by Ann Bruce
Her shoulders shook as she laughed, the sound decidedly lacking in humor. “I need some space,” she said, forcing her body to straighten away from him, and, through the rear window, saw a familiar street with familiar trees with autumn-hued leaves in front of two rows of familiar brownstones. Gordon pulled the car into an empty spot in front of her apartment. Her eyes went back to Dean’s. For an instant, she wanted to tell him she changed her mind, she did want to go home with him, she wanted to continue living in the bubble that separated them from the real world.
She looked away.
Dean reached for the door handle and pulled it open with more force than necessary. “Gordon, stay in the car. I’ll get the bags.”
Parker slid across the seat, followed him out and stepped onto the sidewalk. She started after him when he went around to the trunk Gordon had popped open.
“Get inside before you catch cold.”
His brusque tone made her stop in her tracks. His face was hard, his mouth compressed. Was he angry with her or with the circumstances? Deciding she couldn’t handle that type of confrontation right now, Parker went up the steps and waited for him, a little chilled but no longer shivering. When Dean joined her with her suitcase in one hand and her tote in the other, she unzipped the outer compartment of the tote, withdrew her ring of keys, unlocked the outer door and held it open for him. He watched the proceedings with annoyance radiating off him and she wisely declined from offering to take one of the items from him.
Keys jangled while she tried to find the right one as she hurried up the steps after him to the second floor. He’d dropped her baggage on the floor and was blocking the door. When she tried to sidle in front of him, Dean shot out an arm and shoved her back, keeping her behind him.
“The lock looks busted,” he said grimly before she could ask the question.
Her heart started pounding very heavily, very loudly. “Are you certain?”
He tossed her a look over his shoulder. “I was here when the new lock was put in. Now it looks like someone pried it open and scratched it up.” He pulled out a cell phone from his front pocket and gave it to her. “Go back to the car and call nine-one-one.”
He tried the doorknob, it turned, and he murmured, “Busted.”
She saw the muscles in his back tense and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “What are you doing?” she asked in a hushed tone, hearing the alarm in her voice and unable to suppress it.
He hesitated, then replied, “Checking out the damage.”
“Whoever broke in might still be in there.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “The sun just went down. Whoever broke in wouldn’t have been dumb enough to do it during daylight.”
“You don’t know the IQ of the burglar! And the first break-in occurred during daylight!”
“That was when his key worked. Your door’s busted. Whoever did this wouldn’t have stuck around to bust it open while people are up and moving about.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
He turned to her, an easing of the hardness in his features, and cupped her shoulders. “You’re really worried.”
Worried didn’t quite cover the churning in her stomach. She was on the verge of being sick and he…he was looking damned pleased. Exasperated, she pursed her lips briefly. “Of course, I am. Like I would be for anyone who’s lost his senses.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Her hands came up and clasped his wrists. “By letting the professionals do their jobs. You come downstairs and wait in the car with me for the NYPD.”
A door swung open behind them.
“Parker!”
Her head swiveled toward the sound. Her neighbor, Deidre, looking resplendent in a multi-jewel-colored caftan, rushed toward her and Parker was enveloped in a cloud of auburn curls and perfume.
“Where have you been?” asked Deidre in her husky voice, her hands fluttering over Parker, multiple rings glittering ostentatiously. Bright green eyes slid to Dean, turned appreciative. “Right,” she murmured and offered her hand. “Deidre Wallace, neighbor extraordinaire.”
Dean shook the proffered hand and gave his name and nothing more, but that didn’t stop the woman, who was in her heels and nearly at his eye level, from casting Parker a sly glance.
“Deidre?” prompted Parker.
“I think it happened late last night. I thought I heard a noise, but I was half asleep and couldn’t be certain. Next morning, I saw your door was ajar and I knew it couldn’t have been you because Owen told me you’d be gone for a week, so I called the police. They went in, took notes, asked questions and left me a business card to give to you as soon as you returned.
“I tried to contact you but your cell was out of range.”
Parker’s stomach cramped. “Deidre, please tell me you didn’t call my mother.”
The other woman looked insulted. “Of course, I didn’t. Your mother can be a little scary.”
“My mom’s not scary,” Parker said automatically, the knots in her stomach unraveling.
“Sweetie, she’s a tigress when it comes to you.” Deidre made a face and shuddered. “God knows what she would’ve done to me if I’d told her your home was burglarized, but you weren’t around to tell her you’re okay.”
“The police might’ve notified her,” Dean said quietly from behind Parker.
A sheepish expression crossed Deidre’s strong, handsome features and she touched her fingertips carefully to her lipsticked lips. “Oh, you might be right. I gave them her name, but I did tell them you were on vacation and you wouldn’t want your mother to find out about this from them.”
“Oh God.” The cramping returned with a vengeance and she folded an arm across her middle. Parker flipped open the cell phone in her hand and punched in ten digits. While a landline rang somewhere on the other side of the Hudson River, Dean started questioning Deidre. Parker turned her back on them. On the sixth ring, someone answered. It was Brenda.
“Parker, are you back already?” asked her sister, her tone casual.
