by Dani Criss
Kaitlyn’s father had totally dominated her life, as well, giving orders, demanding immediate obedience. He’d told her what to wear, what to say, how to act—and punishment for disobeying orders was severe. She’d worked hard to break out of that cycle. She couldn’t make the dreadful mistake of giving up her ability to make decisions for herself, and under no circumstances would she end up like her mother.
Calling the police was just the beginning of Jake’s interference in her life, she was sure. She delivered the tickets and made several cold calls to prospective clients, then drove back to her office on Quivera Boulevard, all the while wondering just how many encounters with him this ordeal would bring. She’d hoped for one and only one when she’d phoned his office this morning. One trip down that hormone-laden memory lane was about all she could take.
But fate was not on her side, not today, she decided, walking into her office just before five o’clock to find Jake there with Rob Donovan and a fingerprint technician. With a quick glower at Jake, she led him and Rob into the other room, stopping inside the doorway as Rob explained that the forensic tech would dust everything in the room. He would undoubtedly leave behind a film of white on every surface, even the arms and backs of all the chairs. It would take a good two hours of cleaning to get rid of it. Kaitlyn groaned inwardly at the thought.
Just then Shelly breezed in, cheery as a canary, her yellow hair feathering around her pixie face. “Ah, the gang’s all here. Good to see you, Jake,” she said with an obvious wink at Kaitlyn. “Jake said he and Rob were going to take you to dinner. Did he tell you I invited myself along?”
Kaitlyn’s smile was more grimace than grin. “No, we hadn’t even discussed dinner yet, but then, Jake likes his surprises.”
Shelly hooked her arm through her fiancé’s and studied the other couple. “Do I detect a few sparks flying between these two?” she asked him.
Rob rolled his pale blue eyes. “This morning Jake told me they once lived together for several months.”
“They’ve known each other all along?” Shelly questioned in surprise. She looked at Kaitlyn. “You sly thing. You never said a word about that when I mentioned that Rob and I were hoping to get you two together.”
“I don’t envy you,” Rob said, giving Kaitlyn a sympathetic smile. “Shelly’s going to want to hear every single detail.”
Standing across the room from Kaitlyn, Jake could practically hear her blood boil. Her eyes had narrowed and she had a death grip on her purse strap—probably imagining it was his neck she was wringing. Fortunately his installation crew arrived at that exact moment. He got them lined out and his three dinner companions out of the office without a hitch. The fact that Kaitlyn didn’t protest the driving arrangements—Rob and Shelly in Shelly’s car and he and Kaitlyn alone in his Lincoln Town Car—meant she had something she wanted to say to him, he knew.
He didn’t want to do battle with her this time around. Before, they’d always been itching for a fight, but he’d learned a few things in the past several years. Such as it was easier to catch flies with honey. He had to convince her she needed his help and he couldn’t do that if she was in a blind rage. He had to make her see the potential for danger. Apparently she hadn’t labeled the situation as a stalking, but Jake had been in police work, then in the security field, far too long to call it anything else.
Back in his early days driving a beat, his sister had been involved in another situation very similar to this one. He’d taken a wait-and-see attitude and Candy had nearly died because of it. Things in Katie’s situation could turn ugly and she needed someone who could protect her.
But there was another danger to contend with, he decided once he’d let her in on the passenger side and had slid in behind the wheel. As he drove south on Quivera Boulevard, her light, delicate scent wafted through the big car, tempting him to do something foolish like pull her into his arms. All afternoon he’d been thinking about this morning and how, if only for a second or two, her eyes had been lit with hunger.
It had been that way the first time he saw her at the Quick Mart, her red-gold hair pulled back in a sexy ponytail, her thin, curvy shape defined in tight shorts and tank top, her walk sassy and mesmerizing. She’d snagged his attention immediately. One-thirty on a Saturday morning in what was not exactly the best part of Kansas City, she’d decided she needed chocolate milk more than she needed sleep and had consequently gotten herself caught in the middle of a holdup.
He and his partner at the time had been staking out the place and Jake had managed to pull Kaitlyn out of the line of fire. Then, feeling the aftereffects of the icy fear that had gripped him when he’d realized she was in peril, he’d lectured her about why a female alone shouldn’t be making late-night jaunts after groceries. In response to his forceful advice, she’d poured the half gallon of chocolate milk over his head.
The next day he’d shown up on her doorstep and both of them had soon given in to the volatile chemistry between them. In the end, they hadn’t been able to make it work, except perhaps in bed—there they’d meshed perfectly. He still remembered. But outside of the bedroom—
“Will this be just dinner, or does it come with an inquisition?” she asked, breaking into his thoughts.
“According to Shelly this is supposed to be a working dinner. We’re supposed to discuss wedding arrangements.”
“Then why are you tagging along?” she queried, suspecting the worst.
He smiled over at her as he swung the car onto College Boulevard and headed east. “I’m the best man.”
