THE RUMBLING of male voices disappeared down the stairs, and Katie slipped on her sneakers, which she assumed Luke must have taken off. She struggled to stand, putting all her weight on her good leg. Dumb knee, not to mention her calf. It hurt worse from having a needle poked through it than it did from the cut. Katie dug her cell phone out of her purse and checked caller ID. Donna had called. Not once, but several times, which meant she had something important to share. But first she had to deal with the current situation.
Katie headed to the hallway, hesitating as she shoved a hand through her messy hair and then over her rumpled clothes. She prayed she looked as if she’d spent hours in the E.R., with no telltale signs that hours in bed with Luke had followed.
She clutched the winding wooden rail of the stairwell and sucked up the pain, ready to get this over with. When she finally managed to reach floor level, Katie followed the echo of voices and found Luke and Ron standing in the kitchen.
Or what was left of it.
“Good grief,” Katie said, pressing a hand to her forehead, appalled at the sight of broken glass, smashed pictures and food products dumped everywhere. “What happened?”
Both men were staring at her; both seemed to be filled with condemnation. Luke, because she’d said she felt like a groupie. Ron, because he thought she was one, given the scene in front of them. The attention from both wasn’t easy to bear, considering her body still hummed from Luke’s touch. Her cheeks were probably flushed. Her lips swollen.
Ron cast Katie a suspicious look, and spoke with a deliberateness in his tone that said she was right—she looked as if she’d just had a sexcapade with his client. “You tell me,” he said. “I arrived here to find the door cracked. I came in and found it like this.”
Katie grimaced at the obvious implication that she had been doing something other than her job, the heat of arousal quickly becoming the heat of anger. She and Ron obviously needed to have a talk in private.
She forced inner calm and focused on her job. “Was there any sign of forced entry at all?”
“None,” Ron assured her. “But we checked the security panels. They’re turned off.”
Luke quickly explained, “When I came downstairs to get ice earlier, I had this weird vibe, like I wasn’t alone, so I checked those panels and they were on.”
Katie frowned, trying to make sense of this in her head. “We’ve only been back from the E.R. a few hours.” Realization washed over her at the same moment her eyes collided with Luke’s, a silent understanding between them that neither of them dared to reveal to Ron.
The kitchen had been destroyed while they were in that bed together. Katie’s hand went to her throat. The bedroom door had been open. Whoever had been here might well have watched them together.
A Spanish exclamation pierced the air as Maria appeared beside Katie, taking in the mess. She charged forward, Jessica right behind her. Jessica brushed past Katie, a distinct chill frosting up the air as she knocked into Katie’s arm.
“I called Maria to clean up,” Ron supplied, glancing between Luke and Katie.
Katie looked at Luke. “I take it that means we aren’t calling the police?” A challenge laced her voice. The police could fingerprint.
“No police,” Luke said firmly. “The odds that they will find anything aren’t worth the odds something will slip out to the press. I don’t need that kind of crap right before my season starts.”
Her eyes locked with his. “We’ll keep it out of the papers.”
“No,” he said, his jaw tense. “No police.”
“I have to agree,” Ron said, his tone as starched as his white shirt. “The last thing we need right now is management getting word of more trouble after I’ve promised them this is handled.” His lips thinned with disapproval, his gaze raking Katie. “Clearly it was not.”
Katie drew her spine stiff, irritated at the obvious jab. Yes, she’d been in bed with Luke. No, that wasn’t professional, and it should not be repeated, but she was downright offended by Ron’s inference that her failure had led to the kitchen vandalism.
Katie glanced toward the sink where Jessica was running water, her back to the group. Then she flashed a look at Ron and Luke and motioned them to the other room, aware she could not talk in front of Maria and Jessica without blowing her cover. The three of them gathered in the office as they had before.
The instant the door was shut, Katie whirled on Ron. “I get that you don’t want to look bad to management,” she said grumpily, “but I’ve been here less than forty-eight hours, without so much as a proper file to study.”
“You have a file,” Ron countered.
“Twelve hours ago before I left for a gala you knew about for months and didn’t bother to tell me about,” she snapped. “When my team is here, and I have the proper data to do my job, then you can blame me for failures. Not until then.” She leaned against the door, her knee killing her, an irritation she didn’t have time for when she had so many others. “I’m not even sure what happened here today was related to the letters.”
