“So what are you saying?” Parker wondered. “That the people following you probably aren’t some of Luther’s flunky drug dealers?”
A ragged sigh slipped out of Landon’s lips. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true.”
“They could be cops.” Jocelyn uttered her first thought aloud.
Landon glared at her. Even though he didn’t work for River City PD anymore, he apparently wasn’t any more willing to consider that one of them could be Luther’s mole than she was to suspect one of her coworkers.
“I don’t know who the hell they are,” Landon said.
“If you don’t need backup to intervene, why did you call?”
Landon sighed again before slowly admitting, “I might not have noticed them earlier.”
“Okay...”
“We just left the safe house,” Landon said. “We just left Clint and the witness.”
“You think you might have led them there?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know if I led them there,” Landon said, his voice gruff with guilt, “or if they were already there.”
Even though she was still mad at him for his comments and over his snooping the night before, she automatically defended him. “Rosie and Quarters said that Luther Mills probably already knew where they were.”
The thought made her sick with concern and fear for their safety. She wasn’t the only one afraid.
Parker Payne said, “I’ll send more bodyguards to the safe house—make sure none of Luther’s crew tries anything.”
“Good,” Landon said, and now he uttered a shaky sigh of relief.
“You focus on protecting Ms. Gerber,” Parker added.
He glanced across at her. “That would be easier to do if she took her own advice and stayed in a safe house instead of insisting on going into her office.”
“Parker has more important things to do than listen to us argue.” She reached over and pressed her finger on the disconnect button on his cell phone. Payne needed to get more protection on the witness.
“I don’t need to go into a safe house,” she said. “Luther is not going to have me killed because, like I told Rosie, it doesn’t matter if anything happens to me. The trial will still go on.”
“But will the new prosecutor get the conviction you seem pretty confident you’ll be able to get?” he asked.
She had been confident—until she’d learned about Luther’s plan to take out everyone associated with the trial. Sure, that included her, but he wasn’t going to start with her. He would use all his resources to get rid of Rosie first.
“You are so sure someone in my office is a traitor,” she said. “It seems like you’d be happy to go to work with me and try to figure out which one it is.”
He glanced across at her, and his gaze was speculative. “That’s exactly what I plan on doing.”
Was that why he’d searched her office the night before? She intended to ask him, but he suddenly jerked the wheel, sending the SUV into another lane but barely missing the vehicles already in it. Horns blared, and she cursed.
“Hang on,” he advised her. “I’m going to get rid of our tail.”
The vehicle he thought he’d noticed following them? Or their backup?
She didn’t entirely trust him yet. He could still be working for Luther and just very good at hiding it.
* * *
Luther clicked on his vibrating cell phone to a curse. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m following the lady DA like you said,” his caller replied. “But her bodyguard is trying to lose me.”
Blaring horns emanated from the cell phone.
“Aren’t you trained for this kind of driving?” Didn’t the police academy have some kind of a class for it? Like how not to lose a suspect?
“Yeah, but he was trained for it, too.”
He? Who was protecting Jocelyn Gerber? And how the hell would he be able to focus with her around? She was too damn good-looking to be a lawyer.
“Don’t worry about the lady DA,” Luther advised him. “Focus on Rosie Mendez. You already lost her once.” Last night—when she was supposed to have died. Instead, Clint Quarters had literally leaped to her rescue. Damn him.
“What about Gerber, though?”
“I can have Jocelyn Gerber taken out anytime I want,” Luther said, and a self-satisfied smirk crossed his face. He didn’t just have help in the police department; he had help within the district attorney’s office, too.
And that person could easily get to Jocelyn. She, and whoever her bodyguard was, would never see the threat until it was too late.
Until they were both dead.
That was going to happen. Luther wanted them all gone: everyone associated with the trial and every damn bodyguard of Parker Payne’s agency, including Parker Payne. Luther needed to send a message—a very loud message—that nobody better ever try to take him down again.
Or they would wind up dead...
CHAPTER 5
Landon lost the tail—almost too easily—as if the person had suddenly given up. Of course, they had probably already known where he and the ADA were headed. Anyone who knew Jocelyn Gerber knew where she spent most of her time: divided between her office and the courthouse. The two buildings were close, so close that the parking garage that stood between them serviced them both. After pulling into a space designated for the staff at the district attorney’s office, Landon glanced around the garage.
It was early, so not all the spaces were full.
Jocelyn reached for her door handle, but Landon reached across and covered her hand with his. “Wait for me to make sure it’s safe,” he told her.
Her willowy body bristled, but she stayed inside until he walked around the SUV and opened her door. “You don’t have to pretend to be my boyfriend,” she said.
“I didn’t open your door because I think we’re on a date,” he assured her. “I just want to keep you safe.”
And to find out the truth about her.
“I’m safe,” she told him as she headed toward the side of the parking structure where doors opened into the district attorney’s office. She gestured at the guard who sat near the metal detectors at the entrance.
