Protecting His Assets (7 page)

His head dipped. “You might have a bruise there tomorrow,” he murmured with a frown. He’d caught her in the chin during their sparring session.

She cleared her throat, flustered by his about-face. “I’ll be fine. You barely touched me.” She put her hand over his, but he only shifted his touch to the slope of her neck, leaving goose bumps in his wake. She shivered all the way down to her belly and bit her lip to stifle a groan. Her stomach and thighs clenched and her fingers curled into the sleeve of his jacket. She hadn’t even realized she’d dropped her hand to his forearm but she couldn’t pull away, even though she knew she should.

His eyes darkened, all that intensity narrowing on her until she couldn’t breathe.
Dangerous. This is stupid and dangerous, and you’re only going to regret—

And then he was kissing her, and it was nothing like what she’d imagined, not that she would ever admit she’d been imagining it at all; at least not more than once a minute since he’d stripped down to his gym shorts and boxing gloves, dripping sweat and oozing testosterone. Blood, laced with adrenaline and lust, pumped through her veins as hard as if she’d spent hours in the ring.

He didn’t fall on her like she was a prize he would claim, and he didn’t swoop in, trying to catch her off guard. His kiss was testing and calculating, just like him. Telling her exactly what he wanted and daring her to be bold enough to admit she wanted it, too.

She couldn’t admit something like that. Not even with her heart hammering like a speed bag at full tilt.

A groan escaped her lips, and he took that as permission, deepening the kiss. It should have bothered her, made her uncomfortable and nervous, but for once she was consumed by something stronger than self-preservation, the fear of losing her job, or the worry that had plagued her the last several months.

The elevator dinged, and she felt the drag as it pulled to a stop and the door started to open. She heard something, a distinct
click
out in the hallway, and jerked her gaze up over his shoulder, worried that they had company, but there was no one there.

He leaned back in like they had all the time in the world. His hand cupped the back of her neck, the other planted flat against the wall beside her shoulder, but the only other part of him touching her was his mouth. God, his
mouth
. His mouth consumed her, devoured her, took control of her until she almost whimpered with defeat.

Stop. This has to stop.
She twisted away with a gasp, even though she couldn’t quite make her fingers unclench from his arm.

Thankfully, he immediately backed off.

Crap.
She was such a freaking hypocrite. Hadn’t she just been thinking how irresponsible it would be to get carried away in an elevator? Hadn’t she spent the evening telling herself to stay focused and professional?

“You fucking jerk,” she snapped, angry. So angry. But with him…or herself for being such a stupid, weak glutton for punishment? “You were kissing another woman
less than an hour ago
.”

She shoved him, both hands slamming him hard in the chest. He leaned back, but his feet didn’t move. And then he smiled. The bastard actually
smiled
. “She was kissing me, actually,” he said, as if it made a difference.

“What? And you thought that since you couldn’t go home with her, I would just stand in like it was a part of my job description?”

He stood in front of her, not touching but not retreating, either. “Let’s make one thing clear.” The elevator door was closing on them again, but Nolan didn’t move. “When I kiss you, it has nothing to do with your job.”

She snorted and shoved her hand into the crack of an opening before the door closed all the way. “You assume it’s going to happen again.”

“I don’t make assumptions,” he corrected her. “I calculate inevitabilities.”

Chapter Four

A
s they finally exited the elevator, Steve noticed the door to the stairwell swinging closed. Had someone wanted to take the elevator and been scared off by the horny couple making out inside it?

He probably shouldn’t have kissed her. That could bite him in the ass in a thousand and one different ways. But he couldn’t regret it, especially not after getting such a hard-fought reaction out of her. Both reactions. First, her delicious submission, and then the beautiful outrage. The truth was, he’d do it again. In a heartbeat. In fact, he’d been looking for a reason to kiss her all day, and the impulse had little to do with tension or stress. It had everything to do with her. And him. The two of them being impulsive and sweaty together.

That sounded like him, all right. Too bad it didn’t sound much like the very proper Ms. Porter.

During dinner with Jennifer—who was the perfect combination of shallow and self-involved so that he never felt guilty for holding his real self back—“Ms. Porter” had been all he could think of. She had vaguely disquieted him with her unshakable reserve and unnatural stiffness, but she’d also intrigued him. She was interesting, competent, and mysterious. And then she’d become an Amazon at the gym. She’d punched his imagination into high gear, sending crazy, sweaty fantasies streaming through his brain.

Both sides of April Porter that he’d already seen fascinated him so much that he’d been less interested in taking his warm and willing date home, and unreasonably eager to spend just another five minutes with his new bodyguard. He was more than a little curious about the other sides she might have.

Even so, by the time the elevator door slid all the way open, Steve knew he’d miscalculated. The kiss had been too much, too soon. Walking beside him now, she was even stiffer than ever.

She was certainly a mystery, one he wasn’t sure he should try to crack. But he’d never be able to resist trying.

As they reached his apartment door, he pulled his keys out of his pocket with a frown as April stepped in front of him and held out a steady hand. She cleared her throat.

