by Lori Ryan
“I suppose you want me to wait out here while you search the premises. Should I call for backup?”
He looked down at her and had to stifle the urge to haul her smart little ass close to him and kiss the smirk off her face. Damn, there was just something about her when she sassed him. Holy hell, he was in trouble with this woman.
“You’re a smart-ass,” he said. “I’ll settle for you coming in with me while I take a peek around.” That wasn’t what he wanted at all. He wanted to shut her away in a safe cocoon somewhere while he cleared the house, but he thought she’d go ballistic and kick him out if he tried. He’d take what he could get right now.
He tucked her behind him and tapped his service weapon with his elbow, assuring himself it was there if he needed it. Her front door opened right into the kitchen, followed by an open archway to a living room, with a writing desk and shelves built into the left-hand wall. There were sliding glass doors that led to a fenced backyard. He flicked on the outdoor light and scanned the yard. The light was dim. Not at all what he’d want for her safety.
He returned to the kitchen and followed the single hallway off of it to a small bathroom with bedrooms on either side of it. He quickly checked the rooms. Her bedroom had a door that looked like it might have been original to the house. He guessed the kitchen door that she used as the front door had originally been a side entrance.
“Does this door open?” he asked as he tried the lock.
“No. The previous owners had it sealed and had the door built into the kitchen. It’s a strange setup. I actually think at one point the kitchen was the living room and vice versa. Not a clue why they changed it, but I’ve just left this door sealed up. It’s nailed shut and has a couple of coats of paint on the outside, too.”
He nodded. “You need better lights outside. And motion sensors to trip them when someone comes on the property. An alarm wouldn’t hurt either.”
She wrinkled her nose at the idea. “I’ll go over to the hardware store and see about motion sensor lights over the weekend, but an alarm is probably more than I need, don’t you think?”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck and sighed. “I don’t know, Ashley. You tell me. Is there any way this could be a fan? Maybe someone who figured out your real name and is focused on you for some reason? You write some pretty steamy stuff. Has anyone contacted you? Maybe sent you messages online and you haven’t responded? Or anyone you’ve had to block who got a little too personal? Or maybe an ex? Someone around here who might be upset at how things ended?”
She shook her head, but there was a telltale flush to her cheeks. “No exes. I mean, sure, I have exes, but no one I’ve ended things with in the last year or so. There was Pete Masters when I was a junior. I dumped him after we made out behind the bleachers because he kissed like a fish. All tongue and no finesse. Just a lot of slobber. And a lot of tongue. And not tongue in a good way. Tongue in a bad way.”
She shook as if a tremor went through her and grinned at him, but he was no longer listening to a damn word she said. He was stuck on kissing. And tongues. Oh, what he wouldn’t do to run his tongue from her navel to her neck and back down again. Then, keep on going, right on down to—
“Are you listening to me?”
“No.” He answered with the truth. He wasn’t listening to a thing she’d said. His cock, however, had stood up at attention and was ready, willing, and able. Not only to listen, but to take direction from this woman. Any direction. She could name it and his dick would jump to it with a “please, may I have another?” Good grief, he was a goner.
Shit. She’s still talking. Focus, idiot.
“So I guess someone can technically figure out the person behind the pen name pretty easily. I mean, they wouldn’t have to hire a detective to link the books back to me, but I don’t advertise the connection in any way.”
“Have you had anyone get a little too personal online? Ask questions about your life that go that one step too far? Give you that prickly feeling at the back of your neck?” Good. He was back in the game. Mostly. He shifted slightly, casually trying to relieve the tightness in his jeans. Jeez, she would think he was an ass if she spotted his erection right now.
And there was that telltale flush again.
“All right. Out with it, Ashley. You’re blushing any time I ask you if someone got too personal. What is it? What happened?”
She looked at the ground and shrugged. “It’s just, um.”
She actually shuffled her foot on the floorboards.
“Ashley…” he warned.
