“I didn’t tell you about the pillow and blanket on the couch.” Jayden resumed pacing, silently cursing himself. “I didn’t find them relevant.”
“No one else did, either, except his attorney. She claims that Luke only uses that room to keep his clothes. He’s never slept in that bed or touched that pillow. There were no fingerprints on the gun, or on the pillowcase, other than yours...”
“I did not plant that gun there.”
“No one’s claiming you did. They weren’t going to take a defense that would put the burden of proof on them. Or put your word against theirs. They say the gun belongs to Luke’s sister’s boyfriend, according to the story they’re all sticking to. He wanted it in the house for protection from Luke. Just in case.”
“That’s bull. I talked to him during the prerelease home inspection interview. He keeps his gun in his vehicle, which he keeps locked at all times, and said he’d park on the street until Luke found a place of his own. And it’s a Beretta. I found a Glock 9.”
“The Glock was unregistered, and the story is the boyfriend bought it off the street when he knew Luke was coming to stay with his sister. For her to use if she needed it.”
“So the sister knew it was in the pillow.”
“That’s the story. And that, because Luke had no knowledge it was there, he can’t be held accountable to it. I had a chance to question both the sister and her boyfriend and their stories seemed too practiced to me, but the judge bought them. Luke’s out. At least until the parole board has a hearing.”
That Jayden would attend. If they still moved forward on it. The judge had thrown out the gun violation charges. There would still be a parole hearing. Luke had still been on premises with a gun. But with the court’s ruling, there was little likelihood that the board would revoke parole. Feeling like he’d let Emma down didn’t set well with him, but what bothered him a whole lot more was Luke’s wife and daughter being in danger again.
The same instinct that told him Bill Heber was not hurting his wife was yelling loud and clear that Luke would do that to his family, the first chance he got.
“The preliminary is Monday,” he told her.
“I’ve already called up north, letting them know that he might be back out. His wife and daughter will be at the shelter until after the preliminary hearing on Monday anyway.”
“And after that?”
She sighed. He felt it clear to his bones. Somedays were harder than others to find the energy to keep fighting the fight.
More so for Emma than for him, he imagined. Every probation officer he knew was on the same side. But for Emma...she fought her own peers every single time she stepped into court.
“Did you know the attorney?” he asked.
“No. She was someone from LA.”
“I wasn’t aware Luke had the money to hire an attorney from anywhere...”
“Apparently she knows his sister. Took the case on, gratis.”
“You think they’re all three lying to her, too?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. The sister was a particularly good witness.”
A schoolteacher with impeccable credit and a no-nonsense attitude, she’d impressed Jayden, too, during the preliminary home visit, which was why he’d allowed Luke to live with her. But if she’d lie for him...kind of a wrench in the gut.
“You still at the office?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You want to come by for dinner? I laid out steaks and am pretty decent at the grill.”
“Only if I can bring the wine.”
He hadn’t had wine...ever. Unless he had to. Back when he’d been a drinking man, he’d regarded wine as being for weaklings. Beer, he’d taken down in gallons. Whiskey. Tequila. Vodka. Rum. He could take them all, in straight shots, one after another.
Made no sense to him that he hadn’t become an alcoholic, developed some kind of addiction to the stuff. When he thought about how much he could consume, how hard he’d partied...
“You can bring whatever you want,” he told her. He had his six-pack.
Or maybe he’d sip on a little wine. If it would make her feel good.
Emma wasn’t going to get to know him much better. She couldn’t. If she did, she’d start to care, to take on his concerns and go into problem-solving mode. It was her way. She knew it.
No, they were going to be colleagues who respected each other, and who were going to deal with the lust that had sprung up between them.
Tingling with anticipation, Emma took a good six or seven minutes just trying to choose the wine. Did he like red or white? She wasn’t a big drinker, usually just chose a semidry white wine because it was mostly unassuming.
But tonight...she wanted something bold. Daring. Maybe a little dangerous.
She’d had a really bad afternoon at work and wanted to forget it for a few minutes. To put it out of her mind. Just long enough to regroup and go back to believing she made a difference.
The only way she knew how to get that necessary step away was to let her darker side out. On a leash, of course, but to let her run ahead a couple of steps, to lead her down the block.
As long as she chose the block, they’d be fine.
“‘Aphrodite’s Touch,’” Jayden read, taking the bottle she handed him at his front door. His house was smallish, in a nice neighborhood, non-gated, but well landscaped. Clean. Fairly close to the beach.
“It’s from our local winery, run by Tanner Malone,” she explained, though she didn’t say it was described in the Malone winery catalog as a step out for a woman needing more than a good dinner. “He grows a variety of the Aphrodite grape,” she continued, fighting self-consciousness. Where was Ms. Shadow when she needed her?
She’d paid for the damned wine and then gone into hiding. What the hell?
“Aphrodite, the goddess of sex, love and beauty.” Jayden’s voice was laced with...something that made her tingle. And yeah, leave it to him to know about Greek mythology.
“I like Malone Wines.” She tried to play it all off with nonchalance.
“This is one of your favorites, then?” He’d carried it into the kitchen. Already had a corkscrew in the top—with two wineglasses on the counter behind him.
