Task Force Bride

by Julie Miller

  And to hit on Hope. Was she even aware that Hundley had been flirting? Or was that innocence the way she shut down any man who showed an interest in her? That didn’t bode well for the success of this engagement masquerade.

  Pike settled his palm at the nip of Hope’s waist and let his fingers fan over the ample swell of her hip, silently warning her not to bolt while he made some neighborly conversation with a local. “What kind of car do you have?”

  Good. Leon noticed Pike’s subtle claim, and retreated to a more impersonal distance. “A ’72 Camaro.”

  “Sweet. Is the chassis in good shape?”

  “Yeah. I painted it blue. Look, Hope and I were having a conversation. Did you need her for something?”

  “No. Just dropped in to say hi.”

  Although he made an effort to reclaim Hope’s attention, Leon seemed a little less inclined to hang around the shop and chat than he’d been a moment ago. He pointed toward Hans. “Is he an attack dog?”

  “He’s a police officer. He doesn’t get mean or tough unless I do.” Pike released Hope and turned, thumping his chest and inviting Hans to rise on his hind legs and prop his paws on him. Ignoring his stinging conscience at the gasp behind him, Pike rubbed the dog’s leanly muscular flanks, sending out a shower of tan and black fur. “Do you want to pet him?”

  “Maybe another time.” The ploy worked. Even though Hans thought he was playing, it made an impressive show and drove the point home to Leon that the two of them weren’t going anywhere. While he pulled out his cell phone, Leon backed toward the exit. “I’d better let Mother know I can drive her to bridge tonight, after all. Then I’ll get started on that door. I’ll let you know how much the new lock costs.”

  Did Hope notice that Leon had decided to charge her, after all, since she was no longer available for whatever he’d had in mind? And was she really going to stop talking now that he and Hans were here?

  “Thanks, man,” Pike offered as the wiry handyman headed out the door. “I’d planned to do it myself. But if you need the cash...”

  “Right. I’m on it.”

  The bell over the door chimed before Pike put Hans in a sit position and turned to apologize to Hope. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean up where he shed.”

  But she’d already put half the length of the store between them and was gathering up a rainbow of fabric samples from the seating area in front of a trio of mirrors.

  “Hans, platz.” Burying his frustration on a gruff sigh, Pike told the dog to lie down and strode across the shop to join her. He picked up a box from the end of one couch and had it ready for her when she turned around with an armful of filmy material.

  Hope hesitated for a moment, her gaze darting back to the counter, then up to him before dropping the samples into the box. “So, how do we do this?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was talking about baiting a trap for a rapist or masquerading as the woman Pike Taylor loved. “I don’t know. I think we just have to be seen together. Make it look like we’re a couple so no one questions me being here. And don’t let the handyman across the street flirt with you.”

  “I wasn’t letting...” She grabbed the box from his hands and carried it into the dressing rooms. “Leon was flirting?”

  How could a woman who must be in her early thirties be so sweetly clueless? “He wants something from you.”

  “Money for his car. A friendly diversion, maybe. His mother has a chronic illness. She makes a lot of demands on his time, and the medical bills don’t leave anything extra for fun things—like his car. I try to help out when I can.”

  “Well, you need to stop providing fun for Mr. Hard Luck out there.” Pike propped his hands at his belt when she reappeared, carrying three bridesmaid dresses. “The press leak will go out tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Hans and I will keep our eyes and ears open for any sign of our unsub. You do understand what we’re asking of you, right? It won’t be a cakewalk.”

  “You met my father. I’ve been victimized before, Officer Taylor.” She hung the dresses up on a nearby wall before facing him again. “I refuse to be a victim again. I’m tired of losing people I know. I’m tired of living in fear.”

  “That’s the first thing that has to change.”

  Her cheeks warmed with a hint of temper. “I know I don’t come across as a very forceful personality, but I do have convictions—”

  “I meant calling me Officer Taylor instead of Pike or Edison or Eddie or whatever you decide on.”