“All right,” she said, that cute little huffy thing she did with her shoulders coming back. “Some guy sent me a picture of his…of the…of—” She gestured to the general area in front of her hips with her hands and made a funny little noise and blushed a furious shade of red.
“Wait, let me get this straight. You can write a sex scene that takes place in a mountaintop lake in great detail. Right down to the way her muscles clamp down around him as she comes—a sex scene that had me hard for days on end, by the way—but you can’t say the word penis in a conversation with me?”
Her eyes went wide and she glanced down at his groin, which, thankfully, had settled back down. Not completely, but at least he wasn’t sporting something that resembled a tent pole in his pants.
And then it hit him. He processed what she’d said. “Back up. Someone did what?”
“Really? You’re going to make me say it again? He sent me a full frontal shot of his naked…hip region.”
It would have been funny, only it wasn’t. “What the hell, Ashley?”
“I know. It happens, though. Some of my friends have had the same thing happen on Facebook. They’re friended by someone they think is a fan and then they get a message with a picture. You just unfriend the person, report it, then block them. Problem solved.”
“Unless he decided he didn’t like your response and he’s taken things a step further.”
She stepped back, as though he’d frightened her, and he felt a twinge of guilt. But only a twinge. She wasn’t taking this as seriously as she should. He stepped closer.
“You need new locks, Ashley. The ones you have aren’t nearly good enough. And lights. And an alarm.”
“You’re scaring me, Garret,” she said softly and he backed off a hair.
“Send me the guy’s info online so I can have someone track him. I’ll see if he’s harmless or looks like he might be connected to your rat problem.” He paused, then ran one hand up her arm and squeezed gently. What he wanted to do was a lot less gentle, but he’d settled for that. “Okay? Just let me check the guy out.”
She nodded.
“Yeah?” he asked again, wanting to be sure she would follow up.
“Yes. I promise,” she said, with another nod.
It wasn’t until they were walking out of her bedroom to head back to the kitchen that he noticed the other locks. The door to her bedroom had not one, but two deadbolts. And they were heavy duty. The kind he’d like to see on her front and back doors. He wanted to ask her about it, but something told him she wouldn’t share that story.
Not yet anyway.
11
Ashley’s phone chirped at six thirty the following day. She didn’t have to be at the library until eight in the morning, so six thirty wasn’t a time of day she willingly saw. Ever. To say she wasn’t a morning person was putting it mildly.
She reached one hand out from under the blanket, being sure to keep it over her head. Keeping her head covered so she didn’t see the rising sun would be crucial to going back to sleep once she was sure the text wasn’t an emergency.
The light from the screen lit the text well enough that she could make it out under the blanket.
If you hear a noise don’t panic. It’s just me.
Ashley sat up in bed, covers falling to her waist in a puddle. Garret?
What?
I’m outside. I’ll start on outside lights. Do the inside stuff later.
The man made no sense.
What?
When in doubt, repeat the same question until you get an answer that makes sense. Sure. That was a good strategy.
Really? he texted back.
Okay, she probably deserved that. Before she could text back, he called.
“What are you doing outside my house?” She didn’t bother with a greeting. If he wanted a greeting, he should have led with coffee instead of cryptic texts, and he should have shown up at least an hour later. Six thirty. What was the man thinking?
“I’m outside. I’ve got lights and locks. I’ll start out here.”
She hung up the phone and stared blankly at her wall. Garret Hensley was outside her house. Installing lights. She debated her options. Make coffee. Go say hello. Go back to bed.
She looked at herself in the mirror that hung over her makeup table. Her bark of laughter at her reflection probably wasn’t very ladylike. Whatever. He could wait.
She fell back on her pillow, drew the covers over her head, and tried to go back to sleep. In all likelihood, she’d just dreamed the whole thing anyway. Besides, she was still pretty annoyed with herself for how she acted around him. She was known for having very few inhibitions and for speaking her mind without filtering her thoughts.
