by Julie Miller
The threat was real.
Duchess was on her feet, growling at the window. Trixie jumped onto the bed and barked. The repetitive laughter, fading in and out like a clown running in circles, was coming from outside in the storm.
“Max?” Fear hammered her pulse in her ears. She needed Max.
A clap of thunder slammed like a door in the distance, and Rosemary jumped inside her skin. “Rosie?” She heard a rapid knocking, like gunshots at her back door. “Rosie!”
“Max?” Rosemary quickly kicked away the covers twisted around her legs and slid off the edge of the bed. She pulled her sleep shirt down to her thighs and crossed to the door. “I’m coming!” But the laughter started up again behind her and she froze. It grew louder, tinnier. The knocking at her back door stopped and a chill skittered down her spine.
Grabbing Duchess’s collar as she walked past, Rosemary went to the window. With her heart in her throat, she pulled back the curtain and peeked between the shade and the sill. Lightning flashed and she jumped back from the faceless figure in a black hood standing there.
She screamed again.
A deeper voice shouted outside in the storm. “KCPD! Get on the ground!” The laughter stopped abruptly and when the next bolt of lightning flashed, her window was empty. She saw a blur of movement in the blowing rain as she dropped the curtain and backed away. She heard a familiar grumble of curses.
“Max!” she shouted. What was he doing? If the intruder could threaten her dogs and terrorize her, what would he do to Max? What if he bashed in Max’s head with that baseball bat? Would he kill the detective guarding her? Then who would stop him from coming after her? Saving Max was imperative to saving herself. Saving Max was imperative, period. “Max?” Tripping over the excited barking dogs, Rosemary turned and ran. Her fingers fumbled with the stupid lock on her door before she finally opened the thing and slung it open. “Max!”
The wood floor was cold beneath her bare feet, the kitchen tile even colder. She ran through the darkened house but skidded to a stop and abruptly changed course at the furious sound of knocking at her front door now. “Rosie!” He was safe. She would be safe. “Open the damn door! Rosie! Answer me!”
“I’m here. Is he out there? Did you catch him?”
“Rosie!”
She punched in the alarm code, unhooked the chain and dead bolt, turned the knob. Max jerked the storm door from her grasp the moment she’d turned its lock. The blowing rain whooshed in sideways around him, splashing her face and shirt before he pushed her back inside the foyer.
“You’ve got too many damn locks. I couldn’t get to you.” While he griped away, she ran straight into his arms, pressing her cheek against the wet skin of his chest, sliding her hands beneath his soggy shirttails and linking them together at the back of his waist. He walked her back another couple of steps, shutting the steel door behind him. “I lost him. You have to answer me when I call you. You can’t scream like that and not answer... Okay.” Once the adrenaline was out of his system, once he realized how she shuddered against him, clinging tightly to his strength and heat, he curled one arm behind her back and set his gun on the front hall table with the other. His growly tone softened. “Okay, honey.” He reached behind him to throw the bolt yet never let go. Then he came back to wrap both arms around her and nestle his jaw at the crown of her hair. She willingly rocked back and forth as his chest expanded and contracted against her after the exertion of chasing a shadow through the storm. “I’m gettin’ you all wet.”
She shook her head against the strong beat of his heart. “I don’t care.”
He pulled her sleep-tossed hair from the neckline of her pink T-shirt, smoothing it down her back in gentle strokes. “You’re okay. He’s gone.”
“Did he hurt you?” A crisp wet curl of chest hair tickled her lips. A muscle quivered beneath the unintended caress.
“Me? Nah, I’m too tough for that kind of thing. Are you hurt?” He sifted his fingers through her hair until his warm, callous palm cupped the nape of her neck. “Ah, hell, honey. Your skin’s like ice.” He shifted his stance then, curling his shoulders around her, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “I heard a noise and saw that guy outside your window, but I lost him in the rain once he jumped the Dinkles’ hedge out front. And it’s way too dark to be firing blindly into shadows. I didn’t want to take the time away from you to do a search, in case he doubled back and broke in. I couldn’t risk leaving you alone.”
