Obsession

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  What she found was her father lying motionless on the asphalt beside his car.

  “Dad! Oh my God!” She dropped to her knees beside him, grabbing his shoulders, the slush immediately soaking her black pants from the knees down, as icy cold as she suddenly felt all over. “Dad! Dad!”

  To her everlasting relief, he groaned and moved and opened his eyes. Her first, immediate, reaction was a wave of thankfulness that he wasn’t, as she had originally feared, dead.

  “What happened? Did you fall?” Her voice faltered as she noticed that one eye was starting to swell up and his mouth was cut and bleeding. Her hands slid over the smooth surface of his navy overcoat, instinctively searching for other injuries. “Were you mugged?”

  Glancing fearfully all around as the thought occurred—still no one in sight—she was already fumbling through her purse for her phone as she added, “Don’t move. I’m calling for an ambulance.”

  “No! No, don’t call anyone.” His voice was surprisingly strong, and his grip was, too, as he grabbed her wrist to stop her from opening her phone. “Just get me into the car and let’s get the hell out of here. They might come back.”

  He stirred like he was trying to sit up, but he couldn ’t do it, and panic clutched at her throat. Never in her life had she heard fear in her father’s voice—until now.

  “Who might come back?” Pulling her wrist free of his grip, she flipped open her phone even as she cast another scared look around. “Just stay still. I’m calling the police.”

  She was dialing 911 even as she spoke.

  “No!” There was such panic in his voice that she paused with her finger poised above the last digit to frown at him. “Don’t you understand? You do that and they’ll kill me—they’ll kill us both.” Breathing hard, he managed to push himself into a sitting position, then flopped awkwardly sideways so that his shoulder was propped against the side of the BMW. “You gotta call somebody, call Nick.”

  “Nick?” Uncomprehending, she stared at him.

  That’s when her world as she knew it came crashing down around her ears.

  “He’s FBI,” he said tiredly, closing his battered eyes and slumping against the car. Blood trickled from his cut mouth down over his chin, but she was too shocked to even think about trying to stop it. “Just call him, would you? His number’s on my phone. In my pocket.”

  Still reeling, she fished out the phone, found the programmed number, and pressed the button. When Nick answered—a simple “hello” with no identifying information, which, in retrospect, said it all—her voice held no intonation whatsoever as she told him, “It’s Jenna. My father’s been hurt. He said to call you. We’re in the parking lot outside the building.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, and he was. But with her father’s fear that “they” might return as an impetus, she had already managed to get her father up and into the backseat of his car. He was lying across the seats, breathing hard, and she was tucking his legs inside when she heard a footstep behind her.

  “Hey.” It was Nick’s voice, she recognized it instantly, but it came too late to prevent her from whirling and jumping with fright. He met her gaze fleetingly, but his attention immediately shifted to her father. He leaned into the car. “You hurt bad?”

  “A couple cracked ribs, maybe. I’ve had worse.” Mike’s voice sounded labored.

  “Was it Manucci?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t like the profit margin, so he sent two of his goons to let me know. Jumped me in the parking lot.” His voice changed. “They said that if things don’t improve, next time they’ll hurt Jenna.”

  “Okay.” He withdrew from the car, shut the door on Mike, and caught Jenna, who was hovering behind him, by the elbow. There in the uncertain light of the dark, newly scary parking lot, he looked hard, tough, and in no way like the charming man she had come to have a major jones for. “I need you to get in your car and drive to Mike’s house. Stay right in front of me. I’ll drive him, and then I’ll come back for my car later.”

  He was propelling her toward her car as he spoke, pausing only to scoop her heels and purse from the pavement where she had dropped them.

  “You’re FBI?” she asked, still not quite believing it as she fished in her pocket for her keys. He nodded grimly.

  “Yes.”

  “But what’s going on?” Her head was whirling, and she knew she was in shock, but she still retained enough presence of mind to know that whatever was happening, they—she and her father and the firm—wanted no part of it. “Is it bad? Is it about us?”

  “It’s not about you.” He took her keys from her and pressed the button to unlock her door, then opened it for her. “Get in.”

  “What do you mean it’s not about me?” Panic tightened her throat and had her clutching at the sleeve of his navy jacket. “Is it about my father? Please, I have to know.”

  “You probably ought to ask Mike.” Tossing her shoes and purse into the passenger seat, he disengaged her hands from his coat, bundled her inside the car, turned on the ignition for her, and pulled her seat belt around her. “Lock the doors. Drive. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Then he closed the door on her, turned, and walked back toward her father’s car. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer as she watched his tall, broad-shouldered figure stride away across the wet pavement.

  It was her father who told her the truth, late that night, after they had returned to his house and Nick had called somebody—another shadowy government doctor—who had come, patched Mike up, and left again. Mike was lying in his bed, propped up on pillows because breathing was difficult with his injured ribs. Holding her hand, he wept as he confessed that he was using the firm to launder funds for the Mob, channeling “dirty money” offshore and from there investing it in legitimate businesses and financial vehicles so that the earnings would appear legal. Crime boss Phillip Manucci was one of Hill, LLC’s biggest clients, although his dealings with the firm were known only to her father. Manucci was the target of Nick’s investigation, and he had simply followed the money to Mike Hill. The investigation was almost over, and it looked like it was going to bring down the entire Baltimore-and-D.C.-based faction of the Mob along with a dozen or more basically unrelated businesses that were, nevertheless, part of the web Manucci had spun to mask his crimes.

