The Lady in Red & Dangerous Deception

by Linda Turner

  Staring down at her, her fingers lighting a slow burn deep in his gut, Blake could only nod. Did the little minx know what she was doing to him? She had to—he certainly had no way of hiding it from her—and all she was doing was soaping his hand! And seducing him with the kind of love talk that no man with any blood in his veins could resist. With infinite care she took his other hand, giving it the same attention to detail as she confided how she liked his hands on her breasts and sliding down her belly.

  There was no doubt that she knew exactly what she was doing—her eyes were alight with naughtiness as she lathered her hands again, then carefully soaped each arm all the way to his shoulders, all the while telling him how safe she felt with his arms around her, how she knew nothing and no one could hurt her as long as he was holding her.

  He’d thought he was a strong man, but with nothing more than that, she broke him. Groaning, he reached for her. “Come here, witch.”

  “Wait.” She laughed as he hauled her against his chest where she belonged. “Don’t you want me to wash your back?”

  “Later,” he rasped, kissing her senseless. “Much later.”

  On fire for her, he gave her no time to tease or argue or even catch her breath. Pushing her up against the shower wall, he tried to hang on to patience, tenderness, but he was beyond that. His hands were shaking—shaking!—his lungs straining. He could feel the fire in her, the need, and by God, he ached. Then her hands were on him, right where he’d wanted them, and something in him just seemed to snap. Sweeping her up, her urged her legs around his hips.

  “Blake! What—”

  “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he said thickly, surging into her before she could do anything but gasp. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  He wanted to say more—that he hoped to God she hadn’t been teasing when she’d said how safe she felt in his arms—but she moved, clutching him tighter, taking him deeper, and his entire universe shrank to the wet, hot heat of her surrounding him, her breasts slippery with soap as she slid against him, her name a chant, a promise, that called to him in his head. The world could have stopped and started turning the other way, but, lost in the wonder of her, he never would have noticed. There was nothing except Sabrina, pulling him toward paradise, taking him as he’d never been taken in his life.

  Chapter 10

  Too spent afterwards to do much more than clumsily drag a towel over both of them, Blake carried her to bed and crawled in beside her in the dark, dragging the sheet and bedspread up around them as the cool air from the air conditioner brushed over their still-damp bodies. Shivering slightly, Sabrina scooted back against him, her soft sigh a whisper in the night as he draped an arm around her waist and anchored her close. Outside, the rain drummed against the roof and dripped from the eaves, and occasionally, thunder rumbled far off to the east. Sated, content, they slept.

  They turned to each other again in the night as naturally as if they’d been doing it for years, lazily exploring each other with slow hands and drugging kisses. The white-hot flash of heat that had driven them before was now a glowing ember that warmed instead of burned. This time, they had the patience to linger, to stroke, to pleasure each other until they were weak with the wonder of it. And when he swept her under him and she welcomed him with a soft moan, they looked into each other’s eyes in the dark and couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Whatever happened in the future, they had now, tonight, and nothing could ever take that away from them.

  Still buried deep inside her, unable to let her go, Blake drifted back to sleep with her in his arms. Exhausted, replete, more relaxed than he’d ever been in his life, he never heard the rain stop or the nurse who lived next door come home after working the three-to-eleven shift. Not wanting anything to disturb this night with Sabrina, he’d remembered to shut off the phone on the nightstand after they’d made love in the shower, so he never heard the one in the kitchen ring around two in the morning. Ten rings later, it finally stopped, but his face was buried in Sabrina’s hair, his dreams filled with her, and the rest of the world had long since ceased to exist.

  When someone pounded on the front door at three, he frowned in his sleep, fighting wakefulness. It was thunder, he told himself groggily. Another storm had rolled in—it would blow itself out in a little while and be gone by morning. But the pounding continued, and he came awake with a start to realize that someone was hammering at his front door loud enough to wake the dead. Muttering a curse, he eased away from Sabrina, careful not to wake her, and reached for his jeans.

  “Hold your horses,” he grumbled as he quietly shut the bedroom door and hurried barefoot across the living room. “I’m coming, dammit! And this damn well better be good.”

  His jeans zipped but not buttoned, he glanced through the peephole and lifted a brow in surprise at the sight of the uniformed policeman standing there pounding on his door as if he intended to do so for the rest of the night if he had to, to wake him up. “What the hell!”

  Turning the dead bolt, he jerked open the door and scowled at the fresh-faced cop who looked like he was hardly old enough to shave. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing, Officer?” he growled. “Besides waking up everybody in the complex. Dammit, it’s three o’clock in the morning!”

  Flushing, the younger man said stiffly, “I know that, sir. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m just following orders. Are you Blake Nickels?”

  “Yes, I am,” he retorted, scowling. “Whose orders?”

  “Detective Kelly’s, sir. When he couldn’t reach you on the telephone, he told me to hammer the door down if I had to to wake you up. There’s been an arrest in the serial-killer murders, and he was sure you would want to know about it as soon as possible.”

