All without a word.
Watching him walk around the front of the car, she felt flustered in a way that was completely foreign to her nature. She noticed that he moved with an easy athleticism. There was a kind of coiled energy about him that reminded her once again that this guy didn’t make his living sitting behind a desk. In fact, he made it investigating people like her, a thought that made her nervous all over again and made her sudden attraction to him doubly stupid.
The last thing she needed in her life was that kind of complication. Since her divorce from Jeff, she’d had a lot of men ask her out. Some invitations she’d accepted, some she hadn’t, but in the beginning she’d been too freshly out of her marriage to even start to get serious with anyone, and then, after George’s downfall, there’d been too much chaos in her life. There was still too much chaos in her life. And given the nature of that chaos, Bradley was absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it the wrong guy.
So when he opened the door and slid in beside her, taking up way more than his fair share of space in the small car, she avoided looking at him in the few moments that the interior light was on by pulling down the visor above her seat and checking herself out in the mirror.
What she saw appalled her.
“Oh, gosh, they’re going to be able to tell I was crying,” she exclaimed dismally, referring to Margaret and Emma, who were probably starting to get worried about her by this time and could be counted on to converge on her as soon as she came in.
“Is that so bad?” Bradley closed the door and started the car.
“You have no idea.” The family dynamic worked like this: she didn’t cry; instead, she stayed strong for them when they cried. They would be upset—no, frightened—by this evidence of weakness in her. She looked at her red-rimmed, swollen eyes and pink nose with dismay. The coil she’d pinned her hair into was all lopsided, and at least half of it had fallen down to straggle around her face. Not the cool, calm, and in-control image she wanted to project. As the Mazda pulled away from the curb, she grabbed her purse and busied herself making necessary repairs.
Which also provided her with the perfect excuse not to look at him. Because much as she was trying, she still couldn’t get that ginormous erection out of her mind.
“You never answered my question: do you think Jeff knew where George hid his money?” Bradley was back in interrogator mode again, and because it kept her from having to deal with him in a more personal way, she almost—almost—welcomed it.
It helped that the question was easy enough to answer.
“I’m almost sure he didn’t. George didn’t confide in Jeff.” Glad of this chance to at least outwardly reclaim her composure, Riley kept her answer matter-of-fact. She tucked the last pin back into her hair, slicked on a bit of lip gloss, called it a day, and flipped the visor closed.
And glanced Bradley’s way in time to catch his gaze moving from her mouth to the dark street beyond the windshield. She had the impression that he’d been watching her use her pinky to smooth the gloss over her lower lip.
Looking at his hard profile, she felt a sudden acceleration in her heartbeat. He was aware of her watching him, she knew: she could tell by the slight tightening of his jaw, by the barely perceptible elevation of tension in his body. As she registered those things, the interior of the small car started to feel way too warm. Riley would have suspected a malfunctioning air conditioner, but she could hear the rush of it blowing out through the vents, feel its cold breath on her skin.
Not that it helped.
“I’m kind of surprised at that, seeing as how Jeff was his only son.” There was absolutely nothing in his voice to tell her that he was aware of her in the same (unwelcome) way she was now aware of him.
Still, she knew. The evidence was unmistakable.
Fortunately it seemed like he was no more interested in traveling down that path than she was.
“Jeff wasn’t always . . . reliable.” Drugs and alcohol would do that to a person, as Riley had learned. When he wasn’t under the influence, Jeff was sweet and fun and loving, but when he was—well, he had become a different person. Riley said none of that. Instead, years’ worth of memories of her ex-husband crowded into her head. A lot were good, many more were bad, but the fact remained: eternity could pass, and she still would never, ever get over the horrible manner in which he had died.
My fault. Her stomach tied itself into a painful knot.
“Who would George have confided in? His wife? An associate?”
Bradley’s questions were no longer in the least bit subtle.
In this cat-and-mouse game he hopefully had no idea they were playing, that meant advantage: Riley.
“Not Margaret,” Riley said. “If he confided in an associate, I wouldn’t know.”
“He have a girlfriend? A mistress?”
“I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t know that, either.”
He didn’t reply, and Riley got the impression that he was deep in thought. She looked away from him, out the window. The houses were of the same type as they had been on the previous street, as they were on Margaret’s street, as they were throughout the subdivision: small ranches and split-levels. They were almost to Margaret’s house now.
Riley was both glad and sorry.
“So when did you disable Jeff’s phone?”
The tone of his question was so casual, such a throwaway, that it took Riley a second to internalize the question itself, to accept that, maybe, Bradley might still be harboring a suspicion or two where she was concerned after all. The question also confirmed that she’d been right all the way down the line: he, or his agency, had tracked Jeff’s phone just like her attacker had. That was the real reason he’d been on his way to her apartment, she had no doubt.
She definitely was not the only one with an agenda here.
She replied easily. After all, there was nothing tricky about telling the truth.
“Right after I called 911. That’s when it really hit me that Jeff had been murdered. Then I just got completely paranoid about being followed, and I took the battery out of his phone.”
