YULETIDE PROTECTOR

by Julie Miller

  She was guessing the man wasn’t used to having company. And that her nightmarish afternoon on the Plaza had put almost all of Kansas City’s finest on some kind of duty tonight.

  Bailey hitched up the black KCPD sweatpants Spencer had lent her and padded across the polished wood floor in the white athletic socks she’d borrowed from him. The shower and clean clothes, even if the sweats were several sizes too large for her, had been a refreshing, comforting welcome after her trip through the E.R., a lengthy interview with Detective Nick Fensom and a quick meeting with her trauma counselor, Kate Kilpatrick.

  She was fine. She was safe. She’d shared a heart-wrenching phone call with her mother and stepfather. Her mother had cried the entire time and Jackson had promised to give her a sedative and make sure she got a decent night’s sleep.

  Bailey sat on the black leather couch and curled her legs beneath her, trying to concentrate on cutting shapes out of the white paper she’d borrowed from Spencer’s computer printer. She was doing her best not to eavesdrop on his investigation. But it was hard not to pick up on the gist of the conversations he’d had these past few hours.

  He’d had several calls from his partner, Nick Fensom, talking plan B and perimeter security. Annie Hermann had called with results from the lab—no usable trace on the cash The Cleaner had paid the college student to deliver that last threat, but she was following up on several calls to and from Corie Rudolf’s cell phone before she’d died. Someone named Pike Taylor and a police dog had reported on tracking the shooter from the roof of the Plaza Mercantile Building. But that trail had gone cold with time and snow and some type of chemical on the sidewalk.

  Spencer could be talking to the deputy commissioner or Mitch Taylor or any of a hundred other police officers, lab techs and who knew what kind of experts right now.

  And she...was cutting snowflakes.

  Spencer leaned back in his leather desk chair, smoothing his hand over his damp red-gold hair. “No, Kate. Tell the press Miss Austin isn’t giving any interviews before the trial. And if I see any more photographs from today’s attack on the television or in a newspaper or online, you can inform them that I’ll be charging them with witness tampering.”

  Bailey unfolded her grade-school creations and carried them to the tall silk fern by the living room window. She’d already raided Spencer’s desk for a box of colored paper clips that she’d hooked together and draped like garland through the fern’s long leaves.

  Although she could see the lights of the downtown skyline from the seventh-story window, Spencer lived far enough from the main highways and thoroughfares that the sky was nearly black when she looked outside. The moon wasn’t even bright enough to pierce the low-hanging clouds or lighten her mood.

  Still, she anchored the paper snowflakes to the clips, determined not to slip into one of those desperate funks that could be even more dangerous to her recovery than those anger episodes she sometimes had to deal with since the rape.

  “It’s close enough.” Spencer rose from his chair to pace again. “The judge is already threatening to sequester the jury before the trial even starts. Endangering Bailey and jeopardizing the fairness of this trial sounds like tampering to me.” She watched his reflection in the window, and saw when his attention shifted from the phone call to her. “I’d better let you get to bed. Is Sheriff Harrison in town with you? He’s a good man. Thanks, Kate.”

  Spencer set the phone on the coffee table as he crossed the room to join her at the window. He scrubbed his hand over his jaw before splaying his fingers at the waist of his jeans. “What are you doing now?”

  Bailey stood back from her handiwork. “Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “You’re hanging paper clips on my fern.”

  “It’s a Christmas tree.” She caught the long sleeves of the sweatshirt she wore in her fists and hugged her arms around her waist. Right. Like that didn’t sound lame.

  “You’ve already fixed us an omelet and washed the dishes. My kitchen has never been that clean.” Spencer propped his hip on the ledge of the window and sat back to face her. “I didn’t bring you to my place to cure my Scrooge-ish spirit. I brought you here so I can keep you safe. Away from all that craziness out there today. This way I can keep an eye on you while I work on tracking down the shooter and who might have put that bomb together.”

  He’d missed a button on the collar of the striped oxford shirt he wore. Bailey curled her fingers into the soft cotton shirt, fighting the urge to button it for him. “I know you have to work. I don’t begrudge you that for a minute. But there’s nothing for me to do here except think. I don’t have any clothes to unpack until Sergeant Murdock brings the suitcase from my place. I don’t have a job with work I can bring home. I have to do something to stay busy.” She spun away from the window, gesturing to both floors. “And you weren’t kidding when you said you didn’t celebrate Christmas. There’s not a stitch of decoration or a present to be seen anywhere around here.”

  She heard him stand and felt his hands close around her shoulders. “B, you don’t have to take care of me. I’m used to working late and fending for myself.”

  Bailey turned. “Maybe you don’t need anything, but I...” She reached up and fastened the tiny button before smoothing the open placket of his shirt. “I need...to take care of you. I can do little jobs while you’re working. I want to help.”

  He captured her hands as they moved across the crisp material and pulled her to the couch to sit beside him. “You’re not useless.”

  “You remember me saying that?” Bailey’s cheeks flooded with heat and she pulled away. The man never forgot a detail, did he?

