Not Without Risk (15 page)

It wasn’t what she expected, this little piece of suburbia. Justin lived surrounded
by kids and dogs. And neighbors who were home in the evenings, not just nine-to-five
on weekdays like hers. When he’d invited her to come home with him, she’d naturally
pictured an apartment or condo. She’d never pictured the home he referred to as a
pretty little stucco with flowers that bloomed along the drive between the houses.

As he pulled the car into the attached garage, she turned her attention away from
the dove-gray home with white trim and concentrated on its owner. She watched the
way the shadow caused by the closing garage door played across Justin’s face, emphasizing
the firm line of his lips, the masculine cut of his jaw. The photographer in her wished
for her camera, wanting to capture the searing intensity of his gaze as his eyes locked
with hers. The woman in her wished she could push caution aside and slide across the
seat, straight into his arms.

When he pulled the keys from the ignition and shifted in her direction, she sucked
in air against an undeniable urge to do just that. The tight confines of the car made
it impossible for her to draw a breath without tasting his scent. All her senses were
heightened—touch, sight, smell, sound. Whether from awareness or fatigue, she had
yet to decide.

“Ready?” The deep tenor of his voice tangled her thought processes. He pulled her
bag from the backseat and pushed open his door, stopped when she didn’t immediately
move. His eyebrow raised in silent question. “Paige?”

She licked her dry-as-dust lips. “Ready.”

Paige followed him through the connecting kitchen door, her thoughts on the long-legged
detective before her and not the room about her. That changed as they moved to the
living room.

Bachelor was the only way to describe his decorating style. His couch, the most god-awful
brown plaid she’d ever laid eyes upon, sat in the center of the room. She walked around
it, her hand trailing along the back, and decided he’d chosen the piece not for its
aesthetics, but for its comfort. Oversized and well padded, it called to her, urged
her to ease into its depths and succumb to her exhaustion.

One side of the room was lined with bookshelves and they were filled from top to bottom.
Next to the bookshelves sat a television, its angle telling her that when he chose
to watch, he sprawled on the couch, not in the leather recliner at her right. A desk
occupied the other corner of the room—mahogany if she wasn’t mistaken. Its glass-covered
top held a top-of-the-line personal computer and a telephone.

“The bedroom is that way,” Justin said, pointing at the door to her left. “You can
have the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

“Okay.”

“Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you.”

Where were the bits and pieces of his life? The bookshelves held only books, no sculptures
or family snapshots. No paintings or pictures of any kind decorated the bare walls.
The only photographs to be found in the room littered the top of the coffee table.

“Do you always bring your work home with you?” she asked as the need to sit down before
she fell down pushed her to the corner of the couch. She sank deeply into its cushions,
fought the urge to sigh out loud.

“No,” he replied matter-of-factly. His gaze dipped to the coffee table and hers followed.
“This case is a first for me on many levels.”

She hadn’t meant to look too closely, knew instinctively that she wouldn’t want to
see the images captured in those photographs. Then she caught a glimpse of honey-blond
hair and a smile that could only belong to one man.

Leroy.

The photos that littered the table before her shared the same subject—Leroy St. John.
Spread out before her she discovered candids of him smiling and laughing, mixed with
shots from the scene of his murder. Grisly, bloody shots immortalizing his death as
accurately as the others immortalized his life.

Grief, sharp enough to steal her breath, swelled inside her. She reached out her hand
toward the photo nearest her.

Paige’s small sound of distress kicked Justin into action. Leaning before her, he
began gathering up the photographs. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to see those.”

Her hand settled lightly over his, stilling his movements. “He was a good man.”

She hadn’t spoken more than a few words since finding that ring over an hour ago.
Even with the tension growing tighter and tighter inside him with each passing minute,
he didn’t find much relief when it was the St. John homicide that finally broke her
silence.

Her fingers curled around his momentarily before she pushed his hands away and picked
up one of the pictures. “He didn’t deserve this,” she said, her voice barely above
a whisper.

