Between The Sheets

by Jeanie London

  REX AWOKE to find dawn paling the sky beyond the bedroom window. The restraints were still hanging from the bed frame where he’d left them after freeing April. He’d fallen asleep with her wrapped in his arms like they had every night since their first in Atlanta. He’d enjoyed waking up to the feel of her warm body curled around his, her cheek resting on his shoulder, her fine hairs teasing his nose every time he inhaled.

  This morning he awoke alone.

  He didn’t hear the shower running and the bedroom door was shut. Given the events of the previous night, Rex wouldn’t take her mood for granted. Slipping out of bed, he dragged on sweats and headed into the suite.

  He hadn’t made it into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee when he noticed her laptop missing from the bar. A look around revealed her luggage piled high in the hallway.

  Disbelief stopped him in his tracks. His mind was gearing up and he just stared, trying to register, yet not wanting to accept the implications of those packed bags.

  He hadn’t convinced her to take a chance.

  Even after last night, after loving her until he hurt, after baring his soul, he still hadn’t convinced her.

  “April?” Defiance spurred his voice past a tight throat.

  She emerged from the bathroom, dressed in her traveling clothes—comfortable jeans, sweater, sneakers. She looked pale and drawn, the slight droop of her shoulders making him guess she hadn’t slept much.

  “I showered out here so I didn’t wake you.”

  “You’re leaving.” Not a question that needed an answer but a statement.

  “I’ve got to go home, Rex. I need some time to sort things out before we can make decisions about the future.”

  “How long?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “What about us?”

  She spread her hands in entreaty. “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t either. He might have an ability to read people but he wasn’t a mind reader. Her beautiful violet eyes were shuttered against him, her expression so reserved she seemed to be holding it together by sheer will, an expression that emphasized the miles of distance she’d thrown between them.

  “I need some time to think and to straighten some things out.”

  “What things?”

  “I can’t tell you right now. I promise I will, but I can’t just yet.”

  Was she telling him the truth or simply making an excuse to get out that door?

  He honestly didn’t know, but believed her capable of either. She’d been confused last night, conflicted. He’d wanted to calm her fears, but was too emotionally invested himself to focus on her. He’d pushed. Maybe too hard.

  Something about the way she stood so tense—a hundred and ten on the nervous meter—told him that backing her into a corner right now would only send her out that door even faster.

  A wild urge to restrain her again hit him, to tie her up until he could convince her to stay. But the night had passed and in the blinding morning light, he couldn’t use the Fit to be Tied Restraints to avoid facing the truth.

  Their relationship was only beginning. He didn’t have much more than sex in his arsenal to convince her to tackle whatever was holding her back.

  Sex obviously hadn’t been enough.

  She’d shuttered her heart tight and he stood there without massage, without sex, without any way to reach it. And that look of inevitability she couldn’t quite hide told him he’d never stood a chance anyway. Her mind was made up. She wouldn’t stay.

  So he stared at her, unsure of what to do next. Did he simply let her walk out that door, and out of his life?

  “Wilhemina will be sending Charles’s assistant to help you,” she said. “She’ll have him here in the morning. Will you be okay until then?”

  He’d expected to work this project alone all along and found her concerns ironic. Why was she worried? For herself, because she didn’t want to feel guilty for leaving? Or for him, because she cared?

  A knock on the door ended any chance to pursue the answer.

  April moved past her bags and pulled open the door.

  A bellboy stood in the hallway, spiffily uniformed and totally unaware of the intensity of the encounter he’d just walked in on. “Someone called for bags to go down.”

  “These here in the hall, please.”

  Rex’s mind raced for some argument, something to stop what was happening. As soon as that bellboy finished loading that cart, he’d leave, and April would go right behind him, along with any chance to convince her otherwise.

  All he could come up with was a solid understanding that he wouldn’t accept this. She may walk out that door, thinking she was off the hook, but they weren’t over. Not by a long shot.

  “I’ll be right down,” was all April said as she tipped the guy and partially closed the door behind him.

  Then she turned to face him. Again, he got that sense it was taking everything she had to hold herself together. All his questions evaporated, all the uncertainty, and, yes, the hurt. He knew what to do.

  Covering the distance between them, he reached for her and wrapped her in his arms before she could back away.

  Instinctively, she molded against him, just like she’d done so many times, her body fitting against his in all the right places, warm, yielding, perfect.

  She might walk out that door, but he knew she hadn’t bargained on just how determined he could be.

  Stubborn, his mother always said. Like his father and grandfather. An Irish thing then.

  She pressed a slip of paper into his hand. He glanced down at it, read a telephone number with a Dallas area code.

  “It’s my cell phone number. As soon as I get everything straightened out, I’ll call you, but…but I wanted you to have my number if you needed me.”

  He heard the tears in her voice, didn’t understand what the problem was, knew it was big. “April, if you can’t make it back for the Phoenix run, you have to promise you’ll make time to go yourself. Soon,” he whispered into her hair, promising himself that he wouldn’t have to wait long until he could hold her again. “Harold has your name. All you have to do is call him and tell him I sent you.”

