by Kyra Jacobs
I resisted the urge to go over and check to see if he actually locked his kitchen window, mainly because I couldn’t seem to find a light switch. “You gonna catch the light?”
“Don’t need the light. I know exactly where what I want is.”
I heard him toss his keys onto the kitchen table. Next thing I knew, Nate had his arms around my waist. He spun me around, pulled me close, and leaned in for a kiss.
“Stop right there, Officer Steele.” I put my hand on his chest to halt his progress. “We had a deal, remember?”
Even in the dark I could see his responding smirk. He peeled my hand from his chest as easily as if he were turning the page in a magazine. Lifted it to his mouth. “Of course I do,” he said, his lips starting to travel up my arm. “Loser buys shots. I held up my end of the bargain.”
“No, no, no. That was only part of the deal. The rest was—”
“That if you won, you’d get to sleep in your own bed. Alone.” He reached down and collected my other hand in his.
I cleared my throat. “Precisely. So, what are you doing?”
“Kissing you. What does it look like?” I could hear the smile in his voice.
My head was still humming, but my quickened breath had nothing to do with the alcohol in my system. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking me home?”
“Nope.” He stepped forward, and I instinctively stepped away from him. My back grazed the wall. He lifted both my arms up and over my head, and secured my wrists with one large, strong hand.
“But we had a deal,” I said, my voice sounding higher than usual.
He leaned his face down to mine and kissed me gently on the lips. “I never promised to take you home. Just that you could sleep in your own bed. Alone, if you so choose.” His teeth gently nipped at my lower lip.
“That’s not fair!”
He pressed his body against mine, pinning me to the wall. “No, I’ll tell you what’s not fair,” he said, blue eyes blazing only inches from mine. “Watching that perfect little ass of yours strut in front of me all night and not being able to grab it. At least, not then.” He reached down and slid his other hand along the curve of my jeans.
I tried to pull my hands free. “But…I won fair and square!”
His smirk spread into a devilish smile. His hand traveled north from my hip and slid under the hem of my shirt. “And I told you. I hate losing.” Before I knew it, my shirt was up and over my head. I inhaled sharply as Nate tossed it aside.
“Nate! I—”
His lips found mine, silencing the cease and desist order I was about to issue. Only, this kissing wasn’t as gentle as before. There was more behind it.
That hunger I’d sensed all week.
The humming in my head increased. My lips broke free from his, and I gasped for air. Everything was happening so fast! I tried to think of a way out. To escape before…before…
Before what?
Before I become vulnerable, the voice of doubt whispered somewhere deep inside me.
Nate’s lips began skimming my jaw line as his hand traveled to areas previously unexplored. Thoughts of worry and self-doubt swirled through my muddied mind. But then Nate’s thumb slipped under my bra and my resolve evaporated with a sharp exhale.
Suddenly all my worries and fears were replaced by something infinitely stronger: need. My body arched into his, now set on its own agenda. He let go of my wrists and slid his free hand to my back. In the blink of an eye my bra fell slack.
And then just plain fell. To the floor.
I laced my fingers through his thick, dark hair, pulled his face down to mine, and kissed him with all I had. It was like throwing gasoline on an open fire. A growl rumbled in Nate’s chest as he lifted me up, sandwiching my hips between his and the wall.
I wrapped my legs around him, wishing there weren’t several layers of clothing yet between us. Because him pressed up against me felt good. Damned good. Too much more of this teasing and I’d spontaneously combust.
I turned my face, breaking the kiss to catch my breath. The sound of our ragged breathing echoed through the hallway.
“Nate, I—”
His mouth flew to mine once more. A second later, he cupped my breasts.
Damn those thumbs of his!
I broke free from his kiss and gasped for air, at the same time clawing at his broad shoulders for more. Which he gave me. When I could stand it no longer, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him tight.
“Okay,” I breathed. “You win. I—”
The doorbell rang.
We both froze.
“Were…you expecting someone?” I whispered.
Nate shook his head and pulled back a few inches. We both turned our eyes to the front of the house and listened.
Silence.
He shrugged, and turned his eyes, still hungry with desire, back to mine. “You were say—”
Someone knocked on the front door. The knocking soon became more of a pounding. Then a muffled voice called out, “Nate?”
I recognized the voice instantly—would know it anywhere. Without thinking, I lifted a hand to protect my nose.
“Ignore her,” he whispered, and began tracing my jaw line with his lips.
Sadly, I wasn’t feeling as combustible as I had been a moment ago. And unlike him, I couldn’t ignore the fact that his violent ex-girlfriend was still standing on the front porch.
“Nathan Andrew Steele! I know you’re in there. And I am not leaving until you let me in!”
Nate muttered a string of profanity and carefully set me down. “I’m so sorry. I’ll…try to get rid of her as quickly as I can.”
I swiped my clothes off the floor. “I need to hide. Please don’t let her find me here!”
He placed a hand on my elbow and led me to a door at the far end of the hall. “The basement. You’ll be safe there.”
* * * *
I yawned, and plucked another cobweb from my hair.
“Jess, I am so sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. How were you supposed to know she’d be so hard to get rid of?”
