Kansas City Christmas (17 page)

He squeezed the bottle’s cap within his fist and considered turning it.

He was saving them both from a big world of hurt, right?

“…Holly Masterson, medical examiner with the KCPD crime lab. Dr. Masterson…”

“What the…?” The words from his TV set suddenly became important.

Switching out the beer for the remote, Edward turned up the volume. The nosy blond reporter who’d tried to stop him at the lab, Hayley Resnick, was recapping a news report, covering the highlights of a KCPD news conference held earlier in the evening. The picture switched from Ms. Resnick to taped footage of the news conference.

Edward’s heavy boots thumped to the floor as he sat forward. Unbelievable. Did that woman have a death wish?

Flanked by Mitch Taylor and Detective Kevin Grove, Holly stood at the press room podium, waiting to address the reporter’s question. “Dr. Masterson. Is it true that your lab has found conclusive results confirming that Cold War operative Irina Zorinsky Hansford is still alive?”

“Yes. Her DNA turned up at a recent crime scene.”

“Can you elaborate?”

Holly tucked her short hair behind her ears. “I’m afraid I can’t comment as it’s part of an ongoing investigation. But I assure you, the results are conclusive. She is alive.”

Dissatisfied with that answer, Ms. Resnick turned her microphone toward the officer in charge. “Major Taylor, I see you’re standing in for the commissioner while she’s away on vacation. Can you tell our viewers—does Ms. Zorinsky pose a significant threat to the Kansas City community? Is this something Homeland Security will look into?”

KCPD could place a woman matching Irina’s general description at two different locations—one of which was Holly’s attack—and they thought it was a smart idea to splash Holly’s face all over the television?

Edward rose to his feet. Was
this
Holly’s idea? Flush Irina Zorinsky out of hiding? And what was Taylor thinking? That Holly’s pretty face and brainy deductions made the perfect bait?

Edward snatched his cell phone off its charger, intending to punch in Major Taylor’s number and warn him of the danger Holly could be in. But when he turned it on, three voice mail messages popped up, all from Holly. She was probably just checking up on him, being strong and sensible and braver about their growing feelings than he’d been. But if any one of them included the word
help
or
danger
, then he’d probably just tumble right over the edge into the bottle that was now leaving a ring of moisture on his coffee table.

Edward turned away from the temptation and played the first message. Holly was looking for him. Why didn’t he answer his phone? The second message was similar, leaving her sister Jillian’s cell phone number as well as her work phone in case he wanted to contact her. The third—

The knock at his front door was as startling as any cry for help. Ages ago, he would have sensed the unwelcome guest and identified him already. Tonight, he hadn’t even heard a car drive up. Every muscle inside him tensed before he closed his phone and set it on the table. The hour was late, the cabin dark, the location remote. This couldn’t be any accidental tourist stopping by.

The box containing his past life was right there beside his hand. With defensive instincts and old cautions surfacing inside him, it felt only natural to reach for the gun and pull it from its holster. It hadn’t been cleaned in two years, but then it hadn’t been used, either.

He was unboxing a clip of bullets when his visitor knocked again. Louder this time. “Edward? Are you awake?”

“Holly?” His ankle and knee protested the sudden spin toward the door. But other pangs moved him even faster. “Holly?”

He tucked his gun in the back of his jeans and swung the door open to find her standing on
his
screened-in porch. Bundled up and dotted with snow on his porch. “I know it’s late, but—”

“Get in here.” He pulled her inside, taking note of the black-and-white unit making a U-turn in his drive and pulling away. He scanned the woods and gravel road beyond, searching for any sign of being tailed, before closing the door and pushing her against the thick stones and beams of the wall. “Where’s your escort going?”

“He’s been with me all day and night. I told him once I got inside with you he could go home to his own family.”

“Call him back.”

He was still shielding her with his body from a threat he knew was out there, somewhere, when her gloved hand came up to brush against the stubble of his jaw. “You didn’t return any of my calls. I was worried. I didn’t want to leave it like it was between us this afternoon. I think we need to talk.”

Wants and needs lurched inside him in response to her determined tenderness. But something harder, self-preserving, made him reach up and pull her hand away. “Do you have any idea how much I
don’t
want to talk?”

Her gaze moved beyond him to the coffee table. “But you’re willing to get drunk?”

“I saw your news conference. Taylor shouldn’t have put you up to that.”

“I volunteered. This case is about to break wide open. I’m about to find the answers I’ve been searching eight months for.”

“No. No way, Stick.” He raked his fingers through his hair and turned away, crossing to the table and placing the loose bottle back in the carton with its golden, frosty mates. “This is
my
war to fight against Z Group. Not yours. I want you off my father’s murder investigation. I’m prepared to deal with the mess that’s coming down the road. But I don’t want you anywhere near it.”

