Hidden Hearts

by Marci Bolden

  “Look,” he said, coming closer. “Every week she sent me these damn pictures of the dogs she was walking. Can we adopt one? She asked the same thing every damn week. Can we adopt one? I always said no. We have a grandbaby on the way. The last thing we need is a dog.”

  Holly watched as he scrolled through photos that Julia had sent to him. Every image was of her cuddling a different dog. The thing that struck Holly, though, was that Julia was in the photo.

  “Do you know who took these pictures?” she asked.

  Eric looked at his phone and shrugged. “No. I never asked.”

  Damn it. This just wasn’t adding up.

  “Could you send me a list of all the services you’ve had in the last six months? Any electrician or plumber or cable repair. Anything like that.”

  Eric lowered his phone. “You’re getting desperate.”

  “We’re checking into every possible lead.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled loudly. “I’ll see what I can find for you.”

  “That would be helpful.” As she headed toward the door, Holly glanced around the room. Jack was right. The house was too neat. Too tidy.

  Too perfect.

  As soon as she was in her car, she pulled her phone from her pocket and called Jack. She knew he had other cases to tend to, but she still sighed with frustration when her call went to his voice mail. “Fredrickson had photos of his wife with the dogs she walked. She sent them to him every Tuesday. She might have been sending him those to cover her tracks, but she had that volunteer sticker on her car. She had to get that somewhere. I’m headed back to the shelter. Let me know if you have other ideas.”

  She ended the call and dropped her phone into the passenger seat. She alternated between tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and squeezing the damn thing so hard her knuckles turned white. There had to be a connection between Julia and Penelope. What was it?

  After parking in the same spot she had the day before, Holly headed right for Bailey.

  “Hey,” the girl said with the same bright smile. She tilted her head. “Where’s your partner?”

  “With his wife,” Holly said. She had no idea why, but she didn’t like the way the bubbly woman immediately focused on Jack’s absence. Jack wasn’t married, but stating so would put an end to any notion she had of hooking up with a cop. “You said yesterday that Julia Fredrickson doesn’t volunteer at this shelter.”

  “No, ma’am,” Bailey said.

  “She had a volunteer sticker from this shelter. Do you know where she would have gotten that?”

  Bailey shrugged. “We stopped giving those stickers out a long time ago. We have T-shirts for our volunteers now.”

  “Do you know when you stopped handing out stickers?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “What happened to the leftover stickers?”

  She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. “They’re in a box in the storage room.”

  “Who has access to that room?”

  Bailey shrugged. “Pretty much everyone. If I have to run errands or help with intake on a new dog, a volunteer runs the desk.”

  Holly tilted her head. “So is it possible Julia came in to volunteer and you weren’t the one here to help her?”

  Confusion filled her eyes. “I…guess. But why would someone… I mean, there are forms to fill out, and I’d have to put her on the schedule. So… I don’t know why someone would tell her to volunteer without running it by me.”

  Because she was immediately targeted, Holly realized. “Great,” she muttered. “Thanks, Bailey.”

  Back in her car, Holly tried to call Jack again. Voice mail.

  She didn’t know why she was so damned irritated about that. She understood he had other obligations, but for some reason him not answering her call irritated the hell out of her. Actually, there were a dozen reasons why. The main one being that she felt like she was beginning to flounder in this case. Julia and Penelope were counting on her, and Holly couldn’t seem to make two and two add up to four.

  She’d never been on the losing side of a case before, but she certainly felt she was there now. Eric had accused her of becoming desperate. She hated to admit it, but he was right. Holly was grasping at straws, and they all seemed to be slipping through her hands. And that pissed her the hell off.

  “Jack,” she said after the tone, “it’s Holly. I think we need to dig deeper into the shelter volunteers.” She started to ask him to drop whatever he was doing and come to her office now rather than later, but that sounded desperate. And not just to solve the case.

