by Geri Krotow
She nodded. “Makes sense. So that no one catches on to your routine. You’re the one who’s supposed to be determining patterns, right?”
“Exactly.”
“We’ll exchange phone numbers, and I’ll text you each time I leave my house, and tell you where I’m going.” She pulled out her phone and her fingers hovered over the face. “Give me your number and I’ll call, then we’ll have one another’s info.”
He went along with it, until his phone vibrated, her number illuminating. The buzz went farther than his hand where he held his cell but he’d worry about his attraction to her later. He had to keep Bella Colton safe.
“There you go.” She slid her purse onto her shoulder. He reached out and stilled her by touching her forearm.
“Wait.”
She stared at him and when their eyes met the claws of her searching need reached him in places he didn’t know he’d opened to her. Bella wasn’t just another woman or citizen he was trying to protect. There was something more between them. Something he’d been missing in his life for a long time.
“You keep asking me to slow down, Agent St. Clair. I’m concerned you’re not going to be happy until I stop my investigating entirely.” He heard the threat in her words. Not a frivolous barb, but a show of her steely strength, the determination to do right by her best friend.
“I have to be with you, Bella.” As soon as the words left his mouth he saw her eyes widen, her lips part. And darn it, he looked down at where her breasts pressed against her shirt, the hard nipples pushing her response through the thin material.
“That sounds like a personal issue, Agent St. Clair.”
“No, I don’t mean it that way. I mean yes, there’s clearly some chemistry here, which is to be expected. I mean, we’re adults, both single, on an intense case.” As he bumbled he watched her and instead of being revolted by his faux pas she appeared...delighted. Bella Colton let out a belly laugh that proved her lack of self-consciousness and her ability to live in the present moment. Good traits for someone who was a potential target of a serial killer.
“You’re refreshing, Holden. I’ve no doubt you’re a crack agent or you wouldn’t have been sent here. But you’re real. I like that.”
He ignored his embarrassment, the racing thoughts that he’d never be worthy of this woman’s attention. Holden considered himself too devoted to his job to deserve a woman like Bella, a woman who deserved a man who’d give her nothing less than one-hundred percent. He stopped his thoughts with expertise gained from years of investigative work that required complete focus. Had he forgotten that she was a reporter, just like his ex?
You’re on the clock, man. Get it done.
“You’re a target, Bella. The killer likes women with red hair and green eyes, and you’re the only one with both.”
“I have blond—” She fingered her ponytail and her face crumpled. “Crap. I forgot. I do have red hair. I thought it’d help me stand out from all the other contestants, especially the blondes.”
He nodded. “It does. And it was smart, for the pageant. Except you may have drawn the attention of the killer already.”
“I’d say I did by getting attacked.” She spoke matter-of-factly and he let it go. It wasn’t the time or place to remind her that he wasn’t so sure her attacker was the serial killer. The killer’s modus operandi was to lay low until he either poisoned or shot his victim. It made Holden think that the killer didn’t seem to care how his quarry died, just that they did. Something he wasn’t going to let happen to Bella.
“The truth is, Bella—I need to stay with you. At your house, and possibly elsewhere if we decide you need to move. It’ll probably amount to nothing more than me sleeping on your floor by the front door for the next few weeks, with no further interruption from any bad guy. But we can’t take the risk that they know your identity or where you live.”
Her face stilled, then she laughed again. “Oh, just wait until Spencer finds out that his buddy is sleeping with me.”
“Ah, not with you, specifically—” All he needed was Spencer coming down on him for moving in on his sister.
“Chill out, Holden, and let me have my sibling fantasy. My brother means well, but he’s always telling me how to stay safe and live my life. He’s absolutely livid I signed up for the pageant, as I’m sure you figured out already.”
“I don’t blame him. There are a lot of moving parts here. And another thing—you can’t tell your work colleagues or supervisor who I am, or that you’re working with me. No one but you, Spence, and the state pageant director know I’m on the case. No one on the Ms. Mustang Valley Pageant board knows who I am. I’m deep undercover here.”
“Not so deep, Agent. I know who you are and I’m a member of the press, remember?” She looked away, lost in thought for several moments. He let her process his request. It was a lot. Sure, she’d seen his badge, Spencer had vouched for him, they’d survived a possible abduction attempt already.
He’d helped her—she knew that. But she was about to let a strange man into her home, no matter that he was Spencer’s army friend. Holden wasn’t her friend, nor could he ever be, not during this investigation, anyhow. It would compromise his work, because he’d want to trust she was telling him all she discovered with the pageant and that just wasn’t reality. Not with a reporter. He’d already learned that lesson.
Holden had his priorities, and Bella had hers.
“If there was another way to do this, instead of having to be with you 24/7 and staying at your place, I’d make it happen.” He needed her to know that he wasn’t taking the easy way out at her inconvenience.
