Hot Secrets (19 page)

“It’s not on fire,” Lauren said, glancing at
Blake.

“It’s contained,” Blake said. “That doesn’t mean
it’s not on fire, or it wasn’t on fire.” He dropped his phone to
the seat, and grumbled something about hanging Royce up by his
toes. “Looks like several houses down is as close as we’re going to
get with all the yellow tap.” He angled the Ranger to back in
between two cars, and put the car in reverse, pausing to say, “I’ll
go get Royce and bring him to”

Lauren shoved open the door, hopped out, and started
running towards the house, the cool night air whipping through her
hair and making her pull her the jacket of her sweat suit closer to
her body.

“Lauren!” Blake shouted.

She ignored him, cutting up a line of bushes to
avoid the cluster of four official personnel not far away, and then
ducking under the tape.

Blake shouted again, getting closer, and Lauren
stepped up her pace, and charged towards the porch. She hit the
first step, relieved that if there was any structural damage, it
wasn’t significant enough to be seen from here.

She entered the front door, hearing Blake talking to
someone behind her. She paused inside the foyer, seeing no obvious
fire or damage, but the scent of smoke tainted the air, bitter
proof there had been a fire. The sound of voices drew her to the
left, towards her father’s den.

Her tennis shoes padded soundlessly over the carpet
and she paused at the cracked door, some invisible force, instinct,
telling her to wait, to listen. She eased around the edge of the
door so that she could see into the room.

Royce was standing by the marble fireplace, Luke at
the opposite side. Her father, and some man she didn’t recognize,
sat in leather chairs framing the couch.

“I’m not going to keep this from her,” Royce said.
“I’m done, Senator. This ends tonight.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” her father said, standing
up. “When I hired you”

“I don’t work for you,” he said. ”I did you a favor
because you saved my father’s life in Vietnam. The end.”

The words cut through Lauren and she acted
immediately, shoving open the door and stepping inside, seeing only
Royce. “Favor? I was a favor.”

“Lauren,” Royce said, taking a step towards her. “I
can explain.”

“That’s a ‘yes,’” she said, humiliation and hurt
pouring through her. She turned and started to run, bursting
through the front door, rushing down the steps, and straight into
the path of Blake. At the same moment, Royce’s hand was on her arm,
shooting hot fire up her arm.

She whirled around to face him, jerking out of his
grasp. “Don’t touch me. You don’t ever touch me again.”

“Let me explain. Please. Just hear me out.”

“You made a deal with my father,” she said. “You
used sex and my feelings to get inside my life to do his bidding
whatever the hell it was. There’s nothing you can say that I want
to hear.”

“He asked me to check out a couple threats against
your life and I agreed. And I would have told you but I saw you
were in danger and I wasn’t going to risk you pushing me away.”

“So you thought you’d just fuck me into
submission?”

“No,” he breathed out. “Damn it, no. This has been
eating me alive. You had me at ‘hello,’ Lauren. Hell, you had me
from across the room. I couldn’t, I can’t, let you push me away and
end up dead. I won’t let that happen.”

“I’m not your concern. Not anymore.”

“This wasn’t a fire. It was a bomb, delivered in a
package that said it was for you. It went off, sitting on a table
in the dining room; thankfully when no one was around.”

She gasped. “Oh God. I… I can’t believe this is
happening.” Luke stepped to Royce’s side. “Julie. I need to make
sure Julie”

“I know,” Luke said. “Kyle tried to get her to my
place. He’s taking her to a well secured hotel. Her choice.”

She nodded. “Okay. Yes.”

“And you’re coming home with me,” Royce said.

“No. I’m going to stay with Julie.”

“Staying with Julie makes her more of a target,” he
said. “You have to see that.”

“The police have to know about this now,” she said.
“I’ll talk to them. I’m sure they want to talk to me. I’ll get
protection.”

He closed the distance between them and pulled her
into his arms, his face buried in her neck, lips by her ear. “I
swear to you, Lauren, that if you don’t leave here with me of your
own free will, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out
of here. Hate me if you have to but you’re going to be alive when
this is over.”

