She studied his face, recognized sincerity in his expression, and felt the tightness in her stomach ease. Not ready to speak yet, she gave a quick nod and edged around him. She’d nearly reached the bedroom when he continued, “But, for future reference, make sure you tell me when you are ready, sweetheart. Because you wanted me, that much I know. You just weren’t ready to act on it. And I can deal with that.”
She stumbled on her way to her room, recovered, and shut the door between them with force. She leaned against it. Oh God, he knew she’d been ready to give in last night. On the heels of that thought came another. Of course he had, stupid. What girl lets a man stick his hands down her pants unless she wants him?
But she’d stopped, because, although Jake was gorgeous and not really an escaped con, he was still on the run and most likely not going to stick around for any length of time. And Lucy was tired of transient love affairs. Besides, she hadn’t been this wildly attracted to a man in ages, which made her more cautious. And a man on the run from a drug lord wasn’t someone she should add to her romantic resume.
Changing into another sweat suit, Lucy smoothed her ponytail and exited the bedroom. She couldn’t resist inhaling the smell of home-cooked food, and made her way to the kitchen, where she could hear her handsome roommate puttering about.
“What’s cooking?” she asked, joining him at the kitchen counter. “You didn’t have to, you know.”
“I almost wasn’t able to. Your fridge was practically empty. What do you eat, anyway? The plants in the courtyard?”
She couldn’t help herself. She glanced longingly at the oven. “I usually—um—bring something home. See, the bag?” She nodded at the reusable satchel he’d placed on the counter. It was his turn to roll his eyes.
“Well, it was the least I could do after you let me spend the night. If you’re ready, we’ll be eating in less than five minutes. I had to guess at when you’d be home. Not bad, eh? Make a good detective myself, don’t I?”
Was he flirting with her? Would he? Even after last night, when she shot his more aggressive moves down? By the way he was gently smiling, she guessed he would, and was. And the thought warmed her insides.
He’d moved to the oven while she’d been contemplating his behavior and was now pulling out a quiche. A quiche? All other thoughts left her head. He made a quiche out of the food in her fridge? Who was this man, a magician? Or, better yet, Gordon Ramsey?
Jake turned around. “Sit. It’s not as good if it’s cold.”
Numbly, she did as she was told, sitting down with the man who’d first kidnapped her, then come to her for safety, and now had cooked her dinner. That “down the rabbit hole” feeling overtook her senses once more. Lifting her fork, she watched him seat himself across the little dinette table. Their knees almost touched beneath the tabletop.
He paused, as if sensing her consternation. One brow rose as a mocking smile flitted across his supple lips. “What? Real men don’t make quiche? Some of the best chefs are men. I’ve had a longer relationship with food than with most women. I started my cooking career in the high school cafeteria, carried it on into college. But I gotta admit, your kitchen was a particular challenge.”
With her fork suspended, she hesitated to gaze directly into his teasing expression. But as she placed it between her lips and the delicate flavors of his thrown-together dinner exploded on her tongue, she decided now was not the time to ponder their mutual attraction. Maybe after she’d eaten.
“Oh. My. God. Oh, this is soooo…mmmm.” She groaned with her eyes closed. After a few more appreciative moans of ecstasy, with no sounds returning from across the table, she lazily opened her eyelids to find her companion staring at her.
She flushed to the roots of her hair, realized her orgasmic response to the meal smacked of When Harry Met Sally. Oh, she was mortified. Crawl under the table and hide embarrassed. She was staring into the warm, brown eyes of the most gorgeous man in her entire acquaintance and sounding like she’d had the best sex of her life.
His gaze warmed with humor and something else. An attentiveness, a sharp realization that they were that single man and woman from last night, with nothing stopping them from acting on their attraction but her weak inhibitions. When his look shifted to predatory, she plunged another forkful of the heavenly food into her mouth, speaking around it to dispel the sexually-charged atmosphere.
“This is fantastic, Mr. Dalton. I’ve been so hungry and I worked through lunch. I can’t help myself.”
