by Lora Leigh
She had not only forgotten the crime scene, as he’d read about, as was usual in the case of trauma-induced amnesia. She had forgotten everything. Everything Zach could not forget. Not their fights, not their kisses, their secrets, or the dozen times they’d been close to making love.
Clenching his jaw, he drew out his tape recorder and set it on his thigh. Get the job done and fucking stop with this bullshit— Detective.
“Taking it from the top again,” he said.
She smiled. It was a weak smile, and it made his gut twist with longing.
“How do we know each other? We were friends?”
She seemed baffled by this. Zach thought it best not to elaborate and simply nodded. But no. She had not been his friend. She had been Paige Avery and he had been in love with her.
Desperately in love.
With Paige.
Who had loved him back with every ounce of her heart and soul.
They’d been more than friends, more than lovers, more than a secret.
Aware of the other officers’ tomblike silence in the adjoining room, Zach pushed to his feet and abruptly cleared his throat. “Tell me more.”
“Detective.” By the way she dropped her voice to a whisper, they could’ve been alone somewhere. Necking. “I just got here,” she said. “To the city, I mean.” He could hear the rest of her unspoken thoughts. Why would anyone do this to me? Why aren’t you out there catching this bastard?
He stared into her eyes, still not believing he had them this close.
“I know, Paige. And I’m sorry about your mother. I heard.”
Her eyes shimmered, and her voice cracked around the edges. “I’m sorry, too.”
“So, Stalker. We found your bird, didn’t we?”
He stiffened at the voice from the doorway. Miles Perrini had a twisted sense of humor. Okay when you were having beers but definitely not okay here.
“Get to work, Miles,” Zach said softly.
But Miles called out, “Hey, Vance, we found Stalker’s birdy. Come have a look.”
The guys were such assholes. Couldn’t stop laughing over Zach’s “little dove who got away . . .”
“You mean the little dove who got away?” he heard Vance’s approaching voice ask.
Zach swore under his breath, and to her, he murmured, “Excuse me.”
THEY WERE RIBBING him.
The two patrol officers who had appeared soon after she’d made the 911 call were ribbing the detective.
Paige stared at the domed ceiling, pretending to be engrossed in the wood beams as the officers walked around. The house’s oppressive ambience was shattered with their laughter.
They kept whispering things. Saying, “Damn, that’s got to hurt, man.”
Paige settled deeper into the leather chair and forced her gaze out the window. Neighbors peeked over the top of the police car.
And she desperately wished she’d stayed in Seattle. At her studio. With her cat, who’d been grudgingly checked into a pet motel and must not be enjoying it at all. She should, she thought for the twentieth time, have let the Realtor handle everything. Hired help to settle the estate. But ahh, no. She’d wanted to come back to . . . to what?
See pictures? Try to remember what for seven years she had not? Finally know the place Mom had pretended did not exist on the map?
A neighbor made a questioning gesture from the sidewalk, and having no idea if she’d once met this worried-looking old man or not, Paige gave a little wave that hopefully transmitted the message: it’s all fine, you can go back to your life now and leave me to mine.
The old man ducked his head formally and went around a parked black Cherokee. The detective’s black Cherokee: there was no doubt in her mind it was his.
Now that the shock was fading, now that the anger was tightly on a leash, and Paige was gradually returning to her senses, she began to register this darkly attractive officer. Really register him. God, she could not stop stealing glances. He was tall, muscled; a suppressed strength and authority radiated off his athletic body.
She’d never seen such a virile thing in her life.
He was dressed in jeans and a solid crewneck T-shirt. A gun rested at his hip as he bent over a broken chair and pointed something out to the other officer. He spoke in low, hushed tones, and his voice made her stomach sink in her body, then fly up to her throat.
When his lazy, dreamy smile spread over something the other said, it hit Paige like a blow, left her struggling for air and staring so stupidly at him that his smile faded the second he straightened and noticed. His expression transformed, became serious, his eyes intent. He seemed to be done with his search and plunged a hand through his hair as he strode forward.
He had a face from her dreams. Hard boned and square, with a direct stare that trapped you. His eyes were amazing, green as a Colorado forest, candid, thick lashed. His body was lean and sinewy, the kind that moved with the grace and coiled strength of an animal of prey. His hair reached his collar, the color a dark sable, just a shade under black.
Paige couldn’t breathe. She could not tear her eyes away, stop staring, stop ogling him. God, this was so not the moment.
Time seemed to come to a standstill when he halted within arm’s length of her. The two officers weaving around the living room lifted their heads to catch Paige’s reaction as he spoke. “With your permission, I’d like you to accompany me upstairs.”
Someone coughed.
Paige frowned, wondering why a muffled laugh followed that cough.
“Please ignore them.”
His voice was deep and rich, like something rumbling out from a bottomless, magical well. Hearing it appeased her, but at the same time, made her core ache and tighten. Her legs, and remarkably the rest of her, felt unsteady as she rose to her feet.
He stepped back to let her pass, then noiselessly followed her up the stairs.
She could feel his eyes on her nape. His body close to hers. Felt aware of his every step in the wake of hers. Up the landing . . . down the hall . . .
