by Dawn Altieri
He closed the passenger door behind her. “You were expecting a mansion in the Hamptons? I’m sorry. I probably should’ve been more specific.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said with a tired chuckle, but her stomach twisted at his words and what he likely thought of her.
She was used to people assuming she had her sights on luxury penthouses, expensive cars, and summers in the glamorous seaside villages farther out on the island. When she and Justin first became engaged, several of his friends suspected she was a gold digger, more interested in money than the man she was going to marry. In reality, she’d never experienced that world until Justin came along, despite her mother’s attempts to marry her way into it after her father left.
“It doesn’t really look like…a home. Maybe once the boards are off.” She glanced at the mansions across the street with their beautiful, overflowing gardens and meticulously manicured lawns. “There are some huge houses around here.”
“Yeah, and the neighbors all hate me for not knocking down this eyesore. I figure I’ve got squatter’s rights. My dad built it in the seventies, way before those monstrosities went up.”
With his hand at the small of her back, he steered her down a path around the side of the house. The backyard had potential but wasn’t much more inviting than the front. A grassy patch surrounded a wooden deck, which connected to a pier jutting out into the water at the far end of the yard. The creative wheels in her mind spun with visions of flower boxes and cushioned seating areas. Maybe even a fire pit or a Jacuzzi.
“I can’t remember the last time I was near the ocean,” she said, gazing out at the bay. “You must spend a lot of time out here.”
“Not as much as I’d like. I don’t take much time off work.”
“Really?” She’d hated all the nights and weekends she spent alone while Justin worked late, entertained clients, golfed with colleagues. Hated the romantic dinners she’d prepared and eaten by herself when he’d stayed at the office to finish “just one more thing.” A future with someone like Jake would mean more of the same, with the added stress of wondering whether or not he’d come home at all.
Not that she actually wanted a future with him. She’d just met the man, really.
“But you’re off today,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
He met her gaze, stared at her for a long moment with that muscle twitching intensely in his jaw. “Not exactly.”
She understood the implication. She was his job—he was protecting a key witness. She’d be a fool to believe he’d invited her here for any other reason, that he cared about her beyond the investigation. She was not here as his date, or even as his friend. Their easy conversation was convenient, their simmering chemistry nothing more than an unwanted distraction. She shook off her disappointment, refusing to let him see it.
“But I really did plan to come here today,” he added. “I’ve been neglecting the house for too long. Maybe I’ll make a point to use it this summer, for a change.”
“You don’t use it?” Maybe he was even more addicted to his job than she’d guessed. “Why bother having a beach house if you never use it?”
“It was my parents’ place,” he said. “I sort of inherited it. It’s been boarded up since the hurricane last summer. I come out to check on things when I visit my dad, but I haven’t had a chance to do much with it.”
He headed to a shed at the far side of the yard and returned with a crowbar, which he used to pry a sheet of plywood off the back door before he tackled the window boards. The muscles of his back swelled and twisted as he worked, clearly defined through his gray T-shirt.
A dizzying warmth came over her, and it had nothing to do with the heat of the late morning sun. She fought to clear her head and scanned the yard again.
Climbing roses would be perfect on the empty wooden trellis against the house, maybe a few wild grasses in the corners, even some potted tropical plants that could come inside in the winter…
No. She needed to stop this. It wasn’t her house.
“Can I do anything to help?” she asked.
He glanced over his shoulder with an appreciative smile. “Nah. I’ve got it.”
She twisted her fingers together behind her back to stop herself from grabbing some gardening tools and getting to work. “Where does your dad live?”
“At the veteran’s home in Stony Brook.”
“Oh. Is he sick?”
“If you ask him, he’s practically on his death bed.” Jake’s strong biceps bunched as he yanked on a particularly stubborn board until it came loose. “Diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, arthritis. A whole list of issues, and a boatload of medications, but nothing terminal. I think he just gave up after my mom died. As much as he loved us, my brother and I were just pains in his ass. My mom was his whole world.”
Emma caught the spark of pain that crossed Jake’s face, the brief but heavy sadness that came over him…along with an impression of regret she didn’t quite understand. It drooped his shoulders and hardened his features, but he quickly shook it off. She would have asked what had happened to his mother, but it seemed like an unwelcome subject.
“I’m so sorry,” she said instead.
He nodded, but kept his eyes averted.
His parents’ marriage sounded like the exact opposite of the animosity her own parents had shared before her father finally left. The opposite of the stifling relationship she’d had with Justin toward the end. More like the kind of love she’d always hoped to find for herself.
Damn it. She had to stop thinking like this. She was here so Jake could keep her safe, not so she could find love and happiness.
He moved to the next window on the side of the house, and she trailed after him.
“Dad likes it there,” he said, tossing another board to the ground. “He has more of a social life than I do.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Jake chuckled and raised the crowbar again. “My social life consists mostly of interviews and interrogations. I spend a lot of time with some very unsavory characters.”