Shut up, she silently screamed. She was rambling, but was unable to quit. The man’s appearance, his talents, and the way he looked at her had her fumbling. And all the while she shoveled forkfuls into her mouth like a pie-eating contestant in the home stretch.
“It’s Jake. Not Mr. Dalton. I told you, it’s my way of thanking you for housing and taking care of me. It’s been a while since anyone has.”
She paused, caught his eyes, and took a few moments to digest his words.
“Well, knowing that you weren’t actually an escaped convict helped, even though you did really scare me that day.” She frowned at him over her plate, and he had the grace to look ashamed.
“I have apologized. I was hoping tonight’s meal went a little way toward making amends. What else can I do to show I’m sorry?”
The image of them naked together flashed so quickly through Lucy’s brain she thought it might be subliminal. She was shocked. Why would making love with Jake Dalton pop into her head as a way for him to show his sincerity? It was oh-so inappropriate and not at all what she wanted. Wasn’t it? But my goodness, now that she’d imagined him without clothes she couldn’t get the picture out of her head.
Shoving back her chair, she took her plate to the sink then turned around and steeled herself against his earnest expression. “Clean up the kitchen? I have some emails to answer for work.” She avoided looking into his eyes as she moved past him and back toward her bedroom, picking up her closed laptop from the coffee table. Just as she cleared her doorway, she thought she heard him say, “Aye, aye, captain. I’ll get right to it.”
Lucy almost slammed the door in response to his mocking comeback.
Lucy lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling and contemplating the man in the other room, as well as her unsuitable thoughts regarding him. She liked his looks, his personality—of course she did. He was hot. But why did she find herself so drawn to him that she imagined them in bed together? They’d only shared one kiss. But what a kiss…
Yes, he was right. She wanted him. Wanted him like a woman wants chocolate. If she was honest with herself, she even knew why. Unlike past suitors, Jake Dalton was comfortable being who he was. He was confident. He faced problems, didn’t sit back and whine. That was majorly attractive to Lucy, who usually dated men who leaned on her for support. Add to that Jake’s sexy physique, sinfully handsome face, and go-to-hell attitude, and Lucy was afraid she could fall for him in a big way, even though he was sooo not her type.
It was probably also the fact that he made it clear he found her attractive. Drop-dead gorgeous hunk Jake Dalton had wanted C-cup, size ten Lucy Parker enough that he would have taken her to bed last night. She’d known it and had run from it. From him, because she didn’t want to be compared to all the Barbie dolls she was sure he normally surrounded himself with.
Rolling to her side and seeing the clock display a blurry eleven p.m., she sighed and scrunched her eyes shut, willing herself to sleep while trying not to think about the two of them together. But her attempts were futile, merely making her hot and bothered and confused, which didn’t help her sleeplessness. So she resolutely shoved Jake Dalton with the magic lips and fingers out of her mind, and attempted to clear her brain of everything but hypnotizing thoughts of “you’re getting sleepier.”
Apparently the exercise worked, because she was jolted awake by an almost imperceptible noise. Checking the time, Lucy saw she’d been asleep for three hours, and wondered what she’d heard. After sev
eral moments of strained listening, she sat up.
A rapid burst of movement in the room was her only warning. Before she could respond, a sudden weight crashed down on her body. It crushed the air from her lungs and pinioned her legs under the blankets. A gloved hand slammed over her mouth, sealing it shut.
She flailed wildly under the intruder. Adrenaline rushed. This wasn’t Jake. She knew it intuitively. He’d manhandled her enough in the past for her to know the difference. And that scared her even more, realizing she was once again being accosted by a male.
Refusing to give up, she began to bow and buck her body, anything to unseat this ski-masked home invader. She would not be a victim. She bit the hand over her mouth and won a cuffing blow to the side of her head for her efforts. She reeled, saw stars behind her eyelids, but still she continued her thrashing.
And all the while the gloved hand held her breath captive, the heavy body pressing her down, squeezing the air from her lungs. She felt faint from lack of oxygen and the glancing pain at her temple. Her movements slowed. Vision swam. She was suffocating. She was going to die. Right here, right now, with Jake only steps away in the other room. How ironic.