Her footsteps followed him into the kitchen. “You’re armed and sitting in the dark with twelve beers? That’s what you call prepared? I was right to be worried.”

“Here.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it out to her. “Call your backup guy back, and have him drive you home. Or better yet, to a safe house.”

Bright lights flooded the kitchen, forcing him to close his eyes. “Stick.” Any argument died when he felt her press her face against his chest. Cells in his body leaped to life. She turned her nose to the juncture of his neck and shoulder and his pulse raced. She framed his face and tilted her head back. His arms went round her and he lowered his mouth, helplessly drawn to her kiss. But the surge of passion came to a cruelly abrupt halt when she sniffed. And then she was prying open his eyelids. “What are you doing?”

“You haven’t had anything to drink yet?” Her hazel eyes studied his, looking for answers that went beyond the physical. Looking hopeful.

He squeezed her shoulders and pushed her away. “No.”

“Then call your sponsor and go to a meeting before you do. Please.”

This woman was unbelievable. She’d just revealed her knowledge of a dangerous killer on a public newscast and she was worried about
him
? He released her entirely. “Look, you do not need to deal with the likes of me. You already have one addict in your family—that’s more than any one person should have to take care of.”

“Jillian’s a recovering addict,” she corrected. “And you’re the one who reminded me that it isn’t my job to ‘take care’ of her. She has to take care of herself. I just have to love her.”

Her green-gold eyes reached all the way into his heart, stunning him like an electric shock, bringing something back to life inside him.

No. He couldn’t hear those words. Couldn’t dare feel them or believe what they implied.

He gripped the edge of the counter behind him. Gripped it with both hands. “Let me solve Dad’s murder on my own, Stick. Leave me alone and let me work. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’ve watched Jillian heal, Edward. You can, too. I
need
you to heal.”

“So I can keep you safe? You know how well I protected my own family.”

“Please.” She had the brass to reach right into his pocket and pull out the keys to his Jeep. “Let me take you to the meeting, Edward. And then…we’ll come back here.” Her hands might be bold, but vulnerability softened her eyes and sentenced him to the truth. His efforts to free himself from his feelings for Holly Masterson had come too late. “You may want to get rid of me, but I have no intention of leaving you.”

“Satisfied?”

He watched her slide the last stack of bills back into the envelope he’d given her, and then tuck it into her trinket box along with the other spoils from her work here in the United States. She’d counted out the entire $100,000, not trusting him for one minute, even after all this time together.

She reached up to trace his mouth with one red-tipped finger. “Now that’s a loaded question, isn’t it, dear? You know my appetites are insatiable.”

He kissed the fingertip because she expected him to. But his mind was already racing ahead to the plans he’d made following his visit from Edward Kincaid earlier in the evening.

Edward—who suspected everything but couldn’t prove it.

If he was anything like his father—and he was—then it was only a matter of time before Edward found that proof.

He’d already buried his best friend because of this woman.

William Caldwell wasn’t going to stay around long enough to see his best friend’s oldest son buried alongside him. The game was finally up. But Bill had one last play to make.

After she zipped the trinket box into her carry-on bag, Bill tossed a pair of airline tickets onto the bed beside her. It had to be two tickets because even with all her conniving intellect and complete lack of remorse for the vicious retributions she’d handed out over the years, Irina Zorinsky had one fatal flaw.

She hated to be alone.

It was her
insatiable
need for male companionship that had doomed him to this deadly alliance in the first place. If he hadn’t been sleeping with her thirty years ago, she never would have discovered that
he
was the one who’d been selling American technology and the names of Z Group operatives to their enemies. She never would have discovered how lucrative playing both sides of the spy game could be and demanded to be cut in on a piece of the profits. She never would have hatched that ludicrous plan to take the blame and “die” in his place, thereby setting up a secret partnership that allowed him to be the straight, upstanding American entrepreneur while she sold his company’s technology abroad without fear of being caught. After all, how could Interpol or the CIA or anyone else track a dead woman?

Over the years she’d proved to be a perfect partner. In exchange for a little sex and a lot of money, she took care of any problems that came up. She knew how to entice reliable help to work for them and how to dispose of unreliable ones.

And any time she began to think that
he
was becoming an unreliable partner, she only had to remind him that she knew as much about his illegal activities as he did about hers. Killing her for real had never been an option because she’d hidden clues about him on two different continents. If something ever happened to her, he didn’t doubt that some mysterious package would show up on Interpol’s doorstep, naming names and pointing the finger straight at him.

But he’d never thought about killing himself before.

The ruse had worked so well for her, why not for him? It was his turn to disappear, to leave this life behind. To take his money and be rid of her and finally find some peace.

But first, he had to get her on that plane.