  Spencer perched on the edge of the couch, taking her hands and rubbing them between his bigger, warmer ones. “You don’t think putting Brian Elliott away in prison is the bravest, most helpful thing you can do? Think of all the women you’re protecting by getting him off the streets. Think of families you’re saving from heartbreak and tragedy.”

  He’d hunched down to her level and those handsome gray eyes were right there in front of her. The sincerity she read there was fiercely sweet. Bailey smiled her thanks, but pulled her fingers free to hold his in her lap. “I know that’s important. And trust me, I’m not forgetting what a challenge it will be to talk about that night again in front of Brian and all those other people, strangers I don’t even know, who’ll be in that courtroom.”

  He waited patiently for her to continue, and Bailey discovered that having Spencer Montgomery focused solely on her—listening, watching, caring—could be as empowering as it was intimidating.

  Her grasp tightened around his. “But the only reason I’m any help to you or the police department or Kansas City is because that man beat me until I was unconscious and did...unspeakable things to me.”

  “B—”

  “No.” She pulled away when he reached for her, trying to make things right, trying to take care of her and make the pain go away. She would have moved away, but his hand settled lightly on her knee, silently asking her to stay close and finish what she had to say. “What else do I have to offer the world, Spencer? When this trial is done, I don’t want to be that poor little rich girl again. I want to do something meaningful with my life. I need to be something more than what I was...before. And if all I can do is wash your dishes and bring a lame little bit of Christmas into this sterile home, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He studied her for several long seconds, taking in the butterfly bandage on her cheek, her vehement words, her frustration. Then his hand tightened around her knee and he leaned in to kiss her. His left hand tunneled into her hair to hold her at the nape and anchor her lips to his until she surrendered to his gentle persuasion and parted for him. She caught his jaw with her hand, holding on as he deepened the kiss.

  It was tender, leisurely, giving, sweet. She tasted the coffee from d
inner on his tongue and felt a languid heat curling inside her belly and seeping out into every extremity until she was far too warm for a winter’s evening, and far too bewitched to recall the unsettling emotions that had left her feeling raw and second-rate just a few minutes earlier.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered on a husky voice when he finally broke away.

  Spencer’s fingers lingered in her hair and he rested his forehead against hers. His deep, uneven breaths made her think he’d gotten lost for a few moments in that kiss, too. But he was smiling when he straightened and looked into her eyes. “You’re ambitious, Bailey Austin.” His fingers stroked the hair at her nape. “As horrible as that night must have been for you—and as angry as it makes me to think a man would ever put his hands on you like that—I think the attack awakened a fighting spirit in you. You’re no longer content to accept the status quo. You want to make your own decisions, make your own mistakes, create your own victories. You’ll never settle for having them handed to you again.”

  A year’s worth of therapy sessions with her counselor, and she’d never heard her internal struggle verbalized for her so perfectly.

  “Yes.”

  Spencer understood. As twisted and complicated as her life had become, as volatile and bewildering as her emotions could be, he understood. She just wanted to be a normal woman again. Maybe for the first time in her life. With all his logic and acrimony and deductive genius, he got that.

  No wonder she’d fallen in love with the man.

  Even as the revelation blossomed in her heart and filled her with an anticipation and apprehension that were too new and unfamiliar to fully understand, he was pulling her to her feet and leading her across the living room to the foyer closet.

  “I guess I have to ask you to be patient and not try to conquer all those battles tonight. Here.” He pulled a box off the top shelf and handed it to her. “These are a few things I kept from my parents’ estate.” He lifted the lid to reveal a tray of glass ornaments, thinning silver garland and a pair of clumsily painted angels made out of popsicle sticks and cupcake wrappers—one red, one green.

  Bailey lifted the green angel from its tissue wrapping and held it up. “Did you make these?”

  “Yeah. A couple or thirty years ago.” Spencer closed the box of decorations and carried it to the coffee table. “I think my mom kept everything I made in school.”

  “They’re precious.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone to go get a real tree, but—” he pointed to the window where the silk plants are “—the ferns are all yours.”

  Laughing, she impulsively threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. “Who’d have that the stoic detective had a sentimental streak?”

  “Don’t let that get around the precinct, okay?” For a few moments, he hugged her back. Then his hands slipped to her waist and he was pushing some space between them. The stoic detective truly had returned. “I’ve got two more calls to make. We’re trying to get some more background on Corie Rudolf. We dumped the numbers on her phone and discovered she’d made and received several calls from the same disposable cell number—almost all of them after the D.A. announced you’d be testifying at Elliott’s trial. The last one came right before that bomb went off today.”

  Corie had been on the phone when she’d come out of the coffee shop. Maybe she hadn’t been trying to call Bailey at all. Maybe her neighbor had followed her to the Plaza. “Do you think Corie was working for The Cleaner?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Spencer admitted. “But not a fact yet. I need to run down a few more leads.” He reached around her to pick up his phone. “Will transforming this bachelor pad into something more festive be meaningful enough work for now?”

  Bailey nodded, sobered by the possible treachery of a friend who’d been murdered. “Thank you. You do your job. I’ll be fine.”

