by Joanne Rock
Now there weren’t just morning-after spooks on his tail. There was a whole legion of niggling regret demons and one very pissed-off ghost of what might have been.
SHE MIGHT HAVE PLANNED this better.
In the past eight months, she’d learned how to run a board meeting, mastered a travel schedule to oversee her offices abroad and played mediator to countless interdepartmental spats. Surely she could have devised a way to broach this subject with Wes in a way that didn’t put him so far on the defensive he was seething at the other end of her kitchen, the steam rising off him faster than their freshly boiled tea.
Too bad she’d been afraid to go to sleep last night, terrified she’d wake up so out of her mind in love with the man in her bed that she would never be free of him. She hadn’t even learned how to master her own insecurities. She was jealous that he met with strange women to crack a possible prostitution ring, for crying out loud.
Any guy noble enough to put his neck on the line as a cop didn’t deserve that kind of anxiety from his partner. Girlfriend. Whatever she was supposed to be to this man who freely admitted he’d never been able to make a relationship work before.
If only he could give her some time to forge her own path first. To find her own strengths and get a handle on her own dreams. Maybe then she’d be able to commit herself to being the kind of woman Wes deserved. She just needed some more room to breathe. More space to think things through before they plowed ahead at break-neck speed.
“I thought I could brazen out an affair with you, Wes, but I can’t. At least, not right now. I’m an old-school, hearts-and-flowers type of girl no matter how tough I try to be in the business world. And I just can’t find it in myself to cut off my feelings from sex and simply enjoy what we have.” At least, that was part of it.
They didn’t need to delve into her lack of confidence now, did they? It was tough enough to deny herself the man she cared about without picking apart her psyche, too.
“Who the hell expects you to cut off your feelings from sex?” He gulped down another slurp of tea that had to singe all the way down. “I sure as hell have feelings about you, and I damn well expect you to have feelings about me after the conference room table, and the Park Avenue encounter, the alleyway…and that’s not saying anything about last night.”
“You have feelings for me?” Her feminine radar blinked wildly at the thought of this man harboring a hint of deeper emotions for her. All this time, she’d thought she was the only one whose heart was getting involved in their affair. “What kind?”
His brow furrowed as if she’d just asked him to solve quadratic equations. “Hell, I don’t know. But you can bet I feel something when I’m with you.”
Disappointment fizzled through her, renewing her decision to untangle herself from him before she had more to lose than great sex.
“Well if you ever figure it out, you be sure to let me know. I think we could both use a little time and space to find our footing with whatever is happening between us.” She stared at the man she’d clung to half the night, feeding a frenzy of need inside her she hadn’t even known existed. It wouldn’t be easy to walk away from that, even knowing it was the right thing to do. “More tea?”
Dark clouds rolled through those gray eyes of his, warning her of the storm coming. She braced herself for a tirade in Wes’s plainspoken style, but instead of arguing, he suddenly lifted his fingers to his lips and motioned for her to be quiet.
“What?” She peered around her studio, finally noticing Eloise standing on guard at the front door, her ears perking straight up as she stared at the knob expectantly.
Someone was outside her apartment.
Tension crackled as she watched Wes move stealthily across her floor, his steps soundless despite his long strides. For a moment, she hoped maybe it was the paperboy, and then she remembered she didn’t subscribe to a paper.
And anyone who wanted to see her should have buzzed in downstairs.
Maybe it could be a neighbor loitering around the hall, looking for a lost key? The superintendent changing a lightbulb? Her brain rushed to supply scenarios even as her gut instinct gave her a bad feeling. She swallowed back a wave of fear, knowing Wes could handle whatever came his way. Still, what if her would-be intruder had a gun? Or worse, what if more than one per son lurked outside her door?
She rose, unable to sit still while Wes confronted her problems by himself. She might not be a trained professional, but she had a vested interest in seeing her antagonizer brought low.
Her bravado held right until Wes’s gun flashed, the dull gleam of silver sending a chill through her. She paused a few feet behind Eloise while Wes positioned himself by the door and motioned for her to get back.
Too bad her ancient fuzzy slippers were rooted to the floor beneath her. She bent down near Eloise, ready to vault into action if anyone bothered her dog, guns be damned.
Wes reached for the door handle, utterly silent as he listened. Waited. Jerked the door open with a start.
His gun glinted in front of a woman’s face.
Kelly Kline’s face.
Her hands whipped over her head, raised in surrender, skin going pale on the other side of Wes’s gun.
“I’m just here to see Tempest.”
Scrambling to her feet, Tempest walked closer to the standoff where Wes drew her co-worker inside, never taking his gun off her.
“It’s okay, Wes. She works with me.”
He snorted. “All the more reason to suspect her.”
Kelly’s eyes widened. “You’re the guy from last night.” She looked from Wes to Tempest, her gaze lingering on her CEO. “Is he here against your will?”
“He’s a detective,” Tempest inserted, thinking to put her at ease, even though now she was starting to wonder if Kelly’s visit today had been a social one.
Could her ambitious VP be vindictive enough to go after Tempest if her path up the career ladder had been thwarted?
