by Marci Bolden
She was clearly processing his observation. She’d likely be more aware of her actions in the future so someone else couldn’t see through her so easily. “You’re following me,” she chastised.
He didn’t even attempt to look ashamed of his actions. He wasn’t. “If you don’t want to share your intel, you leave me no choice but to gather it on my own.”
“I told you I would share if it was important.”
“You could have missed something.”
Her jaw tensed and she lowered her hand, but Jack grabbed her left hip before she could step back. He pulled her closer. She didn’t resist, but she did lift her brow ever so slightly, as if silently warning him against his blatant trespass into her space.
“I don’t mean that as a slight,” he said. “We all miss clues sometimes.”
“Thanks for the pep talk, Detective. But I’m quite confident in my assessment.”
“What assessment is that?”
She whispered, “That I was right not to trust you.”
Her words were an unexpected punch to his gut. Though he’d suspected as much, having her admit to not trusting him caused his stomach to knot. “You’re the one keeping secrets,” he reminded her.
Anger flared in her eyes. “I’m doing whatever it takes to find these women before they both end up dead. Maybe you should set your ego aside and do the same.”
Jack hadn’t intended to pull her closer, but suddenly he was holding her body against his, digging his fingers into her hip. His chest tightened with two realizations: his anger at her not sharing Gary’s secret had nothing to do with this case, and if he didn’t put space between them—now—he was going to kiss her.
He pushed her back a step and released his hold on her. “How am I supposed to do whatever it takes when I don’t know everything?”
Holly forced a breath between her lips before licking them. For a moment Jack thought maybe she was disappointed he’d let her go, but then she straightened her shoulders and pinned him with her hard stare.
“His name is Dallas Kirby. They know each other through church. She wasn’t having an affair with him,” she said. “She was seeking help for depression.”
“Depression?”
“He said she was spiraling into paranoia because, get this, she thought she was being followed.”
Jack’s breath hitched. “How long?”
“Not long. He was trying to convince her to seek a professional, but apparently Gary isn’t keen on the weight gain caused by her previous use of antidepressants.”
Jack frowned. He wasn’t surprised by that. “He does seem to be about outward appearances, doesn’t he?”
“Are you talking about his house?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever know them to fight when you lived next to them?”
Jack thought of how happy Penelope always seemed to be. “No. But do we ever really know anyone?”
“Not really,” Holly said. She took another step back. “I’m headed back to the office. In case you planned on following me.”
He grinned. “I have to get back to my real job, but I’ll catch up with you later. I’d like to hear more about your coffee date.”
“I bet you would,” she muttered before turning.
Jack continued leaning against his car, watching her leave. He had to chuckle at himself. He’d never been the type to fall under the spell of a woman, but he could literally feel himself becoming entranced with Holly Austin. The authority with which she walked away was like a siren song calling out to him. He wanted to follow her again, but this time just to watch her movements.
Jack turned and rested his palms against his car. The wind blew her hair, lifting the golden strands away from her face as she glanced to verify there were no cars headed toward her. He wished she’d take another look his way, but she crossed the street in several long strides and used her fob to unlock her car doors.
Opening the driver’s door without so much as a glance his way, she climbed in. He couldn’t see her because of the reflections mirrored on her windshield, but he suspected she was slipping the key into the ignition. Sure enough, her car came to life, but she didn’t pull away from the curb because, he guessed, she was pulling her sunglasses from the compartment.
When she did leave her parking spot, Jack had to chuckle. She drove by him, sliding her dark glasses into place, as if to remind him how little concern she had for him. Too bad he saw through how hard she was trying to be dismissive.
Tapping his fingers on his car roof, Jack debated pointing out that denying the spark between them only made it more tempting to him. He stood upright and dug into his pocket and then paused in his movements as he noticed a man emerging from the café where, just a few minutes prior, Jack had sat watching Holly. The café was casual, but for some reason the man’s dark uniform stood out; it didn’t quite fit with the rest of the people in business dress who bustled along the street at this time of day.
Jack’s intuition kicked into high gear, telling him that something about what he was seeing was significant, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. The man seemed familiar, but not so much so that Jack instantly recognized him. As he stood watching, the man disappeared into the crowd moving along the sidewalk. He debated trotting across the street to see if he could get a better look, but a line of cars blocked his way as the light at the intersection changed.
Dismissing the feeling, he climbed into his car and headed back to the station before anyone could start to question where he’d gotten off to.
6
Holly stopped reviewing her notes on the Fredrickson case when Rene sat on the edge of her desk. Everyone said she was a workaholic, but maybe this was the real reason she always ended up working late—she was constantly being interrupted. Getting anything productive done took three times longer sitting behind her desk than when she was sitting on her sofa. She really needed to consider working from home more often. Especially now that Jack Tarek had wormed his way into her case and the women of HEARTS suddenly seemed even more intrusive on Holly’s time.
Rene stared at her, silently demanding answers to unspoken questions. That was Rene’s trick, her superpower. She could make grown men spill their guts with nothing but unyielding eye contact. That didn’t work on Holly, though. She just leaned back in her chair, met her gaze, and waited Rene out.