“You’re awfully quiet.” She picked up the tickets and read the first-class schedule for a flight to Rio de Janeiro. She’d like the heat there. “It makes me nervous when you spend so much time thinking, dear. Makes me wonder if you’re up to something.”

Realizing that his cover was slipping, he plucked the tickets from her fingers and pulled her into his arms. Her curves settled against him in that familiar decadent fit, and he reminded himself that the sex between them would have to end. He kissed her lips. “I’m just worried you’ll change your mind about going. Life as Senhor and Senhora Smith is going to be a lot less exciting than what we’ve been used to.”

And then he reached for the zipper of her dress. She reached for
his
zipper, making it hard to focus on his plan. “You’re not thinking that a hundred grand is enough for us to live on, are you?”

“I told you, it’s just spending cash for the trip. I’ll take care of setting up our new home in Brazil, I promise. But I can’t just write a check for seventy-five million dollars without making my accountants suspicious. Don’t worry. I’ve set up a charitable trust that will pay us on a regular basis.”

“Good.” She pushed him back on the bed beside her luggage and climbed on top of him. “Because just ‘spending cash’ will never be enough for me.”

It was sometime later, after she’d had her way with him and he was drifting off to sleep that Bill remembered the most dangerous part of his plan. It wasn’t staging a fatal car accident while she waited for him at the airport.

It was getting out of the country with a woman he could really love.

Irina wasn’t the only one who hated to be alone.

T
HOUGH
E
DWARD’S RUSTIC CABIN
was devoid of any Christmas decorations whatsoever, Holly felt cozy and warm and curiously at home as she explored the kitchen and main rooms.

Maybe it was because the place felt so much like the man who owned it. The masculine style of the exposed wood beams and leather furniture reminded her of Edward’s dark hair and earthy scent. The quiet, isolated location and unyielding strength of the rock walls fit, too.

And inside the spare, forbidding exterior, she’d found glimpses of tenderness and sentimentality and love.

Like the sweet, handmade doll she’d put in a place of honor on the mantel above the fireplace where she’d lit a small, warming fire. Obviously made by a child’s hand, the rag doll angel was crafted of ticking and yarn and glue. The crooked design of its eyes and mouth made her think of a fresh-faced smile, and she wondered if it reminded him of his daughter. Or was the dusty ornament a treasured memento from his past life?

Holly had already dumped the beer down the sink and tossed the bottles into the trash. Whether he believed it or not, he’d made her feel safe here. She wanted him to feel safe, too.

After hanging up their coats, Edward had checked the locks on every door and window and headed straight for the shower. He hadn’t said more than five words on the drive back from the midnight AA meeting. But it wasn’t the moody, brooding quiet of a man dealing with internal demons. It had been a silence of inevitability, an acceptance that something had changed irrevocably between them. She’d broken down walls tonight by practically confessing the love that was growing in her heart. He was dealing with that. Maybe deciding what his own feelings were, maybe deciding he wasn’t ready to deal with feelings yet.

She’d give him the time and the space to let him deal.

But she wasn’t walking away from him. He couldn’t scare her off with his grouchy tempers or his dire words about somehow failing her. Edward Kincaid didn’t need someone to love him in order to heal and believe in himself again.

He needed to
give
love to someone else. He needed to learn that he
could
love again.

And she was here to volunteer for the job.

“Cold?”

Holly startled at the deep, gravelly voice behind her. But it was a welcome sound. She held her palms out toward the fire, warming away the hint of goose bumps that lingered on her skin. “A little. I haven’t been around a real fireplace in years. I’d forgotten how wintry and festive it makes me…”
Oh, man
. “…feel.”

She caught a delicious whiff of spicy shower gel and steamy male skin a heartbeat before Edward’s broad bare shoulders came into view. He walked past her to the woodbin next to the hearth, wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue jeans, unsnapped at the waist and riding low around his hips. With shameless fascination, Holly watched the flexes and swells of muscle along his shoulders, arms and tapering back as he pulled aside the fire screen and added a couple of large logs to the flames. “That should keep things burning all night.”

Holly felt that double entendre all the way down to her toes, though he’d been talking temperature, not lusty surges through the blood. She licked her lips, feeling a sudden thirst. Beat-up, as he’d described himself, looked mighty good on him. “Aren’t
you
cold?”

He shrugged, shifting the muscles and her hormones all over again. “I’m used to it.” He proceeded to stir the fire and secure the screen. He combed his fingers through his still-damp hair and then he made yet another trip around the cabin, rechecking the double lock on the front door and making sure the windows and shutters were all locked up tight.

