by Desiree Holt
Finally, with great reluctance, he slid out of her and rolled over, drawing her close to him. He felt such an unfamiliar tenderness and caring. No wonder the passion had been so volatile.
Then, like a bucket of cold water, a chilling thought swept over him. How could he have been such a fool? Taken leave of his senses like this?
“Lindsey?”
“Mmm?”
“Lindsey, honey, we have a problem.” Shit. How had he allowed this to happen?
“Oh?” She tensed beside him. “What’s the problem? Breaking Vanetta’s Rule of Law?”
Whatever it was, she’d deal with it. And at least she’d have the memory of this one night.
“Worse.” He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “I didn’t use any protection. Please tell me you’re on the pill. Or some kind of birth control.”
Yeah, right. Would a woman who hadn’t had sex in so long she was tighter than a virgin be on the pill? Get serious.
He felt her withdraw from him emotionally, and a tight band constricted his chest. Oh, God, she wasn’t. And she was abruptly hit by the consequences. That was it.
“Lindsey, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she replied, her tone distant.
“Sugar, we have to talk about this.” He tried to pull her back to him, but she resisted.
“I know,” she said in a small voice. “It’s all right.”
“So you are taking the pill?”
“No, but you don’t have to worry,” she told him, closing her eyes so she didn’t look at him. “I can’t get pregnant.” She said the last in a soft, tiny voice.
He frowned, feeling suddenly disconnected from her and not knowing why. “What do you mean, you can’t get pregnant?” She tried to pull away from him again, but he held her in a tight grip. “Don’t do that, damn it. Talk to me. What’s the matter?”
She tucked her head against his shoulder, not looking at him. “I mean I can’t have children. Period.”
He forced her head up. “You have to explain this to me, because I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Can I make it any plainer than that? What don’t you understand?”
****
Tell him now and get it over with.
Lindsey’s infertility, the result of a physical problem that had left heavy scarring in her reproductive system, had been a major issue in the two serious relationships she’d had, and she’d learned a hard lesson. No children? No heirs to carry on the line? Every man’s dream? You’ve got to be kidding. Well, I guess you know this changes things. But hell, we can still have fun. And no worries, either, right?
With the men she dated, adoption had come to be a dirty word. It was almost as if time had rolled back to a place where a woman’s ability to breed was one of her greatest attributes. She never should have given in to this. Healing her heart this time would take even longer.
Her brain was sending her messages—break it off right now, fire him, go and hide until the stalker is found or finds another victim.
But Nick was relentless. Demanding information from her. “I want to know exactly what you mean.”
“I have…had…a problem.” She drew in a shuddering breath and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the look on his face. “I’ve had all the tests, and they all had the same results. No children. Can’t provide the sons all you macho Texans seem to crave to carry on your name and build a Texas dynasty.”
“I see.” Very matter of fact. “Apparently you’ve been involved with some real Neanderthals. Is that why you decided to stop having sex altogether?”
“What was the point? It didn’t mean anything. Not anymore.” Her voice had a slight tremor. “I’m not a person who can do it just for the exercise.”
“No, I don’t believe you are.” He put his hand under her chin and forced her to tilt her head up. “Is that why you never married?”
“Yes.”
“But people adopt children all the time,” he pointed out. “And the love and family bond is just as strong.”
“Now there’s where you’re wrong,” she said bitterly. “None of the men I knew wanted to raise ‘someone else’s brat.’”
He was quiet again, this time for so long Lindsey began to tense. She forced herself to lie totally still, her face remaining hidden against his shoulder. He wouldn’t let her move away from him, and she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Now what? Will he find a way to let me down easy? I thought he was different, but I guess my judgment isn’t so great after all.
At last he tilted her face up, his eyes burning into hers with an unexpected ferocity. “Lindsey, we haven’t known each other more than a few days, yet already I feel things for you I never thought I could feel for a woman.” His throat muscles flexed as he swallowed. “Does it scare me? Yes. It terrifies me. Do I want to run away from it? Strangely enough, no.” His grip on her tightened. “You don’t know much about me at all, but you must have a very low opinion to believe that what you said would chase me away.”
“You’re a man, aren’t you?” she asked, her tone bitter. “With an ego, right?”
For a long moment, Nick didn’t reply. When he did, his voice was hard and grating. “I know this is all fast and unexpected, and we’re both blindsided by it. But answer this for me. Did this, what we just did, mean something to you? Was it more than just that exercise you talk about? Because it was a lot more than that to me. A lot more.”
“Oh, God. What are you doing to me?” She hardly got the words past her tightened vocal chords.
“I’m trying to get an answer from you. You don’t want to look at me, and you seem to have a pretty bad opinion of me. So I guess I want to know if I’ve made a fool of myself here, something I don’t often do.”
“Yes.” The word barely scraped from her mouth.
“What was that?” He turned her face, forcing her to look at him.