  “Oh.” The blush faded. “Like when you called me hon in front of Leon.” So she had been paying attention and hadn’t gone into a frozen version of her last panic attack. With a nervous adjustment to her glasses, Hope went back to the counter, walking a wide berth around Hans even though he had laid his head down to rest and didn’t seem to care. “I’m just Hope. The only nickname I ever had was ‘Sis,’ and you could hardly call me that.”

  “That’s right. You said you had a brother.”

  She nodded and picked up a computer pad. She brushed her finger across the screen and pulled up a calendar. “Harry. Henry Lockhart Jr.—named after our father. But he doesn’t claim that name. He’s just Harry. He’s a sergeant in the Marine Corps—an MP at a base overseas.”

  Pike joined her behind the counter, subtly positioning himself between her and the dog. “Then let’s just agree that it’s Hope and Pike for now.”

  “All right.”

  “Besides your dad, is there any other family I should know about?”

  “He’s not family. Not to either of us.” She uttered the statement like a pledge, then set the computer pad back on the counter and tilted her face up to his. “And no, it’s just me here in Missouri. Detective Montgomery said that would help make this—us—more convincing. No one should question it.”

  The bell jingled above the door again. Hope smiled and nodded as a mother and daughter came in. The younger woman hurried toward a princessy wedding dress in the front window and the mom followed. “Excuse me, I have an appointment.”

  “And we need to make our rounds. Hans. Steh.”

  Hans jumped to his feet and Hope dived back a step, gripping the counter behind her. “You talk to him in German?”

  Pike nixed the idea of telling her that leaping up onto the counter wouldn’t stop Hans from getting to her if the dog wanted to. “He’s bilingual. He answers to English when he’s relaxed like this. But yeah, his work commands are in German. I’ll teach you a few words sometime.”

  “Why?”

  “Hans goes wherever I go, Hope. So that means you’re stuck with both of us. I want him to mind you as well as me. He’ll be our first line of defense if our perp comes after you.” He dropped his voice to a whisper the two customers couldn’t overhear. “Still want to go through with this?”

  She answered with a jerky nod. “If I can help catch that predator, I want to.”

  Hope’s skittish reaction had garnered the mother’s and daughter’s attention. Pike offered them a reassuring nod before glancing over to see Leon Hundley watching them, too, from the vestibule where he was measuring the broken door. Finally, he turned to the pale woman with the prim dress and too-tight bun. “I’ll be back before you close. I’ll have an overnight bag with me, and Hans’s kennel. We’ll talk more then. Lay down a few ground rules.”

  Pike pulled out his cap and started to leave. But with the customers and Leon watching, he knew he couldn’t just walk away. Might as well go for it.

  In two long strides, he came back. He palmed the nape of Hope’s neck, catching his fingers beneath the bun, loosing a few of those decadent curls before tilting her face up to kiss her. Their lips were touching, but she wasn’t kissing him back, and he supposed the hand she braced against his chest might look as if she was holding on to him. But she wasn’t.

  He raised his head, watched her pupils dilate behind her glasses and reminded her they were a team on this undercover op. “You might want to make this look good,” he whispered.


  When her hand slowly climbed up the placket of his shirt, Pike dipped his head and kissed her again. This time, her fingers curled into his collar, tugging on his shirt and the turtleneck he wore underneath, catching on the edge of his flak vest and pulling him closer as she stretched up on tiptoe. Her soft mouth parted beneath his, but did little more than submit to the force of him pressing against her.

  She’d latched onto the front of his shirt with both hands by the time he lifted his head and pulled away. Her breath blew against his lips with a gentle, stuttering whisper of heat. What the heck? He felt that tiny caress like a kick in the gut as he pried her fingers from his wrinkled uniform. This was a charade, wasn’t it? So why was he transfixed by those deep gray eyes peering at him over the top of her glasses? Why wasn’t he moving away?

  It took a nudge from Hans to get Pike to pull his fingertips from the silky bun that wasn’t so tight and neat anymore. Pike plopped his hat on his head and tipped the brim before grabbing Hans’s leash and heading for the door. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  That ought to get some tongues wagging about his claim on Hope Lockhart. That soft, shy kiss, so at odds with the fingers grabbing at his chest, had certainly piqued his interest.