“You partnering up with Tarek?” Rene finally asked.
Holly suspected she was hinting at something else. Rene was direct and candid, but she also worked her way to the big questions. She never started exactly where she wanted to be. She liked to work suspects down to that point. “Maybe.”
“He’s cute in a Rami Malek kinda way, don’t you think?”
“In a what kind of way?”
Rene tilted her head and lifted her arched brows, looking like she didn’t quite believe what Holly had asked. “Rami Malek. The actor. Jesus, Hol, crawl out from under your rock once in a while.”
Holly smirked. She wasn’t as out of touch as she let her co-workers believe. Yes, she had noticed how his close-trimmed facial hair and intentionally messed hair made him look more like a movie star than a police detective. She’d chosen not to admit that to anyone but herself for the sake of her sanity. If any one of these women even suspected Holly had noticed Jack was handsome as hell, they’d harass her more than they were already. She’d never get a moment of peace.
He hadn’t been very subtle in pointing out that he, too, had noticed the natural pull between them, but his teasing didn’t irritate her as much as she suspected it would if any of her team started taking part in that. Jack hadn’t come right out and said he was attracted to her, but she’d noticed him staring at her more than once. And not just to point out how much she looked like the missing women.
He obviously felt the same strange attraction she did. Although he seemed more at ease with it. Tarek was probably the type of man who had no hesitation seducing or being seduced and moving on when the passion died. Holly
wasn’t much into relationships and didn’t mind an occasional short-term fling. He would probably be good with that after this case was solved. But the key to that was after the case was solved. She wasn’t going to let herself get distracted from the goal—bringing Julia home as soon as possible. She wouldn’t investigate whatever was happening between Jack and her until after that.
A celebratory night in his bed definitely wouldn’t be a bad thing. Until then, she needed to keep his subtle flirting and her desire to pin him under her once more in check.
“The point is,” Rene continued, “you were cold as ice to him at the front desk. Only one thing makes a woman that cold.”
“The fact that you keep jacking up the air conditioning and making the bill twice as high as it should be?”
Rene ignored the jab. She was the one always complaining about it being too hot in the office and was the most likely A/C culprit, but Holly didn’t have proof. She did find Rene’s lack of denial interesting, though.
“You don’t want us to realize that you’re hot for him,” Rene continued.
Holly scoffed. “You saw me with him for all of two minutes.”
“And it was enough.”
“Enough to what?” Holly held up her hand. “No. I don’t want to hear it. Did Sam put you up to this?”
“No.”
The next on her list? “Alexa?”
“I don’t need Sam or Alexa to point out the obvious. There’s a sizzle between you and this detective.”
“A sizzle?”
Rene made a hissing sound as she winked.
Holly let out a wry laugh. “My God. You guys are impossible. I don’t even know him.”
“You’ve never been physically attracted to someone without knowing them? Bullshit, Hol. That’s human nature.”
“Lucky for me, I can control my impulses and not pounce on every man I find attractive.”
Rene cocked her head again. “Maybe you should. How long has it been?”
She snorted at the boldness of Rene’s question. “Excuse me?”
Rene, as always, was unfazed by Holly’s curt tone and continued to push. “I’ve known you almost a year now. I have never seen you give anything of yourself to anyone outside of this office and our clients. Maybe it’s time you found a man to distract you.”
“Maybe I’m gay and just don’t want you to know.”
“Oh, please.” Rene rolled her eyes dramatically to emphasize her disbelief. “You’ve surrounded yourself with strong, independent, and—dare I say—sexy women. If you were gay, you’d have tried to sleep with one of us by now.”
“Maybe I am sleeping with one of you, and she just knows how to keep her mouth shut.”
“That would never happen in this office. I can’t even burp without one of you bitches sending out a memo.”
Holly chuckled not only because it was true but because that had actually happened. One of Rene’s clients owned an Indian restaurant and had insisted on treating her to lunch after she’d caught their employees stealing from the cash register. Rene was too polite to turn down the pork vindaloo, which she knew wouldn’t sit well in her stomach. She’d come back with horrible indigestion and, after taking a handful of antacids, spent the afternoon belching so loud, Sam concocted an official notice and e-mailed it out to the rest of HEARTS, warning them not to feed Rene Indian food. Ever.
Yeah, her team drove her nuts, but she adored them and their crazy antics. She wouldn’t trade them for anything.
“Besides that,” Rene said, “if you were seeing someone, male or female, you wouldn’t be so hot for the good detective.”
Holly opened her mouth, another smart retort on the tip of her tongue, but her phone rang. She cleared her throat when she noticed Jack’s name on the screen. She made it a point to sound official as Rene stared at her. “Holly Austin.”
“Hey, it’s Jack,” he said.
Damn it. Just those three simple words spoken in his smooth baritone made her core vibrate. She wanted to spin her chair to turn her back on Rene’s scrutiny, but that would just make her more suspicious.
“I thought if you had some time, we could go over a few things,” he continued in her ear.
She swallowed, shifted slightly, and answered, as casually as possible, “Sure. When?”