“I said, yes. But…”
“Yes, I’ve made a fool of myself? Or yes, this means something to you.”
“Yes.” He could barely hear her. “It means something. This was…more than just sex for me, too. I respect you and feel safe with you.” She swallowed. “And care for you.”
“That’s the answer I was looking for.” His arms tightened around her. “So we have some things to get straightened out here.” His big hand stroked her back, soothing, the hot feel of his palm comforting against her skin. “Not being able to have children has to be a loss for you. It means you’ll never have the experience of pregnancy and childbirth. But adoption is a very real possibility, if we get to that point.”
“But—”
“Don’t judge me by others, okay?” Anger edged his voice. “My ego isn’t what’s at stake here. My heart is. Whatever happens between us, the issue of childbearing will not be what affects it. You can count on this. I will never hurt you. Okay?”
She wanted to believe him. Badly. “O—Okay.”
He sighed. “Not a ringing endorsement. Honey, do you trust me?”
She nodded.
“Then believe in what I’m telling you. This didn’t just happen because of hormones. It was another level on which we could communicate.” He leaned down and kissed her. “But there’s something more important than this right now. It’s the reason I’m here in the first place. You’ve got a stalker out there somewhere that needs catching. I need to do a better job of keeping you safe than I did today. That’s our first priority. Then, when this is over, you and I are going to talk about our future. Thinking about it scares the shit out of me, but I’m not running away from it.” He smiled down at her. “How does that sound?”
“That sounds okay with me.” Touched by his words, she managed a smile and her body relaxed.
“I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Lindsey sighed and snuggled against him, warmed by his words, and dropped light kisses on the crisp hair covering the thick muscles of his chest. How amazing that disaster could brin
g her a man who made her feel both wanted and protected. A man she connected with on so many levels. She believed Nick and trusted him. She was safe with him. He would find her stalker and then—dare she hope—this relationship could land on solid footing.
Nick chuckled. “One thing you have to do for sure. You have to clue Ruben and Mary into what’s happening. I’ll be damned if I sleep alone when we go to the ranch.”
Chapter Ten
I’m watching you again. So close, and you can’t even see me. Fool.
Did you like my new message? I want you to know what fear is like, to realize your life is in my hands. When the time is right for you to die, you’ll know it. But first I want to have my fun, my satisfaction. I want to torment you until you can’t sleep, can’t eat, because the fear is so strong.
Last night, I dismembered Barbie again, but a doll is becoming less and less satisfying. I want the pleasure of removing your real body parts. One at a time. Watching your blood flow out of you. Or maybe I’ll just squeeze your neck in my hands, watching your eyes pop out and your face turn blue.
Pampered bitch. You have it all, and you don’t deserve any of it.
I have to do something about that idiot you hired, but I’ll figure it out. I always do. It just requires a slight change of plans. But I guess I’ll have to stop the emails before someone tracks me down. They’ll probably block your system, anyway. No problem. There are other ways.
And it’s time to ratchet up the fun.
Soon. Soon it will all be clear to you.
You think you have everything. What would it be like for you to have nothing?
I’m watching you.
Bitch!
****
Nick considered them lucky that the balance of the week passed in relative quiet. The office hummed along at a fairly normal pace, if the schedule they followed could be considered normal. He had Tony run point on everything, directing the security teams, coordinating with the IT guys and supervising the research into all the people in Lindsey’s life. That way he could devote himself to Lindsey and whatever was happening around her. They were all uptight—Lindsey, Mark, and Brianna—but they all made a deliberate effort to ignore the tension.
Nick spent one hundred percent of his time with Lindsey. During the day, he was in and out of her office, and at night, he locked them up together in her apartment.
“I want us to stay in town during the week,” he explained, “where I have more manpower, more resources and better containment.”
“And what do I tell Mary?” she asked.
“That you have several new clients with immediate deadlines.” He kissed her forehead. “That’s not far from the truth, right?”
While Lindsey worked each day, Nick read the reports from Guardian on her clients, her friends, her former co-workers in Austin, even the guys she’d dated. Then, leaving nothing to chance, he had both Mark and Brianna checked out. Tony brought him thick reports on both of them that Nick was careful to read away from Lindsey’s curious eyes.
Brianna Moore had been raised in Michigan, her father a paper shuffler at a large corporation and her mother a stay-at-home mom. In their late forties when she was born, they were often at a loss as to how to raise their frenzied, bright, overactive child. She aced her grades in school but took great pleasure in skirting the edge of danger. It was assumed her behavior was more to test her parents than anything else, the report read, because she was never in what could be considered serious trouble.
After high school, she took classes for a certification in business science and was working for a company in Detroit when a fire destroyed her parents’ house and killed both of them. After that, she bumped around the country, working here and there, moving apparently whenever the spirit struck her. She had come to San Antonio looking for new adventures and had shown up at the exact moment Lindsey was advertising for someone.