And she was the maid of honor. This was the worst possible situation. She groaned. “Jake, this isn’t going to work. You know that. Rob is your close friend and Shelly is mine. We can’t mess up this wedding for them.”
“Agreed,” he said, thinking that this wedding might provide the leverage he needed to get her to work with him and not against him. At least it would give him plenty of excuses to keep his eye on her. “We’ll have to find a way to get along.”
“You’re still angry,” she observed aloud. “About the way I walked out.”
He shook his head. “I was, but after I left your office and cooled off, I came to the conclusion I was more angry with myself. I thought about our conversation that morning and realized you’d tried to explain why you had to leave, but as usual I didn’t let you.”
Kaitlyn mulled that over. Something about the way he owned up to his part in their separation touched a chord. “You weren’t the only one to blame, Jake. I never was very tactful or diplomatic about how I stated things.”
“And I was even worse than you.” He sighed. “The point to all this is that we can’t let our past differences ruin this ‘moment of bliss’ for Rob and Shelly. Truce?”
She studied him for a few moments. “Think this one will last longer than any of our others?”
“It has to. Besides, this time we have a wedding to motivate us.”
Kaitlyn nodded and was quiet for several seconds, absorbing this new development. “Best man?” she finally muttered at the disturbing thought of the amount of time she would have to spend with Jake. The parties, the photo sessions, the celebration dinners Shelly had planned, the fittings, the rehearsals, the ceremony and reception, and heaven only knows what else was bound to come up.
She turned to see him smile, the grin deepening the lines that bracketed his firm mouth and the tiny crinkles that accented those dark, penetrating eyes of his. How could he be so happy about this situation when he knew it would throw them together several times over the next month?
Didn’t he remember their shouting matches? The time he’d come back to their apartment and found his clothes in the hall? The time he made fun of her lack of cooking skills and she dumped a bowl of cold, pasty spaghetti on his head? How they’d had to set their box spring and mattress directly on the floor because the wood slats in the frame would often give out during their lovemaking?
Heat rushed through her at that last memory. She wan
ted to back out of her duties as maid of honor, but she’d made a commitment to her dear friend and couldn’t let Shelly down.
She would have to control her runaway longings, and that would be easier said than done, she realized as Jake ushered her into the restaurant, his hand at the small of her back. He eased his large frame into the booth beside her. He was too close. Kaitlyn could feel his body heat. To her dismay, his nearness was as unsettling as ever. When Jake was around, the desire to lean into his solid strength had always been—and apparently still was—difficult to resist.
But resist was something she had to do. She’d fought long and hard to establish her independence and her confidence in herself. She would not surrender either one to any man the way her mother had.
She put her purse on the seat between them, then looked up to find Shelly grinning at her.
“I believe I do detect some friction between these two,” she said to her fiancé, sliding into the booth. She didn’t sound the least bit worried about that friction causing problems at the wedding.
Kaitlyn opened her menu, though at the moment she didn’t have much of an appetite. She decided on a grilled-chicken salad, then once the waiter had taken their orders turned to Shelly.
“Let’s talk about the wedding,” she said, hoping she could steer the conversation in this direction.
Shelly shook her head. “We’ll take care of that later. Right now, I’m more concerned with this guy who broke into your office. Rob told me about it on the way over here. Why didn’t you say something before?”
Kaitlyn shrugged. How could she explain that talking about it made it seem so much more frightening? She wasn’t ready to deal with the fear yet.
“Nothing against the marriage plans, but I’m more concerned with this guy, as well,” Jake put in. “What’s his name? How much do you know about him?”
Kaitlyn decided she would have to answer his questions eventually. The man was terminally persistent. May as well get it over with. Jake would just keep at it until she would be ready to scream in irritation. The only way to end the interrogation was to answer his questions.
“He said his name was Craig Fallon. Two weeks ago he came into the office to ask about an Alaskan cruise special,” she said. “He stayed and talked for almost an hour.”
“Did he book anything?” Jake asked.
She shook her head. “That didn’t bother me. I figured he was in the ‘where do I want to go and what can I afford’ stage.”
“Did he ask you out then?” Jake inquired.
She shook her head. “Not then. I didn’t think much about him at the time, until he came back at closing. That’s when he asked me out. Something about his coming back made me feel very uncomfortable.”
Jake’s left eyebrow arched questioningly. “Uncomfortable? How do you mean?”
“Well, this time he was so insistent. Didn’t want to take no for an answer. He said he’d noticed I hadn’t had lunch,” she added with a shiver.
“He knew you hadn’t had lunch?” Jake demanded sharply. “You failed to mention that to anyone.”
. “I’d forgotten about it. I mean, it bothered me a little at the time—” She paused as the waiter set their plates and a basket of French bread on the table.
“A little?” Jake queried as the waiter walked away.
“All right,” Kaitlyn said, picking up her fork, “a lot. But I told him no and he finally quit pushing, so I figured I was simply overly tired and letting my imagination run amok.” She drew in a shaky breath. “Then he slowed up the next day, once when Mary went to lunch and again midafternoon when she went downstairs for a break.”
