Protecting What's His (6 page)

“What’s this?” he asked, nodding toward the chest.

“Decoupage.”

Derek raised an eyebrow, prompting her to explain. For some reason, it felt too intimate sharing her hobby with him. If he mocked her for it like he did everything else, she wouldn’t know how to react. Her buyers were like-minded people with an appreciation for the creative. Derek probably wouldn’t know creative if it bit him on the ass.

She sighed. “I buy used furniture and personalize the pieces with magazine and newspaper cutouts. Like that one over there.” Ginger pointed toward the Parisian-themed coffee table she’d completed last week and decided to keep since it suited the apartment.

He walked over to inspect it and Ginger turned to wash a glass in the sink, afraid of seeing judgment on his face.

“It’s good. Do you sell them?”

Ginger jumped at his deep voice right behind her in the kitchen. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Willa get up and enter her bedroom, closing the door with a
click
behind her. To give them privacy, no doubt.

Willa seemed full of surprises today.

Ginger turned to him, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “No. I mean, every so often someone back in Nashville would buy one, but it’s really more of a hobby.” With an inward wince, Ginger realized she’d just revealed where they’d lived prior to Chicago. Volunteering information didn’t seem wise considering what had prompted their departure.

“Maybe you should make it more than a hobby.”

She felt herself flush a little under his compliment, not used to men commenting on anything beyond her looks. He could have been patronizing her, but it didn’t feel like it.

Derek circled the kitchen, eyes lighting on everything in their path, weighing and measuring. She supposed he couldn’t simply turn off his ability to observe and analyze after hours, but having him in her house felt strange. Honestly, it would feel strange having
any
man in her house, but Derek in particular kept her off-balance, never knowing what to expect. They’d established a physical attraction and she’d been interested in possibly pursuing it, but Chinese food and bantering with Willa, that felt like something more.

Ginger pushed down the rising panic at that thought and decided it was high time she reestablished some boundaries. This relationship would be strictly physical. She didn’t need or want some messy emotional entanglement with anyone.

“Are you looking for something illegal so you’ll have an excuse to handcuff me, Derek?”

Derek’s eyes darkened as he approached, and a shiver ran down her spine. Oh boy, did her lieutenant ever love dirty talk. She delighted in knowing his weakness. He likely spent all day at work maintaining that resolute control, but around her, the sexually charged bad boy took over.

“Baby, I don’t need an excuse to cuff you. I just need the opportunity.”

Lordy.
He’d managed to get her hot and bothered in two sentences. Maybe her weakness was talking dirty, same as him. Ginger’s head tipped back as Derek moved closer, bringing her up against the sink.

“Oh, and just how do you plan on creating such an opportunity?”

Derek brought his hand up to rub a thumb across her bottom lip. “I’ve got an hour before I need to be back at the station. I’ll have fucked you three different ways by then.”

Ginger’s breath caught on a gasp. “You certainly don’t mince words, Lieutenant.”

“I think you love it.”

Did she love the indecent way he spoke to her?
Yes.
Should she be offended?
Probably.
But
it felt honest, and she couldn’t deny the overwhelming effect it had on her body.

“Maybe.” Her tongue licked out at the pad of his tracing thumb and Derek groaned. “But I still can’t be seduced with a bag of Chinese food. Try harder, Derek.”

“Point taken. But one more thing.” Derek leaned forward, resting his hands on either side of her on the counter, then dipped his head lower. Ginger’s mind reeled as he ran his tongue upward in one long lick of her neck. “The longer it takes me to get between your thighs, the rougher I’m going to be when I finally get there. Understand?”

Her chest rose and fell quickly with stuttered breaths. Trembling with the effort to resist begging him to take her to his apartment and make good on his threat, Ginger nodded.

Just like that, she’d surrendered to him. And it felt fantastic.

One hand slid down her back and palmed her ass, kneading the flesh in a gesture of blatant ownership.

“Be good tonight, Ginger. I’ll know if you’re not.” Then he turned and left the apartment, leaving her staring after him.

It was beginning to become a habit.

Chapter Eight

Ginger stared up at the dark ceiling of her bedroom mentally listing adjectives to describe her current state of mind. “Livid,” “violent,” and “pure spitting mad” topped the list. Following close behind were “impressed,” “bemused,” and “slightly turned on.”

