by Nancy Warren
Once dinner was done, Matthew and Brittany got up to leave. “Thank you so much for a wonderful dinner,” Brittany said.
“You’re welcome. I enjoyed meeting you.” And she had. She knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Brittany and Matthew were never going to make each other happy.
Of course, that was a pro bono case and right now she had to focus on the one paying her. Rafe rose to leave at the same time and she stopped him, saying, “I wonder if you could stay behind, Rafe. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
Matthew flicked her a glance that was full of surprise and hostility. She blinked, then realized he was condemning her for what he obviously thought was a ploy to get his ex-partner into bed. She raised her brows at him and then shot a rather significant glance at the woman waiting patiently by his side.
Matthew’s jaw clenched and with a curt, “’Night,” he was gone, shutting the door behind him with unnecessary violence.
Rafe didn’t say a word, simply looked at Chloe. His expression was, if anything, carefully expressionless.
She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want to seduce you.”
He sat back down. “I’m sorry to hear that, but it will save me a pounding from my buddy there.”
“Matthew’s a fool,” she said.
“Seemed to spend more of the evening with his eyes on you than on that gal he’s set to marry.”
“Oh, he’s not going to marry that sweet girl. It would be a disaster.”
Rafe’s eyes stayed steady on hers. She could see the cop in him now. “Matt tell you that?”
“Of course not. He doesn’t know it himself yet.” She took a deep breath, knowing she was going to have to tread carefully. “But I didn’t ask you to stay to talk about Matthew.” She twiddled with one of her earrings. “Rafe, I want you to do me a favor.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I run a rather unusual business.”
“Yeah. Matthew seemed pretty bent out of shape by something you were doing.”
“Matthew gets bent out of shape by pretty much everything I do,” she said.
He didn’t argue and she wondered how much Matthew had said about her. “Tell me about this business of yours.”
“You have to promise not to tell Matthew anything about it.”
“I can’t promise anything if you’re operating outside the law.”
She giggled. “Oh, dear. Is that what he thinks? Poor Matthew. No, of course I’m not a lawbreaker. I am the owner of The Breakup Artist.”
“You’re a makeup artist?”
“No. Breakup. People pay me to end unsatisfactory relationships.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. I’m not. You’d be surprised how many people want to end an affair and have no idea how to do it. I help them.”
“What do you do? Deliver dead roses and slap faces?”
“Please. I have standards. Mainly, I try to end things in a way that’s the least painful for all involved.”
“What’s wrong with these people that they can’t do their own breaking up?”
“Oh, a multitude of reasons. Don’t want to hurt their partner, don’t want to do the dirty work. They’ve moved on and simply can’t be bothered. Sometimes they try to get the other person to break up with them.”
He sent her an odd look, then glanced down at his hands. “You do this work alone?”
“I do have one employee,” she said with a hint of pride. “Stephanie, my receptionist. She starts on Monday.”
His glance shot up to meet hers, sharp and slightly alarming. “Stephanie. I know a Stephanie who works at a bank.”
“Isn’t that a coincidence? My Stephanie works at a bank. But I offered her a job and she accepted.”
“When was this?”
He seemed to be taking an awful lot of interest in things that had nothing to do with him. “I doubt it’s the same person.”
“Yeah, probably.” He shifted. “So, what’s the favor?”
Suddenly, she wasn’t so certain she wanted to ask him for this favor. And yet, he was perfect and if he said no, she’d be no worse off than she was now.
“I know this will seem odd, but I need someone very much like you, someone disorganized and chaotic, but also intelligent and attractive. I want you to make an appointment with a psychotherapist and get her to fall in love with you.”
It seemed as though Rafe sat there and stared at her without moving a muscle for ten minutes. Of course, it was probably no more than thirty seconds, but they were among the longest seconds of her life.
“How am I going to get some woman I don’t even know to fall in love with me?”
“I suspect, for all your scruffiness, you don’t have much trouble in that department,” she said sharply.
She was rewarded with one of his lightning grins, the ones that she’d hazarded her assumption on. “What would be in it for me?”
She regarded him for a moment, her head to one side, considering. This was, of course, the sticking point. “I’m assuming you’re single?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could break up an unsatisfactory relationship for you at no charge.”
“I don’t have any of those.”
“Aren’t you lucky.” She stood in the hallway that Matthew had no doubt rebuilt in some clever fashion and wondered what would appeal to this man in front of her. “Well, of course, the sessions with the counselor will be free. She’s got an excellent reputation. Perhaps you have a problem you need help with?”
His gaze sharpened suddenly on her face. Oh, interesting. There was something. “I’m not into shrinks.”
“Really? I love therapists. It’s so lovely to be able to talk about oneself for hours without then feeling obliged to listen to the other person’s problems. I look on therapy as a day at the spa for my psyche. Perhaps you’ll learn something. Perhaps there’s some small behavior pattern you have that you might like to modify.”
