Desired by a Dangerous Man

by Cleo Peitsche

  I became aware of Rob, similarly slack jawed, standing about twenty feet away. The rapt look on his face was reminiscent of someone staring into a raging bonfire.

  “I’m paying overtime, so there will be some amount of construction around the clock,” Corbin said.

  I nodded, but tears had welled up in my eyes, and the back of my throat felt like it was squeezing closed.

  “Audrey?” Corbin wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “The building inspector, he told the truth. The building doesn’t deserve to be condemned, but the foundation has cracks, the electrical isn’t up to code, and the roof was going to need replacing within the next two years. Sooner, if we have another harsh winter.”

  “I’m just… in shock. The place hadn’t really changed since we were kids.”

  I sensed Rob walking over. Even though I didn’t look at him, I still drew strength from knowing he was there, just next to me, and that he was also witnessing this.

  “Holy crap,” he said, elation in his voice. “You don’t play around.”

  “It’ll be three floors,” Corbin said, moving behind me.

  I twisted my neck to look up at him. He was almost a foot taller than me, so I had a great view of his upper chest, his broad shoulders, square jaw.

  “Three floors?” I asked his chin.

  He looked down at me. “We’ll be adding in showers, a small workout area, and a kitchen area.”

  “All of this before Alaska?” Something was beginning to trouble me, but I wasn’t quite sure why. Corbin was a take-charge kind of man. As he’d explained, it was his personality. He liked to be in control, liked to solve problems.

  But even for him, this was a lot of activity in a short amount of time.

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked. And I thought, Please be something simple, please be something simple, please be—

  “Paella.”

  One of the backhoes thudded to a stop, and I jumped, startled. Corbin tightened his arms around me.

  “Yum,” Rob said. “I love paella, but it’s too much work. There used to be a good Spanish place downtown, but they closed. Hint, hint.”

  “Sorry,” Corbin said, laughing. “Next time.”

  So Corbin had an elaborate dinner planned. I felt my features sinking into a frown.

  Oh, yeah. Something had definitely changed while we were apart, something I wasn’t going to like.

  Chapter 15

  Corbin didn’t say much as we drove, and with the images of the broken building flashing in my mind, I wasn’t in the mood for a big conversation, either. I almost wished I’d insisted on driving my car back.

  The construction shouldn’t have bothered me. There were even reasons to be excited about it. The addition was finally going to happen. I’d never again have to look at the spot where Zak had died. If the construction had gone as planned the first time, I would have returned from France to a drastically altered office, anyway.

  But this was bigger than what I’d expected, and it was permanent.

  And even though I knew the changes were surely going to be an improvement—they couldn’t have made things worse—I just didn’t like it.

  There. I’d admitted it to myself.

  For whatever ridiculous, illogical reasons, I didn’t like the fact that the boxy building where I’d spent too many hours of my life was now… gone.

  Forever.

  A lot of things had changed since the start of the year. Dad had brought in Henry as a partner, and I’d quit.

  Then Dad had ended up in the hospital. Obviously he’d survived, but it was iffy for a while.

  Then I moved out of my apartment and into Rob’s place. Then moved again, into my new and mostly unused apartment. And then into Corbin’s place, even if that wasn’t the address on my driver’s license.

  Rob and I became equal partners in Stroop Finders. My crappy but familiar car got exchanged for a company car. Rob had fallen in love with someone and wanted to get serious.

  And now the building was, for all intents and purposes, gone.

  Forever.

  No matter what I did, I would never get back to that time when Dad was healthy and Rob and I were so close that we were practically the same person.

  My chest felt tight, and I struggled to get enough air. My breathing became wheezy. I clawed at the seatbelt but couldn’t make my fingers work.

  “Audrey!” Corbin swerved the steering wheel.

  Horns blared. The SUV slammed to an abrupt halt.

  Corbin threw open his door and came around, pulled me out.

  I bent double. My fingers and lips felt cold, tingly, and mottled shadows and pinpricks of light dotted my vision.

  It had been months since I’d last had a claustrophobia-induced panic attack, and years since I’d had one like this, for no good reason. My heart banged around in my chest, and my knees buckled.

  Corbin’s hands were on my shoulders as I slid into a heap on the gravel. I was vaguely aware of a pair of torn khakis in the weeds at the edge of the shoulder. Crumbling cigarette butts, tabs of soda cans… The edge of the road was filthy, more detritus than pavement.

  Corbin’s voice floated toward me, but he sounded remote, like I was at one end of a tunnel, and he was far, far away, at the opposite end, and there was nothing but vast darkness between us.

  “Audrey,” he was saying. “Slow, deep breaths.”

  But I couldn’t.

  My lungs wouldn’t inflate. Maybe they’d collapsed. I needed…

  Needed to get away.

  The SUV was too large, as were Corbin’s hands on my elbows as he pulled me up… His presence was making me feel worse, not better. I wanted to shuck off my skin, get some goddamn breathing room.

  My breath was coming faster and faster, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I passed out.

  If it was going to happen, I hoped it would be soon.

  I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to remember Mrs. Rico’s calming voice. Tell the panic who’s boss. Despite how it feels, you are safe.

