Intimate Caresses (The Love and Danger Series) (5 page)

Brock knocked on the door, wondering what his pretty suspect might wear after hours.  Was she one of those who grabbed a pair of sweats?  Or was she the kind that pulled on aerobics clothes and worked out? 

He raised his hand to knock again and found he was eager to find out.  Hell, he was eager to find out just about everything about her. 

It took several moments after he knocked before he heard movement inside her apartment.  But when she opened the door, his anger was monumental! 

“Did you even check through your peep hole to see who was on the other side of the door?” he demanded, pushing his way inside. 

Nina had been reviewing her notes, trying to figure out how to solve a problem with her
logic. So when she heard the doorbell ring, she hadn’t really thought about anything other than getting rid of the person as quickly as possible.

But the deep, angry voice that was admonishing her for answering the door startled her and she almost dropped her notes.  Her mouth fell open as she looked up at the tall man pushing his way into her apartment, pressing her against the wall. 

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to not be intimidated, but it was hard since he was so big.  And he was scary when he was this close.  And good grief he smelled good! 

“I’m here to ask you questions but my first is why the hell you opened the door!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.  “You rang the doorbell!” she came right back, albeit a bit breathlessly and with an edge to her voice that she wished she could banish. 

“What if I was a sociopath out to rape and murder you?”

She gripped her notes close to her chest, trying very hard not to reach up and touch him the way she wanted to. 

“Um…I guess I would be in trouble.”

He pressed in even closer, bracing his hands against the wall on either side of her head.  “You’re damn right you’d be in trouble.  And you’d be hurt and probably in the morgue or the hospital.”

Her eyes flashed with his words. 
Anger was a fabulous defense mechanism she suddenly realized.  “Or some jerk who has more muscles than courtesy might storm into my personal space and try to intimidate me.”  She glared up at him, daring him to deny what he was trying to do to her.

He glared right back down at her. 
“You think this is intimidation?” he asked, thinking it felt more like him holding himself back from kissing her.  

She ignored the trembling in her body, the excitement curling up in her stomach and focused only on her anger. 
“I think you’re a big, mean police officer who thinks I murdered someone and you’re just trying to get information by scaring me half to death.”

Damn he liked the lilting, southern quality of her voice when she got nervous or angry
.  And he really loved the feel of her breasts against his chest.  Hell, he liked just about everything about her except for the fact that she might have murdered someone last night.  Or tried to. 

“Maybe I just want to
get to know you better,” he suggested, being completely honest with her. 

She tried to slip under his arm, to put some space between their bodies but he easily blocked her escape route by sliding his arm lower. 
“And you get to know someone by scaring them?”

He smiled down at her, wondering what she might think if she could read his mind.  She’d probably slap his face.  And he’d definitely deserve it.

Pushing back from the wall, he continued to look down at her.  “I have more questions,” he stated. 

She slipped around him, moving into her kitchen.  She didn’t want him in her family room which didn’t contain any family room furniture.  It was filled with several monitors and a high powered computer, not to mention several different
servers and various other components.  She spent almost all of her money on computer equipment, trying to get her secret project up and running. 

“What are your questions?” she asked, taking her tea pot and filling it with water. 
She tried to pretend that her hands weren’t shaking and she was only leaning against the counter to balance herself.  It had nothing to do with the fact that she was having problems holding herself up with her wobbly knees. 

Brock looked around, noting that there weren’t any personal knick knacks around the kitchen.  Most women he knew had things everywhere.  Pictures, colorful hand towels, little things that took up space on the counters…Nina didn’t even have a toaster on her counter.  There wa
s a coffee maker that was empty and a tea pot on the stove.  When she opened a cabinet door, there were four cups, four dishes, four bowls and four glasses – all of the kind that one would purchase at a low end department store for the smallest amount of money possible. 

Didn’t she cook?  He peered into the trashcan and noticed several empty boxes of frozen meals and a couple of yogurt containers, some fruit remnants and used coffee grounds. 

“Thanks, I’ll have a cup as well,” he told her, even though he didn’t really need any additional caffeine at this point in the evening. 

She froze, but a moment later, she took another cup from the cabinet.  With a smile that tightened his stomach, she turned around and faced him.  “I’d be happy to make you a cup,” she told him.  “What additional question
s do you have for me?” she prompted again.

Br
ock really didn’t like that smile, but he wasn’t sure why.  Something was wrong.  She never smiled around him.  Oh, he suspected she was feeling exactly the same things he was, but smiling didn’t have any place in what they were feeling. 

Well, maybe afterwards….

“Were you able to come up with a possible alibi for last night?” he asked, grasping at straws. 

Nina glanced to the right, thinking about her programming.  She’d
built her system so that, anytime she was working on her project, it automatically saved her program every five minutes, just to ensure that she didn’t lose anything.  But she also worked quickly, her fingers flying over the keyboard and when she reached various points in her programming, she saved her work herself.  So she had manual saves and automatic saves, recorded by the system.  They weren’t a perfect alibi, but the time stamps on the system would show she was working from the moment she arrived home until around one or two in the morning when she fell into an exhausted sleep.  And there would be a record of her changes too, just in case she needed to go back to a previous file and extract code that worked better or differently. 

Did she dare to show this man her work? 

Steven’s last words to her broke through her concentration.  “You’re too trusting, Nina.  You’ve got to learn to toughen up and be hard core if you’re ever going to make it in the video game industry,” he’d said sarcastically as he’d carried his suitcase out the door.  Remembering that moment – her mind even recalling how he’d callously left the door open in the winter – brought all of that home once again. 