Wes pushed Kelly into a chair near the door while Eloise barked intermittently.
“I’ll be asking the questions here. Just be kind enough to keep your hands where I can see them, Ms. Kline, and we won’t have any problems.” Wes tucked his weapon in the back of his trousers and kept his focus on Kelly. “Care to explain how you got into the building without Tempest buzzing you in?”
“A man coming out held the door for me.” She crossed long legs in a pencil-slim skirt that rested just above her knees. “Since it was raining, I didn’t think twice about coming inside and looking up Tempest on the directory. Now would you please tell me what this is about?”
Perhaps seeing the futility of firing questions at Wes, she directed a haughty stare toward Tempest.
Certain Wes wanted to run the show with their visitor, she said nothing.
“Not until you explain your reason for showing up here unannounced.” The scowl on Wes’s face suggested he didn’t appreciate high-handed attitudes.
Tempest held her breath, wondering if Kelly would turn out to be the intruder who insisted she was in the wrong business. The Whores ’R’ Us business.
“When I found out Tempest wouldn’t be in the office today, I decided to track her down at home because what I have to say won’t wait.” Kelly smoothed her hands over her skirt before she looked Tempest in the eye. “I’m handing in my resignation.”
“You’re quitting?” She hadn’t been prepared for that, considering Kelly had done everything but stand on her head to prove how committed she was to Boucher Enterprises. “You had so many plans for development, so many projects in the works overseas.”
“Wait a minute.” Wes reached out toward Kelly. “I’d like to see the letter please.”
“That’s between me and Tempest.” Her coral-painted lips curled. “And you haven’t even explained to me what’s going on here. If I’m going to be greeted by a gun in the face, I think I’ve earned the right to know why.”
“The NYPD is helping Ms. Boucher find out who’s be
en harassing her. And you’re welcome to leave if you can produce the letter of resignation you say you were submitting today.”
“Well I can’t do that because I haven’t actually drawn it up yet. I wanted to speak to Tempest about what terms I might expect.”
As if. The woman was insane if she thought she could dictate terms for quitting.
Wes didn’t look overly impressed with her answer either. Nor did he seem any more pleased with the hedging answers she went on to give about her whereabouts the night before, after she’d left Mick’s Grill, or her reasons for using MatingGame’s services in the first place.
She maintained her dating life was her personal affair, and that she’d gone straight home after meeting Wes. A fact which no one could vouch for since she lived alone and hadn’t seen anyone on her way into her apartment.
After another half hour of circular conversation and petulant answers, Wes allowed Kelly to leave with a re minder that she needed to conduct all business with Tempest at the company headquarters and not a private residence.
When the apartment door finally slammed shut be hind her co-worker, Tempest didn’t even know where to begin. She had more reason than ever to suspect Kelly was up to no good, although Wes said it would be difficult to prove anything until she made her next move.
Did that mean Tempest needed to wait for an escalation in violence against her?
And as if that weren’t unsettling enough, she also hadn’t even succeeded in getting Wes to agree their affair was over. But with a whole new set of fears and worries churning through her, she didn’t know if she could find the emotional fortitude to debate the merits of a relationship built on lust today.
Now, she watched Wes as he stared out the window toward the street, thudding his forehead lightly on the glass. Making sure Kelly really left?
He turned toward her after a long moment, swiping a hand through his dark hair.
“She’s lying about why she came over here.” He stalked restlessly around the apartment, his body tense as if every muscle was coiled with tension.
Tempest said nothing, sensing he’d entered some kind of thinking zone and hadn’t really been talking to her anyhow.
He paced a few more steps and stopped. “And we know she uses MatingGame to meet men. But is she strong enough to—” Pivoting on his heel, he focused on her. “Do you know if she works out?”
Confused, she shook her head. She’d only been on board with the company for eight months, and Kelly had probably been out of the country half that time.
“The murder victim was strangled,” Wes continued, picking up his pace again until Eloise barked at him, tail wagging. “And whoever did it would have needed a hell of a lot of muscle.”
Tempest bent to quiet her dog while that bit of information rolled over her. Strangulation? Somehow it seemed more brutally cold than a gunshot. She wondered why she hadn’t asked Wes about it before.
Her fingers went to her throat, seeking the reassurance of her favorite quartz pendant until she remembered she hadn’t worn it today. She was still loafing around the apartment in her bathrobe.
Before she could ask Wes more about how the murder case related to the break-in and vandalism at her apartment, the doorbell rang, raking along nerves al ready worn raw. This time at least, her visitor had used the buzz-in system connected to the downstairs door.
“That’ll be my partner,” Wes supplied as he moved toward the intercom speaker and exchanged a few words with a woman on the other end. Turning back to Tem pest, he pushed the buzzer to admit the newcomer. “I called her before I took a shower this morning so she could swing by for a couple of hours.”
Wes worked with a woman?
A stupid concern when ten thousand other worries bombarded her from all sides, but Tempest couldn’t deny the flash of jealousy at the thought.
“You asked your partner to come here?” Why hadn’t she at least taken a shower this morning? She probably looked like she’d been cut from one of those real-life cop shows where the women were always wearing mangy bathrobes with their hair shooting out of their heads in twenty different directions.
