CHAPTER TWO
The doorbell was ringing when Beverly Hernandez stepped out of the shower. Figured. Probably the FedEx guy. If she didn’t answer, he would take her new coffee maker clear across town to the depot. Bev dragged her bathrobe on over her soaking-wet body while she trotted to the door. She opened it without looking out the front windows. Well, damn. Bad had just gotten worse.
“Merry Christmas, Beverly,” Lincoln D’Angelo said. He held out a large bunch of flowers wrapped in shiny red paper with little green and white trees stamped all over it.
Bev retreated on damp, bare feet down the short hall and into the living room of her little bungalow. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought maybe you’d be ready to talk by now,” Lincoln said calmly. “You still keep your vases on the top shelf?” He stalked into the kitchen and she heard him rummaging. Water splashed. He came back out holding her tallest vase. He had haphazardly stuffed it with pale peach roses and green ferns.
Bev put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “I was angry,” she reminded him, “With damned good reason. Does that reason still exist?”
“If you mean, did I force Amanda Larkin to give me back the key to my apartment? I did. Do you mean, did I fire her? I didn’t. That was her manager’s job. As you would know if you were answering my emails instead of dumping them.” Lincoln fiddled inexpertly with the flowers and greenery in the vase. He gave up after a few seconds and focused his blue gaze on her.
The pale apricot and cream rosebuds were just starting to open. Even though they stuck out unevenly, his flowers were pretty and Bev’s favorites. Still she hardened her heart. “I don’t understand why she had one in the first place. You told me you only went out with her once. Yet obviously she was used to showing up at your place without calling.”
“When you and I went to the Bahamas, Bev, I left my keys with Brad so someone could check on the condo.” Lincoln matched her fierce tone. “It invalidates home insurance if you leave your place uninhabited for more than a couple of days. He assigned her the job. That was the sum total of Amanda’s connection to my condo.”
At six foot three, he towered over her, but it didn’t occur to Bev to back down. She met Lincoln’s glittering blue eyes with her own hostile gaze. “You’ve had two months to think that up,” she accused.
“I said it two days after you slammed out of my place. I don’t know how many texts I’ve sent you. How many times I’ve left you voice mail.”
Lincoln stalked her until her back was pressed against the wall and his long arms had trapped her. He didn’t touch her. He just looked down at her so much lust and longing on his hard face that she had to press her thighs together. Which was just another way in which she knew Lincoln D’Angelo was bad for her. He subverted her mind.
“Took you two days to think it up, eh?” Bev folded her arms across her chest. Too late, she realized that the sash she had only loosely knotted was coming undone, and her movement had made the robe gape.
“I thought two days was long enough to let you simmer,” he corrected. “Turns out I was wrong. Two days was just long enough to heat your righteous indignation into boiling rage.”
How well he knew her.
Lincoln seemed to notice her loose sash at the same moment she did. The flinty planes of his face softened. Red scored his cheekbones. His big hands found the trailing ends of the yellow sash and tugged until it tightened around her waist. “Amanda and I dated for about six minutes – long before she came to work for my company. She didn’t have a key to my place then. Hell, we never even made it to the bedroom. There’s no reason for you to be jealous, sweetheart.”
His deep voice made her whole body quiver so badly she could hardly think. Could he be telling the truth? It was true that Bev had made it impossible for Lincoln to contact her. But it didn’t seem as though he had tried very hard to make up. And Amanda had sung a different tune. Bev was not about to forget the mortification of having the other woman walk in while they were trying out the dining table. She was so not going there again.
“Amanda told it differently,” she said quietly.
“Amanda Larkin is a narcissistic liar,” Lincoln said flatly. “You ever wonder why a woman as pretty as her is single?”
Bev shook her head and water sprayed in an arc. Crap. She hadn’t dried her hair. It was going to set in a tangled mop of frizz. “I have to go get dressed,” she said.
“Not on my account,” Lincoln said. His words were a caress.
“I want to put some clothes on.”
He pushed away from the wall in one athletic bounce and half bowed his head. “Go right ahead. I’m going to make coffee. Maybe you’ll be willing to talk sense when you’ve had some.”
Bev was halfway to her room before she realized she was taking orders again. Somehow when Lincoln was around it was just easier to do what he said. She had never liked fighting, and Lincoln didn’t fight. It wasn’t so much that he was easy-going – he wasn’t. But when he said to do a thing, most people jumped into action. It would be nice if she could acquire the knack – without having to spend a decade and a half in the Air Force.
