by Lori Foster
“—but I dislike the idea of being alone even more.”
Every time he was with her, she stole another piece of his heart. Emotions softening, Jack promised, “I’ll make it as painless as possible.”
She stabbed him with a sharp look. “None of it means anything, so don’t start assuming.”
For whatever bizarre reason, when Ronnie got particularly prickly, it turned him on. Maybe he had some masochistic tendencies. Maybe he just relished a good challenge. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You should know, I’m an insomniac. If you’re a light sleeper, you’re not going to like having me in your bed... That is, I assume we’ll sleep together?”
He hadn’t considered any other possibility. “Among other things.”
“Well...” Her chin lifted. “Good.”
The way she blended belligerence with sex appeal, there was no holding back his bark of laughter. And to Jack’s surprise, Ronnie broke down and snickered with him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“NOTHING, IT SEEMS, is ever normal with the twins.”
Beside her on the abandoned porch, Jack repeatedly looked around as if searching for a threat. “I don’t like this.”
Again he banged on the front door.
Again, silence.
Yeah, Ronnie wasn’t crazy about it either. It felt wrong, very wrong. Not just the location, but the very air, the smells.
The fine hairs on her arms stood on end.
A table holding the photos sat to the side of the front door. So far they hadn’t even looked at them. It all felt too much like a trap.
“It’s strange, I agree.” Ronnie chewed her bottom lip while considering things. There was no one to meet, no one to do business with. Just the pictures the brothers wanted, in an envelope on that rickety homemade wooden table. A rock kept them from blowing away, and on the rock, someone had used a marker to write, Leave the $.
“But hey, it’s all strange. Drake and Drew collect oddities, so...”
Occupied spiderwebs, strung from the overhang down to the broken railing, shimmered with a light breeze. Dead leaves blew across the unkempt walkway. Warped floorboards in the small treacherous porch were curled in places, missing or broken in others. It was an invitation to twist an ankle or fall completely through.
Ronnie carefully stepped around the table to peer in through a grimy window. All she saw inside was empty shadows. “It’s vacant.”
“No shit.” Jack took her arm and tried to draw her back. “Let’s go.”
“Sure.” She shrugged him off, determined to show him that although she’d accepted his help—for now—nothing had changed. She was the same capable woman. “No reason to stay. Get the photos and I’ll leave the money.”
Incredulous, he stared down at her. “You’re going to drop a hundred bucks out here in the open?”
“Jack.” A tingle along the back of her neck urged her to make haste. “If you think this is the weirdest pickup I’ve ever done, you’re wrong. Not saying it’s fun, not saying I don’t have the creeps, but I do have a job, and despite me trying to convince you otherwise, so do you.”
Jaw locked, he replied, “I’m doing my job, but take a look around. The photos were supposedly taken by a neighbor. Isn’t that what Drew or Drake said?” His gaze swept over the abandoned area. There was a house in even worse shape across the street, with the remains of a basement next to that, and a long-ago burned structure farther up. “Ghosts, I can believe. But neighbors? How the hell is that possible here?”
“No one said it happened here.” Wind whistled, making her hunch her shoulders against the chill. The grainy photos looked as if they’d been taken from a distance with a magnifying lens, or with a very cheap camera.
One showed a cluster of cops at the front of a house while paramedics carried someone out on a stretcher. Another showed a destroyed bathroom, shower curtain down, blood splatters on the white tiled walls and floor. In both, the shape of what could be a pale specter, a puff of smoke with eyes and an oval of a mouth, peered from a window.
Not for the first time, the brothers’ morbid fascination with weirdness gave her the shivers. “I assume this is just a safe place to trade them off.”
“There’s nothing safe about it. It’s fucking unsafe. I feel it and so do you.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her arms and looked around. “Does it feel like we’re being watched?”
A muffled noise made them both go still. Scraping sounds echoed hollowly, close, but not distinct enough to pinpoint. Jack pulled her back, his sharpened gaze darting around even though he held perfectly still.
Whispering, Ronnie asked, “Where was that?”
He shook his head, the gesture as bewildered as she felt.
With her heart suddenly punching too hard, Ronnie knew they had to go.
Apparently Jack agreed.
He snatched up the photos, then stood in obvious outrage as she withdrew the cash and put it under the rock. With his longer legs, he easily bounded down a missing step on the stoop. From the broken concrete walkway, he reached a hand up to assist her, but as she moved to step forward, a long blade, almost like a machete, jabbed up from the gaping hole where a floorboard should be.
It narrowly missed slicing the inside of her ankle.
Dear God, someone was under the porch. Someone had been there all along!
Gasping, Ronnie reared back in an automatic reaction, only to see the long knife appear between another crack, and one more. It stabbed up so quickly, searching for her, that she didn’t know where to step.
Suddenly Jack’s hands were on her waist and he somehow hauled her up and off the porch, her feet never touching the wood until he put her firmly on the ground behind him.
Immediately, a clatter came from beneath the rotted wood, rocking the entire structure.
