He just hadn’t said no. Hell, no. Are you crazy? No.
But, Jesus, what if not swimming endangered her and the baby? He frowned. The creep couldn’t stake out the high school swimming pool ten hours a day. He wouldn’t be looking for Lina in the Camaro.
Bran still wasn’t happy about the idea, but...
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “We can go.” Even though going to the high school, where she’d already been attacked once, went against his every instinct.
Her face lit up. “Really? Do you swim?”
“Not well enough to swim laps. I need to stay aware anyway. I’ll watch.”
Shadowed by the reminder, her expression dimmed. “You really think you need to be on guard while I’m in the pool?”
“Nah.” He half smiled. “I was trying to get out of embarrassing myself.”
Lina giggled. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Wouldn’t it feel good?”
“The hot tub would,” he admitted. Seeing her in a bathing suit. That would feel good.
“I’ll go grab my stuff,” she said eagerly.
“Aren’t you supposed to give it an hour after a meal before you go in the water?”
Lina subsided, making a face at him. “I suppose. Fine. I’ll go see what you brought for me.”
“You mean, check to see what I forgot?”
She offered a saucy smile. “Now, what would make you think I’m that critical?”
Just like that, his body hardened. He needed to kiss her. Now.
She went still, her eyes dilating.
In silence, they stared at each other.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BRAN FLAILED HIS way up and back half a dozen times, thankful he wasn’t the only one in the pool whose strokes couldn’t be mistaken for Michael Phelps’s. He remembered Lina telling him she’d swam competitively, which explained why she sliced through the water with such effortless efficiency even with the extra weight she was hauling.
This was his second visit with her. She’d been so happy after swimming yesterday, so obviously invigorated, he’d agreed to this evening, too, even though he wasn’t any happier about it than he had been yesterday.
Monday was one of his usual days off, as long as he wasn’t tied up in a particularly intense investigation. This time, staying home hadn’t been an option, between the double slaying during the bank robbery and the threat to Lina, never mind the rest of his caseload. And maybe that was just as well, given how hard it was to keep his hands off her. After yesterday’s prolonged proximity, some distance today had seemed smart.
He stopped at the shallow end, shook his head, spraying water, and scanned the room. Two older women appeared from the locker room, the teenage lifeguard was flirting with a girl who didn’t look more than about thirteen and a man who’d been in the lane next to Lina’s had disappeared. No—that had to be the back of his dark head, appearing above the edge of the hot tub. All was well.
Bran had been disappointed to learn that, because of her pregnancy, Lina couldn’t join him in the hot tub after her laps. Yesterday, he’d grabbed a few minutes in it when he thought she might be nearly done. If he sat so he could still see the pool, it seemed safe enough.
The added benefit was being able to watch her rise from the pool and walk across the deck toward him in a racing-style suit that fit her like a second skin. Yesterday, during the drive home, she’d ruefully confessed that it wasn’t a maternity suit, and she was stretching out the fabric enough, she’d have to throw it away when she outgrew it. At the moment, it looked more than fine, however. Her body was everything he remembered and more.
Her legs and arms were still long and taut with a swimmer’s muscles. The summer’s tan was gone. Her already generous breasts were bigger, he thought, along with that ripe swell of belly. Damned if she didn’t turn him on as much now as she had before.
Time for the hot tub. He levered himself out of the pool, checked automatically to see where Lina was and strolled over to join the one other guy already lounging in the bubbling water.
He’d have liked to close his eyes and lay back, but couldn’t let himself relax his vigilance. Lina was probably safe in here, but it wasn’t in his nature to count on it. So even as the hot tub jets loosened his tight muscles, he scanned the deck, eyed the wall of glass looking for movement beyond it, automatically assessed everyone coming and going from the locker rooms.
He was glad to see Lina finally duck under lane ropes and take hold of the ladder. He doubted she bothered with a ladder normally, but her new bulk had to have changed how she did a lot of things.
Water streamed from her as she appeared, darkening her hair, confined in a single, fat braid. She gleamed, all that pale skin and rich curves. Her gaze went straight to him, which meant she’d noticed when he left the pool.
She stopped close enough he could have touched her pretty feet. “I so wish I could hop in there.”
“Hop?” he teased.
That earned him a wrinkled nose. “Climb carefully in there.” She sighed. “Take your time. I don’t mind waiting if I get ready first.”
He nodded, but had no intention of letting her emerge out front alone.
Like the day before, he had to take a minute to let his body’s reaction to her near-nudity subside. Living with her and not making a move was killing him. He wondered if she had any idea how much he wanted her.
He wasn’t 100 percent sure what was holding him back. Yeah, the fear of making her uncomfortable given that she had to depend on him contributed. He was chagrined to acknowledge that it was also his own fear of being rejected. From the way she looked at him sometimes—like yesterday—he believed she felt the attraction, too, as much as she had the night they met.