  Hill, LLC included.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” her father said, clutching her hand as she sat on the edge of his bed, his usually cheerful face crumpled with worry and grief. “Money was real tight. I had you to raise, put through college. It started so small—I needed a loan to keep the business going, and Manucci was the only one willing to give me the money. Then he asked me for advice. What was I going to do, turn him down? Let me tell you, you don’t turn down Phillip Manucci and live to tell the tale. Then it just mushroomed from there. Soon there was no way out. I was in too deep. By the time Nick showed up, I’d been laundering money for Manucci for years. Once the FBI found me, I knew I didn’t have a choice. Like Nick said, if I cooperate with him I’ll spend a few years in prison. If I don’t, when Manucci gets wind of the investigation—and he will get wind of it, sooner or later—he’ll kill me without a second thought. And even if I was prepared to face that, now he’s threatened you.” His eyes closed, and he heaved a great shaking sigh as tears leaked out from under his closed lids. “I’ve made a hell of a mess of it, Jen.”

  Listening, her stomach cramped. Her throat closed up. Always, all her life, her father had been her rock, the solid, sturdy presence at the core of her life. No matter how guilty he was, to see him brought so low both terrified her and wrung her heart.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she said, tears falling from her eyes, too, as she hugged him. “We’ll get through this together. Don’t worry anymore, please.”

  She stayed with him until at last the pain pills the doctor had given him kicked in and he fell asleep. Then she headed for the living room. For her entire life, her father had done his best to care for and protect
her. Now she was determined to do what she could to care for and protect him.

  With that goal in mind, she went out to the living room to talk to Nick. He was sprawled on her father’s big leather couch, minus his jacket and tie now, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his hands folded behind his head as he watched some kind of sports show on ESPN. A black shoulder holster was slung across the left side of his chest, unmistakable against his white shirt. There was no mistaking the gun that was strapped securely into it, either.

  The sight of that gun made her stomach knot.

  His head swiveled toward her. His arms dropped and he sat up a little straighter.

  “How’s Mike?”

  “Worried. Scared.” She walked toward the couch and sank down beside him. Because her pants had been soaked, she was wearing a pair of her father’s silky pajamas with a matching robe that was cinched tightly around her waist. Her feet were bare. “Just like I am.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You have nothing to worry about.”

  They were sitting so close that their arms brushed. Jenna turned a little sideways so that she faced him. Except for the flickering light from the TV, the small living room was dark.

  “I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about my father. ” She picked up Nick’s hand and held it in both of hers, her slim, cool fingers sliding with wordless entreaty against his big, warm ones. Her heart stuttered a little as their eyes met. Despite the circumstances, despite what she now knew about him, despite the threat that he posed to her father, she could still feel the heat sparking between them. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “He’s going to prison.” His voice was flat. “I’ll tell the court how much his cooperation meant to the investigation, and he’ll probably get just a few years.”

  Jenna felt faint. “A few years.” She lifted his hand to her face, pressing the palm against her soft cheek. His eyes narrowed. His mouth tightened. He didn’t pull his hand away, though, and she took this as a good sign. “He’s an old man. Prison could kill him.”

  “Prison won’t kill him. Manucci will.”

  She took a deep breath. “There has to be some way, something you can do. . . .”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Nick, please . . .” She turned her head so that her lips grazed his palm. Deliberately, she parted her lips against his skin so that he could feel the moist heat of her mouth. She pressed a soft kiss to his palm and touched it with her tongue. His hand stiffened, he sucked in air through his teeth, and his eyes went dark and hot. Electricity arced through the air between them, and she could feel her body quickening with anticipation. Holding his gaze, she whispered, “I’ll do anything, anything, if you’ll keep my father from going to prison.”

  He moved then, leaning toward her, his hand tightening on her face as he tilted it up to him. For an instant his eyes slid over her face, seeming to linger on each feature. Then his mouth was on hers, hard and hot and fierce and absolutely mind-blowing. Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and her bones melted, all in a single sizzling instant.

  Then he pulled his mouth from hers and stood up.

  “Forget it, angel eyes” was what he said, in a low, rough tone, as she sat there gazing blankly up at him, her eyes dazed, her head spinning, her body aflame. “Even if I wanted to, there’s nothing I can do. This thing’s too big, and I’m not the only one involved here.”

  Then he scooped up his jacket and tie from the nearby armchair and walked out the front door.

  Two days after that, late on a Saturday night when the rest of the building was deserted, she and her father were huddled in front of the computer in the basement offices where their back files were stored, at Jenna’s insistence secretly going through every business dealing Mike had ever had with Manucci. If there was any way to make any of them look legit in the eyes of the law, that was what Jenna was determined to do, and to hell with whether she got in trouble for it or not.

