She turned the corner out of her office with a slight wave to Rochelle, and ran smack into J.D. Easton. She really needed to stop running into people.
“Leave your boyfriend at home?” J.D. asked.
She gritted her teeth. J.D. was an incredible lawyer, able to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of a witness. Usually, she admired that. Today, not so much. “I told you we're not involved.”
J.D. shot her a look, his green eyes sparkling. “Keep telling yourself that, Everett,” he said as he brushed by.
She watched him go, happy he was also too busy to engage in long conversation in the hallway. She had a hard time keeping things from J.D., and truth be told he was one of her closest friends. She sighed. She could count her close friends who didn't have the last name Everett or Jamieson on one hand. Maybe she needed to get out more. Right. When did she have time to do that? As she made her way to the elevator, her phone vibrated with an incoming text.
Planning a party at Mom & Dad's in 2 weeks
Mason was planning a party? This was new. What kind of party?
Engagement party
Black tie? She wanted to get Dylan in a tux, so sue her.
Why?
Why not? She sent the text back quickly, then thought of an even better reason to get Dylan into a tux. It might be rushing things, but this was Mason. She smiled to herself as she sent another text. Why not just get married then instead?
Less than a minute later, her phone vibrated again. A surprise wedding!
A what? Her brother wasn't just ambitious, he was crazy. You're insane!
You know it.
She was laughing as she made her way into Judge Winthrop's chambers. A surprise wedding indeed. Only her brother would come up with a such a thing after everything he'd been through.
Chapter Two
The following afternoon Dylan sat across from Cassidy at lunch, wishing she'd stop moaning around the cheeseburger in her mouth. She was making him crazy, not to mention hard as stone. He had to stop looking at her, imagining her making those noises with him in her mouth, so he stared out the window instead. Hazy movement caught his attention on the edge of his vision, and he swung his gaze to the right. A wisp of smoke was coming from beneath the hood of Cassidy's car, a precursor to something he'd rather not relive.
“Get down!” he shouted, yanking Cassie beneath the table seconds before a huge explosion rocked the cafe. Even though his ears were ringing, he could hear her breath coming in shallow pants and he worried telling her what had happened would make her lose it. “That was your car, Cassie.”
“Why? What?” Her teeth were chattering, her eyes wide and impossibly dark. “Someone blew up my car?”
He nodded, forcing himself to stay calm. “Had to have been remotely detonated. If it had been tied into the ignition, we'd both be dead.”
“Thank God for small miracles.”
“This was nothing close to a miracle. This was a warning. Who would want to blow up your car, Cassie?”
She seemed to notice then that he still held her and stiffened, the shock he'd seen seconds ago receding. “I'm a prosecutor, Dylan. I put bad people in prison. Sometimes they don't appreciate that.”
There she was. “Any of those people threaten to kill you?”
Her eyes widened, as if she hadn't connected a car bomb to attempted murder. “Who would want to kill you? Don't you catch bad guys too?”
He stared down at her, willing her to see reason, but deciding not to lie. “There are a few,” he admitted.
“Anyone I know?”
“Maybe,” he acknowledged.
She thought for long moments before shaking her head. “I don't know who would want to kill me or Blue.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “Shit. Most of your clothes were in the car.”
He'd almost forgotten they'd picked up a second load of his clothes this morning. Trying to make light of the situation, he flashed her a grin. “Someone is determined to keep me naked.”
She looked pointedly at the arm around her and cleared her throat. “Um... We should probably move.”
She was right. He shouldn't be just sitting here holding her when he didn't know exactly what had happened. Enough time had passed as they hunkered under the table that Aylesford Fire and Rescue and the PD should have arrived and begun to catalog the scene. He knew there would be endless questions he couldn't answer, but was thankful they were in Aylesford. He'd overheard a fair amount of information about a certain Detective Davis in Tyler, none of it good. “Let's go talk to the officers on-scene,” he said. Rest and pain relief would just have to wait.
