Chapter Nine

Outside, the sun was low on the horizon, and the temperature had cooled off some. Inside the house, Kade had the AC cranked up, yet the kitchen was hot. Equator-hot.

After unpacking the groceries, Laia got Rosa and Smoke settled in front of Jamie’s mega monster-size TV, watching The Nanny, which Rosa got a kick out of. Something about Fran Drescher’s New Yawk accent had Rosa rolling with laughter.

Through the opening to the living room, Rosa held up her hand to Smoke, turning her head away from the dog. “Tawk to the paw.”

He chuckled when Smoke raised his paw to Rosa’s hand.

“You have to turn your head around, too,” she said to Smoke, repeating, “Tawk to the paw.”

Smoke had the paw thing down but hadn’t quite grasped the concept of twisting his neck around the way Fran Drescher did with her talk-to-the-hand thing.

The kitchen wasn’t small, but it might as well have been a four-by-four-foot square box. The woman of his dreams—some clean, some X-rated—was standing on the other side of the kitchen chopping ingredients for the salad. If he stuck a thermometer in his mouth, he was more than certain his temperature had soared well into the triple digits. If he’d been in a doctor’s office right then, they probably would have called an ambulance to truck him off to a hospital and throw him in a tub of ice.

Kade grabbed yet another sheet of paper towel from the roll and wiped his brow. Then he made the mistake of looking again at the subject of his thoughts. Laia had showered and changed into a lavender sundress with thin little spaghetti straps. Her hair was still wet, leaving a damp spot on the back of the dress, and every time a bead of water rolled down her smooth shoulders, he had to clamp down the urge to lick it off.

Didn’t help any that she was barefoot, revealing sparkly purple polish on her pretty toes. And damned if she wasn’t wearing a silver toe ring with a tiny jewel that flickered every time she moved. He’d never thought much about toes or toe rings before. Now it was all he thought about. Laia’s anyway, and sucking her toes into his mouth right before letting his lips do the walking directly north to the satiny curves of her calves and thighs.

The zipper over his crotch protested at the sudden pressure. Yeah, bad idea.

He turned back to the tortillas, sprinkling shredded cheese and cut-up vegetables he’d sautéed over one tortilla, then topping it with another.

“You really can cook.” A hint of a smile curved Laia’s lips, the first smile she’d graced him with since he’d shown up at her place yesterday.

“Told ya.” His head was playing major games with him. Seeing her smile turned his insides to mush. Soft, squishy mush. Which only exacerbated his dilemma.

She was still the same woman he’d been crazy-attracted to in that elevator. Now he was seeing that she was also a caring, sensitive woman who loved her daughter—Josh’s child—to distraction.

With superhuman effort, he refocused on the quesadillas. It didn’t matter that his brother was gone. Laia had chosen Josh over him, and he had to remember that.

“How long do you think that tracker has been under my car?” she asked, then set down the knife she’d been using to slice cherry tomatoes.

Kade leaned back against the counter, grateful for the distraction. The skin over the bridge of her nose was wrinkled in concern. She was worried, and she had every right to be. “There’s no way to know that. The battery wouldn’t have lasted for more than five days. Your Escape is parked in your driveway at night, so they could have been replacing it every time the battery died. Do you know anything about Colon’s background?” She shook her head. “He thinks like a cop. His father was a cop, one of the best undercover officers the New Jersey State Police ever had.”

Her brows shot up. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “He grew up in a police family and learned all the tricks from stories his father told him. Including knowing everything about a target, in this case you. He knows who I am and what I do for a living. He’d know that if I had the ledger, I’d turn it over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office so they could indict him all over again.”

“I can’t believe his father was a cop. That must have been difficult to live with, knowing his son had become a drug dealer.” She turned to open one of the overhead cupboards, then stood on her tiptoes to try and grab one of the large bowls.

“I’ll get that.” He reached over her shoulder for the bowl, and in the process, his chest and arm grazed her shoulder, and he felt her body tensing. As he set the bowl on the counter, she averted her eyes but not before he caught her cheeks pinking.

Maybe she’s not immune to me after all.

He sure wasn’t immune to her. Being in the same room with her made him hot. Touching her—even inadvertently—made his skin flame like the inside of a volcano.

He set the bowl on the counter in front of her, then returned to his side of the kitchen. “I’m sure it would have been hard on Colon’s father if he’d lived. He committed suicide when Colon was just a teenager. How such a good cop could have spawned a monster like Colon, we’ll never know.”

Laia began chopping lettuce. “What about his mother?”

Kade remembered Cecilia Colon from court. Her son showed absolutely no remorse for his crimes, while his mother sat weeping silently in the back of the courtroom. “I don’t think she ever condoned what he did. She was a cop’s wife and from what I heard was active in the police community for a long time after her husband died.”

“Watching her child get sent to prison couldn’t have been easy on her.” Laia looked into the living room where Rosa had climbed off the sofa and was settling against Smoke’s body, using him for a pillow.

“You’re a good mother,” he said, thinking she was looking at her daughter for reassurance.

Laia stiffened. “How would you know? You’ve only seen us together for less than two whole days.” She turned her back to him and resumed cutting tomatoes like she wanted to kill them. Or maybe she was imagining his neck on the cutting board.

Rather than respond, he clamped his mouth shut because she was right. He’d made damn sure to stay out of her life, and he deserved her irritation when he reminded her of the fact.

Kade’s phone blared from the kitchen table. Manny Dominguez’s name lit the screen. “I have to take this. Manny, how’d it go?” he said after answering.

“Jesus Montoya confirmed it,” Manny said. “He didn’t participate in the burglary and doesn’t know who did, but he was ordered to put a tracker under your sister-in-law’s car and to follow her around and see where she goes.”

