“You should wear the red dress.” Quiet, gentle, his tone was like a caress. “With the bow at the shoulder.” It was his favorite dress. One she never wore because it reminded her of him.
It was clear that Harper had a choice to make. She could drop the towel and see how quickly he dropped trou. Would she chance being late for her all-important meeting, or would she tell him to leave?
“Not many redheads can wear red,” he said.
One word. Just one word from her and she’d hear his zipper tug open, the distinct sound of pants falling to the floor. Her heart raced.
“But with your complexion, you make it work,” he said.
She wanted to see him naked again. Wanted to taste his skin again. Love him. Be in his arms. But it would be a surrender unlike any other she’d made before. She was safe for the moment, gunmen patrolling her property, so the excuse of fear clouding reason wouldn’t shield her pride. Welcoming Lucas into her bed now would be admitting defeat, that she’d given up on finding someone to love her forever, instead of for now.
“It’s an interview, not a wedding.” She reached in the closet and pulled out a cream-colored floral pencil skirt, and a summer-weight rose sweater. She paired the outfit with taupe sandals.
“That’s nice, too,” he said.
She refused to turn and acknowledge him again. One more look, and he’d see the invitation she couldn’t hide. He’d approach, and she’d buckle because she was only human.
He continued to lean on the door. She suspected he was waiting for—no, daring her to look at him. Hands trembling, breath shallow, she wanted to look…wanted to do more than look.
Harper dropped her towel, yet remained conflicted. She wanted but didn’t, needed but knew better… Lucas caught his breath. She could feel his gaze as it burned her skin, as she imagined where he looked, where he’d touch her first. Her knees quivered, and it was hard to hide the catch in her breath. By the time she stepped into her lace panties, he was on the move. She gasped. Her bedroom door slammed on his way out, muffling the stream of expletives filling the hall, until even that faded as he hurried downstairs.
Harper’s poise fled, leaving her leaning against the closet door, stripped of energy but not pride. He’d cried uncle first, and to her mind, that was all that mattered.
Making quick work of dressing, she grabbed her purse, her shoes, her folder of credentials and ran downstairs, not stopping until she found herself in a spotless kitchen. It was, in fact, cleaner than he’d found it. More coffee was in the pot, so she poured herself another cup and then set about worrying. She continued to worry after Lucas nodded good-bye to Caleb’s security team, and then while he drove her to the school, then when she was buzzed inside, and still now, as they sat outside the principal’s office waiting to be called. Worrying was exhausting.
Lucas shifted on his seat and leaned against her shoulder—by accident or design? His lips touched her earlobe, creating a luscious shiver of desire she was incapable of disguising. “Kick ass in there,” he said.
Harper scanned the hall, wondering if anyone overheard. “Security is tight. No one gets past Mrs. Coterie.” She indicated the school secretary, who had the power to buzz people in. Lucas righted himself on the chair, no longer pressing against her. Sighing, as if preparing for an argument. “Look, I know you. This is not your thing. I’ll be safe here. I’ll wait for you to pick me up. Come back in two hours.”
“Trying to be rid of me, huh?” He crossed his ankle over his knee, not looking in the least inclined to leave. “You should know better.”
“Fine.” She was convinced he was itching to go to the precinct and do whatever cops did, but Lucas, being Lucas, was on a mission. Or rather, he was doing his job. Same thing. “You were warned.”
Chapter Seven
Lucas felt like the walls were closing in on him. The chairs were too small, and sitting outside the principal’s office was giving him the willies. The corridors were cramped and there were little kids lined up in the hall, being shuttled from one classroom to the next, sneezing and coughing, little petri dishes of disease. Perpetual school, even in the summer. He remembered warming similar seats in Boston’s public school system more often than not. As a kid with truancy issues, he’d played more catch-up than catch, and these poor kids were living the same nightmare. He didn’t want to empathize. He wanted to leave.