Trouble was, nothing between them was simple anymore. She’d had to deal with the shock of learning she was pregnant only to have him essentially accuse her of using him because she wanted to be pregnant. Not smart on his part. The damned wedding invitation and the timing of that night still stung when she thought about it, too, he knew without asking. Did she think he’d imagined she was Paige when they made love? Was he sure himself he hadn’t been taking some subconscious form of revenge on Paige for dumping him?
Now, there’d be an irony, given how immensely grateful he now was that Paige hadn’t gone through with the wedding. Which sent him back to yesterday’s reflections on how poorly he understood his own deeper motives.
At least he could get out of the hot tub now, the depressing reflections having taken care of his problem. Bran showered quickly and wasted no time getting dressed. As a result, he had to wait a good ten minutes for her, no surprise given that she had to dry that mass of hair.
When she emerged from the locker room, for a moment he saw only her. Her glorious hair hung loose over a tunic that clung to her curves more than she probably imagined. As he watched, she shrugged on a parka that clearly would no longer meet in front.
“You’re beautiful,” he said roughly, catching her hand.
Her eyes widened. “I’m more than a little pregnant, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed.” He cleared his throat. “Got everything?”
“I...” Her gaze shied from his. “Yes.”
“All right.” He led her to the door, wishing the lighting was better in the parking lot. He had parked illegally as close to the entrance as he could, leaving a sign on the dashboard identifying the vehicle as law enforcement. “You know the drill.”
Lina nodded. He tucked her close to his left side, angling to keep her between him and the wall of the building until they reached the Camaro. There he unlocked and hustled her in before going around to the driver’s side himself.
The arrival and departure were the part of the outing he had dreaded tonight. Yesterday, he’d had the advantage of daylight. Tonight,
he was all too aware that someone could have waited for them to walk out, backlit through the glass doors, or have ducked between parked cars preparing to shoot as he drove past. But damn it, he’d swear no one had followed him, and how else could anyone know where she was?
In the rearview mirror, he saw movement.
“Take off the seat belt,” he said suddenly. “Get down.”
She fumbled for the release. With a hand on her back, he pushed her forward even as he accelerated with a squeal of tires. Lina hunched down, letting him use both hands on the wheel to circle the perimeter of the parking lot like a race car driver.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice came out strangled. “Do you see someone?”
Christ—with only one road in and out, setting up an ambush would be a breeze. What was I thinking? Headlights came on behind him in the lot, somewhere midway down an aisle. Ahead...the beams of his own headlights found nothing.
He drove tensely, gaze switching from the road ahead to the rearview mirror to side mirrors. Only when they approached a major cross street did his muscles loosen. The light turned green as they approached, and he swung a right.
“Okay,” he said. “You can sit up.”
Lina groaned and straightened.
“Seat belt,” he said.
She obeyed. “What happened?” Her voice was taut with anxiety. “Did you see something?”
“I thought I did.” His fingers flexed on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. “Coming here is stupid. Open season.”
“How can it be? They don’t know where I’m staying, they don’t know your car! What do you think, they’re just staking out the high school?”
“It’s possible.” Pretty damned unlikely, but he wasn’t about to admit as much.
“Really? Twenty-four/seven, on the off chance I show up?” Disbelief seemed to be warming up her temper.
“It’s possible,” he repeated. “The pool is the one place they know you’ve come. You’re not home. Where else are they going to find you?”
“You’re saying I can’t go swimming again.”
He hesitated, glancing at her profile under a passing headlight. The stakes were high either way—her health or her life. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
“What am I going to do if you can’t find them?” She didn’t look at him; he wasn’t 100 percent sure she was even talking to him. “Maybe I should go home.”
“To your apartment? The hell you’re—”
“No. I mean home. Minnesota.”
His hands tightened convulsively on the steering wheel until it creaked. He needed her to stay here, where he could protect her, where he’d know she was safe.
And, damn it, home should be here, where he was, not somewhere in the Midwest.
“If they know anything about you, they could find out where you came from. Where your parents live. What if they were to follow you, Lina?”
She clutched the belt in a fist where it crossed her torso above her belly. “Do you really believe they’d do that?”
“I don’t know.” That, at least, was honest. “As time passes, they may relax and decide you can’t identify him. This soon... I’m guessing they’re pretty focused on eliminating you as a threat.”
Belatedly, he realized how brutally blunt that was. She didn’t look at him.
“Maybe I’m being paranoid,” he said, more quietly. “That goes with my job, too. But...”
“Better safe than sorry?”
“Yeah,” he said regretfully. “Something like that.”
She didn’t say anything, which left him worrying about what she was thinking. Cops had a really high divorce rate, and there were good reasons. The unpredictable hours, the inability to talk about what they did, the high incidence of PTSD and alcoholism were all factors.
Paige hadn’t seen Bran working except for their initial meeting, when he’d been at the hospital in Mount Vernon to talk to a gunshot victim. She didn’t ask about what he did in any given day, he didn’t offer to tell her. Long term, he thought now, they’d have been living together like two strangers.
