“That’s a need-to-know sorta thing. And you don’t.”
No, no, no. This can’t be happening. This is really bad. I don’t do really bad.
The back of her feet hit the step below the door, forcing her up and inside, with Officer Smith’s massive bulk following. Ally fought back a whimper. This guy was so huge. She didn’t stand a chance.
“Nice place.”
This stranger, police officer gone rogue, who planned to do…something not good, was admiring her home. She had the ridiculous urge to giggle. Giggling involved breathing and she was pretty sure that function had seized up. Shaking her head, disbelief warred with flat-out terror.
How had a simple outing, an attempt to get a bit of a life, turned into this?
Officer Smith shoved her into a chair in her living room. Detective Marsing had insisted on sending her home with an armed escort. Her soon-to-be killer pawed through her belongings and Ally gritted her teeth. This was all Marsing’s fault
Smith picked up a romance novel she’d been reading, snorted and tossed the book over his shoulder. Crossing her trembling arms, she narrowed her eyes. Like it wasn’t bad enough he planned to kill…Her thoughts fractured. Panic beat at her. Dragging in a deep breath, she used sheer force of will to bring her emotions under control.
A porcelain figurine shattered on the floor and she snapped her gaze back to the behemoth pawing through her drawers. Clarifying outrage flowed through her.
He turned his back completely, and Ally had a lightbulb moment. Toeing off her sandals, she eased to her feet. He grunted and shifted his impressive weight. She froze, lightheaded with fear. The temptation of escape whispered in her ear. So very close.
When he didn’t turn, she walked backward on unsteady feet, slipping around the corner into her beautiful, immaculate kitchen. He was so sure she would sit there like a good little girl while he satisfied his curiosity. Fat chance. Steel slid up her spine. Maybe she was boring and terrified of far too many things, but she wasn’t going to sit obediently on her hands and wait to die.
She spun on bare feet, raced through her kitchen and into the garage. The police cruiser in the drive fenced in her car. Tearing around the corner, she dashed across the neighbor’s side lawn. Heart racing, anticipating discovery any moment, she leapt the waist-height fence into their backyard with the agility of a trained athlete.
Grinning over her small feat, she aimed for the back fence.
A bellow from inside her house made her flinch, pulling the plug on her pride. Remembering an old police show, she hunched and ran in a zigzag pattern. Heart pounding, palms clammy, the six-foot privacy fence loomed before her. A zing, a crunch to her left. She stared at a fresh, neatly splintered hole just to the side of her head.
Oh, God! He was shooting at her. Actually shooting. In broad daylight. In her neighbor’s backyard. Didn’t they have rules about that sort of stuff?
Nerves shredded, Ally gritted her teeth. Three more feet. Two. Another crunch. She swore the heat of the bullet singed her shoulder. Arms extended, she jumped for all she was worth. Up, braced her arms and pushed off. She landed with an oomph on the other side, followed by another crunch and a hole in the wood fence.
For a split second, she crouched panting, staring in disbelief at the fence towering over her head. Had she really done that?
Cursing from the other side got her up and moving again. Squealing tires and a revving engine brought her head around. A car tore into the alley and raced toward her. More bad guys? Had he called in reinforcements?
Ally froze.
Did I do something horrible in a past life to deserve this?
Truly, I’ll help the poor. Serve food at the soup kitchen. Go to church every Sunday. Donate money to the shelter. I’ll even babysit my friend’s bratty kids.
Just please, please, please get me out of this alive.
The shiny black Camaro careened to a stop with the driver’s side door facing her. Heavily tinted windows revealed nothing. In a last desperate bid for freedom, she darted past the door. Strong arms encircled her waist and dragged her back toward the idling car.
Chapter Three
“No!” Ally screamed like a banshee, flinging out her arms and legs, scrabbling for purchase. Hard hands sent her flying across the front seat.
“Ally.”
“Let me go!” She dove for the door handle.
“Ally!” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her back, away from the passenger door. “Damn woman, you are way more trouble than you’re worth.”
