by Anthology
“It’s not on fire,” Lauren said, glancing at Blake.
“It’s contained,” Blake said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not on fire, or it wasn’t on fire.” He dropped his phone to the seat, and grumbled something about hanging Royce up by his toes. “Looks like several houses down is as close as we’re going to get with all the yellow tape.” He angled the Ranger to back in between two cars, and put the car in reverse, pausing to say, “I’ll go get Royce and bring him to-”
Lauren shoved open the door, hopped out, and started running toward the house, the cool night air whipping through her hair and making her pull the jacket of her sweat suit closer to her body.
“Lauren!” Blake shouted.
She ignored him, cutting up a line of bushes to avoid the cluster of four official personnel not far away, and then ducking under the tape.
Blake shouted again, getting closer, and Lauren stepped up her pace, and charged toward the porch. She hit the first step, relieved that if there was any structural damage, it wasn’t significant enough to be seen from here.
She entered the front door, hearing Blake talking to someone behind her. She paused inside the foyer, seeing no obvious fire or damage, but the scent of smoke tainted the air, bitter proof there had been a fire. The sound of voices drew her to the left, toward her father’s den.
Her tennis shoes padded soundlessly over the carpet and she paused at the cracked door, some invisible force, instinct, telling her to wait, to listen. She eased around the edge of the door so that she could see into the room.
Royce was standing by the marble fireplace, Luke at the opposite side. Her father, and some man she didn’t recognize, sat in leather chairs framing the couch.
“I’m not going to keep this from her,” Royce said. “I’m done, Senator. This ends tonight.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” her father said, standing up. “When I hired you-”
“I don’t work for you,” he said. ”I did you a favor because you saved my father’s life in Vietnam. The end.”
The words cut through Lauren and she acted immediately, shoving open the door and stepping inside, seeing only Royce. “Favor? I was a favor?”
“Lauren,” Royce said, taking a step toward her. “I can explain.”
“That’s a ‘yes,’” she said, humiliation and hurt pouring through her. She turned and started to run, bursting through the front door, rushing down the steps, and straight into the path of Blake. At the same moment, Royce’s hand was on her arm, shooting hot fire through her body.
She whirled around to face him, jerking out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me. You don’t ever touch me again.”
“Let me explain. Please. Just hear me out.”
“You made a deal with my father,” she said. “You used sex and my feelings to get inside my life to do his bidding whatever the hell it was. There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”
“He asked me to check out a couple threats against your life and I agreed. And I would have told you but I saw you were in danger and I wasn’t going to risk you pushing me away.”
“So you thought you’d just fuck me into submission?”
“No,” he breathed out. “Damn it, no. This has been eating me alive. You had me at ‘hello,’ Lauren. Hell, you had me from across the room. I couldn’t, I can’t, let you push me away and end up dead. I won’t let that happen.”
“I’m not your concern. Not anymore.”
“This wasn’t a fire. It was a bomb, delivered in a package that said it was for you. It went off, sitting on a table in the dining room; thankfully when no one was around.”
She gasped. “Oh God. I... I can’t believe this is happening.” Luke stepped to Royce’s side. “Julie. I need to make sure Julie-”
“I know,” Luke said. “Kyle tried to get her to my place. He’s taking her to a well-secured hotel. Her choice.”
She nodded. “Okay. Yes.”
“And you’re coming home with me,” Royce said.
“No. I’m going to stay with Julie.”
“Staying with Julie makes her more of a target,” he said. “You have to see that.”
“The police have to know about this now,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. I’m sure they want to talk to me. I’ll get protection.”
He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, his face buried in her neck, lips by her ear. “I swear to you, Lauren, that if you don’t leave here with me of your own free will, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here. Hate me if you have to but you’re going to be alive when this is over.”
She was trembling with his touch, with the warmth of his breath on her neck, with desire to turn back time and have him be who she’d thought he was. To have them be what she’d thought they were. “I can’t. I just... can’t.”
“She can stay at my place tonight,” Blake said from behind her. “Then you two can figure things out from there.”
Royce pulled back to look at her, his blue eyes hard with determination. “Choose. Me or Blake?”
“Blake.”
His chest expanded and then relaxed, before he took a step backwards. “We have to talk.”
“No. No, we don’t.” She turned to Blake. “Please get me out of here.”
His gaze lifted over her head to Royce’s and held a long moment before he stepped aside and waved her forward.
Once they were in the Ranger, darkness and silence was all there was, until finally, they pulled into the garage of their building and parked.
They sat there a moment, neither of them moving. “When I was in the ATF I fell in love with a woman, another agent.”
Shocked at his personal confession, she turned to look at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was clutching the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall in front of them.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I... knew that.”
“So you know she was murdered.”
Her heart clenched. “Yes.”
His head jerked around, his gaze piercing hers, even in the darkness of the vehicle. “If Royce had asked me if he should have come clean with you, I wouldn’t have told him ‘no’ but ‘hell no’. You would have done what you did tonight. You would have pushed him away and made it damn near impossible for him to protect you. And you don’t take risks with someone’s life, especially not someone you care about the way he cares about you. You risk their anger, their inability to forgive you, but you don’t let them die.”
