by Julie Miller
She quickly shifted her gaze to his eyes as he turned. “You said you were going to cook me something as a thank-you.” He thumbed over his shoulder out the window. “I introduced myself to Hank across the street. He promised to keep an eye on things when I can’t be here. But my shift is over. Daisy and I got our two miles in. I’m thinking I’m hungry.”
“He’s still outside, isn’t he?” Beth hurried over to the window. Kevin’s arm went out like a barricade, preventing her from getting right up to the blinds to look for herself. But she still caught a glance of the dark green car parked on the street out front. She latched on to the protective forearm and sank back onto her heels. “Can’t the man take a hint? Do you think he knows Charles’s death wasn’t a suicide? Do they suspect me?”
“Possibly. You were the only one in that office this morning.”
“His wife Deborah must have been there. The music was playing when I arrived.”
“Music?”
“Classical stuff. It’s a high sign to warn me—and to mask any sounds—when they’re in there making out.”
“But you didn’t see her?”
Beth thought back to the chaos of the morning, from sneaking in early to Kevin’s last, caring kiss. “They come and go by Dr. Landon’s private elevator. I don’t know if it’s discretion as much as they think it’s fun to sneak around.” The images began to pop into place. “But, no. She wasn’t there when Geneva barged in and found him. And I went in right after her. I remember Deborah being there after your partner, Atticus, arrived—Geneva called her on her cell phone. But I never saw her before that. I just assumed they’d had their tête-à-tête and she’d gone.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“I…” Beth suddenly pictured what sneaking into the office before hours, leaving the lights off and trying to crack security codes must look like to a seasoned detective like Kevin. “I didn’t kill him.”
“I know. But suicide or murder, you were on the scene and you had the opportunity to be involved with his death. If James is any good at his job, and I think he might be, he wants to find out what you know.” Kevin unzipped her parka and pushed the bright blue nylon off her shoulders. When she thought he might pull her into his arms for another of those hold-on-for-the-ride kisses, he instead stuffed her coat into her arms and turned back to the window. Guarding her. “He’s on the phone—either reporting in that you got home safe and sound like he said—or telling someone he couldn’t get inside to scope out your place or interview you.”
“You’re not leaving until he does, right?” The answer was written there in the intensity of the golden brown eyes that met hers. He’d keep her safe, even if they weren’t quite sure what the danger was or where it was coming from. Beth smiled, tossed her coat over the back of a dining-room chair and headed into the kitchen. “How do hamburgers sound?”
“Better than what I had planned. You have an old towel I can dry off Daisy’s paws with? Sorry about the take-down. Once she gets going, she has a hard time putting on the brakes.”
Several hours later, with her French doors repaired, their plates clean and Daisy appeased with a hamburger of her own and a blanket draped over the couch to sleep on, Beth rolled over in her own bed. The dark of the winter night had found its way beneath the covers to chill her through her flannel pajama pants and long-sleeved T-shirt. Or maybe it was the fear and confusion lurking at the corners of her mind that was chilling her from the inside out.
Normally when she couldn’t sleep, Beth got up and worked on something mundane that would bore her into drowsy relaxation again. There was wallpaper to scrape in the main bathroom, bills to pay. She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed, stopping in her bedroom doorway and looking across the hallway into her office. The red power button on her computer glowed in the shadows, and for a few moments, she thought about running the flash drive again, to see if she could read it on her home computer, now that she knew at least one password. But the soft lamp light shining from her living room drew her down the hallway on silent, stockinged feet.
Kevin looked up from the book he was reading as soon as she appeared at the end of the hall. He peered over the top of a pair of reading glasses that gave his craggy features an intellectual appeal. “It’s late.”
Daisy lifted her drowsy head to acknowledge Beth’s presence before snugging her nose back against Kevin’s thigh and snorting with fatigue.
Rubbing her hands up and down her arms, trying to hold on to some kind of warmth, Beth stepped into the dim circle of light. She didn’t know if the gun resting on the end table beside her two guests should reassure her or frighten her. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. About two hours ago.”
But Tyler James had watched the house all through dinner. He’d made another call from his car when Kevin had gone back to his house to change into jeans and return with the tools and wood to repair her French doors.
Beth made herself say the polite thing. “You don’t have to stay.” Although having the extra bodies around, with the heat and sense of security they provided, went a long way toward easing the isolation she felt.
“It’s easier to watch over you from here. I’m running some background checks and waiting for the M.E.’s autopsy results, so there’s nothing more I can follow up on tonight. I’d be awake over at my house, watching through the window, worrying I was too far away to help if something else happened to you.” Kevin pulled off his glasses. “Unless you want me to leave.”
She shook her head.
“You should go back to bed.”
“I can’t sleep.”
He held up the book. “Neither can I. And I’m dead tired.” He set the book and glasses on the table, next to his holstered weapon and gave the dog a shove. “Daisy, move.”
“She’s okay.” Beth sat at the far end of the sofa with the length of the dog between them. She curled her legs up beneath her as she adjusted her position to stroke Daisy’s warm, mottled flank. “What happened to her? Why does her skin look like this—all patchwork with fur and scars?”