“What are you saying?” Ron demanded, his arms crossed in front of his body.
“Jessica,” she said. “She’s jealous. She’s young. She has the codes to get inside the house.”
“No way,” Luke said, leaning against the desk, his arms flexing beneath his shirt, drawing Katie’s unintentional inspection. She swallowed hard, blaming the pain medication for her lack of focus, as he added, “She’s a good kid. She wouldn’t do something like this.”
“A kid,” Katie pointedly repeated. “Emotional, jealous and upset about my appearance here, Luke. It makes sense.”
He made a frustrated sound. “The next thing you know, you’ll have her cutting and pasting letters.”
Katie hesitated, unwilling to rule out anything. She couldn’t shake the idea that Jessica had come into the house, seen her and Luke together, and lashed out by destroying the kitchen. But believing that Jessica had been obsessing about Luke enough to have written those letters was treading through deeper waters.
“I think we need to look at all options,” she said. “We certainly need to know if Jessica has been in any trouble. I’ll have my people look into it. I doubt that’s something Maria would announce to her employer, no matter how close you are to her, Luke.” As far as Katie was concerned, they couldn’t get those letters to the FBI lab soon enough. “I’m assuming you changed the locks and codes after the issues with your ex?” she asked.
His expression darkened. “Months ago.”
“I figured as much,” she said. “But we’ll have to change the locks and the codes again today. Once my guys get here, they’ll analyze the entire security system and make needed changes. But no one gets the new codes without my approval.”
Luke pushed off the desk, ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I’ll give Maria a month off with pay. I hope like hell that’s enough time to make this go away.”
Katie’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at the number. Donna again. Her heart hammered in her chest. She’d called so many times, Katie was starting to feel nervous. What if something was wrong with her sister? “I need to take this, but, Luke, don’t give Maria time off. Not until we have time to think it through. If Jessica is the culprit, we don’t need to send her warning signs. We need to catch her in action.” Her phone kept ringing. “I really need to take this.” She flipped open her phone and answered as she made a hobbling escape. “Hello.”
“The point in having a phone,” Donna said immediately, “is to answer it.”
“What’s going on?” Katie asked urgently. She slipped into the den where she could grab some privacy, rather than climbing the stairs.
“Noah and Josh are on their way to you this afternoon,” she said. “They finally wrapped things up here. They get into the airport at eleven-fifteen.”
Having considered moving Luke away to a hotel that night, until she had the place secure—something she’d known he wouldn’t be pleased about—Katie absorbed that news with relief.
A few minutes later, Katie ended the call, relieved that her sister was safe, and that Noah and Josh would arrive soon. She’d also asked Donna to run checks on both Jessica and Maria. Donna had the electronic file Ron had provided, as well, and was working though it with a fine-tooth comb.
Ready for a shower and some inner perspective, Katie headed to the door only to be cut off by Ron, who now stood in the doorway.
“I only have one question,” he said.
Her chest tight, she answered cautiously. “All right.”
“We’ve established that you and Luke playing at dating works in theory. It keeps the press off his back, and keeps the team from panicking about a potential threat. But I need to know right now—is this thing with you and Luke a problem?”
Thing. She assumed that was his code word for sex. She inhaled sharply despite having expected this question. It wasn’t an unfair question, after all. He’d hired her to do a job, full stop. “There is no problem, Ron.” Because Katie wasn’t going to let there be a problem. She had the thing with Luke, whatever it was, within her grasp.
He gave her a curt nod, surprising her by disappearing through the doorway without another word. Katie let out a breath of relief, thankful he’d let it go that easily.
And with Noah and Josh showing up shortly, she and Luke would have proper established boundaries. Now, she simply needed to come to a workable understanding with him. Then control would be restored, and she and her team would make this stalker problem go away for Luke.
Unbidden, a very female part of her flared to life and cursed the fact that she and Luke had been interrupted before they’d completed their thing. Control would be so much easier if she didn’t have the memory of how good almost making love to Luke Winter had been.
***
NEAR EIGHT in the evening, hours after the meeting with Ron, Katie sat alone at the informal dining table at the back of Luke’s kitchen, the house to herself. Ron had taken Luke to ball practice, and Katie had stayed behind to deal with the locksmith and the kitchen cleanup. She didn’t like Luke being out without her, but Ron was with him, and they had all agreed, she could only follow Luke around so much without breaking her cover.