But yesterday, she’d turned into a blushing schoolgirl when she’d tried to explain that she’d gotten pictures of a guy’s penis in her inbox. What the heck was that about? She could say penis ’til the cows came home. Penis, penis, penis. Cock, dick, wanker, one-eyed-snake, chubby, fire hose, ramrod, pleasure pole, meat missile, midnight wrangler, mister happy, wacker, wang, wee-wee, willy. Yup. She was good with talking about the penis. So why on earth had she clammed up in front of Garret?
Ugh. Now she lay in her bed, with the man outside her house, as she daydreamed about what his sexy-stick might look like. What it might feel like.
Ugh.
*
Garret tried to wipe the grin off his face, but he had a feeling he didn’t do a very good job of it. He’d catch hell from the guys if he walked into the station like this, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d spent an hour putting up solar-powered, motion-triggered floodlights outside Ashley’s house. Then, because he’d discovered through his earlier texts and phone calls that she didn’t function well early in the morning, he had gone into town and bought her a coffee and chocolate croissant from the bakery.
The first grin had appeared on his face when she hung up on him. The second when she slammed the door in his face. He wasn’t sure if it was the slamming door or the way her hair stood wildly on end as though she’d slept in a wind tunnel. But he didn’t care. He knocked again, calling out that he had coffee and chocolate, and the door had opened immediately.
“I brought locks for the windows and doors, too. And door guards to help prevent the locks from being jimmied. I can install them while you drink that,” he said with a nod to the coffee he handed her. She grunted at him. Grunted. Not a cute delicate ladylike noise. A real, full-on, man-sized grunt.
He laughed. Then he installed the locks, door guards, and window locks. His third big grin had come when she reappeared, showered and dressed and no longer grunting. She had smiled then, and thanked him. And she’d let him walk her to work. Then she’d let him kiss her goodbye outside the library doors at eight thirty in the morning. That had been his final big grin. Final because the damn thing still hadn’t left his fool face.
He couldn’t get it out of his head. It would have been perfect if all she had done was let him kiss her. It would have been perfect even then, because the scent of her shampoo filled him, dizzying him with its floral potion. It would have been perfect if all he had gotten from her was the tiny sigh she’d let out as she leaned into him, letting her stomach and chest brush his body, starting flames he had a hard time putting to rest.
But she took it a damn sight further when she trailed one hand up the nape of his neck and twisted her fingers into his hair, pulling his head down to her. Pulling him into the kiss. Deeper. Longer. Harder.
It was one hell of a grin-inducing, body-hardening kiss. And he planned to relive it every minute of every hour of the day today. Screw it. The guys could say whatever the hell they wanted. He wasn’t about to wipe that fool look off his face for shit.
“My office, Hensley!”
Well, that lasted all of two minutes. One foot in the door and his captain was bellowing for him already. He hadn’t cursed, so with any luck that just meant he’d taken a message or had a lead he wanted Garret to chase down for him. He needed a lead right about now. He hadn’t gotten back anything from the lab that would help track Alice’s killer, and his frustration was grating on him.
Normally, he was all right with the process. Making the phone calls, doing the interviews, chasing one little thread of the case at a time. But when the case involved the death of a friend—no, family—he wasn’t able to handle things as calmly as he should.
Doug was already in the room, and Garret had a quick flash of unease as he wondered if his captain had found out about his connection to Alice. He would probably be pulled off, and might even lose his job if his captain found out. But he kept his mouth shut and waited. He wasn’t going to say anything until he was sure the captain knew something.
Captain Sharp watched him over steepled fingers for more than a few minutes. Garret kept his face carefully blank and made sure not to catch his partner’s eye. If it came down to it, he’d swear up and down Doug knew nothing about his connection to Alice. He’d protect his partner.
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something, Hensley?” His captain’s eyes drilled into him, but he schooled his features and affected a careless face.
“Not sure what you’re talking about, Cap. I got nothing to hide.”
