by Joanne Rock
“How did you find me tonight?” She couldn’t understand how he came to be lurking around the All Tucked Inn so soon after she’d sent her email. He had to have another way of knowing her movements besides tracking her computer.
“Luckily, the lady lawyer is even more dutiful about reporting in to friends and family than you are. She sent a text message from her phone a couple of hours ago, letting her sister know she was at the charming All Tucked Inn. As luck would have it, I’d been staying there myself this week, keeping an eye on things at the Marquis until a couple of more deals came through for me, so I was very familiar with the layout of the place.” He winked at her as he pulled his wool hat down more securely over his ears. “That part worked out so well, you couldn’t have planned it better yourself.”
Marnie ignored his self-congratulations to focus on what else he’d said. A couple of deals? How many people had he been swindling? She tried not to let her distaste show as she chose her words carefully.
“I’m worried there are a lot of people looking for you,” she confided, keeping her voice low so the driver didn’t hear her. She couldn’t be certain how involved he was in Alec’s plans, but she knew from experience that he didn’t much care if he hurt her. “You might attract less attention if you put away the gun once we arrive at the hotel.”
“Innocent Marnie.” Alec tucked the weapon into a holster beneath his wool pea coat. “It’s precisely because so many people are looking for me that I need to have the piece within easy reach. Your P.I. friend has run me ragged the past two months trying to cover my tracks, but he’s not going to win in the end. One bullet keeps him quiet forever.”
He patted his coat where the gun rested beneath, and a thick dread rose like bile in her throat. Alec had every intention of killing Jake. A vision of Jake lying cold and lifeless in the snow pierced her heart and chilled her blood in a way no snowstorm could.
The sleigh began to slow as the driver pulled back on the reins.
“Looks like we’re nearing our destination.” Alec reached down to replace the duct tape on her mouth and haul her up to the seat beside him as the sleigh halted in the woods near the Marquis. The driver jumped to the ground and disappeared into the dark. “You’re coming with me until I’m safely out of the country. Your new boyfriend isn’t the only one looking for me now.”
Marnie’s heart dropped at the realization that he’d only taken her to be a hostage.
She might never see Jake again.
Click.
The unmistakable hitch of a weapon being cocked for fire sounded inches behind them.
“I’m the only guy looking for you that counts.”
Jake. He stood inches behind the sleigh, his 9 mm pointed at the back of Alec’s head. She had no idea where he came from as he’d arrived in total silence, but somehow he was there.
Marnie wanted to warn Jake that Alec had a gun and that there was another guy with him, but Alec held her arms so she couldn’t remove the duct tape.
“Let her go,” Jake warned. “I’ve got backup and we’ve already got your driver and his friend. It’s all over.”
In the distance, Marnie heard the wail of a siren. Headlights entered the resort parking lot nearby, ringing the sleigh with light.
Thank God. Thank you, Jake.
She sat very still until she felt Alec make a sudden move. Her captor released her to go for his gun, but Jake was in the sleigh and on him in a nanosecond. Three slugs from Jake’s fist and he was out cold, slumped and bleeding on the furs.
All at once, the woods were filled with light and sound and people. Rico and his brother arrived. The brother—Raul—had a pair of handcuffs and he took care of dragging Alec out of the sleigh. His ease with the job made her guess he was probably one of the people who had been hunting for Alec.
“Hold still.” Jake’s arm went around her as he took the seat beside her, his other hand gently peeling the tape away from her mouth. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay.” She swallowed hard, still trying to take in what had happened. She wanted to find out how he knew where to find her, how he’d arrived at the Marquis before them. But right now she was just so grateful to see him safe that she flung her arms around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder. “You found me.”
TWO HOURS LATER, Marnie still looked spooked.
Jake watched her as the local detective finished taking her statement in the lobby of the Marquis at dawn. He’d talked to a half-dozen different departments and task forces that had been investigating crimes linked to Alec Mason. Or at least, it seemed like there had been that many. The cop work was a blur because he hadn’t given a damn about closing out an investigation. His one concern was getting Marnie out of here and back home safely as soon as possible.
She wavered on her feet, still wrapped in a fur from the sleigh that bastard had used to abduct her. The damage Jake had done with his fists hadn’t come close to satisfying his need to tear the guy apart. When he’d first heard her tell the police that Mason had held a gun to her head, Rico had to keep Jake from hunting down the cop car the scumbag sat in so he could finish him off.
For now, he tried to put that out of his mind to be the kind of man Marnie needed. The kind of man she deserved.
“We’re free to go,” he told her, sliding an arm around her waist to lead her out of the lobby. “And we’ve got a safe, quiet room we can stay in here. The police contacted the owner of the Marquis and he’s canceling the entertainments for a few days while the cops check out the computer systems. They’re assigning a guard to your room to be sure no one bothers you.”
Jake had personally made sure of that. He wished he could take her far from here, but the road crews hadn’t made much of a dent in clearing the snowfall.