Steady green eyes met his. “I know.” Her mouth was a half-smile and she let out a sigh of surrender. “I’ve got one brother who’s a rancher and one who’s a cop. They both deal in reality every day, as do I. If I’m doing my job right, anyhow. You can stay with me, and I’ll do my best to stay in your sights or whatever you need for my security. Because it’s not just about me, Holden. This is about the pageant, its contestants, the women who really need the scholarship. I’m doing it for them.”
“And for your best friend.”
She nodded and he saw the glisten of tears in her eyes, but she didn’t let one fall. Add stubborn to independent, passionate, intriguing.
“Yes. For Gio.”
* * *
Bella didn’t like that in the span of six short hours she’d gone from being completely undercover, working her report as part of the pageant, to Holden knowing so much about what she was trying to accomplish. But after being attacked, warned off the pageant and now being unable to shake the sense of someone watching her, she gave in to what her brothers called her killer instinct. She had a gut instinct for a story and was good at sizing up character. Holden might never appreciate her vocation or support her article, but he wanted what she did. Answers, and no more people hurt.
“Let’s get into your vehicle.” He took charge the minute they left the diner. “We’ll come back in the morning for mine. This way if anyone’s trailing you we’ll make it look like—”
“Like I’m picking up a stranger in the local greasy spoon.” She unlocked the passenger door with her keys.
“This car is the oldest running antique I’ve ever seen.” Holden’s observation brought a smile to her face but she didn’t reply until they were both inside her beloved twenty-year-old station wagon.
“This was my mother’s car. She and Dad were killed in his car, in a crash. One of their family friends bought this one from our aunt and kept it in his garage until my brothers and I were sixteen, and the day we got our driver’s licenses he drove it up to the house.” She couldn’t stop the giggle as she moved the gear, on the steering wheel, into Reverse. “Our aunt Amelia was fit to be tied, because she didn’t want us being that independent so soon, but when she realized we’d be asking her for a lot fewer rides, she gave
in.”
“Sounds like your aunt had her own issues.”
Bella nodded. “She did. I had little to do with her after moving out, when I went to college, but now looking back... I don’t know. It couldn’t have been easy for her, losing a sibling and gaining three kids, age ten, ready to head into the tween and teenage years, all at once. She wasn’t much older than me when it happened.”
“I saw on your license when you checked in at the high school that you’re thirty-one. That surprised me. I mean, I know you’re Spencer’s age, but it still seems unbelievable.”
“Why?” She turned onto the main drag through town and headed west, toward the small, quiet subdivision where she lived in an adobe-style midcentury house.
“You look about ten years younger.”
“Until I open my mouth, right?” She shot a quick glance at his profile in time to see the quick grin. “I’ve been told I sound like an old soul, and my deep voice sure doesn’t sound youthful.”
“I think your voice is sexy as hell.”
Heat that had shimmered on the surface of her awareness ignited and spread to her center, pooling in her most sensitive spots. “Uh, Agent? I don’t think that’s something you’re allowed to notice.”
“It’s not. Sorry. Are you a smoker?”
“Nope, never have been. My voice was froggy as a kid, and I never outgrew it. Supposedly it’s similar to my mother’s, but I have no way of knowing. I don’t remember her voice a whole lot anymore.”
“Spencer shared about losing his folks, your parents. That’s an awful break in life, to lose them so early.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t fun. What about you, are your parents still here?”
“Yes, they’re happy empty nesters in Kansas City, Kansas. My mother is an engineer and works at the state power authority. My father is a government contractor. I grew up there, in Kansas, with my two brothers. We have that in common, two brothers.”
“That’s neat. Sounds like you had the perfect childhood.” She tried to keep the envy out of her voice, but it was there in the tightening of her chest. Dang, the attack must be making her more emotional.
“Perfect? Wondering if either parent was going to lose their job as the economy swung up and down? Watching one of my brothers turn to drugs when we were teens?” He spoke matter-of-factly, not with an iota of self-pity. She liked that Holden knew himself well enough to be able to do that, that he knew he wasn’t the sum total of some of his life experiences. “It wasn’t perfect, no, but it was pretty darn wonderful at times. Our parents always did the best they could for us, and now that my brother’s sober we all get together a couple of times a year to hang out.”
“That’s pretty cool, if you ask me. Kansas City sounds appealing, being a larger city. Living in a small place like Mustang Valley can be a bit like being in a cultural bubble. Except we’re lucky that Mustang Valley is in Arizona. By that I mean we have a confluence of cultures, including Native American and Hispanic. I learned Spanish in school from kindergarten.”
“I wish I’d studied a second language sooner. I took German in high school, then Spanish in college. I’m not a natural at languages. I imagine since you’re a writer, you are.”
“I do okay. I haven’t had the opportunities you have to see the world, though. That would be neat.”
“Can’t you do international reporting?” His query hit a sensitive spot in her belly, a vulnerable piece of herself she wasn’t ready to reveal. If she landed this piece with the pageant, she’d very well receive the attention her work needed to propel her to the next level, which she hoped would be on a more national and eventually international stage.
“It’s not that simple. It’ll take me a while to get there.”