Unexpectedly, her attacker shifted, and there was air. Fresh, heaven-sent air, gulped in through a suddenly exposed nose, though her mouth remained covered. Rejuvenated, she redoubled her bucking efforts, grunted through the human gag as she tried to unseat her attacker.
Only to freeze when she spied the knife brandished before her eyes, its blade gleaming in the bluish glow of her bedside alarm clock.
She stiffened. Eyes locking on the weapon, sweat broke out all over her body. Tremors of fear shook her. This was it. All the fighting for her rights, all the picking herself up by the bootstraps, this was where it would end. She whimpered, teeth chattering.
Her assailant chuckled sadistically as he drew the knife’s point down her temple in a deadly, arrow-straight line. His eyes tracked the path of the blade and the thin line of blood it left behind.
He licked his lips and leaned in close. “Do you think he’ll make a trade, you fat cow? Do you matter at all to Nicky, I wonder? Stop fighting and come with me now, or I’ll carve your eyes out.”
Chapter Nine
Jake awakened a little before two. He lay listening to the silence inside and outside the apartment. On a sigh, he sat up and grabbed the TV remote. Time to channel surf. Maybe he’d find something to take his mind off the sexy accountant he spent way too much time fantasizing about.
He’d found out she was an accountant earlier today, when she’d gone to work and he’d been trapped inside the apartment. First, he’d showered again, because he couldn’t get enough of all that hot water. Then he’d eaten and turned on the TV for news of the ongoing manhunt for Nicky Costas. He was relieved to see it had been buried fifteen minutes into the news hour. The pursuit was still going on, but in the mountains. His captain had kept his word and limited the press exposure.
He’d moved on to the laptop, searching for something, anything he could find to support his hunch that he was being set up. He hit brick wall after brick wall, though, without the use of his official credentials, so he’d shoved the laptop aside and started snooping on his hot hostess.
He learned that she was an extremely neat person, which was a bitch because it meant he had to put back her mail and other paperwork exactly as he found it. He’d discovered she worked for a tax accounting firm in the city and drew a decent salary. She had a nice little nest egg in a savings account, and he wondered what she was saving for. A trip? A house? He shouldn’t be so interested.
She didn’t have an overabundance of personal relationships, that was for sure. The one he did find was with a Mary Alton who couldn’t seem to pay her rent on time or in full. Lucy had pitched in a couple hundred dollars on more than one occasion.
He came to the conclusion that Lucy never let her hair down and he found himself speculating what had made her so…businesslike. With her looks and body, she should be rotating hot dates in and out of her place on a conveyor belt. But, except for him, there was no evidence of a steady man, or any man, in her life. By her own admission she’d had an “ex,” but from the pics on her Facebook page there didn’t seem to have been anyone since. And he wanted to know why.
As Jake now punched in his favorite TV channels and received black screens with the encouragement to “subscribe today” he realized Lucy also didn’t splurge on any of the good channels. Some more of that thriftiness he’d discovered over the course of his day. That figured. She had the body of a goddess and the scruples of a nun.
Not willing to stoop to watching infomercials, Jake tossed the remote aside, stood up, and stretched. Lucy Parker was turning into a problem. As much as he was grateful for a place to stay, she was influencing his thoughts and actions way too much, and that was dangerous for him. Dangerous because he needed to concentrate on this muddle of a case, and instead he found himself trying to impress her as a police officer, as a cook, and, most of all, as a man.
Crossing the floor to check the door lock he asked himself since when had he cared if there were napkins on the table under the proper utensil? Or that the dishes matched? When did he ever walk back into a bathroom to make sure he’d put the toilet seat down and hadn’t left a mini Lake Erie dripping off the sink counter?
It felt odd considering another person in this way. Odd, but also right, like he’d grown beyond hiding behind a dysfunctional family and was finally able to share himself with another human being. Which was really screwed-up thinking when he was wanted by both a drug lord and the department he worked for. What woman would want to tie herself to him?