She hauled on jeans and hesitated. She picked up first her old sweatshirt and then a heavy sweater and a cardigan. And discarded each one in turn. She put on her new long-sleeved tunic instead. The pretty bias-cut one with the pattern of aquamarine and turquoise swirls. She peeked in the mirror. The knot under the bust outlined her waist and made her look curvaceous rather than square, as the sweatshirt and sweater did. Was it too low-cut for having a fight with your ex?
The coffee smelled wonderful. Lincoln had opened the blinds and set two places at her little kitchen table. Butter was sizzling in a pan and as she entered the kitchen he tossed in beaten eggs and began to stir them around with a spatula. “You want one piece of toast, or two?” he asked without turning his dark head.
“One, thank you.” Bev poured herself a cup of coffee and admired his fine ass. The man was a wonder of nature. Broad shoulders tapered to narrow hips and the heavy thighs of a weightlifter. Her mouth watered and she rinsed her longing down with coffee.
“Tastes better,” Linc said, “If you let the machine finish.” It was an old argument. Was it more important to get caffeine in your system, or to have the perfect cup of coffee? They came down on different sides.
“Newsflash,” she shot back. “My coffee maker’s broken. It has to be turned off manually. It won’t ever be done.”
He dished up eggs onto two plates that already held buttered toast and sliced oranges. “That’s how fires start,” his voice was gruff. It was his worried voice.
“I ordered a new one. That’s how you got in. I thought you were the FedEx guy with my new machine.”
Bev forked up eggs. They were good. Lincoln was a good cook. He was good at most things. He liked domestic things. Home-cooked meals, cuddling in front of the Friday night game, mowing the grass. Sitting across from him eating eggs he had cooked and toast he had buttered, made Bev realize how much she had missed him.
“You opened the door, thinking I was a complete stranger, in your f – bathrobe.” Lincoln swallowed the F bomb before he said bathrobe. But he might as well have exploded it in her kitchen. He was furious. His eyes were glacially cold and his mouth was a thin, grim line.
“I wasn’t thinking.” Bev tried to head him off at the pass.
His chest swelled. His face stiffened. She knew he was trying to contain his wrath. Lincoln owned a security company. He spent every day cleaning up after criminals. It was how they had met. She had hired his company after an overnight break-in at her printing business.
Lincoln always shook his head over the fact that most people called for a security system only after they had already been robbed. He spent too much time talking to women who had been beaten or raped when they were burgled.
Bev couldn’t take her eyes off his wide chest. Suppressing his desire to roar at her was placing a great deal of strain on Linc’s ribcage and his crisp blue-plaid shirt. If he didn’t exhale soon, those buttons were going to go flying. Her lips curved involuntarily. She might as well have lit a match.
“Are you trying to prove I’m uncivilized?” he roared. “Because you’re going the right way to do it. Geez Louise, woman, you don’t answer your front door in your fucking bathrobe. Not when that little squirrel is still after you.”
“You’re right.”
“Dylan Perkins is the sort of asswipe who blames everyone but himself for the sewer he is swimming in,” Lincoln continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
“He’s not going to escalate from pilfering office supplies to rape,” Bev said ignoring his tone.
“His juvie records are sealed,” Linc retorted through white lips, “But I have a pal who remembers he was charged with arson and sexual assault when he was a minor. Kids like that go on to become serial killers.”
“Serial killer? Dylan Perkins was afraid to talk to customers – that’s why he was in charge of ordering supplies instead of working the front counter.”
Lincoln shook his head at her. “Bev, you are too trusting for your own good. Dylan isn’t a shy little introvert who happened to steal fifteen grand of your office supplies. He’s a con artist who inveigled himself into the one position in your firm that would allow him access to money. I’ll bet when that audit comes back, that you will be glad I made you change all your credit cards and passwords.”
“Why am I just hearing this now?” she snapped.
“Because every time my people send a report, it goes unanswered.”
“I asked Melody to handle the D’Angelo file,” she responded sheepishly.
“Well, she hasn’t made a single decision. And if she has implemented our recommendations, she hasn’t informed us.” Linc’s voice was back to being level.
“I’ll look into it on Monday,” she promised. “But I thought you said con artists just melted when they were caught?”
“Most do, but Perkins has a history that suggests scams are a way to fund his other activities.”
