Armed and Devastating

by Julie Miller

  She swallowed hard, tried to catch her breath, but the words erupted again. “There was a man…in the shadows. He was right behind me.”

  “Brooke?”

  That voice was urgent. Familiar. “Atticus?”

  “Did I hear you call for help? What’s wrong?” She turned to see him jog up behind her. Tall. Imposing. Scowling. She walked straight into his chest, knocking him back half a step before he braced them both. She locked her arms around his waist and grabbed up fistfuls of his jacket as she buried her face at the juncture where his neck met his shoulder.

  “O-kay.” There was the slightest of hesitation in that word, and in the stiff way he held himself. Then his chest expanded with a deep breath and his arms folded around her. One palm came up beneath the bun at the nape of her neck, gently soothing the tension there. “Okay,” he murmured, more affirmation than bewilderment this time. His voice resonated beneath her ear as he spoke over the crown of her head. “Officers, what’s the problem?”

  “I’m not sure,” one answered. “Sounded like she thought someone was after her. Sometimes the vagrants can get in here.”

  “No.” She whispered the certainty against the steady beat of Atticus’s heart. “It was him.”

  “Him?” He must have signaled something to the officers. “I’ve got this covered. Why don’t you take a sweep around and make sure nobody’s here who shouldn’t be.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’ll be fine.” His hand continued its patient massage. “Right?”

  In answer, Brooke squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed impossibly closer. How could one man be so warm? How could one place feel so safe? Her breathing calmed, her pulse no longer thundered in her ears. But she wasn’t budging. For the first time in two days, she felt normal again. She hadn’t been singled out to be watched or toyed with. She wasn’t afraid. She was just…a woman.

  A woman whose senses prickled to life as she became aware of so much more than the strength and security Atticus had offered—or rather, that she had helped herself to and he hadn’t denied. He was hard in places that she was soft—muscled through the chest and arms, growing leaner down to his waist. He smelled enticingly male. His tie was soft silk, his suit crisp gabardine—well, maybe not so crisp now that she eased her grip on the back of his jacket. His touch was no-nonsense, confident, firm.

  He was a lot like the streamlined, not-to-be-messed-with gun her elbow kept bumping at his belt. Protective. Deadly. Steel.

  The fanciful metaphor receded to the back of her mind as Atticus leaned back, easing some space between them. He stroked her jaw with the backs of his fingers. “Better?”

  She leaned into the caress without thinking, almost purring her positive response. It felt so good to be touched like that.

  Opening her eyes, she tilted them up, surprised at how clearly she could see him over the top of her glasses at this short distance. The kaleidoscope of grays in his eyes—silver and dove, pearl and smoke—trapped her, entranced her. Despite the cool colors, they flickered with heat. That heat seemed to move closer. Or maybe she was the one moving, drawn to the flames there.

  He cupped her jaw in his hand, nudging her glasses into place with his thumb and blurring his beautiful eyes out of focus. “Brooke?”

  Reality check. Atticus was letting go. And if she had any pride or self-sufficiency left in her at all, she’d summon her strength and step away herself.

  “Here.” Brooke brushed her hair off her face and tucked the loose curls back into her bun as Atticus held up her scraped leather pump. “You threw a shoe back there.”

  He was trying to make her laugh, gently reminding her that their relationship was of the brother/sister/good friend variety, and that anything extraordinary about heat or eyes or holding tight was all in her imagination. She did smile as she reached for the shoe, though she had an unsettling feeling that her longtime crush on the man had just blossomed into something that could never go back to sisterly again.

  She held on to the arm he offered for balance as she lifted one leg and bent down to put the shoe back on. But she quickly released him so he wouldn’t feel awkward about her taking advantage again. “Sorry I freaked out on you. I didn’t realize it was you calling my name.”

