by Lisa Childs
She’d be able to hurt Amber, or worse, before a guard ever stepped into the cell to help. As the woman moved closer, so did the others. Amber didn’t like her chances.
Milek couldn’t protect her here. Amber was on her own.
Chapter 21
“Where’s my mommy and daddy?” Michael asked. The little boy’s thick lashes fluttered as he fought to keep his lids open. His eyes were so like his father’s—like his uncle’s—that Candace’s heart warmed with love.
She’d already fallen for her nephew, though—probably the first time he’d called her Aunt Candy. Damn Garek...
She loved him so much. He didn’t irritate her nearly as much as he used to. Thinking of him made it easier for her to force a smile for their nephew. “Your mommy and daddy will be home soon,” she promised. They had to be.
Amber was a victim—not a suspect. She hadn’t obstructed justice when she’d fled with her son. She’d kept him alive.
“I’ll wait for them,” Michael insisted as he dragged his lids up again with a flutter of those thick lashes.
“It’s late, sweetheart,” Candace said as she tugged the blankets up to his quivering little chin.
Tears sparkled in his silver eyes, and her heart constricted over his sadness.
“Mommy tucks me in,” he said. “Every night.”
But tonight...
Because she was in a jail cell. What if something worse had happened? What if one of the bullets fired into the SUV had struck her?
She had had too close a call in that parking garage. She could have a close call in jail, too, if anyone recognized her as a former assistant district attorney. But Amber’s appearance had changed over the past year.
Hopefully no one would recognize her. Hopefully she’d make it safely back to her son.
The little boy couldn’t lose his mom.
“She’ll tuck you in, too,” Candace promised. “When she gets home, she’ll come in and give you a kiss.” And she leaned down and kissed his puckered brow.
“The bad man didn’t get Mommy?” the little boy asked, his voice cracking with fear.
Candace dropped to her knees beside his bed and wrapped her arms around him. “Of course not. Your daddy won’t let anyone hurt your mommy.”
Just as Garek hadn’t let anyone hurt her when she’d been in danger. Kozminski men protected the women they loved. They were heroes. That should have been their reputation—instead of the notorious one they hadn’t earned.
Michael drew in a shaky breath and nodded. “Daddy will get the bad man.”
“Yes, he will...” Or he’d die trying.
It was the die trying part that Candace worried about. They’d nearly lost Milek once—to his grief. Now they might lose him to a killer.
Finally, snuggled in Candace’s arms, the little boy succumbed to sleep. She waited until he was breathing deeply before settling him back into his bed. Rising from his bedside, she pressed another kiss to his forehead. Maybe he would think it was Amber—that his mommy had tucked him in just the way she had every other night of his life.
She rose, turned toward the door and gasped at the shadow standing there. But she instinctively recognized that long, hard body even before Garek leaned into the glow of the night-light beside the child’s bed.
“So, we going to do this someday?” her husband asked, gesturing at the little boy she’d tucked into bed. “We going to make one of those?”
Emotion choking her, Candace could only nod—quickly and definitely. She wanted a baby with her husband.
“I’ll tell Stacy to get started on another bear.”
She pressed a hand over her stomach, thinking of their child growing inside her. And Garek’s hand covered hers. His shook slightly. But then he was worried about his brother and Amber—just as she and Michael were.
“Did you hear from Milek?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“He’s okay,” she reminded him. He’d survived the gunfire in the parking garage.
“He won’t be if Amber’s not,” Garek said.
She had to be okay. Candace glanced back at the little boy. He slept, but his brow was still furrowed. He wasn’t sleeping peacefully. He needed his mother.
* * *
Milek didn’t know if Nick Rus had done him a favor or a disservice when he’d let him watch the interim district attorney interrogate Amber. The woman wasn’t as delusional as Amber thought. She was right about him, just as Gregory Schievink had been right. Amber would never be elected if she was with him. His reputation would destroy hers and any chance she had of winning the job she wanted.
And now he knew for certain she still wanted it—even after having to take a year away from the courtroom. Maybe the year away had made her want it even more.
But if she wanted to run for that position, she needed to be able to stop running for her life. Milek had to find who was really after her.
The crazy DA? The woman obviously resented Amber enough to want to hurt her. When she’d slapped her...
Rus had had to hold him back. Milek had nearly broken through the glass between the interrogation room and the room where he’d stood with the FBI agent watching the former colleagues.
After the interrogation, they’d gone back to Nick’s office while Amber had gone to a holding cell. His stomach muscles clenched with dread. He hated the thought of Amber being locked up—the way he’d been locked up. It wasn’t right. She didn’t belong behind bars.
And it wasn’t safe. He couldn’t be with her—couldn’t protect her. And he didn’t trust her safety to anyone but himself.
“What’s taking so long?” Milek asked.
“My boss had to wake up a federal judge,” Nick said.
“Was he afraid to do that?” Milek asked.
