by Jane Graves
She irritated him. She challenged him. She aggravated him so much sometimes that he wanted to throttle her. And still, it got to the point that every minute he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her, wondering how he was going to stay one step ahead of her next time. Wondering what off-the-wall thing she was going to do to make him pull his hair out tomorrow.
Wondering what it would be like to kiss her.
The thought of having all that energy she exuded with every breath directed specifically at him was just about the sexiest thing he could possibly imagine. And that night in her apartment, it was the only thought he seemed to be able to grasp. That should have been his cue to get up off the sofa and put as much distance between the two of them as he possibly could within the confines of her apartment.
Instead, he eased closer.
Alex?
That softly spoken word had been a question. Actually, several questions all at once: What are you doing? Why are you here? What’s happening between us? And that was when he should have told her. He should have told her that the profession she wanted so badly she couldn’t have, that by this time tomorrow she’d be out of the academy.
Instead he leaned even closer, sliding his hand along the top of the sofa behind her head.
She swallowed hard. Her gaze dropped to his lips, then came slowly back up again, her eyes suddenly alive with anticipation. From one second to the next, they went from cadet and superior officer who clashed at every turn, to a man and a woman who wanted each other more with every breath they took. His pulse thundered inside his head.
Stop it. Back off. You have to tell her, and you have to do it now.
But he couldn’t. Instead, he did what he’d been thinking about doing for weeks.
He kissed her.
The moment he touched his lips to hers, there was no going back. That first contact was like a spark setting off a forest fire, and their lovemaking turned out to be just as hot and exciting as he’d always believed it would be. And through it all, he deliberately ignored the truth: he knew something she didn’t, and that something was going to rip her heart out.
Later, after she’d fallen asleep, all he could think about was how much she was going to hate him tomorrow for what he’d done tonight. For what he hadn’t done tonight. After what they’d just shared, he couldn’t bear to see that look of betrayal on her face. And that was why he’d left.
It had been a gutless decision, one of the few he’d ever made in his life, and one he’d lived to regret. He should have stayed until morning and tried to explain what was going to happen. Tried to find some way to make her not hate him for what he’d done. Tried to tell her how sorry he was that things had turned out the way that they had, even though he’d been the one to make it happen.
Tried to tell her that even though he couldn’t see her as a police officer, he had no trouble seeing her as a woman.
Over the past five years, somehow he’d managed to make himself believe that she’d been just one in a long line of women who’d meant nothing to him. But now, faced with the very real possibility that somebody was out to kill her, he knew just how much he’d deluded himself.
“There. If I do any bleeding in this, at least it won’t be so obvious.”
Alex looked over to see Val walking back into the room wearing a red T-shirt. She sat down on the sofa with a heavy sigh, and to his surprise, he won the rest of the battle without firing a shot. After giving him a token look of disgust, Val laid her head down and pulled her feet up onto the sofa. And damned if he didn’t have the urge to go over there and make history repeat itself.
“You’re not gone,” she murmured.
“I told you I was lying about that.”
She closed her eyes, as if to pretend he wasn’t even there. That was fine with him. Maybe she’d fall asleep.
He pulled a book off her bookshelf, a leather-bound volume that was a little tattered around the edges.
“Alex?” Val murmured drowsily, unable to see him over the back of the sofa. “What are you doing?”
“Looking at your books. Winnie the Pooh?”
“Be careful with that. It’s a first edition. Worth a bundle.”
He set it back down on the shelf and picked up another one. “Secrets of Tai Chi?”
“Eastern mysticism. It’s intriguing. Now, will you put it down?”
He picked up another book. “Sweet Savage Love?”
“Damn it, will you get your hands off my books?”
“Nope. This is interesting.”
“I’m armed, Alex. And I’m a damned good shot.”
He had to admit she was right about that. At the academy, she’d outperformed every other cadet at the firing range, as well as any seasoned officers who happened to show up. Including him.
“Maybe,” he said. “But right now you’d be lucky to hit the broad side of a barn.”
“You’re a pretty big target. Don’t push me.”
He put Sweet Savage Love back on the shelf. Sounded like an interesting book. Or, at least, it was interesting to picture Val reading it. At night. In bed. Wearing nothing.
“Alex, sit down. As long as you’re here, I’ve got a couple of questions.”
“Just rest. We can talk in the morning.”
“Sit.”
He shook his head. She really hadn’t changed a bit.
He came around the sofa. He had a choice between a rattan rocker and a fluffy, overstuffed chair covered in a fabric that looked like an explosion in a flower store. He chose the fluffy one. He sank halfway to China.
“Nice chair,” he muttered.
“Thank you.” Val put her arm behind her head, looking as if she could barely keep her eyes open. “Why did you go home with Shannon last night?”
He excavated himself from the depths of the chair and sat on the edge of it. “Why do you think I went home with her?”
“To get laid?”