  Chapter Six

  “What in the world...?” Hope shielded her eyes and squinted at the bright square of light dancing on her bedroom wall. She picked up her glasses from the nightstand and put them on as she shuffled to the window to peek outside. Normally, the morning sun flooded her apartment with soft warmth and sunshine. It was one of the reasons why she’d converted this half of the second floor into her living space and had left the back half to be used as more storage for the shop below.

  But today the clear autumn morning was playing tricks. While the windows facing her across the street remained dark and opaque in the shadows, the sun glinted off the windshield of a vehicle parked below on the street, nearly blinding her. For one frightful moment, her stomach clenched. Was that a white van parked in front of her shop? Was the man sitting behind the wheel watching her shop? Watching her?

  A car drove past and she had to close her eyes and turn away. The light bounced from glass to glass and reflected up to her bedroom. No doubt that was the explanation for the dazzling rainbows shining in that had wakened her before the alarm. When her eyes had adjusted and she could lower her hand, Hope saw that the boxy vehicle below was a silver SUV of some type.

  Not the van that had followed her home.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she shut the blinds behind the eyelet curtains and considered crawling back into bed. But she had a business downstairs that wasn’t going to open itself. And she had an even more important job to do today—help catch a rapist. Detective Montgomery had said she was the city’s best chance at ending the nightmare that stalked her neighborhood.

  And just like on that fateful morning twenty years ago when she’d made the decision to find help for her starving, neglected brother and herself, Hope knew she couldn’t hide in her room and wait for someone to rescue them. She had to venture out and save herself.

  Hope tied her blue chenille robe snugly around her waist and took a deep breath before leaving her room. The polished oak planks that ran the length of the entire loft were cool beneath her bare feet. The automatic coffeemaker in the kitchen was bubbling to life and filling her apartment with the rich, warm aroma of fresh java.

  But the same odd light was bouncing through her living and dining room area now. When it sliced across the white pillars and exposed brick and hit her eyes again, she tiptoed to the bank of windows facing the street and looked down. As she pulled aside the curtain and leaned closer to the pane of glass, trying to make out a face to go with the gloved hands on the steering wheel below, she heard the engine revving to life. The silver SUV pulled out of its parking space and headed down the street—not an early riser coming to work, but a late-night partier finally going home, most likely.

  Funny. Generally, the patrons of the nightspots down the block and around the corner parked in one of the garages down there. It wasn’t unheard of on a busy weekend to see cars parked this far up the street, and even in her private lot outside the shop. But on a Tuesday morning? Her heart rate kicked up a notch. Maybe not so funny. It was perfectly likely that the man she’d seen Saturday night had more than one vehicle. He was probably too smart to come back to her place in the van she’d already seen.

  “You’re making too much of it,” she whispered against the glass, trying to calm her racing pulse. “He wasn’t watching you. You don’t even know it was him.”

  Still, the nervous instincts refused to completely dissipate. Reflecting lights and unfamiliar vehicles weren’t the only differences in her regular morning routine. She had other reasons to be a little jumpy this morning. Her homey, countrified decor now included a large gray kennel with a steel mesh gate. The smells in her home were different, too. There was a slight pungency of dog food and heat from the beast dozing in said kennel. Even the sounds were different. In the early morning quiet before downtown Kansas City came to life again, she heard a soft, even snore coming from her guest room.

  Maybe she should report the SUV. Just in case she was right to be worried about strange vehicles parked in front of her shop. A panic attack was embarrassing. But not responding to a real threat could be downright dangerous. Her footsteps took her back down the hallway.

  She’d made a deal with KCPD—for LaDonna Chambers, for her late friend Janie Harrison, for her client Bailey Austin, for the women who lived and worked and played in this neighborhood, to end that threat. She’d made the deal to help capture the Rose Red Rapist for herself. Because she deserved to feel safe in her own home and shop. She’d gone to bed a shy woman who lurked in the background of society, and she’d woken up to a very different, unfamiliar world where she had to take action and play a starring role.

