by Joanne Rock
She purposely left the velvet case containing the black frames on her nightstand as she headed for the door.
Later, she would think about Aidan. For now as she drove the few blocks down the palm-tree-lined streets that separated her house from her mother’s, she planned to concentrate on overcoming a few fears of her own. Before she could ever get involved with any man, she needed to make an effort to talk to Pauline. First she had to assure herself she wasn’t turning into her mother, and then—with any luck—she needed to convince Pauline to quit hanging out with dangerous guys.
Maybe they could enter their own twelve-step program together. Because as much as she wanted Aidan, she also knew his job would make her insane. Scare her into thinking up frightening new scenarios for how he might get hurt while chasing bad guys.
As she sat at a stoplight, Brianne allowed her head to drop on to the steering wheel of the sleek black Lexus she’d bought for herself when she’d left New York. She knocked her forehead against the cushioned leather twice before the light turned green.
One thing at a time, she counseled herself, wishing she could remember some of the wisdom from the documentary she’d made about dangerous men and the women who love them. First, she’d worry about her own issues, then she’d figure out what to do about Aidan.
As she turned down her mother’s street and spied Aidan’s car parked two doors down from Pauline’s house, however, Brianne realized she would have to confront that issue sooner than she’d thought.
Because the dangerous man she’d been in the process of falling for was apparently making visits to her mother on the sly.
He was already out of his car and headed for Pauline’s as Brianne drove closer, his tall, muscular body and dark good looks a sight to behold even when she was miffed. No, make that angry.
Hadn’t it occurred to him to mention in his note that while he was working on his case it just so happened that he’d be hanging out at her mother’s house today? She parked the Lexus right behind his Ford and hopped out of the sedan, her high heels tapping in double time on the suburban sidewalk as she caught up with him.
Aidan turned, his body swiveling enough to give her a quick glimpse of the gun tucked into his waistband underneath his suit jacket. He had the FBI-guy look down to a T between the blue suit and the shades. Only the narrowly trimmed beard and mustache detracted from the image.
“You can’t be here.” He shook his head, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Well, that’s a mighty fine greeting, lover.” She realized she was scrambling behind comfortable defenses by shooting off that attitude. But damn it, his reaction hurt.
Hadn’t last night touched him at all?
“I’m serious, Brianne. You need to get in the car and drive away.” The smooth, unwavering tone of his voice put her on guard.
“Is my mother in danger?” When his response didn’t come immediately, she felt the punch of fear clear to her toes. “I’m not leaving if she might be in trouble.”
“She’s not in trouble.” He looked back up at Pauline’s house over one shoulder. “But having you here will only complicate things.”
“You think I have a choice about walking away now? Welcome to the world of deep emotions, Aidan. You might fight them, but I’m not going to anymore.” She planted her feet on the concrete and mentally dared him to shove her aside. “She’s my mother and I’m not leaving.”
Pauline might have her idiosyncrasies, but she’d done her best to be a good mother. Brianne wouldn’t let her get ensnared in some mysterious FBI operation without a little backup. Her mother would probably evade all the questions that struck her as too blunt and end up arrested for obstructing justice.
She watched Aidan’s jaw tighten and wished she could see behind those dark sunglasses to his eyes. Didn’t he realize he’d have to tie her to the streetlamp to make her stay put when her mother could be in trouble? Not wanting to give him any ideas, she kept the information to herself.
Aidan knew he couldn’t take the time to deal with Brianne right now and he couldn’t afford a big scene. He could see by the expression on her face, the stubborn tilt of her chin that he’d have a major battle on his hands if he tried to keep her away anyhow.
And valuable time ticked by while they debated the issue.
“Fine. But you follow my lead. Stay back. And run like hell if I tell you to.” He didn’t anticipate trouble. Brianne and Pauline should be long gone by the time Mel put in an appearance—if he showed up at all. Actually crossing paths with one of Florida’s Most Wanted here in a quiet, upscale Palm Beach neighborhood was a long shot, but Aidan refused to take chances.
