CHAPTER 26
CARTER
No matter what anyone tells you, night-vision cameras aren’t perfect. Not even close to halfway perfect. So when I went to the monitors to see what the system was beeping about, I didn’t notice her clogs or the slimness of her frame. I just saw a black-clad person skulking around the house and up the porch.
I worked for famous people with crazy fans. Before that, I put people in jail. I made a very nice living and had things to steal. Mostly, and at the top of the list, I needed to protect Phin from my life without making him feel as if he lived in a prison. So the security system was invisible and thorough. It conformed to frustrating Historical Society guidelines. It had been silent for years.
When I saw the figure crawling around the house at dinnertime, my instinct was to protect first and ask questions later. I’d been a cop when Genevieve Tremaine and her estranged husband wound up dead. I took stalking very seriously. I told Phin and Mom to get upstairs now. When Phin asked questions, I practically threw him up the stairs by the back of his collar.
I scared the shit out of him.
My mother was more scared of me than the intruder.
Who wasn’t an intruder.
Once the LAPD showed up, I went outside, where Emily had her hands up and the same sexy little black outfit she’d been in all afternoon. She was drowned in light, squinting, scared. Two uniforms had their guns on her. I stood away from it all, in a dark corner.
I felt a burning need to protect her as much as I’d felt the need to protect my family against her a minute before. An older cop came up the steps. I knew him.
“Fifty-one-fifty.” He addressed me by my badge number.
Harry and I exchanged a quick handshake as one of the gun-wielding cops put his piece away and told her to turn around and put her hands on her head.
“I know her,” I said.
“Got yourself a stalker?”
He seemed to think it was funny. Maybe it was. I didn’t have much of a sense of humor about it.
“She’s harmless,” I said without thinking. One of the cops started patting Emily down, and my whole brain short-circuited. I jumped toward them.
“I’ll do it,” I said. The cop looked at Harry, who must have nodded. Emily should have recognized my voice, but she didn’t turn around.
I got behind her.
“Hands on the wall,” I said. “Above your head.”
When she obeyed me, stretching her arms over her head and placing her hands flat on the siding, half my anger drained away. My dick woke up.
“Feet apart.” I didn’t wait for her to do it. Obedience was nice, but kicking her legs open was just a little more arousing.
“Carter.” Her voice was an apology I’d accept later.
“No talking.”
I frisked her, starting at her wrists, working down to her ribs. She wasn’t hiding a damn thing under those strips of clothing except tits and curves and an ass shaped like two eggs in a carton. I took it slow, as if I didn’t want to miss anything.
“I left you in your house. You were supposed to call me if you were leaving.” I let my fingertips brush under her breasts, feeling the soft flesh yield underneath. “You put yourself in danger and ruined my dinner.”
Belly, hips, thighs. I slowly ran my hands between her legs, because you never knew what a girl could hide between skin and Lycra.
I brushed her crotch quickly, then stood behind her.
“What did you think you were doing?”
“You said not to talk.”
Harry and the other cops had gone to the lawn to wait. I waved them away and they waved back. Harry gave me a thumbs-up. I turned back and put my nose in Emily’s hair. Behind me, doors slammed and tires crunched the driveway.
“This is a problem,” I said. She smelled of fear and fresh sweat. “If I can’t trust you, I can’t work with you, and I certainly can’t fuck you.”
“I’m sorry.”
I rested my hands on her hips. “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
“Yes.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
“Really?” I moved from her hips to the front of her thighs, to the triangle in between. She shuddered.
“How are you even touching me on your wife’s porch?” She dropped her hands and spun on me. “That’s sick.”
“My what?”
She crossed her arms as if she were loading a weapon. “Don’t bullshit me. Look behind you. Three bikes. One definitely adult female. The pictures on the mantel. You look really happy, Carter. Why would you do that to her? Why would you kiss me and touch me . . .” Her eyes went wide as if she realized something. “That’s why you didn’t let me make you come.”
“Whoa, you are—”
Suddenly, I was on the defensive as Emily lifted an accusatory finger to my face.
“That’s some kind of line for you and her, is it?” She jabbed my chest repeatedly. “Right? What normal man turns down a blow job? A married—”
I took her finger.
“I’m not married. Read my lips. Not. Married.”
“Living with her?”
“No. The only woman I’m attached to is turning out to be a real psycho.”
She jerked her finger away.
“I’m going to call Thor,” I said. “If he’s not around, I’ll get someone to take you home.”
“I can get to my car by myself, thank you. An explanation before you kick me out would be nice.”
I got out my phone.
“I don’t owe you one for peeking in my windows.” I was getting more deeply entrenched in my position than I wanted to be, but her sense of entitlement rubbed up against my sense of safety. “I keep my personal life separate for a good reason.”
Tap tap tap.
Phin knocked at the window. Mom stood behind him. They were both looking at the pretty lady on the porch.
I shooed them away, but Mom took that as a cue to open the door.
“Are you coming in for dinner?”
“Mom,” I said, “go inside.”
“She doesn’t look dangerous at all!”
“Oh my God!” Emily exclaimed. “You’re the one in the pictures. You look so young.”
Her voice was thick with honesty. She wasn’t flattering my mother, but Mom was flattered anyway. She put her hand to her chest and smiled.
“Please go inside,” I said in a last-ditch effort to get control of the situation.
“Oh, stop,” she said, holding her hand out to Emily. “We have plenty of food, even if it’s a little cold.” Emily was polite enough to hesitate, but my mother wasn’t polite enough to know a damned social cue when she saw one. She took Emily by the elbow and led her inside. “Please,” she said, “call me Brenda.”