“You’re taking this protection thing just a little far, don’t you think?” he said.

He was immediately contrite. He shouldn’t have snapped at her. His irritation had nothing to do with the way she was doing her job.

But she didn’t even flinch. “Let me have the key,” she said.

“I’ve got it,” he insisted, pushing past her to reach for the lock on his own. “I think I’ll be safe enough in my own home.”

He threw open the door and flipped the light switch.

The place was trashed.

H
e’d found no notes this time. Then again, the intentions of the bastard who’d broken in and destroyed his place didn’t exactly need to be spelled out any clearer.

April claimed that without a note, there was no way to be certain that the “incident”—as she called it—was related to the threats he’d already received. He begged to differ. She and the police officers could theorize to their hearts’ content, but Steve was certain. And he was sure of another thing, too. He’d had enough.

His bristly bodyguard was right. He hated to admit it, but it was past time for him to take this situation seriously. He couldn’t wait for these events to escalate any further. It was becoming obvious that the party responsible was taking it seriously, and he couldn’t afford for someone to actually get hurt because he was too stubborn to acknowledge the problem.

April glanced his way with a crease digging across her forehead. She said something to the police investigator. It had taken an hour for him to arrive, with two other officers in tow, and he had a feeling it might have taken longer if not for the combination of his reputation and her apparent connections.

Steve had been surprised to hear the investigator call his bodyguard by name and ask after her father. It added another layer to his curiosity about her, but now was not the time for an interrogation…even though the presence of police officers might suggest otherwise.

Doug approached. “I’m so sorry this happened, Mr. Nolan. I still can’t believe someone got up here without me noticing and trashed your place. This is completely my—”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Doug. It wasn’t your fault.”

His frown didn’t go away. Steve’s reassurance wasn’t making a dent in the poor guy’s guilt. “I’ll get the security tape from the manager first thing in the morning and make sure it gets to the cops like I promised,” said Doug. “And if I can think of anything else, I’ll let Ms. Porter know immediately.”

She had asked Doug to outline as much of his shift to the uniformed officers as he could remember, in as much detail as he could, indicating that they would record it all and give her a copy of his statement in the morning. Then she’d supervised as the investigator brushed Steve’s front door and the other flat surfaces of his office for prints before moving on to do the same in the kitchen and bedroom.

Steve hadn’t had much to do but listen to Doug relating his statement. He was on nights this week, so he’d started work at seven that evening and had done a sweep of the perimeter before the two daytime guards went home. Then he was the only guard on duty until three in the morning—as it was, he’d been forced to call in the next guy early when the police had shown up.

He’d taken a break around ten but ate his snack—a peanut butter and jelly on rye that his mom had packed—at the front desk. He’d recalled that there hadn’t been any unaccompanied guests through that evening. It was against policy to interrogate strangers who
were
accompanied by residents of the building, so he didn’t have a list of those particular names, but it was a Friday night, so there’d been plenty of activity.

It was good to know that his neighbors were all having a good time tonight, Steve thought with a grimace.

He looked around the room, but his gaze always drifted back to her.

It was obvious that Ms. Porter was the one running the show here. The investigator seemed competent, but not invested. After having to explain the threatening letters to the police once already that day, Steve didn’t doubt that if Ms. Porter hadn’t been here now, the cops would have asked him the same stupid questions all over again. But her no-nonsense presence had added a degree of efficiency to the procedure that alleviated a lot of the explosive anger that had consumed him since he’d walked into his apartment.

A lot of it, but not all of it. There was still enough aggravation there to fuel him for a dozen more hours in the boxing ring.

He fixed his sights on Ms. Porter while he seethed. Maybe she sensed it because she finally nodded and everyone started to pack up. She’d apparently decided they had everything they needed for now. He released a sigh of relief.

The doorman glanced toward her for the twentieth time, too. Doug had been impressed to learn that Steve’s guest was actually his bodyguard—he’d decided to confide once the cops showed up—and the guard had been following her movements ever since with something akin to hero worship.

Steve thought he might be feeling the same. Ms. Porter hadn’t acted outraged or quit on the spot after he kissed her in the elevator. Instead, she’d stepped up and taken control of this disaster, making the whole thing as hassle-free for him as possible—considering they’d had to call the cops at midnight on a Friday.

She was professional and competent, and he wanted to appreciate her efforts, but this holding pattern was killing him, allowing bitter, unproductive emotions to penetrate the shell of calm he needed to maintain. Someone was bound to find out about this, and if he appeared to be anything other than unconcerned about the whole thing, it would be all over the gossip sites that he’d pitched a fit after “the police had been called to investigate” a “late-night incident” at his home. He could see the headlines twisting it into a domestic dispute, or even worse, actually connecting the dots and linking this to the threatening letters. It never failed to amaze him how easily the facts got warped and corrupted until they barely resembled the truth.

