by Ivy Layne
"Brennan will be here in fifteen. Can you stand up?"
I nodded and tried to get to my feet. Lucas's arm came around me, lifting me. He reached past me and turned on the shower. "Let's get you warmed up, okay?"
Impersonally efficient, he stripped off my T-shirt and jeans, focused only on getting me in the shower.
I would've stumbled if he hadn't been there, steadying me, guiding me. When I was under the warm spray, he drew back, saying, "I'll get you some dry clothes."
I tipped my face back under the shower, letting the hot water rinse away the cold sweat of panic, the stink of fear. The water stung the raw skin on my cheek and temple, but the penetrating heat was worth a little pain.
I flipped open my tube of body wash and took a deep sniff, letting the smell of fruit and flowers soothe me. Mechanically, I washed my hair and my body, then stepped out of the shower, dried off, and smoothed lotion over my skin.
Squeezing out an extra-large glop of toothpaste to brush my teeth, I scrubbed every nook and cranny of my mouth to get rid of the taste of vomit.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, towel wrapped securely around me, I heard voices in the kitchen. Lucas and Detective Brennan. Brennan was fast. I slipped into my room and closed the door behind me, wishing I could crawl into the futon and go to sleep.
I wanted this whole mess to go away. It didn't look like that was going to happen, and hiding in bed wouldn't help anything. Lucas had laid out a stack of clothes on top of my pillow, a T-shirt, sweatshirt, and a pair of yoga pants.
No underwear. Amusement muscled aside my nerves for a second and I rolled my eyes. Lucas didn't make mistakes. He wanted me commando. A tiny grin tugged up one side of my mouth as I pulled on the clothes he'd chosen. If I couldn't crawl into bed, at least I could be comfortable.
Lucas stood in the center of the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, jaw set, eyes grim. Detective Brennan was holding the plastic grocery bag, examining its contents without touching them, the same way both Lucas and I had.
Hearing my feet on the floor, Detective Brennan looked up. His eyes were as grim as Lucas's.
"How are you holding up?" he asked kindly.
"I'll be okay," I lied.
I was not at all sure I'd be okay, and I was extremely unhappy about that goddamned note. But I didn't want to be a whiner. None of this was Detective Brennan's fault. He seemed willing to let me get away with the lie.
Lucas stepped in front of me with a clump of ointment on his finger and a fresh bandage for my temple. I stood there, acquiescent, as he doctored me. For the moment, I was all out of independence. I needed help, and if Lucas wanted to give it, I wasn't going to make it harder for him.
His strong fingers smoothed the bandage against my skin. He wiped the extra ointment on his cargo pants and wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into his side. It felt like being wrapped in a shield. Safe. Protected.
"Can you think of anyone else, anyone you haven't already mentioned, who might be targeting you?" Brennan asked.
He let the envelope fall into the bottom of the plastic bag and loosely tied it shut. I shook my head. I'd told him everything I knew already. If I had any idea who might be doing this, I wouldn't keep it a secret.
"Hayward has an alibi," Lucas said abruptly. I glanced between Lucas and Brennan. Neither of them looked happy.
"For the other night?" I asked.
Lucas shook his head. "For everything. He's got eyes on him around the clock."
"It's always possible he's hired someone," Brennan said. "The FBI is all over him, so if Bruce Hayward is behind this, he's got someone else doing his dirty work."
"We pulled up the last few hours on the cameras, but all they show is someone in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans stopping at your mailbox about an hour ago," Lucas said. "Whoever it was, they look to be about the same height and weight of your attacker Wednesday night, but we can't be sure."
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"It means that we don't have a solid suspect," Brennan said. "There's also the problem of the pictures. Whoever was sending those pictures to your family is still out there. If they've escalated their harassment, this could be the same person. Sending your brother and your cousin photographs, but you a personal note . . . that may be an escalation, or it could just be that they're acting out differently because you're younger and female. Without knowing who the perp is, it's impossible to say."
"Okay, then what happens now?" I asked.
