by Julie Miller
He watched the reprimand on her lips start and die. Good. He wasn’t in the mood for one of her lectures on the evils of swearing and smoking—one of which he hadn’t done for years. She seemed to consider his request for brevity and nodded. “Actually, I want you to come to my house. I had a trespasser tonight. I don’t know how long he was there before he started vandalizing my front porch. He broke the lights and left a message in my mailbox. It’s...disturbing, to say the least.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a folded sheet of white paper with just her thumb and forefinger and held it out to him. “It’s typed like the one I found on the back patio. No signature to say who it’s from.”
Straightening from the wall, Max snatched the paper from her fingers and unfolded it. “Somebody threaten your dogs again?”
Her chin shot up and her cheeks dotted with color. “He’s not after my dogs. He just knows they’re a way to get to me. To scare me.”
“You keep saying he.”
“Or she. I don’t know who it was. All I saw was the shadow on my porch and the damage after the dogs’ barking scared him away.”
Max squinted the words on the note into focus. “Murdering whore. Justice will be done.” Anger surged through his veins and he swore around the cigar. “You should have reported this ASAP to 9-1-1 instead of taking the time to track me down.”
“I don’t want to be brushed off with another phone call, and I certainly don’t want to be accused of making it up again.”
“What makes you think I’m gonna believe you?”
Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and his pulse leaped with a response that told him he was already far too interested in this woman to remain objective. Probably why he was such a growly butt around her. He didn’t want to like her. It didn’t make sense to like her. And yet, she was doing all kinds of crazy things to his brain and libido.
“To look at you, and listen to the way you talk... You’re military, aren’t you? Or you used to be? Not just the haircut. But, the way you stand. The way you move. You recognized Dad’s gun as Army issue, and you remind me of him when he was young. Except, he was shorter. More patient. And he didn’t smoke.”
Hell. Where was she going with this? Suspicion tried to move past the fog of alcohol and put him on alert.
“Dad was in the Army. A career man who retired as a colonel. Isn’t there some band of brothers code I can call on for you to help me? Without treating me like a suspect in a murder case?”
Max tilted his face to the canopy of cloudy haze reflecting the city lights overhead. He’d spent the day mourning his fallen band of brothers, cursing his inability to save them all—to save his best friend. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t call on that part of him to do his duty and fail again. Not for this woman. Not for a comrade in arms or superior officer he’d never even met. With a self-preserving resolve, he lowered his gaze to hers and handed back the note. “You should have called Trent. He’s the reasonable one.”
“No one will listen to reason.” Her hands fisted in frustration. “I need someone who’ll help me out of blind faith in my innocence...or out of a sense of duty. Or honor. Besides, I don’t know where your partner is. But I remembered you said you were coming here for a drink.”
“That was this morning. What made you think I’d still be here?” A little frown dimple appeared between her eyebrows when she wrinkled up her nose in an unspoken apology. Oh. Her opinion of him was that low, huh? He supposed he’d earned it. And yet she’d sought him out instead of Trent or one of the other off-duty detectives and uniforms inside the cop bar. Maybe he shouldn’t alter her opinion of him by telling her he’d gone back to his desk at the precinct and put in his full shift before grabbing a burger and heading to the Shamrock. “How will me going to your place prove you didn’t put this note there, too?”
The soft gaze that had held his for so long dropped to his chin. Her skin blanched to a shade of alabaster that absorbed the harsh green color of the neon sign. He didn’t like that unnatural color on her. He didn’t like feeling like a first-class rat for blanking the color from her skin.
“Hey, I...” Max pulled his cigar from his mouth with one hand and reached for a red tendril with the other. Although she startled at his touch, she didn’t immediately pull away this time. Instead, she watched his hand as he sifted the silky copper through his fingers. “I’m sorry, Rosie. I’m having a really sucky day. It’s hard to see the good in anything or anybody tonight.”
“You’re not always like this?”
He chuckled at the doubtful face she made. “Some say I am. But on this one day every year, I’m an extra sorry SOB.”
“I wish you wouldn’t swear like that. I get that you’re angry, already.”
Oh, he was angry, all right. At himself. At friends who died. At failing to save them.
“I get that you’re hurting. Did something bad happen?”
“Yeah. Something very bad happened. To a friend of mine.” She’d tilted her eyes up to his, bravely held his gaze. Maybe it was a trick of the lights and shadows, but from this angle, standing this close, her eyes filled with compassion, maybe even a little of that same odd awareness he’d been feeling about her. A man could lose himself in the deep, soft shadows of her eyes if he wasn’t careful. As uncomfortable with her intuition about him as he was with the male interest stirring deep inside him, he pulled his fingers from her hair and retreated. “You said your daddy served?”
She nodded, retreating a step herself. “He flew troop transports and cargo planes until he retired from active duty. Later, he commanded a local unit in the National Guard.”
Max thought of the unseen pilots and navigators who’d flown him, Jimmy and the rest of their battered squad from the Middle East into Germany. Another transport had finally brought them and the caskets of their fallen friends stateside. The world was a mighty small place in some ways. “He flew soldiers home?”