After what had felt like chaos for most of the day, finally, the house was empty. Katie sat with her much-improved leg—thanks to several painkillers—propped up on a chair, her notebook computer open in front of her. Soon enough, though, Luke would return, and it would be only the two of them—alone again—a host of sexual tension bursting with life, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Sadly, she saw Noah’s and Josh’s appearance later that night as a way to keep her chemistry with Luke from eroding her common sense. A buffer was good. The memories of what they’d done in that bedroom—the kisses, the touches, the pleasure—were diminishing her ability to think straight. And when Ron had surprised them, she’d felt guilty, she’d felt wrong.
But now…now, she felt conflicted. She wanted Luke safe. She wanted Luke in bed. She wanted to do what was right. Could all of these things happen together? She wasn’t sure, and since she had no time to really evaluate things objectively, she had to focus on what had happened today, and on Luke’s protection.
Beside her, Katie’s cell phone rang. No caller ID. Katie tensed. It could be Luke. It could be Ron. She answered. Silence filled the line. “Hello?” More silence. Her gut clenched. Not again. “You’ll get your money!”
She hung up and dialed her sister. No answer. Carrie never answered her calls. She was angry at Katie. As if Katie were the cause of everything bad in her life. Losing her parents. Marrying a creep of a man. And it hurt. Katie felt like she had lost Carrie, too. “Carrie,” she said into the voice mail. “Please call me back. Let me know you’re okay. I love you, sis.”
Katie tried to refocus on her research, but in the back of her mind she worried. Maybe she’d been too hard on Carrie over this gambling thing. It must be hard to have a husband who treated her like a rug, on top of the loss of their parents.
She shook off the thought. She couldn’t let the guilt eat her alive. This job was paying off the gambling debt, which was a monster. Donna was watching over Carrie. Everything was okay.
Katie punched her e-mail and found one from Donna—an Excel spreadsheet of Luke’s team that included everything from their date of signing and contract terms, to their marital status, even spousal names. Donna was using that list to add any red flags that her research had dug up on the different players. Katie planned to go down the list of friends and family with Luke, a process she was quite certain he would not be thrilled about, especially after seeing his reaction to Jessica’s potential guilt.
Katie’s mind went back to Carrie, back to that second silent phone call. She dialed Donna. “Is everything okay there? Carrie is fine?”
“Sugar,” she said. “Everything is peachy. I went by her place this morning. Well…aside from the fact that her loser husband was there, everything was peachy. I think Carrie is coming around. We had a chat about leaving her loser husband.”
Katie perked up. “You did?”
“Yep,” she said. “Even got her to agree to meet that new attorney who opened an office down the hall from us.”
“I don’t believe it,” Katie said. “Finally she’s going to leave him.”
“Nothing is for sure,” Donna warned, “and frankly, it’s best you don’t say a word to her about this. She seems to do everything you tell her not to do and vice versa.”
Katie rested her elbows on the table. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“Too bad she needs that attorney for a divorce,” Donna said. “He’s a cutie pie, that one.”
“I’m surprised you aren’t happy she needs him for the divorce,” Katie said laughingly. “That makes him open season for you.”
“It goes against my better judgment to date someone I have to see every day.”
Katie snorted. “That’s called marriage.”
“Which is not on my agenda. So thanks, but no, thanks,” she said. “Speaking of men, how’s Luke doing?”
Katie frowned, determined to avoid the personal place this was going. No way was she admitting that not only had Luke taken her to the E.R. and tended her injury, he’d tended to her pleasure, too. If she didn’t admit it had happened, it hadn’t. Right? Right. That was her strategy, and she was sticking to it.
“Actually,” Katie said. “I just forwarded you an e-mail from Ron with the team roster. We need to run background checks on everyone and look for secondary links to Luke.” She thought back to the party. “Also—there was an agent I met here. I’ll e-mail you his info. He was trying to grab Luke’s attention.”
“Aren’t they all? The man is a hot commodity.”
“Regardless, it might be worth checking out. He showed up at a charity event that Luke was attending when Ron didn’t feel the need to be there. I’m wondering if it wasn’t specifically to court Luke. Perhaps he wants to be the hero who rebuilds Luke’s career once it tanks.”