Her stomach churned. Unsavory characters. Depraved criminals, rapists, and murderers like the one who’d attacked her and killed at least one woman in the city so far.
“That’s work,” she said. “That’s not a social life.” She grimaced. “Not that I should talk.”
“Come on,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. “A beautiful young woman with a great job, living in Manhattan? I can’t believe you don’t have a fully booked social calendar.”
She shifted uneasily at the compliment. “Well, my job’s not that great. And as far as a social calendar, I have Lauren and Matt, and the Windsor family, but that’s about it. During college and after, my life revolved around Justin. Then, for a while, it revolved around my job, but I was just trying to keep myself busy after Justin was gone. Now I’m not sure what my life revolves around anymore.”
Jake dropped another board and wiped his sweat-soaked brow with his forearm. “What’s not that great about your job?”
She shrugged. “It should be great. The people are nice, and the work isn’t hard. I might even have a shot at a promotion soon.”
“But you don’t want it.”
Surprise filled her at how well he could read her. Her lungs deflated in defeat. “No, I don’t.”
He folded his arms, accentuating the hard planes of his chest. “What job would you have if you could have any job in the world?”
“Me?” she nearly squeaked. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Of course you have. Everyone has. It’s just a matter of whether or not you listen to the answer.”
She surveyed the yard with its barren flowerbeds and weed-scattered grass. “I’ve always loved gardening. I used to dream about becoming a landscape designer, but that was a
long time ago.”
“You could get loads of practice with that right here.” He lifted the crowbar to the next board. “So why don’t you become a landscape designer now?”
“Well… I’d probably need to go back to school.”
He shoved the bar under another board with a grunt until it gave way. “And? Then why don’t you go back to school?”
“I don’t really have time, with my job and all—”
“The job that’s not that great, you mean? The job you don’t even want.” He leveled his mostly rhetorical questions in rapid-fire succession, not giving her a chance to think, which was probably his intention. No doubt, he was a hell of an interrogator.
He placed his hands on his hips as he turned to her to catch his breath, exuding the confidence and strength she lacked. Confidence and strength that had allowed him to get exactly what he wanted out of his career and could easily win him any woman he desired.
He studied her for a long moment, and she shrank inward under the scrutiny. “Emma, the only thing your life should revolve around is you. You’re way too young to have that it’s-just-a-job attitude. You have your whole life ahead of you. Why not spend it doing something you love?”
It was easy to see he cared deeply about his job. And he was right…even though she wasn’t ready to make a change just yet, especially with everything else going on in her life at the moment.
She hated being the focus of a conversation. She needed to get off this topic. “So, tell me about these unsavory characters,” she prompted, hoping he wouldn’t call her out on her transparent attempt to change the subject. “What’s it like being a homicide detective in New York City?”
He moved on to the last window. “It’s just like you see on TV,” he replied, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
She rolled her eyes and he laughed.
“I prefer to keep all that in a separate world.”
He lifted the hem of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face, revealing the toned ridges of muscle along his stomach and the thin trail of dark hair leading beneath his shorts. Her pulse skyrocketed at the sight.
“Those characters are nothing you need to have in your head,” he added. “Bad enough I have them in mine.”
The fear she’d managed to ward off all morning suddenly reared up. “It’s not exactly in a separate world right now,” she said softly. “Have you heard anything from Mack?”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, steady stream. “No. Not yet.”
She gazed up at him through her lashes. “The break-in attempt, the lilacs, that phone call… What’s next?”
“Emma, I know how hard this is, but I promise you, I won’t let him get near you.” Jake took her hand in his, squeezing his fingers around hers. “I won’t let this guy get away.”
Tension covered his face, and she sensed there was more behind his determination than she knew…likely involving other people who had gotten away.
It was a subject she hadn’t wanted to approach, but he’d just opened the door. “How much do you know about Justin’s case? About what went wrong?” She pulled her hand from his grasp. “How much do you know about me?”
He took a measured breath, as though he’d been expecting the conversation and needed to brace himself. “I know you were a few weeks away from your wedding, and you were leaving a bakery where you’d been sampling cakes. You dropped a bunch of lilacs, and he ran back into the street to pick them up.”
Memories of that day came rushing back. She’d wanted the flowers so badly for the wedding. Lilacs wouldn’t be in season in New York in September, so Justin had placed an order for several varieties from a private grower, enough for all the centerpieces and Emma’s bouquet. The owner of the little bakery in the quiet neighborhood at the edge of the Hamptons had offered to create edible fondant lilacs to adorn the cake, and Justin had brought along a sample bunch to the tasting. They’d left the bakery, and she’d laughed at a joke Justin made as they crossed the street. She couldn’t remember what the joke was now, but she knew it was the last thing Justin had ever said to her. When she realized she’d dropped the bouquet, she’d turned to see the Do Not Cross hand flashing at them from the signal box.