“I’m surprised it occurred to you to do that.”
“Are you kidding? Do you ever watch TV?”
He gave a little grunt. “Not much.”
Riley got the impression that she had allayed his suspicions once again, and gave herself a mental thumbs-up.
Then they turned the corner that took them onto Margaret’s street. Riley took one look at the quartet of news trucks gathered outside the house, at the gaggle of reporters, at the klieg lights and crowd of gawking neighbors, and felt her stomach drop. Her eyes widened in alarm.
“Something’s happened,” she said.
“Shit,” Bradley said at the same time, and turned down the nearest side street. It was, as it happened, the street Riley had parked on earlier in an effort to avoid the cameras. As Riley stared at the fresh swarm of media, he added, “Relax. They’re probably here because the word’s out that you were attacked in your apartment tonight.”
“Oh.” In a way, that was a relief. She frowned, and started to say, Margaret would have called me, then bit back the words because in the nick of time she remembered that she’d popped the battery out of her phone, too.
That thought was quickly followed by another: Margaret will be going nuts.
“I have to go in.” Riley looked worriedly at the gathering on the street.
“Yeah.” Bradley was already parking, pulling over to the curb not far from the spot Riley had vacated earlier. He cut the engine and the lights. A house blocked their view of most of the activity in front of Margaret’s house, but the glow of the lights was impossible to miss.
“Probably your best bet is to go in through the back door,” Bradley said. He looked at her. “You up to cutting through some yards?”
Up to retracing the route by which she’d left Margaret’s house?
But of course, he didn’t know that—she didn’t think.
&n
bsp; “Yes.”
He got out, retrieved her suitcase from the trunk, and joined her where she stood waiting beside the car. He handed her keys to her.
“Come on, I’ll walk you,” he said.
The knot of dread that had settled in her chest as she got out of the car was due to far more than the prospect of sneaking across a number of dark yards alone, but still his offer was welcome.
She nodded, and they started walking, staying in front yards to avoid fences, keeping close to the houses to make use of the denser darkness of the buildings’ shadows. Instead of pulling her wheeled suitcase as she would have done, Bradley carried it by its handle as if it weighed nothing at all. His other hand curled around her upper arm. She was glad it was there, and not only because, with her knees still not being completely reliable, she needed the support.
The thing was, the feel of his warm, strong hand gripping her arm had become familiar by this time. Like his presence beside her in the dark, she found it comforting. She discovered that she hated the thought that he would shortly be going away.
The closer they got to Margaret’s house, the more unnerved she became by the situation she knew she was walking into.
“We’re not safe here, are we?” Riley kept her voice low. The grass was so dry their footsteps crunched. They skirted patches of light thrown into the yards by the curtained windows, and at the same time Riley kept a careful eye on the media circus down the street. If they were spotted . . . “Margaret and Emma and me, I mean.”
“Maybe you should think about getting out of town for a while,” Bradley replied, tacitly confirming what she suspected: that she was right to be afraid.
Riley gave a huff of bitter amusement. “And go where, exactly?” She’d already considered, and discarded, the idea of gathering up Margaret and Emma and fleeing somewhere far, far away. The conclusion she’d reached was, there was nowhere that was far enough. “George ripped off a lot of people. I’m not sure there’s anywhere that would be safe.”
His slight grimace acknowledged the probable truth of that.
“I’ll see what I can do to get you and your mother- and sister-in-law police protection.”
“Since Jeff’s death, the police already drive down our street every few hours. I think it’s as much to make sure the press isn’t disturbing the neighbors as anything.”
“Should be able to get a patrol car parked in your driveway for the next few weeks, at least at night.”
“That’s something.” Although Riley was terribly afraid that it wouldn’t be enough. “Thank you.”
He nodded, seemed to hesitate. “Listen, the bastard who attacked you—he’s probably long gone. I don’t think you have to worry about him coming back.”
“Really?” When he gave a brief, affirming nod, she felt a flutter of relief and added, “That’s good to know.” But there was no way to be sure that her attacker and Jeff’s murderer were one and the same, a thought that made her heart lurch at its implications for her, Margaret, and Emma.
“There are a lot more people who could potentially be coming after us than just that one guy tonight, aren’t there?” Riley asked in a hollow voice, after outlining her conclusions for Bradley. They were in Margaret’s backyard now, having just stepped through the gate. Bradley’s hand had dropped away from her arm: the skin it had warmed was already starting to feel cold.
She was already starting to feel cold. Riley attributed that to the fact that without him, she was afraid.
“Maybe.” He stopped walking and held out his hand. “Give me your phone. And the battery.”
That dry add-on told her that he knew she’d disassembled her phone, too. Big surprise. Riley stopped walking, as well, fished both pieces out of her purse, and handed them over without a word.
He snapped the battery back into place far more easily than she’d taken it off.
Then he said, “Type in your code,” and handed her phone back to her. She did as he asked, then without question gave her phone back to him when he held out his hand again.
