After The Storm

by K. M. Scott

  Damn, that’s a nice body. That’s even nicer than I imagined. That is one fine body.

  He noticed her staring and smiled. “Why are you in the bathroom when I’m taking a shower if nothing happened?”

  His question roused her from daydreaming about how hot he looked standing there, and she instantly felt defensive. “Asks the man who walked in on me while I was taking a bath.”

  “Then I guess we’re even?” he said with a stupid grin that irritated her.

  He’d probably smiled like that with Cheri from the fifth floor. Cheri who he’d spent the entire day with while she slept alone down here in the room.

  Cheri who was probably a blonde. With a name like Cheri, she had to be a blonde. Women with names like that were always blonde with great bodies and men hanging off them. Good looking men like Roman.

  Kate focused her attention on Roman still smiling at her like any of this was funny. “So don’t feel like you have to hang around if you have something else you want to do,” she repeated, trying to avoid looking at any part of his body but his face.

  It was a nearly impossible task now that she’d seen him without clothes on. With water running over the peaks and valleys of his muscular body.

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but I have nothing else I want to do. I told you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Kate.”

  He waited for her to say something, but nothing came to her. Well, nothing she wanted to say out loud. Jealousy and arousal rushed through her like some kind of toxic mixture she knew wouldn’t end up sounding right if she spoke, so she clamped her lips shut.

  “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be done with my shower, okay?”

  None of what she’d just done felt okay. None of the jealousy that coursed through her felt okay either. The only thing that was remotely okay in all of that was how incredible Roman looked standing there naked with water rolling over his gorgeous body.

  She didn’t say anything else and when he closed the shower curtain, she turned on her heels and left the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Utterly sure she’d never been so stupid, she flopped down on the bed and covered her eyes with her arm.

  “So dumb. Get it together, Kate. You’re losing your mind.”

  Now anger folded itself into the mixture of jealousy and desire. Anger at herself, though. She hadn’t completely lost the ability to think logically. Roman had every right to do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted. Even if the person he wanted had the name Cheri.

  And the truth of the matter was he hadn’t done anything but try to help her. For that, he deserved her thanks, but even more, he deserved far better than the ridiculous scene she’d just put on in the bathroom.

  Kate had no idea why she became so jealous. “I barely know the guy,” she mumbled to herself as she lay there on the bed. “What’s wrong with me?”

  The bathroom door opened, and she looked up from underneath her arm to see Roman standing there fully dressed once again but looking so good with his dark hair still wet. God, did this guy ever not look incredible?

  Embarrassed by her behavior, she didn’t want to say anything now. Better to let him talk first so she could gauge just how idiotic he thought she’d acted in there.

  Roman ran his hand through his wet hair, smoothing it off his face, before he walked over to the dresser to get his watch. Pausing a moment, he looked down at where he’d left it and then slid it over his hand and closed the band around his wrist.

  “Now that you’ve had a chance to rest, I need you to tell me everything you know about why anyone would be after you.”

  She hadn’t expected those words to come out of his mouth. Kate had been preparing to defend herself for the spectacle she’d just put on for him in the bathroom, so she breathed a sigh of relief that he wanted to discuss her problems with the law instead.

  Sitting up, she made sure her robe covered everything it should and said, “Well, there’s not much to tell other than my boss and one of his clients were murdered on Tuesday. Jonas, my boss, had warned me that if anything happened to him because of that case that I couldn’t trust the police. I guess he was right since they’ve plastered my face all over the TV and think I’m a suspect.”

  “Why would he say you couldn’t trust the cops?” Roman asked as he walked in front of her to sit down in the chair near the window.

  Quickly, she tried to remember another time Jonas had an issue with the police. As a personal injury lawyer, he didn’t often deal with the police as adversaries on cases. That role was saved mostly for insurance companies. The cops just filled out the reports he used when he went after other people for pain and suffering, the two things he always said had made his life what it was. She’d always thought those were two odd words to use to describe a life.

  She turned to face Roman and shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t have a problem with the police, for the most part. Jonas wasn’t a defense attorney, so the police were never the focus of his cases.”

  “What kind of lawyer was your boss?” Roman asked with a hint of distaste in his tone.

  Kate knew what everyone thought of personal injury lawyers. She’d heard it a million times since she began working for Jonas. Ambulance chaser, blood sucker. And she’d heard the jokes about the only good lawyer being a dead lawyer and how Shakespeare had been right when he said they should kill all the lawyers.

  But Jonas did good things for people. He wasn’t someone who tried to make millions on other people’s suffering. He just wanted to help those who needed it.

  Feeling defensive, she said, “He was a personal injury lawyer, and before you say anything negative about that, please remember my boss is the victim here.”

  Roman simply nodded and pursed his lips. “Okay, point taken. But why would a personal injury lawyer tell his assistant not to trust the police if anything ever happened to him? That says something odd was going on. What was the case he and his client were working on? Clearly, that connection is the important one.”