“Wrong. Did you see her sitting on the hood of her car outside the Onion?”
“Yes.”
“She told me she broke her car key off in the lock. I agreed to take her home.”
“But you went inside her house.”
“When we got there, she saw the light off in her bedroom and she swore she’d left it on. She said she thought she had an intruder. I knew it was a ploy to get me into her bedroom, but as a cop, I had no choice but to go along with it.”
“So you weren’t planning on getting up close and personal.”
“Not for one moment. You were in the Onion, right? Watching her?”
“Yes.”
“That hundred-dollar bill from the pool game. Did you see her give it to me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did you see me give it right back to her?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’d written her address on it. Her subtle way of suggesting I come home with her. I had no intention of having anything else to do with her.”
“When I came into the house, she was naked.”
“Her doing, not mine. It was amazing how fast she could get out of that dress.”
Val nodded. He assumed he’d convinced her, because she wasn’t exactly one to keep her opinion to herself.
“You said you were drugged. Forgive me, Alex, but—”
“I know. It’s the flimsiest story ever, and if I were on the other side of it, I’d call it bullshit, too. But it’s the truth. I’d tell you more if I knew more. But I don’t.”
“Do you think somebody drugged your drink at the Onion?”
“I don’t think so. The dizziness came on suddenly, and I was out in seconds. I have no idea what could have—”
He froze. Yes, he did. How could he possibly have forgotten?
It was a fuzzy memory, but just before he’d started to feel light-headed, he remembered thinking that maybe he’d been stung by something. An insect, he’d thought at the time. But no. Not an insect.
“It was a needle,” he told Val.
“A
needle?”
“Yes. Right before I got dizzy and blacked out, I felt something in my hip. Something sharp. I thought at the time that it must have been an insect, but it was more intense than that.”
“And you’re just now remembering it?”
“It was a powerful drug. It’s hard for me to focus on anything that happened around that time.”
“So Shannon stuck you with a needle?”
“She had to have. There was nobody else in the room.”
“This makes no sense. She sticks you with a needle, knocks you out, and then she’s murdered?”
“I never said it made sense. I can only tell you what happened.”
“Are you sure she was the only one in the house?”
“I didn’t see anyone else.”
“Someone could have been in the bedroom.”
“But she was the only one close enough to stick me. I had just turned around. She was right behind me, and that’s when I felt it.”
“But no needle was found.”
“No. But the drug screen didn’t rule out that I might have been drugged.”
“You had a drug screen?”
“I insisted on it. They found an unidentifiable substance, but they said it could be anything.”
“Why didn’t they know what it was?”
“When they do a drug screen, they have to know what they’re looking for. They can only compare my samples to those of known substances. If something shows up that’s outside the bounds of those substances, it’s impossible to say what it is.”
“But if you had the actual drug, they could match it, right?”
“Right. But there’s also the possibility that the drug I was shot with had left my system by the time they did the test, and the unknown substance is something else entirely.”
Val shook her head. “I don’t understand any of this. Even if somebody was in that house, even if you were drugged, the question is, why?”
Alex sighed. “I have no idea.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?”
“We’re supposed to hope they find the bullet. Hope they can eventually match it to something. Hope we can find out who shot you before he tries it again, and before I go to prison for a murder he committed.”
“So it’s as simple as that?”
“Yeah,” he said wearily. “It’s as simple as that.”
Val shifted on the sofa, grimacing a little. This time she put her hand to her stomach.
“When’s the last time you ate?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe ten o’clock this morning.”
“You took Percocet on an empty stomach? No wonder you’re nauseated.”
“I’m not nauseated.”
“You’re holding your stomach, Val. That’s what we in the detective business call a ‘clue.’ ”
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll fix you some toast.”
“I don’t want toast.”
“Yes, you do.”
She glared at him. “You really piss me off sometimes, do you know that?”
“Only when I’m right. Butter?”
She stared at him a long, deadpan moment, then turned away with a sigh. “Dry. I don’t think I could handle anything else.”
Alex got up and went to her kitchen. He fished through half a dozen cabinets before finally finding the bread in the refrigerator. He stuck two slices in the toaster, which looked like one his mother had used when he was a kid.
He glanced around the room. Along a wall near the kitchen table was yet another bookshelf. The top shelf held framed photos, and as he moved closer, he saw one that surprised him. It showed a girl of maybe fifteen, whom he recognized as Val, with an older man dressed in a police uniform beside her.
He blinked with surprise. Who was that man?
He looked closer for a clue that it had been taken at some kind of police “meet the public” function. But it had clearly been shot in a private home.
The officer looked too old to be her father. He appeared to be Hispanic, with a uniform unlike those worn by Tolosa officers. Val’s dark hair, dark eyes, and deep complexion said she could possibly have at least one relative who was Hispanic. But if she had a relative who was a cop, why had she never mentioned him? Maybe he should ask her.