The principal stepped into the hall, smiling at Harper, shaking hands. Like most principals, he supposed, this woman was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Step out of line, and she’d fall on you like a ton of bricks. He told himself to smile.
Lucas stood and watched as the principal’s neck craned back to maintain eye contact with him as he unfolded to his full height. At one very alarming point, he’d feared she’d tip. Short, maybe five even, and round as a potato, Principal Nougat was wearing a fuzzy pinkish sweater and a brown tweed skirt. Strangely enough, he noted the color and tone of Harper’s outfit matched the principal’s. Rose and khaki. Hmm.
“This is my…friend Lucas Sullivan.” Harper blushed, probably because she’d dropped his title of detective. Lucas thought it wise under the circumstances.
Principal Nougat smiled, extending her hand for a shake. “Pleased to meet you.” His hand dwarfed hers, so only the tips of her fingers were visible.
“My car is in the shop, so Lucas was kind enough to offer a ride.”
“How nice.” She indicated the hall to the left with an outstretched hand. “This way.” Principal Nougat led, glancing at Lucas, as if surprised to see him follow. His presence, as predicted, was making Harper’s potential boss curious. Lucas exchanged glances with Harper, who was pretending everything was normal, so he followed suit.
When the principal stepped into a classroom off to the right, Harper stopped him from following them, pressing her palm against his chest. Her hand was hot, and the look she gave him was even hotter. He had to surmise it was unintentionally so, that Harper just couldn’t help but be sexy. Chin tilted up, she licked her lips and gave him a weighted, heavy-lidded stare.
“Wait here.” She paused until he nodded.
Point to Harper. He’d allow this win, him guarding the door while she walked deeper into the room for her interview. Grabbing a chair, he positioned it against the wall, out of the way, but where he was still able to see her. He was satisfied…in the mildest sense of the word.
He put his hand on his chest. It was crazy, but the imprint of her touch still burned, distracting him, making him wish she’d touch him again, that he’d touched her earlier, in her bedroom. At the time, he’d told himself if she turned away from the closet and looked at him, she wanted him, and he’d make love to her. If she kept her back to him, she didn’t, and he’d leave. When she ignored him and slipped on her panties, he knew he had his answer and it felt like a cinder block to his chest. There was no going back for them. He’d lost her. Yesterday was an anomaly, a moment of weakness for her. He wondered if she regretted kissing him back when they were in the shipping container.
“I thought this room would be better than my stuffy office.” He heard the principal’s voice carry out into the hall. They’d pulled together a few small chairs in the center of the room, close enough for him to still hear if the hall was quiet. “When possible, I like to spend time with the little ones. Do you mind if we have the interview here?” Principal Nougat sat, glancing at Lucas in the hall, forcing him to explain his attention or look away. Lucas dropped his gaze.
“No, of course not.” Harper smiled at the children peeking at her with curiosity.
“This is our side-by-side program, where we pair developmentally delayed students with children that are considered on target for their age level. They’re three and four. It allows the children struggling to model on the students who aren’t,” she said. “Janet, Allyson, I believe you know Harper.” The two women pulled up two more chairs, so the circle was now four. All seated, smiling at one another. “She’s interviewing for Mrs. Page’s old
job.”
They seemed oblivious that they had an audience of one in the hall. Young, pretty, Janet and Allyson also seemed happy. It felt right…Harper working here. She belonged here, with happy people. Her peeps. When they’d lived together in Boston, Lucas loved coming home from work, stepping into a world fashioned by Harper. The weight of life-and-death decisions would fade when he saw her smiling face. Happy. Yes. Harper deserved to be around happy people.
A long line of children filed between him and the classroom door. He saw an older male teacher shepherding them to class. Music teacher—his piano-key tie gave him away. Then Lucas peeked inside the classroom again as the last kid filed past. Janet and Allyson were looking at Harper as if they were in on a secret. Harper must be killing it. Lucas could tell they liked her. Everyone liked Harper.