Nate pulled his car up in front of my place and shifted into park. “Well it sure as hell wasn’t how I’d planned to spend this past hour, that’s for damned sure.”
I grinned, but kept my eyes down. I’d had a good long talk with myself in that dark basement. About how close I’d come to opening my heart up for more misery, when what I should have been doing was behaving myself. And working to solve the mysteries surrounding Grace’s case, not making out with my partner in anti-crime.
Of course, that talk was much easier to swallow without Nate pressed up against me.
“I really should get inside. Brutus is probably dying for a potty break.”
Nate snorted. “Brutus is probably dead asleep.” He took in my determined look and sighed. “Alright. I’ll go.” He pulled me close for a steamy kiss goodnight. The kind of kiss that threatened to weaken even the strongest resolve.
A dog began barking like mad from somewhere inside my house. I pulled back, steeled my resolve, and reached for the door handle. Saved by Brutus.
Chapter 25
I awoke to the feeling that something large had crashed down upon me. It snapped me right out of the middle of my dream—a dream where no doorbell had interrupted what Nate and I started last night. With a startled scream, I pushed my comforter back and scrambled to escape from beneath whatever it was. My feet hit the floor and I whirled around with fists at the ready.
Whatever had attacked me was still on my bed, thrashing about beneath my thrown covers. I heard a growl, and watched as the face of my attacker emerged from under the comforter. It was snub-nosed, covered in slobber, and its tongue—as if to add insult to injury—proceeded to loll out one side.
I groaned.
“Brutus!” I took a seat on the edge of the bed and waited for my heart to stop racing. He army-crawled over to me, nudged my elbow with his slimy nose, and whined. A quick glance at
my alarm clock proved it was almost nine AM.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said and rubbed under one of his ears. “I guess I overslept a bit. Let’s get you outside before you have an accident.”
At the word “outside,” Brutus took a flying leap off my bed and raced from the room. I pulled on a pair of lounge pants and followed after him. Was halfway to the back door when my cell phone began to ring. I snatched it from my purse, which I’d left hanging off the back of a kitchen chair last night. I’d been much too preoccupied with thoughts of Nate and those damned thumbs of his to do much more than that with my handbag.
Brutus’s whining grew to a fevered pitch as he scratched at the inside of the back door.
“Hang on, buddy.” I grabbed his leash and tried to hold him still long enough to get it clasped onto his collar. “There.”
I opened the door, and Brutus shot out, yanking me along with him. My still-ringing cell phone flew into the air. Somehow I managed to keep hold of the leash, not do a faceplant on the cement walkway, and catch my cell phone before it hit the ground and shattered into a million pieces.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Jessica?” It was Sharon. Something in her voice sounded…different. Alive.
“Hi Sharon. What’s up?”
“She’s awake.”
The Hallelujah chorus sounded in my head.
“I’ll be right there.”
* * * *
I raced through the halls at Metzler Rehabilitation Center, eager to hear Grace’s voice, see her warm smile. A few cries of irritation reached my ears as I dashed past the center’s staff, but I continued on. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing Grace.
Nothing, of course, except Grace herself.
I burst into her room moments later to find it just as I’d left it: Grace, in bed, asleep.
An exasperated sigh escaped my lips. “But?”
I looked around the room, hoping this was some kind of practical joke. Maybe everyone was hiding, and would jump out any second and yell, “Surprise!” But as I darted around the room, checking every nook and cranny, I found nothing out of the ordinary except for a plain, white note on the table beside Grace’s bed.
She was up, but ran out of energy fairly quickly. Maybe she’ll wake again for you, Jessica. Norm and I decided to catch the late service at church, to offer our thanks to the Lord.
I dropped into the seat next to the bed, physically and emotionally spent. All that hurrying, all that excitement. And for what?
To sit here and watch her sleep. More. Again.
A single, hot tear ran down my cheek. Then another. The floodgates slowly opened. I laid my arms on the edge of her bed and buried my face in them. “Why couldn’t you have waited for me, Grace?” I sobbed. “Held out just a little longer. I’ve m-missed you so m-much.”
“No you haven’t.”
I sniffled. “Yes, I have. I—”
My head snapped up. Eyes locked for the first time in over a month with a familiar set of green ones. I’d never seen such a beautiful sight.
“Oh, Grace!” I threw my arms around her.
“Jessica?”
I hugged her tight, the way a child would their favorite stuffed toy. “Oh, Grace, it’s so good to hear your voice!”
“Jess…” She reached up and placed a weak hand on my head. “What did you do to your hair?”
“Huh? Oh, this?” I sat up and patted my hair. “It’s nothing. I just…got bored.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Just how long was I out?”
I wiped the tears from my face and stopped. Surely Norm and Sharon had already answered that question. Worry began to creep into my mind—had the accident affected her memory?
“Didn’t…didn’t your parents tell you?”
She grinned. “Yeah, but I can’t believe you made a change like that in only thirty days. Especially without me there to advise you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask. What had it been like the past month, trapped in the land of sleep? Had she been able to hear us talking? But her parents were due back any minute, so I settled for the ones that would help our investigation. Ones that I didn’t especially want to ask with Norm and Sharon in the room. The rest could come later.