  The rest of the evening passed by in relative silence between Bailey and Spencer. He worked until about midnight while she created a unique, silly display in the window that brought some childish fun and holiday colors to the otherwise austere condo. Bailey took her thoughts to bed with her and was sound asleep in the guest bedroom by the time Spencer came up the stairs.

  Chapter Ten

  It was 2:00 a.m. when Bailey rolled over in the dark, tangled in the covers of an unfamiliar bed, and the panic hit.

  “Don’t hurt me!” She fought against the tape that bound her wrists.

  He was here.

  “I told you not to look at me, you filthy witch!” Her captor pulled the hood over her face, plunging her into darkness. “You’re like every other woman who doesn’t know her place. I’m the man here.” Her body jerked as he ripped her skirt off her hips. She screamed as he cut through her slip and pantyhose. The spicy, musky assault of his cologne burned into her memory as his weight crushed her into the mattress and plastic underneath her.

  “Bailey?”

  Lights flashed behind her eyelids. He was pouring something all over her, washing her body with a pungent liquid, inside and out. “No!”

  Her nightmare exploded in a blast of fire and pain, throwing her to the ground. She fought to escape. Fought to live.

  “Bailey!”

  She woke up swinging, blindly smacking her attacker. “Let me go!”

  “Easy. Easy, B.” She wasn’t trapped in the dark. There was no hood on her head. No man in a surgical mask hovering above her. She was in a bed. There was a lamp on beside her. Granite-colored eyes blazed in the light. “It’s me, Spencer. Do you know me now?”

  She took several more seconds to comprehend when and where she was. Not in the past. Not in a windowless construction site draped with plastic tarps. She was in Spencer Montgomery’s home. On a winter’s night. She saw the scratches she’d raked across his chest and felt his strong hands pinning her wrists into her pillow.

  “B?”

  When she nodded, he released her and sat up on the side of her bed.

  “Sorry I had to hold you down,” he apologized as she sat up and pushed her hair off her face. “You were wailing pretty good on me. I had to protect myself. I can tell you’ve been working out.” He winked. But she didn’t see the humor. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  He rubbed at his bare right shoulder. She’d done worse than scratch him? She climbed onto her knees beneath the sheet and blanket, and pushed the long sleeves of the black sweatshirt up past her elbows to free her hands before reaching out to brush her fingertips across the rusty-gold hair above his heart. “Did I hurt you?”

  His muscle flinched as she neared the mark she’d made and he sucked in his breath, pulling away from her touch. “I can imagine who you were really fighting, and I hope you did hit him that hard.” But he shook his head and pointed to the bruise on his tricep. “I jarred this pretty good diving into the parking garage this afternoon. But I heard you crying out, and...”

  Now she saw the gun sitting on the table beside the lamp. He thought there’d been an intruder, that one of The Cleaner’s hired thugs had gotten to her. Was that why she saw concern still lining his face?

  “I’m okay. I’m safe. The nightmare woke me and I was disoriented, and it all got mixed together. I’m sorry I woke you.” She looked up at the ceiling, knowing there were condos above and below them. “Do you think I woke anyone else?”

  “We’re pretty soundproofed here. Don’t worry.”

  Bailey was breathing normally now and was fully able to distinguish memory from reality now. Her gaze was drawn back to his long, lean torso and she realized he’d charged to her rescue with nothing more than his gun and a pair of flannel pajama pants that rode temptingly low beneath his belly button.

  And though her blood heated with a different kind of tension, it wasn’t only longing that made her reach out to touch the puckered white scar that formed a jag
ged circle on his right flank. She’d seen something like that on a TV show—the scar from a bullet.

  “What happened?” His flat stomach quivered when she touched his skin and Spencer shot to his feet.

  “It’s an old war wound.” He picked up his gun and headed toward the door. “If you’re okay, I’ll go back and get some sleep now.”

  “Spencer.” Don’t brush away my concern. Don’t think I can’t handle it. Bailey swung her legs off the side of the bed, not bothering to pull the sweat pants back on over her panties as she hurried into the hallway after him. The shirt hit low enough on her thighs to make a modest nightgown. “I may not carry a badge or have a therapist’s license, but I know how to listen.”

  She followed him straight into his bedroom, a carbon copy of the gray walls and dark wood downstairs.

  “Don’t come in here unless you intend to stay the night.”

  Bailey took another step in, stopping at the foot of his king-size bed while he circled around it. “Is that supposed to scare me away?”

  “You make me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time, Bailey. I don’t know that I want to feel them.”

  “Because it hurts?” She was trying to piece together what he was admitting to her. “Something about the nightmare, about me crying out, bothered you.”

  “Let’s see.” He holstered his gun and set it on the bedside table before picking up the dove-gray comforter and shaking out the messy folds from his hasty dash to her room. “Someone tried to kill you today. She threatened to finish the job if you won’t crawl into a hole and forget about the trial.”

  “Don’t.” Bailey snatched the cover from his hand and folded it back, out of his reach. “This isn’t that relentless cop thing you do. That scar means something. Tell me about it. Tell me what makes you so afraid to feel something for me.”

  When he turned around, there was a look of such pain and anguish on his chiseled face that Bailey immediately reached out.