  There was more cop than man standing before her now, and even her apology couldn’t coax his customary smile to return. “You were already running when I stepped off the elevator. It wasn’t me who spooked you.” He pulled the letter that she’d thrown away from his jacket and held it up to let her know he’d seen the creepy message, too. “I found this in your office, along with a man going through your desk. Does any of that have to do with why you ‘freaked out’ just now?”

  “You went through my trash?”

  “Answer my question.”

  She pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze to the oil-stained concrete before she looked up into his discerning eyes. “Will you walk me to my car?”

  “Absolutely.”

  His hand settled lightly at the back of her waist as they went back up the ramp and headed toward the back of the garage. Brooke tried not to let the politely protective touch distract her, but it was hard to organize her thoughts and express herself rationally when the temptation was there to simply turn into Atticus’s body and feel his shielding warmth all through her again.

  He traded salutes with the two officers who reported back that they’d seen nothing or no one out of the ordinary on the third level. They’d search the rest of the garage and if anything suspicious turned up, they’d call it in.

  They reached her car and he moved ahead to thoroughly check all around, under and inside her VW and the larger vehicles on either side of it before motioning her over and taking the keys to unlock the door for her. But she wasn’t getting in. He turned and leaned against the door, bringing his face several inches closer to hers. “Now. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I guess I let my imagination get away from me.”

  “Wrong answer.” He glanced back the way they’d come, then nailed her with that steely gaze. “You don’t have to sugar-coat anything with me. You have an ex-con working for you who conveniently and mysteriously doesn’t seem to have any past before he went to prison.”

  “We’re back to Tony, huh?”

  “I find a stranger making himself at home in your office, someone’s giving you gifts you clearly don’t want,” he waved the letter in his fist, “you’re getting crap like this in the mail—”

  “Who was in my office—?”

  “And now you think someone’s following you? I’m not real comfortable with that much coincidence. I don’t care how shy you are, you are going to talk to me.”

  Atticus Kincaid in his reserved intellectual mode was intimidating enough. Atticus Kincaid determined to have his way was downright scary. Brooke hugged her arms around her middle, feeling a little like a specimen under a microscope.

  “Who was in my office?” The question was barely a whisper this time. But the words came out, soft yet clear.

  Her insistence on being heard seemed to surprise him as much as her charging into his arms a few minutes ago had. His chest expanded as though he had another argument to make, but then his breath seeped out and he slowly relaxed. A little. “The guy said his name was Mirza Patel. I went to find you after work—I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk about the journal again. He said he left some equipment behind, but I’m pretty sure he was searching through your desk.”

  “Mirza is a friend from the assertiveness-training class your dad urged me to take.” Another sentence out without a nervous hitch. Nurtured by Atticus’s surprising patience, a seed of confidence took root inside her and started to grow. “I worked with him all afternoon, so it’s possible he left something behind. I didn’t see anything, though. And I don’t know why he’d be in my desk. I think…”

  Her confidence faltered a bit. This hushed, coherent conversation with Atticus was a new expe
rience for her.

  He brushed his finger across her chin and touched his thumb to her bottom lip, gently stopping the self-conscious urge to squeeze her mouth tight. “You think what?”

  Brooke’s skin heated beneath the contact.

  “I think he may like me?” She reached up to adjust her glasses—another nervous habit—and pull away before she read anything more into the intimate gesture than friendly persuasion. “Is that possible?”

  “Yeah. It’s possible.” His gaze swept out to the side and back, the second time she’d seen him do that. Was he expecting her spook from the shadows to show himself? “Do you like him?”

  Brooke knew a strangely compelling need to laugh. More nerves? “No. He’s a sweet enough friend, but he’s not my type. I mean, he is exactly my type. We’re just alike. Either too stuck in our heads overanalyzing things to speak, or letting it out all at once so we don’t make any sense. I mean, can you imagine a conversation between two people like me?”

  Atticus stood up straight, reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze after dropping her keys inside. Standing so close to him forced her to tilt her head back to see the bemused grin on his face. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re acing Conversation 101 right now. Don’t knock what you can do until you try. And keep trying ’til you get it right.”