Almost blind with panic, she twisted around and crouched on the seat, prepared to draw blood.
Shocked hazel clashed with furious aqua. Her mouth fell open. Muttering under his breath, Detective Marsing threw the car into gear and spun out of the alleyway. She whipped her head around in time to see a blocky head pop up over the privacy fence as they disappeared around the corner. She’d done it. Escaped. Stayed alive. Like an atomic bomb, the events of the past hours and the emotions she’d worked so hard to control mushroomed up, exploding inside. Tears stung.
“Can’t you stay out of trouble for five minutes?”
His harsh tone burst the erupting emotional storm. Her tears dried before they fell. She plopped down into the passenger seat, staring at him as the last few minutes replayed. Then she flung herself across the console and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I am sooo glad to see you. You don’t know how glad.” She tightened her arms and breathed him in. He smelled incredible; like sunshine and the ocean and relaxation. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?” A thought froze her outpouring of gratitude and she sat back on her heels. “Wait a second. Everything I’ve been through since getting home is your fault!”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
Her jaw dropped. “You sent me off with some jerk who tried to kill me, you…you…jerk!”
“Jerk?” Detective Marsing turned incredulous eyes on her. “Someone tries to kill you and jerk is the best you can come up with? That’s sad, Ally.”
Crossing her arms, she sat back. “Just admit it. This whole situation is all your fault.”
“What is it with women? Look, if I’d known Smith was part of this thing, I never would have sent him with you.”
“Confession is good for the soul. Come on, it won’t hurt. Much.”
He sighed, scrubbing his hand over his face. A smile tipped up the corner of his mouth and he glanced at her. “Fine. If it’ll make you feel better, you’re right. This entire situation is my fault.”
“Thank you.” A man like Detective Marsing didn’t make such admissions easily. She smiled a little but shifted in her seat, disconcerted. She glanced at his Greek-god profile. He’d drop her off somewhere and she wouldn’t have to worry about the way he made her feel again.
The atmosphere in the car settled into an uneasy truce and gradually her smile dissolved. Staring at her dirty toes, she clenched her hands in her lap. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“I live a very quiet life.” She sighed. “Nothing exciting happens to me. I avoid excitement like the plague. So, why would anyone want to, uhm, off me?”
“Off you?” Marsing grinned. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to find out?”
“Yes.”
He pulled into an underground garage beneath a gleaming high-rise.
“Where are we? I thought you were going to, I don’t know, drop me off at the police station, I guess.”
“Not a good idea. I need some time to figure out what we’re facing.”
We. Against her better judgment, her heart softened and opened the teensiest bit. “Thank you.”
He grinned, an awe shucks sorta smile. Her stomach flipped. All he needed was a cowboy hat to tip.
“Just doing my job.”
The walls around her heart slammed shut again and she battled back an ache of disappointment. They idled down neat rows of expensive cars. BMW, Mercedes, Saab, Lexus and Audi. Sh
e straightened, for the first time conscious of the high-quality leather under her butt.
“You live here?”
“Sort of.”
“Sort of? What kind of answer is ‘sort of’? Either you do or you don’t live somewhere. You can’t ‘sort of’ live somewhere.”
“Sometimes, okay? You could try the patience of a saint, Sugar Lips.” His gaze dropped to her lips and a slow, intensely hot smile formed. “And I’m no saint.”
“Gee, I hadn’t noticed.”
Her irritation from the rooftop fiasco returned. Saint, ha, good one. More like the department Don Juan. Wasn’t she just the luckiest girl in town?
He steered the car into a spot sandwiched between a Jaguar and a Beemer. She hopped out as soon as he killed the engine. Tapping her feet at the rear of his car, she glared at her toes. Barefoot and dirty. Just the look she dreamt of sporting when going into a ritzy condominium building. Lovely.
“Detective, I can’t go in there looking like this.”
“You look fine.” He grabbed her arm and tugged her along beside him.
She glared at him. “How do you know I look fine when you haven’t even looked at me?”
“Believe me, I’ve looked far too much for my own peace of mind.”
