by Dani Criss
“Great.” Her mouth felt dry. The early-evening temperature seemed to rise several degrees.
“We got a lot accomplished,” Shelly said, watching Jake with undisguised curiosity. “Wait until you see Kaitlyn’s dress.”
“Umm,” was all Jake said in reply, his concentration on Kaitlyn. The man had no right to look at her as if he could devour her, she thought.
Rob laughed. “I think Jake wants to be alone with his lady.”
Kaitlyn frowned. Since when had she become Jake’s “lady”?
Rob didn’t notice her change of expression. He dropped an arm over Shelly’s slender shoulders. “I know I certainly want you all to myself.”
Shelly didn’t waste any time. She gave Rob a peck, tossed her friends a wave, then got in behind the wheel and was backing out of the driveway in record time. Rob followed close behind her as she drove down the street.
For just one moment, Kaitlyn longed for what her friend shared with Rob. But soul mates were a rare commodity and she didn’t think she dared surrender herself so completely to another person, especially one as strong willed as Jake.
Kaitlyn looked up at Jake. The heat was still there in his eyes, a heat she had to turn her back on. The risks of getting involved with him again were simply too great. “Where’s your crew?” she asked, walking into the open garage.
“Finished and out of here,” Jake said. “They did their final tests on the system shortly after you and Shelly left to go shopping.”
Then there would be no reason for him to spend the night again. Good thing, she thought. Tonight she would have a hard time getting to sleep if he was close by. That kiss had brought back memories of other nights with him. Nights she wondered if she would ever forget.
She went into the house, pausing in the laundry room to kick off her sandals. The aroma of something spicy greeted her. She walked over to the oven and peeked inside at the Monterey Jack cheese covering the bubbly enchilada sauce. On the countertop were bowls of chopped lettuce and tomato, grated cheddar cheese and corn chips. She opened the lid to the saucepan on the stove and sampled the Mexican rice.
“I put my ladder in the garage for now,” Jake said, walking into the kitchen as if he belonged there. How natural it seemed to see him here in her house. “I may need to adjust the angle of one of the floodlights later.”
Kaitlyn paused, her fork poised over the rice. “Lights? Plural?”
“One for the front, the side and the rear of the condo,” he told her.
“You’ll have this place lit up so bright my neighbors will complain to the homeowners’ association,” she grumbled.
“Trust me.” Jake gently tweaked the end of her nose, instantly regretting the small contact. While he’d shopped for groceries and as he’d worked on installing those lights, his thoughts had been on Kaitlyn. That kiss had been fairly tame compared with some of their more passionate ones of the past, but it had been enough to start him thinking of things he shouldn’t. Such as how she’d practically melted against him. How wonderful her soft curves would feel under his hands. How good it would be to have her in his bed.
He wasn’t likely to forget that kiss anytime soon. And while he longed to act on the wants and needs it had stirred, he knew that would only spell disaster for them both.
“Hungry?” he asked, seeing her dip her fork into the rice again.
She only shrugged, but Jake knew his rice dish had tempted her taste buds. Katie rarely sampled. She rarely cared whether she ate.
“Hand me a couple of hot pads and two plates,” he told her, pulling the chicken enchiladas out of the oven once she’d complied.
He put one enchilada on a plate, added a generous helping of rice, put together the lettuce, tomato and cheese for a small salad, then handed her the plate. He fixed one for himself, got the sour cream out of the fridge, then joined her at the table. She’d already dug into the enchilada, he noted, pleased.
“These are fantastic,” she said. “Where’d you get them?”
He pretended to be offended by the question. “I made them. I’m a first-rate cook, if I do say so myself.”
“You cook? I’ll believe that when I see it.”
She was eating with unusual enthusiasm for her, he thought. As if she was thoroughly enjoying the food. He smiled to himself. He’d debated quite a while about whether to fix dinner for her. The scene was very domestic, especially after the kiss. She’d been distant and quiet afterward and perhaps that was for the best, since there couldn’t be anything romantic or sexual between them.
Then he’d thought of Katie. She would most likely refuse to go out to dinner with him, and if he didn’t have dinner ready, he figured she wouldn’t eat at all. Although whether she ate shouldn’t have mattered so much to him, he’d found he couldn’t turn off his concern.
“So, what was Rob doing helping you with the lights?” she asked.
Jake watched her pop another forkful in her mouth. No way would he risk ruining her rare appetite with the news Rob had given him. She would have to deal with that reality soon enough. After this morning’s incident, he wanted her to have a brief reprieve from worry and fear.
“You don’t want to hear about my cooking chronicles?” he inquired. “I’m wounded.”
She eyed him suspiciously for a long moment, as if debating whether to allow him to change the subject. Finally she nodded. “All right. Tell me about your cooking.”
For the next twenty minutes he kept her smiling and laughing at stories of his early mistakes in the cooking classes he’d taken, the ensuing disastrous dishes and the more outrageous pickup lines some of the women students had tried on him. At one point he cut another enchilada in half and slid the portion onto her plate along with another serving of rice. He was pleasantly surprised when she polished that off, too, then even picked at the cheese topping on the remaining food. He pushed the serving dish toward her, but she shook her head.