“Neglect.” Kevin stretched his arm across the back of the sofa. “She was left outside a drug house—they didn’t take into account that she was more couch potato than guard dog. She was just a decoration to them, I guess—not a living, feeling creature. She nearly starved. She contracted mange and then instead of taking her to a vet, they tried to treat her with some chemical that burned parts of her skin.”
“That sounds awful. It’s a wonder she’s still such a gentle—albeit loud and kind of clumsy—giant.”
“My friend Liza’s a veterinarian at a shelter downtown. She got Daisy’s skin healthy again, fattened her up. But with three dogs and a husband at her house already, they just didn’t have space and were looking for a home for her.” Daisy licked her jowls with contentment. “I figured we were a good match.”
So Daisy had a big heart, too, that belied her fierce-looking exterior. If only someone cared enough to see it. “You rescued her?”
“One of Liza’s rescue dogs saved my life once. I figured I’d return the favor by paying it forward. Nobody wanted her.”
“You did.”
“She’s why I bought the house and moved out of my apartment.” He dropped his hand to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “You never know what you’ll do for a woman you care about, I guess.”
Beth’s hand stilled on Daisy’s thigh as some unnamed emotion constricted her heart. Was she supposed to read anything into that comment? Or was he strictly talking dogs and old girlfriends? Beth couldn’t figure out her feelings for Kevin Grove any better than she understood why she’d been given a flash drive filled with incomprehensible codes and a man she’d cared about had died.
Beth pulled her sleeves down to her knuckles and tucked her arms around her waist again, fighting off a shiver. “Why are these things happening to me?”
Kevin scraped his palm over the golden stubble shading his jaw and shook his head. “I don�
�t know the answers to that yet.”
“I feel like my world is spinning out of control. Like I can’t hold on to anything that makes sense.”
His eyes darkened to the color of fine whiskey as his gaze locked onto hers. And then, despite her protests and the dog’s, as well, he was shoving Daisy to the floor and tossing the blanket after her.
“Come here.” Kevin reached for Beth, pulled her into his arms, settled her in his lap. His thighs burned into her bottom. His scent surrounded her. He flattened her palm against the soft cotton of his sweatshirt and encouraged her to latch onto the harder muscle underneath. “I’m solid. Do you feel that?” She nodded against the strong beat of his heart, snuggling close as his arms folded tight around her. “You hold on to me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.” For a man who didn’t mince words, it was promise enough.
In a matter of minutes, Beth fell into the warmest, most exhausted, most secure sleep of her life.
Chapter Eight
Kevin woke up on fire.
The house was still save for Daisy’s deep snore. The morning outside the front windows was still dark. His neck was a little cramped from sleeping on a couch that was too short for his frame, but that hitch of pain quickly receded as his body awoke to one feverish sensation after another.
Warm spice and vanilla teased his nose. Dark, velvety hair caught in the morning stubble on his chin. Sometime during the night he’d pulled off his sweatshirt, leaving nothing but a thin layer of cotton between his bare chest and the twin pearls at the tips of pillowed breasts branding his skin. Long legs tangled with his. A soft palm claimed the swell of his pectoral muscle and the turgid male nipple standing at attention beneath it.
His hands were full of sweet, sassy curves as his waking mind identified the possessive grip he had on Beth’s bottom and the warm skin at the nip of her waist.
He was aroused. He was wanting. And he was painfully aware that the fierce need coursing through his veins was not what Beth had had in mind when she’d come to him looking for companionship and comfort last night.
How did he wriggle his way out of this one without embarrassing her? And why the hell wasn’t he making any effort to move away from the intimate cloak of her body?
“You awake?”
Well, hell. She knew?
Beth tipped her chin up and rested it on her fist atop his chest to look him straight in the eye. “I’m still holding on.”
Kevin’s breath caught in his chest as he lost his thoughts in the depths of her gray-blue eyes. He shouldn’t do this. He was here to protect her. She might be the key to solving a murder, to uncovering a conspiracy at GlennCo. The last time he’d tried to keep a woman safe, it had nearly cost him his job. It had damn well cost him his faith in everything he wanted from Beth right now.
He let himself reach up and brush the hair from her cheek. He touched the butterfly bandages that protected the stitches at her hairline. But then he saw that his hand was shaking and he curled his fingers into a fist. Was he that needy? That starved for affection? That…in love with Elisabeth Rogers?
“Is Beth important to you?”
Sucker. He was so gonna be screwed by the time this was all over and she was out of his life.
“Lady, I can’t…” His voice was little more than a husky growl in his throat.
She pressed a finger over his lips. “It’s okay. I want you, too.”
He shook his head. She didn’t understand how out of practice he was. She couldn’t imagine the kind of longing a lonesome beast like him kept locked inside. He lifted her hips and tried to move to a less obvious position beneath her, but when he set her back down, her legs split on either side of his thigh and she clenched around him—just the way he wanted to feel her squeeze around…
“Kev?” Her soft little gasp danced across every nerve in his body like a firm caress.