  “Audrey. Baby, you have to relax. Can you hear me?”

  “Let… me… go,” I wheezed. I couldn’t catch my breath, and everything that touched my skin—Corbin, my clothes, my shoes, even the hair sticking damply to my neck—felt like it was pressing in, squeezing me into a cage.

  The sour mixture of bile and orange smoothie flooded my mouth, and I only had seconds to jerk away from Corbin before I vomited. I could hear myself breathing, my strained voice high and pathetic.

  Vaguely, I was aware of flashing blue and red lights…

  Another vehicle stopping behind Corbin’s…

  Doors opening, closing, footsteps running up.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Corbin’s dark jeans, his boots, and also the pressed pants and standard-issue shoes of the county sheriff’s deputies.

  There were shouts, but I couldn’t make sense of them. My stomach squeezed, and I wiped away tears as I tried to choke back the rest of the contents of my stomach.

  It was futile.

  But when my stomach was empty, the chaos inside me started to fade. The buzzing cleared from my brain, and I slowly became aware of where I was. The weeds and litter. The whine of vehicles whizzing past.

  I was on the side of the road, gravel cutting into my knees and the palms of my hands. The latter weren’t protected by denim, and I wiped them on my thighs, brushing off the pebbles.

  Shakily, I pushed to my feet and used the hem of my shirt to dry my mouth.

  I felt physically better but mentally worse. Corbin had seen me in more embarrassing circumstances. Like when he’d found me half dead in the middle of the road. Or when I’d freaked out after Zak’s death.

  This, though… There was no excuse.

  Almost regretting that I wasn’t still retching so I wouldn’t have to face him, I turned toward Corbin.

  He had someone pushed up against the side of the SUV.

  It took a moment for my confused mind to match the unifo
rmed deputy to the cruiser parked behind Corbin’s vehicle. It took another moment to make sense of the second deputy who stood back in shock, his hands out as if to show that he wasn’t holding any weapons, that he wasn’t going to be making any sudden moves.

  “Corbin?” I asked.

  In the fading light, his blue-green eyes were more electric than ever. “Are you ok, baby?”

  He shifted his weight back, and I caught a glimpse of the deputy’s face, his skin pale. His blue eyes, filled with desperate pleading, were fixed on me.

  “Get into the truck,” Corbin told me.

  “But—”

  “Just do it!”

  Startled out of my dreamlike state, I climbed into the SUV.

  Corbin kicked out a leg and slammed the door shut. I sank low in the seat, and even though I didn’t want to see what was happening, I couldn’t keep my eyes from fixating on the side mirror, on the two men.

  “The next time you harass my girlfriend, or anyone in her family, it will be the last thing you do,” Corbin growled. “And I’ll make sure that whatever your family is told, it’s so shameful that they have to leave the state.”

  The deputy nodded, or tried to, and my mind struggled to make sense of everything that had happened in the last ten minutes.

  Was it possible that I’d passed out? Was I asleep, having a really bizarre dream?

  Corbin turned the man around by his shoulders. His arms were behind his back, and I caught a flash of silver. Corbin had cuffed him.

  He shoved the deputy, who staggered, then ran with an awkward gait that kicked up pebbles and dust as he headed for his partner.

  Corbin continued to face them, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.

  Instinctively, I knew that stance. It meant Don’t fuck with me. It was the kind of body language that, on the rare occasion I’d encountered it while trying to apprehend a bounty, made me call for backup.

  Corbin was unarmed, and the deputies had holstered guns. I didn’t know what he was thinking, if he truly appreciated just how dangerous his situation was.

  But the men seemed more intent on unlocking the handcuffs than retaliating against the civilian who had assaulted one of them.

  Civilian… Because Corbin was nothing but a civilian now. He didn’t get free passes.

  Oh.

  Oh, shit.

  Chapter 16

  It was fully dark by the time Corbin and I arrived home. Other than making sure I was okay, he didn’t have much to say.

  And the only words running through my mind were What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck just happened?

  “I’m going to run you a bath,” Corbin said. His voice, his face, were unreadable.

  “I’ll take a shower,” I said. My tone said, What the fuck?

  “Undress.” His tone said, I’m not going to talk about it right now. He went through the bedroom and began filling the tub.

  I pulled my shirt over my head, peeled off my jeans and underthings. Even though being on my hands and knees meant that very little of the puke had gotten on me, I didn’t want to stay in those clothes a moment longer than necessary.

  They were damp with sweat, too.

  “I need to check the security footage.” Corbin exited the bathroom, and I went in. He’d dropped one of the floral bath bombs into the water, which I appreciated.

  Not wanting to sit in my own filth, I rinsed off in the shower before stepping into the bath. I turned off the running water even though the tub was only half full.

  Corbin returned with two glasses of wine.

  “I’m not thirsty,” I said, but apparently my body disagreed because my hand was already reaching for a glass. My fingers slid on the damp globe, but I didn’t drop it.

  Not even pretending to taste it, to savor it, Corbin took a long swallow of his.

  I did the same. My hand trembled.

  “What happened?” I finally asked.

