A Steamy Bodyguard Romance Anthology: Just One Look

by Joanne Rock

  Her heart had started hurting the second he walked out of her place.

  “We didn’t exactly break up. We hadn’t ever officially dated in the first place.” She felt a little better when she remembered that. And he had gone out of his way to make it clear he’d never committed to anything long term.

  “Things looked fairly intense between you last night for a couple who never dated.” Mick settled the mug into a cup holder on the console and Donata guessed his tired eyes were held open by the miracle of caffeine alone.

  “We’d been shot at,” Donata argued, remembering the way Sean seemed to touch her continuously after their backup had arrived to escort Katie out of the building. “That’s intense by itself.”

  “I’ve been shot at a time or two and I don’t remember ever palming my partner’s butt. Although your butt is a lot better than the last guy’s.” He grinned as he downshifted for a stop light.

  Commuters poured across the crosswalk in a human flood even though they were still many blocks from the busy financial district. Everyone had somewhere to go at 9:00 a.m., apparently, even in a neighborhood turned trendy in recent years despite its old rep for drug dealers and rent-controlled apartments. There was the mix of change here and, as usual, the artists and musicians, designers and restaurateurs were the urban pioneers to start the revolution.

  “I think you’re mistaken about the butt palming. Although I get your point. We didn’t need to have dated to be close.”

  And they had gotten close.

  Her throat tightened to think she’d made a panicky mistake because Sean made her feel things she wasn’t ready to feel again.

  “All I’m saying is that it seems a little hasty when you’ve been working together for what? A week or so?”

  Is that all it had been? The days had blurred when their nights were spent in a police station or in the middle of a crime scene. And the other nights had been far more wonderful but equally tiring since they hadn’t involved sleep.

  “I just needed some space until this investigation closes.” Her eyes burned thinking she messed up something good. Something rare.

  “You might want to make sure he understands you were only angling for some time. I don’t know Beringer all that well, but some guys might take offense at being given the boot in the middle of a tense investigation, when people aren’t at their best anyway. He’s been developing this bust for a long time.”

  Was she so insensitive that she needed a guy to tell her how clueless she was being? She should have talked things through more with Sean. Except that the strength of the passion had blown her away and she could barely string two words together the night before. By the time they were through, she’d been so vulnerable that she protected herself the only way she knew how.

  She’d given herself some space.

  But now, it seemed, she might have more space than she could handle.

  “This is it.” Mick’s voice dragged her back to their morning mission at Richie’s house. Another car of officers—including two with computer expertise—waited at the end of the block. The driver of the other vehicle waved to Mick as they rolled past. Scents of ethnic foods—Vietnamese cooking or Thai, maybe—drifted right through the windows even though the only businesses Donata spotted were a few bars and a music store.

  This was why she’d asked Sean for space, right? So she could approach days like this with more clearheaded focus. Too bad she sat outside an important suspect’s house, search warrant at the ready, thinking about her screwed-up personal life instead of work.

  “Are you ready?” Mick had already switched off the car. He patted his pocket to be sure he had the warrant.

  “The sooner we make an arrest, the sooner life can get back to normal.” Or so she sincerely hoped. “Let’s go.”

  Mick put his hand on her arm.

  “If this is the guy behind the break-ins at your apartment and the bed-and-breakfast, you need to be careful today. Whoever rigged those computers has it in for you.”

  “I’m always careful.” Probably too careful when it came to Sean, damn it. But at least in her work environment, caution paid off.

  A minute later they were out of the car and on Delancey Street with their team behind them to execute the search of the premises. Donata and Mick walked shoulder to shoulder as they moved past the yawning doorman and up the stairs to the second-floor apartment. For a moment, she felt a small thrill at the possibility of her first big bust. Despite the danger, despite being shot at the night before and awake almost until dawn, Donata couldn’t suppress the sense of rightness surging through her with each step toward Richie Ford’s door.

  When they arrived on his welcome mat, she rang the bell and waited, wishing she could recount this moment for Sean later. If he was still speaking to her.

  A knot of trepidation settled in her stomach, worsened by the scent of scorched eggs from an apartment nearby. The knot only tightened when the person who answered the door wasn’t Richie Ford.

  The woman on the other side of threshold had a face Donata had prayed never to see again. Rosario Gillespie. Dear, sweet Rosie.

  The tall brunette with killer curves and a loud mouth had been Sergio’s mistress back when Donata still cared. She stood in Richie’s apartment now with a purse under one arm and a fur-trimmed wool coat draped around her shoulders like a cape.

  Donata was so stunned she forgot to announce their reason for being there. Rosie took the opportunity to get the ball rolling as she cackled her Wicked Witch of the West laugh.

  “Jesus H. Christ, Donata, you look like hell. But then I suppose your beauty budget isn’t what it used to be now that Serg is in jail?”

  Mick flashed the warrant in Rosie’s face while Donata tried to scoop her jaw off the ground at seeing the woman Serg said had moved to the country.

  Rosie peered at the paper and then back at Mick.

  “I’m afraid your little note doesn’t include searching me since I don’t live here.” She twitched her hips in obvious display, lips puckered into an air kiss. “Better luck next time, detectives.”