Rafe had good manners and his abuela, who’d drummed them into him from the time he was old enough to sit at a table with the adults, would roll over in her grave if he gave in to his inclination to grab his stuff out of the front closet and walk out.
Besides, he knew that this was the woman Matt had wanted him to tail from the food court, and that she’d been seen with Stephanie right before he appeared on the scene, by which time she’d vanished and so he’d followed Stephanie instead.
He was curious.
And worried. What was up with Stephanie that she’d leave a safe job at the bank to run off and work for this British wing nut?
An awful sense of guilt crawled up his spine. He’d deliberately gone into the bank to warn her that he was keeping his eye on her. He was trying to protect her. He hadn’t wanted to scare her out of her nine-to-five routine, her livelihood, and her company pension plan.
Had he done that?
As much as he hated anything to do with shrinks, he’d sure like an excuse to keep an eye on Stephanie and it seemed pretty likely that his Stephanie and Chloe’s Stephanie were one and the same.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, walking purposefully to the front closet where she’d left his stuff.
She followed at a leisurely pace. “Thank you.” She handed him a business card. He read it and shook his head. “I never heard of anyone who made money off breaking people up.”
“What about divorce lawyers? They make a lot more money and cause a great deal more misery than I do. The thing you must remember, Rafe, is that a solid relationship is safe from anything I might do. By the time someone comes to me, the relationship is all but over. I merely ease the transition along and, if I do say so myself, make the breakup easier on the other party.”
“By tricking someone like a therapist to fall in love with a guy like me who’s only there to cause trouble?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Honestly, think it through. If a woman who is ethical and obsessed with orderly rules of relationships begins to
develop feelings for another man, she’s not going to go after him. She’s going to realize that there’s a problem in her primary relationship. I’ve thought it all through. She’ll never allow herself to get involved with a patient. You’re safe. All I want you to do is go along and perhaps share with her some of your disorderly attributes.”
“Like I said, I’ll think about it.” By this time he’d shrugged into his jacket and was halfway to her front door, his helmet swinging at his side.
He strode down the path to where he’d left his bike and rode off into the night. Even as he told himself not to be stupid, he passed the turn that would take him home and headed instead for the office.
He muttered a string of obscenities in Spanish even as he parked and headed into the precinct.
Because of the nature of his work, he was often there at odd hours, so nobody thought anything of him appearing at eleven o’clock at night to use the department computer and resources. He tried to convince himself he was doing the work he was paid for, and not using government property for personal reasons, but he didn’t try very hard.
Instead, he worked swiftly. He knew her first name was Stephanie and who her employer was and at which branch she was a teller. In a ridiculously short amount of time he had her full name, date of birth, home phone number, and address.
There’d been an engagement ring sparkling on her finger both times he’d seen her. Was it a live-in arrangement?
He figured he’d drive by her place, check to see if there were lights on, and take it from there.
Once more he headed off on his bike, this time riding to her address in south Austin where a string of blocklike apartments stretched like boxcars.
She was in the second building, apartment 318. He glanced at his watch. Eleven thirty. A lot of lights were shining in third-floor windows, but he had no idea which one was hers. Or whether she was alone.
He walked to the front of the building, contemplating ringing her apartment, when a couple walked out of the front doors, the guy holding the door open politely for him to enter. Of course, he should read the pair a lecture on safety and security, but instead, he muttered thanks and entered the building.
He never took an elevator if he could help it, so he found the staircase and jogged up a couple of flights of stairs that smelled of stale air and some kind of bug repellent.
The third-floor corridor was dimly lit, and the carpet needed replacing. The walls were scuffed, but the place was clean enough. It would run to transients, young people starting out like Stephanie, divorcees in transition, people new to the city. He found 318 and noted light under the door. He put his ear against it and heard voices. He was about to walk away when he realized the noise was from a TV.
Knowing it was crazy, he knocked on the door anyway.
There was a long pause and then a female voice said, without opening the door, “What do you want?”
At least somebody in this building knew the importance of security and safety precautions, he thought, even as it irritated him that she hadn’t opened the door. Maybe the boyfriend was there. He said, “Police business.” If the boyfriend was there he’d make up something. He hadn’t survived working undercover without being quick on his feet.
Once again there was a pause. He wondered if she’d open the door at all and figured she was pondering the same thing.
At last he heard the deadbolt slide, and then she opened the door a measly six inches.
She’d had a bath or a shower. That was the first thing he noticed. Her hair was wet, hanging in damp tendrils down the front of a white terrycloth robe, like the ones in hotels. He wondered if she’d swiped it.
He saw a tantalizing six-inch strip of soft, damp skin at the vee of her robe. Her calves, ankles, and feet were bare. She had cinnamon-colored nail polish on her toes and a funky silver toe ring.
She didn’t say anything, simply regarded him with those eyes that drew him in with their hints of warmth and cold at war. He understood exactly how she felt, for he was at once thrumming with heat simply from being in her presence and filled with an icy anger that such a great woman was messing up her life.