  “You’re going to answer that first,” he said, sitting on the edge of the tub. “You had a panic attack.”

  I took another sip. Now I wished I’d let the water fill up, let the bubbles cover me so that I could hide underneath the iridescent foam.

  Instead, I felt exposed, and with Corbin so serious, so deadly serious, I barely recognized him.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know,” I said. It had been a kind of claustrophobia, like doom was wrapping around me, squeezing me.

  I closed my eyes and prayed with all my being that this wasn’t the first in a new spate of anxiety and panic attacks, something I’d have to struggle with for the rest of my life.

  “It started when you saw the building under construction,” Corbin said. “You’re not comfortable with this. Are you?”

  I opened my eyes and shook my head. “No. But you knew that.”

  “You seemed fine when we talked two days ago—”

  “Well, I didn’t realize it,” I said a little sharply.

  “Ok.” His voice had gentled some. He tipped forward, gracefully falling into a crouch that brought him level with me. “What can I do right now to fix it?” His eyes drilled intensely into mine.

  Oh, god. Why did he have to be so perfect? Why couldn’t he be like anyone else and tell me to suck it up? When he was kind, I felt obligated to try to answer his probing questions, and the process always left me feeling fragile.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I just wasn’t prepared to see the building like that.”

  “But you and Rob had already started construction,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah. Logically… I guess… I don’t know.” Because I really didn’t.

  “Are you worried you’ll lose yourself? I’m not buying into the company, Audrey. I know you don’t want that. I’m the new landlord, and I’m making some improvements. There’s nothing else going on.” He was so earnest. He cared so much about making sure I was ok.

  I didn’t deserve him.

  “I don’t know what my problem is,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine, and for the first time, I’m not sure how to fix it.”

  That scared me enough to make me take another long sip of wine. Corbin always knew how to fix things. Always.

  “It’s just fast,” I said, suddenly feeling braver. “What happened tonight has never happened before. I swear. Maybe… The thing with Alaska didn’t help.”

  “Ok. We cancel the trip.”

  “No,” I said with a weak smile. “You already bought tickets.”

  “Yes.” He rose to his full height. A frown lightly caressed his handsome features. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just throw together some pasta for tonight. I’d rather talk to you than cook.”

  Over a pesto linguine, Corbin studiously avoided discussing his trip. Apparently his idea of “talking to me” meant “asking questions.”

  He grilled me on the deputies, what kinds of harassment I’d been dealing with, and how the authorities had been treating me. Mostly, I pretended I hadn’t been having a problem because for the most part, I hadn’t.

  “What happened back there?” I asked. “I was so out of it.”

  Corbin leaned back in his seat, a glass of red wine in his hand.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “You’re trying to decide if I deserve to know. You’re allowed to be all secretive about the stupid spy shit, but this is my life.”

  He smiled a little when I said secret spy shit. “I was only ordering my thoughts,” he said. “It happened quickly, and my attention was mostly on you. They followed us from the office.”

  My eyes went wide. I hadn’t been driving, so I hadn’t been watching the road behind us—second nature for a bounty hunter on her home turf, but when Corbin was around, I tended to relax. Or maybe he just distracted me.

  “Rob,” I realized with a gasp.

  “He got home fine.”

  My fingers tightened around my fork. “You know, your priorities are really backward sometimes. You could have
mentioned that sooner instead of asking a million questions about things that don’t matter.”

  “My priorities are exactly where they need to be,” he said. “Keeping you safe.” He stared at me as if daring me to contradict him, to point out that I wasn’t safe.

  But I was, of course. “If you don’t tell me—”

  “When I pulled over, they continued past. Obviously they looped around. It was clear they weren’t planning to offer assistance.” His jaw clenched. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay with you, couldn’t comfort you, but I didn’t know what they had in mind, if they planned to take you for a ride downtown or what. Generally I try to work with local law enforcement, but I couldn’t chance anyone putting their hands on you.”

  Heat prickled my cheeks. It had been a long time since Corbin had needed to take care of me at this level.

  “Have you had any other problems with them?” It was probably the fifth time he’d asked.

  Which meant he probably knew the truth and just wanted me to admit it.

  I stifled a sigh. “Someone pulled me over. He was a real dick, but instead of giving me a ticket, he gave me a written warning to be careful. And this was before you told Henry to stay away,” I added quickly.

  But it was too late. Corbin looked furious.

  Setting down his wine glass, he leaned forward, skewering me with his gaze. I felt like an insect pinned to the wall.

  “And today?” he asked.

  If I could have pulled my eyes away from him, I would have, but I was strangely unable to move. “What about today?”

  “Did what happened today occur before or after I told Henry I would kill him if he bothered you again?”

  I didn’t like the way he said it. “Corbin—”

  “Was it before?” He shook his head. “Was it after?”

  He stared evenly at me until I nodded. My cheeks burned. Two years earlier, I’d bought a bottle of spa-grade exfoliator online and left it on my skin for too long. I hadn’t thought my face would ever get that hot again, but I was wrong.

  Corbin hadn’t come out and said he was going to kill Henry, but I found it hard to come up with another interpretation for his question.