agreed to speak with law enforcement. Because she was familiar to some of the victims, and knew all of the full-time employees at The Lemonade Stand from prior cases she’d worked, Chantel spent all day Thursday at the Stand conducting interviews. And calling Sam who followed up with investigations of every single abuser, looking for priors, for any kind of police or traffic violation. Over the next two days he spoke to every one of the abusers himself. All but the three who were in lockup.
From that, he had three he liked for the harassment of Bloom and Lila and the taking down of two guards, who did not have alibis for the two nights in question—the previous Friday and Wednesday of that week.
On Friday Bloom called him at work to let him know that she’d spoken with her attorney and due to the situation in Santa Raquel, the court had granted her request for a stay on the show cause hearing scheduled for the next week. They’d been given a month.
It was the first Sam even knew she’d made the motion for the stay—she’d been in her room when he returned to the cottage just after ten Thursday night. But he was more than a little glad her motion had been granted.
Glad beyond what a detective would feel regarding a victim on one of his cases. Glad that she’d been given a reprieve. Glad that they could take care of one dangerous situation before heading into another one.
Glad that she’d taken charge of the situation and had taken care of it. He knew how much that meant to her.
And glad for how far she’d come from the woman he’d known two years before.
The rest of the afternoon was spent investigating his three suspects in Santa Raquel, looking for anything that ruled two out or made one stand out. Looking for a female connection to any of them. A sister, maybe.
Most likely. Someone who’d be willing to commit a crime because she loved him enough to do so. And not a girlfriend, since the targets were those influencing his wife to stay away from him.
Two of the three he liked had sisters who fit the age range. Both had dark hair. Could have been the woman in his grainy picture. Neither had alibis. Both denied ever owning a guard uniform. And Sam didn’t get a particular feel either way that either one of them was his perp.
But he didn’t feel like they weren’t, either.
On Saturday, while Chantel and Bloom shopped for groceries and whatever else two women shopped for, and to give himself enough of a breather to get his instincts back in check, he went for a long run on the beach. And then turned his focus back to the drug case against Freelander. He’d been granted a month’s reprieve to find a way to prove that Freelander had purchased illegal drugs with the intent to harm—a month to ensure that Bloom never had to go to court, to show cause or to ever be in the same room as Kenneth Freelander again.
With nowhere else to turn, he pulled up the list they’d already obtained of Freelander’s class rosters for the year before his indictment. And on another screen, pulled up a joint task law enforcement list of known gang members in the LA area. The second list was a hell of a lot longer than the first, but he went through them, one by one, looking for the same name on both lists.
It didn’t appear. A headache did.
To go along with the almost continuous ache in a lower part of his body. He hadn’t been able to do anything the past couple of days without knowing, in the back of his mind, that Bloom wanted him.
He wasn’t going to sleep with her, of course. If he hurt Bloom he’d hate himself for the rest of his life, and he couldn’t live with that.
So he started checking first and last names, first names only and then last names only, from Professor Freelander’s rosters, against the joint task list of gang members. Thirty-six first names were a hit. Four last names were.
He knew he was really in deep, spinning wheels just to keep from having to face real thoughts, when he set about investigating the students with those four random last names.
Somehow he was going to have to get Bloom Freelander out of his system.
* * *
AFTER TWO FULL weeks of living moment to moment, and curtailing most of her activities outside of work so as not to inconvenience those who were giving up their normal daily lives to protect her, Bloom was getting cabin fever.
It wasn’t that she had any particular hankering to leave Sam’s cottage. To add color to it—okay, yes—but not really to leave. What she needed was to go home. Home to who she was. Home to herself. And she woke up Sunday morning knowing what she had to do.
She knocked on Sam’s door—forcing herself not to think of tighty-whities and doing just that—intending to tell Sam that before he went to work, she needed him to pick up some things from her house.
Painting was something she’d done, on a lark, during the first year after her marriage had ended. She hadn’t known she could actually paint. She’d just craved the ability to throw color around however she wanted to.
Sara Havens, the full-time licensed professional clinical counselor at The Lemonade Stand, had suggested that she buy a couple of canvases and some paint and see what happened. Kind of an offshoot from the collaging she’d done with Talia Malone, an artist who volunteered at the Stand. The exercise had been suggested as a means of finding her inner self. She’d ended up with an inner voice that was painful in its honesty and some colorful prints on her home and office walls.
It was taking Sam a long time to answer her knock. Maybe he was on the phone. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to her that she could have texted him.
But maybe she’d wanted an excuse to knock on his door. Even if only for innocuous business conversation.
She didn’t knock again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SAM WANTED ALL of the information he could get before going to Bloom, but he had to make certain that her knock on his door hadn’t been an emergency.
Ending the call with the officer who’d called him to report a break-in at Bloom’s home overnight, he texted her.
On phone. Business. Problem?
And didn’t have to wait but a second for her response.
Not at all.
He knew the house was secure. He’d already been all over it that morning. Checked in with both guards on the premises. And Chantel, who was due in less than an hour.
Until he called her and told her what was going on.
“I think I should stay with her today,” he told his female counterpart.
“Good. I think I should be the one to go to LA and check up on Freelander,” she told him.
He wanted to be the one. But knew she was right. He and Freelander had history. Revisiting it right now would probably not be in Bloom’s best interest.
He didn’t bother to try to figure out why he thought so. Or why Chantel did, for that matter.
“Keep me posted,” he told her and hung up. Only then realizing that without Chantel there, or Bloom at work, he was going to have to shower with her in his home.
Not a good plan.
* * *
BLOOM WENT DOWN to the beach path with Lucy.
The grounds were patrolled and safe. Sam had never meant for her to be a hostage.
And she needed some air to clear the clutter from her brain. Make conscious choices rather than reacting to unreliable emotions.
Knocking on Sam’s doo
r had been stupid. Plain and simple.
Thank goodness he hadn’t answered, saving her from herself once again.
It was time for her to save herself. Past time. She’d thought she’d already passed that point. Permanently.
Lucy started down the path. Bloom looking longingly after her. Pulled her cell out of the pocket of the bright blue cotton capris she’d put on after her shower that morning, and texted Sam.
Heading down to the beach with Lucy. BRB.
Chantel was due in half an hour and she’d be back up by then.
When her phone buzzed, Bloom seriously thought about ignoring it. He was just going to tell her it was fine and she’d look for some kind of hidden message in that, a sign that she wasn’t the same as every other victim he’d ever protected.
Some sign that the look in his eyes the other night, the way he’d held her hand and led her down the hall, had meant what she’d known it had meant.
She hadn’t dreamed that up.
But she might as well have, for all the difference it made in their relationship. When this was all over, she wasn’t going to want him like she did now. Her professional self kept reminding her of that.
Bloom pulled out her phone. She just wasn’t the type to ignore a message.
But before she could open it, even start to analyze it, the front door opened and Sam came running out in sweats, a T-shirt and boat shoes.
Bloom froze, too scared even to look around. She shrank into herself, as though if she could make herself small enough she wouldn’t be a target for whomever Sam was protecting her against.
She prayed that Lucy was far enough down the path not to hear what was going on. Not to come back up and put herself in the middle of the danger.
“I need you back in the house,” Sam said, not even breathless from his sprint.
She didn’t argue. He wouldn’t have come running after her if it wasn’t important.
To allay panic, she spent the whole way back wondering if he wore tighty-whities under his sweats.
And then, when they were safely inside, Lucy, too, she started to shake. They’d all three made it without being shot.
* * *
The Promise He Made Her Page 16