Slow Heat (16 page)

“What? Wait? Did you just call that detective?”

Micah spun around, too pissed to respond to Maggie’s shocked expression. “No one enters my house,” he informed her. Micah tried for a calming breath but fury burned him alive inside. Who the fuck did that detective think he was, tearing his place apart?

He was so pissed it took a few tries to make the small key on his keychain fit into the keyhole in his top dresser drawer.

“What are you doing?” Maggie asked as she picked up newspapers scattered on the floor around them.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Huh?” she asked, and stared at the crumpled stack of papers she held in both hands.

Micah pulled out the small cigar box he kept under his Glock. Maggie sucked in a breath at the sight of the larger gun. She might as well get accustomed to seeing guns around him, especially if they were dealing with this type of game playing.

“I’m cleaning house before I clean up,” he told her, knowing she wouldn’t understand.

“That makes sense.”

It took yet another few seconds to get the even smaller key into the cigar box’s keyhole. He really needed to get a grip on his anger. No one here knew who he was, nor would they. They thought they were dealing with some paid-by-the-hour bounty hunter who didn’t know all the ropes. Micah tried cooling down by reminding himself that he needed to play that part. Well, he would, but if that detective showed up again, Micah would play that part right after showing the detective he wasn’t a stupid paid-by-the-hour bounty hunter.

He pulled his small debugging equipment out of the box, then set the box back in his dresser drawer. Then slowly he began running it over everything in his house, including the house itself. He started with the papers in Maggie’s hands. Immediately the small handheld debugger, which cost more than that detective would have made in a month, possibly several months, began blinking rapidly.

“Put the papers back on the table,” he told Maggie.

She did, then moved to stand next to him and watched as he went through each page until his debugger beeped once. Micah ran it over the page he was on until he saw the flat disk stuck in the middle of a Walmart ad.

“Damn,” Maggie whispered.

Micah moved quickly and precisely, going through his entire house, and in less than ten minutes found two more bugs. He promptly destroyed each one.

“What are you doing?” he asked when he returned to the living room and Maggie had it practically cleaned.

“What’s it look like?” she retorted, keeping her back to him and continuing to pick items off his floor that had been tossed there.

“I told you, I can handle this.”

“I didn’t ask if you could handle it or not.”

“Sit down and quit touching things.”

She spun around and her bright blue eyes flashed defiantly at him before she marched to his trash can and stuffed more newspapers into it. “Where do these go?” she asked, holding up two triple-A batteries. “I assume there’s a remote, but I don’t see it.”

“Is there a reason why you aren’t listening to me?” he demanded, then walked over to the dresser in his dining area. He put the debugger back into the cigar box, locked it, then slid it back under his guns.

“Several actually,” Maggie said, moving to stand next to him as he made sure everything was in order in the drawer. Her arm brushed against his as he made quick work of covering the small picture he had of himself, his grandfather, and his father, taken when he was a child. “What’s that?” she asked, and tried reaching for the photo.

“God damn it!” Micah’s temper roared to life once again, but this time because his guard had been down. It felt so natural having her standing next to him that he hadn’t thought about what she might see in the drawer. Although a small part of his brain pointed out that he was being unreasonable, Micah slammed the door shut, locked it, shoved his keys in his back pocket, then grabbed Maggie. “Why won’t you follow orders?”

He lifted her, dropped her in the chair he’d asked her to stay in, and felt all rational thought drain from his brain when she sprang right back out of it. Maggie came at him, finger pointed.

“Because I’m not now, nor will I ever be, yours to order around,” she yelled, her hair tousling around her face as her eyes turned a torrential midnight blue. She stabbed his chest several times with her finger and actually went up on tiptoe to bring her face closer to his. “If you want anything to do with me, other than professionally, you’d better get that through your thick skull right now, mister.”

When she would have stabbed his chest again, Micah grabbed her hand. She tried yanking free, but he held her close. “Hear me, sweetheart,” he growled, trying to whisper but failing. She was pushing every one of his buttons and even now, as he stared into her face, he saw the challenge in her eyes. “Don’t think for a second you can take me on.”