“Did he confirm they’re looking for the ledger?” He glanced up when Laia moved closer.

“Yeah,” Manny said, “but that’s not all they’re looking for. Get this…they’re searching for a large amount of cash Josh stole from Colon.”

Now it was Kade’s turn to frown. Before he was murdered, Josh had already admitted to the AUSA that his cut was 3 percent of any amount he laundered, which was enough that the government had seized most of his and Laia’s property and holdings. “How much are we talking about?” Because if Colon was looking for it two years after the fact, it had to be a ton of cash that he only now discovered was missing.

“Somewhere around two million. I cut Montoya loose and sent him back out there to get more information in exchange for not locking his ass up.”

“Thanks, Manny. Keep me posted, and I’ll do the same.”

“Well?” Laia asked when he’d ended the call.

“The man you ID’d—Jesus Montoya—said Josh stole two million dollars from Colon.”

Laia’s jaw dropped. “Two million?”

“Yeah. He also admitted he was following you and that Colon’s people broke into your house.”

Her expression brightened. “That’s good. Now you can arrest Colon, right?”

If only it were that simple. “It’s more complicated than that. Jesus Montoya wasn’t part of the burglary, so that’s all hearsay, not probable cause to arrest anyone. Manny cut Montoya loose to get us more intel. He can be more valuable that way.”

High-pitched giggling came from the living room where Rosa was busy high-fiving Smoke and still trying to get him to “tawk to the paw.”

Her brows drew together. “I don’t have any of Colon’s money. Why does he think I do?”

“I don’t know.” What he did know was that stepping closer to Laia was a bad, bad idea, and idiotic sap that he was, he did it anyway.

“And why would Josh have to steal from Colon in the first place? Wasn’t he already getting paid for laundering his money?”

“I can’t answer that. For Colon, getting back any money Josh skimmed off the top would be a matter of principle. No one steals from him and gets away with it.” Kade had once thought there wasn’t anything else his brother could have done to make things worse. He’d been wrong. “Did Josh give you any money that you forgot about?”

“No!” She looked at him as if he had two heads. “Don’t you think I’d remember if he handed me two million dollars? Why don’t you ask your friends? Anything Josh gave me the government took away. Or did you conveniently forget that?” She covered her face with her hands and began shaking her head. “I can’t believe this is happening again.”

When her shoulders began trembling, Kade’s resistance crumbled faster than a house of cards in an earthquake. He pulled Laia into his arms, and she let him. Her body was slim, soft, curvy. Her soft hair tickled his chin, and he couldn’t keep from nuzzling the top of her head.

She sighed, a grief-filled, gut-wrenching sound that made everything in him want to protect Laia and her daughter from all the evils of the world. Starting with Fernando Colon. He tensed when her arms crept around his rib cage and wrapped around his back. God, she felt good. He’d never actually held her before, only dreamed about it. More specifically, dreamed about holding her lithe body as he drove deep inside her.

“We’ll figure this out,” he whispered. “I’ll be here with you every step of the way until we do.”

She lifted her head. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

Her arms around his back loosened. “Being so…helpful. So attentive.”

“You called me for help, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Help you.”

She pushed at his chest, forcing him to release her. “I did call you, to help me at the house with the burglary and to talk to the police. I knew they wouldn’t do anything unless you were there. But that’s over and done with. Why are you still helping us? Whatever’s going on here isn’t your problem. We,” she added, gesturing to the living room to include Rosa, “are not your problem.”

Now it was his turn to be confused. “Did you really think I’d just abandon you?” He could no sooner have done that than he could have cut off his own foot.

“That’s exactly what I expected from you.” She lowered her voice as she cast a quick glance to Rosa. “Not to belabor the issue, but you’ve made a distinct point of staying away all this time, so why would I ever think you’d actually stick around now?”

Jesus, she had no idea how much it had hurt, how much it had scaled his heart to keep his distance from her. He shook his head at the incredulity of what was happening and just how very wrong she was. About everything.

He ground his jaw, vividly remembered every single invitation he’d turned down because he couldn’t put himself through any more pain. “Don’t you get it? Once you married Josh, I couldn’t be near you.”

“Why not?” She parked her fists on her hips. “You were part of the family, yet you did an awesome job of being a selfish, self-absorbed, absentee brother-in-law. You could have joined us for Christmas, Thanksgiving, all kinds of family gatherings that for some reason you couldn’t manage to drag yourself to.”

“You’re right, and you’re wrong. I couldn’t have been there for any of those occasions, but not for the reasons you obviously think.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, why not?”

She was killing him, slowly, by painful degrees. Telling her the truth would be opening up a can of soup and turning the can upside down. Everything would spill out, and there’d be no putting it back.

“Kade, for God’s sake! Will you just talk to me?” When she took a step closer, he stepped back. “What in the world is going on with you?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing his heart not to burst from his throat and divulge how it felt. Then she reached for him, gently touching his forearm, and his eyes snapped open.

Something inside his chest lit, then exploded with the force of a hand grenade, and he couldn’t tamp it down a second longer. And what did it matter anymore? He still couldn’t have her.

He ground his jaw harder. “Since the moment I first saw you, I’ve never stopped thinking about you. Wanting you. Just because you said I do to my brother didn’t make that stop.”

Laia’s arms dropped to her sides. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. She stared at him, her brown eyes as wide as chocolate Moon Pies.

Christ, his skin was on fire. He had to get out of the kitchen, the walls of which were closing in on him, squeezing the life from his body and suffocating him. If he didn’t get a cold shower now, he’d die of heatstroke.