She was trembling with his touch, with the warmth of
his breath on her neck, with desire to turn back time and have him
be who she’d thought he was. To have them be what she’d thought
they were. “I can’t. I just… can’t.”

“She can stay at my place tonight,” Blake said from
behind her. “Then you two can figure things out from there.”

Royce pulled back to look at her, his blue eyes hard
with determination. “Choose. Me or Blake?”

“Blake.”

His chest expanded and then relaxed, before he took
a step backwards. “We have to talk.”

“No. No, we don’t.” She turned to Blake. “Please get
me out of here.”

His gaze lifted over her head to Royce’s and held a
long moment before he stepped aside and waved her forward.

Once they were in the Ranger, darkness and silence
was all there was, until finally, they pulled into the garage of
their building and parked.

They sat there a moment, neither of them moving.
“When I was in the ATF I fell in love with a woman, another
agent.”

Shocked at his personal confession, she turned to
look at him, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was clutching the
steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall in front of them.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I… knew that.”

“So you know she was murdered.”

Her heart clenched. “Yes.”

His head jerked around, his gaze piercing hers, even in the
darkness of the vehicle. “If Royce had asked me if he should have
come clean with you, I wouldn’t have told him ‘no’ but ‘hell no’.
You would have done what you did tonight. You would have pushed him
away and made it damn near impossible for him to protect you. And
you don’t take risks with someone’s life, especially not someone
you care about the way he cares about you. You risk their anger,
their inability to forgive you, but
you don’t
let them die.”

She could barely breathe with his words. “You blame
yourself. You think you compromised on something that cost her her
life.”

“I know I did,” he said. “I let her die. He’s been a
wreck, worried you would hate him, worried about protecting you.
And that woman on the machine was nothing to him, Lauren. Nothing.
You are. He has a past but so do you. We’re going upstairs and you
aren’t staying with me. You’re staying with him. If you want to
sleep in the guest room, then so be it, but you need to be with
him, so you two can try and work this out.”

She started to cry, the second time in two days and
she couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried before that. She
hadn’t even cried when she’d found Roger in bed with his bimbo. Mad
at her weakness, she swiped the tears, and shoved the door
open.

Blake met her at the bed of the truck, and they
walked in silence to the elevator and then the apartment. She
waited for him to search the apartment, and then joined him. She
stood inside the door, trying to decide what to do, unsure how she
felt. No, she wasn’t unsure. She hurt. She hurt like she’d never
hurt before.

Blake sat down on the couch and she walked into
Royce’s room, ignoring the rumpled sheets and the spicy male scent
of the man she knew she loved, the man she’d always known would
break her heart, and gathered as many of her things as would fit in
a bag. She needed space, she needed to think. She needed trust.

She walked out of the bedroom, heading to the spare
room down a hallway to the left of the master. Blake was watching
the news, and he didn’t look up, but when she was about to turn
down the hall, the television went off.

“Lauren.”

She paused without turning. “I meant it when I said
‘what if’ destroys. It’s the bitch of all bitches. Don’t give her a
chance to destroy you, or my brother.”

Chapter Eighteen

Lauren’s cell phone alarm buzzed near her head and
her lashes shot open. She’d dozed off and on, but true deep sleep
had never come. She turned off the alarm, emotion swelling insider
her. Royce hadn’t come to her, and it hurt, which confused her. She
had told him to stay away. She wanted him to stay away. She sat up.
Oh God. What if something had happened? What if he never came home?
She shot to her feet, tugging her long pajama top to her knees as
she hurried down the hall and rounded the wall, to stop dead in her
tracks. Royce and Blake were both there, fully dressed and sleeping
the two chairs they occupied reclined back, the television on
mute.

Lauren stared at Royce, his long hair half out of
the clasp at his neck, the long, dark strands brushing his
handsome, tension etched face. She inhaled and started to tiptoe to
his bedroom, where she’d realized last night she’d left her purse
and makeup, and pretty much everything she needed to get ready for
work. She crept into his room, gently eased the door shut and then
rushed to the bathroom.