Why was her heart pounding like this? Because she feared what he’d find or because she feared the directions her thoughts were taking?
“I don’t like this house all that much,” she said shakily as she entered her bedroom.
When he passed, his arm brushed her shoulder, triggering a tense, fiery frisson down her spine.
“You never did.”
He delivered the remark with no inflection as he surveyed her mirrored nightstands, and Paige couldn’t conceal her startled, “Oh.”
He walked past her vanity, his presence a shock of testosterone in such a girly room. The white comforter, the lacy pillows, the canopy, all seemed to fade into the background, flimsy and insubstantial compared to the primal magnetic force, the realness, of him.
Facing her, he crossed his arms and assumed a wide-legged stance that made her feel utterly small. “Were you in this room previously today?”
A shaft of unease spiked through her stomach. She’d not only been in this room today, she’d been screaming at the walls. You son of a bitch! I won’t forget forever, I won’t give you the satisfaction! “Yes,” she admitted.
“Can you retrace what you did for me?”
For me . . .
Flushing at how utterly personal that last sounded, she sailed over to the door. “I only came in and . . . sat on the bed for a bit.”
She promptly demonstrated, bouncing slightly as she did.
He didn’t smile, didn’t move; he was so intimidating. “You sat.”
His gaze drifted down her neck, lingered on her chest for a heart-stopping moment. Then his fingers curled into his hands and his jaw bunched as he dragged his eyes back up.
His voice rumbled up his chest, an octave lower than before. “Did you do some reading?”
She exhaled slowly and forced herself to focus on his question, but she was loath to admit to him what had just happened. What she’d done.
He’d think her crazy.
Reckless.
“I straightened up,” she improvised, then winced and tried to appear contrite. “I shouldn’t have? I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s a terrible habit of mine.”
He nodded toward the bookshelf and signaled at the bottom. “Do you recall which of these books you moved?”
Note: he didn’t ask if she’d moved them, but stated it as fact. She’d tampered with evidence. She might very well be in deep shit.
“I . . .” It took a second for her to register her folly. The yearbook she’d haphazardly stuck among the others was standing upside down. The rest of her books were lined up perfectly and in alphabetical order.
Cheeks flaming bright red, she rose to point at it, careful not to touch now that he was watching. “This one.”
She heard the snap of a glove and almost jumped out of her skin.
Swallowing a lump the size of a golf ball, she mentally calmed herself down and remained in place as he plucked out the yearbook with one gloved hand. Suddenly her every inhale of air was scented of him. He smelled natural and clean and terribly good.
Only inches away, she regarded him in confusion and awe as he bent his head. A lock of hair fell on his forehead as he thumbed through the pages.
Something in that visual made her breathless. She had a vivid image of his lips fusing with hers, of her hands in his hair, and insanely thought of sun and warmth and mint and apple juice. Her mouth began to burn so badly, she brought three fingertips to fleetingly feel her lips.
His head jerked up, his eyes flashing a bright, fiery green, and the startling move made her drop her hand. “Were you aware of a page missing?”
“I . . .” She nervously moved away and said, “Yes.”
He set the book down, and she became the sole focus of his attention. She struggled not to squirm under his brutally intense regard. “If you don’t trust me, I can’t help you, Paige.”
Help. Someone was offering to help her. She had denied that she needed help for years, but what if she did? What if this stranger helped her?
Gathering her courage, she confided, “He left a note. A message.”
A black brow rose. “He?”
“Or she.”
“Do you still have it?”
She fished the torn page piece by piece out of her pocket, holding them out while seeing herself as she’d been less than an hour ago, hissing through her teeth and tearing the page like a mad person. “Son of a bitch! You . . .” She had ripped the paper into shreds just as the bastard had her family’s precious pictures downstairs, gritting her teeth until she thought they’d crack. “I won’t stay quiet, I won’t . . . forget forever, I won’t give you the satisfaction!”
She’d destroyed evidence! God, how sick was that!
“You tore it,” he said.
She thought she’d burst from the embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she rushed to say. “I shouldn’t have done that. It just made me so angry.”
A restless muscle jumped in the back of his jaw as he fixed his attention on the small pieces she’d handed him.
She could see him sorting them out in his mind. The image was branded in hers. Mocking. Twisted. Infuriating and . . . frightening.
In the yearbook photo, she’d been a smiling, glimmery-eyed senior. Her pet peeve? Natural disasters. And there, under “goals,” where the true goals of an innocent eighteen-year-old—“world peace and no hunger”— had been scratched off, bright red words replaced them.
MEET DADDY IN HELL.
SOON, MY DEAR.
“I didn’t mean to destroy it,” she said meekly.
He looked up and, somehow, into her.
“I understand,” he said quietly.
He understood.
While Paige could not understand the balm his voice spread inside her, the medicine his simple words provided; he understood. He stood close enough to touch, and as she stared into those solid, riveting eyes, he could’ve been holding her, the moment felt so profoundly intimate.
She was the first to break eye contact, unsettled to her core. Who was this man? The detective cleared his throat and within minutes he’d called up one of his team— the stocky blond who’d earlier introduced himself as Detective Nordstrom— who efficiently bagged both the torn page and her yearbook. Then Paige was once again alone with him.
