Run From Fear (41 page)

Another woman sidled by them and Talia could hear the heavy bass of the music, signaling the start of class. “Wait for me after,” Susie said as they entered the studio. “There’s more stuff I need to talk to you about.”

Talia had a good idea what some of that stuff was, and she wasn’t exactly eager to get into it. But for the next hour, she was able to shove it aside and lose herself in the loud, thumping music, the kicks, the punches, and the pleasure of putting her body through a strenuous workout.

Afterward she went with Susie to refill her water bottle before she had her one-on-one session with Gus.

“So I’m hoping to have the restaurant ready to reopen by July,” Susie said.

“Wow, that’s fast,” Talia replied. Jack must be throwing some serious coin at the problem to get it done so quickly. “I’ll contribute as much as I can—”

Susie waved her comment away. “I don’t want any money from you.”

Right, Talia thought bitterly, because Jack, massive foundation and all, can fund the entire thing ten times over.

“What I want,” Susie said, her falsely casual tone setting off warning bells, “is for you to promise you’ll come back to work.”

“I can’t.” It was out of the question.

“Please?” Susie said, bringing her hands together in a pleading position. “I need you.”

Talia snorted. “More like you need Jack’s money. Don’t worry. Jack’s not going to give you the shaft just because you don’t take me back on.” She started to push past Susie.

Susie caught her by the forearm. “So I guess you know the truth, then?”

“That he had to bribe you to give me a job? Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a bribe,” Susie protested, “more like an investment to help me grow the business.”

“He gave you fifty thousand dollars to hire me,” Talia said, and jerked her arm from Susie’s grasp. “I’d call that a bribe.”

“Fine,” Susie said, and rolled her eyes. “But he did it as an investment, one that’s about to pay off. In part because of you.”

Talia felt a tiny burst of pride, one that was immediately squelched by the vivid memory of sloshing through the two inches of water on the restaurant’s floors. “Right, it was about to pay off until Suzette’s was flooded by the sprinkler system.”

“God, will you just give yourself a break?” Susie snapped, throwing her arms up in exasperation. “Whatever motivated me to hire you doesn’t change the fact that you’re damn good at your job. In the past eight months, you’ve saved me over fifteen thousand in overhead.”

“All of which can now go to repairs—”

“So what? With the new layout and expansions I get to make, we’ll make the money back in a year. And it’s not just the money.” She leaned close. “This thing with Philip, I really think it’s something special,” she said in a low voice, as though she would somehow jinx it if she admitted it out loud.

“He seems like a really great guy, and it never hurts to have a cop on your side.” Talia tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but there was nothing worse than hearing about someone else’s happy love life when your own heart was in a million pieces.

“That’s part of the problem, though. Between the two of us, we work such bad hours it’s almost impossible to make time to see each other,” Susie said. “If we’re going to have a chance, I’m going to need help managing the
remodel and running the place once it’s open again. And you are the only person I would trust to do the job as well as I can.”

“Really?” Talia said, taken aback.

“Well, maybe not quite as well as I can,” Susie said with a wink, “but close enough that I’d feel comfortable going out on an occasional date without freaking out that stuff wasn’t getting done.”

Part of her wanted to brush Susie’s words off as blowing smoke, but Talia knew that if Susie was dead serious about one thing in her life, it was her business. “I’m flattered,” she said. “But I’m just not sure… Jack and I aren’t together—”

“Because of the investment?” Susie asked. “He just wanted to help you—”

“Going behind my back is not the way to help me,” Talia snapped. God, why was everyone so quick to defend him? “Just because it was done with good intentions doesn’t make it right.” When Susie would have replied, she held up a silencing hand. “It was the money and other things too, nothing I want to get into right now. Let’s just say it will be hard for me to be around him, and if he’s involved—”

Susie nodded. “I totally understand. Jack’s what we call a silent partner, and you’d never have to interact with him. Unless you wanted to, of course.”

Talia closed her eyes against the sting of tears. Hell yes she wanted it, wanted him. That’s what made it so dangerous.

“You don’t have to answer me now,” Susie said. “I’ll give you a call in a couple days and we can talk more about it.”

“Okay.” Talia nodded and started for the gym.

“Wait,” Susie said, and, ignoring the sweat from their workouts, grabbed her in a fierce hug. “No matter how we started out, you need to know that I truly consider you my friend. Whether you come back to work or not, if you need anything—shoulder to cry on over a couple glasses of wine—you let me know.”

Talia nodded and left Susie with a little wave. Though she was still bruised over the subterfuge, she knew Susie meant what she said.

If nothing else, Jack had bought her a friend.

J
ack waited a solid thirty minutes for Talia to show up. He spent most of the time calling himself a hundred kinds of idiot. He should be digging into Margaret Grayson-Maxwell’s financial records to find additional ties to Sutherland and see if she’d made any payments to other past associates of David’s in the past few days.

He should be trying to find Sutherland’s killer before the cops showed up to haul him away.

Instead he was lurking in his car across the street from Talia’s house, going over his manufactured excuse to check up on her so it would ring true when he gave it. Finally she was there, and even the glimpse of her through the window of her car was enough to ratchet his heartbeat up a few more notches. She pulled into her driveway, and as the garage door started to go up, he knew he needed to make his move.

He wanted—no, needed—to see her in person as though his life depended on it. And he knew once she got behind the locked door, there was no guarantee she’d let him in.

Of course, he could easily pick the lock and override the alarm system if she’d even bothered to change the
access codes. But he figured breaking into the house when she didn’t want him there wouldn’t win him any points.