“As if he knew when you’d be there alone,” Jake mused aloud, cutting into his Kansas City Strip steak. “Is that still going on?”
She nodded. “Mary doesn’t leave me alone very often, though. She’s been bringing her lunch back to the office and taking her breaks at her desk. This hasn’t been much fun for her, either.”
“It’ll probably get worse,” he told her softly.
Deep down Kaitlyn knew that, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to reassure her that the alarm system would be enough to deter the man from breaking into the office, enough to give him the message she wasn’t interested. Instead of comforting, Jake’s words had her painting a pretty grim mental picture of what she would have to deal with if he was right about the situation.
“Worse? No one will ever accuse you of being a ray of sunshine,” she snapped at Jake, taking refuge in her annoyance over his handling of the matter. “The man will get tired of being turned down and will move on to someone else.”
The two men exchanged glances at that, but neither one spoke his thoughts. They all finished most of their meal in silence, then ever the detective, Rob pulled a notebook and pen out of his jacket pocket and jotted something down. “Give me the guy’s last name again and his address,” he said, glancing up from the page.
“Fallon is his name, but I don’t have an address,” Kait lyn answered, pushing her half-finished salad away. The return to this conversation had effectively killed what little appetite she’d had.
Jake growled softly. “And of course you didn’t bother to ask,” he said, helping himself to the rest of her salad and another slice of bread.
Put in this context, not asking did seem like a dumb move on her part, but she wasn’t about to tell Jake that he was right. “I figured he was just curious at that moment and I didn’t need to know where he lived. Then when I realized he was hanging around just to talk, I was more interested in getting him out of my hair so I could get back to work. When he came back after we’d closed up, all I was concerned with was making him understand I wasn’t going to have dinner with him. Asking where he lived would have been a bit counterproductive.”
“What does he look like?” Jake demanded.
“Blond hair, blue eyes, good-looking, a little under six feet tall, average build. I’m guessing he’s around thirty years old.”
“Could cover a good portion of the men who live in Kansas City,” Jake muttered. “What does he do for a living—does he work in the building? If not, how can he hang around to know that you don’t often take a lunch break?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She didn’t know, because she’d never asked, Jake realized. He barely refrained from swearing and from lecturing her on the wisdom of asking for details in such a situation. A woman alone had to pay attention to everything. He’d drummed that into his mother’s head and his two sisters’.
But what he considered looking after the people he cared about, Katie regarded as domination and overprotectiveness. She’d walked away from him once before over the issue. He couldn’t let that happen again, not until he knew for sure how much danger she was in.
“Katie,” he continued cautiously, “most people think stalking is a celebrity crime, but in reality it can—and does—happen to anyone. This situation could turn dangerous. You tend to minimize things up to the moment reality slaps you in the face.”
“And you look at going outside to get the morning paper as a potential catastrophe,” she countered. “I’m not taking things lightly, you know. Otherwise I would have found someone else to install the damn alarm.”
Jake took a deep breath in an effort to hold on to his temper. Losing it would accomplish nothing; it would only drive her away at a time when she needed his help. He couldn’t let that happen.
“Katie,” he said quietly, “you have to realize that an alarm system alone may not be enough.”
Again not what she wanted to hear, Kaitlyn thought. But she couldn’t ignore the reality of the matter any longer. Truth was, she was far more frightened than she wanted to admit even to herself. It would be a comfort to put things in the hands of professionals, even if one of them was Jake Riley.
There was strength in that chiseled profile of his. Integrity. And passion. The man didn’t do anything by halves, not even eating. Not that there was a
spare pound on that tall, solid frame of his. She’d bet her favorite navy pumps that under the charcoal suit he wore, his body was as rock solid as it used to be. Something she had no business recalling.
But her mind seemed to have a will of its own. She remembered the feel of his strong arms around her, holding her at night, keeping her safe, making her feel wanted. Remembered the heat of his kisses and longed to know if he could still set her on fire. Something else she had no business imagining. She sighed quietly and tried to force her attention back to the unwanted conversation.
“Jake is right,” Rob put in. “It may not be enough. This situation is all too weird.”
Shelly nodded her agreement.
“You need to take all the safety precautions you can,” Jake informed her, pausing while the waiter removed their plates and left the check. He took out his credit card and laid it on the tray on top of Rob’s. “I’m hoping you’ll consider an alarm system for your condo.”
She glanced at him in surprise. “Condo? How did you know...”
He shrugged. “Rob told me. I’ve already had a look at the place from the outside. I only need to see the inside, then I can get the parts together and get the system installed tomorrow.” .
Which meant Jake thought the man might show up on her doorstep. That was a bit too much reality to absorb in one day. And having Jake at her house tonight was more than her emotions could handle. She needed a breather, time to collect her wits and bring her emotions under some sort of control.
“I’ll think about it tonight and let you know tomorrow,” she told him. “I assume you’ll be at the engagement party after work tomorrow night?”
“Of course. But we ought to get started—”