by Dani Criss
It was dark. Totally black between the flashes of lightning. Kaitlyn couldn’t see. Didn’t know where she was. Walls were on both sides. She had to feel her way down the endless corridor. The walls were narrowing. Someone was breathing behind her. Chasing her. He was getting closer. She could feel the hot breath on her back
She had to run, but she kept stumbling over the uneven floor. The corridor would go straight for a while, then turn suddenly. Each time it took her precious seconds to get oriented Lightning flashed in the distance. Thunder rumbled behind her. Or was it footsteps?
She had to get away, but she couldn’t run fast enough. No matter how fast she went, he was right behind her, breathing down her neck. She had to find someone. Had to get help. Her legs ached unbearably Her lungs were on fire. She couldn’t draw in air. But he was gaining on her. She couldn’t stop.
She didn’t know whom she was running from, but she knew whom she was running to—
“Jake,” she shouted, finally forcing the words out of her constricted throat. “Jake.”
She struggled to pull free of whatever was. wrapped around her. A blanket. Tight around her.
From somewhere his voice called to her. “Katie. Katie, I’ve got you,” he soothed. “It’s okay. You were dreaming. It’s over now.”
Dreaming. A nightmare. It was over and Jake was there with her. She quit struggling and let him unwind the blankets she’d managed to tangle herself in. Very quickly she was free and his arms were around her, holding her, protecting her. Driving away the demons.
“I was running,” she said, breathless. “I couldn’t get away from him. He just kept coming.”
Jake’s arms tightened around her. He propped the pillows against the headboard and switched on the light, as if knowing it would be a long while before she could sleep again, then pulled her to his side, tucking the sheet around her shoulders. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Kaitlyn buried her face in his chest and pressed her body closer to his.
“It’s just a summer thunderstorm,” he said softly against her hair.
“There was thunder. In my nightmare.”
“It’s all right now,” he murmured. “You’re safe here.”
But was she? Kaitlyn wondered, her head on his bare chest. The scent of him, the enticing feel of his hair under her cheek and palm, the warmth of his skin, the hard plane of his torso—all of it called up memories. Making love, lying like this afterward, cradled in his arms, often making love again. The danger was every bit as serious as the one that had sent her to him. But she didn’t know what to do.
“How’s your stomach?” he asked, his voice husky.
“About the same.” She sighed, knowing she should move to the guest room bed. Knowing, too, that she wouldn’t go anywhere.
She needed to be near him, despite the way he brought her senses alive. She needed to feel his arms around her, to feel his powerful body next to hers. Beneath the fear she felt was that aching awareness of him. He wore only a pair of briefs. That virility tugged at her senses, called to the woman in her. Desire teased at the fringes of her mind, too strong to ignore, but what she needed now was his strength, his ability to keep her safe from harm.
“Jake,” she said in a whisper, “I’m scared. What’s going to happen now?”
Jake gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze, knowing what she most needed now was assurance that she could get through this. Fallon was truly stalking her and she couldn’t hide from that reality any longer. She was frightened and Jake knew how she hated feeling vulnerable.
“Tomorrow we’ll talk about it,” he told her, not wanting to upset her further tonight. “In the morning, I’ll tell you all the possible situations you could be confronted with and all the procedures I want you to follow.”
Head against his chest, she nodded. Thunder boomed through the room, making her jump.
“The storm is getting closer,” he said against her flower-scented hair. “It’ll pass over soon.”
She burrowed closer still. There was no space between their bodies. She was pressed to the length of him, all softness and gently rounded curves. Jake wanted her so badly he hurt. Too clearly he could remember letting his hands explore her beautiful contours, could recall the feel of her breasts in his palms, the softness of her skin. He longed to explore her all over again, to tug the cotton sleep shirt from her body and make love to her. But that’s not what she needed. She needed to be held.
“I’ll take good care of you, Katie,” he crooned, rubbing her back with the palm of his hand, feeling her tensed and knotted muscles. “Just leave everything up to me.”
She nodded again and sighed quietly as he kneaded her shoulders, working some of the tension out. If he didn’t get her to relax, he knew, she was apt to end up with one of her killer headaches.
“Come on,” he said softly. “Lie down on your stomach and let me do this properly.”
After a moment, she complied. He understood her hesitation. Many times he’d given her a massage as a prelude to lovemaking. He would work away the tension of the day, the tension she tended to hold on to, then kiss her soft skin until he created a tension of another kind. That had never taken long, but often he had deliberately prolonged the sweet torture until both of them were mindless with need.
He groaned silently as he worked his way to her shoulder blades. His thoughts were going to land him in an icy cold shower.
Katie opened her eyes, angled her head so she could see him, and as he looked into her eyes, he realized she was remembering, too. And wanting. He could take her. It would be so easy and so very wonderful. But it would also be wrong. She was defenseless right now. Vulnerable. He couldn’t take advantage of her this way and be able to live with himself. He placed a tender kiss on her forehead.
“Close your eyes,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Go to sleep. Let me take care of everything.”