She could barely breathe with his words. “You blame yourself. You think you compromised on something that cost her life.”
“I know I did,” he said. “I let her die. He’s been a wreck, worried you would hate him, worried about protecting you. And that woman on the machine was nothing to him, Lauren. Nothing. You are. He has a past, but so do you. We’re going upstairs and you aren’t staying with me. You’re staying with him. If you want to sleep in the guest room, then so be it, but you need to be with him, so you two can try and work this out.”
She started to cry, the second time in two days and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried before that. She hadn’t even cried when she’d found Roger in bed with his bimbo. Mad at her weakness, she swiped the tears, and shoved the door open.
Blake met her at the bed of the truck, and they walked in silence to the elevator and then the apartment. She waited for him to search the apartment, and then joined him. She stood inside the door, trying to decide what to do, unsure how she felt. No, she wasn’t unsure. She hurt. She hurt like she’d never hurt before.
Blake sat down on the couch and she walked into Royce’s room, ignoring the rumpled sheets and the spicy male scent of the man she knew she loved, the man she’d always known would break her heart, and gathered as many of her things as would fit in a bag. She needed space, she needed to think. She needed trust.
She walked out of the bedroom, heading to the spare room down a hallway to the left of the master. Blake was watching
the news, and he didn’t look up, but when she was about to turn down the hall, the television went off.
“Lauren.”
She paused without turning. “I meant it when I said ‘what if’ destroys. It’s the bitch of all bitches. Don’t give her a chance to destroy you, or my brother.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lauren’s cell phone alarm buzzed near her head and her lashes shot open. She’d dozed off and on, but true deep sleep had never come. She turned off the alarm, emotion swelling insider her. Royce hadn’t come to her, and it hurt, which confused her. She had told him to stay away. She wanted him to stay away. She sat up. Oh God. What if something had happened? What if he never came home? She shot to her feet, tugging her long pajama top to her knees as she hurried down the hall and rounded the wall, to stop dead in her tracks. Royce and Blake were both there, fully dressed and sleeping, the two chairs they occupied reclined back, the television on mute.
Lauren stared at Royce, his long hair half out of the clasp at his neck, the long, dark strands brushing his handsome, tension etched face. She inhaled and started to tiptoe to his bedroom, where she’d realized last night she’d left her purse and makeup, and pretty much everything she needed to get ready for work. She crept into his room, gently eased the door shut and then rushed to the bathroom.
Minutes later, she stepped into the shower, the hot water pouring relief into her stiff, tired muscles. She lingered, taking her time, not eager to get out and face the day, most likely filled with police and news people.
Finally, she forced herself to turn off the shower and pulled the curtain back. Royce sat on the toilet. Lauren jumped and let out a tiny yelp. He handed her a towel, his eyes lowered. She accepted it and wrapped it around herself.
His gaze lifted to hers, his eyes so blue, so tormented, they stole her breath. “I couldn’t go to bed knowing you weren’t there.”
She squeezed her lashes shut, water dripping down her cheeks, off her hair. “I can’t do this now. Not before I go to work.” She stepped out of the tub and he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close. “I wanted to tell you. I was going to tell you. I wasn’t about to let your father hold this over my head for the rest of our lives. I-”
She shoved away from him, suddenly furious. This was about her father. “Right. You wouldn’t want my father to hold this over your head.” She pointed at the door. “I know this is your bathroom but please leave and let me get dressed. Please. I need to be alone.”
“You took that wrong. You didn’t-”
“I don’t want to hear this now, Royce. I want to go to work and do what I do far better than relationships. I put criminals behind bars.”
He studied her a long moment and then scrubbed his heavily stubbled jaw and stood up, towering over her. His eyes pierced hers, lingering on her face for several tense seconds, before he turned and walked away. She stood there, unable to move, in a puddle of water, and then something snapped inside her. She ran after him, rounding the bathroom door at the same moment he reached for the bedroom door.
“Consider yourself fired.”
He turned to look at her. “You can’t fire me. You didn’t hire me and neither did your father, Lauren. I promised to check out a threat. I fell in love. The end.” He turned and yanked open the door and left, slamming it behind him.
Lauren sank down on the floor and damn it, she was flipping crying again. He didn’t love her. No. And saying he did was manipulative and mean. She was so damn tired of the men in her life using her like some sort of token. She swiped angrily at the stupid tears she should be above and forced herself to stand up. It was time she took a real lesson from Julie, that she separated sex from relationships, accepted that the relationship part was better left for people who liked heartache, because she didn’t.
***
Royce showered in the spare bathroom and changed into jeans and a black t-shirt he’d left in his dryer, and was pulling on a leather jacket when the bedroom door opened. Lauren emerged, dressed in a cream colored suit that grabbed the highlights in her long, brown hair and turned them to sunshine. Hair he knew smelled like honey and vanilla. God, he had it bad for this woman and she hated him. He was pathetic, the kind of pathetic he would have called foolish in any other man.