He found Detectives Chris Delmonico and Jason Monroe cataloging the empty shell of Cassidy's Lexus. “What can you tell me?”
“I didn't think you were cleared yet, Black,” Monroe greeted.
“This is Cassie's car,” he explained. “I was here with her.”
“I'll just bet you were,” Delmonico teased with a waggle of his eyebrows.
“Don't talk about her like that!” Dylan snapped at his friend.
Chris closed his mouth, ran a hand over the back of his neck, and started over, a chagrined look on his dark features. “Looks like remote detonation, likely a cell phone somewhere close by. We're canvassing the area now.
“Good,” Dylan replied with a quick nod. “I don't think it was professional—I saw smoke before it blew.”
“You know you'll have to give a statement, Black,” Monroe said on a sigh.
Of course he would. He thought briefly of how many statements he'd given in the last few weeks and almost sighed himself. “No problem, but right now, I need someone to take Cassie and me to my house. We'll pick up my truck and some more clothes.” He shot a look at both detectives, daring them to say something. “My suitcase was in the car.”
“I didn't say anything? Did you say anything?” Chris looked from Dylan to Jason and back again.
Jason chuckled at his partner before turning back to Dylan. “I'll get O'Halloran to take you two up to your house.”
“Thanks,” he replied to Jason as he turned to find Cassidy walking toward them, phone to her ear. He could hear her side of the conversation with J.D. Easton, assuring the other man she was fine, and that he didn't need to come down to collect her.
A strange feeling coiled in Dylan's belly. Jealousy. He watched her as she animatedly spoke, his working hand clenched into a tight fist. What was this woman doing to him? He was going crazy. When she finally disconnected the call, he found himself asking, “You got a thing with good ol' J.D.?”
Her dark eyes narrowed. “Would it matter?”
“Hell yes, it would.”
She glared at him. “No, I don't have a thing going with J.D.” She walked away a few steps before turning sharply. “Do you think I would've kissed you if I had a thing with anyone else?” She marched back to him, her long finger poised to poke him in his chest. “I told you I don't do casual.”
Fuck. “I'm sorry. I'm still jumpy from the explosion,” he lied. He was acting like an idiot because of her, not because of a car bomb.
She softened, her hand opening against his chest. “PTSD?”
Not exactly, but he'd go with it. “Maybe.”
She looked up at him, her coffee eyes sucking him under, but he refused to fall. Not now, not today. He cleared his throat. “Chris has a uniform taking us to my house. We can get my truck and some more clothes.”
“Truck?” she repeated.
“Is that a problem?” he asked, knowing she'd never admit to a problem even if she thought one was there. The Bronco could handle almost anything, and as stubborn as this woman was, there was no way she'd let a truck get the better of her.
She gave him a small smile. “Of course not.”
~*~
“You have got to be kidding me,” Mason Everett said after Cassidy recapped the incident at the cafe. “You were nearly blown up at lunch?”
“Nearly blown up is a little bi
t of an exaggeration, big bro. Blue might be in the great junkyard in the sky, but I'm fine.” She shuddered at the memory of her brother's all too recent kidnapping. “You came a lot closer to death than I did.”
A sour expression twisted his handsome face. “We were both saved by a certain former Army Ranger.”
“Why the face?”
“How many more Everetts is he going to have to save?” He spun on his heel, paced Cassidy's small living room. “Who's out to get you?” He paced a while longer, the worry and agitation coming off him in waves. “Someone is trying to kill you, Cass.” He stopped to sink into her plush sage couch. “After...” He swallowed, started again. “We can't have something happening to you.”
“You won't,” Dylan declared from the doorway.
Dylan's words rolled over her like syrup, thick, rich, and dark. She squashed the arousal his voice alone elicited. She wasn't going there, and her brother was in the room. Eww. Instead, she turned to face him. “Why do you need me if you can sneak through houses?” He pinned her with a look, his golden eyes nearly burning her. She knew he saw right through her facade, but she wasn't about to acknowledge that. Sharpening her tone, she snapped, “What, were you a ninja in a former life?”