  Hope paused outside the second bedroom and pushed the sleepy tumble of hair off her face. As much as her heart and conscience wanted to do this undercover job to help the police, her father’s voice inside her head was telling her she was doomed to fail. She could never pull this off—being the fictitious fiancée to one of Kansas City’s finest, playing the part of would-be witness to draw a dangerous man into KCPD’s trap.

  “You’re too much of a coward, girl. Now quit thinkin’ on your own and dreamin’ those stupid dreams, and do what I tell you.”

  “Shut up, Hank,” she whispered, pushing open the door and peeking inside. She’d gotten her brother away from their father’s prison. She’d started her own business. She supported herself more comfortably than she’d ever dreamed possible back on that remote patch of land in the Ozark woods. She could do this, too. She could live with a man for a few days. She could tolerate his dog and get used to their habits. She could even learn to be more convincing as half of a couple.

  Still, her heart beat faster and her breath locked up in her chest when she saw the big man sleeping in the bed. Pike Taylor’s broad shoulders and naked chest seemed at odds with the white, eyelet-trimmed sheets and hand sewn quilt draped around his waist. A more familiar light coming through the eyelet curtains at the window dappled his skin with tiny spots of sunshine, highlighting golden spikes of hair among the sandy shades of tan and brown on his scruffy jaw and chin, and farther down, in the hair that dusted his chest and narrowed into a thin line running down his flat stomach and disappearing beneath the sheet.

  Watching a grown man sleep was as mesmerizing as it was unfamiliar. Other than her brother, Harry, her father ages ago, or catching an accidental glimpse of a customer trying on a tux in her changing rooms downstairs, half-naked men weren’t something she’d had much experience with. She’d never had that much muscle and testosterone sleeping in her apartment.

  Hope’s skin suddenly burned beneath her nightgown and robe, and her mouth went dry. She was assuming Pike Taylor was only half-naked. What if he wasn’t? Her pulse thundered in her ears. She’d certainly never had that in her a
partment.

  The twin bronze medallions that marked him as uniquely male had puckered in the cool air and stood at attention atop the even rise and fall of his chest, mocking her inability to make a decision. Should she wake him up to tell him about the car? Politely retreat until he was awake and back in uniform?

  They probably should have talked about the bathroom schedule and sleeping regalia last night while they were discussing ground rules for this charade. What if he was a sleepwalker? What if he sat up in bed right now and the quilt drifted farther south?

  “It’s not polite to stare.”

  Hope gasped as Pike’s deep, husky voice startled her from across the room. He was awake? He’d been watching her...watch him? One blue eye blinked open, confirming the worst. Embarrassment heated her face as the second eye opened. “There was a car out front,” she blurted. “It’s gone.” Sound like an idiot much? “I’m sorry.” She was already backing from the room, pulling the door closed behind her. “I am so sorry.”

  “Hope? Wait. What car?”

  Smooth, woman. She tucked her robe together at the neck and dashed to the kitchen. His teasing tone made it sound as though she’d been admiring the scenery. She hadn’t been, had she? Not intentionally. She’d been curious. Concerned. She was just trying to get used to having a man in her home so she wouldn’t freak out like...like the way she was doing right now. “Good grief.”

  If Pike had any doubts about her ability to pretend she was in love with him, she’d just confirmed them.

  “Hope?”

  She spun around the corner in her haste to get away from the door opening behind her. Her hip bumped a chair and rammed it against the table, knocking the lid off the sugar bowl and waking up the beast sleeping by the front door. Hope shrieked at Hans’s deep woof and reversed course, plowing into Pike’s bare chest.

  Her fingers brushed across ticklish hair and warm sinew before she flattened her palms against a sculpted swell of muscle and pushed away. The heat of his skin sizzled beneath her cool hands and her vision swam with a blur of faded blue. Hope realized he had on a pair of old jeans, and the words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Thank God, you’re wearing pants.”