“Why the urge to learn to cook?” she queried. “When we lived together, sandwiches and frozen or prepackaged dinners were the extent of your kitchen skills.”
He gave her a wry smile. “I did it to meet single women. Then when the first teacher told me I was a lost cause in the kitchen, it became a matter of pride. And,” he added slowly, “it filled the evenings after you left.”
Her gaze was warm and sympathetic. “I know what you mean. I took so many classes that last year in college that I was swimming in homework. Then when I graduated, I went to work for a travel agency and learned everything I could about running my own business.”
As if to change the subject, she got up and began clearing the table. Jake grabbed a couple of dishes, intending to help her.
“I’ll take care of this part,” she insisted. “It’s the least I can do after you went to all this trouble.”
“That’s all right. I don’t mind giving you a hand.”
He set the two dishes on the countertop, then put the lid on the sour cream container and placed it in the refrigerator. When he turned around, he caught the annoyance in her gaze.
“What?” he asked, recalling that this was how the majority of their fights had started. They’d just shared an enjoyable meal and he didn’t want to end it with a fight. But running from one wasn’t his way any more than it was hers.
She glared at him. “I’m trying to do a little something to reciprocate for the wonderful meal and for everything else you’ve done today, but you just can’t let me.”
“I’m only giving you a hand. What’s the big deal? Why is it always so difficult for you to accept my help?”
“Because your help soon turns into taking over whatever I’m doing.” She let out an angry breath. “Jake, I don’t want to spoil the evening with a fight.”
“Neither do I, honey, but I need to understand what’s going on here.”
She looked up from loading the dishwasher and studied him. “I suppose that in my mind your taking over is more of a criticism, proof that you think I’m not cap
able of handling this. I feel like a little girl all over again with my father correcting, disapproving of the way I do things.”
“Katie,” he said softly, “you’ve been living on your own since you went away to college. Don’t you think that after nine years you should have that monkey off your back?”
“You didn’t live every day of your life being criticized for everything, and no matter how hard you tried, nothing you did was ever good enough. You don’t get a chance to develop any self-esteem. No matter what Mom and I were doing, he would take over and show us the proper way to do it, then end up telling us how inept we were.” She sighed. “Sometimes I don’t think about it. Other times, it comes back and hits me so hard I feel just like that little girl again.”
Jake nodded, understanding at last why she’d resisted his assistance so vehemently, realizing that he’d inadvertently treated her as her overbearing father had. He hadn’t been trying to crush her self-esteem as the colonel had, but he had brought back those unpleasant memories. He had to make her see that his only intention had been to help her.
“I didn’t mean to be so pushy. It’s just that I’ve always been one to pitch in and help,” he explained. “Mom was working a part-time job in addition to teaching. Most nights she came home totally exhausted. The girls were little, so I would take over the housework for her.”
It was Kaitlyn’s turn to nod her understanding. “So, think maybe you could sit down and have a beer while I finish this?”
He thought about it for a brief moment, then shook his head. “But I think I could carry the stuff from the table to the counter and let you do the rest.”
She smiled at him. “All right. I’ll accept that much. Then you can tell me what Rob wanted. Now that dinner’s over and there’s no chance of ruining my appetite, you don’t have to ‘protect’ me any longer.”
She had seen through his ploy, Jake realized, but surprisingly she hadn’t objected. As if she’d needed the brief reprieve. Even now he hated having to tell her. Wished she would turn it all over to him to deal with. But that wasn’t her way, and the truth was she needed to be fully aware of what was going on. He couldn’t protect her alone. She had to be looking out for herself as much as he was.
“I gave Rob Fallon’s driver’s license number,” Jake told her.
“And?” Kaitlyn prompted, glancing up as she loaded the pans and baking dish into dishwasher. She wasn’t going to like what Jake had to tell her, but she couldn’t continue to bury her head in the sand as she’d been doing.
“He’s running it through the computers to see what other states Fallon might have lived in.”
“They can do that?” she asked.
Jake nodded. “When you apply for a new driver’s license, they make a note of the information from the old license. They can cross-reference it to see if you’re wanted in other states.”
“Do you think Fallon might be wanted somewhere else?”
“It’s a possibility. We’ll know in a week or so.”
“But that’s not all Rob came over to tell you, is it?” she asserted.
“The local computer check on Fallon came back. He was arrested thirteen months ago...for beating up his ex-girlfriend. She’d left him several months before that and he’d been harassing her since then.”
“Harassing?”
“Following her wherever she went,” Jake explained. “Letters, phone calls at all hours, standing on her front lawn and yelling obscenities at her.”
Kaitlyn shuddered. “Why did she leave him?”
“The report says he was extremely possessive and got violent a couple of times. Broke some guy’s jaw because he saw the guy talking to her and she’d laughed at something he said. He did some time for that, too, but not much. He was supposed to be seeing a shrink for counseling as part of his release conditions. Rob’s going to check into that.”