“You available now?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Have you eaten?”
She stuttered, not sure what to say and why she couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t as if he’d asked her to strip naked and climb into his lap. Which she probably would have figured out how to respond to more quickly than his simple question of whether she had or hadn’t put food in her stomach recently.
Speak, she screamed in her mind.
“Sustenance, Princess. Have you had any lately?”
She wanted to call him out on using that vile nickname again, but she wasn’t about to banter with him under Rene’s watchful eye. She was already stuttering and warming from the inside out at the sound of his voice. “Uh. No.”
“Good, I’ll swing by and pick you up. I can be there in ten.”
“Okay.” She pulled the phone from her ear and focused much more than necessary on ending the call.
Rene slid off the desk. “You’re blushing.”
Holly exhaled loudly. She couldn’t deny it. The heat in her cheeks was so excessive she was about to break her own rule and turn the office temperature down even more to stop the nervous sweat from starting. “He wants to pick me up to go over some things.”
“You can’t do that here?”
“He’s, uh…hungry, apparently.”
Rene tilted her head and grinned. “Ah. A dinner date.”
“No,” Holly said, much too quickly and her tone far too firm. “No. Nothing like that. Just food while we talk about this case. Like…like a dinner meeting.” She nodded confidently. “It’s just a dinner meeting.”
“You should brush your hair and touch up your makeup before your dinner meeting. You look like a mess. Most men only appreciate that disheveled look after sex.”
Holly frowned. She did not need post-coital images of Jack Tarek slinking around her brain. “Screw you, Schwartz.”
“You should be so lucky,” she sang as she headed for the door. Stopping, she turned and offered Holly a soft smile. “Take your damn tracker. We didn’t buy that so we’d know where your desk is. If something happens, we need to be able to find each other. And Holly? A little social interaction would do you good. Getting laid would do you even better.”
Holly opened her mouth to chastise Rene, but her co-worker disappeared. “My God,” she whispered. “Not an ounce of professionalism among them.”
But then Jack’s smile flashed through her mind, and she jerked her desk drawer open. After dragging a brush through her hair, she opened a compact and swiped foundation over her blotchy skin. Tapping at the bags under her eyes, she frowned. There wasn’t anything she could do about that. She needed some sleep. Real sleep. But she hadn’t gotten a solid night of rest since Eric Fredrickson had hired HEARTS to find his wife.
She didn’t have time to sleep. Not when there was a missing woman out there who could still possibly be alive.
The front door opened and closed as Holly tossed the makeup back into the drawer. She dropped her keys in her pocket as she stood, touched the gun on her hip just to verify it was there, and headed for the lobby. She stopped as she remembered this was not a dinner date and grabbed the Fredrickson file off her desk. She froze midstep once more and then dug in her drawer for the one-inch-by-one-inch GPS tracker.
The small black squares had been Rene’s idea. If she’d known where her agent had been, she might have been able to intervene before losing a team member. She wasn’t about to let that happen again. Not that this little bit of plastic could protect them from everything, but it made Rene feel better, so they’d all agreed to carry them. When they could remember. Holly was the biggest offender of that particular company rule.
> With her tracker tucked in her pocket, she headed to the lobby, where she absolutely refused to acknowledge the twitch low in her gut when she spotted Jack casually leaning against the desk where Sam usually sat. He was admiring a framed photo of the six women of HEARTS celebrating Alexa’s birthday. Rare evidence that they could all look happy simultaneously.
He looked at Holly, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze skimmed over her. She did dismiss it, however. Despite the obvious attraction they shared and the pushiness of her co-workers, she wasn’t looking for a man. And if she were, she sure as shit wouldn’t get involved with one while working a case. That was the kind of trouble she left for Rene and Alexa to get into. But she couldn’t deny the temptation was there.
“I’ll drive,” she said as she passed him and headed for the door without casting him another glance.
“My car’s right outside.”
“So is mine.” She didn’t look back, denying him a chance to argue. She unlocked her car, slid into the front seat, and then dropped the file in his lap as he sat next to her. “Burgers?”
“Sounds good.”
She barely looked at him but noticed the smirk on his face. He probably thought he was appeasing her by letting her drive. He’d figure it out if they worked together long enough. Holly drove. That wasn’t a question. And that wasn’t up for debate. And it wasn’t an ego thing, either. She’d learned long ago that being in control meant she was responsible for the outcome of what happened in her life, and she wasn’t about to let someone else be in control of what happened to her—even while grabbing a burger.
So Holly drove.
Always.
And if Jack Tarek thought he was kowtowing to her, that was fine. He could sneer and feel superior all he wanted. She didn’t care. But then she frowned because part of her did care. She didn’t want him to think she was full of herself or didn’t trust him or…whatever he was thinking.
As she fondled the pendant hanging around her neck, she debated explaining to him, but she didn’t because the reality was, she couldn’t. Driving was a false sense of security, and she knew it. Accidents happened all the time, no matter who was driving, and there was no guarantee she could make better snap decisions than Jack or anyone else. Holly had just convinced herself of that.