“Yes, I cut the vacation short. Listen, did the police call or come by while I was away?”
“What? Why? What happened?”
Relief made her knees go weak and Parker would’ve collapsed had she not grabbed on to Dean’s arm. He wrapped his arm around her waist and gathered her against him. Parker quickly made reassurances to her sister, promised to stop by the next day to explain everything, and ended the call before Brenda could put their mother on.
“Sweetie, you need to sit down,” remarked Deidre.
“I will,” Parker said, “after I check out the damage. I want to know if I need to call my insurance agent tomorrow.”
Deidre’s brow furrowed and her prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “The officers only let me clean up the food that was tossed onto the floor. I told them it would spoil and stink up the place if left there.”
“You’re an angel,” Parker said emphatically. “I’ll let you run wild in the sample room next week. Anything you want is yours. I’ll even help you carry them home.”
Deidre’s face lit up, like she’d just won the lottery. “Oh, sweetie, you just made my Christmas.”
Her expression dimmed as she waved a hand at Parker’s front door. “Your place isn’t habitable, especially with the broken lock. You can stay with me until everything gets put to rights. It’ll be—”
“She’ll be staying with me,” interjected Dean.
Parker felt warmth blossom on her cheeks as one of her neighbor’s expertly plucked eyebrows rose, then lowered. “I think I’ll go get that business card for you,” murmured Deidre. “Be right back.”
She returned shortly and held out the card. Dean took it and pocketed it.
“Call me if you need me, sweetie.” She fluttered her fingers at them, the stones in her rings winking, and disappeared back inside her unit in a swirl of glittering fabric.
Keeping Parker behind him, Dean silently opened her front door and went in first. As a faint sense
of déjà vu swept over her, cold air wafted through the doorway, around his frame, and hit her. Whoever had violated her home had also broken her windows. Deidre wouldn’t have left them open.
Dean deliberately blocked the doorway with his body for several moments, his body tensing more with each, then flipped on a light switch and stood aside to let her enter. Despite having braced herself, Parker wasn’t able to smother her gasp of dismay. Her living room looked like two giant hands had picked it up, shaken it and put it down again. Furniture was overturned and vandalized. Her sofa was on its back, its cushions ripped open, exposing white batting, and flung across the room. Her slipper chair and ottoman-cum-coffee table both suffered the same fate. Like a sleepwalker, she shuffled deeper inside. Glass crunched under her shoes. She glanced down. It was the remains of the Tiffany lamp she kept on the side table.
Parker shivered as fear congealed in her stomach. This wasn’t a simple robbery motivated by greed. Whoever was responsible for all this destruction had been enraged, dangerously so. Oh, God. Who hated her to such a passionate and disturbing degree?
Parker stood still, afraid to move, afraid to see the fate of her kitchen, the fate of her bedroom.
A hand landed on her shoulder. “Let’s go. You don’t need to see anymore.”
She blinked, then took a quivering breath. “Yes, I do,” she countered, her voice surprisingly steady. Kitchen first, she thought, and forced her feet to move in that direction. In the dim lighting, it didn’t look nearly as bad as the living room. She turned on the overhead lights, and promptly wished she hadn’t. The glass top of the stove was a spider web of cracks, the cupboards were empty, and the walls marked with dents and holes that would require a lot of polyfill.
She brushed by an ominously silent Dean as she headed for the bedroom. The door creaked as she gave it a little shove and it swung inward. By rote, she turned on the lights.
Parker heard Dean’s vehement curse as if he was a great distance away while she took in the scene of her bedroom. Was there a single item still intact? Did she have a single wearable garment left? As her gaze swept from the torn bed to the walk-in closet, taking in the ripped clothes strewn between, she doubted it.
Who would do this?
“Moore,” Dean bit off, making her realize she’d asked the question aloud. “I’ll make sure the police take him in for questioning.”
Parker shook her head slowly. “He’s childish, not criminal.”
“Are you sure?”
She started to nod, then stopped mid-motion. “How do you know Tyler’s last name? I don’t recall ever mentioning it to you.”
He shrugged. “My sister is a fount of information that rivals the CIA. And I wanted to know how I stacked up against your exes.”
“Oh.” With his arrogance, she didn’t think he would even give a thought to any other man in her life, past or present. Didn’t he assume all other men would pale in comparison to him? Especially, if she were to be brutally honest with herself, since it was the truth?
Christ, I don’t need this right now, Parker thought, and shook her head to clear it.
“I broke up with Tyler over a month ago. He’s never done anything like this before. He throws temper tantrums, but he’s not destructive. Whenever he got angry, he’d yell for a bit, then just give me the silent treatment.”
“And yet you still got involved with him.”
“He didn’t come with a warning label,” she said, a bit testy. “As soon as I saw what was underneath his good looks, I ended it. He didn’t like it because it hurt his pride to be the dumpee and not the dumper, but he never did anything more than make a nuisance of himself.”
“But you didn’t get involved with anyone else until me.”
“Maybe it’s about you. Maybe you have a psycho ex somewhere in your closet who doesn’t want you to be with anyone else.”
