Ready (10 page)

She pushed herself into a sitting position, the covers falling to her waist. It didn’t reveal anything, so why was he salivating like she was wearing a peekaboo nightie?

“Why are you up?” she asked, her husky voice traveling along his nerve centers like the most pervasive agent in chemical warfare.

“I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to get started on the investigation,” he said, giving her part of the truth.

She pushed back the covers and scooted to the edge of the bed. “I’ll help you.”

“You don’t have to. It can wait until later.”

She stood up and crossed the room to her dresser, where she pulled out a pair of slouchy socks and tugged them on her bare pink feet. “I won’t go back to sleep, so we might as well get started.”

He was too busy watching the way her unfettered breasts swayed under the cotton of her top to answer her coherently, but she didn’t seem to notice. She stopped when she reached him, though. He was blocking the door.

“Joshua?”

“Uh-huh?”

“It would probably be easier to work in the kitchen at the table.”

“Unless you get something on over that scandalous excuse for a shirt, the only thing we’re going to be working on is how fast I can get your nipples red and swollen like they were the other night.”

She gasped and covered her breasts with her arms, then stepped back as if he’d made a move toward her. “My shirt is not scandalous.”

“It’s thin. I can see every damn line of your body.”

She looked down at herself. “It is not. It’s loose. It doesn’t show anything.”

“Honey, I’m not sure a trench coat would be enough covering for you, but we could try it.” Then a vivid image entered his head of her in a trench coat and nothing else. His sex pulsed and he shook his head at his own idiocy. “Maybe not.”

She stared at him like he’d lost his last brain cell in a bad bet.

He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “Just put some clothes on, okay?”

“Fine, but you have to dress, too.”

He looked down and realized he wasn’t wearing anything but his skivvies. They were soft cotton boxers that clung to his thighs and did nothing to hide the condition of his body. “Don’t worry, I’ll get dressed.”

They met in the kitchen ten minutes later and she set about making coffee while he flipped open his notebook and started going through his notes. “We need to discuss a few things.”

“Like what?” She wasn’t looking at him, and he figured she was trying to forget what had happened in the doorway of her room.

He wished her luck.

“Compiling a list of suspects, for one. There’s no reason to wait for Nemesis to act again to start narrowing down the possibilities.”

“Sounds good.” She stood, watching the coffeepot percolate, and he didn’t tease her about it.

They both needed space. A few hundred miles might just work to calm his libido…or not. He’d wanted her while fighting through the humid jungle to reach a small boy being held captive by a group of fanatics who thought more of ransom money than human life.

He shook off his thoughts and focused on his list. “What about your ex?”

She turned abruptly to face him, her expression shocked. “Mike?”

“You said he fell in love and married another woman.”

“Yes.”

“How is that going, do you know?”

“He’s happy. They’ve got a little girl and I think she’s expecting again. He would have no reason to stalk me—besides, he’s not the type.”

He didn’t like hearing her defend the man she’d once loved enough to marry, but he wasn’t about to ask himself why. “Criminals don’t run around with a big C stamped on their foreheads, Lise.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know that. It’s just that he’s so honest, so upfront about things. If he was mad at me for something, and I honestly can’t imagine what, he’d come right out and tell me.”

“Does this Dudley Do-Right live in Canyon Rock?”

“Yes.”

“It should be easy enough to check if he’s taken any extended vacations lately.”

Lise shook her head. “You’re really barking up the wrong tree on this one.”

“I don’t bark at trees.”

“You’re cranky this morning.”

“I’m horny. There’s a difference.”

“Not from where I’m standing,” she said with asperity and a blush that made him want to kiss her senseless.

“Okay, let’s move on.”

“Gladly.”

“What about other lovers?”

“There aren’t any.”

“At all?”

“At all. I got married when I was eighteen and divorced when I was twenty-six. I’ve spent the last two years focused on my career.”

“What about sex?” If he sounded appalled, that was because he was.
Two years without sex?

