“I…could go to my parents’ house, or my sister’s.”
He was silent for a moment. “No, come here. I’d feel better if I knew you were safe.”
“But—”
“No buts. If you need anything from home, I’ll go back with you later to get it.”
She couldn’t say no. What she wanted most right now was to feel safe. “How do I get there?”
As Luke gave her directions, she scribbled them down on a notepad, then repeated them to him.
“Call me if you have the slightest problem, okay?”
Jane assured him she would and hung up the phone. It felt good to have a big, burly guy looking out for her, even if he was getting paid to do it.
She made her way back toward the highway, peering at Luke’s directions in the dim glow of the streetlights. It wasn’t until she was about to exit the highway again that she got the feeling she was still being followed. Jane took the exit and looked around for a busy store to duck into and make another call to Luke. There was a brightly lit diner half a block down, so she headed toward it, and the car followed.
Jane kept her eyes on it and saw that it was painted blue—the same shade as the minivan she’d spotted earlier. It also had the large windshield and short nose of a minivan. She couldn’t make out a driver.
Her palms grew damp on the steering wheel, and at the next stoplight, she picked up the cell phone and dialed Luke again.
“It’s me. Do you know the All-night Diner a few blocks from your house?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“I think I’m being followed by the same person again. I’ll meet you at the diner, okay?”
“Jane, there’s a police station three more stoplights down from there on the right side. Go there right now. That’s where I’ll meet you.”
He sounded dead serious, like this was an even worse situation than she’d feared. Jane listened to the line go dead as she pulled through the green light and glanced back again at the car behind her.
Her mouth went dry, and she decided to focus on counting stoplights instead of staring in her rearview mirror. So it wasn’t until she heard the sickening scrape of metal and felt her car being pushed from the side that she realized she was being run off the road.
Jane fought to control the steering wheel as she caught sight of the blue minivan veering a second time into the side of her car. She steered right, hit a curb, and bounced up onto a grassy area, where she sat and watched the minivan speed through a red light and send several cars screeching to a halt. In her shock, she managed to notice that the vehicle had no license plates.
With shaking hands, she reached for her cell phone a third time and dialed 9-1-1. As she explained to the operator what had happened, a man pulled up in a pickup truck, got out, and peered into her window.
“Are you okay?” he called out, and she nodded, trying hard not to cry.
She called Luke next, told him where she was, and then sank her head onto the steering wheel and practiced taking deep, cleansing breaths. She couldn’t let fear control her.
Easier said than done.
No matter how brave she pretended to be on the surface, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her life had slipped from her grasp. It was in the control of a lunatic and a hunky bodyguard.
Five minutes later, a police car arrived and took a statement from her, and when she’d just finished talking to the officer, Luke pulled up.
He spent several minutes discussing her case with the police officer before coming to Jane’s car, where she’d sunk into the driver’s seat, and leaning down to peer at her with his signature intensity.
“You’re really not hurt?”
“No, just my car,” she said, nodding toward the sizeable dent stretching along the left rear side of her dear old Mercedes.
“That, we can fix.” He took her hand and pulled her up from the seat. “Until we catch this guy, we need to consider more serious protection measures for you.”
Jane squeezed her eyes shut. More serious protection measures meant more loss of control. All she wanted was her old, comfortable routine back. She wanted to be able to write again, and she wanted to be able to go shopping without having to fear for her life.
“Do we have to discuss this right here, right now?”
He enclosed her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. “No, you’re right. Let’s go back to my place. Will you be okay following me?”
Jane inhaled the scent of his leather jacket and nodded.
A few minutes later, she was following his sport utility vehicle through a respectable old neighborhood of single family homes. It looked as if most of them had been built around the turn of the century and restored in recent years. After a couple of blocks, she followed Luke into the driveway of an old Georgian-style house that wasn’t at all what she would have expected him to live in.
Luke, with his black boots and leather jackets, hadn’t struck her as an upscale historic-home kind of guy. But it probably fit with his income. He couldn’t have been earning a modest living providing security for the moneyed folks of Dallas. Now she recalled little details about him—the expensive Swiss watch, his perfectly manicured hands—that were much more congruent with this upscale community than his rebel image.
Jane parked in an empty spot next to him and got out of the car, then scanned the area, unable to stop looking for stalkers or renegade minivans. She locked her car and then checked each door to make sure they were really locked, all the while aware of Luke watching her.
“You’re safe now, Jane. You can relax.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He closed the distance between them. “No, it’s not. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you. Tonight was a failure on my part. I should have been more vigilant about your schedule.”
“How could you have known some lunatic was going to run me off the road tonight?”
“It’s my job to keep that from happening.”
Jane considered arguing, but it seemed pointless. He took her hand and led her up a short flight of stairs to his front door. Once inside, she couldn’t stop marveling at her surroundings.
This was where Luke lived. It was hardly what she had imagined. She’d pictured a spare bachelor pad, complete with empty pizza boxes and dirty socks on the floor. Maybe a recliner in front of the big-screen TV.