Nina squared her shoulders and stared back up into those fascinating green eyes.  “No.  No alibi. 
None whatsoever.”

Brock saw it again.  That challenge, that dare in her eyes.  He loved it and his whole body reacted to it.  He’d always loved a challenge!  “So you have something, but you’re not going to tell me about it,” he said, voicing the thoughts on his mind.  “
You don’t trust me.”

She shook her head. “Not as far as I can throw you.”  The water started boiling at that point and she turned to pour water over the tea bags
she’d already pulled out of the box.  “Here you go,” she said when she was finished steeping the tea.  “What else?” she asked, leaning her hip against the plain, brown countertop. 

Brock looked down into the cup, not liking what he saw. 
Whatever was in the cup…it wasn’t purple….was it?  “This isn’t coffee,” he said warily.  He lifted it up to his nose, sniffing it as if it were some sort of poisonous brine. 

She smothered her chuckle.  “Of course it isn’t,” she replied, unaware of the soft, pink glow illuminating her cheeks or the sparkle that had entered those pretty blue eyes. 
He looked down at her and his body hardened even more. 

“What the hell is it?” he demanded, moving closer as if he could scare the truth out of her. 

She couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of her at his expression.  He looked so dubious about the liquid it had been worth every moment of today, just to see that expression. 

“It’s blueberry tea.”

He actually jerked the cup out as if it was a snake about to bite him and she laughed harder.  “I didn’t know it was possible to be disgusted by a cup of tea, but you just did it.” 

Nina covered her mouth, laughing delightedly.  “It won’t hurt you.  In fact, it is much better for you than coffee or caffeinated tea.”

He rolled his eyes and put it down on the counter.  “No way.”  He liked the way she laughed even though he wouldn’t drink that stuff on a dare.  “A man can’t drink blueberry tea and you should be arrested for even attempting such heresy.”

That made her laugh even more and she hid her face behind her own cup of tea. 

“So when are you going to tell me what you’re hiding in your family room?” he asked, moving closer to her and watching her eyes widen.  Bingo, he thought to himself. 

Nina’s hand was shaking so badly with that statement that she had to set her tea down on the counter or risk spilling the hot liquid on her hand.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He raised a dark eyebrow and waited.  When she didn’t appear as if she was going to respond, he simply pushed away from the countertop and started walking into the family room to investigate himself.

“What are you doing?” Nina demanded,
putting her tea down on the kitchen counter before racing in front of him and trying to stop him by placing herself in front of him.  She should have known that it wouldn’t work.  But she never could have known how it would backfire on her so completely. 

He stopped, but only because he was amused by her attempt.  “You really think placing yourself between me and whatever is in that room is going to stop me from discovering what you’re hiding?” he asked, his voice deep and husky because from this angle, he had an enticing glimpse down her silk shirt and his mind was loving the
peak of lace he could now see.  He loved a woman in lace underwear!  Hell, he loved a woman in any kind of underwear.  And he loved it even more when she was out of it!

“You can’t go through my apartment without a warrant,” she gasped, her hands moving to brace
herself on either side of the hallway. 

He bent down slightly so he could see her in the dim light of her hallway.  “And you think you’re going to stop me?” he asked, his voice soft and silky.  He moved forward.  “You’re going to have to put your hands on me to slow me down,” he said.  “And I’m still not going to stop.”  To prove his point, he moved even closer, his chest once again coming into contact with her breasts.  He looked down, then back into her blue eyes.  “Come on, Nina.  You can do better than this to slow me down.”  When she still didn’t move, he put his hands on her waist, sliding up her rib cage, the silk of her blouse making it even easier.  “You’re not even trying.” 

She was flustered by the idea of both stopping him from moving into her den area and by his hands that were so close, so painfully close to her breasts.  She held her breath, her eyes wide with both hope that he would move his hands higher, and fearful of the exact same possibility. 

They stood there staring at each other for several long moments, neither one blinking, only Brock’s fingers moving ever so slightly. 

“Don’t,” she whispered. 

Brock wanted badly to pull her into his arms, to kiss her and taste those soft, tender looking lips.  He wanted to know her taste, to feel her slender figure in his arms.  His whole body was aching to do just that, but his mind was stopping him.  He wasn’t sure if it was because she was still considered a suspect, or if he wanted her to be
more sure before they ventured into this area of their relationship.

In the end, he dropped his hands down to her waist again but didn’t release her.  In fact, he lifted her up and turned, placing her on the other side of the hallway where he now had a clear path to her den and her secrets.

But as soon as he stepped into the den area, her panic started to expand throughout her body.  This was a different panic than Brock touching her and blowing her mind all out of control. This was a full out panic from a painful past experience that she couldn’t control.

“Please don’t touch that,” she almost screamed when Brock bent down and looked at her monitors. 
Stepping closer, her eyes and body language pleaded with him.  “Please, everything there is very important and has nothing to do with your investigation, I promise.”

Brock looked at her, then down at the monitor.  “You’re using
Intellicent software,” he said, his eyes scanning the code on one monitor and comparing it to the code on a second screen, and there was yet another that showed date and time stamps.  “This is good software for configuration management,” he said, looking up at her. 

Nina moved behind her desk, trying to stop his hands from touching her keyboard, wanting to hide everything he could see.  But he was too fast.  With a few clicks, the monitor flashed up for the
previous evening’s manual and automatic save times, his eyes scanning the time stamps.  “Nina, this shows you were here last night, working on whatever this is.”