“We’re not all sexual time bombs ready to go off with little to no provocation.” Her look said that was exactly what she thought he was.

“A t-shirt thin enough to show you weren’t wearing a bra is not small provocation.”

“Oh, please. Let’s not go there again.”

“So, no other lovers?” He just had to be sure.

“None.”

“Any wannabes?” A thwarted man could be a dangerous man.

“I didn’t date.”

“At all?”

“No!”

He put his hands up to ward off any more explosions. “All right. I just find it hard to believe no one asked you out in two years.”

“I’m a writer. I keep to myself and I wasn’t interested. Men can tell these things.”

“You didn’t act uninterested with me.”

“I liked you.”

“You say that in the past tense. Don’t you like me anymore?” He was pushing her again, but he loved watching this woman everyone else thought was so shy and quiet spark like a lit roman candle.

She could explode over him anytime.

“I don’t like you right now,” she said with enough bite to make him laugh.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he lied without compunction.

She didn’t believe him anyway, and her little harrumph let him know it.

“Okay, what about disgruntled readers?”

“I don’t get a lot of negative mail on my books. Once in a while someone offended by the aggressive personalities of my heroines writes and accuses me of promoting lesbianism or far-left feminism, but for the most part, people who read what I write like it.”

“I want to see those letters.”

“No problem. I keep a weird letter file.”

He made a note of that.

“Anything else?”

“Do
you
have any ideas at all?”

She shook her head. “I really don’t. If my dad were alive, I’d almost think he could have hired someone to torment me, but I don’t have any enemies that I know of.”

“Bella said he was a cold son of a bitch, but would he really have done something like that?”

She looked at him and what he saw in her eyes kicked him straight in the gut. “Probably not, but he made no pretense of caring for me.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “My mom died from complications after my birth. He accused me more than once of killing her.”

“That’s insane.”

“Yes, it is. He was a man with a very twisted view of life.”

“You don’t share it. Neither does Jake.”

“Maybe the fact he ignored us so much was a good thing.” She turned to pour two mugs of steaming coffee. “There were other people in our lives. Our grandparents on Mom’s side were alive until I was ten. Dad’s parents were out of the picture before I was born. If he was anything to go by, they weren’t a great loss.”

“My stepfather never distinguished between me and my sisters in affection. He cared about us all. It’s the kind of father I’d want to be if I had kids.”

“He’s a wonderful man.”

“Yes, but your dad wasn’t.”

“No, and growing up was harder because of it, but I didn’t grow up in the African desert where babies starve to death every day, or in a home where drugs are more important than food. Life could have been a lot worse.”

Joshua agreed, but he had a hard time understanding any father who wouldn’t love a daughter as incredible as the woman standing in front of him.

“That son of a bitch
. He deleted my book.”

The sound of Lise swearing was enough to command Joshua’s full attention, not to mention the fury in her tone.

He got up from the table where he’d been going over the file of “weird” letters Lise had gotten from readers over the years and went in to stand behind her at the computer. “What do you mean?”

She turned her body, her face flushed with bad temper. “He deleted the book I’m working on.”

“Shit.” She’d told him she was fighting to make deadline as it was. “Do you have backup?”

“Of course, but it really makes me mad that he was inside my computer. I feel violated.” She shook her head, a cynical expression twisting her beautiful features. “But then, what’s new about that? He’s been violating my life for months.”

She grabbed a memory fob and plugged into the front USB port on her computer, then clicked her mouse.

Joshua flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed Hotwire’s phone.

His buddy was letting himself into the apartment a minute later.

“What’s this about the perp playing on your computer? I did a thorough scan of your system when we were checking the apartment for bugs and didn’t find any footprints.”

Lise looked up, her eyes snapping. “I don’t know about footprints, but that jerk-off deleted my book.”

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

Lise got up. “Go right ahead. I’m going to write on my Dana.” She grabbed what looked like a black keyboard with a small display screen at the top. “I’m not going to let him stop me from making my deadline.”

