by Anne Calhoun
He flushed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and felt his shoulders crawl up to his ears. “Sorry,” he said. “I was out of line.”
“No, you were observant,” she said.
He looked at her, feeling a little of the heat drain from his cheeks.
“And you’re right. It’s not a good idea. I appreciate you stopping it now, before I really made a fool of myself.”
Her smile was a little forced, not quite reaching her eyes, and the color on her cheeks was now the dull red of embarrassment, not the bright flush of attraction. He reached out and snared her wrist, stopping her in the act of turning away from him.
“That’s on me,” he said, too rough, then moderated his tone. “I feel it, too. That’s why I said something. If it was just you, I would have ignored it. You’re savvy enough to read the signs. But this way…”
His voice trailed off, because he could feel her pulse skipping and thunking under his thumb, even through the thin fabric of her hoodie. A split second later he saw it in her throat. He wanted to back her into the wall, span her throat with his hand, and kiss her, measuring the strength of her response in her blood rising heated to her face under his fingertips.
She drew in a swift breath. He dropped her wrist, knowing he was over the line. No touching the star.
He wasn’t prepared for her fingertips to close around his. His gaze flashed to hers, and he could feel it happen, all the defenses drop, the stupid, dangerous, wide-eyed vulnerability he showed every single time someone wanted him.
“But this way,” she said, “we acknowledge it. It’s out in the open. We both know how we feel, where we stand. We’re both responsible for … managing it.”
“Managing it,” he repeated. Her touch had short-circuited his brain.
“Coming off tour is like coming off an eight-month adrenaline high,” she said. She didn’t drop his hand. “There’s a pretty predictable pattern. I sleep. A lot. Binge on TV shows. Eat all the junk food I couldn’t eat when I had to fit into a skin-tight costume. Stare into space. And I have all the sex I didn’t have when I was on tour.”
His heart stopped. Literally stopped. Like, he’d give himself CPR if he could move. His throat wasn’t working either.
“That’s probably a couple of days away,” she said. “I’m still in the sleep-and-take-hot-showers stage. Is it going to be a problem if I bring someone home?”
Hell, yes, it was going to be a problem. Voyeurism didn’t even make the bottom of his kinks list, and the thought of watching some hipster roam around in his boxers after a night with Cady made him see red. The thought of listening to it in this quiet, secluded house shut his brain right off.
He inhaled deep, and forced himself to pull his hand free from hers. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Fine,” she said. Her chin was still lifted, but she was cucumber cool about the whole thing. Except for her pink cheeks, no longer the steam-tomato or embarrassment-brick. No, the color in her face was the deep rose of desire.
He cleared his throat, stepped to the side. “Complete tour of the house. Please.”
There wasn’t much to see he hadn’t already seen. The upstairs consisted of a huge living space. A big area rug and long table sectioned off the dining area, while the island with stools sectioned off the kitchen. A leather sofa and chairs clustered around a fireplace with a stone chimney stretching up to the top of the vaulted ceilings. A screen hid the television above the mantel. Shelves stretched from the floor by the hearth to the ceiling and held an astonishing array of items: a taxidermied armadillo, a turtle’s shell, a deflated football, a complete, articulated skeleton of some animal he couldn’t identify without the fur to help him along. Books held together by two rearing-horse bookends. Pictures in mismatched frames, some of people he recognized, some of people he didn’t, and lots of landscapes and city streets.
“I take a lot of pictures,” Cady said, following his gaze. “Some of them are even good.”
He recognized the clutter of someone who lived her life from her deepest soul to the most unimportant possession. None of this was junk. It all held a story Cady could tell about somewhere she’d been, someone she’d met, something she’d done. It was the kind of decorating that put a magazine’s spread to shame, and the kind of thing he’d never been able to pull off on his own. Not because he lacked some decorating gene, but because he’d never been able to get past the idea that at any moment he might have to pack up his stuff and move.
