first taping because I couldn‟t manage to stop fucking my wife.”
She laughed. She‟d done so little of that in years. Luc was one
incredibly sexy man, but living with him now . . . she was beginning to see a
whole side of his humor that added a dimension to her attraction.
Every day, she fell a bit more. So damn dangerous, this bottomless pit
of feeling. And still, she couldn‟t stop.
“I don‟t need anyone blaming me for anything else. I‟ve already got
half the women of Lafayette pissed at me. Don‟t start dragging California
bigwigs into the snake pit.”
Luc smiled vaguely before his expression settled into something
serious. “I have to say something before I go. Peter‟s been quiet since he‟s
been out on bail.”
“I hope his daddy has a tight leash on him now.”
“If anything scares you—anything—don‟t hesitate to call me.”
“You‟ll be two thousand miles away. I‟ll manage. I‟m wearing my biggirl panties.”
“For big-girl panties, they always seem very . . . small.” He leered,
brushing a hand up under her skirt and cupping her bare cheek, then
sighed. “And I know you‟re self-sufficient. Photographers have been a little
annoying in the last few days, but I‟m sure they‟ll follow me to L.A., rather
than stay here to hound you. Still, if you have any trouble, call me.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she mocked.
“Am I being overprotective?” He winced.
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“A touch.”
He sighed. “I‟ll try to back off. But . . . call me if you need to. Or want
to.”
“I will. But I‟ll be fine. The baby will be fine. Bonheur, Sexy Sirens . . .
fine. It‟s only two weeks.”
“Right.” He ran his hands through her hair, then palmed her nape.
“Miss me?”
Like mad
. He hadn‟t left yet, and his absence was already a gaping
hole in her heart.
Alyssa didn‟t trust her voice, didn‟t trust that she wouldn‟t reveal too
much. She simply nodded.
“And I‟ll miss you,” he whispered against her lips.
Then, after an all-too-brief kiss, he was gone. She was left staring at
his incredible gift through her stinging, watery gaze, almost afraid to be this
happy. What if it didn‟t last?
BY Wednesday at four a.m., she was frazzled. The crowd at Sexy
Sirens had been unusually rowdy tonight. She‟d fended off more male
octopi than she cared to count. Her two blessings were that Tyler never left
her side, and Peter, who‟d started lurking around the club again on
Monday, had apparently been picked up for a DUI early this afternoon so
he was back in County—and out of her hair.
Now home, she dragged herself through the front door. After not
sleeping well since Luc‟s departure and the baby sapping all her vitamins,
she
needed
a good eight hours‟ sleep. But damn, it was cold in here. She‟d have to turn on the heater pronto.
When she turned to disable her burglar alarm, she saw it had been
smashed with a sledgehammer. There was nothing left to disable.
Plastic pieces were strewn across the floor. Wires dangled from the
panel. The air in her house felt violated, just like her club and office at
Bonheur once had. Why the hell had she insisted to Tyler that she didn‟t
need him to escort her home?
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She didn‟t dare go upstairs alone. In fact, she needed to get out of the
house now.
Stepping back out into the dark morning, Alyssa reached for her cell
phone. Tyler answered on the first ring.
“What‟s wrong?”
“Someone broke into my house.”
Tyler swore, an ugly string of curses that made her wince. “I‟m still in
my truck. I‟ll be there in less than five. Call the police. Now.”
Whispering her agreement, she hung up the phone, and shivered in
the November chill. It had gotten too cold for her short skirts, and she
wished she‟d brought a coat. She had wonderfully warm clothes in her
closet upstairs . . . but she‟d rather freeze than risk going up there alone.
The 911 dispatcher answered quickly, and Alyssa gave her name and
address, and described the break-in, at least as much as she knew about
it.
Should she call Luc now or wait until a more reasonable hour? It was
two in the morning in L.A., and his taping always began so early each
morning, he‟d be sound asleep.
Before she could decide, Tyler pulled into her driveway with a growl of
his engine and threw the truck in park. He climbed out and grabbed her
shoulders, dragging her against him. “Are you all right?”
“Shaken. Not hurt.”
“And cold.”
Swearing, he reached inside the truck, then wrapped his coat around
her. Alyssa sighed at the sudden warmth, but her relief was short-lived.
“Show me what you found,” Tyler demanded.
“Shouldn‟t we let Remy and the boys in there for a look first?”
Honestly, she just didn‟t want to see what else the intruder had done to her
house.
“You mean preserve the crime scene because they‟re such fabulous
investigators?” Razor blades had nothing on the sharpness of his sarcasm.
“I want to see the scene for myself before they fuck it up.”
“Did you used to—?”
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“Yeah. I won‟t have time to examine the scene closely before they
barge in, but I can look.” He pulled out a pair of leather gloves from the
truck. “Let‟s make this quick.”
Alyssa‟s insides shook as she led Tyler back in the house. The
questions about his past could wait.
Inside the dim interior, she flipped on the foyer light, as she‟d done
when she first entered the house. Tyler looked at the alarm panel, studying
it with a clenched jaw. “Fuck. Was this as far as you got in the house before
leaving?”
“I was too afraid to stay, in case the pissed-off intruder was still here
with his friend, Mr. Hammer.”
“Especially if he also brought other friends, like Misters Knife or Gun,”
Tyler muttered grimly. “Good girl.”
From the back of his waistband, Tyler pulled out a nasty
semiautomatic. Alyssa stared, wide-eyed.