“Are you alone?” he finally asked.
She moved her head to glance behind him. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
Their gazes met and held. Wordlessly, she opened the door and he walked in, still wondering what the fuck he was doing.
The door shut slowly behind him and they stood there in a small hallway with beige carpeting and beige walls and he thought how wrong the setting was for such a vibrant woman.
She turned, pulling the lapels of her robe tighter, and stalked into the small living area. She picked up her remote and flipped off the TV.
Silence surrounded them. He felt the heat in his blood that she stirred every time she was near. It was crazy. She was needy, wounded in some way he didn’t yet understand, and a ring sparkled on her engagement finger.
Then she turned and he realized he was wrong. Her hands were ringless.
“Where’s your engagement ring?”
“I took it off.”
He moved closer. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted to smell the female scents of shampoo and flowery soaps and lotions. He wanted to be close enough to touch her. He saw the wariness in her eyes, but she didn’t back away.
“Why? Why did you take off your ring?”
Her eyes heated and he could see her about to tell him to go to hell, when something shifted in her expression. He picked up sadness, confusion, saw the distress flares flash and felt again that pull toward her that came from somewhere outside the physical realm. “We broke up.”
“I’m glad,” he said, because it was the simple truth.
“You don’t even know him.” She whispered the words, her lips barely moving. She had a beautiful mouth. Bare of any makeup, she looked young, fresh, voluptuous.
“I’m glad for me.”
“What do you want?” Her voice was unsteady and he fought to remind himself he wasn’t here to sample the nakedness under her robe.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
She laughed, a jerky sound, and turned her head away. “You came to the bank and practically threatened me. Every time I turn around, there you are, watching me. Why would that scare me?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
Her head swung back, wet hair slapping her neck. “Protect me?” she shouted. “You’ve been stalking me, intimidating me, making me feel…”
“Feel what?” His voice came out husky.
“Guilty.”
“I had to stop you.”
She sat down suddenly on the couch, more as though her legs wouldn’t hold her up than because she wanted to be seated, he thought. Her color was up. From embarrassment? Anger? Guilt?
“What were you thinking?” he asked, sitting beside her on the couch, but not too close. Realizing he was still holding his bike helmet, he reached to place it on the floor, then straightened and turned to face her. “Why would you steal cheap shit that could get you in trouble?”
“I used to have a problem,” she said, “but I haven’t for a long time. I don’t even know what’s the matter with me. I get this crazy urge and I can’t stop myself.”
“What if you’d been caught? You could have lost everything. Your job, this apartment, everything.”
She returned his gaze. “Exactly.” She slumped back and blew out a breath. Her robe parted and she didn’t seem to notice. He tried to tell himself he hadn’t noticed either.
“I’ve been going to therapy for years. It was part of my probation agreement when I got caught.”
“You have a record?” How had she landed a job in a bank with a shoplifting conviction? And how come it hadn’t come up when he’d run his search on her?
She shook her head. “I was a juvie. Sixteen. No permanent record, but I had to go for therapy. My lawyer made an argument that I was under a lot of stress at the time. My parents were splitting up an
d I’d started hanging out with the wrong crowd.” She shrugged, obviously uncomfortable. “You know how it is.”
He nodded. “How come you haven’t been caught again? Do you think your luck’s going to last forever?” He was getting angry. She was so young, so bright. Why would she throw her life away for a bunch of crap stolen from a mall?
Her eyes were so big and so troubled when she turned to him. “You don’t get it. I haven’t. I call my therapist every time I get the urge. And she gets me in. It’s always saved me.”
“Not always,” he reminded her.
“No. If you hadn’t followed me around that store, I would have taken that watch.” She rubbed her temples as though she had a headache brewing. “I snapped.”
“What made you snap?”
Her smile was a little twisted. “Getting engaged.”
A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. He watched it, unable to look away. If he put his lips there, he’d feel that pulse throbbing against his mouth. He wondered how her skin would taste. Ached to find out. “Must be the wrong man.”
“No,” she said sadly. “He was the right man. That’s my problem—I’m always attracted to the wrong men.”
“Always?”
She looked at him, and he felt the heat coming off her, coming off him. “Yeah,” she said, and leaned over, putting her lips on his. And just like that, lust sucker-punched him.
He had his arms around her before he could even think about stopping himself, about restraint, brains, consequences, going down this fucking path again. Another wounded bird.
But with her curled against him, smelling of all those girl scents and the underlying woman scent of her, how could he think?
Why would he want to?
Their mouths were greedy for each other, crazy. They kissed the way starving people might eat. His hands were in her hair, fisting in the still-damp strands.
She had her hands under the leather jacket he hadn’t yet taken off, pushing it off his shoulders. He stopped to shrug the thing off, to help her yank his shirt over his head. It caught on the gold icon his grandmother had given him and he almost strangled as they dragged the shirt off in spite of the restriction.
