Not Without Risk

by Sarah Grimm

  “A mistake.”

  “Yes.” She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair. The long length fell free about her shoulders, the loss of its weight helping to ease the tension in her neck. “A mistake I can’t afford to make right now.”

  His mouth thinned to a grim line. “I see.”

  “I’m not ready for this.”

  “This?”

  “You. I’m not ready for you, for a relationship with you.” She cherished honesty, gave it to him now. “I don’t know that I will ever be comfortable with your job. Not after living through the worst of it. I won’t go through that again.”

  “I never said I wanted a relationship.”

  “Then what?” What else did they have if not the beginnings of a relationship? “What are you looking for? What is this between us?”

  “Sex,” he replied simply.

  Numb with shock, a moment passed before she could speak. “Right. Of course.”

  “Paige—”

  “No, you’re right.” She straightened her shoulders, and tried not to let his words hurt. Hadn’t she just told him she couldn’t handle a relationship with him? Why should it matter that he hadn’t been looking for one?

  Swallowing past the tightness in her throat, she forced herself to hold his gaze. “Then it’s a good thing you ended things when you did. I’m not very good at sex without something more.”

  “You’re an all-or-nothing sort of woman,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “That I am. That’s why I think I should stay home.”

  Slowly, he closed the distance between them. “You don’t think we can keep our hands off each other while under the same roof?”

  She could still feel the weight of his body atop hers, the press of his arousal against her center, and was painfully aware that her body wanted more. It took everything she had not to lift her hand and settle it in the center of his chest, savoring his warmth beneath her fingertips.

  “You do?” The thickness to her voice startled her. “You think we can keep our hands off each other?”

  Her throat tightened as all hint to what he felt left his face. Had she not witnessed it herself, she never would have guessed that moments ago, hunger had deepened his intense brown eyes to near black.

  “I’m prepared to do whatever I have to do to keep you safe,” he said with quiet emphasis. “You are not staying here. You and I both know it is not a good idea.”

  She did know. Just as she knew spending long hours in his company would be a mistake that would lead to certain disaster. Everything inside her screamed to walk away, but there was no way to do that. As easily as someone had gotten into her home the night before, she wasn’t safe staying. It was only a matter of time before her mysterious someone returned, and the next time, he may not be happy just taking pictures.

  Just the thought of being alone when that happened froze the blood in her veins. Wrapping her arms around herself, she scrubbed her hands over her upper arms, trying to ward off the chill that had been with her for hours. “Maybe I should check into a hotel.”

  “He’d find you. The same way he found St. John.”

  “I’ll use a false name, pay with cash.”

  “I won’t leave you on your own. If you prefer we stay in a hotel, fine.”

  Paige closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against her pounding temple. “You’d stay with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Resistance gave way to compliance. “All right, I’ll stay with you at your place. I just need to get some things together.”

  Pausing to kick off the high heels that somehow managed to still be on her feet, she snatched them up and strode toward her bath and the large walk-in closet it housed. With each step, the sense that something about her home seemed a bit ‘off,’ grew. Halfway to her destination the feeling grew so great that she stopped and skimmed her gaze around the living area, searching for anything out of place, anything that would explain the sudden prickling of her skin.

  Nothing stood out.

  But the eerie sensation remained. The small hairs at the back of her neck lifted and she reached out to smooth them. Her heartbeat quickened into a gallop. She wondered if she would ever again feel comfortable in her own home?

  Irritated, she shifted her heels to her other hand, and scanned the room a second time. Froze, then took an instinctive step back as she focused on a spot on the floor, not three feet in front of her.

  Her ring. The ring she kept stuffed in the back of her panty drawer, in a shoe box filled with memories she didn’t wish to revisit but couldn’t seem to part with.

  In her mind, Paige relived her hurried dash across the room the night before. Her muffled cry of pain as she stepped on something unseen in the dark and twisted her injured knee. That something was her ring.

  Only, she hadn’t left her ring in the center of her room. She hadn’t left it on the desk at her left or the bedside table. Not anywhere near its final resting place. She hadn’t even seen the ring since she’d tucked it into that box in her drawer.

  Two years ago.

