CHAPTER FIVE
SURE YOU DON’T want me to carry that bouquet,” Holden asked. “It looks a little heavy.”
Kendall noticed he made absolutely no attempt whatsoever to hide his grin as they stepped out of the elevator. She stuck out her tongue at him. “Thanks, but I think I can handle it.”
He chuckled. “Just offering to help. I know you wouldn’t want those flowers to get damaged, not after all the trouble you went through to catch them.”
Kendall snorted. Holden had teased all the way back to her place. Not that she could blame him for messing with her. Kyla had set her up good. The girl had practically dragged her onto the dance floor with the rest of the single women at the reception, then positioned herself right in the very front of the entire group, giving the evil eye to anyone who encroached into her prime spot on the floor. Kendall had stayed behind the girl, figuring Kyla was bound and determined to catch the bouquet. The flowers had flown straight at Kyla like they were a guided missile, but at the last second, the girl stepped nimbly to the side, forcing Kendall to throw her hands up in front of her face to avoid getting smacked with the flowers. Unfortunately, some crazy instinct had taken over and she’d caught the bouquet.
Everyone had laughed like it was the funniest thing ever, especially Kyla. She’d run off the floor giggling like a twelve-year-old at a slumber party, looking back over her shoulder like she thought Kendall was going to chase her down and beat her with the bouquet. She probably should have. Instead, she’d laughed it off, promising the girl she’d find some way to get her back.
Kendall let Holden move ahead of her a little as they walked down the hallway so she could get another look at his butt. His backside looked spectacular in his dress white uniform. The rest of him did, too, for that matter.
Watching the way he moved, Kendall couldn’t help but remember what it had been like to dance with the strong, sexy Navy SEAL after Chasen and Hayley and most of the others had left the reception. The DJ had been awesome, playing more club-oriented songs and dimming the lights. Holden was good on his feet, and when he’d put his arms around her during one of the slow dances…well…it had been difficult to remember he was a suspect and not a hot guy she wanted to drag back to her woman cave for a round of mattress gymnastics.
She was still thinking about that—and wondering where the heck her head was these days—when Holden stopped in the middle of the hallway to look at her. “I was thinking.”
“Sounds dangerous,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
“Funny,” he snorted. “I’m serious. I had a really good time tonight and now that it’s officially over, I was thinking maybe you’d like to get together tomorrow.”
Kendall moved closer, invading his personal space out of pure feminine instinct, pressing her body against his and draping her arms around his shoulders. She had to reach up a bit because he was so tall. Not that she was complaining.
“First off, I love the idea of hanging out with you tomorrow,” she said softly. “And second, what makes you think the date is over?”
Before Holden could do more than lift a brow, Kendall stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him, wanting to let him know how much she enjoyed tonight, too.
Holden let out a low groan, resting his big hands on her hips and pulling her closer, She nestled her body tightly to his, making it easy to tell exactly how much he liked her kisses. Since they were in the hallway, she had to resist the urge to wrap her legs around his waist. She hadn’t met any of her neighbors yet. Getting freaky in the hallway wouldn’t be the best way to go about making that first introduction. But she sure as heck buried her fingers in his short hair and kissed the sexy off him.
He definitely knew how to kiss, and she suddenly wondered how it would feel if he put that mouth of his somewhere else on her body. Yeah, probably not the kind of thought she should be having as a federal law enforcement officer, but hey, she was a woman, too. And damn, Holden was crazy hot!
When he pressed his mouth to her neck and started nibbling, Kendall realized it was time to move this make-out session out of the hall and into someplace more private. Refusing to think too much about the fact that at least part of her head was thinking about shagging a suspect, she nudged him toward her apartment. He got the idea and broke the kiss, taking her hand and tugging her the rest of the way down the hall with a laugh.
She was still laughing when Holden suddenly stopped, his body going rigid. She looked around him and saw that the door to her apartment was ajar. There was a crack in the jamb, running all the way from the striker plate to the floor.