“Interesting,” he said. “Let’s move on.”
Two bedrooms with a big landing/sitting area in between finished the main level. Downstairs there was an empty basement with a wet bar running along one wall, finished and ready to be turned into a movie or game room. A treadmill, elliptical, rower, and TRX setup were behind one door opposite the bar. A small recording studio was behind the other. He peered into the utility room, but no one was lurking behind the water heater and furnace.
He nodded at the boxes stacked neatly along the far wall. “What’s in the boxes?”
“Stuff from my childhood, mostly. The Christmas decorations we’ll put up in a couple of weeks. The usual crap you’d find in someone’s basement.”
“Who knows your address?” he asked, moving on.
She shrugged as she led him up the stairs to the main floor. “Theoretically, only my family, a few really close friends, my lawyers, and my management team. I bought the house with an LLC—limited liability company—that’s tucked under a couple of layers.”
“Where do your fans think you live when you’re not touring?”
“Everyone knows I come home to Lancaster. I guess they think I’m still living with my mom.” She perched on the arm of the big leather sofa facing the fireplace.
“I thought you told your fans everything.”
“I give them the impression I’ve told them everything, but this is totally under the radar. Not sure how long I can keep it that way. Chris was kind of pissed when I bought the house, because I wouldn’t let People do an “artist at home” feature on me in my new house. I need somewhere to go to ground. Somewhere I can just be.”
Her feet swayed gently, and she tugged the cuffs of her hoodie over her hands as she spoke. In the warm spotlights the shadows under her eyes became even more vivid. She looked exhausted, like she was sliding down the slope to a very long night of sleep.
“I need to go home,” he said. “When I went to the precinct today I wasn’t packed for an extended vacation. I can’t leave you here alone.”
“Okay,” she replied gamely. She slid off the sofa’s arm, grabbed her jacket from the hook in the mudroom, and preceded him out the door, into the garage, where she paused to look very, very longingly at her car.
“I’m really harshing your buzz,” he observed.
“You are,” she said, but slid into the passenger’s seat without further complaint. She buckled up, then leaned back and closed her eyes. “About the only thing I can do on my own, without worrying about pictures showing up somewhere, is get in my car and drive.”
He reversed down the driveway at a speed that made her eyes pop open. “Yikes,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s the car. And the driving course at the academy.”
“Go ahead,” she said. “One of us should have a good time … in this car.”
But she was a little more awake now, looking out the window as they drove through Lancaster to his apartment complex in midtown, close enough to the precinct to make his commute negligible, but far enough away that he didn’t run into people he’d arrested. He parked at the farthest entrance. “Stay close,” he said.
She obeyed, pulling the fur-trimmed hood of her down jacket around her face, so her distinctive hair and eyes disappeared into the shadows. His apartment was on the top floor in the corner, and when he unlocked the door he tried to remember whether the place was a total disaster, or merely messy.
Messy. Really messy.
“I
wasn’t expecting company,” he said. He gathered a stinky exercise T-shirt from the arm of the sofa, and dirty dinner plates from the dining set under the pass-through to the kitchen, then dumped everything on the kitchen counter.
“No worries,” she said, standing just inside the door, looking around. “I spent most of the last year on a tour bus with a bunch of dudes. I’m pretty hard to faze. I see you’re not an early Christmas decorator.”
He had no Christmas decorations. Shane’s family went to town with Christmas, and in the past, he’d gone along for the ride. Lately he’d been getting his Christmas fix at the Block. The holidays were a great chance for overtime, picking up shifts for cops with families. “Yeah, no. Not really. Make yourself at home. Grab something from the fridge if you’re thirsty.”