Though she stayed by the fire’s warmth, Holly’s curiosity seemed to have a mind of its own, taking in several quick observations. Edward worked out—not to any sculpted pretty-boy extreme, but he was healthy and fit and more nicely put together than she’d expected for a man who’d most likely been bedridden or confined to a wheelchair for months. The scars that lined his jaw and neck peppered down across his torso as well, creating tiny voids in the coffee-dark curls that sprinkled across his chest and tapered down to disappear behind the open snap of his jeans. His limp was still there, but barely discernible as he moved with the efficiency of a trained guard dog, making her feel, ridiculously, more secure than she’d felt standing at precinct headquarters, surrounded by cops.

When he came back to her side, one final observation revealed a round, puckered scar on his chest, up near his right shoulder, that she recognized from too many autopsies. Scientific curiosity became a woman’s concern and she lifted her fingers to gently trace the badge of honor on his skin. “When were you shot?”

His skin pulsed beneath her touch and she quickly drew her hand away, singed by a heat far more seductive than the warmth of the fire. “André Butler shot me…that morning.” His words were low and precise, yet laced with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. “He incapacitated my arm, nicked a lung. That’s why I had to use my truck to run him down. I didn’t have any other weapon I could use when he fired on me again. Smacking into a row of cars and a tree did the rest of the damage.”

“Oh, my God. Edward.” Holly automatically reached for him again, feeling the pain of all that was left unsaid in his clinical report.

But the instant her hand touched his shoulder, he pulled away, as though a shock had passed between them. He splayed his hands at the flat of his stomach, modestly covering himself as he faced her. He’d revealed too much, and it had nothing to do with bare skin. “Sorry. I don’t own a robe. I usually just go straight from the shower to…Ah, whatever. I’ll go put a shirt on.”

“No, don’t.” She grabbed hold of his arm to stop him from leaving. His skin seared her, hot from the heat of the fire, hotter still from the man within. But this time, Holly didn’t pull away. “I mean, don’t change your routine on my account.”

“Holly…” He reached over to free himself from her restraining touch. But his hand slid over hers and remained in place instead. His gravelly voice dropped in pitch, creating the most seductive of whispers. “Asking for your help on Dad’s murder has already turned my life upside down. I don’t think adjusting my wardrobe is a big deal at this point.”

Holly frowned. “Is that a joke, Lieutenant?”

“It’s a statement of fact.” With the hint of a smile curving his lips, Edward released her and stalked across the room to a hall closet. “I set up my weight-training equipment in the spare room, so there’s no bed. You’ll have to make do with some blankets and a pillow on the couch.”

“The couch will be fine.” Feeling an inexplicable chill despite standing so close to the fire, Holly hugged her arms around her waist. “It was good enough for you at my place. It will be good enough for me here.”

He tossed a pillow at one end of the long, wide sofa and spread a cotton blanket over the leather upholstery. “Of course, after broadcasting to a killer that you know she’s still alive and that you have the means to link her to several murders, I’d rather you lock yourself in a safe house.” He pushed a thick wool blanket into her arms, indicating her bed was ready. “But since you won’t listen to that kind of common sense, I guess my couch will have to do.”

How could she get it through his thick skull that
this
was where she wanted to be? That she trusted him above anyone else to protect her from the dangers of the world outside? He cared about her as a man, not just a cop doing his job. Didn’t he see that that’s what set him apart from any other bodyguard KCPD could assign to her? “Edward, I—”

“Good night, Stick.” He smoothed her bangs off her forehead and tucked them behind her ear. Holly felt the soft caress deep inside her heart. And when he leaned in, she was already bracing her hand against his chest, rising up onto her toes for his kiss.

His mouth opened over hers, tender and warm, gently demanding as he stroked his tongue across the seam of her lips and slipped inside. Hugging the folded blanket between them, Holly drifted forward, drawn to his tenderness, seeking his heat. She touched the tip of her tongue to his, and he moaned. Holly smiled against his mouth.

This man knew how to love. He knew how to care. He just had to believe that he could—

He pulled away with a determined breath, abruptly ending the kiss. “Good night.”

She watched him walk into his bedroom and close the door. Disappointment for them both left her shivering in her boots. When she was alone, she whispered, “Good night.”

Holly unzipped her boots and stripped down to her camisole and jeans before sliding under the blanket. The wool was scratchy against her bare skin but surprisingly toasty. She had the crackling sounds of the fire, its flickering light and its pervasive warmth to soothe her to sleep.

Yet, according to the time on Jillian’s cell phone, more than a half hour passed and she was still sitting up, curled into a ball beneath the blanket at the corner of the couch and feeling unsettled inside. She’d like to blame the unfamiliar quiet of the snowy rural night, but she knew it was the unfamiliar longing inside her that was keeping her awake.

She was considering searching Edward’s kitchen cabinets for tea to brew when she heard the cursing coming from his room. She heard something like a stomp and froze. Had he knocked something over? Was he having a nightmare? Should she go to him and try to wake him?