“Oh, for all the saints in heaven,” Maggie muttered, rolling her eyes. She looked pointedly at her hand, almost squished in his tight grip. “Let go of me, now!” she demanded, once again yelling. “I will think for a lot more than a second that I can take you on. Would you like me to prove to you how? It shouldn’t take much. I know I’ve got a lot more brains than you have brawn.”

Micah let go of her hand. “I would like for you to believe for one moment that there might be reasoning behind why I’m telling you what to do.”

“I already know. You’re trying to bully me. Sorry, darling. Submission doesn’t run through my bloodline.” Maggie spun around, her dress fluttering up against the back of her legs, and grabbed the knob to the kitchen door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he roared, too close to losing it.

“I think I’m leaving. Call me when you’re willing to be civilized.”

Micah raked his hand through the air. He missed her as she flew out of his house. He damn near yanked the door off its hinges when he ran after her. Maggie moved fast. She was at the street and marching down it, her hot little ass swaying and her nose stuck in the air.

In the time it took him to hurry down his driveway and reach her side, Micah felt his anger replaced with an overwhelming urge to protect that he’d never experienced before meeting Maggie.

Micah glanced behind him before reaching her side, noting each parked car. The ones closest were both cars that had been parked up the block since he’d moved there, not having once moved. That didn’t mean someone couldn’t sit in them to do a stakeout.

He galloped up alongside her, then slowed to match her pace as he took in their surroundings ahead and alongside them. “Maggie,” he said on a sigh. “There are things I know that you don’t.”

“There are things I know that you don’t, too, like manners,” she spit out.

“Are you going to walk home?”

“Been taking care of myself for quite a few years now,” she stated, and her nose perked up in the air a bit more.

“In this section of LA?”

“I have a cell phone.”

“Who are you going to call?”

“I’ve got a big family.”

Something tightened in his gut. “Think they’d allow you anywhere near me if you called for a ride from my home?”

“Better hurry up and apologize then.”

“How about this,” he said, then grabbed her, tossed her over his shoulder, and turned and marched back to his house, ignoring her outbursts. She was calling him every name in the book and hitting him with her fists with everything she had.

Micah didn’t put her down until they were back inside and he’d locked the door. The moment he turned she slapped him hard across the face.

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed.

“I’ve been called a lot worse, and maybe I am,” he said. “Keep swinging until you’ve got it out of your system, darling. There’s no point in talking until you do.”

She slapped him again. This time it stung. “Don’t make out to be the one who is cool and collected here, Micah Jones.”

For a brief second, it threw him hearing Jones instead of Mulligan. Micah managed not to blink, though, and looked down at Maggie as she breathed heavily and glared up at him.

“You will not touch me again, at all, is that clear?” She fisted and unfisted her hands at her sides while glaring at him.

“I’m not sure I can make you that promise.”

A sensual gleam brightened her pretty blue eyes before she regained control of her anger and continued spewing out her Irish temper at him. “Then maybe I need to find someone else to help me.”

Someone knocked on Micah’s front door. Maggie yelped and took a step backward, then tripped over the chair pushed up to his table. His hot little Irish vixen wasn’t a lit fuse anymore. Whoever it was knocked again, louder and more demanding this time. Maggie’s attention shot from the door to him.

He reached for her but restrained himself at the last minute. “Maggie, please, if you never listen to anything I ask of you ever again, this one time go back into my bedroom and stay there.” He gestured to the hallway. “Go, now. Don’t come out until I say it’s safe. All right?”

His cool tone, and possibly years of training enabling him to rein in his temper under dire circumstances, got her attention. “Okay,” she said, and hurried around him. Halfway down the hallway she turned. “Micah?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t get hurt.”

When he smiled at her, Micah swore he saw that fiery temper of hers dissipate into thin air. It took him back. Her reaction was the last thing he’d expected. The pounding on the front door returned.

“I won’t,” he said, since it was the truth, and seemed a logical answer. “Don’t come out.”

“I won’t.” She hurried into his bedroom.