Marnie nodded, allowing him to lead her toward the back of the resort where a handful of rooms overlooked a paddock containing the owner’s horses. Jake had checked out the accommodations ahead of time to be sure the windows locked. Logic told him everyone involved with the embezzlement was now in police custody, including the two goons who’d grabbed her in the card room. But for his peace of mind, he’d need windows that locked—preferably, the kind that had bars across them, too.
“How did you find me?” she asked as he opened the door to a suite decked out in Tudor decor.
A marble fireplace rested across the room from a four-poster bed draped in quilted burgundy-colored satin. The tea cart held pewter goblets and silver-domed dishes that likely contained the breakfast he’d requested for her.
“Rico’s twin was working undercover here. And actually their names aren’t Rico and Raul. They’re Rick and Rafe.” Jake locked the suite door and bolted it, then sat her on the edge of the bed before he pushed the tea cart close so she could eat. “Apparently Rafe had been tracking a perp named A. J. Marks.”
Marnie ignored the food and the juice goblets to pour herself a cup of hot tea.
“Another alias for Alec.” Her dark eyes searched his.
“Right. And he had intel that said Marks was meeting up with his crew here, so he called Rick to let him know he might be following a suspect tonight. The other guy from the closet. And wouldn’t you know, Rick and I were just trying to figure out where Alec would have taken you, so we banked on the fact that Alec and A.J. were one and the same.”
“But how did you get here faster than the horses?”
“Turns out our bed-and-breakfast hostess keeps some kick-ass snowmobiles in her shed. There’s a wide-open trail that follows the power lines between the inn and the resort, so I took off after you on a more direct route to the hotel, closer to the highway. Rick followed with Lianna and they got here about five minutes after me. We made a lot faster time on the sleds in the open fields, not having to guide a horse through the trees.”
They’d met up with Rafe, who had already taken care of the other goon after trailing him to the meeting point. Marnie hadn’t arrived for about five minutes more after that. The
time had stretched so impossibly long that Jake thought he’d lose his mind. He’d second-guessed his decision to head them off here a hundred times in those frigid cold moments while he waited in the snow and the dark.
The kicker was that he wouldn’t have even known where to find her if not for Rick’s twin working the case from another angle. More proof that he’d failed Marnie.
Something he couldn’t afford to do again.
“I wasn’t careful enough,” Marnie confessed between sips of tea. She must have warmed up a little because the fur blanket fell to the bed, unheeded. “I stayed by the door to listen to what was happening in Lianna’s room and because of that, I never heard Alec coming.”
“It wasn’t your job to be careful.” Shaking his head, he buttered a slice of toast and offered it to her. “That’s what I was getting paid for.”
She accepted the bread, but didn’t take a bite.
“No. You were trying to find the embezzler. Protecting me was never part of your responsibility.”
“It damn well should have been.” He couldn’t begin to explain the sick feeling eating away at him because he hadn’t kept her safe.
His gaze tracked the delicate curve of her jaw, the fall of her tousled red hair starting to show its warm, natural caramel color at the roots. She wore a pink T-shirt and blue pajama pants with pink hearts. Hell, she’d been dragged through the mountains in those clothes.
“Jake, you were here.” Setting down the toast, she reached for him. Brushed a hand along his bicep until his muscle twitched with awareness. “I knew you would find me. The whole time, the only thing that really scared me was the fear that something would happen to you when you came for me.”
Her concern melted a warm spot in his chest. The sensation was so strong, so damn real, he had to touch the spot for himself to see if he was still holding together there.
“I’m an ex-Marine. A former cop. And enough of a general badass that people don’t tend to worry about me.” His forehead tipped to hers of its own accord, his need to be with her so tangible he didn’t know how he’d ever be able to walk away from her once they got back home.
“I’m not just anyone,” she reminded him, her dark eyes shining. “I care about you, Jake. So much.”
Maybe if he’d been better at relationships—or more wise in the way of women—he would have known what to say. But her soft admission caught him off guard.
And scared him far more than any crook with a gun.
Straightening, he tried to find the words that would keep the situation from getting any more awkward.
“Marnie, I—”
Her fingertips brushed his lips, quieting him.
“I need to say this,” she assured him. “I know we started out kind of rocky between you thinking I was a felon and all the spying on me without me knowing. But you chose the most efficient means to clear me, and I’m glad now that you did.”
Jake’s mouth was dry as dust, so interrupting her now wasn’t an option. Besides, maybe part of him couldn’t believe where she might be headed with all this.
“But something changed for me this week. You made me realize what I felt for Alec—even before we broke up—was just a shadow of how much I could care about someone.”
By now, his brain blared with code red sirens and somehow he got his tongue engaged before this situation careened any more out of control.
“Marnie, I can’t—that is—I care about you, too.” He mirrored her gesture, swiping a finger across her lips. “My lifestyle has always been dangerous. And I like it that way. But this week? When you were at risk? I didn’t like that one bit.”
He’d never been so freaking scared. And he’d worked some hairy situations in his day.
“I don’t understand.” She shook her head, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Alec’s going to jail. We can go back home—”
“Exactly. We can go back to our lives before all this happened. You’ll be safe at your business and you can spend Christmas with your family. And I’ll be grateful as hell knowing you’re okay.”