Kendall was reaching for the gun she always kept holstered at her waist before she remembered she wasn’t wearing it. At that moment, it was taped to the inside of the nightstand in her bedroom. She couldn’t carry concealed while playing the part of a college student. It would blow her cover in ten seconds flat if anyone had seen it. But as she stared at the broken door of her apartment, she wished she’d said the hell with her cover. She hated being without her weapon.
She opened her purse to dig out her cell when Holden nudged the door open and darted a quick look inside. She reached out to stop him, but he was already moving through the doorway, looking back over his shoulder only long enough to give her a gesture that blatantly said Stay there.
Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.
Kendall was in the apartment right behind him before he’d made it halfway across the living room. He turned and gave her a look of irritation, but she pretended not to notice as she quickly took in the state of the apartment. Furniture was overturned and broken, couch cushions were slashed, and college books and papers were scattered everywhere. Even if she’d only been living there for two nights and didn’t own a thing in there, it still pissed her off that someone had trashed the place.
She stopped thinking about the damage and focused on checking the apartment for threats, following Holden as he bent down and scooped up one of the legs of her shattered desk chair. She did the same, earning another annoyed look from him. She ignored that one, too, but at least did her best to seem like the fragile, tender college student she was supposed to be. She stuck close to Holden, making it look like she was too scared to let him get too far away from her.
It didn’t take long to clear the place since it wasn’t that big. One look in the bedroom and bathroom confirmed more damage, but no one was hanging around.
Kendall set down her makeshift weapon and took out her phone to call the cops when she saw something on the floor that made her hesitate. It wasn’t anything obvious, just college books strewn across the floor near her couch. But it was hard to miss that one particular text book left open right in the middle of the floor—a thick, political science tome on the structure of the US federal bureaucracy. The title at the beginning of the chapter was Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Yeah, like that was a coincidence.
“I’m going to step out in the hall and call the cops,” she told Holden, letting her voice sound shaken. “Maybe you could walk around and see how bad the damage is?”
Holden nodded, thankfully not pointing out that it would have made a lot more sense for him to call the cops and her to check the place out. He probably thought she was rattled and needed to get out of there.
She found Isaac’s name in her contact list and thumbed the call button. He was exactly the kind of jerk who would do something like this without telling her first.
“You broke into my damn apartment?” she demanded the moment he answered. “What the hell?”
“Danner thought your cover could use a little reinforcement and our profiler suggested Lockwood would respond well to this kind of threat. Officers will be showing up in a few minutes to take your report. Play along with the script they throw your way. And try to sound like a freaked-out college kid, not a pissed-off Fed.”
Kendall started to ask why he hadn’t at least sent her a coded text or something as a warning, but the a-hole hung up on her. Wonderful.
“The cops are on the way,” she called out as she walked back into the apartment.
Holden came out of the bedroom, anger clear on his face. “Your mattress is completely shredded and your closet is trashed, but at least it doesn’t look like any of your clothes were torn up.”
She nodded, grateful that her fellow Feds hadn’t gotten carried away with her stuff. The clothes really did belong to her. If those jackasses had messed with them, she would have been forced to go off on somebody. And nobody wanted to see that.
Holden scowled at the papers and books scattered around the living room before looking at her. “You know who did this, right?”
“You think it was Isaac?”
“Don’t you?”
She sighed. “I suppose it makes sense. It’s just I never pegged him for that kind of man. He’d never come off as vindictive when we were dating.”
Holden lifted a brow. “I don’t know. He seemed to be pretty pissed when he saw us together. I thought he’d blow a gasket right there at the bar. Or throw a punch at me.”
Kendall suddenly had an image of Isaac doing exactly that—and Holden beating the crap out of him. For some stupid reason, the thought amused her more than it should have. Isaac could be a bit of a dictator when it came to being a supervisor, but Holden was a criminal. He was one of the bad guys. She shouldn’t think about him as anything other than that.