She watched him punch a button, type something in.
“I just gave you an emergency contact number,” he said, showing her what he’d done. “All you have to do is hit this. Think of it as your own personal 911. If I’m around, it’ll get me. If I’m not, it’ll call out the cavalry. You’ll have help just as fast as it can get to you.”
“Thank you.” She accepted the phone with a quick smile and a surge of real gratitude as he handed it back to her. At this point, the prospect of even speed-dialed protection was better than no protection at all.
“Keep it on you,” he cautioned when she moved to put her phone in her purse, and she nodded and slipped it into her pocket instead.
“I will.”
Although the section of the yard they were standing in was dark, all the lights in Margaret’s house seemed to be on, which was unusual. The effect was to send stripes of illumination cutting across the grass. She doubted that the house was still full of guests. More likely Margaret and Emma, having been alerted to what had happened by the growing media presence out front, were pacing the floors, out of their minds with worry about her.
“I have to go in.” She said it with a surprising degree of reluctance as she glanced toward the back door. Then she had a thought and exclaimed, “I forgot the ice cream!”
“Ice cream?”
“Strawberry for Margaret, peanut butter crunch for Emma,” she explained, and hung her head. “I promised I’d bring some back.”
“Ah.”
Something about his tone caused her to give him a searching look. They were standing so close their arms brushed, but once again she couldn’t read a thing in his face. And that wasn’t because of the shadows that enveloped them, either.
She said, “Thank you. For everything.”
“Not a problem,” he said.
With no more warning than that, his hand came up to cradle her jaw, and he bent his head and kissed her.
— CHAPTER —
TEN
Riley was so surprised that at first she couldn’t move.
His kiss was as uncompromisingly masculine as everything else about him. Firm-lipped, hungry. And hot. So, so hot.
Her heart thudded. Deep inside, her body clenched.
His mouth moved persuasively on hers, and just like that the night went out of focus around her. His tongue slid past the lips she instinctively parted for him, taking expert possession of her mouth. She gave a little shudder, closed her eyes, and found herself kissing him back.
His hand felt warm and strong against the side of her face, and with the tiny part of her mind that remained functional she was aware that he was keeping control of the kiss by positioning her mouth exactly where he wanted it, positioning her exactly where he wanted her. Not that she objected. Hooking an arm around his neck, she let him tilt her back until her head found a pillow on his broad shoulder. He explored her mouth, the hard urgency of his kiss a revelation. It made her dizzy, made her cling to him. His arm tightened around her, pulling her lower body fully against him.
She went up in flames.
That enormous erection was back, making it obvious what he wanted from her.
The truly mind-blowing thing about it was, with that thriller of a kiss setting her on fire like it was, she wanted it, too.
The heart-stopping intensity of the way he was kissing her rocked her to her toes. It made her pulse pound. It made her bones melt. If he’d lowered her to the grass right there and then and come down on top of her, she would have started tearing off her clothes. She wanted to get naked with him. No, get real: she wanted to have sex with him.
It had been a long, long time since a man had been able to turn her on so fast. In fact, she wasn’t sure a man had ever been able to turn her on so fast.
What she was experiencing was nothing short of a blast of sheer, burning sexual desire.
For the first time in her life, she understood how people wound up falling into bed
with complete strangers. Given a bed and privacy, she would have absolutely been there.
He was the one who broke it up. He lifted his mouth from hers and straightened, setting her firmly on her feet and putting a small bit of distance between them while his hands on her waist helped her keep her balance.
For the briefest of moments her arms stayed wrapped around his neck. She stared up at him in bemusement, drinking in the dark, hot gleam in his eyes, the tension around his hard mouth, while she recalibrated. Then she removed her arms from around his neck and deliberately stepped back, out of his reach.
And to hell with her wobbly knees.
“Agent Bradley,” she began, her voice embarrassingly huskier than it should have been, then thought, God, that sounds idiotic after he just kissed me into next week, and amended it to a firm, “Finn.”
His eyes narrowed slightly at her. To her annoyance, that was all the response she got.
Didn’t seem to make a difference: she was still wildly aroused, still wanted more. She was breathing way faster than she should have been. Her heart pounded and her pulse raced. He was feeling the intensity of the attraction between them, too. She could tell, although he didn’t say anything, didn’t make any kind of move. Electricity arced between them. There was a sizzle in the air, an almost tangible heat.
What she wanted to do, more than she had wanted to do anything in a while, was move back into his arms and pick up right where they had left off.
But then the memory of how the rest of her day had gone came crashing into her consciousness, and all those hot, tingly feelings got doused by a wave of cold reality.
“What was that?” She was proud of the undernote of acerbity in her voice.
“A kiss,” he said, and jerked his head toward the back door. “Go on in. I’ll watch until you’re safely inside.”
Her brows snapped together.
“What—?” she began. —do you mean, a kiss? was the rest of what she was going to say, and pretty hotly, too, because that was no answer at all and sounded infuriatingly dismissive to boot, but she never got the chance to finish.
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