The fridge door opened, bottles clinking, as he ducked into his bedroom and snagged his gym duffle from the floor. He dumped his workout clothes on the bed, then replaced them with underwear, socks, shirts. A second pair of jeans, and a pair of khakis. Would he need a jacket and tie? She might go out to dinner somewhere nice, with the unnamed hipster hookup. He’d have to go along, sit at another table, or maybe hang out in the bar, and watch him seduce Cady, or worse, Cady seduce him. What was the protocol for going out? The department provided extra training to the officers assigned to the mayor’s security detail, but the mayor was the former chief of police and Lieutenant Hawthorn’s dad. It was a cushy assignment, made easier by the mayor’s close relationship with the department. Either way, Conn hadn’t been through it.
He added a button-down shirt, and a tie, then folded his blue blazer and laid it on top of the clothes. He peered out of the bedroom doorway to find Cady standing beside his dining table, an open bottle of beer in her hand.
“Do you mind if I use your workout equipment?” he asked.
“One of us should,” she said, grinning. “I’m taking December off.”
He added shorts and running shoes to the bag, set his laptop and power cord on top of the stack of clothes, then lifted it in one hand and his utility belt in the other. In the dining room he dropped the bag on the floor, then sat down to work his gear off his belt and check it. Badge. He still had that, and he was going to carry it until someone made him give it up. Handcuffs in the case went at the small of his back. Taser on his right hip, just to the front of where his gun would sit.
The equipment made various clicks and thuds as he checked it, then snapped it onto his belt. When he looked up, Cady was staring at him, her bottle of beer halfway to her mouth.
“Didn’t Evan carry?”
She shook her head. “He was a bodyguard, not law enforcement. He had training in martial arts, that kind of thing, but the general idea was he’d get me away from a threat, not neutralize it. I’m not a head of state or something.”
“I’m law enforcement on duty,” Conn said. He pulled his Glock from its holster, checked the safety, ejected the clip, checked the rounds, then shoved it back in. “I’m carrying my service weapon. But between you and me, there’s a ton of paperwork that comes after you fire your service weapon, even more if I shoot someone.”
“With lawyers bearing the paperwork. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.” An amused glint in her eyes, she lifted the bottle and swallowed the last of the beer.
He stood up and clipped his gun to his belt. The badge and gun, the Taser and cuffs, grounded him, counteracting that drifting feeling he’d had since he walked into the conference room and Hawthorn showed him the pictures of his arrestee, brutally assaulted, and said the word “reassigned.” “All right,” he said.
“That’s it?” she asked.
He looked at his duffle. He’d moved so often, bouncing from house to house. Sometimes he had a room of his own, more often he slept on a sofa or in a sleeping bag on the floor. Only after he became a cop was he able to appreciate the fact that he’d stayed out of foster care. “I’m used to packing light,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He was also getting used to keeping her close, one hand on her shoulder to guide her down the stairs in front of him. He dropped his hand when they reached the sidewalk, but she stayed on his left hip all the way to the car. He got her inside first, then dropped his bag on the backseat and slid in to the driver’s side.
“You’re good at this,” he said.
“I know the protocol. I may not be happy about it, but I’ll make the right moves.”
“I appreciate it,” he said. “I’m not trained for close protection work.”
“I’ve got your back,” she said seriously. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “All I ask is that if I do something outside that protocol, you do your best to roll with it.”
“You handled yourself okay at the concert,” he said. “Let’s get some dinner and go through the psychos email file. I’ll feel better when I know exactly what I’m dealing with.”
“Eat in or take out?” she said around a yawn.
“We’ll get something to go,” he said. “I don’t want to have this conversation in a restaurant, and you look like you’re on your last leg.”
“The clock’s definitely ticking,” she said. “All I want is a hot shower, then about twelve hours of sleep.”
The air crackled for a moment as he remembered exactly what happened after the sleep-and-shower portion of the post-tour crash. “What kind of food do you want?”
“Barbecue,” she said. “Fat Shack. I’ll call them now and we won’t have to wait long for carryout.”
She made the call while he drove out of his apartment complex. The server knew her voice, because there was a short conversation before Cady could order. “Brisket or pulled pork? Sides?” she asked.