Landon opened his jacket to show his holster to the middle-aged guard. “I have a permit and the chief of police’s permission to carry inside this building,” he told him.
The man nodded. “I know, Myers.”
And Landon grinned as he recognized the former police sergeant. “Good to see you.”
“You, too,” his former boss said with a grin. But when he turned toward Ms. Gerber, his grin slid away. “Ms. Gerber.”
She nodded at the man as she proceeded through the metal detectors. She didn’t wait for Landon, just kept going.
The guard shook his head as Landon rushed off to keep up with her. He was obviously not a fan of the assistant district attorney.
Landon suspected not many of her coworkers were. The ones they passed did the same thing the guard had; if they were smiling or talking with someone else, they tensed and stopped—talking and smiling. Jocelyn didn’t seem to notice or care, but Landon took note.
Her keys jangled as she pulled them from her purse and unlocked her door. Like her desk at home, this one was piled high with folders. They also covered the credenza behind her and the top of a filing cabinet. He pointed at it. “Too busy to use that?” he asked.
She glanced at it. “It’s too full to hold any more.”
And there was no space in her small office for another filing cabinet. A chair barely fit behind her desk and another in front of it. “Why do you have so much work?”
She tensed again. “Because I want it.”
A chuckle followed her pronouncement, and Landon glanced at the man standing in the doorway. “Jocelyn wants every case—ever
y trial,” the gray-haired man remarked. “And if she doesn’t get it, she goes behind our backs to the DA and steals it.”
Jocelyn chuckled, as well, but like her coworker, it held no amusement. “Still stings that she gave me Luther Mills’s trial, huh?”
“Gave?” The man snorted. “You stole that, and you know it.”
Why had she wanted it so badly? Because Luther was paying her to lose it?
“Amber thought I was the best attorney for the trial.”
The guy shook his head. “Was that it—or was it because you’re the only female ADA?”
Jocelyn chuckled again. “Are you claiming the DA is guilty of reverse sexism in the workplace?” she asked.
“I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t want her to hear,” he replied, “because we all know you’re her eyes and ears in the office while she’s off having her baby.”
Jocelyn bristled again. But she didn’t deny being the tattletale her coworker had basically accused her of being. If everyone else suspected the same thing he did, it explained why they’d all stopped talking when she’d arrived.
Landon held out his hand and introduced himself since Jocelyn didn’t seem so inclined. “Landon Myers.” He didn’t bother explaining what he was.
“Mike Forbes,” the man replied, as his gray brows lowered over narrowed eyes. “Myers? You a cop still?”
Landon shook his head.
Before the guy could ask anything else, another man joined him in the doorway. This one was younger and thinner—his body and his blond hair. He had the lean build of a runner. “Hey, Forbes, quit giving Jocelyn a hard time. She just wants what we all want—Luther Mills behind bars.”
As she looked at this man, her smile lit up her already beautiful face and stole Landon’s breath. She’d never looked at him like that. “Thank you, Dale.”
The blond guy smiled back at her. Maybe he was the one person in the DA’s office who didn’t care what she told the boss. Or he wanted to be more than a coworker.
Something about the way he looked at her had Landon’s stomach muscles tightening and his hands squeezing into fists.
But then the guy reached out a hand to him. “Dale Grohms,” he introduced himself.
“This is Landon Myers,” she said before he could. Then she added, “He’s my boyfriend.”
And now the guy’s smile slid away. He definitely wanted to be more than her coworker.
Landon waited until both men left and she closed the door behind them before saying, “I thought you didn’t want me pretending to be your boyfriend.”
“I don’t want you acting like my boyfriend,” she said.
And he frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I can tell people that you are,” she said. “But I don’t want you...touching me...or...”
That feeling in his gut, that he’d had watching her smile at Dale Grohms, intensified now. He wasn’t sure what the hell it was, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t like her much either, but that didn’t stop him from being attracted to her. And he knew, after the night before, that it wasn’t just one-sided. Not with the way she’d looked at him.
Before she could move behind her desk, he stepped closer to her—blocking her path. Her body came up against his, and she sucked in a breath and stared up at him. “What—what are you doing?”
“Calling you out,” he told her. And he wanted to do that—about so many things—but this one was suddenly most important to him.
“Calling me out?” she repeated, her brow furrowing slightly.
Her skin was so creamy and flawless, her features so perfect. She was that kind of beauty that seemed as untouchable as she claimed she wanted to be. But he didn’t believe her.
“You’re a liar,” he said.
“What?” She was also full of self-righteous indignation again as her blue eyes widened with shock.
“You wanted me to touch you last night,” he said, “when I held you in the kitchen.”
“You grabbed me,” she said.
“You didn’t fight me off,” he said. Not like she had in the parking garage earlier that evening. “You didn’t pull back when I started leaning down...” And he began to lean down again. “You didn’t push me away...”