She wandered into the bedroom, making it appear like she was checking out the condition of her clothes. In reality, she slipped open the top drawer of her nightstand and eased a hand inside, checking to make sure her weapon was still taped in there. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt its solid weight. She hadn’t thought they’d mess with it, but it was still one less thing to worry about.
Kendall heard voices outside and walked into the living room to see two uniformed police officers standing there in front of Holden, one taking notes on a spill spiral pad.
“What makes you think it was an ex-boyfriend and not some random creep?” a stocky cop with curly, dark-hair asked. His nametag read Collins. “We get smash and grab type break-ins around here all the time.”
“I might buy that if the place wasn’t so trashed,” Holden said. “Someone looking for stuff to sell at a pawn shop wouldn’t slash the couch and toss her clothes on the floor of the bedroom. This is personal.”
The two cops glanced at each other, but they didn’t say anything. Collins checked out the apartment, while the cop with the notebook—Ellis—asked her questions about Isaac. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought they were real cops doing a real investigation.
Collins came back a few minutes later, his face grim. “You’ll need to talk to the landlord about getting some better locks installed, and we’ll definitely look into your ex. But I got to tell you, it might be a good idea for you to stay somewhere else for a few days. Just until we get this cleared up. Do you have a friend you can stay with?”
“Not really,” she murmured, finally realizing where this was going…and not thinking much of the idea. “I guess I could stay at a hotel.”
“You’re not going to a hotel,” Holden said firmly. “You can stay at my place.”
The moment Collins—if that was his real name—suggested she stay somewhere else, she knew Holden would make the offer. Obviously, the profiler at the Bureau had known, too. But while she could immediately understand the advantages of insinuating herself deeper into Holden’s life, there was something about using his good nature against him that made her feel slimy.
“Thanks, Holden. Really.” She gave him a small smile of gratitude, hoping the queasy sensation she was suddenly feeling in her stomach wasn’t showing on her face. “But I already feel bad enough about involving you in this situation in the first place. If Isaac is the one who did this, I don’t want him trashing your place next.”
She expected Holden to laugh at her concern. He was a big, studly SEAL after all. But instead, he nodded and returned her smile. “I appreciate you worrying about me, but the fact that you’re concerned about Isaac coming at me only confirms you realize how dangerous he is. There’s no way in hell I’m letting you stay by yourself in a hotel. You’re staying at my place until this is over.”
Kendall opened her mouth to argue, but then she caught Ellis standing behind Holden smiling. Apparently, her fellow FBI agent was immensely pleased with himself at how easy it had been to dupe Holden. The urge to smack the jackass was nearly overwhelming, and it took a surprising effort to keep her hands at her side.
Holden must have taken her change of expression as agreement because his smile broadened and he motioned toward the bedroom. “Why don’t you pack some clothes and I’ll grab your textbooks?”
Kendall almost laughed. She’d nearly forgotten she was supposed to be playing the part of a college student in the middle of her master’s program. Of course, she’d need her books.
The two fake cops left a few minutes later, leaving her with Holden and a trashed apartment. If Kendall hadn’t felt crappy enough before, she definitely did when she came out of the bedroom with a weekender full of clothes—and her handgun—to see him crawling around the living room floor on his hands and knees collecting up college notes. All while wearing his dress whites.
Flat out, the guy simply didn’t behave like any criminal she’d ever dealt with.
* * * * *
“This is the last of it.”
Setting down the third box of textbooks and notes into one corner of his apartment, Holden came over to join her over by the big, leather sectional couch that occupied the center of his living room. He’d taken off his dress shirt and that crackerjack hankie thing before carrying everything up from her car, and right then Kendall had to work hard to keep from gawking at him. The white T-shirt he had on was seriously skintight, showing off every muscle of his upper body. And baby, there were a lot of muscles to talk about. If she wasn’t supposed to still be traumatized from the break-in, she’d probably be drooling.
“You want to start going through those notes now?” he asked. “To make sure everything is there.”