She blinked. “What? I don’t even have shoes on. I look like some homeless person you dragged in off the street.”
His lips tightened. “Hardly. You’re far too beautiful to be mistaken for homeless.” He glanced at her feet and shrugged. “It’s hot. You like going barefoot in the heat. Just go with it, keep your chin up and no one will think twice. Wealthy people are eccentric. Trust me, bare feet are the least of what I’ve seen around here.”
Beautiful? He thought she was beautiful? Struggling to process such a strange new concept, she clipped several bumpers and set off a symphony of car alarms. No one had ever called her beautiful before. Cute had come up a few times over the years, cuddly more often than she’d like and attractive brought out and dusted off on a few occasions.
Beautiful. Huh.
“Move your tush, Sugar Lips.” He tugged her at a faster clip across the cool expanse of cement.
In the elevator, he released her and she rubbed her arm. He hadn’t hurt her, but still. “Your little habit of grabbing and hauling me around is getting old. Just a little FYI for ya.”
He grinned, a baring of teeth attractive enough to make her knees go weak—dratted man. “Just making sure you don’t get lost or kidnapped when my back’s turned.”
She returned his patently false smile as he pushed the button for the top floor. The high-tech LCD display prompted him to enter a code. The penthouse. Of course. And he just stayed here sometimes. Poor guy. What a rough life.
After silently whisking them up through the building, the elevator doors slid open. A marble inlaid foyer opened onto a living room that screamed, “I’ve got more money in my sock drawer than you’ll ever see in this lifetime.” Frowning, she rubbed her hand over her churning stomach. She didn’t belong here.
Ally took a step, then hesitated. Trusting Officer Smith hadn’t been the brightest idea, but surely Marsing wouldn’t rescue her and bring her to his place just to kill her. Gnawing on her lip, she stared at the back of his golden head as he strode into the condo. Either she trusted him or she didn’t. Trusted him to keep her safe, anyway. Time to fish or cut bait.
She sucked in a breath and walked off the elevator. “So…uhm…does your family live here? Parents, siblings?”
His lips tightened. The happy-go-lucky guy disappeared.
Nerves jangling, Ally bit her lip hard. Had she made a mistake after all?
Fingers smoothing over the top of a curved couch, she crossed to a wall of enormous windows framing the city. She cleared her throat and faced Marsing again, clenching her jaw to keep it shut.
His eyes sparkled and the sardonic twist to his too-tempting lips had returned. Heck, even his hair seemed cocky.
“Uhm…” Pull yourself together, Ally. Sheesh. “Pretty fancy digs, Detective.”
“Thanks.”
Oookay. Ignore one question, glaze over the next. So much for polite chitchat. He might as well just tell her to mind her own business. She turned to admire the skyscraper view.
“Make yourself at home.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. The room was empty. “Detective?”
Where had he gone? Ally peered through an arched doorway. A massive mahogany table with twenty high-back chairs filled the room, a huge oil painting on one wall and a gilt-framed mirror on the other. The flower arrangement in the center probably cost the same as her monthly mortgage payment.
She wandered back into the living room, taking in the plush furniture and museum- quality paintings. One in particular caught her eye. Swirls of frothing green and blue swept across the canvas, a vision of serenity with a seaside cottage perched on the edge of a sandy beach.
A door closed somewhere, snapping her out of her trance. She investigated another hallway. Thick silence draped the dark passage and she couldn’t help a little shiver. Crossing her arms, she turned in a circle. She’d crawled through dank tunnels, huddled in creepy nooks with who knew what, rolled on a tar pitch roof and run around in the dirt barefoot. No freakin’ way was she sitting on any of the furniture in this place. Not until she’d had a long, hot shower. Gnawing on her lower lip, she made a beeline for a closed door near the entry.
“Uhm…Greg?”
A wide expanse of bronzed skin greeted her when the door swung open. A lucky bead of water traveled down over chiseled pecks, ducking in and out of washboard abs before vanishing into a tantalizing trail of dark golden hair. Hair that disappeared into the top of a low-slung towel. Make that a cold shower.