Mason shot her a “what the fuck?” look, before he turned to Dylan. “Saving Everetts is your thing, huh?”
“It appears that way,” he answered, his voice strained.
Her brother's face paled slightly. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Dylan wasn't looking at Mason when he said it, instead staring straight at her. “I mean it, Cassie.”
“What's going on here?” Mason asked, his dark eyes going from herself to Dylan and back again. Her brother wasn't stupid, and although she was sure he was picking up on the tension, he didn't say anything.
She also chose to ignore the obvious heat sparking between herself and Dylan, answering Mason's question with only facts, “We don't know yet. Someone blew up my car, and while Dylan seems to think it could only be directed at me, I wasn't the only person in the car today.”
“True enough, but it was your car,” Dylan responded. “There are people who might want me dead, but they're either halfway around the world or in prison right now.”
“Same goes, Master Sergeant.” So maybe she hadn't been to war, so she couldn't claim the round the world thing, but she wasn't backing down, and she was convinced this was about Dylan. No one had actually tried to kill her until after he came to live with her.
Mason pointedly looked at his Rolex. “I'm glad you're both okay, but I have things to do.”
“Don't work too hard, bro,” Cassidy cautioned with a wave.
He smiled. “You know it.”
~*~
“What?” Dylan looked up from his laptop to a glowering Cassidy. If anyone should be in a sour mood, it was him—he was the one hunting and pecking one-handed through his email.
“You're supposed to be resting, yet a few days ago you saved my life and today you're...” She tilted her head, her hair swishing slightly. “What are you doing?”
“Email.” Why was it important? He wasn't taking any jobs, but that didn't mean he couldn't look. Feeling her stare, he lifted his gaze to meet hers, and saw concern mixed with something else in her eyes. “Did you need me to be doin' somethin' else?”
Her eyes widened briefly, and he wondered where her thoughts had gone. “No, but you're supposed to be healing.” She looked at the grandfather clock against the wall. “We have to get you to therapy in about an hour anyway.”
God, how he hated that word. “Don't call it therapy, Cassie. Call it PT, or physical therapy if you must, but not therapy.”
She studied him for a moment and he wished he knew what was running through that quick mind of hers. Before he could ask her, she gave him a tight smile and fled the room, “PT it is,” tossed at him over her shoulder.
He watched her go, a soft chuckle making its way from his chest. His little prosecutor was nervous around him, had been running away from him for the better part of a week. After the mind-blowing hallway kisses followed closely by dressing him like a life-sized CEO doll, she had been careful not to touch him, but he caught the heat, the longing in her eyes when she thought he wasn't looking. He had news for her: He was always looking.
~*~
Cassidy scrambled to her home office and collapsed into her chair. She'd almost blurted that she most certainly needed him to be doing something else—her! She smacked herself in the forehead. She had to stop this. She wanted to take him apart and put him back together again, she wanted to find out what made up this dark, brooding man who could melt her with a look. It wasn't her place to figure him out, or jump him, or do anything but help him recover. She needed to get him well, get him out of her house, get him back home to the other side of Aylesford in the woods.
She balanced her head in her hands. God, what had possessed her to bring him home with her? She was slowly going insane with sexual frustration with him under her roof day and night, existing in all his muscled gorgeousness. She knew he would be happy to help her work out her frustrations and that made it worse. He wanted her, he'd proven that—he'd kissed the living hell out of her—and all she had to do was ask for it. She closed the door on that thought. No. She wasn't going down that road. Therapy, physical therapy, that was the only thing physical she was doing with him.
An old Olivia Newton John song popped in her head and she laughed at herself. No, she swore she wasn't getting physical with him, not in reality, at least. In her dreams she could do anything, and he wasn't in pain. She held back a moan at the thoughts tumbling through her mind. Good Lord, how was she going to handle this for another month or more? She had given her word and offered her home, and she was a woman of her word. She just hoped that word wouldn't kill her.