But there wasn’t a big-screen TV in sight, nor a recliner, nor an empty pizza box or a single dirty sock. Instead, the place exuded a warm, masculine elegance that Jane had seen only in decorating magazines. It was clearly a guy’s place—but a guy who cared about his surroundings, who paid attention to details and who was as meticulous as he was tasteful.
She thought of her own messy office and hallway littered with unopened boxes and felt a wave of chagrin. She’d had no idea she was revealing her messy side to a neat freak when she invited Luke in.
She surveyed the shiny oak floors, the pale beige rugs, the earth-toned furniture, the spare but stylish framed prints carefully placed in just the right spots on the walls. Black accent pieces broke up all the earth tones and balanced out the whole look.
Jane turned to Luke and smiled as she shrugged off her jacket. “I had no idea you were into interior decorating.”
He hung his jacket on a coat rack by the door, then took hers and did the same. “I’m not.”
“You have a gorgeous home.”
“I just buy stuff I like and put it in here. Pretty simple.”
She shook her head. “You’re being modest.”
“Okay, well, I also hired a decorator to come here and put all the stuff in the right places for me, and she added a few things to pull the whole place together.”
Jane blinked. Luke Nicoletti was full of surprises—definitely the first guy she’d ever met to hire an interior decorator for his bachelor pad.
“You have lots of women to impress, I’m sure.”
“Clients, actually. I have my office here at home
, so if a client stops by, the place needs to look presentable.”
“Aha.” That, at least, made sense. “I didn’t know you worked from home.”
He shrugged. “It’s convenient. I get my clients almost exclusively by referrals, and I come to them—they don’t usually come to me.”
“Except when they’re being run off the road by minivans.”
“Exactly.” He smiled and pulled her to him, wrapping her in his arms. She felt him place a kiss on her head, and she wanted to melt.
But she couldn’t. There was still the little matter of her needing to resist his charms at all costs to retain her sanity.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“You have coffee?”
“I’ll have some made in a few minutes. Have a seat and relax.”
Jane sank into the impossibly comfortable sofa. When Luke disappeared into the kitchen, she took the opportunity to peer under the couch for dust bunnies. There were none. She tried to picture him dust-mopping the floors and couldn’t. Okay, so he must have hired a cleaning service, too. That, she could picture.
She kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the sofa, suddenly so weary she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Finally, she was someplace that felt safe.
LUKE PLACED the two coffee cups on the table and was about to ask Jane if she wanted a sandwich, when he noticed her asleep on his couch. He sat down in a chair across from her and studied the way the worry lines had disappeared from her face in sleep. She was beautiful in a whole different way when she looked so peaceful. Peacefulness—not a quality she possessed when awake. Alive, passionate and vibrant, yes. But Jane was about as peaceful as a thunderstorm, and he suspected that a large part of her keyed-up manner had to do with being harassed and stalked. Now he could see a certain innocence in her face, something that was disguised behind attitude and sarcasm when she was awake, and he found himself falling for her for a whole new set of reasons.
Falling for her. He was getting used to the idea, but he had no way of presenting it to Jane. She’d run away as fast as she could, and he couldn’t have that. He needed her nearby to keep her safe, and so to keep her safe, he had to keep his feelings to himself.
Luke went to the closet to get a blanket, then returned and spread it over Jane as gently as he could. But when the blanket touched her, she was startled awake, and she sat bolt upright, blinking into the lamplight.
“What happened?”
“You dozed off for a few minutes—that’s all.”
“Where…” She frowned, surveying her surroundings, and after a moment she seemed to remember she was at his house. The tension drained from her brow, and she sat back.
“You’re welcome to use my bed, if you want to go to sleep.”
The offer sounded loaded with implications, even to his ear. He hadn’t meant anything by it, but when it came to Jane, there was no such thing as an innocent invitation to his bed.
She eyed him warily. “Will you be sleeping there, too?”
“I’m not sleeping on the floor.” He would have happily slept on the couch, but the opportunity to bait her was irresistible.
“I’ll just sleep on the couch then, if you don’t mind.”
Luke stood up from his chair and went to the couch, where he sat down beside her. He was tired of the sexual tug-of-war, and they were going to settle this matter once and for all. She tried to scoot away, but he wrapped one arm around her waist and held her beside him.
“You want to sleep with me, and you know we’re great together, so why do you keep fighting it?”
“I’m not fighting anything. I just came to my senses.”
“And realized you hate having great sex?”
She fought to keep a straight face. “That’s not it at all. I was doing exactly what I advise other women not to do—letting my sexual urges control me, sacrificing emotional intimacy for sexual intimacy, generally behaving like an idiot.”
“Basically, it pissed you off that I proved you wrong.”
“No!” Jane expelled an exasperated breath. “I mean, no, you didn’t prove me wrong, so I had nothing to be upset about. On the contrary—you proved my theories correct.”
