The enormous man turned and looked back at her, those blue eyes shimmering with curiosity. Thankfully, he just nodded slightly towards her and turned, walking out of her apartment and into the night.
Once he was gone, Emily rushed over to the door and engaged all of her locks, her fingers trembling now that she was alone once again. It took several attempts to get a few of the locks connected because her fingers trembled too badly. Once she was safe again, she leaned against the door and…slid to the floor, staring at the mess of her apartment.
She allowed herself five minutes, even setting a timer on her phone. “Engage the emotions,” she whispered to herself. As soon as she gave herself permission to “feel”, a tear trickled down her cheek. Emily stared at the mess. Her dishes, the beautiful dishes that she’d found at a flea market with the cute flowered pattern, were destroyed. The dishes hadn’t been expensive, but they’d been hers. She’d chosen them and lovingly cleaned them all before stacking them carefully in the cabinets. Her eyes moved to the pillows that she’d hand embroidered. Each of them had been slashed with a knife or something sharp. She’d spent hours at night listening to podcasts while carefully embroidering each pattern. Today, someone had come in and just…destroyed them. A stranger had been inside of her home. A stranger had done this to her life!
The alarm on her phone sounded and Emily turned it off. “Enough!” she said out loud, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Enough!” and she pushed herself up and looked around. “Time to fix this!” and she started with her books. For the next three hours, she stacked her books up one by one and stood them up in the corner. She filled several bags with the spewed food pieces and shattered dishes, then carried each one out to the dumpster, relieved that it was nearing midnight by that point so none of the other residents would be around to ask her questions.
Finally, she stood in the middle of her clean, organized apartment and breathed a sigh of relief. Her home was back in order and even the fingerprint dust was cleaned up. All evidence of a break-in was gone. She didn’t wear jewelry, didn’t own a television and carried her computer with her wherever she went. Emily suspected that the mess created by whoever had broken into her apartment had done extra damage because there wasn’t anything here to steal. So in the grand scheme of things, Emily felt good about her day. Exhausted, but good. Sure, her dishes were broken and her glasses shattered, but those were just things.
Emily knew that violence against things was nothing compared to…well, she wasn’t going there. It was in her past and she was stronger for surviving that incident.
Chapter 2
Kurt stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom, but sleep didn’t come. His mind was working, sifting through the details of the latest break-in and trying to connect the dots. There had been significantly more damage to Emily’s apartment and he didn’t understand why. Perhaps because she hadn’t had anything to steal, but he wasn’t sure if that was all of it and his gut tightened at the possibility that her break-in might be personal. It didn’t fit the pattern of the other break-ins. First of all, the other break-ins had occurred when the residents were out of town on vacation. Not just gone for a few hours during the day. So he and Keith were going on the assumption that the perp committing the break-ins somehow knew how the families were out of town.
And there was also the mystery of Emily. She’d looked so brave as she’d stepped into her apartment earlier tonight. But he’d caught the look of fear in her eyes. It had been just a flash, barely there before she’d hidden it behind a stoic, determined expression.
There was also the mystery of the door. What was going on with all of the locks on her front door? It wasn’t just her front door either. She had special locks on her balcony glass doors and on the other two windows of her apartment, even though she lived on the fifth floor of the building. Anyone other than Spiderman would be hard pressed to break in through one of the windows, but Emily had installed some pretty serious locks on those windows.
There was also the softness of her skin and the silk of her sandy-blond hair. The gorgeous brown eyes and the cute, stubborn chin. A woman with skin like Emily’s should have freckles he thought. The paleness of her skin should be too sensitive to the sun, but there had been no freckles on that adorable nose nor on her pale cheeks. He knew because he’d been looking.
He smiled into the darkness as he remembered her soft curves in the tight leggings. She’d obviously just come from some sort of workout. An exercise class, perhaps? She’d had those sexy wisps of hair at the base of her neck that had curled from sweat. Plus, there’d been a dampness to her that had been…sexy. There. He’d said it. Emily Bertrand was smokin’ hot.
Kurt didn’t like thinking of Emily as a victim. But he was a cop and he shouldn’t be thinking of her in a sexual way, but he couldn’t help it. She was stunning. Even with her makeup melted off from her exercise, she was gorgeous. And strong! Damn, he’d see her arms and she had muscles defined on those slender arms! He liked that about her. Normally, he didn’t really care if a woman had muscles or not. He wasn’t interested in muscles on a woman, he was more focused on her breasts or her ass. Yeah, he loved a good ass topping off a great pair of legs.
But on Emily, those muscles had been pretty damn hot.
With a sigh of frustration, he pushed the sheets off of him and got out of bed. He wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, might as well be productive.
Grabbing a pair of athletic shorts, he pulled them on and went down to his basement. Flipping on the overhead lights, he headed towards the weights. He’d created a weight room in his basement specifically for nights like this. He also worked out with the guys in the gym at the station, but there were many nights when there were too many thoughts running through his mind and the only way to slow them down so that he could work through all of them was to lift weights. Counting the reps focused his mind and grounded him while the burn of his muscles gave him the endorphin rush that soothed his mind and body.