Kaitlyn closed the dishwasher, then wiped her hands on a towel Jake handed her. “Did he lose interest in this other girlfriend when she had him thrown in jail?”
“Near as Rob can tell so far, it appears she left her furniture behind, packed what she could in the back of her car and left.”
“Just vanished?” Kaitlyn asked, a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “What about her family and friends?”
“Her parents and her friends told the police she was desperate to get away from Fallon. Rob’s going to question them some more and talk to the officers who were on the case at the time.”
“Question them? Why?”
“To make sure she did leave and that she wasn’t possibly murdered,” he told her quietly.
Murdered? Fighting off a shiver, Kaitlyn set the towel on the counter and looked out the window. She had a business to run. Had her mother in an apartment nearby. She couldn’t just pack up and disappear without a trace to escape this man’s unwanted attention.
What if the situation became as bad as the one Jake had described? What if the man had latched onto her as he had his ex-girlfriend? What would she do? She had to fight down the panic. This was all much too frightening to deal with.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to this extreme. Maybe the man had made some strides in his counseling sessions. It provided precious little hope, but it was something to cling to.
She turned to Jake, noting his jaw was clenched. She sensed he hated this situation even more than she and wondered at that. She laid her hand on his forearm, drawing strength from the power she felt.
“These cases really bother you, don’t they?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Come on, I’ll show you how your system works.”
She followed as he walked over to a keypad by the door leading to the garage. One day, she thought, she would ask him to tell her why the case was so difficult for him, ask him what put the silent fury in his eyes and the grim lines around his mouth.
She listened carefully as he explained how to arm and disarm the system, what to do if she didn’t get the code punched in quickly enough, how to respond to the person on the phone if there was an emergency, how and when to push the panic button. It was comforting to learn all the details he’d taken care of. By the time he’d covered everything, she was sure she would feel quite safe in her house.
“Now, if anyone ever accosts you outside and forces you inside,” he continued, “you let the alarm go off. Fiddle with the keypad, punch in numbers at random, act like you can’t remember your code. Anything—just make sure you let the system go off. When the office calls you, give them the code but add an ‘R’ on the end.”
“‘R’?”
“For respond. If they get the ‘R,’ they’ll hang up, call the police, then alert one of my crews and have them out here as fast as possible.”
Kaitlyn nodded, very aware of how close he was standing. She could inhale the tangy scent of his aftershave, feel the warmth of him. This was the only man who could make her want to lean on someone—on him. She would never understand that. But to lean was to make herself vulnerable and she’d vowed long ago to never again be in that position.
She turned when the doorbell rang. “Expecting someone?” she asked.
Jake shook his head, following several steps behind her as she walked through the living room. When she opened the front door, he stood a few feet back, ready for possible trouble. He saw the two uniformed officers on the front stoop and figured they represented trouble of an unexpected kind.
Katie glanced back at him, laughing. “Did you set off the alarm or something?”
“They’re not here because of the alarm,” he said, very seriously. Whatever their reason for being there, Jake had an uneasy feeling he wasn’t going to like it.
“Ma’am,” the dark-haired one said. “May we come in?”
Kaitlyn looked to Jake, a concerned frown creasing her forehead. He nodded once. She opened the door and stepped back to let the two in. They glanced around the room, then their gazes locked on Jake.
“Sir,” the dark-haired one
said, “are you Jacob Riley, Riley Security Services?”
“Yes,” Jake said, putting his arm around Katie’s slender shoulders. She’d been inching closer and closer to him since the two officers had stepped inside. “What can I do for you, Officer Williams?” he asked, reading the man’s name tag above his badge.
“We need you to come down to the station with us.”
“Why?” Katie demanded, her arm going around Jake’s back, holding him tightly. She was trembling.
“We have a warrant for Mr. Riley’s arrest on assault charges,” Williams said in what was supposed to be a calming tone.
The man could have saved his voice. Katie was not in the mood to be calmed. “Assault?” she cried out. “But who—”
“Fallon,” Jake told her.
“But he’s the one doing the stalking. How could he press charges against...”
“Katie,” Jake said, gently unwrapping her arm from around his waist, “I’ll get this sorted out—”
Her mouth opened in protest, but no sound came out.
Her eyes were filled with panic.
“It’s going to be all right,” he reassured her. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I want you to call my service and tell them to send Dallas and Dev over here, stat. Got that? They’ll stay with you—”
“I’m coming with you,” she insisted.
He ignored that “When I leave, you set the alarm, then call and get Dallas and Dev over here. My gun is on the countertop in the kitchen. You know how to use it,” he said quietly so the uniforms wouldn’t overhear, aware her - father had made sure she knew how to handle a weapon. “Just don’t shoot my key people, okay?” he joked.
She wasn’t in the mood for humor, either. “Jake...”
“Are you clear on those instructions?” he asked softly.
“Yes, sir,” she said, miffed. But he knew she was upset with the situation, as well as with him. He could see the concern in her eyes, especially when the other officer proceeded to handcuff him. She drew in a sharp breath as the first cuff clicked around his wrist.