"I'm going to take this back to the lab, see if we can get anything off it," Brennan said, lifting the plastic bag with the envelope inside. "Maybe we'll get a break. In the meantime, the best thing you can do is avoid making yourself a target. I don't want you alone anywhere, if you can help it. Let's not make it easy on this guy to get to you, okay?"
"But I have an alarm," I protested.
I agreed with Detective Brennan. I didn't want to make it easy for anyone to get to me. But isn't that why I had the security system put in? To keep me safe? I wasn't going to be stupid, but I didn't want to be run out of my own home.
"You do," Brennan agreed. "And it's a good system. Better than good. I guess it helps to be on the Sinclairs’ Christmas list."
He grinned and winked at me, letting me know he wasn't making a crack at my family or my connections. I gave him a weak smile in return.
"Sometimes it is," I agreed. "Most of the time, I could do without the extra set of big brothers, but they come in handy. Especially when I'm being stalked by some psycho."
A muscle clenched in Lucas's jaw and he narrowed his eyes at me. "Don't joke about this," he said. Turning his intent green eyes on Brennan, he went on, "I'm staying with her at night. We'll figure out the rest, but I'll make sure she's not on her own during the day either."
Brennan raised an eyebrow. "You in town for a while?" he asked.
"For the moment," Lucas answered vaguely. Brennan nodded at him.
"If that changes, let me know. I'll arrange for some drive-bys, but it's not a substitute for being careful," he said to me.
"I'll be careful," I said.
Lucas walked Brennan to the door. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, hugging myself, my hands threaded through the opposite sleeves of my sweatshirt, trying to warm up.
Even after the hot shower, I was still chilled deep inside. My meatball sub, wrapped in brown butcher paper, sat on top of my mini-fridge. I should have been starving.
My stomach still rolling with nausea, I didn't want to eat.
Lucas came back into the kitchen, stopped in front of me, and pulled me into his arms. I collapsed against him, absorbing his warmth and strength.
He was so tall, my head only came to his collarbone, and though I wasn't a small woman, his big frame engulfed me. Just then, it was exactly what I needed. I burrowed into him, shuddering as his hand rubbed up and down my back, soothing me.
Reminding me I was safe.
"We’re going to find this asshole, Charlie. I promise," he said in a low murmur. I shuddered again, feeling heat on my cheeks. I realized I was crying.
I never cried. I had a little trick I'd used since I was a kid and I didn't want the media to catch my tears. I'd bite my lip, hard, on the inside of my mouth where the flesh was tender and sensitive. It hurt like a bitch, but the pain was usually enough to push back the tears.
I drew in a breath and set my teeth into my lip.
Before I could bite down, Lucas placed a soft kiss on the top of my head. I sucked in a breath, startled by his tenderness. Lucas was protective, but he'd never been sweet.
With one hand, he cradled my head against his chest, stroking the callused flat of his thumb over my cheek, wiping away my tears. Normally, I was appalled at the thought of anyone seeing me cry. Anyone—my brothers, my cousins . . . so why, with Lucas, was it so hard for me to stop?
Maybe if he'd chided me, told me to get it together, it would've been easier to force my emotions under control. But I was terrified, off-balance,
and the soft stroke of his thumb on my skin seemed to draw the tears out as much as it brushed them away.
I don't know how long I stood there crying all over Lucas. Longer than I wanted to. Finally, I wept myself dry and tried to pull back. He didn't let me. His arms wound tight, he said against my hair, "It's still early, but you're exhausted."
I was. I really was. With my cheek pressed to Lucas's chest and the reassuring thump of his heart filling my ear, tension drained out of my spine and my stomach growled. In the quiet of my kitchen, it was loud.
"Do you think you can eat that sub you brought home?" Lucas asked, his voice gentle, his fingers threading through my hair.
"Yeah, I should at least try. If I don't, I'll wake up in the middle of the night starving." Middle of the night kitchen raids never went well, even in an understocked kitchen like mine.
"Where do you want to eat?"