  Instead of adding the last bit, she ended the call and tossed her phone aside. Cursing herself, Jack, and the questions in this case that she couldn’t seem to answer.

  “What am I doing?” Jack mumbled as he parked next to Holly’s car. “What the hell am I doing?” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and then looked at the dish containing the faatah his mother had sent with him. He didn’t even know if Holly liked Middle Eastern food. What if she thought eating lamb was revolting? Lots of people did. Just because she ate beef didn’t mean she wanted a cute little baby sheep chopped up and served for dinner.

  And what if she got the wrong impression? And what, exactly, was the right impression?

  Just as he had suspected, he’d barely walked into his mother’s house before she’d started peppering Jack with questions about the PI he’d mentioned. And as he knew would happen, he’d said way more than he should about how intuitive and hardworking Holly was and how she wasn’t going to stop until she solved this case. His mother would’ve had to be deaf, dumb, and dead to miss the admiration in Jack’s voice. Even he’d heard it; he just hadn’t been able to stop gushing.

  So here he was, showing up with his mother’s favorite dish—at her insistence that no woman could resist a man who served her a home-cooked meal.

  “I’ll bring dinner,” Jack muttered, mimicking his pathetic call to Holly. “Mom threw something together.”

  Actually, Mom had spent all afternoon obsessing over the food, texting him questions about Holly he couldn’t answer, and reminding him how to be a gentleman.

  “I want grandchildren before I’m too old to enjoy them, babba,” she’d said when he stopped by to pick up the dinner she insisted he take with him. “Feed her. Maybe she’ll like you, too. And you can finally find a nice woman to make you a home.”

  Jack laughed as he shook his head. He couldn’t look at a woman without his mother reminding him how much she wanted to be a grandmother. Her only child was Jack, and he was in no hurry to settle down, which was a great stressor for the woman eager to join her friends in showing pictures of grandbabies. Holly was not the soft, sweet woman his mother probably had in mind. Then again, Holly had a pulse, and at this point, his mother was probably so desperate for him to get married that would be more than enough for her.

  Climbing out of the car, he grabbed the dish and bag of disposable plates and cutlery. Holly probably wouldn’t mind if he just tossed the casserole on the table and told her to dig in, but he’d brought paper plates and plastic utensils anyway.

  He smiled as he recalled her stuffing that cheeseburger into her mouth. Adorable wasn’t exactly the word to describe the way she’d attacked her meal, but he couldn’t think of anything else. Most men might have been turned off, but her lack of interest in looking or being refined was just one more layer of Jack’s attraction to her.

  The other layers?

  She was brilliant and brave and fearless. Her wit was dry, but he liked the subtlety of her humor. Her eyes were haunted but lit when she teased him. Her smile…her lips…her lithe body. Damn that body.

  He opened the door to the agency. The desk where Sam usually met him with her bored expression was empty. The light in the conference room was on, though, so he headed straight there. He found Holly staring at the whiteboard with a list of what he assumed to be Fredrickson’s six months’ worth of services and the wor
ds DOG SHELTER in all caps, circled several times.

  He had barely set the food down when she turned around, her eyes wide.

  “What smells so good?” she demanded.

  “Faatah. It’s like a casserole made out of lamb and rice and—”

  “I know.” She put the dry-erase marker down and marched toward him. The look in her eye was that of a woman on the prowl, but sadly her attention was directed at the dish instead of him. “If you didn’t bring enough to share, you’re going home hungry. Is that homemade?”

  “Yes. My mother sent it over. A thank-you for helping look for Penelope.” Or his mother’s idea of seducing Holly into marriage and children before she had to break down and start sharing pictures of Jack’s cat in lieu of grandchildren. He uncovered the dish and thought he might have to wipe the drool from her chin. “You’re hungry, then?”

  “Somehow I never realize how hungry I am until you start waving food around.”

  He smiled as he scooped some casserole onto a plate. “You shouldn’t neglect your stomach, Princess.”