In her hand, the photograph trembled.

Justin’s throat tightened.

Face drawn, she focused on the image she held. The image of a man she once knew and
cared for. It stirred him, a mixture of sympathy and guilt because instead of urging
her to rest, as he’d planned to do, he was going to take advantage of the opening
she’d just given him.

Circling the coffee table, he sat on the opposite end of the couch. “Tell me about
him.”

Her mouth thinned and she replaced the photograph on the coffee table. She remained
silent for so long he didn’t think she would answer him. “Lee was a quiet, down-to-earth
man. A bit reserved. Some people mistook him as arrogant, but he wasn’t. Not a bit.”

Her voice broke, her hands continued to shake as she shifted through the photos before
her, unconsciously separating those depicting his life from those of his death. The
latter she shoved aside.

“He was a good man, loyal and honest, a good friend. He only had a handful of close
friends, but the ones he had could count on him for anything. He was always coming
to my rescue.” Her hands stilled, her voice wavered. “This time it got him killed.”

As difficult as tears were for him to handle, Justin decided he would prefer them
to her all-too-focused gaze and stony expression. He feared for her, the way she denied
her grief, buried it inside. Feared that her reluctance to allow emotion to break
through, her obvious belief that such things were a weakness, would lead to her undoing.
How far would she push herself in her quest to prove her strength? How much more could
she handle before she broke?

And when she did, would she allow him to help her put the pieces back together?

Did he want her to?

“You are not to blame for what happened to him,” he assured her.

She raised a trembling hand, pressed it against her temple. “I know that. In here,
I know that.” Her hand moved to cover her heart. “It’s here, that hasn’t gotten the
message yet.”

Unable to resist any longer, he reached for her. He bit back an oath as fingers of
pain rippled down his side at the exact moment Paige pushed herself further into the
corner of the couch, just out of his reach.

“Don’t. I can’t hold myself together when you look at me with compassion. I can’t
hold myself together if you touch me. And the only thing I have left that I am absolutely
certain about, is the need to hold myself together.”

“You don’t have to hold yourself together.”

“I do. If I fall apart, everything around me falls apart. When that happens, he wins.
He can’t win, Justin.” She closed her eyes against the tears glittering there, pressed
her fingers to her lids. “He can’t win.”

His throat tightened. He wanted to comfort her, to pull her against him and hold her.
She sat not three feet away from him, looking as if she might shatter like glass if
he touched her.

His hands far from steady, he raked them through his hair and stood. He needed to
shift his focus off the woman before him and onto the case, the insight she could
give him into the mind of Leroy St. John. “What was he like on the job?”

She opened her eyes, blinked with surprise. “The job?”

“As a narcotics detective. What was he like on the job? Do you know?”

“He was more than a cop—”

“I need to know, to understand the man on and off duty.” And he needed her to tell
him. If he ever hoped to break her from the nightmare she remained trapped in, to
solve the homicide and give back her life, he needed to understand the victim. Since
St. John’s good-for-nothing partner provided no answers, Paige would have to. “Do
you know his partner, Jon Brennan?”

“No.”

Odd, Brennan’s quick exit today, inferred they knew each other. “You’re sure?”

“Lee grew distant after Rick’s death. He was there for me when I most needed him,
but only if I called him. At the time, I’d been too caught up in my own pain to wonder
about his distance. I always assumed that like me, he needed time to heal. Then, I
moved away. I have no idea who Lee partnered up with after Rick’s death.” She pushed
her hair out of her face, twisted it in one fist and tossed the mass over her shoulder.

Momentarily distracted, Justin watched it tumble and spread across the back of his
couch. The image of all that cinnamon-brown hair spread across his sheets, draped
across his chest sprang to life inside his mind. Blood pooled in his groin. He fisted
his hands against the fierce, urgent need that threatened to engulf him.

Blinking, he struggled to pull air into his lungs. “And your knowledge of St. John’s
work habits?”