Rosemary’s shirt and panties were slowly soaking up the moisture from his rain-soaked clothes. But the furnace of heat on the other side of those wet jeans and unbuttoned shirt that he must have hastily tossed on seeped right through the layers of damp material, warming her skin and easing her panic.
Once they were both breathing normally again, he pressed his lips against her temple before easing some space between them, although he continued rubbing his hands up and down her back and the arms she crossed between them. “Tell me what happened.”
She watched the rain from his scalp run in rivulets down to his scruffy jaw, pooling at the tip of his chin before dripping onto her arm. “I had a nightmare.”
His hands stopped their massage and squeezed her shoulders, demanding she meet his concerned gaze. “Uh-uh. That guy was real. Standard-issue hoodie and dark jeans. At least six feet tall. Wish I’d taken the time to grab my flashlight so I could have seen his face.”
The cop was returning. The warmth was leaving. Rosemary hugged her arms more tightly around her waist, suddenly self-conscious to be standing toes to toes in a puddle in her foyer wearing little more than her long pink T-shirt. A wet T-shirt now. Not that she had any illusions about turning Max’s head, but she didn’t want to embarrass him, either. “I was dreaming of things Richard did to me. When I woke up, that man was at my window. For a split second, I thought...” She shrugged away from Max’s touch and shivered. “It was the same man who vandalized my porch. I’m sure of it.”
“Your scream woke me. When I got outside, I heard that crazy caterwauling.” He picked up his gun and tucked it into the back of his jeans before scrubbing his fingers over his chin and wiping the moisture on the front of his shirt. Was she really still standing there, staring at the glistening wet skin of his chest? “Sorry,” he apologized, mistaking her fascinated longing for some kind of effrontery. His big fingers fumbled to pull the soggy cotton together over the hills and hollows of muscle and hook a few buttons to the placket. “He’s long gone. There were footprints beneath the sill. I went back to snap a picture, but they’re washing away.” Max reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a little red plastic box. “I found this out there in the grass.” He pushed a button, and a warped recording of laughter played.
Rosemary recoiled from the sound. “That’s what I heard.”
“It’s cheap. A noisemaker from a party store. Sounds as though there’s water in the mechanism. With the storm, there’s no way we’re getting fingerprints off this thing. Maybe on the inside, though. Looks like there’s something wedged in there. Do you have a plastic bag?” Although she missed the warmth of his body pressed against hers, she knew this businesslike interchange was more important than her own foolish cravings for physical contact. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she nodded. The dogs fell into step beside her, joining their little parade to the kitchen. Max brought up the rear, stopping in each doorway along the hall, checking inside the rooms to make sure everything was still secure. “Sorry about your floor. I’m making a mess.”
She stopped at the bathroom to pull her robe from behind the door and shrugged into it, adding another layer of warmth and modesty now that she was done throwing herself at her downstairs tenant. “It’ll clean up. I believe you think I’m a prim-and-proper prude. A little mud and water don’t bother me.” Stepping into the kitchen, Rosemary flipped on the light and eyed the path of water and big muddy prints
from Max’s bare feet that marked her hallway. “The dogs have tracked in worse. I just like knowing the rules and what’s expected of me—and what to expect from other people.” She crossed to the bank of drawers beside the oven but hesitated. “I hope I didn’t put you in an awkward position before. I don’t normally wrap myself around a man while I’m in my pajamas.” The burn of embarrassment crept up her neck and into her cheeks at that rather suggestive description of seeking refuge in his arms. “I mean, I don’t...not without asking first. But I was scared. And I was worried about you.”
Rosemary glanced up as he leaned his hip against the countertop beside her. “Do you hear me complaining?”
She was relieved, and more disappointed than she should be, to see him dismissing her panicked indiscretion with a wry grin. She tried to match his easy smile. “You are very good at vocalizing what you’re thinking and feeling, aren’t you, Detective?”