Micah waited until the bedroom door closed before turning to his front door. He already knew who was there. Maggie had been the first person in his home since he’d moved here. And he’d only invited one person over since.

Micah opened his front door and stepped to the side, holding on to it as he willed the man facing him to enter.

“I’m Detective James Osborne.”

A man about Micah’s height and a bit on the thick side sized Micah up with penetrative brown eyes. He wasn’t a white man but he wasn’t a black man, either. He was, as Micah would say—but only in the right company at the risk of being politically incorrect—a product of the melting pot of America. Osborne was a good-looking man, at least at the moment. He wouldn’t be when Micah was done with him.

“Come in,” Micah invited.

The detective entered Micah’s home and looked around, probably impressed with how quickly it had been put back in order. Maybe he was disappointed that his work hadn’t been better and therefore taken longer to erase. Micah closed his front door and turned the padlock. The click of the lock had the detective turning to face Micah.

Micah didn’t hesitate. He lunged at the detective, hitting him full force. When the detective would have fallen backward into Micah’s wall, Micah grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him, and sent the man flying over his coffee table onto his couch.

The detective was fast. Micah always did appreciate a worthy adversary. His gun was pointed at Micah as he managed to come to a sitting position on the couch. It was as far as he got before Micah’s gun was aimed at Osborne.

“You don’t want to do that, son,” Osborne drawled.

Micah seriously doubted the man was as calm as he sounded. They never were.

“You have no idea how much I do,” Micah told him honestly. Then, lunging, Micah grabbed his coffee table and had it turned the long way and hitting Osborne full-body just as the detective’s gun went off. It would be the only shot the detective would get.

“Fuck!” the detective howled when his bullet went through the coffee table instead of Micah.

Micah threw the coffee table to the side, its clatter loud enough to distract the detective. Micah howled for good measure when he was fairly certain Maggie screamed in the back room. As he grabbed the detective by the collar of the man’s button-down shirt, he told himself it was best if Maggie knew how violent a monster he was before she got herself in too deep. Even in her anger, she’d mentioned more than once something about them having a relationship. Or better yet, about them not having a relationship if he continued acting like a pig.

“This is for trashing my house,” Micah informed the detective coolly as he lifted the man off the couch and threw him across the room.

Before Osborne got to his feet, Micah kicked the man’s gun out of his hand. It went clattering across the floor. Osborne reached for his collar without trying to stand. Micah already knew how easily wires, almost-invisible two-way radios, or silent alarms could be hidden in the collars of button-down shirts. Some looked like cuff links. Cops seldom walked into a potentially dangerous situation alone. Micah’s invitation to return to his home had definitely suggested danger.

Micah didn’t care if the man was calling in the National Guard. “And this is for spying on my home and following Maggie around town,” he added, hurling the man across the room once again.

“This is for entering my home without a warrant,” he added, grabbing Osborne and bringing him to his feet. As soon as he was standing, Micah let go and punched him in the face once again with his free hand. “Sucks when a guy has to defend himself against LAPD’s finest,” he added as Osborne slumped to the floor.

This time the person who came to the door didn’t knock firmly. It sounded more as if he lunged at the door. Truth be told, Micah was surprised the old wood held up. Instead of testing its strength, Micah unlocked and opened it. His timing was perfect. A man, probably Osborne’s partner, stumbled into the house when he’d probably planned on hitting Micah’s door once again with the side of his body instead.

“LAPD!” the man yelled, even as he stumbled forward.

Micah grabbed Osborne and shoved him into his partner. “I know who you are,” he said coolly. “Before coming home to a destroyed house, I thought we were on the same side.”

Then, pointing his gun at both of them, he took a step backward. He hadn’t broken a sweat; nor had his heartbeat accelerated. His training had kicked in, which was definitely not good. He took a deep calming breath. He needed to play the duty-bound bounty hunter and not the mechanical killer void of emotion. More than likely, both of these men had torn through his home. They had probably already done a background check on him. Now they would see the man who had no established credit, no recorded history of any kind other than a driver’s license, high school diploma, and a P.I. license, and draw their conclusions as to what kind of person he was. He was treading on thin ice.