An hour later, Kurt stood up, drenched in sweat and nodded. “Got it,” he said out loud. With grim determination, he headed back upstairs and jumped into the shower.
Chapter 3
Emily paused on the sidewalk, staring at the big man leaning against her car. Detective Anderson, she mentally said in her mind. Not that the man had been very far from her thoughts all night. But still, she hadn’t expected to ever see him again. In her experience, the police had too many crimes to investigate and the most recent criminal activity was where they focused their attention. If they couldn’t figure out who had committed the crime within the first day, they had to move on to the next issue.
In her case, they hadn’t even investigated for one whole day. There’d been no clues to guide the police, so they’d simply…stopped trying.
So seeing this big, tall man here in her parking lot, keeping her from slipping into her car and escaping, she was back on the defensive, angry with him for destroying her cynical perception of police in general.
“How can I help you, Detective?” she asked as politely as possible.
“Who hurt you?”
Emily stiffened as outrage surged through her. First her home and now her history?! “Did you invade my privacy by running a background check on me?” she demanded as fury brought her closer to him, ready to pummel him for any sort of violation of her privacy.
“No,” he replied softly, his voice rich and vibrating with…something. “I’m here asking as a friend. I haven’t put your name through the computer system, Emily.”
His assurance both soothed her temper and made it worse. She was relieved that he hadn’t looked into her past. What had happened to her several years ago was over. She’d moved on. The world had moved on! She didn’t want to dwell on it any longer. But for him to claim that he was her friend? She didn’t have male friends! Especially not men who were big and made her senses zing. She didn’t like that and was outraged by her reaction to him.
“You’re not a friend!” she hissed,
the adrenaline and fury still high even though his words reassured her. “You’re a cop!”
Something shifted in his eyes and an ache stabbed at her chest. Emily pushed the pain away, ignoring it because she refused to feel anything but anger towards this man.
“I’d like to be your friend, Emily.”
She saw the look in his eyes and shook her head. “No,” she argued with a deep conviction brought on through years of surviving. She wasn’t a victim, she was a survivor and her instincts told her that this man…! “You don’t want to be a friend. You want to be more than a friend.”
His eyes softened and those firm lips curled up slightly. “That terrifies you, doesn’t it?”
Emily realized that he hadn’t denied her accusation. For some reason, she respected him for that. But still, she wasn’t that kind of a woman. “You don’t scare me.” She shifted her tote bag on her shoulder. “I have to go to work.”
“Prove it,” he replied, but stepped away from her car. Unfortunately, he didn’t move far enough for her comfort and she hesitated. He must have sensed her need for additional space because he stepped back again.
The additional foot of space between them eased her temper somewhat and she paused, looking up at him. “What do you mean?” she demanded, pressing the button on her key fob to release her door locks.
“If you’re not afraid of me, then have dinner with me at Pino’s tonight. They have the best pizza in town.”
Emily jerked at the offer of dinner at the famous pizza place in Nashville. She didn’t want to go, but still, she didn’t want to not go. If she didn’t go to dinner with him, would he think she was afraid of him? Looking up into those yellow-blue eyes, she knew that he would. For some reason, she couldn’t allow that. With any other man, she’d simply shrug and move on with her day, unconcerned with another man’s opinion of her. But with this man, she cared what he thought of her. So what was it about Detective Kurt Anderson that made her want to…prove him wrong? No, that wasn’t quite right. Prove that she wasn’t afraid? Yes, but…it was more. So much more!
“Fine!” She pulled her door open. “But only because I don’t want you to think that I’m afraid of you,” she told him.
“I’ll see you at six,” he replied, stepping out of the way and heading towards his truck.
Emily watched him for a moment, wanting to yell out her window that she’d changed her mind. But as he walked away, her eyes were drawn to his long, muscular legs encased in another pair of jeans. He wore a different shirt, this one tucked in and her eyes were drawn to his butt. “Wow!” she whispered, staring until he stepped into the cab of a giant pickup truck. The big, blue truck suited him, she thought. It was maybe a year old and huge, but so was Detective Anderson. The big truck fit him, fit his size and his personality.
Unfortunately, she’d stared for too long and he caught her, winking in her direction as he pulled away and headed for the intersection that would envelope him into the early morning Nashville traffic.
Emily drove to the high school where she worked, telling herself that she was an idiot. “Call him up and tell him you’re not meeting him for dinner,” she whispered as she parked in her usual spot. Emily was normally one of the first teachers at the school, but this morning, there were several additional cars in the lot. It was about forty-five minutes before school started, which was the period she called “the calm before the storm”. The students wouldn’t start arriving for another twenty-five minutes with the majority sauntering into the hallways around forty minutes from now. Emily loved this part of the day. It was still quiet and she could get her thoughts and classroom organized.
