by Joanne Rock
“Actually,” she spoke up from her spot on a white pine bench at the foot of the bed, “my purse would have been out of my sight while I was on camera the other day.”
She didn’t think anyone from her work would try to follow her, but then again, Warren thought the link between John de Milo’s murder and her might be something film-related.
“You also ran into your ex and the girlfriend who might have reason to be bitter about you.” He set down a cosmetic case that contained an embarrassingly large assortment of creams and serums for her skin. “Let’s see.”
He gestured for her to hand him the bag and she retrieved it from where she’d stuck it under the foot of the bed. Passing him the heavy brown purse, she ignored the implication that her ex could be the one threatening to hurt her. She’d already tried to explain about Manny’s methods for making her suffer, but she understood Warren needed to explore every avenue.
That doggedness—or was it cynicism?—made him good at his job.
“What made you become a cop?” She tried not to wince as he dumped everything from inside her purse onto the bed. Stray coins rolled into lipstick cases and pens while a few loose pieces of paper—receipts for small purchases—floated more slowly to the chenille spread.
When he didn’t immediately start digging through the contents, Tabitha realized her question was apparently another one of his hot buttons since his hand stalled in midair, half crumpling the leather-and-canvas satchel.
“Never mind.” She retracted the question with a wave of her hand. “We could always discuss the weather. Or your favorite shade of my lipstick from the five tubes I seem to have collected in the bottomless depths of my handbag.”
She reached for one of the tubes, not remembering the shade in the silver case and wondering if one of the makeup people had slipped her a bonus sample.
“The cops investigating my father’s murder screwed me over with a crap interpretation of the ballistics evidence. For months, they thought I was the killer.”
His detached words stunned her. The lipstick fell out of her hand as her gaze shot to his face.
His expression remained blank. Emotionless. Except for a slow tic beneath one eye that gave him away. Even so, everything else about him gave off a “stand the hell back” vibe she recognized well enough. It pained him to talk about this and somehow any physical comfort she might offer would only make the pain worse.
“I’m so sorry.” The simple soft words didn’t come close to covering what she felt, what she wanted to offer him, but they would have to suffice because she could see that right now he wouldn’t accept any more from her. She didn’t know, however, if she was sorrier for asking or that the police had made an error that had hurt the family.
Although she knew there was far more to this story, she also guessed he wasn’t the kind of guy to share it. Especially not with a woman he wanted to distance himself from. Yet for some reason he’d decided to tell her tonight and damned if she wouldn’t do her best to put aside her own problems and be here for him. She sensed the best way to help would be to simply listen and let him do the telling at his own pace. No pushing or babbling from her.
Slowly, his bloodless fists unclenched, the color returning to his knuckles.
“The truth came out eventually, thanks to a cop who resorted to more old-school tactics to prompt a second ballistics test.” He exhaled, obviously reaching deep for the words. He rubbed his hands together between his knees, staring at the ground. His hands eased to a stop.
He frowned as he reached for the lipstick tube she’d dropped.
“What’s this?”
Tabitha struggled to keep up with the abrupt shift in the conversation. She was still stuck back there in the world where Warren had been unjustly accused of killing his own father and now they were swapping to a discussion about cosmetics?
She squinted to see the label on the bottom and then realized neither end of the thin silver cylinder had a label. One end looked like clear black plastic, the kind of dark window situated on the end of a remote control.
“It’s not another lipstick?” She could see the seam in the middle that separated the top from the rest of the tube, but when he twisted the two ends apart, no Raspberry Rouge or Pink Paradise color appeared.
A red light blinked on a thin wand inside the case, the way a car alarm flashed when it was armed.
When Warren didn’t explain the device’s significance, Tabitha started to ask about it.
“Ohmigod. Do you think—”
His hand gently covered her mouth as he dropped the device to the bed again. The scent of his skin had an immediate, soothing effect on her even though it scared her to death to think someone wanted to keep tabs on her this badly.
Warren moved close to her to whisper in her ear through the veil of her hair.
“Let’s be discreet just in case it operates as a listening device. Okay?”
She nodded, mute with new fears for her safety. For his. They’d unwittingly led a dangerous enemy right to Warren’s doorstep.
CHAPTER 13
WARREN WEIGHED their options later that night as he watched Tabitha sleeping on his couch in the hours before dawn. Should they stay or should they leave?
From his seat on the floor beside the couch, Warren’s gaze fell on a strand of hair that drooped over her cheek and fell under her nose as she lay curled on her side, knees tucked close to her chest. The wavy red lock moved in time with her breathing, flying out over her soft lips when she exhaled, then falling limp along her skin when she inhaled.
He could watch her forever. Content to keep his hands to himself as long as he could ensure her safety since that’s what mattered most right now. He needed to protect her.
The clock ticked quietly on the wall behind her, reminding him he had to figure out a game plan fast. He’d already had a couple of off-duty friends make the drive up to the Catskills to retrieve the GPS tracking device. They’d met at a gas station a few blocks away and Warren had the officers take his car back to Manhattan along with the GPS device to mislead their perp. Anyone watching the place would think Warren and Tabitha had ditched the country house since Warren had left in the car and walked home along the river under cover of dark.