“So, do you remember anything about the accident?”
Grace’s brows furrowed. “No, not really. One minute I’m driving home, the next, I’m waking up here. In this…this God-awful outfit.” She lifted her elbow and pointed to her floral, pastel gown. “I mean, seriously.” She laughed. “Couldn’t you have protected me a little better from being dressed in something so hideous?”
Her innocent-enough comment stabbed at my heart. If only I’d picked up her call that Friday, focused on her instead of me and my stupid manicure, she never would have had to don that gown. I looked down at my hands. “Yeah, it’s all my fault.”
She set her elbow down and reached a hand to my arm. “I was just teasing, Jess.”
I looked up at her with watery eyes. Shook my head. “It really was all my fault. I-I didn’t answer your call. I was…mad that you were forcing me to go on that double-date. So I let your call go to voicemail. If only I’d answered…”
Grace snorted. “Jessica Ann Hartley. Don’t even tell me you’ve been sitting there blaming yourself this whole time.”
I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t face those green eyes. Eyes that belonged to a person always so much stronger than I.
She lifted her hand from my arm. Then she pinched me, hard.
“Hey!” I recoiled, arm stinging. My eyes flashed to hers. “What’d you do that for?”
“Because you’re not close enough to smack. And I’m not strong enough to give you a good enough one yet.”
I scowled at her. “But it’s true. It is all my fault. So go on, just say it already.”
The smile that won me over the first time we’d met appeared on her beautiful face. “You and I both know you’d never intentionally put me in harm’s way,” she said, her voice soft as a feather. “I don’t blame you one iota for what happened to me that day. Do you hear me?”
It was like being granted a pardon the day before execution. The guilt guillotine that had hung over my head the last month vanished. I leaned down, put my head by her shoulder and wrapped my arm around her. “You’re the best, Gracie.”
“I don’t know about that.” Her body shook as she chuckled.
“But did you really have to pinch me?”
“Yep. ’Cause if there’s one thing that always gets you to stop crying, it’s when someone fans the flames of your temper.”
I smiled and hugged her tighter. She knew me well, too well. How on Earth would I be able to keep my undercover work at her old job a secret?
* * * *
I walked into work Monday morning, a woman on a mission. With Grace awake, the days for me to figure out who’d run her off the road and why were numbered. Plus, I now had the added worry of the possibility that at any moment she might pick up a phone and try to call Michael or Vanessa, either of which would assuredly rat me out.
Eager to get back into Orange Financial and pick up where I’d left off on Friday, I hurried down the hall toward my office. The feeling in my gut told me I was on the right track. And my gut instinct rarely led me down the wrong path.
I unlocked my office, tossed my purse and lunch tote into their usual drawer, and plopped down on my seat. With a flick of my heels I spun around to face my computer. Then I snagged my favorite blue pen and reached for the notepad where I’d scribbled down the search instructions Friday.
The notepad was blank.
I blinked a few times and tried to think back. I’d found the search screen, Michael hollered for me, me I jotted down some notes, left my office... Nowhere in that string of memories had I removed the page of notes from the pad.
Then again, it’d been a stressful day. Maybe I’d torn the note off, and shoved it in my purse? I
yanked it from the drawer and searched through it, but found nothing. That was followed by me tearing my office apart. I dug through every drawer, folder, and cabinet in there. Even checked my extra notepads.
No luck. The notes were gone.
I resolved to take fresh notes, and pulled the original notepad closer. That’s when I noticed the top of the notepad. And its jagged edge.
I hadn’t torn out the top sheet—someone else had.
A chill ran down my spine. I scanned my office with fresh eyes. Who’d been in here and taken my notes? How had they even known what I was doing? And, maybe more importantly, were they still here, watching me somehow?
Vanessa materialized at my door a moment later and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Wow, someone should have skipped the double shot of espresso in her Starbucks this morning.” Her laughter filled the room.
I attempted a smile. “What’s up?”
“Nice to see you, too.” She settled into her usual seat across from my desk.
“Sorry, just got a lot on my mind this morning.”
“On a Monday? Seriously, Jessica, you need to lighten up.”
I let my right eyebrow slip skyward, but managed to bite back the nasty retort that had come to mind.
“I just came in to tell you to watch your back a little closer this week.”
My heart skipped a beat. Or four. “Um, w-why’s that?”
She leaned forward, a fiendish smirk on her face. “Because I’ve heard from more than one source that Frank Pitzen is on the prowl again. He was spotted trying to corner Lauren in the stairwell. Can you believe that?” Disgust dripped from her words.
“Poor Lauren.”
I shook my head. Why was it that nothing good ever happened in that stairwell?
She nodded and eased back into her seat. “Of course, I never take the stairs. Would probably kill myself doing it in these, anyway.” We both looked down to the four-inch leopard print pump dangling from her crossed leg.
Michael passed by my office door. Vanessa sat up straighter and slipped her fancy shoe back into place. I got the feeling she was walking on thin ice with him still, after the whole dead batteries thing with her headset last week. Best to stay on his good side, I supposed.
