Up In Flames: Body HeatCaught in the Act

by Lori Foster

  Her gaze glued to Alec’s, Delilah bared her teeth in what she probably thought looked like a confident smile, but instead showed her tension. “I’m not going home with Mick.”

  Alec raised his brows, waiting for Mick’s response. He was saved from that fate when pounding footsteps sounded on the stairs. They all moved at once, Mick again shoving Delilah behind him while drawing his gun, and Alec stationing himself in front of them both.

  Josh and Zack skittered to a halt at the sight of them blocking the hallway.

  “Uh, we decided you could use some backup,” Josh explained.

  Mick growled, knowing Josh thought he couldn’t apologize to Delilah correctly on his own.

  Delilah mistook him, though. From behind Mick she muttered meanly, “Some watchdog you are if you need those two.”

  Mick turned to frown at her.

  Alec sighed.

  More footsteps sounded. Dane, gun in hand and arm extended, reached the top of the stairs in a crouch. Everyone blinked at him.

  Alec said, “You got my message.”

  “Yeah.” Dane came to his feet and tucked the gun away in a shoulder holster. “What’s going on?”

  Delilah stepped around Mick, glaring at all five men. “Do you all run around town armed?”

  Josh and Zack shook their heads. “Of course not.”

  Alec, Dane and Mick said at the same time, “Yeah.”

  She turned away in exasperation. “I need to finish packing.”

  “Packing?” Josh asked, his tone filled with alarm.

  “You’re going somewhere?” Zack tried to step in front of her.

  Alec caught her by the back of her shirt, then quickly held up both hands when she rounded on him. “Don’t slug me, just listen up, okay? You can be pissed off at Mick all you want. Hell, I would be, too.”

  “Me, too,” Josh and Zack said almost in unison, earning Mick’s glare.

  “But,” Alec continued, “you have to think here. Don’t go putting yourself in danger just to spite yourself. I don’t know where you intended to go, but with everything we’ve just found out, even you have to realize you need someone who can protect you.”

  Dane crowded closer. “Just what the hell is going on?”

  Mick groaned. “God, I’m getting tired of explaining this.”

  “Then let me.” Delilah drew herself up, and she wore the meanest expression Mick had ever seen. It relieved him, because at least some of the shock, some of the hurt, had been replaced. “Mick went to the hospital to see Rudy Glasgow.”

  “He’s awake?” Dane asked.

  “Yeah,” Mick said. “Unfortunately, he is.”

  “While there,” Delilah continued, “Rudy convinced him that I was part of his little gang, a criminal to be arrested.”

  Her tone was so nasty, the men all held perfectly still as if frozen by her censure.

  “You see, Rudy knew personal stuff—and no, none of you need details—about what we’d done here in the apartment.”

  “In the bedroom,” Zack supplied, earning a hot glare from Delilah.

  “So, of course,” she practically sneered, “Mick had to believe the worst about me.”

  Mick swallowed hard. She’d have them all lynching him before she finished. Already Josh was seething again, and Zack kept giving him reproachful looks. Dane and Alec just seemed resigned. “Delilah—”

  “He convinced his connections in the police department to have me picked up for questioning.”

  Everyone looked at everyone else. Dane ventured, “Connections?”

  Mick shook his head. “Never mind.” Delilah didn’t yet know he was a cop, and he had a feeling now wasn’t a good time to tell her. He had enough amends to make without confessing his own deception.

  “She thinks her apartment is bugged,” Alec finished for her, cutting to the chase, “which would explain things.”

  “Ah.” Dane nodded. “That’d make sense, I guess.”

  “It explains it better than thinking she had a hand in that damned robbery,” Josh pointed out unnecessarily.

  Zack elbowed him hard.

  Defensive, Delilah crossed her arms over her middle and repeated, “I am not going home with Mick. I can take care of myself.”

  “You know,” Alec said, his lowered brows making him look more than a little fierce, “this could have all been a ploy. Why tell Mick you were involved unless someone wanted him to get angry with you, to walk away from you?”

  “Which would leave you alone and unprotected,” Dane finished for him. He nodded. “Someone wants to get to her, but that’s impossible with Mick watching over her. So they instigated this little separation.”

  Still determined, Delilah said, “I have a deadline.”

  “Good Lord,” Mick muttered, unable to believe she’d be concerned with that now.

  “I don’t have time to debate with you. I just want to get settled down and finish my work.”

  “Someone is after you, damn it!”

  Even when Mick shouted at her, she didn’t meet his gaze. She stared down at her feet and said, “I’ll be very careful.”

  She turned toward the apartment door, and again she got pulled up short. Josh, standing tall and resolute beside her, held her arm. “If you don’t want to go home with Mick, come to my place.”

  Raging jealousy shot through Mick. Growling, he took an aggressive step forward, and both Alec and Dane flattened a hand on his chest, stalling him.

  Delilah smiled in regret. “I can’t do that, Josh. I’d drive you crazy in an hour.”

  “Not so.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “No, it’s out of the question. I wouldn’t consider imposing on you.”

  “Then come home with me,” Zack said. “Dani would love to have you there.”