  “Keep calling me that, jackass. See what happens.” She accepted the food he’d just served and inhaled deeply. “Oh my God. I love your mother so much.”

  “I’ll remind you of that someday.”

  She didn’t respond. She was too focused on shoveling food in her mouth. And then she made that damned moaning sound that she’d made while eating her cheeseburger—a sound that had preoccupied him when he was trying to sleep the night before. The one that shot straight to his groin and made him want to strip her naked so he could bury himself as deep into her waiting heat as their bodies would allow.

  “What is that smell?” came a soft, husky voice from behind them.

  “Faatah,” Holly said around a mouthful.

  A redhead came walking in, completely ignoring Jack as she examined the dish. He offered her a plate, and she barely glanced at him before accepting the food. He had just filled another plate when Sam came strolling into the room with a young woman right behind her. He hadn’t met her, but recognized her as Tika, the team’s legal expert. She looked like the stereotype of a lawyer, with her black hair pulled back into a tight bun and slacks that looked as freshly pressed at this late hour as they likely were when she put them on. Her russet brown skin was smooth except for the crease between her eyes, as if she had spent too much time furrowing her brow. She flashed him a bright white smile but quickly turned her attention to the food on the table and rubbed her hands together as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

  Rene, the suspicious Mama Bear from the day before, poked her head in and yelled for Alexa to come to dinner. Then the room was somehow full of women scarfing down the dinner he’d brought for Holly.

  Though his plan was to be locked in the conference room, eating a home-cooked meal with the woman who had been haunting his dreams since the moment she had thrown him to the ground, he didn’t mind sharing his food or his time with her team. This was the most relaxed she’d looked since he had met her—which still wasn’t very relaxed. She was smiling, though, and that made him smile, too.

  “What’s in this?” Sam asked, poking at the food on her plate.

  “Beef,” Holly lied, while Rene simultaneously said, “Lamb.”

  Sam looked horrified. Eva, the redhead, started singing a nursery rhyme about bags of wool, and Sam’s lip trembled.

  “Stop,” Holly insisted.

  Sam’s lips quivered even harder as she gawked at Holly, clearly seeking a truth she didn’t want to know.

  “Yes, it’s lamb, but it’s delicious. Just try it.”

  “I did. That’s why I asked what it was.” Sam stuck her lip out in a pout and pushed the food aside.

  “I’ll have Mama make something for you without meat next time,” Jack offered.

  Sam gave him a sad smile. “Thanks.”

  Watching Holly take control of the dinner conversation showed Jack just how important her role in the office was. She had said she didn’t want to be a leader, but that was exactly what she was to every woman in the room. She was in control, and while the other members of her team were clearly strong in their own right, it was obvious to Jack each took her lead from Holly.

  “She doesn’t date,” Alexa said, pulling Jack from his thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  She nodded her head toward Holly. “She doesn’t date. Hasn’t since I’ve known her.”

  Jack figured there was some correct response to her comment, but he didn’t know what that could be. He was glad, however, to learn that Holly apparently was single. He hadn’t realized until that moment that he hadn’t even considered she might be seeing someone. He just knew he found her irresistible and hoped she felt the same.

  “She’s too focused on us,” Alexa continued. “She feels responsible for us, even though she isn’t. She’s afraid to let her guard down.”

  He caught Holly’s gaze. She looked…suspicious? Her attention drifted toward Alexa for a moment, but she blinked away whatever had flashed in her eyes and returned her focus to Eva.

  “Maybe you can help her with that,” Alexa whispered.

  He looked at her, and she smiled, though the sparkle in her eyes looked a bit mischievous.

  “I see how you look at her, Detective. And I see how she looks at you. She needs someone to distract her from all the misery we see day in and day out in this place. Why not you?”

