Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required

by Jennifer Apodaca

  “Oh, yeah.” It was perfect, vibrating against that tight, painful knot. I groaned, then reached over to turn out my bedside lamp. In the dark, I closed my eyes. Just for ten minutes.

  A ringing jarred me awake. Confused, I tried to turn off my alarm, but the noise didn’t stop. Wait, that was the phone ringing. I levered up on my right elbow and reached for the phone with my left hand. “Hello?”

  “Surprise.”

  Either there was one hell of an echo in my phone—

  Or there was a man in my room.

  9

  Fear slammed down on my chest. How could I hear a man’s voice on the phone and in my bedroom at the same time? Flinging the phone back on the hook, I looked around in the dark. How long had I been asleep? Was it morning? Who was in my room? Male voice. I tried to make out the shapes in the room. My desk, my bookcases, a large man—

  Oh God. There was a man in my bedroom!

  Something touched my left hand. Something cool, long, and round. I closed my hand over it. A weapon! I jumped up out of bed, switched the weapon to my right hand and raised it over my head.

  The light by my bed snapped on.

  Blinking, I tried to see the threat.

  Gabe leaned against the wall by my bedside table, holding his cell phone. Faded jeans and a black muscle shirt made him look too damn good for the middle of the night.

  He stared at my raised right hand. His hard mouth curved. “What exactly is that you are planning to attack me with?”

  “Huh?” I had just had a year scared off my life. And what pissed me off more was I had known Gabe would show up eventually. I took a quick look at my alarm clock. Five a.m. Jeeze. The man did not play fair. Using his cell phone to call me while standing right next to my phone? At five a.m.—that was just evil. Lowering my arm, I looked at my hand to see what weapon Gabe meant.

  The vibrator.

  Heat rushed into my face, making me dizzy. “Oh, this?” How did I explain a mint green vibrator? I must have fallen asleep while using the vibrator on my sore neck. “It’s, uh . . .”

  Gabe’s eyes darkened. He took a step toward me. “Don’t you know the cardinal rule of weapons, babe? They can be turned back on you.”

  His voice had thickened. Omigod, he knew what it was and it turned him on! “No! I mean, I was using this as a massager. For a spot I couldn’t reach!”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Well, now, you should have called me. I would have reached that spot for you.”

  Oh God. Humiliated beyond words, I could not believe he’d caught me with a vibrator! It looked . . . desperate. Pathetic. And there Gabe stood, looking hot and dangerous, ready to pounce. All smug with his “you should have called me.” Trying for a shred of dignity while I stood in my black T-shirt holding a vibrator that practically glowed green, I said, “I did call you, stud. Your assistant answered your cell phone. Explain that.” How did I get rid of this vibrator? Drop it? Toss it casually on the bed? Damn.

  Gabe’s smirk spread out into a full devil grin. “So you were calling me for my stud service? Sorry I missed that, but I’m here now.” He took another step.

  The man was stalking me, closing the distance between us slowly. Just one step away, he was taunting me. Gabe had the supreme confidence that he could seduce me into wanting him. Which was true. But I was not going to be played. Annoyance started to edge out my embarrassment. “Don’t worry about missing my call, stud.” I held up the mint green vibrator. “You replaced me with Dee, and I replaced you with Mr. Green Pleasure here. It all works out.”

  Gabe went stone still one step away from me. The light from the lamp in my bedroom backlit him in the predawn hour. Olive skin over hard bones; a nose that might have been broken in a street fight—not disfigured, just with a slight bump; dark eyes that took in his environment almost without any effort on his part. His mouth pulled tight. His eyes darkened to a near black. He closed the last step between us. His dark eyes zeroed in on my face. “Am I that easy to replace, babe?” The question was silky.

  Too silky. I’d stirred the dormant ashes of Gabe’s considerable temper. He was so close, I felt his body heat mixed with anger. I fought to keep my voice steady. “Why should you be any harder to replace than me? How long did it take you to find Dee?”

  “Not long,” Gabe answered in that same silky voice. “But then, I was looking for an assistant, not your replacement.”