Deciding the subject was just too deep to contemplate at this time of night, and that pacing the apartment wasn’t solving anything, Jake decided to get a bowl of cereal. Maybe a full stomach would help him fall asleep.
He’d reached the kitchen when he paused and tilted his head, convinced he’d heard a strange sound from Lucy’s bedroom. Or was it wishful thinking? The gentleman buried deep inside him insisted he move on, but his cop’s sixth sense had him easing the bedroom door open anyway.
The first thing he spied were two bodies in the center of the bed. Adrenaline surged and he saw red. On a growl, he launched himself at the shadowed figure straddling Lucy, snagging the assailant’s throat in one tight-fingered grasp and hauling him up and off of her.
The intruder swung around, right arm outstretched. He had a knife. Lightning quick, Jake grabbed his attacker’s wrist with one hand and twisted until the guy’s arm bent backward. Jake pinched down on the dude’s pressure point until he heard the clunk of the blade on the floor over their raspy breathing. Trying to see in the dark where it fell so he wouldn’t slice up his bare feet, he was caught off guard with a punch to his cheekbone that snapped his head back. That pissed him off.
Like a crazed bull, Jake head-butted his adversary. The guy barely grunted when Jake connected with his iron-hard abs, though the assault sent them crashing into Lucy’s dresser. Items shattered.
Recovering first, Jake grabbed the intruder by his shoulders and kneed him in the groin. A hiss of indrawn breath told him he’d scored. Buoyed, Jake clenched his fist and drew back, throwing a heavy punch to the guy’s face. His connection was solid, twanging right up his arm.
In retaliation, Lucy’s attacker reached up and boxed Jake’s ears. Jake jack-knifed forward, his hearing fading and eyesight blurring. Doubled over, he managed to brace for the uppercut he saw coming. The one-two blow had him seeing stars. This guy was no amateur.
Swaying upright, Jake shook off his residual dizziness and deflected the dude’s next shot with a forearm block, parrying with a quick jab to his neck. A strangled cough meant he’d done some damage. One quick glance to the side told him that Lucy had left the bed, but he had no idea where she was in the dark room. Likewise, he couldn’t distinguish much about the intruder, except that he was near Jake’s own height, but way more bulked up. And he fought lik
e a pro.
The guy swung his left leg toward Jake’s face, and Jake automatically caught it. And yanked. Hard. The man should have toppled. Instead, he jumped into the air and clocked Jake in the head with his free foot, dropping him to the floor.
Shaking off wooziness, Jake pulled himself to all fours. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his opponent draw back his foot. Jake punched the guy in the side of the kneecap. The dude fell like Goliath.
Jake jumped on him, throwing punches to the intruder’s masked face like his arms were pistons. The man rolled side to side, trying to unseat him. Jake retaliated, grabbing his opponent’s collar and slamming his head into the floor. The shithead swore, then raised his pelvis high enough that Jake slipped to the side. He tried to wrestle Jake under him, but Jake jerked free, jabbing at the guy’s eyes with his fingers. The man attempted to knee him in the groin.
“Get out of the way, Jake, I’ve got your gun!” Lucy shouted from across the room.
The guy’s head popped up at the sound of her voice, and so did Jake’s. Holy shit, she really was holding the Beretta. She was pointing it at the two of them with both hands clasped around the butt. The gun bounced so much in her shaky grasp that if she did fire, he’d likely be the one to catch the bullet.
In that split second of inattention, the intruder shoved Jake off him and bolted for the window. Jake made a wild lunge for the guy’s legs, but the asshole expected it. He jumped into the air, bringing his knees to his chest and out of Jake’s reach. The leap landed him closer to the window, which he swung out of, grabbing onto tree branches and shimmying out of sight.
Silence. That, and the chorus of their heavy breathing filled the room. Lucy’s attacker had come as he’d gone. Swift and lethal like a tornado, leaving almost as much destruction in his wake.
Prisoner of Love Page 9