He got out of the car and sprinted across the street, ducking into the garage just as the door started to slam shut. He took some small satisfaction in the fact that even though Sutherland was out of the picture, she was still following the regular safety protocols, entering through the garage and not getting out of the car until the door was shut.

However, Jack had just proven to himself how easy that was to bypass providing you moved fast enough. He made a mental note to address the deficiency.

Talia got out of the car, and as she went to the trunk to retrieve her bag, he called her name.

She gasped and jumped about a foot but recovered quickly, landing in a fighting stance as she looked around the dim garage. He knew the second she saw him because her expression morphed immediately from fear to a ferocious glare. “You asshole! How long have you been hiding out in here?” She popped the trunk, got her bag out, and slammed it shut.

“Actually I was waiting across the street for you to come home. I slipped in the garage before the door closed.”

“Some foolproof security you set me up with,” she sniffed. She punched in the alarm code, opened the door, and walked inside, and he followed about three inches behind. She must have showered at the gym, because she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and she smelled so good it was all he could do not to grab her close and bury his face in her neck.

He could see her hesitate, and he knew she was thinking about trying to slam the door in his face. She must
have realized the futility, because she continued into the kitchen and let him in without a fight.

“Nothing is foolproof, which is why you have to be extra careful,” he said, his eyes tracking her around the kitchen. As he watched her slim, toned form moving underneath the layers of clothing, his hands itched to touch her.

He curled his fingers into fists, afraid that any moment his control would snap and he would reach out and grab her. “How was your workout?”

Her eyes narrowed into dark slits. “Did you follow me to—” Before she got the question out, she looked down at the gym bag she still held in her right hand. “Oh, duh.”

“I would have known without the bag. I’ve been keeping track of you through the GPS in your phone.”

Her jaw dropped. “Seriously? You’re still spying on me behind my back?”

“How is it behind your back if you knew I was tracking you and Rosie?”

“That was before.”

Jack took a step closer, unable to stop himself. “I know you’re pissed, and I understand why. But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring. Until we find out who killed Sutherland and why, I want to keep tabs on you, simple as that.”

“And then what?”

“I’ll go back to Seattle and you’ll never hear another word from me,” he said, the words burning his throat like acid. He took another step closer. “If that’s what you want.”

Her throat bobbed and he could see the tears in her eyes, and for a split second he saw the hurt that matched
his own through the crack in her indignation. Dammit, if he could just push past the wall she’d put up and get her to move past her anger and give him another chance.

But she recovered swiftly, her stony expression back in place. “Why are you here? Did you find something out?”

Jack shifted uncomfortably. “I came to pick up a couple things. I left a T-shirt and a couple pairs of socks in the laundry the night I left.”

Her face suddenly flooded with color. “The socks are in the dryer,” she said, indicating with her thumb the direction of the hall closet where the washer and dryer were stacked. “And, uh, I think the T-shirt is in my bedroom.”

She disappeared upstairs and came back seconds later, the gray T-shirt with
ARMY
emblazoned across the chest balled up in her right fist. “Here.” She tossed it to him, and as the cloth unfurled, he caught the unmistakable scent of her skin clinging to it.

Jack’s mouth pulled up at the corners. She’d fished his shirt out of the laundry and had been sleeping in it. She wasn’t nearly so closed up as she pretended to be. He brought it to his nose and took another deep inhale. “Thanks.”

Her cheeks darkened to crimson, her dark eyes snapping with heat. “You came all the way over for a pair of running socks and a ratty T-shirt?”

“It’s my favorite,” he said simply.

Though her bravado was dimmed by her embarrassed flush, her cocked eyebrow said she wasn’t buying it.

“And I wanted to see you,” he said simply. Screw it. She already knew exactly how he felt, so why bother
trying to play it cool in anyway? “See for myself you’re okay.”

Oh, God, she was dying inside, splintering apart and so far from okay it was a joke. “I’m fine,” she said tightly. “So now that you’ve seen that, you can go.”

Instead he took a step closer, the T-shirt dangling from his hand. He was so close now she could smell him, soap and spice and musky man skin. He was so warm she could feel the heat radiating off him, feel his need rolling off him in waves.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said.

She saw him raise his hand and even as she knew it would be disaster to let him touch her, she stood, frozen, unable to force herself away. The light brush of his fingers jolted her straight to her core, sending a wave of heat rushing through her. “Don’t.” Even as she said the word, she was leaning into him, into his touch like a cat craving a stroking hand.

“Please, give me another chance,” he said.

She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see the pain in his eyes, the yearning that matched her own. She felt his breath on her cheek, and even as she called herself an idiot and told herself to stop, to shut him down and get him out of here before she lost control, she tilted her mouth to his. Parted her lips on a moan to let his tongue rub against hers.

His hand splayed against her back, pulling her close until they were practically glued together as Talia rapidly spun out of control. She kissed him hungrily, savagely, as her hands tore at his clothes with a will of their own.

She could feel him, straining against the front of his jeans. She reached between them and rubbed him up and down. While the other night she’d done the same move in an effort to cheapen what they’d had, tonight she was desperate to feel him, hot and hard in her hands. She tugged clumsily at the button at the top and jerked the zipper.

“Easy,” he breathed, “don’t—” His words choked off in a surprised hiss as she shoved his jeans and boxers off his hips and closed her fingers around him. “I want you. I want you so much,” he groaned.

She had no idea where this would lead, no idea if she had it in her to forgive him. Right now she was only certain of one thing. “I want this,” she said, stroking him, pausing to swirl her thumb around the sensitive head. He pulsed and jerked in her hand, and she felt a rush of answering heat between her legs. “I want you inside of me.”