Maybe he shouldn’t.
He pulled the toast out of the toaster, put it on a plate, and brought it into the living room. Val’s eyes were closed.
“Val?”
She didn’t respond. Her hands were folded over her chest. She was breathing softly. Rhythmically.
He set the toast down on the coffee table, then went to her bedroom. He flipped on the light in the adjoining bathroom and closed the door halfway, just so he’d have enough light to see what he was doing, then pulled back the covers on her bed. When he went back to the living room, she was still asleep, her fist pulled up to her chin, the bandage on her temple making her look like a wounded angel.
Since he intended to be the one sleeping on the sofa, he took a chance that she wouldn’t wake up and scooped her into his arms, took her to her bedroom, and laid her down gently. She never woke. For about half a second he considered undressing her, then decided it wasn’t worth facing her wrath when she woke up in the morning to find herself half-naked. Then he glanced down at her ankle and caught sight of a holster peeking out from beneath the hem of her jeans. She hadn’t been kidding about being armed.
He gently slid the leg of her jeans up to her knee, then peeled back the Velcro of the ankle holster as quietly as he could and removed it along with the weapon it held. He laid them aside, then started to pull the leg of her jeans back down again.
He stopped. Stared. God, she had pretty legs.
A woman as tough as Val should have had legs that looked like redwood trunks, but hers looked more like willow saplings. He remembered being in this very room, running his hand from her thigh down to her calf and back up again, feeling skin that was warm and soft and satin smooth. That night had been a hot, hazy, intense experience that was going to dwell in his mind for the rest of his life and probably well into his next one.
Still, the last thing he should be doing was looking at her now. Not just because she’d be pissed as all get-out if she woke and caught him staring, but because he wasn’t completely sure he could continue to look without touching.
Face it. You want her. Hell, you’d take her right now if only she was cognizant enough to let you.
Who was he kidding? If she were cognizant, she’d boot him right out of her bedroom and slam the door behind him.
Just then she stretched a little, throwing her arm back over her head, the motion pulling her T-shirt tight across her breasts, outlining them so distinctly that what little was left to his imagination was filled in by his five-year-old memory of seeing her in the darkness of this bedroom, naked and willing. For a long, unguarded moment he let himself think about that. Touching her. Kissing her. Doing more than just touching and kissing. Long hours of passionate sex when neither of them had even come up for air.
Then he thought about Val’s fist connecting with his face the moment he laid a hand on her. Did he really need that kind of complication?
That was the problem with Val. Just being around her made him think stupid thoughts, do stupid things. It was as if her outrageous behavior was contagious, and there was no way for him to immunize himself against it. Right now he wanted nothing more than to crawl into this bed beside her. And Jesus—if he thought he’d done something stupid five years ago, that would make him look positively brilliant by comparison.
He pulled the covers up over her and reluctantly left the room. He’d sleep on her sofa tonight and catch hell for it from her tomorrow. Then maybe she’d settle down and the two of them could try to figure out who was trying to frame him and kill her.
That he was in Val’s apartment was unbelievable. That he was staying the night in her apartment was mind-boggling. He had the strangest feeling that they were two p
eople destined to cross paths from now until the end of time, with each new encounter stormier than the last. If so, he couldn’t even imagine what tomorrow might bring.
chapter eight
Val blinked her eyes open to the pale rays of morning sun that eased through her bedroom window. A little disoriented, she rolled over and checked the clock on her nightstand. It was almost seven-thirty.
Then she remembered what had happened. She touched her fingertips to the gauze bandage still stuck to her temple. It hadn’t been a bad dream after all. She had most definitely gotten shot.
She got out of bed, her head throbbing a little, and walked gingerly toward her bedroom door. On the way, she caught sight of herself in her dresser mirror and almost screamed. Her hair was going in a dozen different directions, even more so than usual, and the bags under her eyes drooped halfway to the floor. She ran a hand over her hair a couple of times and succeeded only in making it stick up more.
Then she thought about Alex.
Her heart skipped a little. How had she gotten to bed last night? Had she been so out of it that she’d walked in here and not even realized it?
Or had he carried her?
She went to the living room. He wasn’t there. Then she smelled coffee.
She walked to the kitchen. Her bare feet made no sound on the hardwood floor, but still he turned the moment she reached the doorway. His eyes, usually so sharp and focused, were still sleepy, taking the edge off their usual intensity. His hair was mussed, but in a way that looked warm and sexy and totally engaging, as if he had just awakened after a night of particularly good sex. He was wearing his shirt, but it was unbuttoned down the front, revealing just enough of his broad, muscled chest to remind her of what the rest of it looked like. What it felt like. What it tasted like.
She remembered the fantasies she used to have about making love with Alex long before it had actually happened. Every one of those fantasies had ended the same way, with the two of them together in her kitchen the next morning, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, laughing, kissing, then pushing the breakfast dishes aside and making love all over again.