  “An arrest!” Surprised, Blake cast a quick look over his shoulder to make sure the bedroom door was still shut, then stepped outside onto the open cement balcony that connected all of the second-floor apartments to the garden patio below. The gutters still dripped, splashing raindrops on his bare toes, but he never noticed. “I had no idea Kelly was that close to making an arrest. Who is the bastard?”

  “His name’s Jeff Harper. He was picked up a little over an hour ago at his home on the north side—”

  “Jeff Harper!” Blake exclaimed, stiffening. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said grimly. “He’s downtown right now being booked, and he didn’t come easily. From what I heard, he fought like the devil. It took four officers to bring him in.”

  Stunned, Blake couldn’t believe it. Jeff Harper. Granted, he didn’t like the son of a bitch or the thought of him coming anywhere near Sabrina, but she had trusted him once, loved him enough to risk marrying him in spite of her family history. She might not love him any longer—she couldn’t, dammit!—but she didn’t hate him, either. Harper had disillusioned her and hurt her, but finding out that he was the one who had stalked and terrorized her while she had defended him to the police was going to tear her apart.

  God, how was he going to tell her?

  She would have to know, of course. And then there was the story to write. They had to get downtown, find out what the hell had happened to break the case wide open tonight, and get some answers from Sam. “Thanks for the information, Officer Johnson,” he said, noting his name tag. “Sabrina and I’ll get downtown as soon as we can. Is Kelly at the station?”

  “The last I saw him, he was at the suspect’s house supervising the collection of evidence,” the other man said. “But he expected to be back at the station within the hour. I can check if you like.”

  “That’s okay,” Blake said. “I’ll find him. Thanks for your help.”

  His mind already jumping ahead to what he was going to tell Sabrina, he stepped back into the apartment and shut the door behind him and never saw her standing in the darkened living room until he started toward the bedroom and she switched on a light. She’d pulled on a robe and stood hugging herself as if it was the middle of winter, her brow
n eyes huge and haunted in her pale face, and he knew she knew.

  “I woke up and you weren’t there,” she said huskily. “When I couldn’t find you, I noticed the front door was ajar….”

  So she’d heard it all, every damning word. Watching the hurt darken her eyes, he would have given just about anything short of his first-born child to have five minutes alone with Jeff Harper in a dark alley. Stepping toward her, he reached for her and hauled her into his arms. “Honey, I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said against his chest, clutching at him. “Not Jeff. There has to be a mistake.”

  He shouldn’t have been surprised by her defense of the bastard—even when his car had been spotted near her house and her neighbor had given a description of a jogger that had sounded like the twin of her ex, she’d still refused to believe that Jeff could be involved—but it still twisted in his gut like a rusty knife. Stiffening, he said, “Why? Because you still care about him and you can’t believe that someone you have feelings for would want you dead?”

  “No, of course not,” she began, only to suddenly become aware of his coolness. Drawing back, she looked up and gaped in amazement at the rigid set of his jaw. “You’re jealous!”

  “I am not! Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He scowled, glaring at her, just daring her to repeat such nonsense, but she only laughed, not the least bit intimidated, and stood on tiptoe to loop her arms around his stiff neck. “If I weren’t so surprised by the idea of you being jealous of anyone, I just might be insulted, Nickels. Do you really think I could have done what I did in that shower with you if I cared two cents about another man?”

  His lips twitched, but he stood unbending before her, softening only when she melted against him, giving him an excuse to hold her again. “You were awful damn quick to defend him,” he grumbled, stroking her hair as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Only because I thought I knew him,” she said quietly, sobering. Her heart suddenly aching, she laid her cheek against the hollow of his bare shoulder and fought the crazy need to cry. “Try to understand,” she said softly. “It wasn’t all that long ago that I was married to him, Blake. For two years, I slept with him, cooked for him, even washed his damn underwear. How could I have been so close to him and never sensed the violence in him? Was I that blind? Or just insensitive? What did I do to make him hate me so?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” he said roughly, tightening his arms around her. “You aren’t the one with the problem, honey. He is. The man’s sick. He has to be. And you aren’t the only one he fooled. He has friends, family, people that have known and worked with him a heck of a lot longer than you have. If none of them saw this coming, how could you?”

  “But the Jeff Harper I knew couldn’t even take a sick dog to the vet. How could someone like that kill four women and terrorize me?”

  He shrugged. “People change.”

  “But not that much. There’s been a lot of pressure on the police to make an arrest. Maybe someone made a mistake—”

  He drew back, his hand cupping her chin to lift her gaze to his. “You know better than that. Kelly was the one who made the collar, and he never would have done that without a hell of a lot of evidence. You know how careful he is. Especially where this case is concerned. The whole state’s watching, not to mention his superiors. He wants a conviction too badly to risk making a mistake.”

  He was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. Jeff. Dear God, how could it be Jeff? She hadn’t lied when she’d told Blake that she didn’t care two cents about him, but he was still the first man she’d ever loved, the first man she’d ever given her heart and body to. They hadn’t parted friends, but she hadn’t thought they were enemies, either. Obviously, she’d been wrong.

  “I know,” she said thickly, forcing a halfhearted smile that did nothing to conceal the pain squeezing her heart. “It just makes no sense. Why would he do such a thing now? If he was going to try to kill me, why didn’t he do it when I divorced him?”