“Ah, hell.” Kevin tipped his head back against the arm rest and groaned in agony, locking every muscle into place, willing his body not to react. “It won’t be the way you think. I’m a little past patient seduction, and I don’t have much finesse to begin with.”
“Then just do it.” She rubbed her palms over his short hair and cupped the back of his head, forcing him to look into those irresistibly expressive eyes again. “I need to feel something besides fear. I want to be certain of something in my life. And I know we want each other.” She rode the ragged rise and fall of his chest. “I want to feel desire. Passion. I want—”
He stopped up her words with a kiss, forcing her soft lips to part, thrusting his tongue inside. “I want you.” He spanned her waist with needy hands and dragged her squarely on top of him to deepen the kiss.
She clutched at his shoulders, at his hair, at whatever she could reach—purring in her throat, breathing harder, faster, answering every foray of his lips and tongue.
“I want you,” he whispered against her throat, nipped at her chin, kissed her again. With a powerful move, fueled by desire, he sat up with Beth on his chest and spilled her into his lap, swinging one foot to the floor and veeing his legs apart to relish the full impact of her fiery softness pressing against his hard arousal.
He peeled her shirt off over her head and pulled one of those peach-colored aureoles into his mouth to suckle on her even before her hands were free of the sleeves. She cried out his name on a startled gasp and raked her fingers into his hair, holding him against her while he squeezed the generous globe in his hand and feasted on the pebble-hard tip.
He kissed his way from one swell to the other, warming a damp path across her cool skin. “I want you.” He fanned the words across her skin.
She moaned. He caught her twisting hips in his hands and held her still while he writhed helplessly against her.
Her busy hands wandered at will across his body. Scraping a palm across his grizzled cheek, sliding across his shoulders, trailing her fingers farther down as he shifted his attention back to her swollen lips.
“Kevin…” She went up on her knees to help him pull off her flannel pants. “Soon…” Her fingers found his belt buckle, unsnapped his jeans, gently unzipped. “Don’t make me wait.”
He was shifting, moving, helping her in whatever way he could, speeding faster and faster toward his inevitable release. When her fingertips slid beneath the elastic of his boxer briefs, he lurched into her palm and then swore.
“Damn it.” He snatched her wrist and pulled her back. He wasn’t such a rutting bull that he’d let it happen this way between them. He wouldn’t endanger her like that. “Stop.”
“Kev?”
“Lady, you are the most beautiful thing I ever…” He sucked in a painful breath, framing her stunned face between his hands and begging her to understand. “I don’t have a freaking condom with me.”
Shock turned to disappointment in one hard, deep breath. But by the next breath, she was smiling. “I do.” She pushed against his chest, trying to clamber to her feet. “If I can find them. I’ve never used them. Gag gift from my brothers when I moved. Protect myself from those big bad city boys, they said.”
“Like me?”
For a moment she stilled. “Do I need protecting from you?”
Kevin shook his head, speaking straight from his heart. “You’ll always be safe with me.”
Beth leaned forward, planting a firm kiss on his mouth that promised she’d be right back. “I believe you.”
Then she was up and stumbling on wobbly legs toward the hallway. “They’re in the bathroom.”
He didn’t wait for her to return with the prize. He chased her down the hall, laughing with her as they opened three drawers in the vanity before finding a box of foil wrappers stuffed in the back. He lifted her onto the counter beside the sink and moved between her legs, shoving his pants down to his ankles and stepping out of them as her fingers fumbled with his to cover him. Wise or not, this woman ignited something in him that could no longer be delayed or denied.
“I can’t wait.” He pulled her to the edge of the vanity.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his waist, giving herself to him in the most humbling way imaginable. “I don’t want you to.”
Kevin took her right there in the bathroom, sliding inside her welcoming heat. She buried her face against his neck as he held her tight and exploded inside her.
Once the tremors of her release subsided and her skin began to cool beneath his hands, Kevin backed away. He pulled a towel from the rack and gently tended their bodies. And before her toes could reach the floor, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to her bedroom where he tucked her beneath the covers and crawled in behind her.
Beth must have dozed for a few minutes because the icy glow of the sunrise was reflecting off the snow outside her window and filtering into her bedroom when she next opened her eyes. She smiled serenely and settled against the furnace of heat warming her back.
Kevin’s deep growly voice whispered against her ear. “Told you I was short on finesse. Have I scared you away yet?”
“No.” She was feeling a lot of emotions right now—too many to sort out, perhaps—but fear of Kevin Grove and the passion they’d shared wasn’t one of them. “That was…exciting.”
“I hope it’s okay that I stayed.”
“Of course.” She squeezed the hand that rested on her hip.
“I wanted to wait around long enough to make sure you were okay.”
She rolled over to face him, hating that he could still doubt that a woman could truly care about him—that she cared. She reached up to brush her fingertips across his stubbled jaw. “I think I’d be insulted if you were too eager to get away from me after…that.”
“You were perfect.”
“I wouldn’t say—”
He silenced her with a quick kiss and lingered close so she could see past the hard jaw and crooked nose, and read the honesty in his warm, smiling eyes. “You’ll get no complaints from me.”