  “I don’t know. Jonas wouldn’t let me know any of the details of that case.”

  A look of suspicion settled into Roman’s face. “You were his assistant but he wouldn’t let you know about a case he was working on? Was that normal?”

  Shaking her head, she admitted the truth she never understood from the moment he began hiding things from her. “No. Jonas never did that before this case and never did it on any case that came in after that.”

  “How long was he working on this case?”

  “Seven months,” she answered, wishing at some point in all that time that she’d listened to her gut and looked into what Jonas was up to.

  Maybe if she had, Jonas and Samuel Darnell would still be alive.

  “So for more than half a year, your boss was working on a case he wouldn’t share with you, his only assistant? What reason would he have not to let you know about this particular case, Kate?”

  The suspicion she’d seen a minute earlier in Roman’s face had turned into a look of judgment she couldn’t understand. “What are you saying? That I did something?”

  Roman slowly shook his head. “No. I’m just asking why a lawyer wouldn’t tell his only assistant about a case when he’d never before or ever since acted like that on any other case.”

  Kate didn’t like the way he sounded like judge and jury when he said that. Standing up, she looked down at him and told him the same thing she’d said before.

  “I have no idea why my boss wouldn’t let me know about this case. I don’t know why he told me if anything happened to him that I shouldn’t trust the police either. All I know is he’s dead, his client’s dead, and I’m wanted by the police for something I had nothing to do with. You say you want to help me, but it doesn’t seem like it right now, Roman. It seems like you think I did something to deserve the police coming after me. Is that what you think? Do you think I’m a murderer?”

  She waited for him to say something in response to her ou
tburst, but instead, Roman just sat there staring up at her like he was mentally weighing every word she’d just said. She wanted to lash out and scream that he had no right to judge her like that. That just because he looked like every cop she’d ever seen and may very well have been a cop at some point didn’t mean he should trust the cops more than her.

  But she knew the reality. Roman was the only person who might be able to help her out of whatever mess she’d found herself smack dab in the middle of. Even more, Kate knew she couldn’t get out of the mess on her own.

  So, whatever she did, she had to convince Roman that she hadn’t killed Jonas or Samuel. No matter what the police said.

  Chapter Eight

  “So there’s no other reason why the police would be looking for you?” Roman asked and watched Kate carefully, looking for any sign or tell to let him know she may be lying about this case.

  He had no idea if she’d done anything to deserve the police looking for her other than the fact that until two days before she’d been Jonas Flynn’s only assistant who they justifiably could think knew the details about this case she claimed he never told her about.

  Her mouth dropped open in shock, but she recovered quickly and shook her head. “No. I’m a boring, law abiding citizen. Let me tell you how boring I am. I don’t have a car, so I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket. I don’t have a dog, so I’ve never let a pet shit all over the neighborhood. I haven’t gotten high since back in high school, so unless the New Orleans police suddenly have a lot of time on their hands and feel like busting people for the foolishness of their teenage years, the pot I smoked isn’t why they want to find me. They’re after me because they think Jonas, Samuel, and I were involved in some love triangle. At least that’s what they’re saying to the press.”

  As he studied the way she moved her hands when she got angry about something, he had the surest sense that boring would be the last thing anyone would call Kate Sheridan. She had a fire inside her that begged to be allowed to breathe fresh air. He wondered if she even knew how strong she was.

  That aside, he suspected she was hiding something and a love triangle with her boss and one of his clients seemed doubtful. Whether what she was hiding would mean anything to this case or not he didn’t know, but everyone had secrets.

  And Kate definitely was concealing something. Now he just had to figure out what.

  As for the cops, he had a hard time squaring what he knew about every cop he’d ever known and her suspicion that the local police had it out for her. While that kind of thing made for good movies and sold newspapers, he’d always found the truth to be far less exciting but no less impressive.

  Police, whether local yokel cops or big city officers, tended to err on the side of good and honor in his experience. As much as she wanted to believe there was some conspiracy against her led by the New Orleans Police Department, he just didn’t buy it.

  “What proof do you have that the cops are somehow involved in this case?” he asked and then waited for her to tell him something, anything to convince him she was onto the truth with her theory.

  Her eyebrows drew in toward her nose like angry slashes. Obviously, she didn’t like his question, but that didn’t change the fact that he needed an answer.

  She began talking with her hands again, waving them around wildly as she became more frustrated with every moment he didn’t jump up and agree with her.

  “They came after me at that seedy motel. Why? What would make me a suspect?” she asked, punctuating her question by pointing at him.

  “You were Jonas Flynn’s only assistant, Kate. You naturally would be a suspect, along with every other person in his life.”

  “Ah ha!” she exclaimed, pointing at him again. “Right there I can prove that’s wrong. Jonas had a girlfriend. Why isn’t she the one whose face is being flashed all over the television? If there was going to be a threesome or a love triangle or whatever they’re claiming, wouldn’t she be the logical third person and not me?”