“I’ve...um...actually never had it.” She couldn’t lie to him. Her shadow side might have been able to, but Emma would have stopped her. “I usually just drink his Riesling, when I drink wine at all.”
“You prefer something harder?” he asked, a tiny grin on his lips as he poured.
“Nope. Just wine.” So now he knew. She was a lightweight when it came to alcohol. If he didn’t like it...if he was a heavy drinker...didn’t really matter. They weren’t starting anything that was meant to last.
Turning to her, he handed her a glass. Held his up to hers, looking fresh and way too hot in his jeans and button-down shirt—with at least three buttons undone.
Gaze fixed on his chest hair, suddenly nervous, she willed Ms. Shadow to get her ass up out of wherever she went when she was banned, and held her glass while he clinked his against it.
“To what’s to come,” he said.
She’d have felt better with a simple “Cheers,” but took a sip. Saw the steaks prepared and waiting to go out to the grill. Wanted to see his backyard and so she walked over and looked, feeling...drained from her long day. So...yesterday in her light brown skirt that hugged her thighs nicely but was way more businesslike than sexual. The off-white silk blouse and brown pumps she wore with it—ditto.
She’d dressed for court, not seduction. And now that she thought about it, wasn’t even positive what underwear she’d put on that morning. Could she hope it had been anything with lace?
“You want to come out and sit with me while I grill?” he asked. It was July, but Santa Raquel didn’t generally swelter. They were a seaside town with enough breeze to keep things moderately comfortable.
Feeling like she’d been given a huge reprieve, Emma followed him outside, finding his cute ass about as nice as anything she’d seen that day.
Jayden figured, about a second after Emma had handed him the wine she’d brought, that he wouldn’t be getting any that night. Sex, that was.
And quickly rephrased the thought in his mind. He wouldn’t be giving any. The gorgeous blonde, with her curly hair, looked tired, about as ready to fly as an ant.
“You had a rough one,” he said as pulled out a seat for her at the pagoda table on his way to the grill.
“When you get your thrills from work, days like today really suck.”
He might have thought she was leading him to more...thrills...personal ones, but the way she sat there, staring out, sipping her wine, surveying his yard, not meeting his gaze, told him differently.
“Luke’s getting to you.”
“And Bill Heber,” she said. “I couldn’t get the man the last time, couldn’t protect Suzie, and it looks like he’s going to do it to me again.”
“Unless he didn’t do it.” It bothered him that she didn’t seem to give that option any consideration. For Bill’s sake, of course, but more for Suzie’s at this point. If they didn’t find the abuser, she was likely going to be hurt again.
“He did it.” She met his gaze then. “I know he did it. I just have to outsmart him. And believe me, I will.” She sipped.
He admired her bravado. The attitude it took to fight the kinds of fights she fought every single day.
Any chink at all could lose her this case. And police officers relied on their prosecutors. It was a heavy burden she bore.
“You aren’t drinking your wine.” She was looking at him now. “You don’t like it? I’m sorry, I should have asked what you preferred...”
He took a sip of wine. Found it...not bad. Not bad at all.
“I’m more of a beer man,” he told her. “But this is good.”
“It’s not going to hurt my feelings if you drink a beer.”
He shrugged.
“Seriously,” she said. And then, “Or are you out? I can go get some...”
Her desire to please was genuine and he realized how much he really just liked the woman. “I’ve got a six-pack in the fridge,” he told her. “I’m happy with this.”
He was just plain happier having her around.
Sitting in Jayden’s smallish, but nicely manicured backyard, Emma finally started to relax. The wine tasted good. The steaks cooking on the grill smelled good. And the man...
Every part of her approved of him.
Her ringing phone interrupted a feeling of contentment she hadn’t experienced in a while. It was Luke Lincoln’s arresting officer.
She listened, nodded, and hung up, noticing that Jayden had also taken a call.
“Luke?” she asked as he also disconnected.
“Son of a bitch.”
“You have to go?”
There’d been a miscommunication between court deputies and, instead of being taken to the holding cell to wait for a ride back to jail that afternoon, Luke had been released.
“No. Not yet, anyway. Officers have been sent to get him. Technically he hasn’t broken the law by leaving. He was told he could go. Might even think, with the win in court today, that he really is free.”
Technically. “I have to call up north again.” She was thinking aloud. “I know his wife and daughter are safe, but I need to let them know...”
“I was told someone from the department already made that call.”
The relief she felt, knowing that she didn’t have to put her work hat back on right then, was a bit startling. Emma was always ready to work. Was energized when she was needed.
Had to be the wine.
It most certainly could not be the man.
Refusing to be an animal that jumped the bones of his dinner companion without foreplay, finesse or tenderness, Jayden forced his libido to calm down and tried to focus on the food they were sharing. He liked to eat. He just didn’t bother to put forth the effort to eat well. Mostly he settled for canned stuff. Frozen stuff. Fast-food stuff.
When he saw his parents—at least once a month to keep them happy—he ate all weekend.
Emma had done his steak proud, though. She’d scraped right down to the bone with her knife. And devoured the baked potato and salad, too. He liked that she wasn’t so conscious of calories that she couldn’t eat a good meal.