Joshua smiled at her. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

She stopped, startled, and stared at him as if he’d sprouted a halo or something.

Joshua winked at her and turned, whistling “We Will Rock You” by Queen on his way back into the kitchen.

Lise watched Joshua walk away with a sense of unreality and a silly grin twitching at the corners of her mouth.

“He likes you,” Hotwire said.

She shifted her gaze to the blond man. “I think maybe you’re right, and here I was believing it was all just unbridled lust for my body.”

Hotwire grinned. “That, too.”

“I—”

“Hey, it’s obvious. He’s been pissing a circle around you since you got off the plane. Nitro and I are laughing our as—tails off because of it.”

She couldn’t help smiling at Hotwire’s imagery. It was pretty apt for the way Joshua had been acting, justified or not.

“Is he like this a lot?”

“Nah. He wasn’t even this territorial with Melody.”

“Who’s Melody?”

“Wolf’ll tell you sometime, maybe.”

She realized her curiosity was showing again and sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s a bad habit I have.”

“I don’t think Wolf would mind if you asked him about it.”

“I think you’re confusing his feelings of protectiveness because he’s helping me with something else.”

“Nah. He’s got a savior complex that goes bone deep, but it doesn’t extend to sexual possessiveness.”

She hadn’t meant that; she’d been talking about Hotwire’s belief that Joshua wouldn’t mind her prying, but why bother correcting him? For some reason he believed Joshua’s feelings for her involved more than lust.

If she argued about it with him, she might foolishly allow him to convince her.

She hugged her Dana to her chest, intrigued by Hotwire’s other comment. “What do you mean,
a savior complex
?”

“Joshua figures he’s got to save the world. He’s risked his life for other people so many times, I think he sees it as a way of life.”

“But he’s not proud of what he does.”

“No. He figures that since he gets paid for it, that negates the good he does.”

“But he doesn’t get paid for all of it, does he?” she guessed.

Hotwire shook his head. “No, he sure don’t, but don’t go thinking that counts any with him. It doesn’t.”

“What about you—does it count with you?”

The charming Georgia boy transformed into an emotionless mercenary before her very eyes. “We’ve all got our reasons for doing what we do.”

She didn’t let the transformation faze her. She just grinned wider. “I guess you do, but I’m willing to bet that Joshua isn’t the only man around here with a savior complex.”

She emulated Joshua’s wink and turned away before Hotwire could answer.

She heard nothing but silence behind her for several seconds and then the sound of furious typing on the desktop’s keyboard reached her ears.

Joshua laid aside his notes. He had a few letters written by potential suspects from the manila folder Lise called her “weird” letter file.

While Lise had not saved envelopes, she had noted on each letter what city and state or country it had been written from. She’d also jotted down if the letter came from a penal institution and which one. That was something, but finding the people who had written the letters wasn’t going to be completely straightforward.

He stood up and stretched before going to the edge of the living room. Lise defiantly sat in the maple rocker that was in direct line to the hidden camera and typed away on her small black keyboard.

“Ready for a break?”

She didn’t respond and he waited until her fingers stopped their rapid clicking on the small keyboard, and then he asked the question again. Hotwire got like that sometimes and Joshua had learned to wait for the opportune moment to break his concentration.

She looked up, her expression dazed. “A break?”

“Yeah.”

“I…” She looked down at the keyboard in her lap and started reading out loud to herself, then said, “Maybe in a little while,” before going back to reading the words aloud.

“Okay.”

Soon she was typing again. From her zombie-like tone, he figured
a little while
was going to take longer than a few minutes.

He walked over to where Hotwire was working on her computer and dropped the stack of letters beside him. “See what you can find out about these people.”

His buddy nodded. “You got it.”

“I’m going for a run—you okay to stick around here for an hour or so?”

“Sure.” Hotwire grabbed the letters and started shuffling through them. “Could take that long to get preliminary locations for these.”