“Where did you get that?”
“My truck. I don‟t make a production about the fact I have it. Stay
behind me,” he instructed as he made his way up the dark stairs.
He shouldered open the first door on the left, the guest room, and
flipped on the light. “Anything look disturbed?”
Alyssa peeked over his shoulder. Everything looked exactly as she‟d
left it that afternoon. In fact, it had a vaguely stale smell, as if no one had
opened the door in weeks, which was true.
Tyler extinguished the light and rolled his shoulders, as if trying to get
calm. He crept toward her exercise room, gun drawn. The door was still
wide-open, as it had been after she‟d finished her morning workout.
Inside, he groped around for the light switch. A moment later, soft
overhead light illuminated the space. Everything was the same: punching
bag dangling from the ceiling, stair climber, free weights. Even the
remnants of this morning‟s bottle of water remained on the windowsill.
“Nothing,” she murmured.
“Good.” He sighed as he switched off the light, clearly trying to find his
calm.
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“Maybe when the alarm went off, he smashed it in frustration, then
took off.” But even as she said the words, she
knew
that someone had
been up here. She felt it—and the resulting fear.
Tyler just grimaced, as if he didn‟t want to scare her with the truth.
She chewed on her bottom lip nervously. “I don‟t know why it didn‟t
alert the police.”
“I‟m going guess this asshole snipped your phone line before he broke
into your house, cutting your connection to the police.” Tyler sounded grim.
“If you don‟t have detectors on your windows, he probably cut a hole in the
glass and climbed in.”
“Which is why it‟s so cold in the house.” Nausea slid through her.
“Exactly. Then he probably disabled the audible alarm system in your
attic. That way, no matter what he did next, he never had to worry about
alerting your neighbors. Then I‟ll bet he pounded your alarm panel just for
fun.”
“Would a run-of-the-mill burglar do all that?”
He shook his head, then turned to trek down the hall, toward her
bedroom. “They usually prefer something simpler. Open windows are an
engraved invitation. But that‟s not to say they won‟t do whatever necessary
to get past your fancy equipment if they think you‟ve got something of great
value.”
“B-but I don‟t. I never bothered to buy a flat-panel TV. My laptop is at
Bonheur. I don‟t keep cash in the house. I don‟t have much jewelry.”
“And you‟ve been wearing your wedding rock, so it wasn‟t lying around
the house.”
So Tyler
had
noticed her ring. And his grousing voice didn‟t sound
thrilled in the least. Then again, she wasn‟t surprised.
As Tyler opened the master bedroom, he paused. “Light switch?”
“On the wall to your right, closer to the bathroom.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “Too far in the dark. Just in case . .
.”
Edging away from her bedroom, he backtracked to the guest bathroom
in the hallway and switched on the little room‟s bright lights. The beam of
illumination drifted across the hardwood floor of the hallway and cast gray
shadows just inside the doorway of her room.
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“Wait here.” Tyler‟s voice made it clear that his demand wasn‟t up for
negotiation.
Terror pulsed in her stomach. She had the worst feeling that whatever
she found was going to crush her, scare her in a way that the notes affixed
with knives never had. Heart racing, she pressed her lips together so she
didn‟t pant and alert Tyler to the fact she was right behind him.
“You‟re not following directions.”
Alyssa ignored him until he thrust out an arm. “Fucking wait outside
the doorway. And get out of my light.”
Reluctantly, she stepped aside, peering around the door. A moment
later, Tyler flipped the light on.
He revealed complete disaster, and she screamed.
Luc‟s clothes had been piled in the middle of the bedroom, torn to
shreds, then doused in red paint. The linens had been yanked from the
mattress and strewn across the floor, again ripped in a fit of fury and
drenched in crimson. It was all over her carpet, her bedroom walls. She
could
feel
the rage of whoever had done this. The act had been deeply
personal, his silent act of war.
“Who would do this?” Her voice shook, and she clutched her stomach,
wondering if she was going to lose her dinner.
“Peter would be my first choice.”
“He‟s in County right now.”
A grim frown crossed Tyler‟s face. “Primpton?”
“He just wants to shut me down. For that, he needs to publicly discredit
me, not scare me. Invading my personal space doesn‟t accomplish a damn
thing.”
“Maybe he‟s just hoping to run you out of town?”
“I‟m sure he‟d love that, but he should know better after eighteen
months of bitching.” She shook her head. Primpton doing this didn‟t feel
right.
“True . . . but he‟s the only suspect we‟ve got, unless you can think of
another slighted customer who would be this pissed at you.”
“No.”
Alyssa kept taking in the devastation in the room with her mouth
agape. Her perfume bottles were everywhere, most broken, and the room
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smelled like a horrific mix of flowers and chemicals that nearly made her
sick. He‟d piled a bunch of her lingerie in the middle of the naked bed, and
as she approached it, the sight got even more revolting.
“Oh, my God. Th-that‟s semen.”
Instantly, Tyler was at her side, staring at the thick white ejaculate
some sick freak had sprayed all over her lingerie.
Alyssa put a hand over her mouth and turned away. Now she really
was going to throw up.
But her eyes landed on something silver on the carpet, barely sticking
out from under the comforter. Fear and denial turbocharging her heart, she
ran to it and reached out to grab it.
“No!” Tyler growled, then pulled her back before she could clutch the
object. “You can‟t touch anything. Let me.”
Gingerly with his thumb and forefinger, he lifted the downy comforter