"I'll just sit on the floor in here," I said. Lucas released me to go grab my sandwich and I sat, leaning against the wall. Tomorrow, I was getting a table and chairs. Nothing fancy, just a folding card table and some folding chairs. They'd come in handy later when I needed extra seating, and I was getting tired of eating breakfast standing up.
Lucas handed me my sub and a paper towel before taking a position across the room, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. I wasn't sure I had an appetite until I took the first bite of the meatball sub. It was cold, but it was still delicious.
The second the tang of marinara sauce hit my tongue, I realized I was ravenous. As I chewed and tried not to look like a pig, I thought about what had happened. Everything. Aiden firing me and my moving in here. Getting jumped in my yard, the threatening note . . .
I needed to figure out what to do.
I knew what I should do. And I knew what I wanted to do. Halfway finished with my sub already, I swallowed and looked up at Lucas. There was worry in his green eyes.
I didn't know if I liked that or not. I didn't need another overbearing male worrying about me, but it was nice to know he cared. Unless he was just worried I was going to get killed and then he wouldn't be able to have sex with me anymore. That was a possibility. At the moment, it wasn't important.
"I don't want to move back in with Aiden," I said. "I want to stay here. In my house."
"I get that," Lucas said evenly.
"But you think I should move back into Winters House."
"You'd be safer."
I looked down at my sub and took another bite. I couldn't argue with his logic. Winters House was on ten acres, behind gates, and built like a fortress. It wasn't impenetrable, but it had layers of security. Intruders were far easier to spot than they were here.
Lucas interrupted my thoughts.
"Unless you stay at Winters House twenty-four seven, you'll still be exposed. You've got a solid security system here, and I'm next-door."
"I don't want to move back into Winters House," I said, resting my head against the wall and closing my eyes. My voice wavered with tears and exhaustion. "I want to stay here."
"Then you'll stay here. You need to be careful. We'll talk about taking precautions in the morning. For now, you need to eat, and then I'm taking you to bed."
Tears pricked my eyes again. Dammit. What was with all this crying? Lucas's gentle consideration when I suspected he'd rather just tell me what to do softened something inside me.
I didn't know what to say, so I finished my meatball sub and stood so I could throw out the wrapper.
"You look like you're about to pass out standing up," Lucas said. He wasn't wrong. I could feel myself wobbling a little. Every muscle in my body was drained.
My brain was done. Just done.
I didn't want to think about anything. I wanted to sleep.
Lucas wound his arm around me and urged me down the hall, stripping off my clothes and nudging me onto the futon. He disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes before he came back and started to undress.
I don't know what I was expecting. My mind was too sluggish to consider sex. Watching Lucas strip through half-closed eyes, it occurred to me that it might not be time to pass out quite yet.
Lucas wasn't my boyfriend. And I wasn't a client.
He wasn't spending the night on a futon too small for him because it was fun. Our whole thing was about sex. That was why he was here.
It was okay. I'd get into it as soon as he started touching me. With Lucas, it didn't take much. He slid beneath the blanket, lying on his back. I rolled into him, hiking one knee over his legs and pressing my palm to his chest, intending to let my hand drift south.
My fingers skimmed his warm chest, dipping into the grooves of his muscles, tracing the line of his abs. He caught my hand when it hit his hipbone, wrapping his fingers around mine and pulling them back up to press my palm over his heart.
"Go to sleep, Princess."
"But—"
Lucas passed his hand over my hair, starting at my temple and sliding around the back of my skull and down my neck. "Go to sleep. If you're too wired to fall asleep, I'll fuck you. Promise."
I grinned into his chest and let my eyes close. I doubt it took more than another minute or two before I passed out, lulled by the heat of his hand stroking my hair and the pulse of his heartbeat echoing in my ear.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUCAS
I was sucked into work, eyes focused on my laptop as I burrowed my way into line after line of code for a client. Beside me, my phone beeped an alarm. The security system. Not Charlie's, mine.
Proximity alert on the driveway.