  “Thanks for the words of encouragement, oh wise one.”

  His answering grin was fleeting. He pulled back the front of his jacket and splayed his fingers at his waist, bringing attention to the badge and gun he wore and reminding her that Atticus was a detective first and serving as her life coach was way down on his roles-to-play list. “Though I think stalking the woman you’ve got the hots for stinks as a seduction strategy, is it possible Patel sent you the flowers and note?”

  Brooke shook her head. “I considered that—that maybe he was too shy to say anything. But when I challenged him on it, he reacted more like he wished he’d thought of it rather than being embarrassed or surprised. I don’t think Mirza would do that to me.”

  “Then that puts Fierro back at the top of my list.”

  “Tony was a thief, not a predator.”

  Atticus’s skepticism was clear on that count. “Don’t drop your guard around him for one second. Not until I can find out more about him. Promise me that much, okay? And I don’t want you walking out here by yourself again, understand? Ask an officer to escort you. Or call me.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it, Brooke. How would I explain it to my dad if something happens to you?”

  She laughed. Breaking the tension between them felt almost as good as Atticus holding her had. Almost.

  He opened the car door for her. It was reassuring to see the smile on his face again. “Get in, already.”

  After she climbed in, he closed the door and stepped back. But almost as soon as she started the engine, he came back and knocked on her window. Brooke quickly rolled it down. “What is it?”

  He braced his arm on the roof of the car and leaned in. “You have a hot date tonight?”

  “Me?” Oh, Lordy. Was that a snort? She covered her mouth and cleared her throat. “No. I was just heading home. It’s been a long day.”

  “Too long to go get something to eat with me?”

  “I’ve already wrinkled your jacket, nearly knocked you down and taken up way too much of your time.”

  “Being with you is never a waste of my time. That’s what friends do.” She hadn’t been thinking of him as a friend recently. In fact, he’d seemed very much like that hero on the white charger when he’d shown up with her shoe and his warmth and attitude. “We never did get around to that journal. So what do you say?”

  She’d like to say she’d had more romantic invitations. But then, she had a hard time remembering any invitation recently. And he wasn’t really asking her out on a date. He was asking her to work.

  “I didn’t hear a no.” He stooped down to her level and looked her straight in the eye. “So is that a yes?”

  What the hell. Alone hadn’t been working out for her too well the past couple of days. And she truly did want to bring John’s killer to justice. If she could be any help at all…

  “Do you know where Pearl’s Diner is up by the City Market?” Brooke nodded. “I’ll buy you a burger and fries.”

  “Let me call Peggy and Lou to tell them I’ll be late. Then I’ll meet you there.”

  “How about I wait right here while you call, and then I’ll follow you there.”

  Yeah. She’d feel safer with Atticus close by. She’d like that. A lot.

  She pulled out her phone and dialed their home number. And while she put it to her ear and waited for Peggy or Lou to answer, Brooke reached out and touched one of the extra creases she’d put on the front of Atticus’s jacket. “If you want, I can take that to the cleaners and have it pressed for you.”

  “I’ve survived worse from you.” He turned his hand and laced his fingers through hers. “Make your call.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I swear, I didn’t know they were going to be here,” Atticus apologized over the half-eaten burgers and fries on the tabletop between them.

  “It’s okay.” Tucked away in the corner of a new booth at Pearl’s Diner, sharing her seat with Sawyer and his soon-to-be adopted son, Benjamin, Brooke was a quiet anchor in the chaotic storm that was his family—especially when they were in celebration mode as they were tonight. The news that Sawyer and his wife Melissa were expecting their first child together merited ice cream sundaes with Holden, their mother Susan, and family friend Bill Caldwell.

  “Is it as long as me?” Sticky four-year-old fingers tugged at one of the corkscrew curls hanging over Brooke’s cheek. Benjamin was a curious little tike who’d developed such a fascination for Brooke’s golden-caramel hair that he’d climbed up on the bench seat beside her to play with it. He laughed when he released the tendril and it sprang back into place.