He wanted a pair of boxing gloves and a punching bag, or some other excessively physical activity…and he wanted April Porter. His gaze still hadn’t strayed from the figure across the room. He wanted her more than he wanted to breathe. It wouldn’t matter if she was wearing Lycra or nothing at all, as long as she was out of that suit.

He gritted his teeth and forced his attention back to Doug. “Hey, why don’t you go on home? I think Ms. Porter has everything under control for now, although I’m sure she’ll have some more questions for you after she reviews the surveillance video.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder. “But you should go home now and get some sleep.”

Doug nodded and twisted his hands together as if he wanted to apologize again. “Go,” Steve repeated. “There’s nothing left to do here tonight.”

Doug followed the police officers who were filing out at the same time. The investigator was the last to leave, flipping his notebook closed and putting an arm on Ms. Porter’s shoulder as he said good-bye. Steve’s gaze narrowed on the point of contact as she reached up and squeezed his hand.

Finally his apartment was empty again, except for Ms. Porter…and the lingering sensation of personal violation as he looked around the room. He supposed that was normal but he refused to give in to it.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, looking around as well. Despite the time, she seemed alert and focused.

He swore. Where was the whiskey? “Catch the bastard who did this?”

It wasn’t on the damn sideboard, that was for sure. Nothing was on the sideboard anymore. Whatever
had
been on the sideboard was now in pieces—jagged glass pieces—across the floor, which meant his whiskey was probably soaking into the porous wood grain.

Her mouth tightened. “I meant for right now. Your bedroom seems to have been hit the hardest. The mattress has been slashed, the sheets cut to ribbons. Your clothes are strewn all over the room. Do you want to grab a few things and go to a hotel, or do you have a friend you could call for the night? Maybe the woman you had dinner with earlier this evening? She seemed pretty open to the idea of you staying over.” Her tone was distinctly void of emotion once more.

The option was distasteful. He wanted to be at Jennifer’s mercy even less now than he had before. “I’m quite sure I’m not up for the kind of payment she would expect in return for a bed to sleep in.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that you should…” Wait a minute, was the unflappable Ms. Porter blushing?

He waved it off. “I won’t get any sleep tonight no matter where I go. I’ll just stay and wade through all this junk to make that list of missing items for the police.”

She nodded. “That’s fine. Do you want to tell me where to find the other notes then?”

“Now? Shouldn’t you be going home to sleep?”

“I can’t do my job if I’m at home, and I think it’s become more important than ever that I stick close to you.”

He snorted. “The security guard in the lobby will be extra vigilant, and your company put extra men outside. Besides, I’m pretty sure the damage has already been done, at least for tonight. Trespassing and vandalism is tiring business. The person responsible is no doubt deeply asleep in his secret lair by now, maybe even wearing a pair of my pajama bottoms.”

Her mouth twitched just a little. A tiny smile, and he smiled, too. “It’s been a long day for you. Really. Why don’t you go home and rest?”

She raised those slim eyebrows and said, “I’ll start in the study, then. Didn’t you say the notes were in there?”

He grinned. “Well, I’ve done my gentlemanly duty, but if you really want to spend the night with me, who am I to argue?”

She actually chuckled as she followed him down the hall, but both of them stopped short at the doorway and sighed.

She’d been right that his bedroom had been hit hard, but the office was just as bad. The rest of the apartment had been trashed, too, but it was as if whoever did this had gone into full meltdown mode in these particular rooms.

Steve navigated the books that had been swept off of shelves and the broken glass coating the floor, and carefully stepped behind his desk. It, too, had been swept clean like someone had clotheslined it with his arm. Thankfully, Steve had left his laptop at the office, so it was safe, and there would have been no way to access his confidential digital files from the house even if someone had wanted to try getting around his passwords. But all the desk drawers except for the one he kept locked had been pulled out and upended, and it looked as if all the paperwork had been rifled through.

The locked drawer was scratched up to bejesus, but at least it was still intact. He swept a finger through the greasy fingerprinting dust on the desk with a grimace. The stuff was everywhere, even on the shards of broken glass and some of his paperwork. The police had definitely not wanted to leave any surface untested.

“It looks like whoever did this desperately wanted to get into my files and my desk. When he realized there was nothing here, he apparently went into a rage and tore apart everything else he could get his hands on instead.”

“He or
she
,” she pressed. “What’s in the locked drawer?”

“Not much,” he said with a shake of his head. Some reports for surveillance that he’d commissioned on Justin Fielding’s family a few months ago after learning that there was a slim chance the man might have survived that car crash after taking off with his father’s money. “The anonymous notes are in there, along with some personal stuff, but nothing that a thief would be interested in.”

Ms. Porter stepped closer and examined the mess with an objective look of calculation. “This thief, if it was in fact a thief and not just a vandal—”

He snorted. “As if that isn’t bad enough?”

“Well, you haven’t yet determined if anything is actually missing.” That was true. It was also pretty obvious that this was more than a simple robbery. He stifled a shudder. Shit was getting real. He hadn’t given any of those notes much consideration one way or another, but this couldn’t be ignored. He was able to admit when he’d been wrong, and this time he’d been very wrong.