Tonight’s shift at Sensation had been a doozy, to put it mildly. Fifteen minutes after she clocked in, a badge-wearing detective had taken a seat at her half of the bar. Thinking nothing of it, she’d served him a scotch and soda before moving on to the next customer. But by the time an hour had passed, her entire section was filled with jacket-and-tie-wearing detectives laughing and trading battle stories.

At first, Ginger had thought
, well hell, this is damned unusual
. Until she realized that every customer of the male persuasion who approached was being treated to looks of undisguised hostility from the pack of badges clogging the bar, sending him to Amanda’s side or to another section of the club. Furthermore, not
one
single detective had looked below her neck or addressed her with anything but polite deference the entire night.

“What brings you to Sensation tonight, boys? We don’t get a lot of cops in here unless they’re arresting somebody,” she’d joked, looking for any hint that might confirm her suspicion that Derek had put them up to it.

They’d exchanged innocent glances before their spokesman responded, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We come here all the time.”

In a pig’s eye. Derek’s fingerprints were all over it.

Be good tonight, Ginger. I’ll know if you’re not.

The only thing, and she meant the
only
thing
,
saving Derek from a 2:00 a.m. ass-kicking was the fact that they’d tipped Ginger well and sent her home with enough money to cover the loss of her usual penis-toting customers.

Derek’s motive for pulling such an obnoxious stunt continued to be the part that stuck in her craw. He couldn’t very well send his group of tattletales in to spy on her every night of the week. Therefore his sole motivation had been to toy with her. Let her know what he was capable of. His arrogance clearly knew no bounds.

So why then, when Ginger pictured stomping down the hall to Derek’s apartment to give him a piece of her mind, did the scene end with him lifting the hem of her nightshirt and boosting her onto the kitchen counter?

She would be damned lucky if the manager at Sensation hadn’t noticed something odd about their new clientele and attributed it to Ginger. They wouldn’t appreciate their regular customers being intimidated by Derek’s trained dogs. Finding another equally lucrative job would be difficult for her, and a gap in employment would make it necessary to dip in to the stolen cash.

As usual, the reminder of the money made Ginger uneasy. Most of the time, she could pretend it didn’t exist. That they’d moved to Chicago without having to steal in order to make it happen. Funny how a group of cops and one seriously overbearing lieutenant could make you a little nervous about some harmless larceny.

She worried that someone willing to go to such extremes to keep an eye on her would have no qualms about delving into her past. Possibly had already done so. Though she was convinced Valerie had come by that money illegally and wouldn’t be stupid enough to report it stolen, there were no guarantees in this life. If that information was out there, Derek could find it easily enough.

Ginger flopped over onto her stomach, cramming the pillow underneath her head, and did her best to block the image of Derek’s face after learning her dirty little secret. Besides, there were more important things to worry about at present.

Like how to keep her head on straight when Derek seemed determined to knock her off-balance, right into his bed.

And how maybe she wanted him to.

Something wet dripped from the ceiling and landed with a
splat
on Ginger’s cheek. Two more fat drops of water plopped on her face, then immediately turned into a steady stream of water, soaking her hair and face.

“What the hell?”

She threw her comforter off the bed and climbed out. In the dim light of the bedside lamp, Ginger saw the growing outline of wetness on the ceiling above her bed. Water fell from several different locations around the room. Her bedclothes, which had been dry only seconds ago, were now sopping wet.

She grabbed her new cell phone off the dresser and pulled up the super’s number. Obviously a pipe or something had burst, and he needed to turn off the water to the building before her entire bedroom ended up soaked. She would already have one hell of a time cleaning up the current mess.

She rounded the bed, but just before she reached the door, the entire ceiling collapsed, showering her with even more water and pasty plaster particles.

Ginger stumbled backward and fell to the floor. Scrambling, she reached for the knob to the bedroom door and pulled herself up. She threw one last bewildered look at her room and the veritable waterfall now cascading into it, then ran to Willa’s room. “Wip! Wake up!”

Her sister shot straight up and screamed. “Ginger? What the fuck?”

“My ceiling just caved in and there’s water everywhere. I want to get you out of here in case it’s not just contained to the one room.”

Willa gave a doubtful head tilt. “Are you sure you’re not dreaming?”

“Look at me. I’m soaked!”

“All right. I’m up.”

Cautiously, they entered the living room and flipped on the light to find the ceiling darkening with the spreading water above.

“Oh, God,” Willa whispered. “Ginger, your furniture.”