He waited until she nodded, then resumed his trek up the sidewalk toward her mother’s house and the cluster of artsy topiary bushes in a potted grouping around the front door. Ever since Jackson told him Mel actively sought someone to move his money around, Aidan had been concerned about Pauline.
The most logical choice of people to make the big withdrawal Mel needed would be the person whose name appeared on all the paperwork—Pauline Wolcott-Baxter-and-so-on. Mel had never resorted to crimes that involved physically hurting other people before, but desperate men could be unpredictable.
For that reason, Aidan knocked on the door while he kept Brianne behind him. When Pauline didn’t answer the second time, Brianne reached around him to try the door herself.
Her long, lean body grazed his as she stretched, reminding him of how much they’d shared last night. Positive this wasn’t the time for those kinds of thoughts, Aidan ruthlessly shoved them to the back of his mind while she nudged the door open.
“That is definitely not following protocol,” Aidan whispered over his shoulder. “I’ve got rules to follow for these kinds of situations, Brianne.”
“This is my mother’s house,” she whispered back. “I’m going in now because you’ve got me worried. And don’t try to pretend you’re Mr. By the Rules at this late stage of the game. I know you too damn well for that.”
She had him there. But then, he wouldn’t have allowed Brianne within a mile of him today if he’d been following procedure to the letter. Her presence on today’s investigative efforts marked the biggest bending of the rules so far.
Damn.
He didn’t like this one bit. Where was Pauline?
Ruthlessly shoving Brianne further behind him he edged his way into her mother’s house. Slowly. Carefully.
All the while he padded with silent feet into the foyer he told himself this investigation would not go up in flames like his last bout with Melvin Baxter. He knew what he was doing now. And any rule-breaking he engaged in happened only because he’d grown experienced enough to know when and how to ignore the rules.
He sure as hell wouldn’t make a rookie mistake like allowing his feelings for a woman to cloud his judgment, would he?
As he rounded the corner of the foyer to peer down the hall, he found nothing. No one.
He sensed more than heard Brianne’s breathing picking up pace behind him. Turning to meet her gaze, he told her silently to stay put. Miraculously, she did what he wanted, freeing him to search the house with quick, silent efficiency.
Nothing.
As he wound around the silver teacart that still stood in the middle of the parlor back toward Brianne, he noticed she wasn’t where he’d left her.
Shit.
Fear iced through him as his feet picked up speed.
He’d never forgive himself if anything happened to her because he hadn’t been able to tell her no—
And then there she was. Poised at the threshold of French doors lining the back of the dining room. Staring out over her mother’s garden.
Her eyes cut to his, her wide green gaze full of surprise, maybe a hint of fear. He joined her at the window to see what had caught her attention, determined nothing would frighten her for so much as a second as long as he was around.
Sliding into place in front of her—ready to protect her
from anything, be it a garter snake or one of Melvin’s lackey crook friends—Aidan found Pauline.
Engaged in a lip lock hot enough to generate sparks, Pauline was barely visible from the man who seemed determined to perform a tonsillectomy then and there.
Although the guy’s face was partly obstructed from view thanks to an overgrown hibiscus plant, there were only so many men in the state of Florida who wore a three-piece seersucker suit with a Panama hat and a gold watch large enough to give Big Ben a run for the money.
Melvin Baxter.
Aidan wanted to cheer himself hoarse at his good luck. If only Brianne weren’t smack dab in the middle of the upcoming arrest.
“Stay here.” He mouthed the words even though a pane of leaded glass separated them from the estranged couple who appeared to be settling their differences in record time. “Your mother will be fine.”
Easy for him to say, Brianne thought as her heart pounded with a mixture of fear and dread. She stared back at him in the obnoxiously cheery sunlight of Florida at high noon, knowing her mother was about to come face-to-face with one of the most blunt, unhappy truths of her life.