~*~
“You're doing well, Mr. Black. A little more.” She put him through a series of exercises meant to tone and elongate the muscles. “Just one more, sir, and then you're done,” the small woman coaxed.
“Call me Dylan. I figure if you can torture me three times a week, you should call me by name,” he said through a thready laugh.
Haleigh Carlisle looked up, almost meeting his eyes with her dark blue ones. “It's not torture, Mr... Dylan.” She looked away, a blush creeping up her pale throat. “It's therapy.”
There was that word again. “Let's call it anything beside therapy. I'm not tellin' you my innermost thoughts here, and it hurts like a,” he stopped himself from saying what he wanted to, instead letting the sentence hang awkwardly.
Haleigh gave him a small smile. “It's supposed to hurt. We just need to teach your arm how to work correctly again.”
If only it were that easy. He needed to get back into fighting shape in order to protect Cassidy, and he knew he would have to protect Cassidy. “Doctor Everett said six weeks of PT?”
She nodded, her ponytail flopping with the movement. “Yes, sir.”
This woman was the most demure little thing he'd ever encountered. “Do you think it will take that long?”
Her blonde tail flew as she shook her head. “No, sir.”
Okay then. “Enough with the yes sir, no sir, Haleigh,” he said quietly and watched her eyes widen and her cheeks pale. “It's just Dylan, or yes and no.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, yes.”
Satisfied for the moment, he asked again, “How long until I am able to, say, write? Or correctly use a fork?” Or a gun? he added silently.
“I expect it to be at least three weeks, maybe four.” She looked at the floor, never meeting his eyes. “It could take the full six weeks, it depends on how well your therapy,” she noticed she said the wrong word and shot a glance at Dylan before stumbling over the rest of her sentence, “I mean, your PT goes.”
“Haleigh, look at me,” Dylan commanded. She lifted her face, her eyes focusing on his left cheekbone. “Does he hurt you?”
A practiced look swept her face. “Who?”
> “Your boyfriend? Your husband? Your father?”
She dropped her gaze to the tiled floor. “Not anymore.”
“I will not hurt you,” he promised. “Even when you put me through torture three times a week.”
“I know,” she acknowledged. “You're a hero.”
“I'm just a man.” He paused, waited for her to look at him again. “Anyone who hurts women is not a man. Remember that.”
“I know.”
“Believe it, Haleigh Carlisle.”
~*~
“Detective Davis offered personal police protection,” Cassidy told Dylan over pizza. She had opted for hand held fare after last night's attempt at casserole ended with a frustrated Dylan and a very dirty table. She hoped he and silverware would get along sooner than later—a woman could only eat so many sandwiches, pizzas, and chicken before needing a new wardrobe.
“Refuse it,” Dylan growled.
She already had, but was interested in his hostility. “Why?”
“I don't trust that man as far as I can throw him. He is not watchin' over you.”
Well, then. “Proprietary much?”
“I protect what's mine,” he stated plainly.
What was his? She wasn't his, no matter how often she thought about it. She ran her gaze over his long, tough body. He was gaining mobility in his right arm, but she doubted he could pull the trigger and hit what he meant. “Dylan,” she started, cut off by another low growl.
“I can protect you better with this half-workin' body that that bastard can fully functional.” He took a sip of water. “How do you know he wasn't the one who blew up your precious Blue, anyway?”
She scrunched up her face. Why would Brandon Davis blow up her car? “He's a detective.”
He gave her an “and this matters how?” look. “The other cops on your brother's case don't trust him. Chris thinks he's crooked as a dog's hind leg.”
She shook her head. “Crooked as a dog's hind leg? Where are you from?”
“Up the road,” he answered vaguely. “Admit it, you know he can't protect you.”
“I don't know that.” She shifted to place her glass on the table, faced him fully. “How do you know that?”
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