by Joyce Lamb
She tried to say yes but ended up coughing. Chills quickly followed, and she curled onto her side again, coughing and shivering.
The blond man rose, and she sensed him standing over her, looking down at her in contemplative silence while her coughing settled down. She was all but naked yet couldn’t bring herself to try to cover up. She didn’t have anything to cover herself with anyway, but it seemed she should at least make the effort. Better yet, she should get up. There was a strange man in her house. Someone, a freaking ninja, for the love of Pete, had just tried to kill her. But she couldn’t seem to move, and she felt she had to concentrate just to breathe in, breathe out. Perhaps this was a dream. What a relief that would be.
Instead of waking up, she heard the stranger who’d said he was a cop walk away. She let her eyes drift closed. Maybe when she woke, everything would be fine.
Footsteps forced her eyes open again. The cop was returning. God, he was huge. Muscled thighs filled out faded jeans that would have looked baggy on a regular man. Broad shoulders stretched a white T-shirt taut across sharply defined pecs, and short sleeves molded to upper arms that were muscled but not too bulky. It took her a moment to notice that Nana’s afghan, the one she’d always tucked around her legs in the rocking chair, hung from his large hands.
He draped it over her shivering body. “Hang in there. I hear the sirens already.”
He had a soothing voice, but she sensed that in other circumstances it might boom so loud it would vibrate the floor under her feet.
“I’m going to take a look around, okay?”
Sure, fine, whatever.
She didn’t try to speak, or even move, instead focusing what little strength she had on breathing. Her throat felt bruised from the inside out, swollen. What would happen if it swelled shut?
Don’t think about that. Just breathe.
The shivering gradually abated, as though the throw carried leftover warmth from spending so much time on Nana’s lap. She wanted to get up, wrap the afghan completely around her, sit on the sofa and look at least halfway alert when the Lake Avalon police arrived. But her muscles refused to obey her brain’s get up commands.
She heard the front door bang open and the running footsteps of at least two men. “Police!”
The man who’d covered her with the blanket calmly spoke from somewhere behind her: “I’m a cop. My badge is in my back pocket.”
Then Detective John Logan was on his knees beside her. “Charlie? Charlie!” He turned his head away and yelled behind him, “Get the paramedics in here!”
Oh, good. Logan was here. He’d take care of everything.
She closed her eyes and toppled into the dark.
CHAPTER SEVEN
So you just happened to be sitting out front when she was attacked?”
Noah returned the Lake Avalon cop’s belligerent stare, telling himself the guy was just freaked about the attack. Not that Noah could blame him. He was still shaken, too, but that might have been from how much Charlie Trudeau resembled her cousin Laurette. Same long, rich, reddish brown hair. Same tiny birthmark on her cheek where a dimple would be. Charlie, though, was the more feminine one, all curves and smooth skin and long, graceful legs. Even in the intensity of the moment, he’d have to be dead not to notice that she was nearly naked. He remembered how her lace panties had matched the delicate material that clung to round, palm-sized breasts . . .
Christ, he needed to stop thinking about that. She’d been helpless and vulnerable, and he should have immediately gone to get the blanket to cover her. But he’d been so shocked at how much like Laurette she looked, and yet how different, how . . . female. He remembered the moment when she’d started to shiver, how her nipples had hardened under that tasty-looking white lace, and guilt sliced through him for letting her get cold. He was such a jerk. Apparently, a horny jerk. But surely no man could have stopped himself from looking, from appreciating. A woman shaped like that—
“Hello? Are you going to stare me down all night or answer the damn question?”
Noah focused on the burly police detective. They were probably about the same size, but John Logan had a tanned, unlined face and tidy haircut that made Noah feel like a shaggy, pale old grandpa.
“We’re on the same side, Detective Logan.”
Logan squared his linebacker shoulders and hooked his thumbs in his belt, a practiced stance that Noah was familiar with. It made any cop look bigger and badder. “Look,” Logan said, “I’m not in the mood for any shit. Just tell me why I shouldn’t haul your ass in for assault.”