Nick snorted. “Chief Special Agent Lynch is afraid of nobody.” His admiration for his boss was understandable.
Milek had met the man when a couple of his agents had gotten married in the wedding chapel Penny Payne owned. Milek had helped with protection duty. Every time he’d been in that little chapel he’d imagined himself standing at the altar, waiting for Amber to walk down the aisle to join him.
But he could never again ask her to marry him. He couldn’t ruin her life—if she managed to survive the killer determined to end it.
Nick’s cell rang and he grabbed it up. After listening for a moment he let out an exultant “Great!”
“You got the charges dropped?” Milek asked, the tightness in his chest easing slightly.
Nick nodded. Then after listening a few more moments, he hung up and chuckled. “Not only are the charges dropped, but the mayor is going to appoint a new interim DA.”
“Amber?” he asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “While no charges are being pressed against her, she’s not entirely clear of suspicion.”
“Are you still suspicious of her?”
Nick shook his head again. “No.”
And that tightness eased a little more. Rus would help clear her name. “Let’s go get her,” Milek said.
But he’d no more than turned toward the door when it burst open, and a uniformed officer rushed in. “There’s a problem in the holding cells, Agent Rus.”
Milek’s heart lurched in his chest as he realized what the problem was: Amber. He’d known she wouldn’t be safe in lockup. Someone could have recognized her. Or Reynolds could have hired someone to take her out while she was in custody. Maybe that was why she’d brought the phony charges against her to begin with—to get her alone and vulnerable.
If that was the case, he’d take care of that bitch. She’d lose more than her job...
* * *
Amber hadn’t thought she would ever see her son again, so she couldn’t stop
staring at him, watching him sleep. The minute she’d stepped into the room Michael had let out a shuddery sigh—as if he’d sensed her presence.
There was no way she wouldn’t have come back to him. He was everything to her—he and his father.
As obsessively as she watched Michael, Milek watched her. He stood beside her in the doorway.
“You’re really all right?” he asked, his voice a deep whisper.
But Michael must have heard him anyway; he shifted in his bed, burrowing in as his sleep deepened. He felt safe now—with his father.
Amber should, too. Milek had saved her life over and over again. But even though he watched her, something had changed. There was a distance between them.
That distance scared her nearly as much as being locked up had. If not for the woman she’d prosecuted two years ago, Amber might not have survived lockup. But she’d recommended rehab for the young prostitute instead of jail time two years ago. And the woman had been grateful—grateful enough to fight for her when the others had turned on her.
Not wanting to wake their son, she stepped away from the doorway and headed across the living room to the room she shared with Milek. Did he want her sharing it anymore?
He followed her inside and turned on the light. Then he touched her chin, tilting it toward the glow. “You might have a bruise,” he said.
“I didn’t get hit,” she said. The fight had been broken up right away. And then she’d been released.
“Reynolds hit you,” he said.
“You saw that?”
He nodded.
And she realized he’d seen the rest of it—the interrogation. “She’s wrong,” Amber told him.
He nodded again. “She knows that now—since her phony charges cost her the job she wanted.”
The job she might have killed to get. Would she have? The blonde lawyer was ambitious and vicious. But a murderer?
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Amber said. “I was talking about what she said about you...”
He shrugged. “It’s true,” he said. “I killed a man...”
“In self-defense.”
“I wasn’t the one he was trying to hurt.”
Stacy had been. Their stepfather had nearly raped their sister before Milek and Garek broke into the room where he’d been holding her. Amber knew the story. Not from Milek. He had never talked about it. But Stacy had.
That was all Amber knew, though, because Stacy had been strangled into unconsciousness. She probably would have been strangled to death if her brothers hadn’t come to her rescue. She didn’t know what had happened next—just that her stepfather had died and both her brothers had been charged with manslaughter.
That had been another travesty of justice.
“You saved your sister’s life,” Amber said. “Just like you keep saving mine.”
She hadn’t had a chance to thank him for earlier—for saving her life in the parking garage. If he hadn’t pushed her down, some of those bullets might have hit her—or the flying glass would have. She had it in her hair. Remembering the fragments, she reached her hand up toward it.
But Milek caught her fingers the way she’d caught his earlier. “You’ll cut yourself,” he said. Linking their hands, he pulled her toward the bathroom off the bedroom. He stepped inside the walk-in shower and turned on the faucet.
The shower was huge, the walls and floor and ceiling tiled in slate—which changed into a myriad of colors as the water washed over it. Without even waiting for her to undress, Milek pulled her inside with him. And fully clothed, they stood under all the showerheads.
The glass washed away with the water, running down into the drains. Her clothes molded to her, plastered against her body as her wet hair was plastered against her head.
Milek pushed back her hair as he stared down into her face. She couldn’t read his expression—didn’t know what he was thinking.
