Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2021

by Marie Ferrarella, Regan Black, Karen Whiddon

  Belatedly, he released her arm before he gave in to the temptation to draw her closer and kiss that full mouth of hers. A mouth that, for some reason, seemed even more tempting here in his kitchen than it had been earlier.

  Maybe the moonlight, pushing its way in through the blinds, had something to do with it.

  But he sincerely doubted it.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed to Sean.

  “So I see,” he replied. “I could offer you a drink.”

  But January shook her head, turning him down. “That would only make me more tense,” she told him.

  Sean nodded, understanding. “And if I gave you enough to make you relax, that would probably wipe you out for the next day,” he guessed. He thought for a minute. “How about some tea?”

  Even though she had come to search for some, she looked at him now in surprise. “You have tea?” she asked, adding, “You don’t seem like the type, Detective.”

  “I’m not,” he admitted. “Personally, I detest the stuff.”

  Okay, this was making no sense, she thought. “Then why—”

  “Every once in a blue moon, my stomach acts up, and I found that drinking that swill helps settle it,” he told her. “It tastes disgusting, but it does the job and that’s all that really counts, right? Now, do you want me to make you some tea or not?”

  January smiled and could feel her eyes crinkling. The man really was full of surprises.

  “Yes, please,” she told him. And then it occurred to her that she should be the one who was making the tea. There was no need for him to stay up. She didn’t want to keep him from getting his rest. “Or you could tell me where you keep your pot and I can just boil some water. You don’t have to stay up.”

  Sean pretended to study her face. “Are you telling me that you don’t want my company?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not that,” she assured him with feeling. “I’m just—”

  He found it hard not to laugh, but he managed. “Then just sit down and shut up, Ms. Colton. I am not impressed—or intimidated—by who you are.”

  Sean was still kidding, but he also suspected that there were people who bowed and scraped before her because of her last name and who her family was. Personally, he found that to be dishonest. To his way of thinking, people should be treated for who they were, not who they were related to or associated with.

  “I didn’t say that you should be,” she protested. She had no use for people like that. In her opinion, they were dishonest.

  “Good, now sit,” he told her again.

  “I’m beginning to understand why those women I felt would be flocking to your door aren’t flocking,” she told him.

  “You thought women would be flocking?” Sean asked, amused—and just a little mystified as to why she would even think that.

  “Never mind, I’m delirious,” she said, waving the remark away. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  Sean looked at her, a wicked grin rising to his lips. But when he spoke, there was no trace of amusement in his voice.

  “Understood.”

  Opening the cupboard, Sean looked on first one shelf, then the next, the contents of his cupboard pretty much of a mystery to him. He finally found a half-filled box of individually wrapped tea bags pushed to the back of a third shelf.

  “I’m really not sure how old these are,” he admitted. “If the tea winds up tasting ancient, feel free to toss it. I won’t be insulted.”

  “If the tea bags are individually wrapped, they should be good indefinitely. Don’t worry. I’m not picky,” she assured him. “If it tastes reasonably like tea, that’s good enough for me.”

  “We’ll see.” Sean poured the boiled water over a tea bag in a mug, then waited several minutes for it to turn into something acceptable. “I believe it’s tea now,” he told her, moving the mug in front of her. He left the tea bag in for good measure. “I’ve got a little bit of what passes for cream if you want to try adding that to the tea,” he suggested.

  She smiled. “No, I’ll quit while I’m ahead. But thanks,” she told him. “I do appreciate the effort.”

  He heard something in her voice and looked at her, all thoughts of continuing their banter gone. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked, concerned.

  “I am. Now. It’s just that I can’t get myself to stop thinking about what if,” January confessed.

  Sean shook his head. “You can’t go there,” he told her firmly. “Thinking that way will totally paralyze you and then you won’t be any good to yourself—or that little girl you’ve taken under your wing.”

  January blew out a very shaky breath and took a long, slow sip of her tea. The warmth curled all through her, swirling in her chest then moving its way down through the rest of her.

  “You’re right,” she told him.

  Sean sat down opposite her at the table. “I usually am.”

  His unshakable confidence made her smile. “There’s that ego again.”

  The detective didn’t think of having an ego as a bad thing. “Hey, that ego is what keeps me alive,” he told her.

  January’s green eyes met his. And then she slowly smiled. “Thank goodness for small favors,” she said seriously.

  “Or big ones,” he corrected. “Now promise me that, other than being on your guard for Maya’s sake, you are not going to spend any time dwelling on what might have happened. Just focus on the fact that the two of you managed to survive. By the way, answer a question for me.”

  “If I can,” she equivocated, taking another sip of her tea.

  “Just how did you happen to buy a place with a panic room in it?” he asked. “Did you actually want one?”