She was grasping at straws and Dean knew it. He caught her hand and drew her from the room. “Let’s go.”
Parker let him lead her to the front door, then stopped. “Your place?”
He faced her, his expression neutral. “Yes.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Where then?”
“My mother’s place. It’s in Jersey.”
“You want to put your mother, your sister and your niece in danger? Whoever did this might decide to go after you while you’re staying with them.”
She pressed a fist to her middle. “God, no,” she said, shaking her head. “A hotel, then.”
The neutrality faded. “Where security is probably even worse than here. I have a doorman and an apartment suite only my cardkey can access. The elevator won’t even go to my floor unless you have the cardkey. You’ll be safe there.”
“But what about you?”
The words were low, barely audible, but Dean heard them and they sliced through the fear that had gripped him since they’d reached the brownstone, when she’d begun distancing herself from him.
Gently, he pushed back the hair he’d convinced her to leave loose. “I’ll be fine. I don’t take stupid risks.”
“You wanted to go in here before we knew it was empty,” she reminded him sharply, looking like she was about to get upset over it again.
“Parker, I didn’t hire Gordon just for his pretty face. And I’m no slouch on the mats, either.”
Her cheeks reddened and her lashes lowered. In a flash, he knew her memories weren’t of him taking his frustrations out on the punching bag. Arousal stirred, hardening his body.
“If you go to a hotel, I’ll only go with you.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips over her temple. “I’m not going to take any risks with your safety.”
She swayed, her body coming nearer.
“It’ll be okay. I’ll take care of you,” he coaxed.
Her eyes closed. “How do you do this to me?” she said rhetorically, not sounding happy.
Quietly, he said, “You do the same to me.”
Her head turned away from him, but she didn’t resist when he started forward. They left the brownstone, with Dean carrying out Parker’s suitcase and tote. He summarized the situation for Gordon, who cursed rather colorfully, apologized to Parker for his language, and drove them to the Upper East Side. Remarkably, Parker managed to doze during the short drive and Dean reluctantly prodded her awake when they neared a prewar limestone building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-third Street. Gordon dropped them off at the canopied entrance, which was flanked by a lot of greenery and bronze lanterns, and went to park the Maybach at a nearby garage.
Dean hustled Parker through the front entrance, the door held open by the uniformed doorman, across the lobby and up to the twelfth-floor penthouse. The apartment, which took up the entire floor like all the units in the building, had four guest bedrooms, but he dropped her suitcase and tote on the floor of the master bedroom. He wasn’t about to let her take two steps back from him. When he turned around, he found her using the doorframe to remain upright.
“Food or sleep?” he asked.
“Sleep.” She ran a hand through her hair and made a face. “But shower first.”
He caught her wrist and, as he tugged her into the en suite bathroom, she yawned behind her hand.
“You really don’t fly well.”
“No,” she agreed, “I like terra firma under my feet. When I have to cover shows overseas, I always head over a day or two early so I don’t look like one of the ugly stepsisters when I stand next to all those supermodels.”
“You could never be ugly,” he said, shutting the bathroom door behind him with his foot and enclosing them in the navy and white room.
She leaned back against the vanity counter. “Sometimes you say the nicest things.”
“Only sometimes?” He closed the distance between them and planted his hands on the marble counter on either side of her.
“Uh huh. You’re not exactly the smoothest operator.”
“Are you complaining?
”
“No.” Her lashes lowered, but it wasn’t a coy move. “I’m done with smooth operators.”
His muscles tightened as anger shot through him. “Moore.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about that right now.”
He gathered the hem of her top and carefully pulled it over her head. She was braless and he couldn’t resist tasting the velvety nipple that topped her small, plump breast. At the first swipe of his tongue, her fingers tunneled through his hair and she sighed his name.
Chapter Seven
The next morning, Dean had breakfast and the NYPD waiting for her. The detectives, Wade and Harris, looking bland and interchangeable in black shoes, dark trousers and worn suit jackets, asked questions, took notes and promised to send a tech team to her residence to gather evidence and to chat with Tyler Moore themselves.
Parker stood on the balustraded balcony, dressed warmly in blue jeans and a black wool sweater she’d borrowed from Dean’s closet. Owen had packed garments for a tropical island, so she was limited in the clothing department. The sweater hung down to her thighs and the sleeves were ridiculously long, but it was warm and—she pressed her nose into the thick, soft fabric and inhaled—it smelled like him.
The balcony door opened behind her. Without taking her eyes off of the sprawl of Central Park, breathtaking with its dense fall foliage and sunlight sparkling off the Pond, she remarked, “They’re not going to be able to do much, if anything.”
Dean came up behind her, slid an arm just underneath her breasts and pulled her back against him.
“Moore won’t get away with it.”
She glanced up at him. “Please don’t do anything rash. Tyler was never violent when we were together.”
The arm around her tightened. “Maybe he was better at hiding it.”
“As difficult as it may be to believe, he’s a very successful corporate attorney; he’s not stupid. I just don’t buy that he would do something like this.”