His captain grunted, but lifted a folder from his desk and tossed it to them. Garret grabbed the toss and flipped open the folder. It was a file from social services. Bill and Tanya Franks. He didn’t connect it to any case right off the bat. Until he saw a name that told him exactly what and who this was connected to.
“What’s this?” Garret asked, handing the file to Doug. He saw the moment Doug froze. It was only a split second before the seasoned cop shook off his surprise. But Garret knew he’d seen the same thing Garret had spotted. In the file marked Bill and Tanya Franks—whoever the hell they were—was Ashley’s name. Front and center.
His captain didn’t seem to catch the change in either man; instead he answered Garret’s question. “This is a file Alice Johnson asked an intern at social services to dig up for her a few days before she was killed. The intern forgot about it until someone from records sent it over this morning. She brought it by, thinking it might help you trace what Alice was working on.”
Doug tapped the file on his knee, all business. “Great. We’ll run it down. See where it leads.”
Garret nodded and stood, only to have the captain stop them both. “Are you sure you don’t want to share anything, gentlemen? If I find out you’re hiding anything from me, I can’t promise I’ll have your backs. I can only protect you if you trust me.”
Doug shook his head, slowly, his mouth pulled down at the sides. “Nothing to protect us from, Cap. Nothing at all.”
Garret felt a pain lance through his gut and realized it was guilt. He shouldn’t have dragged Doug into this. But what other choice had he had? He needed to find Alice’s killer. There was no way he’d trust anyone else to do it. The department wasn’t big and the two other detective teams had a lot less experience than he and Doug had. One pair had worked one homicide in the past and the other had worked two. That hardly stacked up against the experience he and Doug had handling ten homicides and umpteen other violent crimes over the years.
No. There was no way he could entrust this case to anyone else. When his captain nodded, he walked out of the room alongside his partner and hoped the shit didn’t spray too damn far when it hit the proverbial fan.
/> 12
Ashley felt like she did back in high school when Jake Kimball kissed her behind the bleachers. It wasn’t that he was the captain of the football team. And it wasn’t that everyone liked him. And it wasn’t that he had jet-black hair and black-as-night eyes that she could feel on her whenever he looked at her during class.
It was the way he stood close enough for her to feel the strength of his body barely brushing against hers. It was the way her breath caught when he leaned in close as she closed her eyes and hoped for a kiss. And it was the way she felt giddy any time she thought of him and that kiss.
Garret’s kiss this morning had been so much more enticing than Jake’s. Which made sense, given that she and Jake had been teens. But still. The kiss this morning had been in a whole other league altogether. She could still feel her toes curling, her heart racing, and that flutter in her stomach. All from a simple kiss.
She’d tried not to let herself fantasize about what else she and Garret could do if they made it to a bed, but she was a romance novelist, after all. Scenes had been racing through her mind at utterly inappropriate times all day. She was fairly sure she’d moaned out loud at one point when Mrs. Shacklemire was standing next to the circulation desk. She’d faked a pain in her neck and shrugged it off, but she was sure Mr. Shacklemire would get an earful about it when the Mrs. got home. Then he’d go down to Jansen’s Feed Store, and sure enough the story would be out before the end of the day.
It wouldn’t be the first time Ashley would be the subject of town gossip. She’d grabbed the Queen of Town Talk title early on when she’d arrived in town and she hadn’t given it up too frequently over the years. She smiled to herself and shrugged off the concern. She had tough skin where gossip was concerned. She could deal with it.
Until she saw the look on Garret’s face when he walked in that afternoon. It was apologetic. And something else. Determined? Haunted? There were so many emotions, Ashley couldn’t read them all and she had to fight the sudden urge to flee.
His partner, Doug, whom she’d met on only one occasion earlier, lurked in the background as Ashley’s thoughts began to swirl. If he was here to tell her he regretted the kiss, he wouldn’t bring his partner, would he? Then again, maybe he might? Maybe he wanted his partner here so she wouldn’t cause a scene? Did he really think she was that kind of woman? Actually, wait. Maybe she was that kind of woman.