His smile disappeared and he reached over to catch a tendril of hair that stuck to her damp cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “I thought I’d earned a Max from you by now.”
Her gaze drifted to the front of his shirt and the three buttons that he’d fastened into the wrong holes. Rosemary couldn’t stop the smile from curving her lips again. This man was a tornado blowing through her controlled, predictable world, upsetting her routine, ignoring her personal barriers, waking wants and needs she thought had died long ago. And yet he was growing more dear to her, more necessary as a protector, a friend and maybe something more, with each encounter. Even if all he ever wanted from her was a drunken kiss and the chance to solve Richard’s murder, she was glad that he’d barged into her closed-off, humdrum life. She opened a drawer and pulled out a box of plastic storage bags for him. “Here. Max.”
Nodding his approval, Max pulled a pocketknife from the front of his jeans to pry open the red box. “Looks like our perp took it apart to modify it somehow. Even with industrial glue, though, it didn’t reseal completely. That’s probably how the water got inside.”
“That horrible sound reminded me of Richard. Of that night. He laughed when he...” The scars on her chest seem to throb and she tied the robe more snugly around her damp T-shirt.
“Who would know about him laughing that night?” Max asked, pulling out a chair at the table to tinker with the box. “Somebody had to know it would rattle you.”
“I’m not sure. It’s probably in the police report.”
“That’s public record if somebody looks hard enough. Who else?”
Rosemary considered herself a very private person, but after that night, she’d been desperate to find someone who could help her escape Richard’s tyranny. “My brother, Stephen. A couple of friends.”
“What friends?” Max glanced up from unscrewing the back of the box. “Crimes are solved in the details. I need you to tell them to me.”
Rosemary wondered if the storm outside could somehow cool the air inside the house, as well. “Otis and Arlene, when I went to their house to call the police afterward. Howard.”
“Your attorney?”
She nodded. “I told him everything when he was putting together the restraining order.”
What about a statuesque blonde who blamed her for Richard’s death?
“You got a suspect for me?” he prompted, sensing her thoughts turning.
Rosemary pulled out another chair and sat kitty-corner from him. “Richard could have told one of his mistresses. I ran into one of them at Howard’s office the other day.”
“One of...?” Max’s curse was short and pungent. “Sorry. I know you hate that.”
“Not as much as I hate not knowing who’s doing this to me. Her name is Charleen Grimes. She said your friends Detectives Watson and Parker had shown up at her boutique to ask her questions. She was pretty ticked off.” Rosemary remembered the hate and pain spewing from Charleen’s perfectly painted lips that day. “She accused me of killing Richard.”
“And getting away with it? Like that first note?”
Rosemary nodded. Charleen’s verbal attack in Howard’s office that day still rankled. But the memory of the blonde woman striding across Howard’s office and towering over her was triggering a different memory. “Charleen is tall for a woman. Could she pass for a man at night, in the shadows?”
“It’s possible. The guy I chased tonight was wearing clothes so baggy and nondescript I’d be hard-pressed to confirm a gender. I just assumed it was a guy.” He wedged the tip of his pocketknife into the seam around the box. “I want to meet this Charleen... Finally.” With one more twist of his knife, the box popped open and a soggy piece of paper fell out and plopped to the floor.
“What’s that?”
He put out a hand to keep her from picking it up. “Don’t touch it. I’ll bag it for prints and have Trent take it to the lab tomorrow.”
“You know it’s not there by accident. I want to know what it says.”
He used the plastic bag to retrieve it from the floor and gently shake it open. “Ah, hell.”
It was a black-and-white photocopy of a picture. Of her.
Her thoughts instantly went to the mysterious photographer who’d snapped a picture of her in the visitors’ room at the state prison. It was even more disturbing to see her wearing a different outfit than the flowered blouse she’d worn that day. She didn’t have to move any closer to see the candid image of her climbing into a cab outside Howard’s office building. “How long has he been watching me?”