For a moment, she thought the whole thing would collapse. From the far side of the porch a body scrambled out. Hidden in a dark hoodie, he took off in a dead run without looking back at them. The deadly blade flashed in his hand as his long legs ate up the ground.
Jack visibly waffled on what to do. Ronnie easily read his indecision. He wanted to give chase, to demand answers with his fists. Yet others emerged from the house across the street.
Three men, all watchful, prepared.
They loomed as dark warnings from the shadows, bodies poised in menacing intent. Jack gave a low curse and hustled her to the car.
“I can walk,” she snapped, equally interested in getting the hell out of there in one piece and more fractious than usual because of her fear. “I don’t need an escort.”
Maybe because the driver’s side was closest to the emerging mob, Jack let her veer to the passenger’s side so they could both get into the car quicker.
He hit the door locks and started the engine...then sat there, thinking.
“Don’t even,” Ronnie ordered, alarmed by that particular vicious look in his ebony eyes. She knew he disliked the idea of running, and if he wasn’t concerned for her, he wouldn’t. He’d stay and confront. That’s who he was.
It was who she wanted to be—and wasn’t.
But fuck it, sometimes intelligence won out over bravado.
“Move it, Jack.” She dug the gun from her purse, just in case.
He put the car in gear. “Keep an eye on them while I drive. You see anyone make a move, let me know.”
Thankful that he’d put his macho bullshit aside for the moment, she nodded and twisted to keep her gaze on the men. They remained glued to the porch. “Haven’t budged an inch. But if they do, I’m ready.”
He glanced at her, saw the gun in her hand, and cursed low. “Put that away.”
“Not yet.” What if the men chased after them?
“You don’t need it.”
Because she had him? He had bee
n pretty spectacular, sweeping her off the porch that way, as if she weighed nothing at all. Thank God he’d acted so quickly, or that next stab of that long, sharp blade might have gotten her. Her boots would have protected her feet, but it would have gone right through her jeans...and her leg.
Ronnie shuddered, swallowing hard to get her heart out of her throat, and then tried to think.
Briefly, she closed her eyes. This was no time for her to fall apart. You’ve been through worse, she reminded herself. True—and she wanted to know why this shit kept happening to her.
At least this time, she wasn’t alone.
“If anyone starts to follow, you can outrun them?”
“Yes.” The clipped word, harsh with confidence, reassured her.
When they rounded a corner, then another and finally met with humanity again—people in houses, routine traffic, commerce in the form of a saloon next to a drive-through next to a tattoo parlor—Ronnie finally released a calming breath.
None of that had made sense. Not the location, not the attack. Now what?
As she stored the gun back in her purse, another thought occurred to her. “Damn.” She twisted to face him, her heart jumping again. “Did you drop the photos?”
“I have them,” he snarled. Like, completely, violently snarled.
Wow. Every muscle in his body tensed and bulged until he looked bigger, as big as Brodie and twice as menacing as a mob of three.
So impressive.
Ronnie cleared her throat and hoped it would also clear the fog of intruding desire. This most definitely was not the time to think of hot, frenzied sex. “Can I ask where?”
Reaching inside his jacket, he withdrew the folded envelope and tossed it to her lap.
So...still angry, obviously. Not that she knew what to do about it. She wasn’t even sure what to say to him. He’d saved her. If he hadn’t been there, whoever was beneath the porch would have stabbed between the boards again and again and she’d have been...trapped.
Possibly murdered.
Maybe worse because, yes, there were worse things than dying.
After several minutes passed in silence, she said, “I’m glad you have quick reflexes.”
“I’m glad you do as well.” He now spoke in his most annoyingly polite voice—but without separating his teeth.
“I made the wrong move,” Ronnie pointed out. Lurching backward, farther onto the porch, only put her at worse risk. Oddly, it didn’t shame her the way it should have. Not with him.
“You reacted,” Jack insisted. “You didn’t scream. You didn’t panic.”
Wincing, she confessed, “Maybe a little panic.”
Jack shook his head. He breathed harder, deep breaths drawn in through his nose. His chest bellowed, his muscles clenched even more. And suddenly he jerked the car over to the curb in front of a church. Arms rigidly straight and forearms bulging, his big hands squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Goddammit, Ronnie, you could have been maimed, maybe even killed.”
Tentatively, she put a hand on his balled-up shoulder, impressed to find pure steel under her fingers. “Yup. I know.” She tried a laugh that nearly strangled in her throat. “I’m rethinking that whole working-alone thing.”
No response.
“You came in pretty handy today.”
His gaze shot over to hers. “Don’t tease. Don’t laugh about your life.” Eyes nearly black, he stared at her, into her. “You matter to me. Can’t you understand that?”
Fighting off a sheen of tears, she nodded. He meant it. She didn’t think anyone had ever meant anything quite as much as Jack meant it now. It weakened her, while paradoxically making her feel stronger, almost invincible. “Yeah. Okay.”
They stared at each other until she started to feel uncomfortable. He expected something of her, but what did she know of this emotional back-and-forth stuff? Nada. Zip.
All she knew was that for the first time in years, she liked it. “When I see Drake and Drew, man, I’m going to give them hell.”