“Ready?” he asked.
“You’re taking me?”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” he said, and there was a bite to his voice he couldn’t hide. She had a fist around his heart and just kept squeezing. “You're stuck with me until I catch your would-be killer. Then you can kick me to the curb.”
She stared at him a long moment and then cut her gaze, her shoulders folding in slightly, that sunshine hair hiding her face. Emotion rolled off of her and punched him in the gut, twisting him in guilty knots.
“Lauren,” he said softly.
Her gaze lifted to his. “Yes?”
“Truce, baby. Today is going to be hell. Let’s be on the same team so we can get this SOB and make him pay.”
“Yes,” she said, a slight tremble to her voice. “Yes, okay.” She walked toward him but they didn’t speak.
They walked to the truck in silence, the tension between them so thick it might as well have been concrete. He helped her into the vehicle, their glances catching, the awareness between them crackling in the air. She still cared about him; he saw that in her eyes and determination filled him. He was going to make things right.
Fifteen minutes later, he parked at a meter in front of her office. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Aren’t you just dropping me off?”
“Not today. Whoever this is saw us fight last night, or I’ll gamble that he did, which means we need to send a clear message. I’m still here and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to walk you in and I’m going to kiss you goodbye in public.”
“That’s... that’s not necessary.”
He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “I love you, Lauren. I have since the moment I met you. I can’t be mad at your father for bringing us together.”
She dropped her head to his chest. “I’m afraid to believe you.”
He tilted her chin up, gently forced her to look at him. “Then I’ll show you and tell you until you do.”
And when he expected her to push him away, she whispered. “Promise?”
Relief washed over him and he kissed her, a deep, passionate kiss and it took everything inside him to end it. “I promise.”
“I’m not going to tell you I love you now,” she said.
“Now?”
“Not now.”
“If there’s a later, I can live with that.” He wiped smudged lipstick from her cheek. “The police aren’t involved. I used my FBI contacts and they claimed jurisdiction and sealed the file. No press, and I have a guy over there working this already. He’s simply no longer doing it off the books. He’s a good man. This will be kept quiet.”
Tension rushed from her body. “Thank you, Royce.”
“Thank me by being safe. It’s Tuesday. Your jury selection is still scheduled for tomorrow, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then I’m going to work through the evidence from last night before tomorrow. I have a feeling our guy will show up for that. I have three men on the building. I’m one phone call away. If you feel even a tiny bit uncomfortable, you call and I’m here. I’ll take you home.”
Her phone rang, she dug it out of her purse and he watched her hit ‘ignore’. She glanced up at him. “My father. According to his five messages, he wants me to drop this case before I get ‘everyone killed.’”
For once he was beginning to agree with the senator, and for his own selfish reasons. He wanted Lauren safe. “I’ll walk you upstairs and I’ll pick you up inside your office.”
***
Several hours later Lauren had finally managed to focus on her work, and was deep in concentration when the buzzer on her desk made her jump. She hit the button.
“Lauren?”
“Oh
God, I know that tone to your voice. Who is here that I don’t want to see?”
“Mommie Dearest,” she whispered.
“What? Why in the world… Sharon is here?”
“Oh yes.”
This was odd and unexpected. “Fine. Send her in.”
“Good luck.”
Yeah, I’ll need it, Lauren thought. Obviously Sharon wanted something. It was the only time she heard from the woman. Dropping her pen on the desk, she leaned back in her chair, hands settling on the arms rests.
Dressed from head to toe in Chanel, her skirt short and fitted, her perfume obnoxious, Sharon sashayed into the office.
“Hello, darling,” she purred. ”How is my favorite stepdaughter?”
“I’m your only stepdaughter,” Lauren reminded her.
“Yes, dear, and that makes it even more special now, doesn’t it?” She set her purse on a nearby chair, and moved to a decorative mirror on Lauren’s wall, inspecting her appearance.
“What is it you want, Sharon?” Lauren asked without any effort to hide her impatience. “I have a lot on my plate today.”
Dabbing at her lipstick first, obviously in no hurry, Sharon turned with a heavy sigh. “I want to talk about Brad.”
“Brad. The house had a bomb in it last night and you want to talk about Brad.”
“I want to talk about getting your life back on track. Clearly, you’re spinning out of control and taking the rest of us with you.” She sat down and crossed her legs. “And it seems to me that now, right after you almost got us all killed, is the perfect time to talk about real change. Quit this fool’s game you play in this place and get serious about a bigger picture. Your father is being urged to run for the Republic presidential card again this term. He’s seriously considering it, but to get the backing he needs, and that will be a massive cash influx, we must be solid as a family. This is a greater calling, a way to change the world. We all must make sacrifices, which means you have to stop this thing you do here and now. Battered women deserve sympathy, not the electric chair. You are making your father look bad.”