Far removed from firearms and violence—basically, all the things that had become staples in his life over the past ten years. This was what he was good at. Too bad the job didn’t allow him to rope off his personal life and keep it safe from his professional world.
“You want to go back to the way things were before.” The softness in her voice was gone. With her shoulders straight and her fingers laced together, she reminded him of the way she looked when she was behind the counter at Lose Yourself. Professional. In control.
And yeah, distant.
Hard to believe that was what he’d been going for. With regret, he kissed her forehead and nudged her breakfast tray closer.
“Yes. I think that would be—” painful “—for the best.”
14
“YOU’RE A COP?”
Lianna tried to remind herself this wasn’t a cross-examination and that Rick had been instrumental in helping nab a bad guy.
She paced the floor of a freebie suite assigned to her by the owner of the Marquis as a thank-you for her role in capturing a criminal who’d bilked the hotel. Lianna found it frustrating to think that Rick had still been hiding behind a mask the night before when they’d been together.
Her heart had been totally engaged, some long-buried romantic side of her thrilling to the idea that Rick wanted to peel away the pretense and touch the woman beneath. All the while, he’d kept a big part of himself secret.
She’d slept alone for a few hours after they gave their statements to the local police. Rick had told her he needed to help his brother tie up a few loose ends and she’d been so exhausted she hadn’t argued. But when he’d knocked at her door a few minutes ago, she’d been ready for answers.
“Technically, yes.” Rick sat on the small sofa in her room with its Victorian-gone-deviant decor. Crushed red velvet wallpaper covered the walls between framed ink drawings of antique sex toys. A life-size mannequin of a Victorian nobleman sported a codpiece that would have made for one heck of a conversation starter if she’d been in the mood to discuss that sort of thing. Which she absolutely was not.
Right now, with the realization that Rick had been lying to her all along, her heart ached in a way no libido ever could.
“Meaning?” She had been questioned in a separate room from Rick, so she’d heard only sketchy bits of his statement to local police, and even that had been filtered through the chatter of half a dozen other witnesses to the showdown just before dawn.
“Meaning, that while I happen to be a cop in San Diego, I’m not here in a work capacity. I took a vacation week to help Rafe out. This was personal for him, since Alec swindled his wife out of her savings and duped her into thinking they’d elope.” Rick lowered an arm across the back of the small sofa, the heavy rope of muscles drawing her eye and reminding her what it felt like to have his arms around her.
She wanted to know his touch again, to feel the things only he could make her feel. Yet how could she be with someone who withheld the truth from her? Who might have only been with her for the sake of an investigation?
“So Rafe is a police officer, as well.” She tried to search for what had been true in the things Rick had told her. “And what you said about coming here with him to forget about the wife who left him was at least partially accurate.”
“Well, I thought he’d get over her faster if he found the bastard who’d led her astray so we could send the guy’s ass to jail. Yes. True enough.” His chin jutted forward, defensive. His jeans and T-shirt were rumpled as if he’d caught a few hours of sleep in a chair in the lobby.
Unfortunately for her, that didn’t come close to dimming his appeal. Whereas Alec had been charming and slick, Rick was earthy and real. His dark good looks made it tough to even recall what Alec looked like.
She smoothed her hands over the simple lines of a long, forest-green dress she’d purchased in the boutique that morning since her suitcase remained back at the
All Tucked Inn. The ankle-length outfit she wore now could have passed for a modern holiday dress if not for the laced-up cutout all down her back. But since she’d bought a white cashmere pashmina to wear like a sweater, no one could see the hint of skin beneath the laces.
“Then why didn’t you tell me the truth last night after you learned Jake was a private investigator?” This was the part she kept coming back to, the idea that upset her most. Alec had used her. And while the two men were different in a fundamental way—one was a cop and one was a crook—she still worried they both saw her as nothing more than a pawn. Her fingers wove through the cashmere, clutching it in her clenched fists. “You must have known that Alec was the same guy you sought.”
Rick shook his head.
“Lianna, I wanted to explain everything. But I’d promised Rafe I’d keep cover until we found our guy, and my brother wasn’t answering his phone last night for me to clear it with him.” He sat forward on the couch, his beautiful sea-blue eyes locked on her. “Besides, maybe I wanted to believe that outside stuff didn’t matter. That you and I were already seeing what was real and important in each other. Did it change anything that you’re a lawyer and that you live three thousand miles away from me? Or that I’m a Mexican-Irish cop who will drop everything if my family needs me?”
Rising, he closed the distance between them. Did he know how persuasive he was close up? Ah, who was she kidding? He’d done a damn good job of persuading her from across the room. She had the feeling he’d be equally compelling on a phone call from the west coast, too.
“I don’t know.” She wasn’t sure what to think anymore. “Maybe I’m just scared about getting involved with someone when I don’t know them well. I spent half the week waiting to meet up with a guy who turned out to be a total fake.”
But Alec had lied to her for months, whereas Rick had only needed a couple of days before being upfront with her. And bottom line, Rick moved her in a way Alec never had.