I tapped the app on my phone and watched Aiden Winters unfold himself from what I knew was a very expensive and almost impossible to get Aston Martin. Damn, that was a gorgeous car. One of the perks of being a billionaire.
Didn't bother me. I wasn't a billionaire, but I had enough money socked away to buy my own Aston Martin if I really wanted one. Someday, maybe. For now, my capital and my attention were on building my business and playing around with rehabbing houses. An expensive luxury car didn't fit in.
With a sigh of annoyance, I logged out of my laptop and closed it. This particular client wasn't in a rush, but the job was taking longer than I'd estimated since Charlie's life had intersected with my own.
I didn't have to guess why Aiden Winters was here. After William Davis's visit, I'd been expecting Aiden to stop by. If he thought he was going to roll in here and scare me off Charlie, he was very much mistaken.
Charlie was mine for as long as she wanted to be, as long as this thing between us stayed good, and nothing her brother had to say would change that. I knew guys like Aiden Winters. Rich, entitled, used to thinking the world existed to serve them.
When you work in my business, you run into more than your share of men like him. I let him ring the doorbell and took my time answering it. When I swung the door open, I was taken aback by how much he reminded me of Charlie.
In pictures, they didn't look that much alike. Her blue eyes were so striking, they overshadowed the features she shared with Aiden. It was disconcerting to see her lower lip and those defined cheekbones in a male face.
Aiden met my eyes with a direct stare and said, "Lucas Jackson?"
I nodded, affirming his guess.
"May I come in? We have things to talk about."
I stepped back, holding the door open. "Charlie is at Winters House," I said. I'd dropped her off myself not more than an hour before.
"I know," Aiden said with a quirk of his lips that was almost a smile. "She's playing with Maggie's dog. I told her I would do it, but she said I wouldn't spend enough time letting him drool all over me. She was probably right. You drove her?"
"I did," I said. It might be overkill, but I was serious about not leaving her on her own. She was behind a gate at Winters House, protected by multiple layers of security. I still didn't like her being on the other side of town without me.
Echoing my thoughts, Aiden said, "I'm surprised you let
her out of your sight."
So was I.
Which was a problem. It was supposed to be easy to let go of Charlie. That was the whole point of our arrangement.
No relationship. No attachments.
I wasn't sticking very well to my own ground rules. Until I knew what Aiden was getting at, I wasn't going to respond. I gave a half-shrug and waited.
"I talked to Evers this morning. Brennan told him about the note. I can't help but notice that no one told me about the note."
"Charlie specifically asked Brennan not to tell you," I said. "He's doing his job, which is to build a case against whoever is after her while they look for the guy. His job is not to keep Charlie's family posted on his progress."
Aiden narrowed his eyes at me. I stared back with a level gaze. When he realized I wasn't going to give him anything else, he said,
"I'm aware of what Detective Brennan's job is. Evers assures me that the system he installed on her house is as airtight as he can make it while it's being renovated. I still don't like it."
"Are you going to try to force her to move home?" I asked. I crossed my arms over my chest, bracing for his answer.
"Do you think it would work?" Aiden asked, raising an eyebrow at my stance. He went on, "Charlie's already angry with me. Trying to strong-arm her into moving home when she obviously doesn't want to would be an exercise in futility. I don't like to waste time."
"Why did you fire her?" I asked. The change of subject was a one-eighty, but I needed to know.
"Because it was the most efficient way I could think of to start making up for my mistake."
"And what was the mistake? Hiring her in the first place?" I asked. Every report I dug up about Charlotte Winters said she was exceptionally good at her job. Firing her didn't make sense.
"No. Not exactly. But that was part of it. And this really isn't any of your fucking business."
"Humor me," I said.
"No. I'm not in the habit of talking to strangers about my family."
"Smart, considering your family. But I'm involved with your sister. I'm not a stranger. And I'm curious. You two are close. She poured her life into that job. Before I trust you, before I tell you things that she may not want me to share, I have to know why you would do that to her."