  “No,” she answered gently, looking a little amazed by the offers. “I don’t sleep regular hours, and I’d be disruptive and—”

  Dane shrugged. “You know you’re welcome to our place, or to Alec’s.”

  Alec nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “But either way, Delilah,” Dane continued, “you can’t be alone. It isn’t safe.”

  Mouth open, she shook her head. “I don’t believe this. You people hardly know me. You can’t really want me underfoot. And if there is some type of danger, I could be bringing it to your homes!” She shook her head again, more violently this time, as if making a point. “No, I could never do that.”

  Dane turned to Mick. “Why don’t you go in with Alec and look around? I’d like to speak to Delilah alone a second.”

  “About what?” Mick asked suspiciously, afraid Dane might bury him further. He was beyond pleased that everyone had jumped to her defense, had rushed to assist her, but he’d have been happier if she’d had no alternative but to give him another chance.

  “About life and love and reality.”

  Josh grinned. “Can I listen in?”

  “No.” Dane caught Delilah’s arm and dragged her toward the steps. “This’ll only take a minute.”

  * * *

  Delilah went grudgingly. Truth was, she didn’t know what to do. Her only plan had been to get out of the apartment. She felt...dirty. Not just from Mick’s impossible and hurtful accusation, but by the sickening possibility that someone had been watching her, someone had seen her making love to Mick. She shuddered with revulsion.

  Dane put his arm around her shoulders and stopped at the landing at the bottom of the stairs. It was slightly cooler here, but not much. She felt hot and irritable and irrevocably wounded.

  “You asked why any of us would want to take you in.”

  “I’ve never known people like you,” she admitted, glad for something to think about besides the invasion of her privacy.

>   “We’d do it for Mick. We love him, and it’s obvious you’re important to him. He’d go out of his head if he screwed up this badly and something happened to you. I don’t want to see him hurt that way. He’s been hurt enough in his life.”

  The thought of Mick suffering because of her made her sadder than ever. Damn it all, she still loved him—and that was sheer stupidity on her part. Nursing her hurt, she said, “Yeah, he cares so much he thinks I’d get him shot.”

  “Men in love do stupid things. Our brains get all muddled. It’s not what we expect, and we don’t know how to deal with it.”

  “He’s not in love.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “He’s never said so.”

  “In words, maybe. But from the start he’s been fascinated with you.”

  She scoffed, and Dane added gently, “Delilah, he took a bullet for you.”

  She shrugged off that irrefutable fact. When he’d thrown himself on top of her, he hadn’t even known her name, so he couldn’t have had feelings for her then. And since then...well, since then everything had been too fast. She was confused, so no doubt he was, too. “Mick is a hero,” she reasoned. “He’d do that for anyone.”

  Dane laughed. “I agree, he’s pretty damn heroic. But he’s still human, so you have to allow him some human faults. Like bad judgment on occasion, and jumping to conclusions. And acting before he’s really thought things out—which is what I think happened today.”

  “Do you have any idea how badly it hurts for him to think that of me?” Her heart, once full to bursting with love for Mick, now felt cold and hard, a dull ache in her chest.

  “Yeah, I do. I made the same mistake with my own wife once.”

  That got her attention. Delilah stared at him, fascinated.

  “It’s a long story,” Dane said, “and I won’t bore you with the details now, but I let her think I was my deceased twin, because I thought she’d had a hand in trying to murder him.”

  Delilah felt her mouth drop open, her eyes widen. “That sounds more outrageous than the stuff I put in my books.”

  Dane winced. “I know.” Then he smiled. “I fell in love with Angel before I got around to telling her the truth. When it all came out in the open, she hated me. Or at least I thought she did. She certainly thought she did. Circumstances not a lot different from what you’re dealing with now kept her with me. And it gave us a chance to work things out.”

  “You think I should go home with Mick so he can make amends?”

  “I think you should give your relationship every chance to work out the ugly mistakes. It’s not like you two met under normal circumstances. You’ve been shot at, he’s been wounded, someone is obviously after you for some reason—that’s enough in itself to make any relationship difficult.”

  “I guess.”

  Dane hugged her close. “One more thing. Mick wouldn’t risk his life for just anyone. From what he said, he was already mesmerized by you before the shooting. He’d watched you, and thought about you. I understand it happens that way sometimes.”

  She rubbed her face, so tired and washed-out and confused she could barely order her thoughts enough to keep talking. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re feeling muddled, too,” Dane pointed out, while gently rubbing her back. “All the more reason you should give things a chance. Go to his place, rest up, talk. I’m not saying to forgive him tonight, but at least let the opportunity exist for him to make it up to you. Give him a chance to explain. Who knows? Maybe he’ll say something profound and you’ll be able to forgive him.”

  They heard a noise and looked up the stairs. Mick stood at the top. Had he heard their conversation? His gaze on Del, he said, “We found something.”

  “We’ll be right there.” Dane put his arm around her and started her walking. “It’s been a rough day. Wouldn’t you like to go sit down and let your mind rest for a few minutes?”

  Mick waited for them, watching Del closely with his intense, probing gaze. He almost seemed to be holding his breath, he stayed so still.