“Sometimes. Is that important?”
Those pretty, intuitive eyes snuck right past his survival armor. An image of Jimmy’s frozen dark eyes blipped through his thoughts. Never leave a man behind. He crushed the memory that left him reeling and grabbed her arm, pulling her into step beside him and striding down the sidewalk. “Where’s your car? I’ll walk you to it and then follow you back to your house.”
But when he stepped off the curb he stumbled. His momentum pulled her against his chest for a split second, imprinting his body from neck to thigh with her warm curves, filling his head with that damnable clean scent he wanted to bury himself in.
“On second thought, maybe you’d better drive.”
She was the one who grabbed a fistful of shirt and his shoulder to steady him and guide him back to the sidewalk. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
There was that snappy, righteous tone again. Her eyes had gone cold. “That was my goal, honey. It helps me forget.”
Rosie didn’t waste any time pushing away. “This was a mistake. I thought you were different.”
“You are the most confounding woman...” With his emotions off the chart, his hormones twisted up in a mix of lustful curiosity and a craving for the peaceful solace he’d read in her eyes—not to mention the four beers he’d drunk since dinner—Max tossed his unlit cigar into the gutter and stopped her from walking away. “Did something scare you tonight or not?”
He spun her around and pulled her up onto her toes, bringing her lips close enough to steal a kiss if he wanted to. And, by hell, he wanted to.
Shifting his hands to the copper bounty of her hair, Max tunneled his fingers into the silky waves and pulled her mouth to his. With a gasp of surprise, her lips parted and Max took advantage of the sudden softening of that preachy mouth by capturing her lower lip between his. He drew his tongue along the supple curve, tasting something tart and lemony there. Her lip trembled at his hungry e
xploration. He felt the tiny tremor like a timid caress and throttled back on his blind need. Another breath whispered across his cheek, and he waited for the shove against his chest. But her fingers tightened in the front of his shirt, instead, pressing little fingerprints into the muscles of his chest, and she pushed her lips softly against his mouth, returning the kiss.
Something twisted and hard, full of rage and regret, unknotted inside him at her unexpected acceptance of his desire. Frustration faded. Anger disappeared. The wounds of guilt and grief that had been festering inside him all day calmed beneath her tender response. He threaded his fingers into the loose twist of her bun, pushing aside pins and easing the taut style until her hair was sifting between his fingers and his palms were cupping the gentle curve of her head. “Your hair’s too pretty to keep it tied up the way you do, Rosie. Too sexy.”
“Detective Krol—” He kissed her temple, her forehead, reclaimed her lips once more. He’d reached for her in a haze of frustration and desire, but she was holding on with a gentle grasp and angling her mouth beneath his. It wasn’t a passionate kiss. It wasn’t seductive or stylized. It was an honest kiss. It was the kind of kiss a man was lucky to get once or twice in his life. It was a perfect kiss. Beauty was taming the beast.
Or merely distracting him?
Detective?
Ah, hell. He quickly released her and backed away, his hands raised in apology. “Did something scare you tonight...besides me?”
“You didn’t scare me,” she lied. Her fingers hovered in the air for a few seconds before she clasped them around the strap of her purse.
Max scraped his palm over the top of his head, willing his thoughts to clear. “Just answer the damn question.”
She nodded.
She wasn’t here for the man. She was here for the cop. He’d like to blame the booze that had lowered his inhibitions and done away with his common sense, but fuzzy headed or sober, he knew he’d crossed too many lines with Rosie March today. “I think this is where you slap my face and call me some rotten name.”
Her eyes opened wide. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I don’t suppose a lady like you would.”
Her lips were pink and slightly swollen from his beard stubble. Her hair was a sexy muss, and part of him wanted nothing more than to kiss her again, to bury his nose in her scent and see if she would wind her arms around his neck and align her body to his as neatly as their mouths had fit together. But she was hugging her arms around her waist instead of him, pressing that pretty mouth back into its tightly controlled line. When had he ever hauled off and kissed a woman like that? With her history, she’d probably been frightened by his behavior and had given him what she thought he wanted in hopes of appeasing him, counting the seconds until he let her slip away. She had to be terrified, desperate, to come to him after this morning’s encounter. The fact that she wasn’t running away from him right now had to be a testament to her strength—or just how desperate she was to have someone from KCPD believe in her. And, for some reason, she’d chosen him to be her hero.
Max scrubbed his palm over his jaw. He hadn’t played hero for anybody in a long time. He hadn’t been any good at it since Jimmy’s suicide. He did his job, period. He didn’t care. He didn’t get involved. This woman was waking impulses in him that were so rusty from lack of use that it caused him pain to feel himself wanting to respond to her request. “What do you need from me?”