With a quiet sigh, she closed her eyes and very soon was sleeping again, her breathing deep and even. Jake watched her for a long while. For the first time, Katie was placing her fate in his hands, allowing him to take care of her. This is what he’d needed from her. What he’d wanted those brief months they’d lived together.
He wouldn’t let anything happen to her, he vowed as he felt her snuggle against him. He reached to switch off the light, then pulled the sheet over her shoulders. He wouldn’t fail her. Whatever it took, he would keep her safe.
Slowly Kaitlyn realized she was holding Jake’s pillow instead of Jake. She experienced a moment of panic before she remembered she was in his bed, in his apartment. He’d held her most of the night, letting her know she was safe, chasing away her fears. But now it was morning. Time to find out what the future had in store for her.
With her stomach knotting already, she went to the bedroom door and opened it. The smell of coffee and the sound of male voices greeted her. Jake had company. Kaitlyn spotted the plaid robe he’d laid out on the foot of the bed, slipped into it, then walked down the hallway, through the living room and into the kitchen.
Jake stood at the stove, his jeans and black knit shirt hugging his long, muscled frame. The momentary heat in his gaze made her breath snag. She smiled at him and he gave her a warm smile in return, then inclined his head toward the table.
Dallas Steele sat sprawled in one wooden chair, his feet on the rungs of another. He raised his coffee mug in salute.
“Hey there, Red. How are you doing this morning?” he asked brightly.
She frowned at him in semiannoyance. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to wake up so cheerful?”
He chuckled. “Haven’t been to bed yet.”
She tensed, certain Craig Fallon was the reason. “What happened?” she asked him.
He looked to Jake for permission before he answered her. Jake considered it for a moment, then nodded. “She needs to know,” he said.
“Fallon showed up at your house at least twice,” Steele said. “Or rather, he got close enough to the place to set off the al
arm twice. Once about midnight, then again about four o’clock.”
Kaitlyn sank into a chair at the other end of the table. Fallon had been at her house, probably had lurked in the shadows for some time, waiting for her to come home. She could only guess what he’d planned to do when she showed up. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. A chill climbed her spine.
“Did he try to break in?” she asked.
“The first time he may have been trying just to see if you were there,” Steele told her. “Neighbors said he was pounding on the front door, yelling your name. They said he quit and ran off just before we got there.”
“We?” Kaitlyn asked, giving Jake a small smile when he set a glass of chocolate milk in front of her.
“I’m not the only one the service calls when the alarm goes off,” Steele explained. “They notify the patrol unit in the area and the police. We generally all show up within minutes of one another.”
Jake, his back to them as he stirred something in a pan on the stove, turned toward her. “We particularly want the police to respond to each incident in these cases.”
“Stalking cases, you mean,” she muttered, staring into the glass in front of her.
“The police will file a report,” he continued. “We want everything documented. Each and every single time he tries anything.”
“I got that message loud and clear at Shelly’s yesterday,” she told him fervently. She wanted him to know she would not repeat the mistake she’d made with the answering machine tapes. “But don’t the police get tired of being called in and having to file reports?”
“That’s their job,” Jake insisted.
“And,” Steele added, “they understand the situation and the need to have the documentation. Most of the time they’re as frustrated as you are because the guy usually takes off just before they show up on the scene.”
Meaning it would be difficult to actually catch him in the act of harassing her. “But they can pick him up, can’t they?” she asked with a touch of alarm. “For violating the restraining order?”
“They have to find him first.” Steele stretched his long arms and legs. “We spent a lot of hours trying to track him down last night. Rob was even waking up the guy’s neighbors, asking if any of them knew where he hangs out.”
“Rob Donovan?” Kaitlyn asked. “You got him out... Jake, you can’t be dragging him away from Shelly every time—”
Jake placed the spoon on the counter, then turned off the stove and reached for three bowls. “Katie,” he said patiently, “Rob wants to be in on this. All the way. And Shelly goes along with him on this.”
“But—”
“They’re your friends,” he went on. “They want to be there for you, want to help in any way they can.”
“But...” She couldn’t disrupt her friends’ lives, couldn’t impose; more important, she couldn’t expose them to danger of any kind. What if one of them were hurt because of her “problem” with Fallon? She would never be able to forgive herself.
Jake placed the bowls of oatmeal and a basket of croissants on the table, then sat down next to her. “Katie,” he said in a tone that didn’t allow for disagreement, “you can’t hold on to your independence here. I know you prefer doing things on your own, but from now on, you’re going to need help. As much as you can get.”
In other words, Kaitlyn thought, it would take all of them to keep her safe. Gone would be the peaceful, relatively carefree life she’d known for the past few years. But not only would she worry about herself, she would have to worry about her friends, as well.
With an inward sigh, she picked up her spoon and sampled some of the oatmeal flavored with brown sugar. It was delicious, but her stomach protested. She set her spoon in the bowl, noting Jake’s scowl as she did so.
“You can do better than that, Red,” Steele coaxed. “Jake’s oatmeal is great. The only oatmeal I’ll eat.”
“He says that as if he doesn’t care for oatmeal,” Jake said, “but don’t let him fool you. He’s never met a food he didn’t like.”
