Luben swelled his chest and a vein pulsed to life at his temple. “Was. We’ve got a bigger problem on our hands right now, one that you’d be privy to,” he added, leveling a sausagelike finger at Link’s nose, “if you bothered to check in on a regular basis.”
Link tried to keep his expression impassive. “You’ve never found fault with my work habits before.”
The chief’s hand came down on the desk hard, making the phone rattle and papers fly. “That was because I’ve never had Fortune breathing down my neck. His daughter’s disappeared, and all we’ve got to go on so far is a wrecked car we found this morning abandoned out in the desert.”
Link pulled at his chin, pretending to absorb the details he’d heard, playing for time. He needed to know Rowan’s reaction to Isabelle’s disappearance, his movements since he’d left the church. And in order to gather that information, he would have to bring Rowan’s name into the conversation.
But that was going to be difficult, since no one but himself and Hank knew that Brad Rowan was a suspect in Mike Dodd’s murder. Neither of them had been foolish enough to breathe a word of their suspicions to the chief or anyone else in the department. Not when they didn’t have a shred of evidence to substantiate their claim. Not when their prime suspect was a prominent businessman in Pueblo. Not when the suspect was the son of one of the town’s leaders.
“What about her fiancé?” he asked, keeping his expression carefully schooled.
The chief snorted. “Rowan? He’s raging around town like a bull, threatening to kill whoever abducted her.”
Link arched a brow. “Abducted?”
Luben scowled and picked up a file folder, then tossed it down again. “What other explanation could there be? Naturally, her family is worried. You know the girl’s history, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do. But what makes Rowan think she’s been abducted? Maybe she just got cold feet.”
The chief snorted again and rounded the desk. He propped a hip on the corner and braced his hands on his thigh. “If that’s the case, then where is she? Why wouldn’t she tell her family her location when she called them, and who she’s with? And how do you explain the wrecked car?”
“Have you brought it in?”
Luben waved a dismissing hand. “Yeah. Towed it in this morning. The lab guys are going over it now.”
Link tensed, thinking of the fingerprints he’d left on Isabelle’s car when he’d rescued her from it.
The chief narrowed his eyes at him. “I want you to take the lead on this, Templeton. I know you and Fortune had words when you arrested Riley, but you’re the best I’ve got, and I need you on this case.”
Link inhaled deeply, already trying to figure out a way he could keep his own involvement in Isabelle’s disappearance from being discovered. “No problem, boss.” He touched a finger to his brow in a mock salute. “I’ll go take a look at the car now.”
Link stepped into the garage, paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the change in light, then strode straight for Isabelle’s red sports car, parked in a bay. Both doors were open and a pair of legs stuck out from the driver’s side. As Link walked, he played the scene from the car wreck back through his mind, trying to remember his exact movements, everywhere he’d placed a hand when he’d pulled Isabelle from the vehicle. Everywhere he’d left a print.
Forcing a smile, he ducked his head inside the car and braced one hand against the back of the seat and the other on the steering wheel. “Hey, Smitty,” he said, bumping a knee against the tech’s leg. “Hear we’ve got us a missing lady.”
Smitty reared up, swearing, when he struck his head on the rearview mirror. “Dammit, Link!” he said, giving Link’s chest an angry shove. “Have you lost your mind? Can’t you see I’m dusting for prints here?”
Link lifted his hands in surrender and backed away from the interior of the car. “Sorry, Smitty. Thought you’d be through by now.”
Smitty scowled and wiggled from inside the car to his feet, ripping off his gloves. “Not when a Fortune’s involved. Hell! I’ll be lucky if I finish before five. Damn their rich hides. They’ve got everybody on the force jumping through hoops.” He tossed the gloves toward a waste receptacle, missed and swore again.
Link stepped back as Smitty stomped over to retrieve them. Though a slob when it came to his own appearance, Smitty ran a tight ship. He considered the garage his own personal territory and kept it as sterile as any surgical suite. Not a trace of grease on the floor, not so much as a lug wrench out of place. “Find anything, yet?” he asked innocently as he watched Smitty scoop the gloves from the cement floor.
Smitty slam-dunked the gloves into the receptacle, then spun back around, yanking a Laker’s ball cap from his head to dig his fingers through his hair. “Not yet. I really just got started. They had me at the church all day yesterday and this morning, dusting every cross and doorknob in the place.”
Link grinned, and clapped Smitty on the back. “Go to confession while you were there?”
Smitty scowled and rammed his hands into the back pockets of his overalls. “Like I’ve got anything to confess,” he muttered cantankerously. “They don’t give me enough time off from here to even think about sinning.”
Link laughed and stepped back, draping a casual arm along the top edge of the car door. “You’d just get in trouble if they did.”
“I could use a little trouble,” Smitty grumped. “Hell!” he said, tossing up a hand. “I haven’t had a hard-on in a week, much less relieved one.”
Link dropped his arm from the car, shaking his head sympathetically as he reached for the door handle. “Don’t let me keep you then. I know you’ve got—”
“Don’t—” Smitty dropped his head back on a groan as Link’s fingers curled around the handle “—touch that,” he finished miserably.