“Like what?”
“Stalking. Peeping.” Lincoln rolled his shoulders as if shaking off an unpleasant burden. “If you’d let me put that peephole in for you, the way I said I was going to,” he continued. “And set up some decent security, you’d at least be able to tell what the guy coming in to rape you looked like.”
“Do you think rapists only rape women in bathrobes?” she asked conversationally.
“Nope. But for those guys who are just borderline, easy makes it possible. In some strange way, they think it amounts to permission.” He held up a big hand. “You know damn well, Bev, I’m not suggesting women deserve to be raped, or that it’s their fault. But the thought of you waltzing to the door, fresh from the bath, in that excuse for a garment.” He set his big square jaw, and his eyes blazed. His breakfast congealed forgotten on his plate.
* * *
He was going to ruin everything again. He hadn’t been here half an hour, and already he was yelling at his mate. He wanted to patch things up. He wanted Bev back in his bed. In his life. But the thought of her opening her door in her robe to some wannabe pervert, made him see the world through a blaze of red. Didn’t she realize what a temptation she was? That scumbag Perkins had made some pretty graphic threats after she fired him.
“That damned peephole is going in today.” Linc dared her to argue with him.
She wandered over to the coffee pot, giving him a view of her perfect, round butt. “Do you want another cup?” She poured herself one.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“No, you’re not.” But her pretty face was smiling as she leaned on the counter and sipped. “I understand. It pushes all your buttons when you think of people being careless of their personal security.”
“Not people. You.” He took their plates to the counter and stacked them neatly. “Where is that peephole?”
“Wherever you put it. Probably still in the bag from the hardware store,” she admitted.
He clamped his jaw. Bev wasn’t incapable. She had a drill and she knew how to use it. She could have installed that peephole herself. Maybe she wouldn’t have done as neat a job as he was going to do, but it would have worked. He reminded himself that he had come here today to woo his mate, not to argue with her.
The peephole was still in the bag from the hardware store. Right on the basement workbench where he had left it. He sniffed. No one had been in here since his last visit. No other man. Not even her dad or her brothers.
He should’ve brought his own tools with him and put it in as soon as he had bought it. Instead he had left the job for the weekend when they would have more time. Except that weekend had ended with him kicked out of Bev’s bed. This is what he got for breaking his own rules.
Bev was stacking the dishwasher when he came upstairs. “What are you doing today?” he asked.
“Cleaning house. Going grocery shopping. Saturday stuff.”
In a silky top, so new it still had a tag hanging out the neck? That didn’t sound much like his woman. Bev liked her house sparkling clean, but she wore old sweats with bleach stains to do her chores. He suppressed his smirk. She had dressed up for him. He went whistling to the front door and set to work.
She wandered over to watch, still working on her second mug of coffee. It didn’t take him long. Drilling a hole, tapping in the lens, and screwing the brass end-plate on to keep the whole thing together. “I’ll get the vacuum,” she offered.
“I can do that,” he said when she came back.
“Okay.”
She left him to it. It wasn’t often that Lincoln D’Angelo didn’t know what was going on. But today, for fucking sure, he didn’t know what was going on. Had Bev forgiven him, or hadn’t she? She hadn’t said. But she also hadn’t raised the slightest objection to him moving in on her. Making coffee. Making breakfast. Playing handyman.
His roses were on the dining room table now. Bev had rearranged them so they spread out in a graceful circle. The warmth of the house was making the buds unfurl, and their soft perfume filled the room. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Bev wasn’t much for playing games. Which was why her wrath at Amanda Larkin walking in on them had been so devastating. He had known Beverly meant every harsh word. Had believed him capable of cheating on her.
He had gone out with Amanda just once. Once was enough. Months later, when she applied for a job at his company, he hadn’t interfered with his manager Brad Erloff’s decision to hire her. She was qualified and her references checked out. Second-guessing his people was not how he had made D’Angelo Protection Services successful. So he had let the hire stand. And when he went on holiday, he had not specified that the job of giving his place a daily once-over was not to be assigned to Larkin.
Brad had fired Larkin’s skinny ass the minute he discovered she had used a key obtained on a job for unauthorized entry. Didn’t matter that the client was the boss. Illegal entry was a firing offense, plain and simple. Lincoln had let Brad deal with her, not just because that was chain of command, but because he was still too angry to deal with the bitch in person.