  “Delilah?”

  The gentleness, the hope in the way he whispered her name, broke Del’s resolve. She nodded. “I’ll go with you.”

  He let out his breath in a rush.

  “But this doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

  He nodded. “I haven’t forgiven myself. For now I just want to get you settled and know you’re safe.” Then to Dane he said, “It’s an optic fiber Minicam. High-tech stuff, run from the apartment next door.”

  Dane halted in midstep. “Next door?”

  “Led in through the vents on the connecting walls.” He glanced at Del, and she could feel his suppressed rage. He held himself in check for her, but he was more furious than she’d ever seen him. “Which included all the rooms except the kitchen and the bathroom.”

  Thinking of the eyes that had been on her, watching her while she wrote, slept, while she made love with Mick, made her stomach lurch. In the next instant Mick was there, gathering her close despite the trouble between them. “I’ll find them, babe, I swear.”

  Giving herself a brief respite from her pride, Del rested her head on his shoulder. God, it felt good to have him hold her again.

  When Dane went ahead into her apartment, Mick led her toward Josh and Zack. He touched her chin, bringing her gaze up to his. “I think it’d be best if you waited in my car. I’ll only be a minute.”

  Josh threw his arm around her shoulder—and Mick promptly removed it. He said under his breath, “You’ve pushed enough today, Josh.”

  Josh just grinned, and Del had no idea what they were going on about.

  “Have you ever noticed the neighbors next door?” Alec asked Del as he reentered the hall.

  She gathered her scattered emotions. Now was no time to fall apart. “I know most everyone else in the building, but I thought that apartment was vacant.”

  “Does your landlord live here?”

  “Afraid not.” She wrung her hands, still shaken by having her worst suspicions confirmed. “I can call him if you want to check it out.”

  Mick shook his head. “We’ll need to notify Faradon. He’ll get a search warrant.”

  Del looked from one male face to another. “So what do we do now?”

  “We get you settled and safe.” Mick’s eyes narrowed. “And then I’m going to see Rudy again.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Delilah waited inside Mick’s house while he carried in her computer equipment, which she’d insisted on bringing along. Alec had checked the hardware and software for bugs and declared everything clean, so there was no reason for her to miss her deadline.

  A severe headache left her somewhat nauseous, but she wasn’t sure what to do. She’d never been in Mick’s home before. Whenever he’d needed something, she’d offered to bring him home, but he’d always gotten someone else to take care of it.

  Now she realized why. He hadn’t wanted her inside his personal domain. That would have been too close to suit him. He wanted to keep her as distant as he could while still being intimate with her. And she, like a fool, had given him the perfect opportunity by moving him into her apartment.

  “Where would you like me to put it?”

  She turned to see Mick standing in the doorway, his arms filled with her monitor and keyboard, watching her. Josh and Zack stood behind him, loaded down with more equipment.

  Del glanced around and shrugged. “I guess the bar counter would work as well as anywhere.”

  Mick didn’t move, even though Zack and Josh were making impatient noises behind him. “You can use my desk.”

  “No, thanks.” She walked away. The last thing she wanted was to further invade his privacy.

  Almost an hour passed before they had her settled in. Dane had trailed them dur
ing the move, watching to make certain they weren’t followed. The whole thing seemed very cloak-and-dagger to Del. Despite her profession, she’d never expected to be on the receiving end of a real mystery. Mysteries were figments of her imagination, not reality.

  Mick’s house, moderate in size, probably forty years old, had a quaint coziness about it. Del stood at the kitchen sink looking out the window. His backyard faced a cul-de-sac, and some distance away she could see a pool filled with playing children, another family grilling out on their patio. It all seemed so...domestic. Hard to believe she was here because someone wanted her dead.

  Zack slipped his arms around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “You’ll be all right.”

  She patted his hands where they crisscrossed her waist. One thing she’d realized through all this was that Josh and Zack were now her friends, too. She cherished that fact. “You think so?”

  “I know there’s no way in hell Mick’s going to let anything happen to you.”

  She laughed at that. “Oh, I dunno. He just might decide I’m a criminal again and hand me over to them.”

  “Nope, ain’t gonna happen. You’ve thrown him for a loop is all, and believe me, that’s not easy to do.” He kissed her temple, then asked, “Did I ever tell you how hard it was to make friends with him?”

  She shook her head.

  “He was so closed off, so damned isolated from everyone and everything. Because the fire department and the life squad are located right next door to each other, Josh and I were friends before we ever met Mick. But we all ate at Marco’s and every day we’d see Mick sitting there alone. He’d just eat and leave.”

  It wasn’t a pleasant image, his self-imposed isolation, and Del’s heart softened in spite of her efforts to the contrary.

  “One day some guys came in drunk and started causing problems.” Del heard an odd note of enthusiasm in Zack’s tone. “They were loud, disruptive, making a mess and scaring off customers. It was interesting, watching Mick go on alert, seeing how he took it all in and waited to make a move, without even appearing to notice. A waitress asked the men to leave, and one of the guys stood and took an aggressive stance. There were four of them, but Mick never hesitated to jump to her defense.