  “Oh?” OK, we had a match here. My own temper flared hot. “Give me a break, Pulizzi! You were baiting me with your Catwoman clone. You all but drew me a map with your intention to replace me with your newest hero-worshipping trainee. Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe that you didn’t know she was answering your cell phone? You have caller ID on there!” I was doing that whisper-yell thing. On one level, I knew the boys were asleep down the hall so I whispered. But I was so damn pissed that I yelled the whisper. I consciously made my throat unclench and added, “Giving me your house key was a nice touch.”

  Gabe’s shoulders relaxed a notch and he quirked up the left side of his mouth. Devil smirk, a smirk that just forced horny women to zero in on that mouth with erotic fantasies. “Yeah, I thought the house key might get your attention. The best part had to be sending Dee in to get my laptop and extra batteries. Taking the digital picture was her idea.”

  Picture. Crap, I’d kind of hoped that getting locked in the closet would have made Dee forget about that picture. “You saw that? Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

  Gabe’s grin widened. “Keep that thought in mind.”

  Huh? Uh-oh. There was most likely only one reason Gabe had shown up here in my bedroom—revenge. I hadn’t seen the picture Dee took, but I knew what I had looked like last night. My white shirt had a wine-and-soda dye job, my hair had to be wild from my fight with Zack . . . “Where’s that picture?”

  “Could be anywhere by now.” Gabe oozed smugness.

  God, it was too early for this. “What have you done?”

  “Hey, I’m not the one playing with sex toys. Not that I have anything against sex toys.” He grinned, then snatched the vibrator out of my hand.

  Heat shot up into my face. “Give me that back!” I reached for it.

  Gabe took a single step back. “Be happy to.” His eyes gleamed with wickedness. Then he turned the vibrator over in his hands. He flicked the switch on, but nothing happened. Raising his gaze, he said, “Looks like you’ve worn out the batteries.”

  This was not happening. I was dreaming. If I pinched myself, I would wake up. I took a step and tried to grab the vibrator.

  Gabe caught me around the waist with his free hand, tugging me to him. Looking down into my face, he grinned. “You look kind of sunburned.”

  “Shut up.” Now I sounded like my kids. I wanted to die of embarrassment. Staring at his throat, I admitted, “I fell asleep with it on the back of my neck. I didn’t—”

  “Babe.”

  Trying to act like an adult woman, I looked up into his face. Make a joke, I told myself. Make this bearable. Pretend to be sophisticated enough that it didn’t matter. “Just tell me you didn’t take a picture of me with that.” I glanced at the stupid thing in his left hand.

  He smiled. “Only in my head, sugar. I have lots of those pictures in my head.”

  OK, I could breathe. Maybe survive this. “Guess I can’t censor those.”

  Gabe lowered his face close to mine. “Stop being embarrassed.”

  “I can’t help it. It’s not even my sex-toy kit. I just—”

  He blinked once. “Sex-toy kit? You have a sex-toy kit? This just keeps getting better. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “It’s not mine!” Getting flustered, I tried to wiggle out of his arm around my waist.

  He tightened his arm, bringing me up to meet his mouth. The touch of his lips sent shards of electricity along all my nerve endings. They pooled wet heat in my belly. I put my arms around his neck, kissing him back.

  He lifted his head to look at me
.

  I met his heated gaze. This was part of Gabe’s sexiness. When we were together, even when I was naked for him, I wasn’t embarrassed or worried about my flaws. He made me feel sexy. Sex toys stretched the limits of that feeling, though. “I really did fall asleep using it as a massager.”

  “Don’t ruin my fantasy.”

  “Really?” I watched his face. “That’s a fantasy?”

  “It’s going to be a reality, first chance we get.” He shifted me until I stood. Then he took my hand. “Right now, though, you need to tell me what’s going on. Why do you have a sex-toy kit that’s not yours? What happened to your shirt in that picture last night? And why are you sore now?”

  I had a bit of trouble shifting. My mind had a disturbing tendency to get stuck on sex and Gabe. “How do you know I’m sore? Oh, I told you I used the vibrator to massage my neck.”

  He tugged me toward the bed and pulled me down to sit beside him. “That, and you are stiff. I can feel it. What happened, Sam?”

  He sat on my left. He set the vibrator on the other side of him. My mind was starting to get up to speed. “That’s why you are here? Because of my shirt in that picture?”