  A cold knot formed in her stomach. Bile crawled up the back of her throat. Her feeling of violation increased tenfold as she watched the sun reflect off the diamond she’d always felt too pretentious. Someone had been in her home last night. And he hadn’t been satisfied with just standing over her bed, taking her picture after all.

  “Justin.” She couldn’t stop shaking. She hugged herself tighter, backed away from the ring and in the direction she’d come. The urge to race to the bathroom and lock herself inside swelled. To hide from the reality of what her world had become.

  “Justin.”

  “What’s the matter?” he asked quietly, his voice directly behind her.

  She spun so quickly she collided into his chest. Her heels slid from her hand, landed with a thud on the oak floor.

  His fingers tightened around her elbow as she teetered. “What’s the matter, Paige?”

  “Last night…” She forced her voice to remain calm even while anxiety tore her up inside. “He did more than take my picture last night.”

  He slid quickly, seamlessly into cop mode. A hard intensity descended over his face. His shoulders stiffened. “How do you know that?”

  “There.”

  “Where? I don’t see what you’re pointing at.”

  Taking hold of his upper arm, she walked the few steps and pointed at the floor. “There. Do you see it? It shouldn’t be there.”

  He crouched down to get a better look, but she noticed he didn’t touch it. “This is yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t where you normally keep it?”

  “You’d be right,” she replied as his eyes came back to her. “I keep it in a shoe box, shoved in the back of a drawer.”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “You don’t keep it in a jewelry box?”

  “No. I don’t wear it.” Her heartbeat quickened to a gallop as she looked past him and focused on the ring on the floor. “The only way it got out of that box is if someone besides me took it out.”

  “Your intruder?”

  “I stepped on it last night. I didn’t know what it was at the time. I didn’t care, I just…” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I locked myself in the bathroom after hearing someone in my studio. On the way there, I stepped on something.”

  “This ring.”

  “Apparently, yes”

  He straightened. “That would mean your intruder did more than take your picture, he also searched your place.”

  A headache started just behind her eyes. Her throat went bone-dry.

  “Have you noticed anything else out of place?”

  She dragged an unsteady hand across her forehead. “No.”

  “Paige?” Justin leaned toward her, his gaze intense. “Is the ring significant in some way?”

  “It’s the engagement ring Rick gave to me.”

  * * * * *

  One hour later, Paige sat in t
he passenger seat of Justin’s GTO, wishing she could enjoy the ride. Under normal circumstances, she found the rumble of a powerful engine calming, its throaty purr reassuring. On a different occasion, she would appreciate the car’s classic lines. Heck, she might even encourage him to open it up and show her what The Judge had. But tonight, thoughts of her own safety kept her mind too busy to enjoy anything of her drive across town. She was on the verge of a breakdown and the police traffic softly crackling from the radio hidden beneath the dash only sharpened her anxiety.

  Taking a deep breath, she blew it out slowly and tried to ease the knots still sliding through the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to think about the man after her, but couldn’t seem to stop. How could this have happened? What did it say about her that she slept through someone searching her house? It had been bad enough knowing he’d been close enough to take her picture, but this? Someone had gone through her belongings. Slowly, meticulously, all while she slept just a few feet away, blissfully unaware.

  Her eyes stung with the threat of tears. She was a grown woman who lived alone. While her security system provided a relative amount of solace, she was not naturally a heavy sleeper. She couldn’t wrap her mind around how now, when she was most vulnerable, she could have dropped her guard so completely.

  Perhaps Justin and Allan were right and she had ingested something that kept her from waking? That would mean her intruder had been in her home on multiple occasions. Once, to drug her food or water, and a second time to search. She didn’t want to believe it, refused to believe. But at the same time she had to wonder if even her exhaustion was great enough to overtake her fear and cause her to fall into a deep, healing sleep.

  Which coincidentally gave her intruder the perfect opportunity to search her home.

  Thankfully the whine of the engine as the RPMs spiked kept Paige from circling back over that train of thought. Her eyes focused on the scenery outside her window as Justin downshifted and turned into a residential neighborhood. Immediately the smell of freshly cut grass and damp earth swarmed her senses. Unable to resist the temptation, she rolled the window down further and drew deep breaths into her lungs.

  It wasn’t what she expected, this little piece of suburbia. Justin lived surrounded by kids and dogs. And neighbors who were home in the evenings, not just nine-to-five on weekdays like hers. When he’d invited her to come home with him, she’d naturally pictured an apartment or condo. She’d never pictured the home he referred to as a pretty little stucco with flowers that bloomed along the drive between the houses.

