Armed With Steele (36 page)

“What? Where are you?”

“Lake Avenue. I just went through a yellow light at Coliseum. There’s a black sedan behind me—they’ve been changing lanes with me for a few miles now. I didn’t think much about it until he blew through that light well after I did.”

“Did he drop back after he crossed the intersection?”

“Yes.”

Nate cursed. “Looks like something you did today drew some attention.”

Or something I did yesterday
.
I clung to the steering wheel and tried to keep my breathing steady. Now was definitely not to the time to start hyperventilating. “W-what should I do?”

“First of all, I need you to stay calm.” I could hear movement on his end of the phone. Keys rattling, an engine starting. “Next, I need you to stay on busy roads. Got that? Stay out in the open. And whatever you do, don’t go home.”

“Don’t go home? But…where am I supposed to go?” I heard muffled voices on Nate’s end. “Nate?”

“Jess, I’m a good hour away. But I’ve got Charlie on the radio. He’s headed to Glenbrook… Go in by the Target entrance, then weave around to the front of Sears. Look for his Hummer over by the key-making hut. He’ll be waiting for you there.”

“Hummer by the key hut. Got it.” I glanced in my rearview mirror at the black sedan, still following me like an unwanted shadow. “Then what?”

“Charlie will lose your tail, then take you back to his place. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“O-Okay.”

“Jess?”

I pried my eyes off the rearview mirror. Tried to keep my breathing even. “Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

* * * *

Charlie’s plan worked. The black sedan followed me through the Glenbrook side streets, and slowed when I parked beside the only Hummer in the lot. But when they saw Charlie standing there, waiting with the door open for me, they high-tailed it out of there.

Now I was standing in the bathroom off Charlie’s guest bedroom, trying to convince my reflection that everything was going to be alright. So what if someone tried to follow me home? Or if I’d received a threatening note on my desk and had my printer sabotaged? Nate was back in town, on his way to pick up a few pizzas from The Hut. Once I’d gotten some dinner in me and some time with Nate, my frayed nerves would be smooth as silk.

Well, that was my hope, anyway.

The plan was to stay here tonight, then have Nate follow me home early in the morning. Give me a chance to shower and get ready for work. But when Charlie told me Nate was stopping by my place to collect Brutus, I had the sneaking suspicion that me not going home wasn’t just a one-night affair.

And while I felt much safer this far from home, I couldn’t help but wonder how I would ever be able to sleep tonight. Alone, in the same house as Fort Wayne’s self-crowned Playboy of the Year. Maybe I should try to convince Nate to stay with me. Ah, but if I did that, there were sure to be assumptions, expectations I didn’t want to meet.

Or did I? My nerves weren’t raw just from today’s activities—my poor body went into high alert every time I was near Nate, or heard his voice, after our
almost
on Saturday. I stared at my reflection, saw the want in my eyes. Why couldn’t I just give in? Let the cards fall where they may?

A sudden knock on the bathroom door nearly severed my last remaining nerve of sanity.

“You sure you have everything you need in there, Jess?” Charlie asked.

Everything except some freaking peace and quiet!
“Uh, yeah. I’m fine, thanks.”

I splashed some cool water on my face. Tried to clear away any lasting memories of Saturday. As I dabbed my face dry, I caught site of a bottle of Philosophy on the ledge of the garden-sized tub. It called to me with the force of Oedipus’ sirens.

Maybe a quick, hot bath before dinner?

Five minutes later I was in bubble heaven. Intoxicated by the scent of lavender, I sank down into the tub until its warm, velvety contents skimmed the bottom of my chin. I closed my eyes and made a mental note to run out to the store the first chance I got and buy some of this heavenly serum for myself.

The tension in my body slowly began to fade. At least, it did until I heard a click, like that of a turning doorknob. I dismissed the sound—surely I would have remembered to lock the bathroom door. But then the lights went out.

“Ah, I see you found the bubble bath.”

My eyes flew open. Charlie stood with his back to me—wearing only a pair of black, silken boxers. The silhouette of his long, lean body shone in the light of a single candle.

“Sure did,” I squeaked, and ducked lower in the water. My hands reached out to position a large mound of bubbles over all my important parts. “S-sorry, I guess I should have asked first.”

“Oh no, I always want my guests to be comfortable.” Charlie turned to face me. “Though I have to admit, I hadn’t pictured you to be the skinny-dipping type.”

I averted my eyes, but not before catching a glimpse of his stellar six pack.

“Me, either,” I said with a nervous laugh. Its unusually-high pitch echoed off the bathroom tile. How did I keep getting myself into these messes?

“If I’d known, I would have steered you to the master suite—the tub in there has so much more
elbow
room.”

A fine sweat begin to break out along my hairline. “You know, Charlie, Nate’s going to be back any time. Don’t you think—”

“Shh,” he said, coming over to kneel on the floor beside the tub. “Don’t you worry about Nate. He knows better than to barge in when I’m up here working my magic.”

Working his magic? Didn’t he know? Hadn’t Nate told him we were…we were…

What
were
we, exactly?

I felt his hands light onto my shoulders, then his thumbs began making small circles on my back. I froze. “Wow, Jessica, your back’s one giant knot.”

“Is it?” I didn’t know what to do. Tell him to leave? Tell him to stay? Without permission, my body reverted back to high alert. His hands felt incredible. And that cologne he was wearing… My eyes rolled back in my head and I felt my shoulders begin to relax once more.