  She did have a point. A romantic entanglement theory would lend itself to one of the victim’s girlfriends more than it would Kate, someone who merely worked with Jonas.

  “Okay, that makes sense. Do you have any other proof?”

  Glaring at him, she twisted her face into a scowl. “Jonas told me not to trust the cops if anything happened to him involving this case. It’s like he was predicting the future.”

  “That’s not proof.”

  “Well, why would he tell me that then? Maybe he knew something about the cops that we don’t know. Maybe that case had something to do with a cop. Maybe he knew they’d protect their own if what one of them did ever came out,” she said, clearly grasping at straws for anything that sounded even remotely possible.

  “Until there’s some proof, I can’t believe that.”

  His dismissal of all her theories infuriated her, and she began to pace back and forth through the room. “Why? Because you’re one of them or used to be one of them so you think they’re angels? Let me introduce you to the real world, Roman. It happens every day. Cops are just as liable to be crooked and dirty as anyone else. They aren’t impervious to being bad. That badge doesn’t mean they have some kind of protective shield around them that evil can’t get through. Trust me.”

  “I’ve never been a cop. That’s not why I’m having a hard time believing all of this. I just don’t see any proof that the New Orleans Police Department is trying to frame you or do anything else other than solve these two murders.”

  He knew saying that would anger her even more, but he had no intention of lying to her. He also knew that he didn’t seem to be doing what he’d been sent there to do. As part of Project Artemis, his job was to protect women in danger, and he believed in that one hundred percent.

  He just wasn’t so sure this woman was in danger. However, he didn’t know all the facts yet, particularly regarding what this case her boss was working on with his client. Without that information, he couldn’t determine exactly who may be looking to cause Kate harm.

  “Proof? You want proof, huh,” she said, marching into the bathroom and slamming the door.

  She definitely had a fire inside her. Roman just wondered if he’d given it too much oxygen this time. He had no idea what kind of proof she’d find in the bathroom, but whatever she found in there, he worried what she’d try to do with it.

  The anger in her eyes warned him that she’d probably try to do something dangerous. This woman seemed to have a penchant for flying off the handle, so as he waited for her to come out, he considered how to react to whatever she sprung on him.

  The bathroom door flew open, and Kate stormed out fully dressed. Pointing angrily at him, she said, “You want proof? Fine. I’ll get you proof. If you’re here when I get back, then you’ll see. If not, then have a nice life.”

  Get back? Where the hell did she intend on going at four in the morning?

  As she hurried toward the door to leave, he jumped up and headed across the room to stop her. Grabbing her by the arm, he said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She looked up at him with eyes full of rage before yanking her arm from his hold. “I just told you. I’m going to get proof that the police are involved in this.”

  He stood there stunned at how reckless she was. “No way. You’re staying right here where I can protect you.”

  “And not believe me! I deserve the chance to vindicate myself. I can see it written all over your face. You think I’m lying to you.”

  She began to move toward the door again, intent on actually leaving and going out where the cops could find her, along with anyone else, like the person who had killed her boss and his client and may well be searching for her at that very moment.

  “Kate, it’s too dangerous. I can’t let you go,” he said as he blocked her path with his body.

  Her mouth dropped open, and she stared up at him in shock. “Let me? I’m a grown woman. No one lets me do anything. Now move out of my way.�
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  She tried to move him, grunting as she pushed against his body, but he simply shook his head. He had no intention of letting her leave to go anywhere.

  Frustrated, she pushed on his chest but didn’t budge him an inch. “What do you have under that shirt? A steel shield?”

  Roman couldn’t help but smile, partly at her compliment and partly at her frustration. “Just what everyone else has. Now let’s sit down and you can tell me more about your boss and this client of his.”

  Her hands fell away from his chest, and her shoulders sagged in defeat. “No. Let me go.”

  “Kate, I’m not letting you leave this room. You won’t be able to get by me, so you might as well just accept that fact and sit down and talk to me.”

  She twisted her face into a grimace and grumbled, “Fine.”

  After waiting for her to turn back toward the bed, he watched to make sure she sat down and then took a seat in the chair again. “Okay, let’s talk this out. What—”

  He didn’t even get his whole thought out before she bolted toward the door, reaching it before he did. Flinging it open so it slammed against the wall, she ran out into the hallway. Roman tore across the room to reach her before she got to the elevators or worse, the stairwell.

  Chasing after her, he broke into a sprint and caught her just as the elevator doors opened. She tried to get away, but he grabbed hold of her and squeezed her to him, hoping to keep her from squirming out of his grasp.

  “Let me go!” she cried out so loud that he expected one of the hotel’s guests to peek their head out the door to see what was going on.

  “Stop it now, Kate. I can’t let you go, so stop fighting me on this,” he said as she continued to do just that.

  If she kept trying to escape, he’d have no choice but to restrain her. He didn’t want to, but she left him with no other options.