He let it go and she relaxed her clenched jaw. Her street sign appeared and she made the left onto the wide paved road.
“I didn’t picture you in a standard suburban neighborhood.”
“Don’t count on it. Why do you say that, though?” She took her time driving around the park that she worked out in. Walking or running proved much less expensive than a gym, and she had a set of weights in her small home’s second bedroom that served as her office, workout room and crafting space. It was a guest room, too, but since her brothers lived close by, no one stayed with her, except if her college friends were visiting. No one really had, except Gio.
“You strike me as independent and preferring your own space to having a next-door neighbor.”
Darn it, he had a true talent. “You’re a natural at profiling, Holden. I mean it.” She turned onto a graveled road that lead through a grove of huge cacti.
“Are you taking us out into the desert?”
She laughed. “In case you haven’t noticed it, you’re in the middle of the desert. It’s called Arizona.” Bella took the last S-turn and pulled up in front of her house, then shut off the engine. She watched Holden, tried to see the view through his eyes, but it was dark back here as the sun had lowered to below her home’s roofline, and the house looked like a dark rectangle surrounded by the glowing golden rays of the last of the day.
“Are you the only one out here?”
“Do you mean my house? Yes. I’m still on city water and utilities, but I get the sense of being out in the country. It’s really not that far to the nearest neighbors, no more than a quarter mile in each direction. But I like how it feels more rural. It’s a nice break from running around Mustang Valley and beyond each day, chasing down stories.”
Holden turned and looked at her. “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to put you on edge, but I’ve been checking the rearview and side-view mirrors since we left the diner. No one followed us, which is a good sign.”
Relief unfurled and the attraction her fear had tamped down surged. This was the first time she’d been alone in her car with a man in...she didn’t even remember. The few men she’d dated on and off over the last several years had either driven, claiming their vehicles were more comfortable, or she’d met them out for a meal or other date.
“Yes, that’s good news.” She watched him, or rather, felt him in the dark. Her dash light had burned out over a year ago and she’d been too busy to replace it.
“So now I’m going to have to ask to do something you’re not going to like, Bella.” His deep baritone wove a sexy spell around her and she tipped her head back, just a bit. In case he was noticing her lips.
“Okay. What is it?” She smiled in the velvet night, liking the direction things were going.
“I’ve got to go through your house first, to clear it. Protocol.” He opened his door and slid out of the car before Bella’s tingling lips had a chance to realize she wasn’t getting propositioned.
She scrambled out of the car and walked up behind him as he strode toward her front door, his handgun out and reflecting the porch light, which she had on a solar timer. Good thing she didn’t want their relationship to be anything more than business.
Chapter 8
Holden couldn’t get out of the jalopy soon enough, away from the temptation he’d been fighting every. Single. Minute. Of this case. It was no use pretending the attraction wasn’t there, because it was, in spades. Bella Colton hit all his physical buttons and worse, she had a terrific sense of humor.
Nowhere else to go but forward. He pulled out his weapon and heard Bella’s approach behind him.
“Stay behind me, to the right, if you’re not going to remain in your car.”
“Of course I’m not. What if the killer is out here, and attacks me while you’re clearing my house?”
He gritted his teeth. “No talking. Let me work.”
She complied but he gave her thirty seconds. Her naturally curious nature wouldn’t allow her to not ask questions, he’d bet.
The sandy gravel underfoot gave way to smooth red tiles that led to the front porch area, which was really a f
ront patio. A small table and a chair looked untouched, as did the ground around the house. He used his phone’s flashlight to see if there were any footprints or other evidence of a recent unwanted visitor.
“The front looks fine. Give me your key.” He faced her, saw the resistance in her stance.
“I can unlock my own door.”
“Bella.” He stood in front of her, his hand out. “Our deal.”
“Whatever.” She grumbled the last, held out the small ring of keys and dropped them in his palm. Was she careful to ensure they didn’t have any skin contact or was he reading too much into it? The fact that he was turned on by her didn’t mean Bella had any such desire for him. Nor should she—he was here to protect her, find a murderer and then he’d be back to Phoenix. Where he had his life, his job, and no troublesome undercover reporter questioning his every move.
“Stay back until I get the door open and clear the first room. Do you have a front hallway or does it open directly into a room?” He scanned her front windows, all two of them, to try to see what the inside looked like.
“I have a foyer with a skylight, and then it opens into the great room. The kitchen, morning breakfast room and living room all flow into each other. I don’t have a lot of interior walls save for the outer ones.”
“Where’s your bedroom?”
“There are two. The guest room is off the kitchen and the master bedroom is behind that, down a short hall. This is a ranch-style home, one level.” She spoke as if he were a grade-school kid and he couldn’t blame her. He was asking pretty obvious questions for a person who lived in Arizona. The homes were often ranch-style, meaning one level, to help with keeping them cool through the long, hot days. Even with air-conditioning it was impossible to keep a home livable when the temperatures soared well over one-hundred-degrees Fahrenheit. The local joke was that it was a “dry” heat. When the temperature hit triple digits, it was too hot.