Noah tamped down his temper. He’d be an asshole, too, if someone he cared about had been hurt. Besides, he had nothing to hide here. “I’m a friend of Laurette Atkins and, like I said, a Chicago police detective.” He spoke slowly and calmly, sticking to the facts. “Laurette’s sister asked me to look into the hit-and-run. I came to see Charlie Trudeau because she was the only witness.”
“Why were you sitting in your car instead of knocking on her door?”
“She’d just gotten home, and I didn’t want to frighten her by approaching her outside.”
“So you lurked out front instead.”
“I didn’t lurk.” Noah kept his tone mild, deciding the cop was going to get a few more minutes to settle down before this got ugly.
“So what happened next?”
“I heard her scream.”
“All the way out there in your car?”
“It was a loud scream.”
“So you came running and what?”
Noah gestured at the front door, whose wooden frame had splintered under his ferocious assault. “I let myself in.”
Noah was sure he saw a flicker of approval in the other detective’s expression before Logan speared him with his I’m-a-hard-ass glare. “You busted down the door and then what?”
“Miss Trudeau was on the floor right over there,” he said, gesturing. “She’d been choked. I found an extension cord in the bedroom, so I assume the attack began there.”
“So, what, you were conducting your own investigation before we got here?”
Noah, his patience about gone, began to count to ten in his head. He wasn’t one to throw punches, but he’d done nothing to earn such attitude.
The tense silence must have tipped Logan off, because when he spoke again, he sounded less accusing. “Did you see who attacked her?”
“No. He ran out through the kitchen. I heard the screen door slam.”
“Why didn’t you go after him?”
“I wanted to make sure Miss Trudeau was breathing okay, and I didn’t know whether there were other intruders in the house.”
Logan gave a grudging nod. “Good move.”
Good, Noah thought. Apparently that meant they could be friends now. “What did the paramedics say?” he asked.
Logan looked away and rubbed the back of his neck. “She was shocky and had some grade-A bruises on her throat, a couple of scratches. But she’ll be okay.”
“She’s a good friend?”
Logan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Any idea why someone would attack her?”
“There’ve been some break-ins in the area. She probably surprised a burglar.”
“A burglar who tried to strangle her with an extension cord?”
Logan’s forehead creased, as though he had already thought it didn’t add up. “Maybe he panicked.”
“Where I come from, a panicked burglar runs out the door.” Noah didn’t wait for a response before plunging ahead. “Any chance the attacker could have been the same person who ran down Laurette Atkins?”
Logan’s brows arched. “Why would you think that?”
“Miss Trudeau is the only witness to the hit-and-run. She was quoted on the news as saying she heard the car accelerate.”
“We’re still looking into that.”
The cop was holding out on him, Noah decided. Something about the hit-and-run hadn’t been reported. Something significant. “What kind of e
vidence do you have?” Noah asked casually.
Logan hesitated for a few seconds before taking a breath. “We haven’t been able to establish a connection between Laurette Atkins and anyone in Lake Avalon or at the hotel. So far, there’s no motive.”
So the detective didn’t know Charlie and Laurette were cousins. Interesting. “What about after she arrived? She didn’t show up in Lake Avalon in a vacuum.”
“She had minimal contact, mostly with hotel employees,” Logan said. “No one knows anything, that they’re sharing anyway.”
“Any sign of the car?”
“It’s the proverbial needle in a haystack. You know how many Sebring convertibles there are around this town? It’s the rental car of choice among the tourists.”
“This one must be visibly damaged, though. Dents, broken headlight, cracked windshield, blood. Something.”
“We’re doing the best we can. If you’ve got suggestions, I’m listening.”
That surprised Noah. A small-town cop who didn’t get bent out of shape when a detective from the big city started asking questions? “I’d like to talk to Miss Trudeau.”
Logan straightened as though he’d been poked with a stick. “I questioned her myself.”