Warren would repay his friends with their choice of weeks at the Catskills house next fall and with any luck, the stalker would track his car back into the city, far away from here. In the meantime, they were staying in the house with no lights on and limiting Buster’s outdoor time as a precaution.
Leaving Warren to do what? He’d added a few security measures to the property before his 1:00 a.m. run to the gas station, increasing the sensitivity of motion detectors so that the whole place would shriek with alarms and light if so much as a squirrel ventured onto the lawn. What more could he do to keep her safe besides move her somewhere else?
He reached over Tabitha to brush the hair from her face, smoothing the strands into place as he considered the dilemma. Move Tabitha to another location that might ward off the stalker longer but would be less familiar home terrain to defend? Or keep her here, a location the perp knew about, and risk a confrontation sooner but keep the advantage of home court where Warren had more tricks in his bag?
The first option might be safer in the short term, but how long could she hide from an enemy who obviously knew her and her habits well? Tabitha might be better off risking a quicker confrontation to win back her life and her privacy sooner.
Even if it meant Warren would have to say goodbye that much earlier.
“What are you thinking?” Tabitha’s voice surprised him and he wondered how long she’d been awake.
Had she felt the longing in his touch?
“I’m trying to figure out how to say your ex’s live-in girlfriend has been making phone calls to fellow producers to make sure they don’t hire you.” He hadn’t really been thinking about that, but he couldn’t tell her what else had been going through his head—the desire for her that wasn’t going to
be quenched by a few shared nights in his bed.
He’d been so close to telling her everything about his past before they’d found that tracking device. Now, he didn’t know how to get back to it. Telling her as much as he had pained him enough. He’d get back to it soon though, and it would either scare her off for good or—
He couldn’t allow himself to think about the alternative since the possibility might rouse hopes he didn’t dare think about yet.
“Evelyn?” Tabitha blinked once before her eyebrows shot higher. “How do you know?”
“I made a few phone calls today from the precinct and some of your ex’s colleagues were extremely cooperative since they seem to take John de Milo’s death very seriously. The New York film industry might be a close-knit group, but they’re apparently more willing to crack when one of their own gets whacked.”
“And one of these people told you Evelyn has been making calls about me?”
Sitting up, she seemed to shake off her sleepiness, her eyes growing more alert. Still, a line from the pillow seam creased her cheek, reminding him she should be sleeping instead of worrying about an enemy who wouldn’t hesitate to use lethal force.
“I heard the same thing from more than one person. It speaks of a vindictiveness that could be in line with the stalking crime.” And if that was the case, Evelyn would pay dearly for what she’d done to Tabitha. Hours after Warren had arrived home his heart still hadn’t stopped racing from fears for what could have happened to this woman while he’d been gone.
Hell, his mind hadn’t stopped spinning every conceivable scenario, either, filling his head with all the ways someone could have gotten to her in his absence.
“Even though most stalkers aren’t female,” she pointed out. “And I can’t imagine what she’d have against de Milo.”
Struggling to shake off the dark images that threatened to swallow him, Warren wanted to touch her, to taste her, to feel her on a physical level and chase away the mental crap.
For a split second he imagined what it would be like to tell her that, to unburden himself for a moment. But the last time he’d shared his nightmarish imaginings with someone—his mother—she’d written them off as demented proof that he should have stayed in juvie instead of letting the cops pin the murder on her older, favored son.
The way her words cut to his very soul had given him all the impetus he needed to keep his mouth shut where his past was concerned. He redirected his thoughts to Tabitha’s situation.
“Donata thinks the killer was afraid de Milo knew something about the distribution of underage porn, remember? Do you think Evelyn could have ties to that industry?” He didn’t want to lead her toward any preconceived conclusions so he didn’t get specific.
“She does hang around with a lot of younger girls.” She sat up on the couch, dragging a blue blanket with her that she must have snagged out of his linen closet. “I just assumed she liked to have a few wanna-be actresses at her beck and call to play suck-up to her and pick up her dry cleaning. But maybe there’s more to it?”
Warren nodded even though he didn’t quite buy the idea of Evelyn as Tabitha’s stalker, either. He rose from the floor to sit next to her on the couch.
“The porn industry isn’t exactly full of female executives, either, so there are two counts against Evelyn being our stalker.” The weight of his body on the couch made the cushion angle downward, the movement tipping Tabitha’s body onto a subtle incline toward him. “Maybe she likes to buck convention when it comes to gender stereotypes.”
“Are you kidding? Have you seen the rack on this woman? Everything about her shouts stereotype. She’s a home-wrecking, boob-lifting, man-chasing, rump-shaking cheat who has been trading in one man for another ever since she was old enough to date. Manny was such a big ticket for her she dropped her attorney boyfriend like a bad habit when she saw how much my husband could help her career.”
“An attorney?”