“I’ve never disliked anything you’ve ever made, that’s for sure,” Steele quipped. “Now, Red’s cooking may be another thing entirely. The only thing I saw in her house was peanut butter and a freezer full of these chicken-and-rice entrées. You must really like rice.”
“We never had rice when I was growing up because my father hated it,” she said with a tiny smile. “I’ve developed quite a taste for it, though.” She pinned Steele with a steady glower. “So, tell me why you were snooping through my freezer.”
“Just checking things out,” he said, raising a hand in a gesture of surrender. “Making sure everything would be all right for the weekend, so you wouldn’t have to come home to spoiled food. Where do you think that chocolate milk you’re not drinking came from?”
Arching an eyebrow at him, she took a swallow from the glass. “From my refrigerator? How...thoughtful of you.”
“Yeah, well, before you start feeling too generous toward me,” he said, “the last time I phoned to report your alarm went off, Jake told me that if there was a carton in your fridge, I should bring it over this morning.”
Lying beside Jake, she must have slept through the ringing of the phone. She glanced at him, thinking again how thoughtful he was, about how safe he made her feel. When she laid her hand over his, he turned his hand palm upward and wrapped his fingers around hers. He squeezed gently.
“Try to eat,” he said softly.
She would need her strength for the ordeal to come, he was telling her, though he didn’t say the words. He would worry about her if she didn’t eat, and this time she hated to have him upset.
Nodding, she picked up her spoon and managed a couple of bites before Steele’s cellular phone rang. He pulled it out of his jeans, exchanged a few words with the person on the other end of the line, then replaced the phone in his pocket.
“Looks like our man was back,” he told Jake. “Martin says he broke out some windows in the rear of the house.”
Her bedroom windows, Kaitlyn thought, setting down her spoon and pushing away her bowl. She saw Jake frown at her again, but she couldn’t manage to swallow another bite around the lump in her threat.
“Go put your clothes on,” he finally told her. “We’ll go over there and see what kind of damage he’s done.”
Chapter 10
With a shudder, Kaitlyn closed the book she reading on stalking crimes and got to her feet. Dallas Steele slept on Jake’s couch, stretched out on his back and snoring softly. Back at her condo new unbreakable windows had been installed, the broken glass cleaned up, and Jake was now overseeing placement of the security sensors.
Before leaving, Jake had given her this book and one other on the patterns of stalkers. The picture of what she had to look forward to was pretty bleak. Boiled down to basics, a stalker was irrational, obsessive and absolutely relentless. Many turned violent at some point. Craig Fallon had resorted to violence with his former girlfriend, and he’d obviously lost control last night at Kaitlyn’s house.
What if she’d been there—alone? she asked herself as she paced the carpet in front of Jake’s balcony doors. What if she’d had to deal with Fallon pounding on her front door and yelling for her to let him in, breaking out her bedroom windows? She could imagine the horror of waiting long, agonizing minutes for help to come, wondering who would get to her first.
She shivered despite the heat of the sunlight that streamed in through the sliding glass doors. Suddenly she needed to be outside. Wanted to feel the full warmth of the sun on her skin and breathe the air. She reached to push the glass panel aside, but a voice from the couch stopped her.
“Jeez, Red,” Steele said, sitting up to cast her a frown of mild annoyance, “don’t touch the door. The pacing was bad enough—”
“You were snoring,” she said, straightening and glaring back at him. “You could not have known I was pacing.”
“Lucky guess,” he said with a maddening grin. �
��Now, about the balcony door...”
“Yes, about the door. How did you know I was planning to go outside?” she demanded.
“Rule number one—Always steep with one eye open when you’re baby-sitting,” he said, stretching, then getting to his feet.
“Baby-sitting,” she muttered in irritation. The least the man could do was refer to his being assigned to guard her as something other than baby-sitting.
“Jake would have been real upset when the service phoned to tell him there was an alarm at his apartment,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
“You guys and your gadgets and gizmos,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes heavenward. The need to be outside was so strong she hadn’t given a thought to the alarm system, hadn’t given a thought to how frantic Jake would be if he envisioned something happening to her. She would have to be more cautious in the future, she told herself.
“In time you’ll learn to love them as much as Jake and I do,” Steele said, coming to stand beside her.
“Appreciate them, maybe,” she corrected, staring at the book in her hands. If the text was anything to go by, there could be many times when she would be very grateful to have the system at her house. Not a comforting thought.
“Not exactly pleasant reading,” he said sympathetically. Seeing her gaze longingly at the balcony, he ran a hand over his stubble-covered jaw. “All right,” he said, “let me turn off the alarm, then we can sit outside.”
“We?” she asked, not certain she wanted company. The book had her spirits even lower than they’d been when she’d looked at her shattered bedroom windows earlier today. At the moment, she didn’t feel up to making small talk.
“Jake wouldn’t like the idea of my letting you sit out there alone,” Steele explained. “It’s my only offer. Take it or leave it.”
Now she couldn’t even sit on a balcony by herself, she thought morosely. Her chest tightened. She felt as if the apartment walls were closing in on her.
“All right,” she said wearily. “we’ll sit outside.”