But, wait! What about Nate? “Charlie—”

“Shh,” he said again, and placed a hungry kiss on the back of my neck. Heat flashed through me. Kisses like that could lead to a whole other kind of stress relief. Sleeping with Nate could lead to heartache, because I truly cared about him. But Charlie? Charlie could be a simple, one-nighter. No emotional attachment, no heartache...

His hands began to slide down from their place on my shoulders. Broke the plane of the water. Started down toward my—

“No, Charlie.”

Sex-starved or not, I wasn’t about to let Charlie walk in and have his way with me. Not when I was, at least in my eyes, seeing his best friend. And especially not when the reason I hadn’t had sex with Nate yet wasn’t his fault, but my own.

“Relax, Jess. I’ll have you stress free in no—”

“Nate and I are seeing each other.”

He retracted his hands as if he’d just received an electric shock. “You’re what?”

“Apparently he didn’t kiss and tell.”

“Damn it. I
told
him not to mix business and pleasure.”

I arched a brow at him.

He shrugged. “His business. My pleasure.” He sunk down onto the bathroom floor, ran a hand through his sandy blond hair and exhaled sharply. “So much for my appetizer.”

Remorse washed over me. And then guilt for feeling remorse. “Charlie, I’m sorry. I should have told you, but…”

A sly grin appeared on his face. “Didn’t want to bruise my ego, huh?”

“No.” I grinned back.

“If you weren’t so incredibly off-limits, I would really be using that to my advantage right now.”

“Off-limits?” I said, reaching for additional bubble coverage.

“Nate and I have always had an agreement—he doesn’t touch my women, and I don’t touch his. You, uh, probably shouldn’t tell him about this whole…” He gestured from me to him.

“Oh! No. No, I think we’ll just keep this one under wraps.”

He scowled for a moment at my poor choice of words, then stood. Took one more quick peek into the tub. Then sauntered out of the room.

I let out a long exhale and sank back down into the soothing water. Whether from hormonal overload or sheer fatigue, I found myself stifling a serious case of the giggles. Not wanting to seriously bruise Charlie’s ego, I bit down on a finger, trying to keep quiet.

Oh, will Grace love to hear
this
story…

I heard Charlie in the next room, zipping up his jeans. Fought another giggle as I pictured how difficult it might have been for him to squeeze back into them. But my giggles evaporated when I heard another door click open and Nate cry out in surprise.

“What the hell?”

“Whoa, Man. It’s not what it looks like.”

Oh, shit.

I scrambled from the tub and threw a towel around me. Dripping wet, I raced out of the room, and down the stairs. But when I heard the sound of his Camaro peeling out in the driveway, I knew it was too late. I ran to the decorative glass window the skirted each side of Charlie’s entryway and watched, helpless, as the man I needed more than ever vanished into the night.

“He’ll cool down in a day or two,” Charlie called from the kitchen.

I turned around. Moped my way toward him. “You think so?”

He nodded and cracked open two cold ones. “Trust me. You aren’t the only one with a temper, Miss Jessica. Now, what’ll it be: pepperoni, or sausage?”

* * * *

4:30 AM.

No one in their right mind should ever be out of bed this early. When I’d agreed to do this undercover gig, I guess I wasn’t in my right mind, either. More like out of my mind. And now here I was, standing outside my back door in the pitch dark, having to sneak back into my own home.

I unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Still not speaking to me, huh?”

Nate snorted and brushed right on by.

Though he was clearly still PO’ed about what he thought he’d walked in on the night before, he’d kept his word. Nate’s cruiser reappeared in Charlie’s driveway at four on the nose to escort me home. But he hadn’t made eye contact with me or said a single word. I bit my tongue and tried to dial back my own temper—lack of sleep had me in no mood for his rude behavior.

He finished a security sweep of the house, then stepped back outside and motioned for me to go in. Didn’t mutter an “all clear,” or “have a nice day,” just a wave of his hand and a scowl on his face. If he kept this up, my tongue was going to be a bloody mess.

“Thanks.”

I walked past him and slammed the door behind me. But found the act not nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. So I spun around, threw the door open, and marched back outside. I was on him in a matter of seconds, words flying, each point emphasized by a jab of my index finger into his solid—oh, so solid—chest.

“I didn’t
ask
for any of this, you know. I didn’t
ask
to be scared out of my mind by some crazy driver yesterday. I didn’t
ask
you to conveniently forget to tell your best friend that the woman you’d left alone in his house was off-limits. I didn’t
ask
to be put on your ex-girlfriend’s hit list. And I sure as
hell
never asked for Grace to land in that
fucking coma
!”

A look of shock dawned on Nate’s face, and some sick part of me enjoyed seeing it there.

“So the next time you can’t solve a hot crime on your own,
buddy
, find some other helpless, naive woman to do your dirty work for you. Because I quit!”

The look on his face transformed into one of outrage. “You…you can’t quit!” he snarled, catching my wrist. “This is your investigation as much as it’s mine!”

“The hell I can’t. Grace is awake. I could quit today. Tell her the whole thing, and help her find a new job. We’d both survive.”

He pulled me closer, his grip like a vice on my wrist. “Whether you like it or not,
missy
, you’ve managed to go and kick the hornet’s nest at Maxwell. You really think you can just walk away?” His blue eyes blazed down into mine. “They’ll be out to get both of you now, and do the job right this time.”