“But you just said you’re a good friend.”
“What does that have to—”
“You’re not objective.”
Logan didn’t bother to hide his irritation. “I can’t stop you from talking to her, but I can stop you from interfering in an official investigation.”
“You mean the investigation that you just implied is already at a dead end?”
Logan scowled. “I’m going to keep an eye on you, Lassiter. It’d be best if you didn’t piss me off.”
So they weren’t going to be friends after all. It’d make Noah’s task tougher, but he could deal with it. “Okay then. If you’re done with me here, I’m going to take off.”
“I’d tell you to hang around Lake Avalon, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“That’s too bad, because I’m not going anywhere until I find answers.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
After a shower, Charlie stood in front of the bathroom mirror and took stock of the damage. A thin, unbroken line of stark purple bruises circled her neck where the cord had bitten into her flesh. Vertical scratches showed where she’d dug at the cord with her own fingernails. A fainter bruise the diameter of a large orange colored the right side of her forehead where the ninja had head-butted her.
A ninja. If the attack hadn’t been so frightening, she might have laughed at the idea that a ninja had broken into her house. As it was, the last thing she wanted to do was laugh.
When Logan asked her who might want to hurt her, she’d hesitated. She was a journalist, after all. She knew things in this town that other people, bad people, didn’t want the public to know. Where to begin?
The married mayor traded sexual favors with an alderman for projects that benefited the alderman’s district.
A home builder price-gouged customers daily while taking kickbacks from a supplier.
The company building a beach-access road bypassing downtown used illegal immigrants to keep costs down.
An auto dealer swapped sales contracts with lease contracts at the last minute. At least that one was busted.
Oh, yeah, and don’t forget the blackmail scheme targeting high-profile residents. She’d love to get her hands on those details. If only her source weren’t such a skittish butthead.
Sighing, she sank onto the edge of the bed. The truth was, during her career at the Lake Avalon Gazette, there’d always been someone who would have loved to cinch a cord around her neck until she stopped breathing.
She closed her eyes against a wave of nausea. She needed to focus on something else, such as the fact that she’d survived. Thanks to a tall, imposing, shaggy-haired police detective. Logan said his name was Noah Lassiter, a detective from Chicago. Despite her semiconscious state when she’d seen him, she knew she would recognize him the instant she saw him again. His appearance—broad shoulders, narrow waist, intense green eyes, careworn features—had been imprinted on her brain at a very basic level. And his voice . . . deep and resonant, oh so soothing.
She could use some more of that brand of soothing.
After pulling on shorts and a short-sleeved turtleneck, she checked the phone, which she’d muted before she went to bed. Caller ID listed five calls: two from Mac at work, as she expected; two unknown name/unknown numbers; and one from her sister Alex.
She called Alex back first, and her kid sister answered as though she’d pounced on the phone. “Charlie, thank God. Are you okay? Logan said you surprised a burglar.”
“I’m fine. Just some bruises. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Alex’s voice rose at the end, evidence that she was losing her cool. “Logan said the bastard tried to kill you. I can’t believe no one in the newsroom heard about this on the scanner last night. That jerk Steve must have turned the damn thing down again. I’m going to kill—”
“Alex,” Charlie said firmly.
Alex took a breath, let it out. “What?”
“I’m all right. I promise. I didn’t call you because I knew you were out on a photo assignment, and I didn’t want to worry you.”
“You’re sure you’re all right? You sound tired.”
“I didn’t sleep very well,” Charlie admitted. “Logan stayed with me, so that helped.”
“He mentioned that.”
“On the couch,” Charlie added. “Just FYI.”
“Why would that matter?”
Charlie laughed softly. Her sister was so transparent where that hunky cop was concerned. “No reason.”
Alex blew out a breath. “Whatever. So I’m coming over. Do you need anything?”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. I need a shower first, though. And then I’ll be there to make you some chocolate chip pancakes. No arguments.”
Alex hung up on her before she could protest further.