Nothing out of the ordinary on her social life, just the usual visits to singles bars and a variety of dates. No close friends, but a lot of people took their time establishing those kinds of relationships in a new place.
And nothing that raised a red flag.
And the relationship with Lindsey appeared to be a solid business arrangement. Despite Bri’s nomadic history, Nick was impressed with the efficient way she ran the office.
Nick had been in the business long enough, though, to know red flags often didn’t appear until it was almost too late. It was a major reason he was digging so deeply into the lives of anyone Lindsey crossed paths with.
They also found their answer to Mark’s mysterious lunch dates. Every day, he slipped out the door exactly at noon and returned on the dot of one-thirty, always with a slightly embarrassed look on his face. Tony followed him twice and reported his findings to Nick.
“Well,” he told him, “the guy met the same female for lunch both times. And they always eat at the same place.”
“You think she might be pulling his strings to help her with this?” Nick wanted to know.
Tony snorted. “I’d be damned surprised if either of them conjured up something like this. Think two nerds in love.”
“No femme fatale stringing him along?” Nick laughed at the image.
“Nothing there, boss man,” Tony assured him. “You can cross him off the list. He’s too busy holding hands to do any heavy plotting.”
“Maybe. But I’m not crossing anyone off just yet. Let’s keep an eye on both of them as well as Brianna, just so we know where all the players are. Anything yet on the mother’s nursing home?”
Tony shook his head. “You didn’t say it was a priority so we just got someone loose today to get over there. Is that a problem?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. Just following up on something that bothers Lindsey. Probably nothing to it, but we can’t afford to ignore anything.”
Reno called Thursday afternoon. “I’m emailing more information on Lindsey’s clients plus other people she’s come into contact with. I thought it would be a monumental chore, but it turned out to be fairly easy. Apparently, she doesn’t have much of a social life, so we hardly had anyone to check.”
“Yes,” Nick bit off, cursing the fact that his tone might have given something away. “I’m aware of that.”
Reno was silent a moment. “Something going on here you want to tell me about?”
Nick exhaled. “Things are…complicated.”
“Listen, Nick—”
“Don’t say it, okay? I’m on top of things here. And I’d like a more thorough rundown on anyone she had a long-term relationship with, regardless of how long ago it was. You never know when someone will pop loose a screw.”
“Whatever.” Reno hesitated as if he wanted to say more, but he simply added before he hung up, “Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
“Okay.”
****
Lindsey used the rhythm of her work to keep herself distracted from the situation, still resisting the idea that someone she knew was out to harm her. She was on edge waiting for the next shoe to drop, and she tried to block that from her mind. She finished the Marquez sketches and met with them, put the final touches on two other projects, and met with two new prospective clients. She was hardly in the mood to deal with new people, but the discipline would be good for her.
But at night, with all the alarms set, security outside in place and everyone else gone, she and Nick could relax with each other and explore their growing relationship. They shared childhood stories, likes and dislikes, even argued over television programs. It made Lindsey realize exactly how shallow her previous relationships had been.
They learned each other’s bodies as well as their minds and personalities. Certain touches or caresses could ignite the heat that flowed constantly between them. He was far more experienced than she, and he taught her all the tricks of exquisite pleasure, driving both of them to greater and greater orgasms. She was an eager student, quick to learn. Before long, she was able to torment hi
m as he did her, driving his body crazy while preventing him from that final release until he begged for mercy.
“I’ve never been like this with another woman,” he confessed one night as they lay in each other’s arms, depleted. “Making love with you is unbelievable.”
“Really, now. What about all these other women I’ve heard about?” she teased. “Quinn said—”
“Quinn needs to mind his own damn fucking business,” Nick growled. He turned her face toward him and kissed her so deeply she thought he’d reached her soul. “This is different,” he told her when he could catch his breath. “Much, much different. More than merely giving in to sexual attraction. And don’t you dare forget it.”
Still, Lindsey had no idea where this thing between them was going. The stalker still dominated their lives, creating an artificial situation What if this all fell apart when the stalker was caught and their lives went back to normal? Somehow, she had to prepare herself for that. She’d learned long ago not to put too much trust in anything men told her.
And despite his protestations, when Nick had a chance to think about the whole children thing, it was very possible he’d realize that could be a deal-breaker. That he really wanted children with his own DNA.
On Friday, Nick decided to leave two men to keep an eye on the building front and back, and one in her apartment to give the appearance they were still there.
“Just in case,” he told her as they finished breakfast. “I think we need to change our routine, and I want to install an alarm at the ranch.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You think that’s necessary?”
“I do. In Ruben’s and Mary’s place and the barn, too. We’ll set them up so each has its own keypad, but the main controls will be in your house. Also, I want a panic button in your bedroom.”
“Is that in case I need someone to save me from you?” She gave him a wicked grin.
“No, it’s in case I’m the one who needs saving.” He smiled back at her and covered her hand with his, giving it a light squeeze. “The less exposure you have out there the better I feel.”