As the children filed around the corner, he had the hall to himself again and could once more hear the interview. “We received the results of your criminal background check,” Principal Nougat said.
Lucas almost laughed. Harper was so squeaky clean, he could imagine the frustration of the putz that searched for dirt on her, but then remembered this was an interview for a job with children. Of course the school wouldn’t take chances.
“As expected,” Nougat smiled, “it came back clean as a slate. So that’s behind us.”
“Does it ever not?” Harper laughed.
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “When you work with children, even the appearance of wrongdoing can send droves of parents into my office calling for a teacher’s head, and who can blame them? They trust us to keep their children safe. Hiring honest, hardworking teachers is the least we can do, and here at Smyth Road School, the children always come first.”
“Of course,” Harper said.
Lucas almost felt sorry for her. Harper was under guard twenty-four seven because a group of dirty cops thought she could hurt them with a list she didn’t possess. Not something anyone wanted on their resume, but for a teacher? He knew Harper had to be feeling more than a little guilty keeping that whopper to herself.
The other teachers chatted and worked with the children as Principal Nougat and Harper dived into the interview. Their voices were quiet and the hall was intermittently busy and loud, so he’d given up listening a while ago, but sitting in the hall, outside looking in, he admired the women in the classroom. They were the type he joined the force to protect. The innocent.
There was nothing more innocent than little three- and four-year-olds and the teachers who helped mold them. Their tiny chairs, the sinks that came to his knees, the finger-painting art on the walls, and the alphabet that decorated the chalkboard. All innocent, the perfect life for Harper. She belonged here. Not in a shipping container with a honey bucket and a bag of McDonald’s.
A small child moved away from his teacher and brought Harper the shoe he’d stepped out of. He wanted Harper to put it back on his little foot. Principal Nougat and Harper cooed and smiled, and then Harper taught the little guy how to tie his shoe while the interview commenced. It made him wonder what Harper would be like with her own children. He could tell she’d put her kids first, want the best for them, even if it got in the way of her ambitions. Yeah, he could see Harper being a wonderful mother. It was those attributes that made her such a perfect candidate for this teaching job. The kids loved her.
It was twenty minutes into the interview, and he was feeling fine…
By hour two, Lucas would have bargained the last five years of his life to hurry the hell out of that finger-painted, tiny furniture–filled, screaming-child pit of chaos. Kids were filling the hall. They were everywhere, shouting with laughter and annoyance. The noise of so many little feet moving, papers in hand waving overhead, kids tripping and pushing, backpacks swung high and low… It was deafening. And they kept touching him.
When Harper finally joined Lucas, he had to restrain himself from tossing her over his shoulder and running. In the car, he couldn’t help but complain. “Was there a nose in there that wasn’t running?” he said. “How can you stand that noise?”
“I warned you.” She strapped herself in, smiling. “They liked you. You always did have a way with kids and animals.”
“Which were they?”
She laughed. His hand paused as he put the key in the ignition, taking a moment to appreciate her. When he turned the key, pumping the gas until the engine roared, he sighed. “I love your laugh.”
Harper blushed and looked out the side window. Her blush only made him happier as he shifted gears, driving out of the parking lot. When he finally made it onto the street, slowly driving from the school and onto the main drag, he took a deep breath, planning out the next item on his agenda.
“Where are you taking me? My house isn’t in this direction,” she said.
“My apartment. I have a few things I need, like my phone charger and stuff.” He took another right and glanced at his rearview mirror. White Honda Accord. It was the same car that had followed them out of the school parking lot. He took a left, slow and steady, and then a right, heading away from his apartment.
“I thought you lived downtown,” she said.
“I do. In one of those brownstones near the river. It reminds me of the apartment in Beacon Hill.”
“Except Beacon Hill is upscale,” she said.
True. He glanced in the rearview. The white Honda Accord still followed. “Do me a favor?”