Link jerked his hand back, but not before smearing the prints there. “Sorry,” he muttered as he backed away from the car. Then he grinned and gave Smitty a playful punch on the arm. “But at least you’ll know how my prints got on the car, right?”
Smitty scowled and tugged another pair of sterile gloves out of the box he’d propped on the car’s trunk. “You just better hope I find someone other than yours,” he muttered. “Otherwise, we’re both going to be up to our eyeballs in trouble.”
Mission accomplished, Link thought wearily as he climbed from the Blazer well after dark. He’d made an appearance at headquarters, bluffed his way through a confrontation with the chief and dealt with the prints he’d left on Isabelle’s car. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.
But the reprieve he’d won wouldn’t last long.
He glanced toward the cabin and the soft golden light spilling from the windows and onto the porch, and frowned. Warm, welcoming. Home, he thought, his frown deepening. Much more so than his condo near downtown Pueblo had ever felt. The only change he’d made in the exterior of his condo since he’d purchased it several years before was to remove the For Sale sign near the front walk. He’d never thought of the place as home. More as a place to sleep, a place to store his possessions, few as they were.
It was Isabelle, he decided, knowing that she waited inside the cabin for him, reveling in the anticipation that filled him at the mere thought. A man could get used to having a woman waiting for him when he came in from a day’s work. Could grow lazy thinking about curling up beside her in bed every night. In two short days, he’d developed a need for her. An addiction that wasn’t going to fade easily once they left the cabin and returned to town.
But they couldn’t stay here forever, he reminded himself as he stared at the windows, his mind filled with thoughts of her. Somehow he had to find a way to help Isabelle remember the men’s names behind the voices she’d overheard. Without the testimony of those two men, he didn’t have a case, the evidence he needed, a prayer of putting Brad behind bars where he belonged.
And when she did remember, he thought, dread filling him at the realization, he wouldn’t have
an excuse to keep her at the cabin any longer. He wouldn’t be able to sleep with her at night, feel the warmth of her body curled against his. He’d never again see her face flushed with passion as he filled her. Never wake to find her sleepy, smiling gaze on his.
He heard the screen door squeak open on its hinges, focused his gaze there as Isabelle stepped into the opening. At the sight of her standing there, waiting for him, a warm smile of welcome on her face, resentment poured through him. Resentment for the gap in their social status. Resentment for the gap in their ages.
Resentment for what his stepbrother had done to her.
“Are you coming inside?” she teased. “Or are you going to stand outside all night?”
He forced his lips upward in a smile. “Depends on what’s waiting for me inside,” he called out.
She slid a hand up high on the door frame and hitched one hip in a provocative pose. “I made chili for dinner,” she said as she toyed coyly with the top button of her blouse. “Or we could skip dinner and go straight to bed.”
The button slipped open and he watched her fingers stroke sensually, teasingly, over the skin she’d exposed. The sight wiped his mind clean and filled him with heat. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he strode for the porch.
“Not really. Are you?” she asked, peering up at him hopefully as he stopped in front of her.
“Starving.” He dipped his head to nibble at her throat. “For you,” he added, and nudged her through the doorway.
Five
“Did you hear anything while you were in town?”
Link watched the water and bubbles sluice down Isabelle’s spine as she leaned forward to shut off the taps and decided that the bubble bath might not have been such a bad idea after all. The suggestion had been hers, one he’d tried to weasel out of, fearing the ribbing he’d receive if the guys at headquarters ever got wind that he’d willingly soaked in a tub full of bubbles scented with something as sissy-sounding as lavender.
She settled back against his chest and fluffed foaming peaks of bubbles over her breasts, and he decided he didn’t give a damn what the guys might think. A bubble bath—one taken with Isabelle—was, bar none, the most entertaining, erotic hour he’d ever spent in a tub.
“Not much,” he said, and dropped a hand from the side of the tub to pop a particularly large bubble that had lodged strategically over a breast. She tossed a smile over her shoulder and closed her hand over his, holding it over her breast.
“What’s not much?” she asked, and swept a small mountain of bubbles to cover their joined hands.
“They recovered your car,” he began, and buried his nose in the curve of her neck and inhaled. “It’s in the garage at headquarters,” he said, releasing the breath on a sigh. “The chief assigned the case to me with instructions to find you ASAP. In the meantime, your daddy’s got everybody on the force chasing their tails trying to find you.”
She winced and tipped her head back to look at him. “I should call him,” she said guiltily. “He must be worried.”
“Too chancy,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead.
She sighed and dropped her chin, nestling her head comfortably against his chest again. “What about Brad? Did you hear anything about him?”
Link scowled, not liking to hear her speak the man’s name. “He’s convinced you were abducted.”
“Abducted!” she echoed, bolting upright and twisting around to look at him. “Why would he think a thing such as that?”
Link lifted a shoulder and touched a finger to the hollow at the base of her throat. “Easier than admitting that you’d left him standing at the altar.”
“Surely no one believes that I’ve been abducted?”
He lifted a shoulder again, dragging his finger down her chest and beneath the water’s surface. “A wrecked car? A missing bride? It would be easy enough to convince someone an abduction had occurred.”