Stalker. She did not even want to know the reason he was called “Stalker.”
His relentless green eyes skimmed the walls of her room, studied the window overlooking the street, covered the length of the plush bone-colored carpet, and Paige found herself examining the tall, lithe man while he assessed her room. She could not remember ever stroking a man’s hair. She couldn’t remember ever wanting to feel someone’s breath, or skin, or . . . God, his hands. As he tugged off the latex gloves, the sight of his large bronzed hands and the long, skillful fingers made her womb clench.
“Do you have someone to stay with tonight?” he asked.
Paige hesitated.
How sad to admit she had no one to call. Then she reasoned that whether or not she should find a room in a nearby hotel wasn’t this officer’s problem. She would clean up the mess downstairs, let the Realtor earn her commission and sell the house, book her return flight to Seattle for perhaps sooner than later, and all would be perfect. All would be perfect.
“I’m okay,” she assured, smiling with a confidence she didn’t feel.
She must have convinced him, though, for he just nodded.
On his way out, he set a business card down on the vanity. “I’ll keep you apprised of anything we find.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
When he left, Paige stared at the empty doorway for the longest time, then crossed the room to lift his card.
Zachary Rivers.
ZACH SLID INTO the front seat of the SUV and shut the door. Okay. Breathe, motherfucker, breathe!
Instead, he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and dropped his forehead until it banged.
Ahh, fuck. He was shaking with a need so violent, so pent-up, so festered, he thought he would break apart. The sight of her sitting on the edge of her mattress, her little breasts heaving, her pretty mouth slightly parted as she realized he could damned well see the tiny pink tips of her nipples poking out, had made him want to cover her body with his, delve his hands under her blouse, and suck her nipples until she cried out “Zach!”
She’d cried out for him before. Oh hell, she had screamed for him. Every Friday night she was not at Francine’s, he would kiss her until she was writhing in his arms, moaning his name into his marauding mouth, their bodies grinding and rubbing and so damned hungry for each other they’d—
A knock had him straightening. He pressed the window button.
“All bags are going to the lab.” It was Cody.
Zach rubbed his face with both hands, struggling to clear his mind. “Yeah. I’ll call and ask how much backlog they have, see if there’s a chance to do this fast.”
“Before the little miss decides to hightail it again?”
Gritting his teeth at the thought of her leaving, Zach climbed out and headed for the back of his Jeep. He rammed his camcorder into the duffel that contained everything from handcuffs to crime scene tape and plastic bags for evidence gathering. Zipping it shut, he frowned up at Cody, who was leaning against the fender, watching him in speculation.
“She’s pretty.”
“Fuck, stop it.”
“Hell, I admit I’ve been curious.”
“Not a word, Cody.”
Silence. Then a long, put-out sigh. “So you think it’s the judge’s murderer?”
Zach did not respond to that at first, but instead assessed a passing sedan until it disappeared around the corner. “I don’t know,” he said after his friend gave up the wait and started for his vehicle, “but I want the bastard!”
The murderer . . .
Dozens and dozens had been questioned. Zach, of course, had been questioned.
You and the girl ha
ve a little forbidden romance going on, don’t you? You want the father dead. He sentenced your father. Put him behind bars. Why not kill him? Get the girl, get revenge.
The bastard who’d interrogated him was now Zach’s CO. Needless to say, he had no love for Zach— and vice versa.
Zach had had no alibi. That fateful month his life had fallen apart at the seams; his only living parent had been sentenced to twelve years in prison, his car— the one he’d been working so hard to pay off— had been stolen, and then Paige . . .
He’d been alone that evening, in his small apartment next to the arcade business, and he’d been waiting for her, just like every Friday for the past months.
He’d worked at Dixie’s Fun and Games for less than a year— first at the miniature golf outside, then inside where the game room was packed with arcade games and teenagers eager to play them during the weekends. Zach did everything from ramming out the stuck coins to mopping the soda from the floor.
His ears would be ringing by nine p.m. and his heart would be kicking into his ribs, wild with anticipation. By ten p.m. the lively place would be cloaked in shadows, broken only by a rainbow of tiny twinkling arcade lights. The smell of popcorn would linger. And Zach would walk to his apartment to shower, and he’d change into a fresh set of clothes, and he’d wait for Paige, long for Paige, ache for Paige.
Sometimes she came early and would step into Dixie’s to watch him. Sometimes she helped power off the lights, grabbed some popcorn for herself, or threw hoops. Other times she would pull him under an arcade game, or lie on the bed of an inflatable kiddie game; then all he would hear was the wet, slippery sounds of them kissing, the rustling of clothes as they touched, the sounds of them breathing raggedly and wanting each other. But that night Paige never showed. Not at his place, not at Dixie’s. Investigators insinuated no one had a better motive to kill the judge than Zach.
Nothing could ever be proved.
He’d stayed away from her until the interrogations stopped and he was cleared, but by then Paige and her mother had disappeared.
Zach remained. And every morning he’d wonder if this was the day Paige would come back to him. I’ll make it better. Whatever it takes, anything I need to do . . .