  “That’s just it,” she told him. “I initially had no idea it was there. I honestly don’t think that the Realtor who sold the town house to me even knew. In her defense, when you open the door, the first thing you think of is that it looks like a regular closet. It’s not until you’re actually standing in the closet and push against the back wall—which swings open—that you discover it’s really intended to be a panic room.”

  Sean shook his head. “That must have been some surprise.”

  “Oh, it was,” she agreed. “I accidentally found it about a month after I moved in. When I did, I thought that someday, when I got married and had little people in my life, the so-called panic room would make a really neat place for them to play in and have creative adventures in.” January looked into her mug. The contents were almost gone. “I never imagined that I would wind up using it for the very reason the guy who first installed it had in mind.”

  Sean heard the catch in her voice.

  “You’re thinking again,” he admonished.

  “Sorry.” January flashed the police detective a quick smile. “Nasty habit I keep falling into. So,” she said, clearing her mind and focusing on a new, lighter topic, “were you serious about that shopping trip you promised earlier?”

  “Absolutely,” he told her with all sincerity.

  “But aren’t you supposed to be working tomorrow?” she asked him. “How would you explain shopping for clothes for a five-year-old?”

  “That’s easy enough,” he told her. “Guarding you and Maya is my new assignment. The warehouse where she was found was the site of a triple homicide. Maya was either an eyewitness, or the killer thinks she was. Sooner or later, he—or they—are going to come looking for her and try to find her. That’s reason enough for me to be hanging around, guarding both of you.” And then their eyes met. “Okay?”

  January nodded, then drank the rest of her tea. Setting the mug down again, she told him, “You make a great cup of tea. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”

  Rising, she was about to take the mug over to the sink.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Sean told her. “You just get to bed.” />
  Starting to protest, January suddenly felt too tired to argue. “Okay,” she agreed.

  She was asleep within five minutes of entering the guest room and lying down.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sean’s eyes flew open.

  When he told January that he slept with one eye open, he hadn’t been exaggerating. An unfamiliar noise had him instantly awake. It was coming from somewhere inside his apartment and he couldn’t place it. It had to be too early for January to be up, especially considering how tired she had been.

  Throwing off his blanket, Sean’s feet hit the floor at the same time that he reached for his sidearm in the nightstand next to his bed.

  He took the safety off as he silently made his way toward the front of the apartment and the source of the noise. His alarms hadn’t been tripped, but the detective was well aware that a savvy intruder could figure out how to bypass any security system no matter what might have been used to arm it.

  Moving as quietly as he could, Sean came into the living room, then froze in his tracks at the same time that he exhaled a long sigh of relief.

  No intruder had broken in.

  As near as he could ascertain, January was cleaning his apartment. Didn’t the woman ever do what was expected of her? he wondered, irritated.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, putting the safety back on his sidearm.

  January dropped the makeshift dust cloth in her hand, which, until an hour ago, had doubled as a kitchen hand towel. She pressed her palm against her pounding chest, trying to regulate her heart rate.

  She turned around to face the detective. “You have got to stop sneaking up on me like that, Stafford, or I swear that you’re going to wind up giving me a heart attack.”

  “That goes both ways, you know,” Sean told her pointedly. He tucked his weapon into the back of his waistband. “Now, I repeat. What do you think you’re doing and why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I got enough sleep,” she replied simply. “As for your first question, I know you’re not familiar with the idea, so you might not recognize it when you see it, but what I’m doing is cleaning.”

  His eyebrows drew together to form a dark, foreboding scowl.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he informed her, annoyed. “But why are you doing it?”

  “If you have to ask, you really don’t understand the concept of doing it. Cleaning happens when a place needs it. And trust me,” she said, her tone lightening, “your place really needed it.”

  Looking around now, she felt satisfied. She had made a dent in cleaning up the apartment, at least when it came to the kitchen and the living room. She told herself that she would tackle the rest later.

  “You do not have to do this,” Sean insisted. He assumed that the social worker felt she needed to pay him back for taking her and Maya in.

  “Oh, but I do,” she answered simply. Her reply surprised him. She wasn’t doing it to pay him back, it was for an entirely different reason. “If the dust bunnies had gotten any worse than they were,” she told him, “I would have risked losing Maya in them.”

  She said it with such a straight face, she almost sounded serious, Sean thought.

  Just what he needed. A social worker who doubled as a comedian.

  “Very funny,” he commented.

  “Sadly, not really,” she told him. January looked around at her handiwork. “I’m going to stop now and look in on Maya. If she’s up, I’m going to get started on making breakfast. This—” she gestured around the general area “—will be continued later.”

  “About breakfast,” he interrupted. “I thought we’d just go to a drive-through place.”

  “No need,” January told him cheerfully. “I looked in your refrigerator. You have eggs, you have bread, you have me. Everything you need for a balanced meal.”

  Maybe she was the type who needed to hear the words out loud, he thought. “Look, I did not bring you here to cook and clean.”