  Then two of Manucci’s goons had appeared out of nowhere, shoving guns in their faces, pulling Jenna away from her father and tying her to a chair. It was, she realized immediately, the real-life basis for the dream she’d had in Nick’s cabin. Manucci had gotten wind of a possible FBI investigation and meant to find out what, if anything, Mike Hill had told them. Once that was accomplished, he’d given orders for the pair of them to be killed.

  At practically the last second, Nick and his team had shown up and blown the goons away.

  Nick had untied her as Mike, who had collapsed and was lying in a pool of what turned out not to be his own blood, was surrounded by frantic agents. By the time Nick got her free and she was able to run to her father’s side, it had been determined that Mike hadn’t been hit: He had simply fainted. Then a medical team showed up and whisked him away, and she went with him. Mike was formally arrested later that night.

  The last time she saw Nick prior to his showing up in her kitchen with his “deal” was at her father’s sentencing. It was the previous June, and he’d sat in the witness chair, unemotionally telling the judge that Mike Hill had been instrumental in bringing down Manucci and his crime family. She had been seated in the courtroom listening, and their eyes had met precisely once. By then she almost hated Nick—but still she felt the electric jolt of that contact clear down to her toes. And that made her hate him even more.

  At the end of the day, the judge had sentenced Mike Hill to ten years, and she had collapsed in floods of tears. Not that it had done the least bit of good.

  With her father in prison and the firm gone, its associates and clients dispersed, its assets confiscated, she had taken a job with a landscaping firm. The hours were flexible, there was no pressure or stress, and she had always loved working with plants. She hoped that tending living things would help her heal.

  Then, on a wintry January day a little more than six months later, Nick had come knocking at her kitchen door.

  Nick, whose lap she was presently curled up in, whose arms were warm and strong around her, who was right at that moment whispering soft words of reassurance in her ears. To be in his arms felt so good, so right, that once she would have wanted to stay right where she was forever. But now that she remembered exactly who he was and what he had done, she stiffened like somebody had goosed her. Her fists clenched. Her head lifted from his shoulder. Her spine straightened and she pushed herself upright in his lap. As he looked at her in surprise, pure fire shot at him from her eyes.

  “You no-good, dirty, rotten son of a bitch,” she said. “Get your hands off me.”

  25

  Nick was still regarding her with transparent surprise as she whisked herself off his lap. Of course, as soon as she stood up her towel slipped—she’d forgotten that all she was wearing was a giant orange towel—and she had to grab at it to keep it from dropping like a stone to her feet. But she saved the towel, tucking the ends securely between her breasts and glaring at him at the same time, and never mind that her head was hurting and her legs were rubbery and she had just remembered the experience from hell. Actually, that was a plus, because it had provided her with a much-needed adrenaline boost. She felt totally herself for the first time in ages, and as a result she was so mad at him she could spit.

  “For your information, I just remembered everything, ” she said through her teeth.

  His expression turned cautious. He leaned back in the chair, his posture maddeningly relaxed as he looked up at her. “Did you now?”

  “You said I’d be perfectly safe. You said you’d make sure of it. You said I would never even set eyes on Ed.” She would have stomped her foot if she hadn’t been afraid of dislodging the towel. Instead, she gripped it tighter and glared at him. “What you didn’t say was that people were going to be messing with my mind. You lying jackass.”

  Infuriatingly, he smiled.

  “Welcome back, angel eyes,” he said softly.

  As the endearment registered, Jenna felt as though steam should be pouring out o
f her ears.

  “Angel eyes? Don’t you dare call me that. Besides being brainwashed, I’ve been beaten and tortured and scared to death and almost killed about half a dozen times now, thanks to you. That’s enough. I quit, do you hear? I quit.” She was quivering with outrage. “I’ve kept my end of the deal. Now it’s time for you to keep yours and get my father out of prison.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And you better not have been lying to me about that, too, because if you don’t do what you promised, I’m going to run straight to a reporter I know at The Washington Post and tell him every tiny little thing I know about this top-secret investigation of yours.”

  “Are you threatening me?” He not only looked amused, he sounded amused. She felt her temper shoot through the roof.

  “You’re damned right I’m threatening you.”

  Without warning, he stood up, his height and broad shoulders making him loom suddenly very large in the uncertain light. Intimidating? Oh, yeah—or at least, he would have been if she’d been even the tiniest little bit afraid of him. The thing was, she wasn’t. She now knew Nick Houston far too well for that. Glaring at him, gripping the towel just in case it should choose that inopportune moment to go south, she stepped back a pace. But only because he was crowding her and she refused to be that close to him voluntarily ever again. So what if her heart was beating faster now simply because, despite everything, she was discovering to her fury that she still wasn’t quite over that thing she had for Nick.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said.

  She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but he sounded sincere. The light spilling through the open bathroom door touched his golden hair; his blue eyes (and was their mildness deceptive, or what?); his long, mobile mouth; the strong, angular lines of his cheekbones and chin. The top of her head just about reached his chin, and the breadth of his shoulders was easily double that of hers. Scowling up at him, she had this thought: How unfair was it that her nemesis should be sexy enough to make her toes curl?