“Nothing is going to tank Luke’s career,” Donna assured her, “as long as he pitches well and stays out of any self-induced trouble, like drugs and alcohol.”
“Luke is convinced he’s going to have a great season,” Katie said. “And it’s early, but so far, he appears to be pretty squeaky clean. He doesn’t even have beer in his fridge. Just a fetish for protein shakes and, apparently, ice cream.” Blizzards. He’d talked about ice-cream treats as she would talk about chocolate. It was cute, endearing even. She liked Luke. Why did she have to like him, damn it? She finished up her talk with Donna and forwarded the e-mails.
With a sigh, Katie tossed a pen on the table; she’d been scribbling some notes as she scanned the Internet. Her drinking glass was empty, and she did a slow stroll to the kitchen, her calf far more painful than her knee, which was a huge relief. It meant she didn’t have a serious flare-up to contend with.
She was refilling her glass with iced tea when the front door opened and closed. Katie turned to find Luke standing in the kitchen doorway, the picture of country boy sex appeal—his light brown hair rumpled, as if the wind or his fingers had gotten a hold of it.
Her mouth went dry; her nipples tightened against her thin bra. She abandoned the glass and crossed her arms in front of her chest, afraid he’d notice her obvious reaction. No matter how much she wanted to stick to strictly business with Luke, her body wasn’t cooperating. And no matter how hard she tried to keep her eyes level with his, she did a full-out inspection of his faded jeans and the light blue T-shirt that fit his chest like artwork rather than cotton. To complete his look, there were the scuffed boots that somehow made the entire look ten times more sexy. It was clear—you could take Luke out of Texas, but you couldn’t take the Texas heat out of Luke.
“I see you got past the new security panel okay,” she said, having called Luke on his cell phone and left a message with the keypad entrance code.
He sauntered forward, leaning on the kitchen island, facing her, close to her. So close. Wonderfully close. Sinfully close. She had to get away.
“Worked fine,” he said, glancing around the kitchen. “Looks like there was no permanent damage here.”
“You lost some dishes and plates,” she said, following his lead. They were making small talk. Avoiding what was between them, or perhaps working toward it. Avoiding was better. Not forever, but tonight.
Thunder rolled outside the window, shaking the glass door, almost as if Mother Nature knew her thoughts and objected to her strategy.
“Your crew is going to get a bumpy plane ride in,” Luke commented.
She stared at his chest. It seemed a good plan—not looking into those all-too-knowing eyes. Instead, she found herself admiring the damn blue T-shirt again, and worse, mentally visualizing how glorious he’d been without it, how wonderful that smooth, taut skin had felt beneath her hands.
She jerked her gaze upward. “They’re taking a taxi when they arrive so it won’t matter what time they get in.”
“They are due in at eleven-fifteen, so with delays and the taxi, they’ll arrive after midnight, I suspect,” he said, the unspoken implication there—they were alone for a while.
She wanted to be alone with him. She shouldn’t want to be alone with him. Her chin lifted, those ice-gray eyes of his anything but icy—they were heat, fire, seduction. The room seemed to shrink, and with it, her hands-off resolve. Desperately, she reached for it again, somehow found a calm, businesslike tone. “I talked with Ron on the phone, just a bit ago. We’ve decided to say Noah and Josh are my brothers, here visiting a few days. We don’t want to set off any alarms for the team or your stalker. And we have to think about Maria and Jessica.”
“Why would your brothers be at my house?”
“I’m a professional dancer who travels as much as you do,” she said. “That’ll check out if anyone looks it up. I’ve done plenty of tours. I’m taking some time off, traveling with you. My brothers wanted to see me before I hit the road again. It also makes us look close, like we’ve been dating awhile, off everyone’s radar. We’ll need to practice our stories and get them down perfectly.”
“You really think you and your team can end this before Texas, like you told Ron?”
“I’m hopeful, yes,” she confirmed. “But we’ll evaluate the situation quickly once my team arrives, and if we feel the situation will extend to Texas, conversations about travel will need to take place. I’ll want you close to me where I can best protect you.”
Their eyes held, awareness between them, the possibility of shared hotel rooms a reminder of an intimate encounter unfinished. Was she insane to think she could keep her distance from Luke?
“How’s your leg?” he asked, clearly ready to put the security issues aside.