Mouth dry, she forced her gaze away and tightened her arms around her ribcage. No touching. She focused on a cream porcelain lamp sitting on a deep mahogany side table. “That’s a lovely lamp. An antique?”
His deep chuckle found a whole swarm of poor, defenseless nerve endings. “I wouldn’t know.”
Of course he wouldn’t. He was clearly one of those men who spent every spare minute in the gym or some woman’s bed. More than likely he used books as paperweights.
From the look of those bulging biceps, he could probably bench-press her.
That doesn’t matter. She wanted more in a man than the number on his weight machine. Like an IQ in the triple digits, the desire for self-improvement and an appreciation of the arts.
Her gaze returned like a homing pigeon. Marsing stood with a shoulder braced against the doorframe. Indulging her depraved senses, she soaked him in. His muscled calves, strong thighs, the irritating disturbance of a fluffy white towel and—oh, momma—his chest.
More than his gorgeous, underwear-model-perfect physique, the strength and air of calm he exuded made his seem so…capable. The kind of guy you could depend on. A perfect place to rest your weary head, and other, uhm, body parts. Oh, man, she was out of control. Heart pounding, flushed and tingly, she bit her lip and met his eyes.
He raised his eyebrows. “Shall I remove the towel for you?”
“Would you?”
She gasped and slapped a hand over her mouth, heat flooding her cheeks. Marsing laughed. Ally spun away and lit out for the other side of the living room like she had a wild badger on her tail.
Deep breath in, then out. She regained her equilibrium and managed to remember why she was there in the first place. Sadly, it had nothing to do with ogling a detective.
“What’s going on?” Spread before her like an exquisite buffet of sensory delight, downtown had begun to light up as night fell outside the windows. “How did you know where I live? Why did you show up like that?”
“We didn’t know about Freddy until about ten minutes after you left. The guy we arrested at the park shared that nugget en route to the precinct.” He paced the room, his fingers buried in his damp hair, all tense and tough and manly. “I’m sorry I got you mixed up in all
this. I don’t know why Smith was ordered to…” He cut himself off, glancing at her. “I will find out, though.”
“How did you find me?”
“Locator chip in the cruiser. They activated Smith’s and sent me his location. I got there as fast as I could, Ally. Smith has been with the department for ten years. He’s the last guy I would suspect of doing something like this.”
Hating her ill-fated attraction to a man millions of miles out of her league, she turned away and shrugged with a nonchalance she was far from feeling. “Are you planning on wandering around undressed all night?”
His reflection in the glass looked down and grinned. “It’s comfortable.”
“Go get dressed, for crying out loud.”
Still grinning, he disappeared into the room behind him. Ally kept her feet firmly rooted to the floor. Overactive and underused hormones would only get her in trouble.
Something buzzed. An intercom? The low rumble of Detective Marsing’s voice drifted from the bedroom. A minute later he emerged, dressed in black slacks and a white Oxford with black and baby-blue stripes. The elevator doors opened and a tall man stepped off, the silver badge glinting on his belt.
“Lucas,” Marsing said.
“Marsing.”
Lucas focused on her. The urge to hide behind the floor-length drapes tugged at her, but she resisted. His ice-blue gaze traveled down then back up more slowly. On second thought, she’d go with hiding. As her fingers curled into the thick fabric of the curtains, Marsing turned and pinned her to the spot.
“Ally, this is Lucas Jones, a detective with the neighboring precinct. We go way back; playmates from our academy days. Lucas, this is Ally.”
To her undying relief, Lucas’ gaze flickered away from her. The sardonic twist of his lips must be what passed for a smile. “Only you, Marsing. Only you.”
“Whatever. You scare the shit out of most people, but I know your mother. And all your sisters.”
“Don’t talk about my sisters. Unless you want to get pounded again.” Lucas cracked his knuckles. “I still can’t believe you snuck off with little Beth-Anne. Necking with my sister. Gross, man.”
Sweet Deception Page 3