  He rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “It worried me. Ruining clothes for you is like a national broadcast that you are on a case. You aren’t exactly working for me now, so how could you be on a case?”

  He still had ahold of my hand. I felt the tension in his fingers. “I’m not on a case. Well, not for money for your agency. But something weird is happening with Angel.” I told him the entire story of walking in on Zack threatening Angel with a gun. I kept my voice level when I told him that Zack had had the gun pointed at my face. Unlinking my hand from his, I leaned down and fished out the velvet box from under my bed. “That’s why I looked through this sample sex-toy kit. I thought maybe there was something in here that Zack wanted.” I refused to be embarrassed now.

  Gabe dropped his gaze as I opened the box and asked, “Who gave that to Angel?”

  “A man named Mitch St. Claire. We were watching Rick Mesa’s group, the Silky Men, perform when he approached us. Well, he approached Angel, really.”

  “Does this Mitch St. Claire have any connection to Zack?”

  I shook my head. “Not that we know of.” I glanced up at Gabe. “I know it was a long shot. I just can’t figure out what Zack wants. It was stupid. I was looking for easy answers.” Truthfully, I remembered that gun in my face. The desperation of Zack behind that gun. What did he want? I shuddered at the memory of staring down the barrel of that gun.

  Gabe touched my shoulder. “That’s not stupid. The answers often are the most obvious ones.” He turned slightly, so that his thigh pressed into mine. “Sam, is it possible Angel’s not telling you something?”

  “No.” I said it without thinking.

  “Are you sure? Think, babe. If Angel made a mistake, she might not want you to know.”

  Anger rushed up. “I am sure.” I bit off the words. I had made misjudgments in the past. My husband was a prime example. Then there was the time Blaine hadn’t wanted to tell me about his past problem with drugs because he had thought I would judge him. But Angel knew better. She knew I’d help her if she needed me. “I’m sure,” I repeated.

  Gabe moved his hand from my shoulder to the back of my neck. Slipping to the inside of my T-shirt, he rubbed the tense spot. “OK, so this Zack Quinn is breaking into Angel’s house to look for something she has, but neither of you know what that is. Then he breaks in again and uses a gun to demand to know ‘where it is.’ She still has no idea what he’s looking for?”

  “I know it sounds crazy. He came in the back door.” I ran my fingers over the edge of the velvet box on my lap. “Can you open a lock without the cops being able to tell?”

  “Yes. But not just anyone can.”

  Gabe’s warm hand felt like bliss on my sore muscles. “That has to be how he got in. The door was sitting open and he ran out of it.”

  Taking his hand from my neck, Gabe pulled his phone off his belt. “I’m going to change my plans and stay here.”

  I wanted to grab his hand and demand more neck rubbing. “What plans?” I grinned then. “Oh, that’s right, with Dee locked up in your closet, you had to leave your cheater to rescue her.”

  Gabe grinned while scrolling through his phone numbers in his cell phone address book. “That case is finished. I’m going to teach Dee how to write up the report tonight. Today, we have another case. A guy with severe back pain had to go out on workman’s comp, but oddly enough, it’s not the kind of back pain to keep him from repairing the roof on his folks’ mobile home in Hemet. As luck would have it, Dee and I will be shooting a video for Dee’s modeling career in that very same mobile home park. And that’s just so convenient, if I happen to catch severe-back-pain-guy on tape working on his parents’ roof.”

  Incredulous, I said, “Dee’s still working for you?”

  He looked up from his phone to me. “She took a little convincing after being locked in a closet, but she finally agreed. Besides, she has a brand new bikini and is excited to try it out on videotape.”

  Good for her. She could be buried in it. Bet she wouldn’t look so good in that bikini dead.

  Gabe found the number and started dialing. “I’ll call Dee and tell her we’re going to hold off on that.”

  Part of me wanted him to do just that. Part of me wanted him to never ever see Dee the Catwoman in a bikini. But that was the same part of me that had called Gabe last night because I was scared. The gun in my face had tripped something inside me and I had wanted to run to Gabe and have him hold me, then fix everything.

  Not good.