“Manny’s former attorney was Evelyn’s previous live-in.” She tucked her blanket around her feet, her hair slithering off her shoulder to fall on his as she leaned forward. “Manny managed to stay friends with the guy for some months afterward but I guess they recently parted ways. Braeden was nothing like Evelyn, though. A grounded guy who took care of business rather than just talking about it.”
“Any chance he’s tied to underage porn?” Warren suspected that connection would be the key to finding the killer, but it was an area he hadn’t investigated much yet. He’d been so concerned with protecting Tabitha he hadn’t looked too far past her link to the killer.
“He’s the last person I’d suspect, but what do I know? He’s an ambitious Texas lawyer who came to New York to make his mark and he’s worked his butt off to do that, including kissing Manny’s ass and forking over his girlfriend when Manny wanted her, too.”
That sounded more in line with a typical stalker profile. Someone marginalized. Someone who wanted revenge after stuffing down the need for a long time.
“Any reason he’d call himself—” He stopped himself midsentence. “His name’s O’Leary, right? An Irish guy?” Warren had spent less time researching the attorney because his ties to filmmaking weren’t as obvious as most of Manny’s other colleagues and the screen name the stalker had chosen for the original e-mail he’d sent Tabitha was “first take.”
“He’s Irish. But he’s got dark hair and blue eyes.”
Warren nodded. “I’ll have him checked out. In the meantime, I put somebody on your ex-husband at all times. As of midnight, he was still in Manhattan.”
“I appreciate what you’re doing for me.” The warmth of her at his side brought him a kind of pleasure beyond sexual interest.
He stretched his arm around her automatically, before he remembered he needed to draw boundaries to keep his head above water around her.
“What do you think of staying here?” He asked the question from out of the blue, needing to make arrangements soon if she wanted to leave. “We might be safer in the short term if we leave now since our guy has tracked this place already. But sending the tracking device back to Manhattan will buy us a little time and at least up here we’re prepared.” He’d already made up his mind about what he wanted to do, but it didn’t seem fair to make the call without consulting her.
“In spite of everything, I feel safe here.” She shrugged as if to acknowledge that made no sense. Her V-necked T-shirt slipped a little sideways with the gesture and he could see a pink lace bra strap hugging her shoulder.
“I don’t know how long we might be here before he—or she—makes a return appearance.” He tried not to be distracted by that hint of pink clinging to her pale skin and it was all he could do not to lift his hand a few inches up her forearm to cover that exposed flesh.
“You’re saying we might be stuck together up here for a little while?” Her mock-innocent expression reminded him she had a sense of humor despite the crappy turn her luck had taken this week.
He wondered what kind of effect she might have on him if he’d met her before life had hurt her. Would her smile at full-wattage have brought him to his knees? Or would he have overlooked a woman who didn’t understand about the scars life could leave?
“I’m saying we’ve got to stick close until we have your stalker in custody and we’re a hundred percent sure it’s the right guy.” The idea of being close to her for such damn dangerous reasons shouldn’t turn him on. But it did. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”
“No problem here. How about you?” Her finger hooked in the neckline of her T-shirt before she tugged it gently back in place. And although it covered her shoulder again, there had been a moment where the fabric gapped away from her chest and gave him a quick glimpse of spectacular cleavage.
She threatened his sanity because she made him feel too much. Passion. Protectiveness. Caring. Once he started feeling those things fully his whole mechanism for dealing with his past would explode in his face. He couldn’t simultaneous
ly feel the things she inspired and close off the painful crap from the old days, too. Something had to give.
“There are going to be problems.” He knew it without question. The more time they spent together, the less he could pretend they were just having simple, recreational sex. “But I don’t think either one of us is going to find it in ourselves to care.”
He reached to pull her across his body and on top of him, his whole body straining closer to her scent, her softness, her taste. He wouldn’t deny himself what he wanted more than anything.
Tabitha followed the dictate of his arms around her, letting Warren lift and reposition her on the wide slab of coffee table across from him so they were face-to-face. His lips were hot on hers, dominating the kiss with fire and insistence instead of tenderness. She saw the kiss for what it was, sexual need fired by thwarted good intentions, and she wanted it anyway.
A wildness lurked in Warren that surfaced every time they kissed and she found herself seeking it out time and time again. She wanted the kisses and the heat, yes. But she wanted to uncover the private man full of dark secrets and anguish she couldn’t understand.
Sex put her in touch with that man.
Her fingers grasped ineffectually at his shirt hem, her hands incapable of making progress when his kisses consumed her. His hands smoothing down her sides, he cupped her breasts and spanned her ribs with his fingers. She arched against him, a whimper escaping from her throat as she fell into him. Her T-shirt provided little barrier to his touch, yet he skimmed it off her body in one fluid motion.
He delved deeper into her mouth as his kisses turned more deliciously aggressive. The wicked intent she sensed behind that wet mating of mouths thrilled her on a primal level, stripping away the need for anything more than sweaty, intense sex to leave them both gasping for breath.
She tugged at his shirt again, needing to feel his body against hers. Hot, naked muscles against her aching skin. With fumbling touches, nerves buzzing with anticipation and need, she finally pulled the material off him, breaking their kiss long enough to accomplish the deed.