“Are all second-hand, told to me by someone other than Leroy.”

“Preston?” He didn’t wait for her response. “Tell me.”

She stared down at her hands, gripped in a white-knuckle clench on her lap. “He had
great instinct, but no real talent for gathering evidence. He tended to jump the gun.
He’d be right, more than nine out of ten times, but he wouldn’t always have the proof
to back it up. Rick always said Lee didn’t have the right stuff to be a cop.”

“Yet Preston remained partnered with him.”

“Leroy St. John was the type of guy you wanted covering your back because he was always
calm. I don’t know how much truth there is to the other things Rick said, but I do
know that for fact. No matter the situation, Lee remained composed. I always wondered
if their Lieutenant partnered them on purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were total opposites, Rick and Leroy, in every aspect imaginable. Lee believed
in people. He was dedicated, loved what he did.”

“Rick Preston didn’t?”

Eyes closed, she shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about Rick.”

“Paige.”

“No, Justin!” Her lips were pale, her eyes bleak as she propelled to her feet. She
swayed once before regaining her balance.

“I know it’s painful.”

“You have no idea.”

Every instinct he had screamed to tread softly. It would take a blind man not to see
that she was hanging on by a thread. Her eyes appeared darker than normal, filled
with torment. Something inside him shifted. Something sharp. Painful.

Her gaze swept over the coffee table where the photographs remained. In spite of her
denial, she sucked in a deep breath and began to speak, her voice lowered to a pitch
he had to strain to hear. “Rick Preston was charming. People liked him. If you asked
around, everyone was Rick’s friend. But no one really knew him, not even me.”

Justin set his jaw. He rubbed at the back of his neck as his muscles began to tighten.
He could see her remembering. The way her gaze turned inward, the way her eyes seemed
distant. Something in her tone told him he wouldn’t like what she had to say.

“Rick could charm the spots off a leopard. Slick, and incredibly smart, he could ease
his way into new situations—make everyone believe he was their newest, most trusted
friend and walk away unscathed. He never let anyone get too close, never showed himself.
Not even to me.”

The tumble of words caught him by surprise. The more she said, the less he wanted
to hear. She’d once loved this man, given her heart to him? Twin feelings of rage
and jealousy twisted his stomach muscles into a nasty, clenching knot.

“You don’t have to do this, Paige. Not tonight.”

“He was arrogant and moody. He’d shut down, shut me out completely, and then tell
me to stop overreacting when I broached the subject. He controlled me like a master
puppeteer and I let him. By the time I came to my senses and realized I couldn’t marry
him, that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life as the woman he molded me into, it
no longer mattered. Someone killed him.”

She was peeling away some of the layers, and finally Justin could see exactly what
fueled Paige’s need to stay away from him. Without knowing all the details, he’d naturally
assumed that it was her fiancé’s violent death that caused her hesitation. He’d been
wrong.

“I’m not that woman anymore, Justin.” Her voice strengthened, her shoulders straightened.
“At least, I keep telling myself I’m not. Then I look at you and I want.”

The air became heavy, hard to draw into his tight lungs. “What do you want, Paige?”

“I look at you and I
want
.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

Blood pounding, he walked to stand before her, curled his hand around her upper arm
and drew her close. “Paige.”

Her fist came up to settle in the center of his chest, creating a barrier between
them. “Do you know how much that scares me? I look at the gun and the badge and I
remind myself what it was like—the secrets, that whole part of his life that he kept
hidden from me. I look at you and I force myself to remember Rick.”

His temper spiked, but he managed to keep his voice even. “I’m not Rick.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I would never expect you to be anyone but who you are.”

“Because you don’t want anything from me but sex.”

Her cool, matter-of-fact tone caused him to flinch. He wanted to argue against the
cold, crass way she summed up his interest in her but couldn’t. After all, he’d told
her exactly that just a few hours ago.

Paige sighed. “It’s not what you want from me that makes you similar. It’s how you
define yourself.”