  She strolled past them out of apartment 2A and Donata thanked God for small favors. That is, until she saw the Wicked Bitch of the West pause in the hallway to talk to a man leaning against a supply closet door. A man with an all-too familiar silhouette.

  Sean.

  Her brief flutter of excitement was quickly squelched by the realization that the two of them were chatting like long-lost friends. Apparently they knew one another. Well.

  Doing her best to ignore an unreasonable explosion of jealousy, Donata turned on her heel and entered Richie’s apartment.

  * * *

  IF SEAN HADN’T already been suffering a bad case of heartbreak, he might have been offended at the death-ray glare Donata had just given him.

  As it was, he needed to put personal feelings aside since the pivotal point in Donata’s case was already walking away, possibly with a boatload of evidence stashed in that oversize purse of hers.

  He dashed into the apartment to see Mick arguing with a man Sean recognized as their suspect while the search team moved with quick efficiency around the rooms. Donata stood off to one side of the living room, staring at the titles of books and CDs on the shelves of a shiny chrome media cabinet.

  “We’ve got to go.” Sean reached for her, arm snaking around her waist in a gesture that had become so easy, so automatic.

  Damn it.

  “I’m in the middle of conducting a search.” Her eyebrows rose high in surprise then narrowed in condemnation. “I can’t leave now.”

  Sean gestured to Mick, knowing he had enough years on the force to appreciate that breaks in a case could happen at any time. Even in the middle of a search.

  Donata played by the book because she was new to the field, but one day…Sean could see her running the whole outfit once she had the experience to go with her cool head and natural skills as an investigator. He just wished he’d have a front row view to see that ha
ppen instead of being banished from her life.

  “Your best lead is slipping away.” He half pulled her out of the modest apartment in a lackluster building, keeping his voice low so that irate Richie wouldn’t notice them leaving and tip off Rosie.

  “What are you talking about? I need to be here.” She dug in her heels just after they crossed the threshold into the hallway with cracked linoleum tiles from about four decades ago. “This is my job, damn it.”

  How could he convince her to follow his instincts when he’d been pegged as the loose cannon for so many years?

  “I know Rosie and I know she’s trouble. I contacted her way back when my sister was molested because Rosie had some photos of herself in circulation at that same time and I thought she might need help to get out of a bad situation.”

  Donata glanced back into the apartment—toward Mick—for only a moment and then seemed to make a decision.

  “I can walk and listen.”

  Sean led her toward the back stairwell he’d come up earlier when he’d decided to be a presence at Richie Ford’s today. Just because Donata didn’t want anything more to do with him didn’t mean he’d turn his back on a case he’d worked his butt off to solve.

  “Hurry. She’s wearing four-inch heels so we’ll be faster, but she got a jump start on us and she might have a car out front.”

  They tore down the service entry stairs, the sound of their pounding feet echoing too loudly in the bare stairwell for Sean to finish his story. The scent of garbage and urine hung heavy in the air even though there were no obvious signs of trash. The place was just old.

  And damn but it felt right to have her at his side, working with him. Being together. How could this sense of connection he felt be so one-sided? His gut felt hollow. Empty.

  “There she is.” Donata pointed down the street where Rosie was just rounding a corner. “Mick’s car is parked down there but I don’t have keys.”

  “If she didn’t call for a cab from that corner, maybe her destination doesn’t require a ride.” He took off running down the block, surprised at how well Donata kept up despite his longer legs.

  And why did he have to keep finding things to admire about her?

  Reaching the corner of Forsyth Street, they skidded to a stop. Rosie was sauntering into a building that looked more commercial than residential with no awning, no obvious building number and a UPS delivery truck double-parked out front.

  “Want me to find a back entrance?” Donata stood at his side, assessing the situation.

  “No. Let’s stick together and hope she’s not planning to bolt. I don’t think she knows we’re behind her.”

  “Why do you think she’s hiding something?” Donata asked as they closed in on the building.

  “When I contacted her four years ago to see if she needed help, she had a mercenary take on the whole industry.” He raised his voice as a street sweeper went by. “Her words were something like ‘if I can make money off a bunch of pervs with no self-control, why shouldn’t I?’”

  Donata said nothing as they reached the building. The door was—happily—unlocked.

  “Why do you think she’s hiding something?” He returned the question hoping maybe Donata simply trusted him.

  “She hates my guts. She was Sergio’s other woman before we broke up. I couldn’t imagine who would want to stalk me personally with Sergio in jail, but I suppose she fits the bill, even if she did wait a hell of a long time to take revenge.”

  “You think she’d post naked pictures of you to get even?” He looked around the long corridor of doors and realized they’d lost Rosie.

  “Four years ago she hated me enough to strap me down naked in a patch of fire ants if she had the opportunity. I thought maybe she would have moved on after Serg went to jail, but some people hang onto anger more than others, apparently.” Donata peered in a door on one side of the hallway while he tried to crack open a locked door on the other.

  Donata moved to the next door on her side while Sean pulled a slim metal pick out of his pocket. Since he didn’t believe in letting a locked door stop him, he carried a simple lock-picking device on his key ring. He worked the lock while Donata worked her way farther down the hall, checking in other doors.