But logically, she knew that if she wanted Wes to solve his case, it would be a good thing for him to join forces with his partner instead of sacrificing himself to Tempest’s insatiable new lust day after day.
“I’ve got to meet the next batch of women from Blind Date at Mick’s this afternoon, but I trust Torres to keep you safe.” Withdrawing his gun from the back of his pants, he flipped some little switch under the barrel be fore dropping it into a holster he’d slung over a chair.
Again with the dates?
She hated the idea of him spending all afternoon getting hit on by women from every borough in the city, but she held her tongue and slowly quelled her old in securities, reminding herself that just yesterday she’d been looking for a way to get some distance between her and Wes. Today it seemed, she’d have it in spades.
There was a knock at the door behind her, startling her into realizing that Wes would be walking out to hunt for a killer who had strangled his last victim. And it dawned on her in that instant that her jealousy seemed petty and her need for distance seemed incredibly selfish. Right now, only one thing mattered.
She reached out to stop him before he could admit his partner, her hand clenching around his wrist. “Be careful.”
“You, too.” Leaning in for a kiss, he covered her mouth with his and clamped his hand around her jaw, holding her steady while he tasted her one more time.
As he released her and Tempest stared up into his eyes, she already regretted that it would be their last.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WES WRENCHED OPEN Tempest’s door, ready to lose himself in work since his personal life seemed to be disintegrating under his feet. Untangling a murder case seemed easy compared to comprehending the intricacies of the female mind. The taste of Tempest’s kiss lingered on his lips as he spied his partner on the other side of the door.
Holding the leash of his 150-pound St. Bernard.
“You brought Kong?” His words were lost in an onslaught of barking and growling as the two dogs spied each other.
Eloise launched in front of Tempest to go head-to-head with the new canine in her territory. Vanessa’s body lurched forward with the force of Kong’s response, though she clung tenaciously to the leash.
“I thought it would be a nice surprise,” Vanessa shouted over the din of woofing. “I didn’t know she had a dog.”
Tempest’s voice cut through the noise. “Eloise, heel.”
The terse words seemed to soothe the German shepherd, her barks quieting as she padded behind Tempest, though her fur remained ruffled along the back of her neck.
Vanessa whistled appreciatively while she struggled with Kong. “That’s an animal with some pretty manners.”
Wes sighed as he took the leash from his partner. “Don’t let her upstage my dog, Torres.” Tugging harder, he shouted to Kong until he got her settled down and almost civil. “She’s just a little more high-spirited.”
Wes quieted Kong as he stroked her head, but there was nothing quiet inside him as he thought about walking out of Tempest’s apartment. Sure it might be easier to leave now than to confront the whole host of concerns Tempest revealed this morning, but he’d been choosing that easy route for too long, continually opting for the path of least resistance when it came to relation ships.
Something about Tempest made him want to work a little harder this time, to try his hand at untangling the knots and soothing the raw emotions exposed from their night together. And damned if the thought of losing her didn’t make him reevaluate things. Rethink what he wanted out of his life.
After making introductions in the foyer, Wes watched the dogs circling each other and inspiration struck. A way to buy himself a little more time.
“Vanessa, how about you take Kong and Eloise down to the street and let them get more comfortable with each other on neutral terrain? They mig
ht relax faster that way and you can treat them to a snack.” He hoped his partner would take the hint since he really needed a few more minutes with Tempest.
“Are you sure she can handle both of them?” Tem pest bit her lip as she looked from the dogs to Vanessa and back. “They’re pretty big.”
“Vanessa’s stronger than me. And she’s a ninja.” He dug in his wallet for a few bucks and jammed them in his partner’s hand before she could protest. He clipped Eloise’s leash to her collar and handed it to Vanessa. “She’ll be fine.”
He pried the door open behind her and steered her into the hallway as he lowered his voice for her ears alone. “I need five more minutes if I’m ever going to break the one-month barrier like we talked about. Got it?”
Understanding lit her eyes before Tempest followed them out.
“There’s a pretzel vendor on the corner,” Tempest called over his shoulder. “Eloise is usually more agree able after a visit with him.”
To Wes’s relief, Vanessa nodded. Smiled. “No problem.” She turned her gaze on him, however, and frowned. “And I’m not a ninja. I practice kendo, you damn cave dweller.”
Steering the dogs toward the stairs, Vanessa walked away, lean muscles flexing as she wrangled the animals and began to lecture them about proper canine street etiquette.
Unwilling to waste his window of time with Tempest, he guided her back inside the apartment, closing the door behind them.
“What was that all about?” She eyed him warily, her bathrobe swinging about her legs as she turned to face him. “What one-month barrier?”
Wes had forgotten women possessed bionic hearing.
“Inside joke.” He held out the desk chair for her and waited for her to take a seat before he leaned on the desk. “Vanessa says I can’t keep a relationship for more than a few weeks, hence the one-month obstacle. I hoped if she could give us a little more time together, I could figure out what happened to make you do the about-face this morning.”