  As he pulled the car into the attached garage, she turned her attention away from the dove-gray home with white trim and concentrated on its owner. She watched the way the shadow caused by the closing garage door played across Justin’s face, emphasizing the firm line of his lips, the masculine cut of his jaw. The photographer in her wished for her camera, wanting to capture the searing intensity of his gaze as his eyes locked with hers. The woman in her wished she could push caution aside and slide across the seat, straight into his arms.

  When he pulled the keys from the ignition and shifted in her direction, she sucked in air against an undeniable urge to do just that. The tight confines of the car made it impossible for her to draw a breath without tasting his scent. All her senses were heightened—touch, sight, smell, sound. Whether from awareness or fatigue, she had yet to decide.

  “Ready?” The deep tenor of his voice tangled her thought processes. He pulled her bag from the backseat and pushed open his door, stopped when she didn’t immediately move. His eyebrow raised in silent question. “Paige?”

  She licked her dry-as-dust lips. “Ready.”

  Paige followed him through the connecting kitchen door, her thoughts on the long-legged detective before her and not the room about her. That changed as they moved to the living room.

  Bachelor was the only way to describe his decorating style. His couch, the most god-awful brown plaid she’d ever laid eyes upon, sat in the center of the room. She walked around it, her hand trailing along the back, and decided he’d chosen the piece not for its aesthetics, but for its comfort. Oversized and well padded, it called to her, urged her to ease into its depths and succumb to her exhaustion.

  One side of the room was lined with bookshelves and they were filled from top to bottom. Next to the bookshelves sat a television, its angle telling her that when he chose to watch, he sprawled on the couch, not in the leather recliner at her right. A desk occupied the other corner of the room—mahogany if she wasn’t mistaken. Its glass-covered top held a top-of-the-line personal computer and a telephone.

  “The bedroom is that way,” Justin said, pointing at the door to her left. “You can have the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

  “Okay.”

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Where were the bits and pieces of his life? The bookshelves held only books, no sculptures or family snapshots. No paintings or pictures of any kind decorated the bare walls. The only photographs to be found in the room littered the top of the coffee table.

  “Do you always bring your work home with you?” she asked as the need to sit down before she fell down pushed her to the corner of the couch. She sank deeply into its cushions, fought the urge to sigh out loud.

  “No,” he replied matter-of-factly. His gaze dipped to the coffee table and hers followed. “This case is a first for me on many levels.”

  She hadn’t meant to look too closely, knew instinctively that she wouldn’t want to see the images captured in those photographs. Then she caught a glimpse of honey-blond hair and a smile that could only belong to one man.

  Leroy.

  The photos that littered the table before her shared the same subject—Leroy St. John. Spread out before her she discovered candids of him smiling and laughing, mixed with shots from the scene of his murder. Grisly, bloody shots immortalizing his death as accurately as the others immortalized his life.

  Grief, sharp enough to steal her breath, swelled inside her. She reached out her hand toward the photo nearest her.

  Paige’s small sound of distress kicked Justin into action. Leaning before her, he began gathering up the photographs. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to see those.”

  Her hand settled lightly over his, stilling his movements. “He was a good man.”

  She hadn’t spoken more than a few words since finding that ring over an hour ago. Even with the tension growing tighter and tighter inside him with each passing minute, he didn’t find much relief when it was the St. John homicide that finally broke her silence.

  Her fingers curled around his momentarily before she pushed his hands away and picked up one of the pictures. “He didn’t deserve this,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  In her hand, the photograph trembled.

  Justin’s throat tightened.

  Face drawn, she focused on the image she held. The image of a man she once knew and cared for. It stirred him, a mixture of sympathy and guilt because instead of urging her to rest, as he’d planned to do, he was going to take advantage of the opening she’d just given him.

  Circling the coffee table, he sat on the opposite end of the couch. “Tell me about him.”

  Her mouth thinned and she replaced the photograph on the coffee table. She remained silent for so long he didn’t think she would answer him. “Lee was a quiet, down-to-earth man. A bit reserved. Some people mistook him as arrogant, but he wasn’t. Not a bit.”