She loved her job. As a history teacher, she thrived on helping the students understand how the past could influence and predict the future. She knew that lesson in a painful way, she thought as she pulled her sweater closer. High school had been one of the most painful lessons in her life, but she’d survived. And now, she was thriving. She was a strong, confident woman who didn’t put up with any of the stupid crap that some of her students tried to toss out to the teachers. Nor would she permit any of the petty aggressive behaviors that some of the boys consciously or unconsciously enacted towards the girls in her classes. There were the blatant moves of bullying or overly aggressive flirtations of course. But even more insipid were the micro-aggressions that undermined another student’s confidence in more subtle, more powerful ways.
After what had happened to her, Emily wouldn’t allow any of it and called out anyone, male or female, when they tried something like that.
It was her way of making the world a safer place, she told herself.
With a determined nod of her head, she walked into her classroom, dumping her bags into her closet where she locked up her personal items during the day, then grabbed the man’s business card that he’d given her the previous evening.
With rapid fingers on her cell phone, she typed in a message, telling him that she had a previous commitment tonight and wouldn’t be able to meet him for dinner. It wasn’t a lie, actually. Emily taught a Zumba class tonight. But that wasn’t the reason she wasn’t going to meet Detective Kurt Anderson for dinner.
Shoving her phone back into her purse, she turned and set up her laptop, hooking it into the overhead projector. It was time to start her day and banish a certain big, tall, sexy…no, not sexy…pushy detective from her mind!
Chapter 4
“Oz!” Emily yelled, then threw down her bag and rushed over to the huge man, wrapping her arms around his big, broad shoulders. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, feeling tears burn at the back of her eyes as his strong, wonderful arms wrapped around her in a gentle hug. Oz Cole was a big, sweet man with dangerous knowledge. He was one of those scary men who could slip into the darkness and do dangerous things without being detected.
“I’m here in Nashville talking to a client and thought I’d stop by and check in on you,” he told her, pulling back and looking down at her, but his hands remained on her shoulders. “Are you doing okay?”
Emily laughed, wiping away the errant tear. “I’m doing really well,” she told him.
His green eyes continued to look at her for a long moment, narrowing slightly as he took in everything. Oz was one of those men who saw things that others didn’t, so it took all of Emily’s concentration to hide her emotions that were just under the surface right now.
Unfortunately, Emily wasn’t up to the task and Oz saw through her bravado.
“You’re lying. What’s wrong?” he demanded, pulling back and crossing his massive arms over his chest. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She laughed and shook her head, refusing to burden him with her problems anymore. “I’m fine!” she told him again. “How is Charlotte? What are your kids up to lately?” she asked, referring to his daughter Bethany and his son John.
Instantly, Oz’s features lightened and he smiled. “Bethany decided she was going to learn French,” he announced. “She’s already forming sentences. And John is irritated that Bethany is learning something faster than he is, so he keeps playing pranks on her.”
Emily clapped, delighted with the stories of normal, happy lives. “I doubt that Bethany puts up with that, does she?”
“Absolutely not!” he laughed. “John went to put a pair of jeans on one morning and found a creepy, plastic lizard sewn into the inside. Freaked him out. We finally had peace in the house for a couple of days.”
Emily chuckled again. “I doubt it was peace,” she replied. “I suspect that it was more like a strategic regrouping. What happened next?”
Oz shook his head, his expression indicating that he wasn’t sure if he was impressed or terrified of his creative children. “John and his cousins somehow built a platform under Bethany’s bed. In the middle of the night, her bed shifted. Really freaked her out. Me too, actually.”
Oh, the delights of raising brilliant children, she thought. “What was his punishment for that one?”
Oz grin
ned. “I had him work with Ryker on coming up with new ideas for the confidence courses he and Carly build across the country for kids groups.”
Emily sighed, shifting her weight slightly. “You have a wonderful life, Oz,” she sighed and picked her bag up off the sidewalk, pulling it on over her shoulder. “But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
They walked towards the parking lot where their cars were parked.
“I told you, I was just…”
She touched his arm, stopping his explanation. “Really,” she urged softly.
Oz sighed. “I got word that someone had broken into your apartment. I wanted to check in and make sure that you were okay.”
Emily smiled, touched by his concern. Oz was a wonderful, decent, amazing man and, if she were ten years older, Emily might be jealous of Charlotte, his wife. But she loved both of them and the couple was more like an aunt and uncle to her. When she’d been…hurt…in high school, it had been Charlotte’s soothing help that had eased her towards the healing process. And it had been Oz who had helped the police search for the culprit. He had never been found, but every once in a while, Oz and his brother Jayce and their best friend Ryker, all three of whom owned The Solutions Group, came up with a new lead, something that they hunted down with the assistance of the Sheriff, Emerson. They were a sweet group of men who hated to see injustice happen.
Endearing Seduction (The Diamond Club Book 12) Page 2