  Nodding, she broke away. She forced a smile but he saw the glint of tears in her eyes, knew she was coming apart. She knew it, too, apparently, because she grabbed her coat from the back of a dining room chair and headed toward the door.

  But she didn’t leave. She paused to look back at him. Just a glance, to capture his image maybe or reassure herself that he was really going to let her go.

  Those tears still shone in her beautiful eyes. “Rex, I’m sorry to run off like this. I’ll call.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  She lifted her hand to open the door and her sweater pulled back from her wrist…

  She was wearing the wristband.

  Rex stared into her face, no less beautiful for its guarded expression, and knew.

  She cared. The walls she’d thrown up and that wristband only proved how much.

  “Take care of yourself, okay?”

  “You, too,” he said.

  Then she walked out the door, as changed from the woman who’d walked into his life only a few weeks ago as he was from the man who’d gotten shocked when they’d first shaken hands.

  REX STOOD in the reception area of J.P. Mooney Investigators, Ltd. biding his time while he awaited his eleven o’clock appointment with the owner. The offices were like a thousand others Rex had been in during his career—up-scale, well-appointed, professionally designed to make clients feel welcomed and confident in whatever services the firm offered.

  With one important distinction—April worked here.

  An eventful week had passed since she’d left him in Denver and his research had yielded up some interesting facts about what had been taking place behind the scenes of the Luxurious Bedding Company and led him right back to Dallas, where he’d first met her.

  After gathering enough information to get a rough
idea of what was going on, he’d confronted Wilhemina, who’d answered his questions and given him a few more pieces to the puzzle. Now he’d come to John Patrick Mooney for a few more.

  An administrative assistant opened the office door. “Mr. Mooney will see you now.”

  “Thanks.” Rex inclined his head at the pleasantly smiling woman as he passed and entered the office.

  The man who sat behind the desk, so at ease—or displeased maybe—that he didn’t stand to greet his visitor, measured him as shrewdly as Rex measured him.

  “So you’re Rex Holt,” he finally said. “Awfully ballsy of you to show up after you cost me my favorite investigator.”

  “I did, sir?”

  John Patrick Mooney motioned toward the door that was closing behind him with a thick finger. “She walked right through that door, dropped her resignation letter on my desk and thanked me for eight good years. Said she was going into business for herself.”

  Leaning back in his chair, he hooked his hands behind his head and stared Rex down with a very no-nonsense gaze. “Do you mind telling me what you did to her, Holt?”

  Rex decided right then that he liked John Patrick Mooney, not only because he could hear echoes of April in the man’s dry wit, but because he got straight to the point.

  “I made her fall in love with me, sir.”

  Mooney exhaled heavily. “I knew it. I’ve got four daughters. I’ve seen the look.”

  Rex could empathize. With his sisters, he knew firsthand that falling in love could be an event.

  “Wilhemina told me to expect you, so sit down.”

  Rex sat in the chair in front of the desk and faced Mooney squarely. “Wilhemina explained that she hired your firm to conduct inside surveillance while I was out on the road. Unfortunately, until her security people officially close their investigation, she can’t tell me anything else without conflict of interest so she sent me to you for some answers.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You sent April, sir. Why?”

  “That’s a personal question.”

  “I have a personal interest in her.”

  “I thought you wanted to know about how our end of the investigation wrapped up?”

  Rex knew that his answer counted, that John Patrick Mooney would base his decision to be forthright on whether or not Rex produced a satisfactory answer. “I do, but only because I need to understand the part April played in it.”

  “And what the hell difference does that make?”

  “It may be the difference in whether or not she takes a chance on me.” He could be equally forthright. “I’m in love with her. I need to understand what’s holding her back from getting involved in a relationship with me.”

  “You’re that sure she has it for you?”

  Rex smiled. “I have four younger sisters, sir. Trust me, April has it bad.”

  Mooney snorted. “All right. I’ll fill in the blanks. To make a long story short, April went rogue. I sent her to do an inside surveillance job. I’m sure Wilhemina told you that this was just a precaution for the both of you. You were never a serious contender as a suspect.”

  Rex nodded.

  “April went in to watch you, to see who you interacted with and make sure you didn’t contact a rival bedding manufacturer while you were on the road with the company secrets. She wound up in such a crush to prove you were innocent that she solved the damned case.”

  “Industrious of her.” He couldn’t contain a smile.

  “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” Mooney steepled his hands before him and frowned. “She asked me to let her investigate, told me she could find a trail to who was sending the posts on the computer. I’m sorry to say I refused her. Wilhemina didn’t ask us to investigate and I was afraid to pile on too much responsibility. But it turned out all she had to do was get inside their network to figure out what the idiots in security couldn’t.”

  “And that was what exactly?”

  “No person was stalking the employees with those posts and covering up corporate espionage. There was a worm running loose in the system. A damned computer virus type of thing. Who’d have guessed?” He shook his grizzled head, and Rex saw what appeared to be Mooney’s first smile of their acquaintance. “Leave it to April.”