She scowled and twisted back around. “I wasn’t abducted,” she grumbled peevishly, and flopped back against his chest.
“Yeah, you were,” he said, and leaned to nip playfully at her earlobe. “I abducted you and I’m holding you hostage as my sex slave.”
She huffed a breath, refusing to be distracted from her anger. “You’re my sex slave. Remember? I seduced you.”
He chuckled and lifted his legs over hers, locking them around her waist. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
She smoothed a palm over his thigh and back up, wiping away the bubbles. “Link?” she said after a minute.
“Hmm?” he murmured, lulled by the sensual play of her fingers on his leg.
“Do you think I’m…loose?”
He choked on a laugh. “Hardly.”
“No, I’m serious,” she said, and unwound his legs from around her so that she could turn and face him. “I don’t want you to think that I would sleep with just anyone.”
He shook his head, unable to believe that she’d think he’d assume such a thing. He swept from her cheek a tendril that had escaped the knot she’d twisted the hair up into. “No. I don’t think you’re that kind of woman.”
Relieved, she dropped a kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She pushed back from him, making the water churn. “Trade places with me.”
“What?” he asked in confusion.
“Trade places.” She stood, dripping foamy bubbles from her fingers as she placed a hand on his back and urged him forward. Easing around him, she sank back down into the water behind him and stretched her legs out alongside his. “That’s better,” she said, sounding pleased.
“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully, already missing the feel of her body snugged up against his. “I kind of liked things the way they were.”
“Oh, you’ll like this position, too,” she promised, and placed her hands on his shoulders and began to knead.
He groaned as her fingers dug deeply into tensed muscles.
“Does that feel good?” she quizzed, pausing to peer at him over his shoulder.
“Don’t stop,” he begged pitifully.
She laughed and resumed her massage. “My brothers swear I have magic fingers.”
“Wise men, your brothers.”
“Yes, they are.” She leaned to peer at him again but continued her massage. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
He tensed, then forced his muscles to relax. “No.” It wasn’t a lie, he told himself. He didn’t have any full-blood brothers. Only one stepbrother, whom he’d never claimed relationship to, anyway.
“That’s sad,” she murmured sympathetically. “I can’t imagine my life without my brothers.” She laughed then and leaned to whisper at his ear. “Promise me you’ll never tell them I said that.”
He angled his head slightly, frowning. “Why?”
“Because I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort trying to convince them that they are a royal pain in the you-know-what.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re too protective.” She shifted her legs more comfortably around him and moved her fingers to cup his neck. “It’s like having three fathers,” she said, kneading at the tendons there. “Bossing me around and checking up on me.”
“They do it because they care.”
“Yes,” she agreed readily. “But it’s infuriating having them hover all the time. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be treated as if you’re a glass doll. Protected and guarded as if you’d break at the slightest jarring.”
Because he felt the need to treat her similarly, and because he feared he’d never have the chance to do so once they left the cabin, Link remained silent.
“I was never allowed to do anything that other girls my age were allowed to do,” she continued. “No overnights. No extracurricular activities. No shopping sprees at the mall. Unless I was accompanied by one of my brothers, of course,” she added, then snorted indelicately. “Imagine shopping for personal items with your brothers along. Ho
w embarrassing! And frustrating, too. They were always pressing me to hurry, rolling their eyes when I’d dare ask their opinion on a particular style or color.” She chuckled and leaned close to his ear again. “Sometimes I would purposely hold up something really risqué just to make them blush.”
Link frowned as she began to knead his neck again, realizing for the first time how truly sheltered her life must have been. “What was it like when you were away?” he asked curiously. “Back east at that boarding school and in Europe?”
“The same. Only my brothers weren’t there hovering. It was usually some other family member, or a teacher that my father employed to watch over me. While in Europe, it was a trusted friend of the family. I’ve never truly been on my own. Ever.”
He absorbed that slowly, knowing the reason why. The kidnapping. Reason enough to want to shelter her. Protect her.
He caught her hand in his and tugged it down his chest, drawing her face next to his. “And what would you do you if you had the freedom to do anything you wanted?” He glanced over at her. “Anything,” he repeated.
She frowned slightly, then a smile began to grow, quickly spreading across her face and lighting her eyes. “A fair. I’ve always wanted to attend a fair. Ride a roller coaster. Eat cotton candy. Throw balls at a target and win a bear.” She laughed and curled her fingers around his. “Of course, I’d probably miss the target, but it would be fun, just the same.”
He pushed himself to his feet, making Isabelle squeal and grab for the edge of the tub to keep from sliding under the water. Then he turned and reached down, pulling her up, dripping, into his arms. “We’ll go to one. Tomorrow,” he promised.
She looked up at him, her eyes going round. “A fair? Where?”
He shook his head, wondering if he was risking their location, as well as Isabelle’s safety, with his desire to make up to her all she’d lost. “I don’t know.” Sure that he could find a fair remote enough, one where their appearance wouldn’t arouse suspicion, he hugged her to him. Bubbles exploded between their bodies, the beads of moisture tickling their bare flesh. “But I’ll find one. If I have to drive you all the way to Texas, I’ll find you a fair.”
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