“How do you figure?”
“Our relationship was based totally on sex. There was no emotional development.”
“Speak for yourself. You didn’t give us a chance.”
“No, we didn’t give us a chance, by hopping into bed nearly the moment we met.”
Luke wasn’t sure whether he wanted to shake her or kiss her senseless. If they kept going like this, they’d just argue in circles all night. He turned her face toward him and dipped his head down, covering her mouth with his. It didn’t take a relationship expert to figure out that this was the most pleasant way to stop an argument.
He’d expected her to resist, and she did. For all of two seconds. Until the automatic electricity between them turned on, and she tilted her head to deepen the kiss. Luke felt her tongue slip past his, felt the urgency of her embrace, and knew that she was just as desperate for him as he was for her.
But after a few moments she stiffened and pulled back.
“See, we’re doing it again. This proves my point exactly. Every time there’s a chance for emotional growth between us, we get physical instead.”
“Maybe I was just kissing you to remind you of the way it feels.”
“Just because something feels good isn’t a reason to do it.”
“True, but we’re not talking about sniffing coke or torturing puppy dogs.”
Jane stood up and crossed her arms over her chest as she walked to the window. She stood there, looking out at the view of the front yard lit up by lights in the bushes and on the front porch, and Luke imagined she was probably trying to decide how best to prove herself right.
Finally she turned and looked at him again. “I’d be lying if I said the intensity of the sexual attraction between us didn’t scare me a little.”
“Don’t you get it? It’s not just sexual. Two people aren’t drawn together as strongly as we are unless there’s something more to it than hormones.”
“I have to disagree with you there. If it were more than a sexual attraction, we’d be able to control ourselves and let the relationship develop naturally—but of course we can’t, because there’s nothing natural about the way our relationship began in the first place, with you wanting to prove me wrong.”
Luke felt pressure building between his eyes. He closed them and took a deep breath. “Jane, I never would have made that comment seriously. I propositioned you because I was attracted to you, plain and simple.”
She frowned. “You swear this wasn’t just about proving my book wrong?”
“I swear.”
“I still think we’ve allowed our sexual attraction to stunt the growth of any emotional intimacy we might have had.”
“You’re talking like a relationship guru now. It’s a load of crap when applied to real life.”
Okay, so maybe he should have kept the “crap” comment to himself. Jane’s cheeks took on an angry red glow.
“Maybe I should go. We’re just going to argue all night.”
She started toward the door, but Luke stood up and blocked her way. “Wouldn’t you rather argue with me than get run off the road by a crazed lunatic?”
“You’ve got a point there.” She turned and stalked over to an armchair, which she flopped herself onto.
He sat on the coffee table in front of her, forcing her to look at him. “I’m sorry about that last comment. It was rude and inappropriate. What I should have said is that you can theorize all you want, but theories don’t always apply to real-life relationships.”
“Apology accepted,” she said, looking like she’d still enjoy giving him a good kick in the shin.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to stop looking for expert advice—even if it’s your own—and take a few risks. Live your life according to how you feel in your gut.”
�
�Sounds like something you read in a book.” She flashed a grin.
“Didn’t I tell you I’m writing one? It’s going to be all about how to get your woman to stop reading relationship books and start sleeping with you again.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Let’s call a truce for tonight.”
Luke extended his hand to her, and she slipped her own hand into his. He drew it to his lips and kissed it, then turned it palm up and let his fingers trace the lines there. When he’d placed a lingering kiss on her palm, he looked up at Jane to find her watching him with a dreamy look in her eyes.
It made him sick to have to wipe that look away with the subject he had to broach next. “We need to talk about what happened tonight, and the implications of it.”
Jane tugged her hand away and tucked it between her knees. “Can’t we just talk about that tomorrow?”
“Would you feel comfortable going home alone tonight?”
She frowned and gave the question some thought. “No.”
“Then yes, we need to talk about it now.”
“I don’t really expect you to let me stay here. I thought maybe you could go with me to my place to pick up some things, and then I’d go to my sister’s apartment for the night.”
“There was the box of porn last week, and now the incident tonight—this is getting more serious.”
“What are you saying? That I need twenty-four-hour bodyguard service?” She flashed a weary half smile, but Luke kept his expression neutral. He didn’t consider Jane’s safety a matter to be taken lightly.
“I think we need to consider it.”
Her smile faded instantly. “So what? You follow me everywhere, go with me to the bathroom, escort me to the post office?”
“You get to use the bathroom by yourself, but for a while, until this guy is caught,” Luke paused, trying to decide if a straightforward approach was best right now. Was she prepared for what he had to suggest? He could only hope so. “I think it would be wise to let me move in with you.”
11
Women are not sexual receptacles that exist solely for your pleasure, and if you can’t figure that out, you should probably be looking for your dates in a barnyard.
What A Girl Wants (Harlequin Blaze) Page 15