She wanted to tell Aidan something. Be kind. Be careful. But he was already slipping out the door and out of her reach, entering a world of danger she’d never understand.
Sunlight glinted off the polished steel in his right palm as he sprinted over the lawn and vaulted a row of foxgloves.
His gun.
The knot of fear that had started the moment she saw her mother kissing Melvin tightened into a sharp ache of pain centered in her chest. She ached for her mother. For Aidan. Maybe even a little bit for Mel who had shown her nothing but kindness in the years that he’d lived in her home, in all the time she’d called him daddy.
It hurt to see the man she’d made love to with heart and soul last night draw a gun on her mother and her long-ago father.
The hurt grew into full-fledged panic when Mel finally noticed Aidan and shoved her mother away with both hands. Brianne’s feet moved without her conscious permission, running out the French doors toward the scene on the lawn. Toward her fallen mother.
She saw Mel duck into the thick planting of hibiscus bushes that towered at least eight feet tall. Saw Aidan shout a warning to his adversary although her heart pounded too hard to discern the words as she reached her mother and knelt by her side.
She heard the gunshot all too clearly.
The sharp crack split the air, sending Pauline into Brianne’s arms and Melvin out of the hibiscus hedge, hands raised in surrender.
Unharmed.
Thank God.
Brianne hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until it all whooshed out her lungs in a rush. She collapsed against her mother who already clung to her for all she was worth. Pauline’s tears bathed her arms while they watched Aidan handcuff Mel and talk to him in a voice too low for them to hear.
“He caught me off guard,” Pauline whispered through tears. “I didn’t want him here. And I told him I couldn’t go to the bank with him like he asked. Then he kissed me.” Cheeks flushed, she blinked up at Brianne. Her neat twist at the back of her head had come unwound. “I shouldn’t have let him kiss me, but I thought he just wanted to say goodbye.”
Knowing Melvin, Brianne had the feeling the kiss stemmed from a desire to cajole more than any honorable notion of walking away. But she murmured only comforting words to her mother, not wishing to upset her further.
Brianne looked around the backyard as neighbors emerged from their houses. Dogs barked. A siren wailed in the distance.
Chaos in Palm Beach. Definitely not the kind of public attention Pauline would have ever wanted.
Realizing her mother needed her now more than ever, she lifted them both to their feet and wished like hell she had a remote that could rewind the whole day and set everything back to rights. For herself as well. Today’s scene served as a too-potent reminder of how much the Wolcott women sucked at relationships.
Watching Aidan in motion before her very eyes bore little resemblance to the suspenseful action she had occasionally dramatized in her work as a filmmaker.
This sort of drama left her a bit shell-shocked. Speechless. She’d been through so many emotions in the last twenty-four hours she didn’t know what to feel any more.
As police sirens neared the house and whined to a stop out front, Aidan took calls on his cell phone and spoke to the swarm of officers who appeared on the scene.
Brianne settled her mother in the house with migraine medicine and a good book, then returned to the lawn to clean up a couple of potted plants that had been knocked over during the incident.
By then, Aidan had sent Melvin off with someone. And although Brianne hadn’t necessarily wanted to renew her relationship with a criminal, it still felt odd that she hadn’t even said so much as hello or goodbye to the man who’d saved her from caviar and toast points in her lunch box.
Now, Aidan made his way over to her, stooping to help her as she righted a pot of jasmine cuttings that had only just started to take root.
“Are you okay?” He brushed spilled dirt back into the terra-cotta pot, his voice conveying a hint of tender concern. Or had that been wishful thinking on her part?
Brianne didn’t trust her scrambled senses to decide. Clearing her throat, she managed to nod. Speak. “I’m fine. Shaken, but fine.”