  As short on answers as she, Blake shrugged. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I wish I did. Who knows what pushes somebody over the edge? It might not have had anything to do with you at all—he could have just been looking for somebody to strike out at about something and your name came to mind. You know yourself that these types of crimes don’t always make a lot of sense.”

  “Do you think Kelly will let me talk to him?”

  Blake stiffened at that. No! Now that they knew Harper was responsible for terrorizing her, he didn’t want her anywhere near the man. But she was the intended victim here, and he knew her well enough by now to know that this would eat at her like a cancer until she got some answers.

  Still, his first inclination was to lock her up in the bedroom until Harper was tried and convicted and behind bars for a good, long stretch. She’d fight him on that, however, and he couldn’t say he’d blame her. She had a right to know what was going on in Harper’s head. But if she was hurting now, that could damn well rip her apart, and there wasn’t anything he could do to protect her from that kind of pain. Except be there for her.

  Slinging an arm around her shoulder, he turned her toward the bedroom. “Let’s get dressed and go downtown and find out.”

  By the time they rushed into the central station downtown, it was going on four. Normally at that hour of the morning, the only ones about were cops and the lowlifes of society—drunks and brawlers and an occasional scumbag who got his kicks punching the woman in his life. But not tonight. Somehow, the word had already gotten out that there’d been an arrest in the serial killings, and the place was crawling with press. There were at least three field reporters from the local television stations, complete with camera crews, hassling the officer at the front desk for the story, not to mention radio and print reporters from every town within a fifty-mile radius. By dawn, there’d probably be some from Dallas and Houston as well.

  Swearing at the sight of them, Blake shouldered his way through the crowd, pulling Sabrina after him. Finally reaching the front desk, he flashed his press badge at the scowling sergeant and said, “We need to see Detective Kelly.”

  “So does half the world,” he drawled. “You’re going to have to wait just like everybody else. He’s called a press conference for seven. You can ask him anything you like then.” Suddenly spying Sabrina where she was half-hidden behind Blake, his weathered face cracked into a smile. “Hey, Jones! What are you doing down here? The last time you covered the graveyard shift, you were still writing obits.”

  Sabrina grinned, affection lifting the heavy boulder that seemed to be sitting on her heart. Stoney Griffen had been sitting at that desk the first time she walked into the police station as a nervous cub reporter. He could have made things hard for her, but he’d gruffly taught her the ropes and had been a friend ever since.

  “There’s not a whole lot of things I’d crawl out of bed for at this hour of the night, Stoney, but this is one of them.”

  Suddenly remembering who the suspect was they had in the lockup, his teasing smile faded. “Aw, jeez, Sabrina, I’m sorry.” Snapping at the other reporters to back off, he waited until they’d stepped back a couple of paces before he confided quietly, “I don’t know what I was thinking of. Of course you’d be here. Are you okay?”

  “Well, I can’t pretend it hasn’t been a shock, but I’m dealing with it.” Introducing Blake to him, she said, “We really need to talk to Sam, Stoney. Isn’t there some way we could see him before the press conference?”

  Sighing heavily, the older man shook his head. “Sorry, darlin’. He’s not even here right now. He’s still over at Harper’s house with the evidence guys. And I wouldn’t go over there if I was you, either—he won’t have time to talk to you. The last I heard, they were taking the place apart brick by brick.”

  “Then when he gets back—”

  “He’s got a meeting lined up with the chief. There ain’t no way in hell I’m interfering with tha
t.”

  “He’s meeting with Travelino at this hour of the morning?”

  The older man nodded. “The chief’s been keeping a close eye on this one. In fact, Kelly hasn’t made a move without letting him know about it. The old man wants to go over the evidence the minute Kelly walks through the door.”

  Blake swore. “It looks like we’re going to have to wait just like everyone else.”

  If it had been any other night, any other case, Sabrina would have been more than willing to do just that. But questions hammered at her, nagged at her, pulled at her like a persistent child who refused to be silenced. Given the least encouragement from Stoney, she would have been out of there like a shot and racing for Jeff’s house. But she knew police procedure as well as he did, and even though Kelly had notified her about Jeff’s arrest, there was no way he was going to give her special treatment at a crime scene of this importance. Not when Travelino was waiting for him back at the station.

  Reluctantly accepting defeat, she sighed. “Great. So what are we supposed to do for the next three hours?”

  “Eat,” Blake growled as he steered her away from the front desk and headed for the nearest exit. “In case you’ve forgotten, we missed supper. I’m starving. Let’s go over to Mi Tierra and grab a George’s Special.”

  She hadn’t forgotten anything, least of all why they hadn’t eaten. And in the few minutes it took for them to walk down the street to the all-night Mexican restaurant that was the heart and soul of Market Square, find a booth, and order their food, all she could think of was those moments in the shower, then later in his bed. He was coming to mean too much to her. Even as her heart swelled with joy at the thought, her head insisted that she take steps to do something about it now that she was safe again and Jeff was behind bars—

  Just that quickly, her thoughts were dragged back to the murders, the notes left for her, the deliberate attempt to terrorize her, the threats to kill her. What little appetite she had vanished.