“Brisket sandwich, and fries are fine.”
“For you, maybe,” she said, and added corn bread, baked beans, and a brownie to the order.
“Billy will call me when it’s ready,” she said. “Normally I’d just wait inside like a normal human being, but right now I’m not up to a conversation.”
When they pulled up, the parking lot was jammed. Cady slouched down in her seat and watched the door. When her phone rang, she answered it, then dug two twenties out of the slot behind her phone and opened the door.
“Stay here. I’ll go,” he said.
“I said body guarding and driving only.”
“I have to go either way,” he pointed out.
“Okay, but we won’t make this a habit,” she said and handed him the money. “Billy won’t take it. Put it in the tip jar when he’s not looking.”
“Got it,” he said.
The restaurant was crowded, people waiting for takeout orders occupying every available inch of the benches on either side of the picnic table by the front window. The rest of the tables were full. The guy behind the counter handled Conn a white plastic bag. “She called and said you were coming. On the house. Say hi for me.”
“Thanks,” Conn said, and took the bag. When Billy looked at the next customer behind Conn, he tucked the twenties into the tip jar and made his escape.
He handed off the bag when he got in the car. She opened the tin foil and stuffed two fries in her mouth. “Want some?”
He got a handful from the bag and multitasked like a mad man, shifting and steering and claiming fries all the way down Tenth Street, cutting through the Cherokee Hill neighborhood to get to her house.
“I should have asked. Are you vegetarian? Vegan?”
“I don’t eat a ton of red meat,” he said.
She scanned him in a way that shouldn’t have been as crazy hot as it was, then lifted her eyebrows. “Really.”
“Chasing down bad guys is hard enough without stopping to puke. They laugh at you if you stop to puke.”
She had to open all the drawers to find the silverware, then started in on the search for the plates. “I’m still learning where everything is. Emily and Mom set up the house for me. I’ll get to know the setup when I decorate for Christmas. We’re having the holidays here so I
’ll have to find the plates by … there they are.”
“I’d just eat it right out of the foil,” he admitted, ignoring the holiday talk in favor of the psychos email folder. “How strong is your stomach?”
One eyebrow lifted. “The hate mail and death threats? I can eat and read at the same time.”
He opened the file on the table between them, and started leafing through the pages. The language was horrific, the threats violent and specific and gruesome. Cady dipped her sandwich in the barbecue sauce and tapped one page with her index finger. “This guy’s been around a while. He hates me because I’m part of the soulless machine that’s destroying music. He threatens most of us equally, although the guys don’t get as many rape threats as the female singers.”
“Rape is not a joke,” Conn said.
“It’s the internet,” Cady said. “You’re familiar with the internet, right? Post even the most bland essay or article and the trolls come out from under a bridge.”
“Who goes on the internet and threatens to rape someone?”
“People without lives? People with axes to grind? People who want to throw rocks at shiny things?” She shrugged. “They’re entitled to opinions. I stopped engaging. I post, interact with fans, and let the label and Chris handle the rest via a press release or a social media post.”
He stared at the pages and pages of fury, loathing, and aggression, then looked up at her, letting his disbelief show on his face. “You walk away from a fight like this.”
“All day every day and twice on Sunday,” she said. She met his gaze with an even expression. “Sometimes walking away is the only thing I can do that makes sense. I can’t win. I can absolutely lose. So I walk. Do you want something else to drink? I’ve got wine, soda, or water.”
“Water,” he said.
She got up and collected the trash in the plastic food sack, and stacked their plates. “By the way, I don’t drink caffeinated coffee, so if you have to have it, we’ll need to go out in the morning.”
He blew out his breath. He could handle a run-in with Hawthorn and Chris, administrative leave, getting assigned to guard a pop star he was insanely attracted to, but not having caffeinated coffee in the morning might kill him. “I’ll get some when we go out,” he said. “What’s the schedule for tomorrow?”