He gestured toward the throng of blue uniforms on the lawn and the two guys in suits and shades that Brianne suspected were FBI associates. “I’ve got about ten places I need to be this afternoon, but first I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
The words permeated some of the residual numbness still clinging to her. He needed to leave. Wanted her blessing on his way out the door. Gun in hand.
She wiped excess dirt off the jasmine leaves and nodded, unable to meet those intense gray eyes of his. “I’m going to stick around here for a little while until my mother is settled. I need to talk to her anyway.”
She’d come to Pauline’s house for a conversation this afternoon and in light of the gunshot and the arrest on the lawn, the topic had never been more timely. Her mother needed to swear off dangerous men.
As for Brianne, she needed to figure out if she could handle Aidan’s hazardous crusade to keep South Beach safe, especially now that she understood how much that mission required him to put himself at risk.
Her brush with the reality of Aidan’s day-to-day life left her chilled, uncertain.
“I’m sorry about this morning.” Aidan tugged the terra-cotta pot out of her hand and set the plant aside. He peered over his shoulder at the mass of cops and federal agents as they fended off a growing crowd of reporters on the lawn. “It’s just that I had a lot on my mind with the investigation and I know you don’t want to get drawn into that. For that matter, I’m pretty sure you’re uncomfortable about my job altogether.”
He studied her as if waiting for her to deny it.
And she wanted to. But how could she pretend she wasn’t scared of something happening to him when he hunted down members of the Most Wanted list for a living? She wasn’t naive enough to think all of his prey would be white-collar criminals who wore seersucker and brought teddy bears to lonely little girls.
“You’re in a dangerous line of work, Aidan. I think it would intimidate a lot of people. And my life has been filled with too much upheaval to handle a relationship with no emotional security.” She brushed the dirt off her fingers, rubbed a spot off her slim black dress and tried not to meet his gaze.
Their future that had seemed filled with possibility last night had grown far more frightening this morning.
Staring back at her flurry of movement, Aidan didn’t need to use his investigative skills to figure out what Brianne was feeling right now. He caught her wrist and held it until she looked up at him.
The fear in her eyes, the hesitation in her voice said it all. She couldn’t handle his lifestyle any more than Natalie ever had.
No matter that Natalie had looked the part of a fragile flower while Brianne had been a firecracker for ten years and counting. Just because Brianne had grown adept at hiding her vulnerability didn’t make it any less real.
He told himself her withdrawal didn’t hurt. That he was okay with this. “Not a problem. I would never try to put you in a situation that would ultimately cause you grief. Been there, done that, signed the divorce papers to prove it.”
The words sounded colder than he’d intended. But damn it, he was feeling pretty damn cold inside today.
“I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re not scared of this, Bri?”
She blinked twice, quickly. And from the mixture of confusion and disappointment in her gaze, he knew she didn’t stand a chance of telling him otherwise.
An ache shot through him. Disappointment. Regret. He hadn’t expected it to tug at him so strongly.
Maybe because she was a woman so well matched for him, even if she would never recognize it. Despite the fact that she preferred to live behind the safety of a few lenses and lots of security controls, she still possessed more strength and flat-out chutzpah than most men he knew.
How would it feel to have that kind of woman watching out for you?
She had nerves of steel when it came to most anything but his job.
He reached to touch her face. Marveled at the softness of her skin. Wished that touch didn’t have to be the last. “Then you’re off the hook, Brianne. Free and clear.”
Shouts from the lawn competed for his attention. Pulled him back to his job.
“You’d better go.” Her words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush as if she welcomed the opportunity to end their conversation. Welcomed the chance to say goodbye.
With a heart full of regret, he brushed a thumb over the fullness of her lips.
Already missing their taste.
15
SHORTLY PAST SUNSET, Brianne finally found the video she’d scoured her house for beside an overgrown cactus and underneath the basket of clothes to take to the cleaners. Dangerous Men and the Women Who Love Them—the documentary she’d filmed last year after flying around the country to talk to countless flirts and daredevils, heartbreakers and bad boys.