She tucked that glorious fall of hair behind her ears and tried to smooth it back into submission. “I think I’m in real trouble. And I don’t know what to do. KCPD thinks I might be a killer, so they’re not taking me seriously and won’t look into these threats. But I thought that you...maybe you’d set aside your suspicions and do it for my dad. I know it’s an imposition, and I know you’d rather be investigating me for murder than deal with some unknown stalker you think I made up, but—”
“You’re right, Rosie. I was a soldier. Sergeant First Class, US Army. A man like your dad brought me and my buddies home from a hell of a fight where we lost too many good men.” For the first time in a lot of months, on that flight across the Atlantic, he’d been able to close his eyes and sleep eight hours straight, knowing he and his men were safe from the enemy as long as they were on that plane. “What was your daddy’s name?”
“Colonel Stephen March.”
“Maybe I don’t owe the colonel personally. But I owe.” She’d appealed to the soldier in him, tapped into that sense of duty he’d once answered without hesitation. She had him pegged a lot sooner than he was figuring her out. “And I owe you for putting up with me on my worst day.”
“Is there something I can do to help? Besides...” She ran her tongue around her lips, maybe still tasting some of the need he’d stamped there. “I’m a very good listener.”
He grumbled a wry laugh. So, no offer to repeat that kiss, eh? “Just give me a chance to be a better man than the one you met today.”
“You’ll come look? You’ll help me?”
Either he was the world’s biggest sucker, or Rosie March was in real danger and she believed he was her best chance at staying safe. Whether he was doing this for her or her dad or to atone for all the mistakes he’d made today—all the mistakes he’d made in the past eight years—he was doing it. “Yes, ma’am.” Wisely keeping his hands to himself this time, he gestured for her to lead the way to her car. “Let’s go find this lowlife.”
Chapter Six
“Why do you swear so much?” Rosemary glanced away from the stoplight to the big, looming silence sitting beside her in the passenger seat of her car. Although the beard stubble on his square jaw took on a burnished glow from the lights from the dashboard, Max Krolikowski’s craggy face remained hidden in shadows. And while she normally appreciated the absence of any confrontation, ten miles without one word left her questioning the wisdom of this last-resort plan to seek him out as an ally.
“Like you said. I’m angry.”
And hurting. He said something bad had happened to a friend. If there was one thing she understood about people, it was the stages of pain and grief a person went through when he or she lost someone or something very dear to them. She’d gone through them with her parents, her brother’s drug use and murder conviction. Her relationship with Richard. Denial. Anger. Sadness. Acceptance. Only, Max Krolikowski seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of anger and pain.
The light changed and she drove through the intersection. His fingers drummed a silent rhythm on the armrest of the car door. Was that endless tapping an indication that his temper was still simmering beneath the surface? She remembered those strong fingers tangled in her hair, holding her mouth beneath his. He’d used words like pretty and sexy—and she’d believed him. For that moment, at least.
Richard had never used words like that with her. She’d looked nice. She’d do him proud at a family dinner or business luncheon. And Richard’s embraces had never been so spontaneous, so unabashedly sensual.
When Max Krolikowski kissed her, she’d felt that knee-jerk instinct to flee from the unfamiliar, from the potential danger of the unknown. But she’d felt something else, too. She’d felt need. She’d felt heartache. She’d sensed a hopeless man discovering some shred of hope.
Or maybe she was the one who’d succumbed to the need to be held and wanted and important to someone—even for a few seconds outside a noisy bar. Because once he’d gentled his kiss, once she understood there was something besides anger driving his embrace, she’d become a willing participant. A shyly eager partner. Out of her depth, perhaps, but not afraid.
There was something bold, raw and honest about Max’s emotions that was completely foreign in her experience with men. But she’d take that kind of blunt honesty, that disruptive force of nature, over Richard’s cool charm any day. Richard’s cruelty had been a blindside waiting to happen. At leas
t with Detective Krolikowski, she knew to expect the unexpected.
Which brought her thoughts around to the question she’d really wanted to ask. “Why did you kiss me?”
“I saw the chance. I took it. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
And now? Did he still think she was...kissable? Rosemary’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as the next question came out in a throaty whisper. “Is that what you want from me?”
The drumming stopped. “You mean like payment for helping you out?” He muttered a succinct curse.
“Language, Detective.”
“Wow. Your opinion of me must be lower than I thought.” His voice was deep and resonant and laced with contempt. “Don’t lecture me on my mouth and insult me at the same time. If you’re going to treat me like a degenerate, I might as well talk like one.”
Rosemary’s grip pulsed around the wheel as a defensive temper flared in her veins. “I wasn’t insulting you. I’m just trying to understand what’s happening between us. My experience with men is rather limited, and hasn’t been entirely positive. I haven’t had control over a lot that’s happened in my life. And now some creep is trying to undermine what little sense of security I do have.” She glanced across the seat and found deep blue eyes bearing down on her. She quickly turned her attention back to the neighborhood streets and took a deep breath to cool her outburst and resume an even tone. “I need to understand so I won’t be caught off guard again. As for the swearing? If you need to use those words to get your emotions out, then go ahead, I’ll get used to it. But they remind me of someone I’d rather not think of.”