  “No.” I put my hand over his dialing finger. “Go on your case. Vance will probably have found Zack. Angel’s at her mom’s house. Everything is under control.”

  Something feral rolled through Gabe’s eyes and stamped down hard on his face. “Under control?” He shut off his phone, dropped it on the bed, and reached for me, taking hold of my shoulders. “A man held a gun to your face and you think it’s under control? Then you were too chicken-shit to call my cell phone back after Dee answered and demand to talk to me? No, babe, this is not under control.”

  Startled by the depth of his feelings, I shot back with, “I am not chicken-shit. OK, I am, but not like that. I would have called you if I—” I broke off. If I what?

  “If you needed me?”

  He dragged me closer. Close enough to see that he had taken time to shave his hard jaw smooth. “Tell me you didn’t need me after looking down the barrel of that gun.”

  I glared at him. “I did call you!” Then I got it. “Don’t turn this back on me. You’re mad at yourself because you didn’t answer your phone. The hero inside you just can’t stand that you missed a rescue-me call.” I jumped up, dumping the sex-toy kit on the floor. Glaring down at Gabe, I said, “Maybe if you weren’t trying to make me jealous—”

  Gabe unfolded from the bed to his full six-foot-plus height. “Jealous?” His voice sank down to that silky death tone. “You have me arranging my entire life around you, and you think this is about jealousy? Maybe,” he leaned forward but didn’t touch me, “I’m tired of being second string in your life.” He turned, went to the bedroom door, and yanked it open.

  “Second string? What the hell are you talking about?” Honest to God, I didn’t know!

  He turned back, looking every bit the part of the oh-so-done Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. “I won’t beg for your love, Sam.” He was gone.

  My chest hollowed with shock. I took a step to run after him, but the toe of my left foot caught on the sex-toy kit. I stumbled and fell to one knee. The skin of my left knee burned across the carpet.

  I hated that sex-toy kit. Picking up the velvet box, I hurled it out of my way. It hit the wall two feet from my bedroom door and thunked to the ground. Stuff spilled out of it. I didn’t care. I got to my feet; I had to catch Gabe. To stop him. To wipe that wound
ed look off his face.

  I stepped on something pebbly hard. Yelping, I lifted my foot and looked down at a black jeweler’s bag that was a bit smaller than an index card. I started to ignore it and rush out when a hard glitter caught my eye.

  I knew Gabe was already gone. I was too late. Something terrible, knotty, and acid-tasting was ballooning up my throat. Through a hot film of tears, I stared at the glitter spilling out of the loosely tied end of the jeweler’s bag. Sinking down to my knees, I reached out and touched the black bag. It was velvet, just like the sex-toy kit lying open on its side. Next to that was the lavender vibrator with the appendage. The end of the vibrator, what I assumed was the battery compartment, gaped open like a perfectly round mouth. The black jeweler’s bag must have fallen out after the sex-toy kit hit the wall and spilled out the vibrator.

  I picked up the black velvet bag, put my fingers inside the opening, and pulled the gold strings open. Then I turned the bag over and dumped out the contents.

  The just rising morning sun streamed through my bedroom window and caught the icy fire in the most gorgeous diamond necklace I’d ever seen. It had three strings of beautifully cut diamonds in what I guessed was a platinum setting. It looked like it belonged around the neck of Jennifer Lopez in one of her fabulous low-cut gowns. Instead, the necklace rested cool and hard in the palm of my hand. I stared at it. An answer. Here was the answer to what Zack was looking for at Angel’s house.

  But all I saw was Gabe’s wounded face. I knew what I felt for Gabe. But I also knew that Gabe was healing from the nightmare of the murder of his wife and unborn son. Once he healed from that, he’d want a family again. A wife and children of his own.

  I was just a stepping stone in that process. I was five years older than Gabe, I already had my children, and I was a miserable failure at love. Heart Mates and reviewing romance novels were the closest I could get to love.

  Closing my fingers over the sparkling diamond necklace, I couldn’t stop myself from whispering. “I do need you.”

  I had to pull myself together. I had two sons who needed me, a best friend in serious trouble, a business to run, and a life to live. I stuffed the necklace into the pouch and placed it back in the lavender vibrator. After that, I reassembled the sex-toy kit and closed the box.