“Oh no!” she’d cried out, and Justin turned back, following her gaze to the pale purple blooms lying in the roadway. With a quick side-to-side glance, he stepped off the curb.
She wasn’t sure what color it had been—black, midnight blue, charcoal gray—but the car had appeared out of nowhere, just a dark blur that came down the road at full throttle. There was no squeal of tires, no rubber burnt onto the asphalt. The driver made no attempt to stop before slamming into Justin and sending him tumbling over the roof. He’d landed with a solid thud as his head made contact with the road. That sound still echoed in her mind—coupled with the sound of her own voice as she screamed, “No!” over and over again.
That bunch of lilacs had cost Justin his life.
Damn. Maybe this discussion wasn’t such a great idea, after all.
She looked up at Jake, pulled herself back to the present and his crystal-blue eyes. The way he met her gaze straight on made her feel as if he could see right inside her, as if he understood exactly how painful and lonely the past few years had been, and he wanted to whisk her away from all of it.
But that was nothing more than her imagination at work again.
“I also know,” he went on, “that the Windsor case drove me absolutely mad. Not to sound like a pompous ass, but I haven’t had many unsolved cases in my career, let alone one that would’ve seemed so cut and dried.” He paused and ran a hand through his tousled curls. “Hit-and-run, car versus pedestrian in broad daylight. It shouldn’t have been hard to solve. But we had uncertain witnesses, a deliberately obscured license plate, malfunctioning security cameras… You name it, and it went wrong. No credible testimony, no body shop records of a car having front end damage repaired. Nothing.”
She nodded as her gaze drifted to the ground. “Justin’s family was really upset with the cops. His father wanted someone’s job. Anyone’s job.”
“I can’t say I blame him. Some guy ran down his son and then just fell off the face of the earth.” Jake shook his head. “I remember the pocket of your fiancé’s jacket had been ripped off. My partner and I tried to find it at the scene, but there was no sign of it anywhere. We figured it must have gotten stuck to the car.” A twisted smile slid across his face, one that somehow apologized for being inappropriate. “You have to understand, we all have a warped sense of humor given some of the shit we see, but it was almost a running joke after a while. The infamous missing pocket. Somewhere out there, someone is driving around with a square of navy-blue fabric stuck to his front bumper, and that’s our guy.”
She hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but she remembered Justin’s missing pocket, too. It was all so absurd, no wonder Jake and his colleagues tried to make light of it. How else could someone be expected to handle the horrific things they saw every day?
He ran his palm across his stubbled chin. “Then there was you. All I wanted was to get answers, to put someone away for what they’d done to you. And to him, but I didn’t know him, I only knew you. I’ve seen a lot of victims’ families in my time, but you…” He shook his head once more. “I can’t explain why, but I lost a lot of sleep thinking about you.”
His eyes remained fixed on her, full of concern and empathy. She couldn’t be imagining the connection between them, one he seemed to have felt even back then, one that clearly ran so much deeper than this conversation. Three years ago, she’d fought to ignore it, but there was no denying it now.
“Emma,” he said, “I’m not sure what sick twist of fate brought you back into my life, but I promise you, I will not let you down again. I swear I will find this bastard, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
His promise quelled the
anxiety twisting inside her, if only the slightest bit. She wanted to believe he’d protect her for reasons beyond ensuring her testimony, but if that was all it was, she’d still be grateful. Every day he was out there looking for killers, he was putting his own life at risk.
“Don’t you ever get scared?” she asked.
“Scared?” He appeared to be considering the word as he tilted his head. “Scared is not a word in most cops’ vocabulary. But sure, I get scared. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t.”
“Well, I would be worried sick about you if—” she began but stopped herself. She turned away as a burn of embarrassment flooded her cheeks.
What was wrong with her, acting like she could already picture them growing old together?
“If what? If we…?” He took her hand. “Emma, as much as I wouldn’t want you to worry about me, I’d be honored if you did.”
Chapter Fourteen
The now-familiar surge of adrenaline coursed through Jake until he released Emma’s fingers. What the hell was he saying? She’d never have a reason to worry about him, and he sure as hell shouldn’t want her to.
Keep it professional, he reminded himself, pulling himself together yet again. And stop touching her.
She gazed at him with no response, seemingly unaware of how unraveled she made him. Thank God.
It had been happening too often lately, whenever he was around her. He’d say things he shouldn’t, entertain thoughts about a future between them, even though he was sure a future with him would never be what she wanted. Or any other woman, for that matter. And he was in no position to consider anything with her, anyway.
Time to change the subject. “Would you like the grand tour?” he asked.
“Sure.” She followed him inside.
The fresh ocean breeze rushed in and forced the musty air out of the kitchen. The room was furnished with nothing more than his parents’ old wooden table and chairs, and the pale-yellow walls struggled in vain to brighten the space. The beige Formica countertops were bare except for an ancient coffeemaker and a small toaster oven with enough crumbs in it to make its own loaf of bread.