  “I know,” she answered. “That’s one of the perks of having me here. Had you asked me to clean, I might have dragged my feet a little. But you didn’t ask, so I’m more than happy to do it.”

  Sean shook his head. That really didn’t make any sense to him, but he had a feeling she wasn’t trying for sense.

  “You women are a very befuddling species,” he told her in all seriousness.

  January didn’t bother correcting him. Instead, she just smiled as she headed out of the room. Her eyes looked like they were laughing at him. “Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it?”

  That wasn’t the only thing it did, he thought, watching January as she left the room, her hips swaying in an enticing rhythm that was beginning to reel him in.

  The next moment, Sean sternly upbraided himself. Thoughts like that were bound to get him into trouble. It didn’t take a crystal ball for him to know that.

  Fully awake now, he went to the kitchen to get the coffee started. He found to his diminishing surprise that January had beaten him to it. There was a freshly brewed pot standing at the ready on his coffee maker.

  In a pot that had been recently cleaned, he noted as he poured his first cup of the day. Just when did this woman get up? More important than that, how had she managed to do all this without waking him up until now?

  Did she get any kind of sleep?

  He doubted it as he looked around at what January had already managed to get done.

  Somehow, she had cleaned the entire kitchen and had gotten most of the living room straightened up. Hell, he felt he was doing well if he managed to wash the dishes every couple of days or so—and that was without ever putting them away. His philosophy was that he planned to use the dishes at some point or other, so there was no real reason to empty the rack.

  That rule of thumb had served him well so far.

  “Guess who’s awake,” January said as she came back into the living room with Maya. The little girl was dressed, wearing the same converted blouse-into-dress that she had had on yesterday.

  Sean noticed that her hair had been neatly brushed and rebraided. He also noted that not only did she seem less frightened than she had yesterday, but she actually looked happy.

  “I don’t need to guess,” he said, lowering his voice before he remembered that Maya couldn’t make out anything he said. But even so, he did add, “You’re talking about my favorite princess.” He enunciated the words right in front of her in hopes that, eventually, the little girl would be able to read his lips.

  If for some reason Maya’s stay here wound up being for a longer time, he would try to learn a few basics when it came to signing. Just a few frequently used words and phrases, because there was only so much that could be conveyed by a smile, he thought, trying not to get frustrated.

  As she walked into the room, Maya surprised Sean by coming up to him and tugging on the edge of his shirt. It got him to bend down.

  “Okay, I’m down to your level,” he said, waiting to see what was next. “Now what?”

  He sincerely doubted that the little girl could read his lips, but when he asked the question, Maya threw her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  “I believe you have your answer,” January told him. “And it looks like you won yourself a pint-sized heart,” she added with a smile, smoothing down Maya’s bangs. “Okay, now on to breakfast.”

  “I found the coffee,” he told her, toasting her with his mug.

  Her eyes crinkled as January smiled at him. “It wasn’t hiding,” she pointed out.

  “I know that,” he replied. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

  “Then say it. Nobody’s stopping you. No preamble necessary.” Her smile widened. “Was it to your liking?” she asked as she took out what she needed to make the simple breakfast. “The coffee,” she prompted when he didn’t respond.

  “It wasn’t as da
rk as I usually make it,” Sean acknowledged. “But it was good.”

  “I wasn’t sure how sludgy you liked it,” she confessed. “So I took my best guess. Next time, I’ll go a little heavier with the coffee—or lighter with the water.” Then she decided that maybe it would be prudent to add, “If there is a next time.”

  “Are you resigning from the breakfast detail so soon?” Sean asked, surprised she would give up so easily.

  “No, I’m not planning on it,” January told him.

  She had lost him—again. “Then why the if?” Sean asked.

  “I was making reference to the fact that you might get the bad guys,” she told him. “Then there no longer will be a reason for Maya and me to play house at your place. The flip side of that is that you might find a member of her family and she will go with them.”

  “I’ll say one thing for you. You certainly have more faith in the police department than most people do. Especially the people I’ve run into lately,” he said, thinking of recent events that hadn’t gone as well as he would have hoped.

  “Sounds like someone might be badly in need of a vacation,” she commented as she started preparing breakfast.

  He laughed under his breath. The sound definitely lacked any humor. “No argument there, but that doesn’t change my opinion about the way that a lot of private citizens in Chicago regard their local law enforcement agents.”

  She turned away from the stove for a second. “I’d say that, at the very least, you need to mingle with a different crowd of people—and soon.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, an idea flashed through her mind. “And I have got the perfect solution for that,” she declared happily.

  He had to confess that the woman fascinated him. She seemed very pleased with herself—and the look became her, not to mention that it drew him in.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” he told her. Despite the smile on her face, he found himself feeling more than a little leery about what she was going to propose.

  “Don’t be afraid to ask,” she said playfully. “You’re a police detective. Asking questions is a way of life for you.”