Charlie put down the phone, smiling for the first time in what felt like days. At least there was Alex.
CHAPTER NINE
Noah knocked on Charlie Trudeau’s front door, impressed that he couldn’t tell that he’d busted it down just the night before. Whoever’d fixed it up had done a bang-up job.
Detective John Logan opened the door, and Noah was relieved to see a familiar face. It would save him from having to explain why he was here.
“Good morning,” he said, reaching out to shake Logan’s hand. He planned to make nice today. The more ass he kissed, the sooner he could get answers from Charlie Trudeau. Assuming she even had the answers he needed.
“Morning,” Logan said, already looking fiercely protective.
When Logan just stood there, Noah asked, “Mind if I come in? I’d like to talk to Charlie.”
“She’s not—”
“Who is it, Logan?” Charlie asked from behind the detective.
Noah stepped to the side so he could see around the bulky cop. Charlie was walking toward the door, and the sight of her knocked the breath from his lungs. In khaki shorts that showed off long, sleek legs and a white short-sleeved turtleneck that emphasized the definition in her arms, she looked . . . edible. He hadn’t thought she could be any more appealing than she’d been the night before, vulnerable in her lacy underwear. But it turned out that a put-together Charlie Trudeau, with her silky hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, that beauty mark where a dimple would be and light brown eyes flecked with gold, was just as sexy. Maybe more so.
When she spotted him, she paused in midstep, her eyes widening and her lips parting. She stared at him for a few seconds before pink color suffused her face and she stepped forward. “Detective Lassiter,” she said. “Please, come in.”
Logan moved aside so Noah could enter. “I hope it’s okay that I stopped by without calling first,” Noah said.
“I’m glad you
did,” Charlie said. “Detective Logan told me what you did last night. I . . . thank you.”
“Just doing my job,” he said. He was impressed at her poise. If he hadn’t known that the turtleneck hid bruises and artful work with makeup disguised the mark on her forehead, he never would have guessed what she’d gone through the night before. She was resilient, he thought. Strong. And beautiful with that dark hair that sharply contrasted flawless, pale skin with a hint of rose in her cheeks.
The ringing phone jolted him, and he realized he’d been staring.
“I’ll take care of that,” Logan said, and strode out of the room.
Noah cleared his throat and extended his hand. “Since we haven’t officially met, I’m Noah Lassiter.”
She glanced down at his outstretched hand. Just when he thought she wasn’t going to take it, she put her fingers in his. Either her hand was chilled, or he had an inferno in his palm. When he felt her tense, he let go, thinking he’d been so distracted by how soft her skin was against his own calluses that he’d clasped too tight. “Oops, sorry.”
She didn’t respond, and he was thinking, What the hell? when he noticed that her golden brown eyes looked weird, as though she’d spaced out. Then she blinked, drew in a shaky breath and looked at him with a sorrowful, compassionate gaze that arrowed straight to his heart. He told himself she couldn’t possibly know exactly how sad, and pissed, he was about Laurette’s death.
She gestured toward the sofa. “Please, have a seat.”
Charlie lowered herself to an ancient rocking chair across from the couch. “I’m sorry about Miss Atkins. You were very close.”
Noah wondered how she knew. But, then, he was here, wasn’t he?
“Yes,” he said as he moved to the sofa. “We worked together in Chicago. She helped me on certain cases.” He paused, cocked his head. “I’m sorry for you, too.”
She nodded, running the tips of her fingers over the neat hair above her right ear, as though to tuck away stray strands that weren’t there. So much like Laurette. Yet, Laurette’s skin hadn’t glowed like Charlie’s. And he was dead certain that he’d never noticed Laurette’s mouth the way he couldn’t stop staring at Charlie’s. But it was hard to look away when the tip of her tongue glanced off her bottom lip just before her teeth caught that full, nicely shaped lip, briefly worried it then let it go. His heart thudded once, twice. He had never, ever looked at Laurette’s mouth and thought of sex. Ever.