Dumb. Such an incredibly dumb thing to say. True, but still...not what Jack would want to hear.
His chest expanded with a very deep breath. He dragged his gaze away from hers, checked the rearview mirror, and slowly, very slowly, forced the angry stiffness from his body.
As he pulled back to the road, Ronnie withdrew her hand. They drove in silence for a few more minutes.
She couldn’t take it. “I want you.”
“Not as fucking bad as I want you.”
Huh. That immediate reply sent a tingle chasing over her skin from her throat clean down to her toes. “You don’t think it’s...misplaced? For me to think about sex right now?”
“Like me, you want to reaffirm that we’re okay.”
That sounded plausible, though actually, she thought maybe she was just a very base woman turned on by his brutal defense of her. There was something so elemental in the way he’d reacted—like a man who wanted to protect...his woman.
She rubbed the top of her head, unsure what to think about that, how to react. For so long now she’d been on autopilot, her reactions so constant they happened by rote, without her considering them. Now, within a week of meeting Jack, everything was different. She couldn’t summon up her indifference, couldn’t shrug off his interest.
Because she was equally interested, maybe more so. Definitely more so.
Trying to sort it all out in her head, she said, “I know you wanted to stay, to maybe kick some ass.”
“I wanted to kill them.”
The stark statement startled her.
“I’d have started with the son of a bitch—” he swallowed, tightening again “—who tried to hurt you.”
“He ran off,” she said, before thinking about it.
“I’d have found him.” His chest expanded on another labored breath. “But you were the voice of reason. They could have all been armed.”
“And probably were,” she rushed to point out. “We know the one had a knife.”
His jaw clenched. “I’d have fed that fucking blade down his goddamned throat.”
“Oh.” Yeah, he sounded pretty confident, so she didn’t know what to do with that info. On most men, she’d have discounted it as reckless cockiness. But with Jack, she had a feeling he could live up to his own hype and then some.
“The problem would have been if they had guns.” He flexed and bulged and overall gave off a killing attitude. “God, Ronnie, if someone shot at you—”
The tortured words worked like a magnet, drawing her closer, sharpening her need to touch him. Opening her hand on his biceps, she stroked up to his shoulder and then kneaded the taut muscles that led to his neck. “I’m fine. We’re fine.” She felt more so by the second.
“I couldn’t risk you.” Taking her hand, he carried it to his mouth where he pressed a smoldering kiss to her palm. “I’m glad at least one of us was thinking straight.”
“Me?” Because honest to God, she hadn’t felt all that clearheaded.
“You.” He lowered her hand to his thigh, pressing it flat. “Never in my life have I completely lost sight of priorities like I did today. I’m always levelheaded, always calm—”
She choked and tried to turn it into a cough. “Yeah,” she said fast, before he got fired up again. “You’re usually so damned calm and reasonable it makes me want to shake you up.”
“Because you’re never reasonable,” he accused, then added half under his breath, “It’s part of your charm.”
She had charm? Good to know.
“But this time, we completely flipped roles, and I’m sorry.”
Another choke of laughter tried to crawl up her throat, forcing her to swallow convulsively. When she got it tamped down, she asked, “You’re apologizing because you...acted like me?”
“I was
n’t hired to act like you, now was I?”
“Nope. One of me is probably enough—more than the brothers can handle, actually. And just so you know?”
Stoic, he stared ahead.
With a shrug in her tone, Ronnie stated, “I liked how you reacted. It impressed me.” Baring herself was never easy, but he’d just rattled off so much, sharing as if it were easy to do, that she felt compelled to reciprocate. “It’s been a really long time since anyone felt that protective of me.” She leaned closer, moving her fingers on his thigh in and up. “Sort of turns me on. A lot.”
“I have to drive, Ronnie,” he said, strangled. “Unless you want me to find a quiet place to pull over, you better curb the teasing.”
Smiling in satisfaction, she settled back, her hands now safely away from him. “How long till we get home?” That sounded really awkward, and she corrected, “I mean, to your house.”
“Ronnie.”
That gentle tone made her sit up and take notice.
“We have to call the police.”
Ha...police? That was... Well, yeah, they probably did. She gave a frustrated and exaggerated sigh. “I don’t see how it’ll help.” At this point, the money was gone, and surely the men were also. “You know there’s nothing they can do.”
“I’m going to insist.”
Damn it. Her good feelings drifted away. “How the hell do you think we’ll explain buying crime scene shots?”
Expression grim, he said, “You were only doing your job.”
“And you think the brothers won’t blow up when cops come knocking at their door? I’ll get canned.”
He said nothing, just continued to stare ahead as he drove.
Ronnie narrowed her eyes on him. “You’re going to make me be reasonable twice in one day, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t make you do anything.”
Oh, so she’d have to own the decision, every sour sip of it? Folding her arms, she sat back in her seat. “They’ll confiscate the photos.”
Again he held silent.
“I’ll have to warn the brothers first.”
“I’d like to talk to them anyway.”
Yeah, she’d just bet he would. “Fine. Get off in the next town and find me an office supply store, or some place I can make copies.”