  “Since she obviously knows a thing or two about computers if she’s hanging out with Richie Ford, I’d say it’s a safe bet she wouldn’t think twice about rigging your home computer.” The lock slid open and Sean peered inside a dark room full of stacked black containers…DVD cases?

  Hot damn.

  “I think we may have hit pay dirt here.”

  When she didn’t answer he moved out into the hallway.

  “Donata?”

  Only silence answered the call. Guilt mixed with fear and the certainty that he’d screwed up. His gut sank as he called her again.

  But he knew she wouldn’t answer because he already suspected what had happened. He’d turned his head for minute and just like that—

  She was gone.

  CHAPTER 16

  DOWN THE HALL, Donata listened for Sean from the steely imprisonment of a thug’s smelly arms. She hadn’t meant to get ahead of Sean when she stepped into a partially open door not quite halfway down the long corridor of the building that looked to be a half-abandoned storage facility. She’d just been focused on moving swiftly so they wouldn’t lose Rosie the Tart-turned-Criminal.

  But then two guys had grabbed her with the quick efficiency of professional muscle. Their combined efforts enabled them to clamp her mouth shut while stripping her of her gun and immobilizing her against a brick wall covered in cobwebs. Her cheek scraped the stony face of the brick as one of the bouncer-size guys kept his hand clamped over her mouth. She was no slouch in the fighting department either, having learned at a young age she could compensate for her lack of size and modest strength with guts, determination and dirty moves. But there was no room for kneeing anyone in the balls or gouging an eyeball. These guys were just that good.

  Her cheek bled now while she was being shoved down the hall, farther away from Sean. The warm stream trickled down into her mouth, coating her lips with a metallic tinge.

  “Donata?” Sean’s voice shouted from the corridor, his footsteps running closer over worn linoleum.

  Was anyone else lying in wait for him? Her heart pounded with the need to warn him but she could barely move a muscle on her own with the might of Hans and Franz suffocating her whole body.

  “Quickly,” a woman’s voice came from nearby, the clammy-smelling room too dark to distinguish exactly where.

  Donata guessed it was Rosie telling her two steroid-inflated freaks to get the lead out. Donata tried dragging her feet or flailing her arms, anything to make some noise that would tell Sean what room she was in. But she was carried to the other side of the room with such precision manhandling—woman handling?—she wasn’t able to make a sound. Her muffled grunts wouldn’t carry more than five feet.

  “Donata?” Sean’s voice sounded farther away this time and she realized at the same time that she was being dragged out of the building into a closed space that smelled like a basement.

  No. A garage.

  Even in the dim light of an overcast day filtering through a high window and the fiberglass overhead door, she could see the outline of a white delivery van on the other side of a wall of boxes. Hans and Franz seemed to home in on the van.

  They were moving her. Transporting her off-site.

  That could not happen.

  People died when they were moved to another location. And if anything happened to her…Sean would never quit his campaign to punish the people responsible. He’d ignore his P.I. business and turn away new clients. He’d be the king of short term forever if she didn’t convince him they were perfect for each other because they were both such chicken-shits when it came to risking a relationship.

  She struggled harder against her captor, finally breaking an arm free enough to scrape her fingernails along the cement block wall as s
he sought vainly for any kind of leverage.

  Nails breaking in record speed, Donata knew her options were fiercely limited by the stranglehold the Rambo-wannabe had her in so she tried the only other ploy she could think of. She tightened every muscle in her body and strained mightily against the guy. She knew she’d never make him so much as crack a sweat, but her movement forced him to readjust his hold on her before he could toss her in the back of the van.

  And once he positioned himself to account for her struggles, Donata switched tactics and went as boneless as she could, slumping down heavily to wiggle out of his arms like gelatin. Thank God for the man’s nylon jacket. She slid down him like a greased cat. As his arm loosened and the guy swore, his hand came away from her mouth long enough for her to shout out to Sean.

  “In the garage! Help!” Her shrill words bounced all around the cement walls and up to the rafters. With any luck, people on the street would hear her through the fiberglass door, too.

  Of course, she hadn’t counted on the wrath of Rosie. Donata couldn’t even formulate the next step of her plan when she saw Rosie’s hand coming toward her with a gun pressed into her palm.

  Donata barely thought “pistol whip” before her head jerked back on contact and her thoughts turned off completely.

  * * *

  GARAGE?

  Where the hell was the garage?

  Sean raced through one room after another until he spotted a back entrance in a brick-lined storage space full of boxes on one side. Tearing through the shadows and cobwebs, he followed the remembered sound of her voice in the eerie silence that followed.

  If they’d hurt her to shut her up…

  Sean made bargains with God as he pushed through the door and found himself facing a white delivery van roaring to life. Was Donata inside? He prayed they were taking her somewhere and that they hadn’t simply left her for dead in a dark corner of the cluttered loading area.

  The van squealed its way into Reverse, bashing into the closed garage door. He shot the front tire and would have fired into the driver’s area if only he could be one hundred percent certain Donata wasn’t up front.