Then his gaze dropped lower, over her body. Her nipples pressed against the wet fabric of her blouse and her lace bra. He reached for the buttons and began to part them. She didn’t know what he was thinking. But she knew what he wanted—the same thing she did.
Her fingers moved to the buttons on his shirt, quickly parting them. She pushed the shirt from his broad shoulders. Muscles rippled in his arms and his chest.
And her mouth went dry with desire. He was so damn beautiful—the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And for a little while he’d been hers.
He had loved her.
Hadn’t he?
Why else had he asked her to marry him?
He must have loved her once. He’d even used the date he’d proposed as the code to the security panel for his studio. It had meant something to him.
She had meant something to him.
Could he love her again?
She had never stopped loving him. Even when she’d been hurt and bitter over his rejection, she had loved him yet. She lowered his zipper and his pants, and she dropped to her knees on the slate floor to show him that love.
She closed her lips around his erection.
“Amber...”
Finally he said her name, his voice thick with desire. His fingers grabbed her shoulders. But he didn’t pull her up—not right away.
She made love to him with her mouth, sliding it up and down the length of him. But before she could push him over the edge, he lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. But he slid her up higher so that he could take one of her nipples into his mouth. He teased it with his tongue and then nipped it lightly with his teeth.
She moaned as tension began to build inside her. She needed him there—driving deep. But instead of his erection, his fingers moved between her legs. He touched intimately, pushing his thumb against the most sensitive part of her.
She whimpered as the tension wound tighter, threatening to snap her. Then he moved again—pulling her down onto his erection. He slid home—that was how it felt when he filled the emptiness inside her.
He was home. His arms. His body.
She had never loved anyone as she loved him, and she never would.
But she didn’t hold out hope that he would ever again ask her to marry him. Because even while he made love to her body, Milek held a part of himself back from her.
There was a distance between them that Amber wasn’t certain she could ever bridge. Even as she opened her body and her heart to him...
She skimmed her lips along his tense jaw, over his chiseled cheekbones—to his mouth. She kissed him as she clutched at his broad shoulders, holding on to him as tightly as she could.
He moved inside her, sliding in and out. And his fingers teased her nipples. He kissed her deeply, his tongue sliding in and out of her mouth as he did her body. And finally the tension inside her broke. She screamed as the orgasm overwhelmed her.
He tensed, and a low groan came from his throat, echoing off the slate walls. Despite his orgasm, the tension didn’t ease from his body. Maybe that was because there was still a threat out there—someone still intent on killing her and her son.
Or maybe it was because Milek would never be able to completely let himself go with her. He wouldn’t ever let her have all of him.
That knowledge hurt more than Evelyn’s slap had earlier. Milek could protect her life. But he couldn’t protect her heart—because he’d already broken it.
Chapter 22
Nick stared out the windows of his office, studying the detectives and the officers who milled around the department. Had he wasted the past year of his life?
Apparently he hadn’t cleaned up as much of River City as he’d thought he had. After digging a little deeper into Evelyn Reynolds and her financial records, he had found bribes. Ones paid to her and ones she had paid.
She was dirty as hell.
But was she a killer? He didn’t know—even after he’d questioned her. Now she was locked up in the holding cell where she’d had Amber Talsma held. He doubted anyone would come to her rescue as they had Amber’s. With her accounts frozen, she wouldn’t be able to make bail. He didn’t have to worry about her right now.
What about Brad Jipping? He picked up his cell and punched in the number for the best River City detective and asked, “Any leads on Jipping?”
“Since his kid died last year, the guy’s gone off the grid,” the detective replied.
Nick breathed a slight sigh of relief. Then Nikki wouldn’t be able to find the guy, either, and he was sure Milek had her looking. Nick didn’t want the Payne Protection Agency finding Jipping before he did. He didn’t entirely trust Milek Kozminski—especially not if Jipping proved to be the killer.
The guy might wind up dead before Nick could have the chance to arrest him. Then Nick might be arresting Milek instead. Not that he’d blame him for wanting to take out the guy who’d terrorized his son and the woman he loved.
If Nick ever had a kid and someone put out a hit on him...
But that wasn’t likely to ever happen. He pulled open his desk drawer and reached for a gooey cookie. The closest he had come to a relationship since moving to River City was with Penny Payne. But that was a strange bastard-son-of-her-dead-husband relationship that nobody understood.
Especially not him...
But he’d never been good at relationships. He suspected Annalise Huxton would heartily agree with that—since he’d crossed the line and ruined their friendship. Maybe it was good her brother had gone missing on his last deployment or he probably would have tracked Nick down to kick his ass before now.
No. He understood Milek Kozminski wanting to hurt the man who’d threatened his child and the woman he loved. He just couldn’t let him do it.
* * *
He had him. Jipping was here. Milek knew it. At his nod, Garek kicked open the motel room door, and Milek rushed inside—gun drawn.
Despite his bleeding shoulder the guy had moved quickly enough to grab his gun. He pointed the barrel at Milek.