  He met Holly’s eye again. She held his stare until Eva said something that drew her attention, giving Jack an opportunity to take in Holly’s profile—to really look at her—without her tossing a sarcastic comeback his way.

  He didn’t know how it was possible for her to be more beautiful today than she’d been the day before, but he’d swear it was so. On the surface, she looked tired and overworked and overstressed, but he was looking beyond the dark circles under her eyes to the soft curve of her jawline and the not-too-obvious bump in her nose that made him wonder if it’d been broken once before or if that was a natural imperfection simply adding to her appeal. Her smile was soft but genuine, and he could swear he felt the warmth of it spread through his entire body. She had one of the toughest exteriors he’d ever seen, but he knew in that moment she had built that shell to protect something incredibly vulnerable.

  She glanced at him, catching him once again staring at her, but he didn’t break away. Instead, he hoped Alexa was right, that Holly wanted him just as much as he wanted her. He definitely felt a spark between them.

  He sat silently, debating Alexa’s question—why not him?—while the women finished eating and running through their cases. As they filtered out of the room, he thanked them for their compliments and promised to have his mother cook for them again soon. Alexa nudged him as she stood, nodded her head toward Holly, and then eased the conference room door closed on her way out. That was man code for “go for it.” He wasn’t sure if that meant the same in woman code, but he was beginning to suspect these women didn’t abide by what men had come to expect of them.

  Holly tossed an empty plate in the trash can next to Jack’s chair. “Hope you weren’t wanting leftovers.”

  “Are you kidding? My mother would take offense.”

  “We don’t get real food around here often. Eva used to bring in dinner about once a week, but since she and her boyfriend broke up a few months ago, she doesn’t cook much.”

  “So,” he said before she could step away, “you don’t cook?”

  “I’m single. It seems pointless. But I can cook, if that is what you are asking. At least well enough to get by. You?”

  “I kick ass at ordering take-out.”

  She laughed, and he had to force air into his lungs. This woman could kill him without even trying. Brushing her hands together, as if ridding them of crumbs, she seemed oblivious to how every movement she made entranced him. He had to fight the urge to take her hands in his and pull her to him.

  She caught him staring yet again—he’d lost count how many times that’d
happened during their impromptu dinner party. Each time he felt trapped in her gaze, incapable of breaking the contact. Her eyes captivated him in a way he didn’t understand. He thought, for the first time in his life, something was a mystery to him that he wasn’t determined to pick apart.

  Moving away from him, she focused on the whiteboard, and he instantly missed her being so close. Logic tried to push into his mind—slow down, take a step back, wait for her to make a move. But he snuffed that voice as easily as he would blow out a candle. He stepped to her side, far closer than necessary.

  Holly drew an audible breath and then exhaled slowly as she gestured toward the board. “I compared the list of services and utilities for the Nelsons that you e-mailed to the list I got from Fredrickson. One match.” She pointed. “Both had cable providers in-home for services in June. I haven’t been able to determine if it was the same serviceperson for both. Julia shopped online several times a month. I thought we should check into the delivery services. Maybe they are on the same route. He could have seen them while delivering their packages. I keep coming back to this dog-shelter sticker, though. There is something more to that.” She glanced his way, as if to get his feedback, and caught him watching her. She tilted her head and cocked her brow. “You’re staring at me. Why?”

  A hundred lame excuses and denials ran through his mind, but none came out. She didn’t seem to care for games any more than he did. She’d given him an opening, and he wanted to take it.

  “You have to ask?”

  She responded by lifting her other brow.

  Jack couldn’t resist. He lightly traced the arch with the tip of his forefinger. “I can’t help it. You’re beautiful, Holly.”

  Her eyes widened slightly and her perfect lips parted, but she didn’t say anything.

  “That’s inappropriate. I know.” His acknowledgement didn’t stop him from running his finger along her jawline. “But the more I’m around you, the more I feel the need to memorize everything about you.” With his fingers now under her chin, he brushed his thumb over her lips.