“I probably should, but to tell the truth, I’m too tired to bother right now. I’ll worry about it tomorrow. Right now, all I feel like doing is finding a comfy spot on the couch so I can crash for a while.”
As if to prove her point, she flopped down on the sectional with a sigh. Not that there was much acting required. It was after one in the morning, and she was exhausted. Besides, it wasn’t like she was really going to need the fake notes for a fake college class.
Holden grinned. “Nice try, but you’ll be sleeping in my bed. I’ll take the couch. I want to be between you and the front door just in case your asshole ex shows up. I want you to feel safe here.”
Kendall opened her mouth, ready to say something about not wanting to put him out of his own bed after everything he’d already done for her, but the words got stuck in her throat as she realized just how incredible Holden was. The man had already upended his whole life simply because he thought she was in danger. Now, he was willing to sleep on a couch in the living room because he thought she’d sleep better that way. What kind of criminal did that for a complete stranger?
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand and jerking his head toward the small hallway that led to the back of his apartment.
“Are you sure you don’t mind sleeping on the couch?” she asked as he grabbed her overnight bag from the floor by the sectional and led the way to the bedroom.
She slowed as they stepped inside, surprised at how nice it was for a bachelor who probably didn’t spend much time at home. There was a thick, cozy navy-blue blanket on the king-size bed that looked comfortable as hell, and the room was decorated with photos and knickknacks that looked like they’d been collected from all around the world. It was an eclectic space and very cool looking.
He chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. You’re the one being harassed and chased out of your apartment by a psycho. If anyone deserve some good sleep in a real bed it’s you. Besides, I’ve crashed on that couch a few times while watching TV. It’s surprisingly comfortable.”
She didn’t say anything as he gave her a quick tour of the adjoining en suite bathroom. There was a walk-in shower, double sinks, and a spacious vanity. She noticed there weren’t any toiletries covering every available flat surface like in her bathroom at home. How did men get away with that? Sometimes, it felt like she needed a separate counter to give her a place for all her lotions and stuff.
“Towels are in this closet,” he said, pulling a pillow and blanket out of the linen closet. “There’re also shower gel, toothpaste, and stuff like that in case you forgot anything.”
She smiled, trying to imagine what kind of shower gel a Navy SEAL used. Something with scrubbing bubbles in it. Or twenty-grit sandpaper.
Holden headed out of the bedroom, slowing long enough at one of the dressers to open it and pull out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. When he reached the door, he stopped and turned back to look at her. “I wasn’t just saying it, by the way. You’re welcome to stay here however long you need to.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, and meant it. “I’m sure the cops will talk to Isaac—if he’s the one who trashed my place—and straighten this out. Hopefully, anyway.”
Holden shrugged, and she couldn’t help but appreciate the way the muscles of his chest and shoulders flexed and bunched under his T-shirt. “If they can’t find a way to deal with the situation, I could always track down your ex and beat him up for you, then toss him in the harbor when I’m done.”
She laughed, but then stopped. “You’re kidding, right?”
He chucked as he left the room. “Of course, I’m kidding. I’d never throw him in the harbor. A fish might choke on him.”
She stood in the doorway, watching as he tossed the pillow and blanket on the couch. “You’re still kidding, right?”
In all honesty, she wasn’t sure. He was a SEAL, after all. He probably knew a hundred different ways to kill someone.
He laughed again and turned off the lights. “Good night, Kendall.”
She stayed where she was, spying on him as he pulled off his T-shirt. He had his back to her and she caught a glimpse of broad shoulders and rippling muscles. She had an overwhelming urge to watch him take off the rest of his clothes, but as he reached for the front of his pants, she stepped back and slowly closed the bedroom door.
Letting out a sigh, she leaned back against it, nearly drowning in a sudden swirl of confusing emotions. Holden was a bad guy—a thief. When she got what she wanted out of him, he’d be arrested and sent to prison. But right then, he was sleeping on the couch so she’d feel safe.
What kind of criminal did that?