She’d been avoiding that side of the room with her eyes, but looked over now to find the child’s hope chest she hadn’t yet lacquered sat directly under a stream of water, along with two unfinished decorative chairs and several hatboxes.

She blinked back tears. “It’s not important.”

Willa searched her face for a moment before her eyes shot wide.

“Dolly,” they breathed at the same time.

Ginger barely had time to register the perfect synchronicity of their leaps over the waterlogged couch and coffee table. They each grabbed an end of the five-foot-tall Dolly statue and lifted, groaning under its weight. Ginger took the lead, wobbling backward through the wreckage, showing Willa where to step safely. They needed to move quickly. Judging by the rapidly growing stain on the ceiling, standing underneath the wet plaster didn’t seem wise.

“Ginger, lift! You’re going to knock off one of her boobs if it hits the table!”

Grunting over the strain in her muscles, she lifted Dolly up and over the dining table. “For once I wish Dolly had smaller tits,” she panted.

Thankfully, they made it outside without mishap and Ginger managed to get the sleeping super, Lenny, on the phone and up to their apartment in less than two minutes. By that time, their living room ceiling had partially caved in, the room filling rapidly with water. Ginger and Willa were waiting with their Dolly statue in the hallway when he ran up the stairs, still buttoning his jeans.

Lenny took one look in their apartment before sprinting up the stairs to Ginger’s upstairs neighbor’s apartment. A minute later he sprinted past them again, presumably down to the basement so he could turn off the water. The steady stream flowing into their apartment finally subsided, but Ginger didn’t dare go back inside. Instead, she stared through the doorway in silence at the new home they’d barely had time to get used to.

Lenny, looking incredibly stressed and apologetic, explained to them that their upstairs neighbor, a middle-aged woman living alone, had been suffering from the flu and thanks to her cold medicine, had passed out waiting for her bathtub to fill some three hours earlier. The older building’s flooring had been no match for the weight of the water, sending it downstairs to Ginger and Willa.

It seemed like only minutes after Ginger’s call to Lenny, the fire department arrived to begin pumping out the water and also attend to their upstairs neighbor, whose illness appeared more serious than she’d originally thought.

As she and Willa pressed themselves up against the hallway wall to let the firefighters by, she heard Derek’s door slam. He exited the apartment wearing gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, clearly having been woken by the commotion. Narrowed eyes ran over the firefighters walking into her apartment, then landed squarely on her. Until his eyes dipped and ran the length of her body, she’d forgotten her attire consisted solely of a sopping wet white nightshirt. She hastily crossed her arms over her breasts and stepped in front of Willa, who wore a similar shirt. In black, of course.

Glaring at the passing men, Derek stomped back inside his apartment without comment. He returned seconds later carrying two giant fleece sweatshirts with police department logos over the right breast. He tossed one to Willa, who gratefully pulled it over her head, then yanked one over Ginger’s head. It fell to her knees.

“What the fuck is going on?” he finally asked.

She and Willa were cold and homeless and this asshole had the nerve to demand answers from her? Fuck that. “Don’t bark at me!”

Derek pinched the bridge of his nose and turned to walk into her apartment. A moment later, she heard Lenny relaying the story to Derek, the super’s harried voice fading in and out as they surveyed the damage.

“Ginger?”

She looked over at Willa. “Yeah?”

“Does this mean we’re going back to Nashville?”

The numbness in her sister’s voice made tears prick behind Ginger’s eyelids, but she kept them in check. Later, she might cry over how this type of catastrophe seemed to follow them around and wonder if maybe she deserved it. But right now, Willa needed reassurance.

“Girl, it’ll be a cold day in hell.”

Willa looked hopeful. “Yeah?”

Ginger tilted her head. “You like it here?”

Her sister nodded.

“Then we stay.” Nodding her head at the statue, Ginger smiled. “Dolly said once that if you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain.”

“How fucking appropriate.”

They laughed.

Derek came back out of the apartment then with Lenny and two firemen. His eyes met Ginger’s immediately and she swore an apology lurked in there somewhere. Watching the way he communicated with the firefighters and Lenny, asking questions and discussing how long repairs would take, Ginger saw him in yet another light. Derek, the cop, currently stood in front of her in the exact spot she’d also met the moody, uptight neighbor and the filthy-mouthed lady killer.

While she’d been lost in her own thoughts, it appeared they’d come to some important decision, because all four men turned to look at her.

Derek finally spoke up in his no-nonsense lieutenant voice. “All right, let’s go. You two are staying with me.”