  She certainly had a gift, one that Rex suspected she didn’t fully appreciate. “Wilhemina wasn’t free to share how that worm got into the company network as it apparently involved several of her employees. How much can you tell me?”

  “I don’t have any conflict issues. Wilhemina’s marketing director was surfing porn sites at work.”

  “Charles Blackstone.”

  “Right. He picked up something from one of the sites—one of those new bugs that hides in the system and kicks out posts and files to everyone in the e-mail address book. The worm was scanning the files and attaching itself to any keyword that had to do with sex.”

  Rex laughed. “The Sensuous Collection files certainly qualified. But a company the size of the Luxurious Bedding Company shouldn’t have had that problem. Their network should have been protected.”

  Mooney smiled. This time a real smile that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. “It was. But the network administrator had apparently known Blackstone was a porn puppy and had been tracking him online. She let the worm run loose to blackmail him into getting involved with her. From what Wilhemina said, he wouldn’t give her the light of day otherwise.”

  Rex had sensed something off between Jacqui and Charles, but he hadn’t even come close to guessing the truth. “I imagine they were both offered severance packages.”

  “You got that right. This nonsense was about the last thing Wilhemina needed right now. She’s been having a hard enough time trying to keep her people focused on business dealing with the launch. But you’d know more about that than I would.”

  “The Sensuous Collection has had quite the effect on the staff,” he agreed. “But I’m sure Wilhemina intends to get her people back on track to get the launch off the ground.”

  “And you’ll help her?”

  Rex leaned forward, and faced the man squarely. “I will, but I want my assistant back.”

  “April?”

  Rex nodded.

  “You might just stand a chance. She’s currently out of work. If her business doesn’t fly, she’ll be job hunting.”

  “Why did she quit?”

  “‘She has to learn to stand on her own two feet.’ That’s a quote.” Mooney gave another short laugh. “You know, Holt, if Wilhemina had officially hired my company to investigate, I wouldn’t have assigned April to the case. I didn’t think she was up to establishing her cover and investigating. I was wrong.”

  “Then I’m glad Wilhemina didn’t hire you to investigate. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you were the only one who underestimated April. I think she might have surprised herself on this one.”

  “You planning to point that out to her?”

  Rex nodded.

  “I’ve known her a lot of years. She’s a live wire. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  “I’m up to it.” He didn’t add that he planned to order the entire Sensuous Collection before he completed this job, just so he’d be stocked up on Fit to be Tied Restraints for the next couple of years.

  John Patrick Mooney raised a grizzled brow. “You made my favorite investigator go rogue then quit her job with my firm and you made her fall in love. But you still haven’t told me what do you intend to do about it?”

  “I intend to become your next son-in-law, sir.” Rex stood and extended his hand in greeting. “That is, if you’ll tell me where April lives.”

  ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS through the years, April had been accused of hiding away in her apartment to pine. And though she hadn’t realized it at the time, she supposed she had been pining. But this time was different. This time she was collecting her thoughts, deciding what she wanted out of her life and out of her future.

  And g
earing up the courage to face Rex with the truth, and then seeing if he was willing to take a chance on her.

  Her apartment had always been her safe haven from the world, but today even the funky leather furniture and bright walls she loved seemed confining. There was no escaping the memories of nights spent asleep in his arms, her cheek pressed to his chest, his heart beating in time with hers.

  She wanted to hop on a plane and fly straight to Phoenix to catch up with him, to visit the research foundation and learn all she could about Electro Hypersensitivity to see if it explained her unusual symptoms. She’d been researching both online and in the university library—trying to, anyway. Rex had been absolutely right in telling her there wasn’t much credible information out there.

  But she couldn’t go to Phoenix. Not just yet. She had to wait for the green light that Wilhemina’s investigation was officially over. Then she would e-mail Rex, explain the whole situation and give him a chance to decide how he felt and if he wanted to see her again to discuss things.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to dwell on what would come after if he didn’t want to see her again, couldn’t, not yet. So she worked on her post whenever doubts or worry set it, an exercise of sorts. She’d been writing, deleting, then rewriting to find exactly the right words to explain the situation and tell Rex how she felt.

  She was writing now and she glanced at the computer screen, felt as if he wasn’t quite so far away. It was the waiting that was killing her.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  The waiting, and the let’s-keep-April-from-pining visits.

  Lowering her head until her brow almost touched the keyboard she’d taped to the treadmill’s instrument panel, she considered ignoring the door. Unfortunately Paula had been passing off April’s apartment key to her daughters so they could all take turns popping up at odd times during the day. As her car was parked downstairs the fact that she was home was no mystery, which meant there was no avoiding this visitor.

  “Who is it?” she called out.

  “John.”

  Her mood, which had been teetering on the edge, sank straight into the pit of her stomach. At first John had flat-out refused to accept her resignation. But he hadn’t had much choice when she’d left his office and not returned.