Minutes later, she stepped into the shower, the hot
water pouring relief into her stiff, tired muscles. She lingered,
taking her time, not eager to get out and face the day, most likely
filled with police and news people.

Finally, she forced herself to turn off the shower
and pulled the curtain back. Royce sat on the toilet. Lauren jumped
and let out a tiny yelp. He handed her a towel, his eyes lowered.
She accepted it and wrapped it around herself.

His gaze lifted to hers, his eyes so blue, so
tormented, they stole her breath. “I couldn’t go to bed knowing you
weren’t there.”

She squeezed her lashes shut, water dripping down
her cheeks, off her hair. “I can’t do this now. Not before I go to
work.” She stepped out of the tub and he wrapped his arms around
her, pulled her close. “I wanted to tell you. I was going to tell
you. I wasn’t about to let your father hold this over my head for
the rest of our lives. I”

She shoved away from him, suddenly furious. This was about
her father. “Right. You wouldn’t want my father to hold this over
your head.” She pointed at the door. “I know this is your bathroom
but please leave and let me get dressed. Please. I need to be
alone.”

“You took that wrong. You didn’t”

“I don’t want to hear this now, Royce. I want to go
to work and do what I do far better than relationships. I put
criminals behind bars.”

He studied her a long moment and then scrubbed his
heavily stubble jaw and stood up, towering over her. His eyes
pierced hers, lingering on her face for several tense seconds,
before he turned and walked away. She stood there, unable to move,
in a puddle of water, and then something snapped inside her. She
ran after him, rounding the bathroom door at the same moment he
reached for the bedroom door.

“Consider yourself fired.”

He turned to look at her. “You can’t fire me. You
didn’t hire me and neither did your father, Lauren. I promised to
check out a threat. I fell in love. The end.” He turned and yanked
open the door and left, slamming it behind him.

Lauren sank down on the floor and damn it, she was
flipping crying again. He didn’t love her. No. And saying he did
was manipulative and mean. She was so damn tired of the men in her
life using her like some sort of token. She swiped angrily at the
stupid tears she should be above and forced herself to stand up. It
was time she took a real lesson from Julie, that she separated sex
from relationships, accepted that the relationship part was better
left for people who liked heartache, because she didn’t.

***

Royce showered in the spare bathroom and changed
into jeans and a black t-shirt he’d left in his dryer, and was
pulling on a leather jacket, when the bedroom door opened. Lauren
emerged, dressed in a cream colored suit that grabbed the
highlights in her long, brown hair and turned them to sunshine.
Hair he knew smelled like honey and vanilla. God, he had it bad for
this woman and she hated him. He was pathetic, the kind of pathetic
he would have called foolish in any other man.

“Ready?” he asked.

“You’re taking me?”

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he said, and there was a
bite to his voice he couldn’t hide. She had a fist around his heart
and just kept squeezing. “You’re stuck with me until I catch your
would-be killer. Then you can kick me to the curb.”

She stared at him a long moment and then cut her
gaze, her shoulders folding in slightly, that sunshine hair hiding
her face. Emotion rolled off of her and punched him in the gut,
twisting him in guilty knots.

“Lauren,” he said softly.

Her gaze lifted to his. “Yes?”

“Truce, baby. Today is going to be hell. Let’s be on
the same team so we can get this SOB and make him pay.”

“Yes,” she said, a slight tremble to her voice.
“Yes, okay.” She walked towards him but they didn’t speak.

They walked to the truck in silence, the tension
between them so thick it might as well have been concrete. He
helped her into the vehicle, their glances catching, the awareness
between them crackling in the air. She still cared about him; he
saw that in her eyes and determination filled him. He was going to
make things right.

Fifteen minutes later, he parked at a meter in front
of her office. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Aren’t you just
dropping me off?”

“Not today. Whoever this is saw us fight last night,
or I’ll gamble that he did, which means we need to send a clear
message. I’m still here and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to
walk you in and I’m going to kiss you goodbye in public.”