And wondered where she put it all. She wasn’t skinny, but there was nothing extra on her, either.
He’d noticed. Again and again.
She’d finished her glass of wine. He hadn’t, but he’d enjoyed what he’d had. When he offered to pour her more, she’d declined, reminded him she was driving.
A sign that she wasn’t planning to stick around awhile.
And yet she didn’t get right up and leave, either.
They cleared the dishes and when he offered her an iced tea, she accepted. And followed him out as he closed the grill, sitting back down as though she was in no hurry to leave.
He was in no hurry to have her gone.
And was growing more and more increasingly bothered by her determination to see Bill Heber back in jail. They’d been talking about work on and off all evening. In between general discussions about their work lives.
Seriously, what else did either of them have to talk about? They were workaholics.
And not falling in love.
“What is it about this Heber case that has you so bothered?” he asked when she brought them back to the fact that he’d found no substantial evidence against Bill Heber that morning. He hadn’t yet mentioned that he’d found an ice cream shop not far from Bill’s house and that Bill had been there enough to be known to the owners.
He was keeping the information to himself at the moment for a very good reason. Bill’s visits didn’t coincide with the times Emma had given him. The man just liked his chocolate ice cream.
And Jayden had to figure out how to help Emma see that.
“I’m bothered by all my cases that feel like failures. In this instance, I’ve got a chance to make it right. I’m not going to blow it.”
“Is this the first case you’ve had that gave you the ability to right a wrong? Surely you’ve had someone reoffend and gotten another go at him or her.” She’d been at the job for eight years. Some failures happened.
“Of course I have, and no this isn’t the first time I’ve faced this situation.”
“So why is this one so bothersome to you?” The woman was clearly deflated, as though she’d hung everything on his location app nailing Heber. That was understandable. But he was far more bothered by the Luke Lincoln issue. Emma was bothered, too, clearly, but not as much as she was by Heber.
“They’re all bothersome to me.”
“Forgive me for overstepping...” She’d stayed, which invited the conversation as far as he was concerned. Plus, he just plain wanted to know. “But it seems... almost...personal.”
“Like you feel Bill’s right to have a second chance, you mean? That’s personal.”
Her jab hit its mark. “Probably.”
She held his gaze. “It’s the baby,” she finally said. “He killed his baby, while it was still in its mother’s womb. That’s heinous.”
“You were not able to prove that at trial.”
“Suzie told me it was him. She just got scared and wouldn’t testify because she didn’t want to be pulverized by the defense attorney.”
“Bill told me that she miscarried because of ill health. She wasn’t eating or sleeping. Was a nervous wreck.”
“Yeah, because he was beating her.”
“He claims he was insanely jealous of her,” Jayden said, hoping he could bring some good to both of their days by putting this one to rest. “He was scaring her, making her life miserable. He was guilty but he wasn’t hitting her.”
He looked Emma right in the eye. Willed her to see the truth.
“That’s not what the facts say.”
Suzie’s testimony. That she wouldn’t give in court. The medical record stated that blunt force trauma had contributed to the miscarriage, but if Suzie had been healthy to begin with, the baby might have survived. The doctor’s opinion was that the trauma was likely the result of another human being.
Likely. Not proved.
Like Suzie’s current injuries.
They could tell from bruise marks, indentations, directionality of blows, that Suzie’s current injuries were human inflicted. There’d been no such clear marks four years before—and he’d proved Bill hadn’t been around Suzie and able to hurt her since his release.
“Bill takes full accountability for the miscarriage, for causing Suzie so much anxiety that she’d lost their baby. His remorse is real. Palpable. This is not an aggressive man,” he told her. “He wants only to do what he can to make her life easier, and if that means staying away from her, that’s what he’ll do. His location app proves it. He’s working his ass off, taking way more hours than he needs to, so that he can send money to her.”
“He’s required to pay alimony.”
“He’s doing it because he wants to. Because he needs to.” And as soon as Bill made more of it, he’d send more to Suzie.
Jayden didn’t like the hesitancy in her gaze as she looked at him, like she was doubting him. Not Bill. “Are you telling me that you aren’t going to keep him on your radar? You’ve decided he’s not a danger?”
“Absolutely not.” He wasn’t just saying that to get back in her good graces. He wouldn’t do such a thing, just in theory, and certainly not to Emma. “I’m fully aware that I’m human and could be wrong. I’ve been wrong. I just want to make sure that, in case we’re wrong, someone is still looking for another abuser.”
“Chantel is all over it. If there’s something else out there, she’ll find it.”
So...why wasn’t she relaxing a bit? Luke’s ex-wife and daughter were in more immediate danger, in Jayden’s opinion, and yet Emma trusted the system to take care of them.
Maybe because they were currently in a secure shelter.
The answer was valid. He acknowledged that as it came to him. He just didn’t think that’s all there was to it.
As a probation officer, he’d gone as far as he could go.
As her possible future lover, he’d already gone farther than he should.
Jayden had no acceptable reason for pursuing the conversation. But he felt compelled to anyway.
“Suzie Heber...it’s personal, somehow, isn’t it?”