When Max would have slipped the note into the bag and hidden it away, she grabbed his wrist and insisted on seeing every last gruesome detail.
Her eyes and heart had been x-ed out on the picture. Someone who was very angry with her had drawn a noose around her neck in black ink and typed a message neatly across the top.
I want to feel my hands around your throat, your pulse stopping beneath the pressure of my thumbs. You will burn for what you’ve done.
There will be justice for Richard.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
But the creepiest part was the five black marks dotting the top of the white dress she wore—five dots right across her collarbone where the burn scars Richard had inflicted upon her lay.
“How could he know? How could anyone know?”
Rosemary was only vaguely aware of Max moving as the room swirled around her. With her hand at her throat, she sank into the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
“Rosie?”
She heard the gruff voice calling to her in the distance. Someone knew her darkest secrets. Someone was using those secrets against her. To terrorize her. To punish her. To plunge her into a nightmare from which she could never escape.
“Rosie.”
Rough hands grabbed her shoulders, shook her. She was cold. So cold.
Then the hands closed around either side of her head and she fell forward until her mouth ran into something firm, hot. Something warm and moist pressed between her lips, parting them. The world gradually took the shape and form of fingers tangled in her hair, tugging lightly at her scalp. The pressure on her mouth became pliant lips that tasted of salt and heat and toasty tobacco. The taste was familiar yet new. Potent, with a tickle of sandpapery stubble on the side. Max. Max was kissing her. His hands were holding her. His tongue was sliding against hers. In one moment, she was the stunned recipient of bold passion—in the next, her tongue darted out to catch his and she leaned into the kiss. Deepened it. Came alive with it. Her throat hummed with anticipation. She stretched to fit her mouth more fully against his.
But when her hands came to rest against his chest, he pulled away. The room was still swaying when her eyes fluttered open and she looked into the damp, craggy face of the man kneeling in front of her chair. “Max?”
He stroked his thumb across her tender lips, brushed her hair behind her ears. “You check
ed out on me there. Don’t scare me like that, okay? Stay with me.”
The disorienting fear and helplessness faded. Other emotions—confusion, hope, desire—grew stronger. She touched the lines of concern crinkling beside his eyes. She brushed her thumb across the masculine line of his bottom lip, absorbing the heat from his skin into hers. She could hear her heart beating over the drumbeat of rain outside. “Another opportunity you couldn’t pass up?” But there was no humor in her laugh, no answering humor in his eyes. “You shouldn’t kiss me like that unless it means something to you.”
Max’s lip trembled beneath her thumb. A deep groan rose from his chest. And then he was pushing to his feet, pulling her with him. His mouth covered hers, hot and wet and full of a driving need she answered kiss for kiss.
He lifted her onto her toes and she wound her arms around his neck, leaning into his sheltering strength. There was little finesse to Max’s kiss. But then, she had little to compare it to beyond Richard’s smooth, practiced seduction that left her feeling unsatisfied and inadequate.
Rosemary liked this infinitely better. There was little to second-guess about a man sliding his hands down her back to squeeze her bottom and lift her off her feet into his hard thighs and the firm interest stirring in between. Max’s cheek rasped against hers as his lips scudded across her jaw and pulled at her earlobe.
His words were basic. “Your skin’s so soft. Your hair smells like summer and rain. It’s the cleanest scent. I could breathe it in all night long.”
When he reclaimed her lips, his tongue was bold, his hands were bolder. Rosemary gasped when she felt his palms branding her skin beneath her shirt. The tips of her breasts tingled, grew heavy and tight as they rubbed against the hard wall of his chest. She wanted his hands there, soothing their needy distress, exciting them more. This kiss was the wildest, most unexpected, most perfect embrace of her life. She was an equal partner, giving, taking. She slipped her hands up into the prickly crop of his military-short hair, turning his head to the angle of kiss she liked best.