“It’s fine. Better.” She could barely breathe. When in her life had a man ever stolen her breath simply by looking at her? Never. Never was how many times. She cleared her throat and motioned toward the table where she’d been working. “I have a list of questions,” she managed to say, her voice somewhat steady when she felt far from it. “Maybe you could answer them for me?”
He didn’t move. Neither did she. She didn’t want to move anywhere but toward him. Yet she had to put distance between them.
Finally, he said, “Is this how it’s going to be, Katie?” he asked. “We act as if nothing happened between us? As if we both don’t want to go back upstairs and finish what we started?”
Going back upstairs and finishing what they started sounded far too good. Katie found herself squeezing her legs together at the suggestion. Somehow, she kept an impassive expression.
Unfortunately, she also put her foot right in her big mouth. “I’m trying to do my job, Luke,” she managed. The minute she said those words, she knew she’d made a mistake.
His mood shifted, turned darker; it radiated off him, as stormy as the weather outside. “Your job,” he said flatly. Suddenly, he moved, closing the distance between them, his hands pressing into the counter on either side of her. He didn’t touch her, but his body aligned with hers, the heat radiating off him, into her. “Is that what we are back to? I’m your job?”
“Luke,” she said, her voice not even sounding like her own. Don’t touch him. Don’t do it. Her hands itched to flatten themselves on his chest. “I am here for a job. To find out who your stalker is.”
“And you think pretending not to want me while pretending to date me is what’s right? You think that makes logical sense?” When he put it that way, no. No, it did not make sense. He pressed onward, his voice full of confessions that reached beyond his words. “I want you, Katie. I can’t stop thinking about your soft moans and your silky skin.” He stared at her, waited for her to react.
Seconds from caving in to her desire for him, from reaching for Luke, Katie struggled to keep up her resistance. Luke watched her, his face filling with dissatisfaction.
With a frustrated sound, he pushed off the counter. “If this is how you want it, if you want to pretend in public and pretend in private, then so be it. We’ll pretend. But be honest about what’s really going on, Katie. Being with me isn’t keeping you from doing your job. We talked about that. We came to an agreement. You’re hiding behind your job as an excuse to hide from whatever is going on in that head of yours. You’re running, and I don’t think it’s from me. I think it’s from yourself.”
Her heart raced with his assessment, the same one Donna had made. “I’m not running. I’m not making an excuse. I’m taking a step back, in light of today’s events, and evaluating my actions.”
“Evaluating?” he challenged. “You know what. You just keep evaluating. Evaluate your little heart out. I’m going to bed.” He started to turn, stopped. Dropped his bombshell. “We have to be at the coach’s house tomorrow for a season kickoff barbecue.”
“Barbecue?”
“Right. Wives. Girlfriends. Family. I’ve never brought anyone with me before. So, we’re going to need to do some really fine pretending, Katie. Of course, we could just say we’re having our first fight. That won’t require much pretending.” He was pissed. Pissed and frustrated. She could see it all over his face. “Two o’clock. Be ready.” He turned away, began to move toward the hall.
Katie’s racing heart shuddered momentarily to a halt, before her mind splintered into a million pieces—a million thoughts. Luke was right. Her job was an excuse. She was afraid of losing herself again in a man and his career, afraid that she would cease to exist if she and Luke began to become a couple. But she wasn’t the same person she’d been when that had happened to her before; she wasn’t.
“Luke!” she called out, stopping him in his tracks. He faced her, waited with an expectant look on his too-handsome face. “I don’t want to go to that barbecue having a fight, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t want you. I do want you.”
He didn’t immediately respond. “I like you, Katie, all of you, just as you are, but I won’t do this back-and-forth again. You’re either in the game or you’re out.”
She didn’t need to think about that. Not anymore. “I’m in on one condition.”
“I’m not really into conditions right now,” he said, his lips a hard line.
She walked toward him. “I think you’ll like this condition.” She pressed her hand to his chest. Warmth radiated up her arm, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “I’m listening.”
“Since we had our first fight,” she said, drawing the words out, “shouldn’t we have makeup sex?”
A slow smile lifted the corners of his tempting mouth a second before he reached for her. And suddenly, wonderfully, they were crazy-hot kissing, and Katie had a good idea they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. At least not for round one.