  Brooke laughed, too. “Here. Let me help you.”

  Much better. Pale and frightened was not a look Atticus wanted to see on Brooke’s face ever again.

  Sitting across from her while everyone chatted around them, his analytical brain couldn’t help but compare Brooke’s slightly tilted, dimple-to-dimple smile to Hayley’s perfectly sculpted lips. There was no comparison.

  He’d take interesting. Real. Honest over perfect any day. Brooke had lips a man could touch without thinking twice about smearing makeup or playing games. He had touched them. Hell, he’d almost leaned down and kissed them back there in that parking garage.

  Must have been the big green eyes staring up at him over the top of her glasses. Wanting him. Welcoming him. Any man with blood pumping through his veins would have been tempted by such an innocent yet blatant invitation. The desire to kiss Brooke Hansford must have been an extension of the comfort and shelter he’d offered her. Nothing more.

  Right. That’s why he tuned out his mother, brothers, new sister-in-law and Dutch uncle while they debated family names and new possibilities for the baby, and stared across the table with the same rapt attention as his nephew. Brooke removed a clip and a rubber band, and sent her thick hair tumbling down around her shoulders. A blue-and-white vinyl booth was hardly the setting for a seduction scene, but there was something sensuous about the dramatic fall of hair that made him reconsider the notion that Brooke wasn’t an attractive woman. Maybe not conventionally so.

  She didn’t wear a lot of makeup or terribly flattering clothes, so she wouldn’t turn heads when she entered a room. But there were elements of remarkable beauty about her that awakened something a tad territorial inside him. He’d noticed those things about Brooke—the eyes, the crooked mouth, those gorgeous, uncoordinated legs. They were his secret treasures, his discoveries.

  The creep with the laugh and the roses who was playing this game of psychological terror with her didn’t deserve any part of the hidden treasure that was Brooke. And whether her stalker turned out to be Tony Fier
ro or some other bastard, he would have Atticus Kincaid to deal with.

  “Now pull it straight.” Brooke guided a curl into Benjamin’s hand. Atticus watched, too, as Ben tugged it behind her back, maybe a little too hard as Brooke winced. But, like a trouper, she didn’t complain. “My hair was even longer until a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Wow. My hair only goes to here.” He pulled his black hair down to his eyebrows, then seemed disappointed when it didn’t spring back the way hers had. Bored with that bit of research, Ben moved on to the next thing that caught his eye. He climbed onto Sawyer’s lap and dug into his shirt pocket. “I wanna give Brooke a cigar.”

  “Oh, no, Ben, I don’t smoke.”

  Sawyer scooped the boy into his arms and swept him away from the rolled tobacco that he’d handed out to the men around the table. “Don’t worry, kiddo, we have special cigars for Big Ben and his friends.” Avoiding Ben’s grabby hands, Sawyer pulled two cigars—one pink, one blue—from another pocket. “Here, give this one to Brooke.”

  Sure of Sawyer’s grip, Ben simply leaned backward over Sawyer’s arm and handed a bubble-gum cigar to Brooke. “I’m gonna have a baby sister or baby bwother.”

  Brooke accepted the gift. “So I hear. Congratulations.”

  “Uncle At’kis.” Ben swung across to Atticus’s side of the table and handed him the other bubble-gum cigar. “You, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sawyer’s petite wife stood up from her chair at the end of the table and announced it was time to go. “One of us has to come back here and work the breakfast shift, so we need to go home and get to bed.”

  “I like the sound of that.” Sawyer winked and Melissa swatted his arm.

  “Sawyer! Your mother is sitting right here.”

  Susan Kincaid sipped the last of her root-beer float and smiled. “Don’t mind me. I know where grandchildren come from.”

  All of the Kincaids laughed. It signaled the end of the festivities. Chairs were returned to their original tables, purses were gathered. There were hugs and handshakes and goodbyes.