“Hmm?”
“Call your brother.”
“No. I don’t want him involved in this. You’ve been very clear the lieutenant doesn’t want him in this, either. Are you trying to get him in trouble?”
“We’re being followed. Do you trust anyone else who can run the plates?”
She went still, and he saw fear replace stubbornness. “Is this it? Is this the sign we were looking for? Someone is coming for me, and they believe I have the list.”
“Don’t panic. It might be nothing.” He hoped it was nothing.
Her breath came in gasps and her hands shook as she fumbled in her pocketbook. Harper pulled out her iPhone, dialed, and put it on speaker. The line connected and her brother answered.
“Harper?” Dane said.
“It’s Sullivan. She’s holding the phone for me while I drive. Harper and I are being tailed and I need you to check a plate.”
“Shoot.”
“A New Hampshire plate, one-three-five, eight-three-eight-nine. Call when you pull the information.” Dane disconnected the line. Harper twisted as if to look behind her. Lucas touched her shoulder. “Stop. I don’t think they know I spotted them. Let’s keep it that way at least until your brother gets back to us.”
She clasped her hands at her waist, tucking her pocketbook to her belly. “I’d convinced myself this wasn’t going to happen. That we were being overcautious.”
He glanced in the rearview. The Accord wasn’t even trying to hide its presence. If he turned right, they followed. If he turned left, they followed. Lucas, meanwhile, was going nowhere, unwilling to lead them to his apartment. “How long does it take to pull tags?”
“You’re asking me?” She was biting her lip, getting more and more upset. Her phone rang. She jumped, connected the line, and held the device between them on speaker. “Dane?”
“Harper. You okay?”
“I’m with Lucas.”
“Good, good. No hits on the plates. They’re fake.”
“Shit,” Lucas said. “The windows are tinted, so it’s unclear what we’re looking at here.”
“Lose them. Get Harper away.”
“Dane, this is an opportunity,” Lucas said, “maybe we ought to trap us a Honda Accord and see what they have to say.”
“Where are you?” Dane said.
“Heading toward Lincoln and Lake.”
“Right. I say we meet up at the Beech and Lake Street intersection. Give me time to get there. I’ll call…a friend. We’ll box the car in. Then you hustle Harper out of there.”
“Clear. ETA?” Lucas said.
“Ten minutes.”
They were the longest ten minutes of Lucas’s life, doing his best to calm Harper while keeping his own shit together. As they were blocks from the Lake Street intersection, his phone rang.
“We’re positioning the cars.” Marnie’s tone was crisp and excited.
“Marnie?” Harper was as surprised as Lucas.
Dane was using his loose cannon of a wife. As Lucas drove through the intersection, he watched as Dane and Marnie positioned their unmarked sedans with tinted windows on both sides of Beech Street. It allowed Lucas to drive down Lincoln Street between them. He passed between their cars and took the next right. “Harper, tell me what you see.”
“The white Accord followed us through the intersection…yikes!” Harper squealed again.
Lucas heard a crash, looked into the rearview mirror, and saw the collision’s aftermath. “What the fuck?”
“Marnie rammed the car!”
“How do you know it was—”
“Because Dane wouldn’t do something that stupid!” Flushed, lips pursed, Harper was furious.
Lucas pulled over. “Stay in the car!” He palmed his gun from his holster and ran toward the intersection and the crash site. Dane jumped out of his car. Harper was right. Marnie had rammed the Accord. Dane waved Lucas back.
“Get her out of here!” Gun in hand, Dane rushed the Accord’s door, careful to stay on its diagonal.
Torn, Lucas ran back to the Chevy, pulled on the driver’s side door, and found it locked. He slammed his hand on the door. Harper unlocked it. Jumping behind the wheel, he drove off, pissed and frustrated…but knowing Dane was right. He had a job—keep Harper safe. “Fuck.”
Tempted by a Touch (Unlikely Hero) Page 11