She didn’t this time either, even as her body tensed. It was as if she waited for it—wanted it—just like he wanted to kiss her. Even if there’d been another crash, he wouldn’t have denied them this time. He brushed his mouth across hers, lightly at first, but then her lips parted on a soft sigh and he deepened the kiss.
Her lips were as silky as her hair looked. Needing to know, he slid his hands into the long, smooth locks as he held her head to his. He slid his mouth over and over hers before tracing her fuller bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. Then he slid his tongue inside her mouth and tasted her.
And he was shocked by the hotness and the sweetness when she always acted so bitter and cold. Her fingers slipped into his hair, too, and she kissed him back. Passion burned through him, heating his body, making his pulse pound.
He couldn’t remember ever being so damn attracted to anyone else. Why her?
Finally, as if remembering what he’d said, she moved her hands from his hair to his chest, and she pushed him back. But her lips stayed open as she panted for breath. Her skin was flushed. She was attracted to him, too.
She didn’t try denying it now. She just moved around her desk and murmured, “I—I need to get to court soon.”
Landon wasn’t sure if she actually had a trial to go to, or if she just didn’t want to stay alone with him in her office. With the door closed and the attraction between them heating up the place, the room felt even smaller than it was.
And Landon felt like he was suffocating. He was tempted to open up the door for some air, but when he glanced at it, he noticed, through the window in the wood, that the two men who’d left her office hadn’t gone far. They stood just out in the hall, looking toward her office. Neither could have missed that kiss.
Had they bought it? Did they believe he was her boyfriend? Or did they suspect he was really her bodyguard? He hadn’t kissed her to convince them, though. He’d kissed her because he’d wanted to.
And, damn it, he wanted to do it again.
But he couldn’t let her distract him from protecting her or from finding out if she or one of her coworkers was also working for Luther.
* * *
Despite all the hours that had passed since that kiss, Jocelyn’s lips still tingled from it—from the heat of it, the passion.
She couldn’t remember a kiss ever affecting her like that, a man ever affecting her like that. She’d had to force herself to push him away. She’d had to force herself to focus on the job that had previously always consumed her.
All she cared about was getting justice, just like Dale Grohms had said. Forbes didn’t believe it. He thought she was lobbying for the same job he was—their boss’s.
Jocelyn didn’t have to be in charge. In fact, she didn’t think she’d like it because she wouldn’t be able to try as many cases as she did now. Forbes had been right when he’d said she wanted them all.
She did—to make sure they weren’t lost. But despite how hard she worked, she didn’t win every case. In fact, she’d had a string of losses that haunted her. A string that had seemed to end when some of the vice unit had quit River City PD to go to work for the Payne Protection Agency.
Could she really trust Landon?
He hadn’t respected her order for him to not act like her boyfriend. But as he’d pointed out, she hadn’t pushed him away when she’d had the chance. Sure, she could have used the excuse that she knew her coworkers were watching them, and she hadn’t wanted to draw any more attention than his following her around already had. But she hadn’t realized Mike and Dale were outside her office yet until she’d settled, with shaky kn
ees, into the chair behind her desk.
Despite the cool night air blowing through the parking structure, her face was burning. And it wasn’t just with embarrassment over her coworkers witnessing that kiss. She was hot because that kiss had been damn hot.
Landon Myers was damn hot. His body, his mouth...his hands slipping through her hair as he’d held her head to his. She stifled the moan that rose in her throat as desire rushed over her again. She had to remind herself that kiss had just been part of his cover; it hadn’t been real. He didn’t even seem to like her.
But he did seem determined to protect her. He walked so close to her that his body brushed against hers with every step they took. He wasn’t trying to turn her on, though. He wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he peered around the dimly lit structure, as if looking for killers lurking in the shadows. And he was ready for those killers, with his gun drawn and held at his side.
Even though he wasn’t trying to affect her, his closeness did. Jocelyn’s pulse quickened, and her breath burned in her lungs, as if stuck there. It didn’t matter how close he was to her, though. In the courtroom, he’d been forced to sit in the gallery a few seats behind the prosecutor’s table. But she’d been aware of him the entire time, had known he was watching her, and her skin had tingled with that awareness—with that attraction.
Her body had flushed with heat and desire, like it was now. But then a sudden chill raced down her spine, and she shivered.
“Somebody’s watching us,” Landon murmured.
So he’d felt it, too.
She glanced around now, staring into the shadows at the few cars left in the parking lot. “Where?”
He shrugged even as he covered her hand with his. She’d thought he was reassuring her, and she leaned closer to him. But instead, he clicked the key fob she held in her hand. The beep of her horn and the flash of her lights startled her so much that she stumbled. She might have fallen had he not caught her and steadied her with his arm around her.
He held her for just a moment—as if waiting for her to regain her balance. But when he touched her, she lost her balance, lost her focus. She could see only him, feel only this damn attraction to him.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set Page 46