That wouldn’t fly with Lina, obviously. She had a way of seeing right through his defenses. If she didn’t like what she saw...hell. How was he supposed to deal with that?
He took a couple of unnecessary turns in town to be absolutely sure no one was behind him before going home. After parking, he once again had her wait until he came around to help her out, then hustled her into the lobby and used his body to shield her from the wall of windows.
He hated when they had to wait for the damn elevator.
This wasn’t the kind of place to raise a kid anyway. He needed to start thinking about buying a house.
Once in the apartment, she went straight to the bathroom, undoubtedly to hang up her suit and towel. He hoped she wouldn’t go straight to bed, although he wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She obviously wasn’t interested in talking to him.
Bran mumbled an expletive and scrubbed a hand over his face. He hated this uncertainty. Not knowing for sure how she felt about him. What she thought. He wanted everything tied up. A ring on her finger, the right to claim her as his. The idea of her, down the line, meeting some other man, starting to date, even marrying... The worry ate at the lining of his stomach like acid.
Lina emerged from the bathroom and came back to the living room, looking at him in surprise. “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to hang up your suit?”
“I can do it,” he said grumpily.
“Okay.” She went past him into the galley kitchen. “I’m going to make a cup of tea. Do you want something?”
Her. That was what he wanted.
“Coffee would keep me awake. I might have a beer.”
When he came back from the bathroom, she had set a bottle of beer out on the table for him, and was pouring boiling water into a mug. Her herbal tea smelled okay; the box said it was orange-spice. She’d offered him a sip yesterday, though, and it tasted like barely-flavored hot water to him.
He had discovered that she was always cold. Her hands were almost always chilly when he held one. She rarely went barefoot around the apartment, which suggested her feet were cold, too. When he wore a sweatshirt or a long-sleeve T-shirt, she’d wear the same, add another layer and tug a fleece throw over herself, too, when she sat on the couch. He didn’t own such a thing, but it had been on the list she’d given him: Red fleece throw on back of couch.
Everything on her list had been exactly where she’d said it was. His place was neat because he didn’t own much, hers because she was organized. Hey, at least neither of them was a slob. They had something in common.
Along with a baby.
And he could warm her feet and hands at night. Volunteering would be no hardship.
He sat in his recliner, her in what had become her usual spot at the end of the couch. She kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged, nursing the cup of tea.
“This can’t go on forever,” she said, her gaze direct.
Forever was exactly what he had in mind, but he suspected she wasn’t ready to hear that. And...what exactly did she mean by this? Getting shot at? Or living with him?
“I forgot to tell you that the artist can meet with you tomorrow afternoon,” he told her. See? We’re doing something. “I’ll bring her here rather than having you come into the station.”
“Oh,” Lina breathed in what sounded like dismay. “I’d almost forgotten.” She reached for the throw and pulled it over herself. “What if I don’t remember enough? It’s been days now, and I only caught the one glimpse anyway. It’s not like I have any kind of artist’s eye.” Anxiety seeped from her every word.
“Do your best. I think you’re going to be surprised. This artist has a gift
. I’ve only had occasion to use her a couple of times, but I’ve seen other sketches of hers. She’s a genius with traumatized children, some of whom are barely old enough to speak. Somehow she worms enough out of them to come up with a portrait so accurate, the sight of it throws them back into terror.” Which, come to think of it, might not be the note he’d meant to strike.
“You’re saying I might scare myself?”
“I’m saying this could be the break we need.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Will you hand it out to the media?”
“Let’s wait and see how good it is.” He had other reservations, but decided not to share those. He hesitated before saying what else he was thinking, but then went ahead. “My hope is that when you see the face looking back at you, it might spark your memory.”
“Of why he looked familiar,” she said slowly.
“Right.”
“Okay. I’ll do my best.” Her expression seemed to suddenly turn inward. “I don’t know if you’d be interested, but...well...the baby is being really active right now.” She regarded him shyly. “You could, well, feel her move, if you’d like.”
“Yeah.” Clearing his throat did nothing to unclog the emotions crowding him. He circled the coffee table, set down his mug and held out his hand, not quite sure where he ought to place it.
Lina lowered the fleece throw to her lap, then lifted her shirt, baring the pale swell. She took his hand and opened it, placing it over her belly. Surprised at how hard her stomach was, he waited, not breathing.
Something squirmed beneath his palm. Blinking, he lifted his head to meet her eyes. She smiled. Her whole belly bobbed, as if the baby had done a somersault.
Good God, Bran thought, in a kind of awe; maybe it had.
No, maybe she had.
“Having this happen inside you must feel really strange.”
That soft, incredibly gentle smile still curved her mouth. “Yes and no. It makes me very aware there’s a whole separate person in there. I don’t suppose it’s all that different from carrying a baby in a snuggly against your body.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 12
