Silver Sparks (9 page)

He grabbed her wrist before she could land another sharp stab against his chest. “Cut it out,” he ordered. “You know that’s not true.”

“Don’t tell me what’s not true!” Instead of calming down, her fury only increased. “You’ve been telling me what’s true and what I should do since the first second I met you. Don’t make Rafe too mad. Don’t get his family upset. Be objective! Like that’s supposed to protect me!”

“It is, damn it!”

He still held her wrist. Instead of trying to pull away, she leaned closer as she lectured him, her fingers closed into a fist. He had a strong suspicion that if he let go, her fist would come straight up to meet his nose.

“Well, maybe I don’t want your protection. Not if it means letting Rafe drag my family’s name through the mud. I told you, I’ve been there before, and I’m not letting anyone do that to me again, and they’re especially not doing it to my sister.”

Her anger did nothing to lessen the impact of her closeness. Her fresh scent, her soft skin beneath his fingers, the passion in her eyes—even if the passion was telling him to go to hell. “It’s not worth dying for, Maggie.”

“I’m not going to die. I’m not a naive twenty-year-old girl, Cal. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a grown woman.”

He’d been having a hard time
not
noticing.

“I can take care of myself. I appreciate the information on Rafe, but if you’re not going to help me fight him, then stand aside.” With her free hand, she pushed his chest, as if that might move him.

“Damn it, Maggie . . .”

“Damn it yourself!” She yelled her frustration. “I don’t even know why you’re pretending to help me when all you want to do is stop me!”

“I just want you to use some common sense!” He yelled back. “I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen this happen before, Maggie, and it ended badly.”

She gave him a confused look. “You’ve seen a Hollywood celebrity go after someone in the press?”

“No. Hell,” he muttered. He hadn’t wanted to bring it up, but maybe knowing the bare facts would convince her to be more cautious. “A cop I worked with was in a similar situation, except instead of a celebrity, it was a powerful drug dealer.”

Her mouth pulled with disgust. “That’s hardly the same thing.”

“You’d be surprised. The big drug dealers engender a lot of loyalty in their communities. It’s mostly based on fear, but it still gives them a lot of power. The cop—her name was Diane—was determined to stop this guy. And she was as fearless and reckless as you.”

Inches from his chest, Maggie still felt coiled to strike. Her eyes watched his closely. “Was she your partner?”

“No, she . . .” She’d been so much more. And been just as careless with his heart as she’d been with her life. A hard lesson learned. “We were friends. The point is, she thought so little of the guy, she didn’t believe he could hurt her. She broke with procedure, tried to do things her own way, without backup. He killed her.”

She gave it a few seconds thought, the muscles of her arm tense beneath his grip. “It’s not the same,” she said, her eyes flashing in warning. “And I’m not Diane.”

He bit back the string of swear words that hovered on the tip of his tongue. He knew she wasn’t Diane. She didn’t look anything like her, didn’t even remind him of her. Except in this one thing. “You’re just as impulsive as she was. Just as reckless. And damn it, Maggie, you could end up just as dead!”

“Thanks for your objective assessment.” With a twist, she yanked her arm away. “I can’t run everything by you first, Cal.” The words sounded bitter, final. “Why do you even care what I do?”

He knew why. The answer ricocheted through his mind, as hot and wild as her temper, but he couldn’t make himself say the words.

He could only show her. With a sudden jerk, he pulled her against him and crushed his lips to hers. Her body went stiff but he didn’t pause, delving into her heat with a sweep of his tongue.

He’d acted on impulse, silencing her tirade, but as soon as he felt the softness of her lips against his own, he knew it was what he’d wanted to do all along. His mouth moved on hers, tasting, devouring. Showing her what he felt. After the first startled moment he feared she’d explode in anger, but the fist she’d raised to his chest unclenched and her lips softened, moving with him, accepting. Her rigid body relaxed against him, and her hands crept around his neck, pulling his body against hers.

It was more than he’d hoped for. He grasped a handful of luxurious hair and took what he wanted.

He hadn’t expected her to be passive—she wasn’t passive about anything, as far as he could tell. But the silken stroke of her tongue on his nearly sent him over the edge. Heat, flavored with the faint taste of mint from her tea, spun through him, waking an even larger need. Lust flared, a sudden awareness of her breasts pressed against him, her thighs brushing his leg . . .

He pushed her away, hands on her shoulders, breathing heavily. Wide eyes blinked back at him and she weaved slightly before regaining her balance.

“That’s why,” he said, his voice harsh, gravel on sandpaper.

Her tongue made a slow pass over her lips and he had to force himself not to kiss her again. Her silence made him nervous. “Nothing to say?”

She folded her arms tightly against her body, as if protecting herself.

Maybe it was better if he left before she decided to kill him. “I’ll see you later.”

He was almost at the door when she said, “Cal.” He turned.

“That wasn’t objective.”

He considered it. “No. Not one bit. And don’t expect it to change.”

She stared at the door for nearly a full minute after he left. It didn’t help. Her brain still couldn’t reconcile the resentment she knew she should feel toward Cal with the naked desire that his kiss had ignited. Part of her wanted him to stay the hell out of her life. The other part—a much larger part—wanted to take him to bed for a week of exhaustive mutual exploration. And wouldn’t that be a good way to prove that she didn’t hop into bed with every guy she met?

Damn it. She didn’t need this sort of distraction.

She wasn’t going to figure it out now. She had a store to open, and probably a dozen photographers and reporters to deal with. She had to be ready.

Thirty minutes later she was out the door.

The day was bright, already unseasonably warm for May, and she paused to admire the view. Across the road, the mountainside fell away sharply toward the nestled shops and houses of Barringer’s Pass. The shallow terraced lots on her road allowed her to look over neighboring rooftops right into the downtown area, and beyond to the rising slope and ski runs of Tappit’s Peak on the other side of the valley. Sunshine bathed the town, improving her spirits. Smiling, she turned away to lock the dead bolt on the front door.

Something moved in the corner of her vision. Barely more than a shadow. She raised her head, turning toward a soft rustle in the forsythia bush by the steps.

The world went black.

Maggie gasped at the feel of cloth over her face. Before she could raise her hands, an arm came around her neck from behind, jerking her head hard against a firm chest and pinning her.

The keys dropped from her hand, clattering onto the wooden porch.

Male. Strong. Rough.

The impressions swirled in a dizzy kaleidoscope as she clawed at the arm pressed against her throat. Hard forearm. Nylon jacket sleeves. Leather gloves over the hand that dug into her shoulder.

She opened her mouth to scream, but his other hand clamped across it, pulling her even tighter against him. A muffled cry escaped her, the most she could do. It sounded weak and frightened.

Helplessness infuriated her, and she fought with the only thing left to her—her feet. Kicking backward, she connected with a shin as she thrashed her weight around. He countered immediately, ramming her against the porch rail. She sucked in a sharp breath as her lower abdomen met the wooden rail with bruising strength. He pressed against her to hold her there while spreading his feet enough to keep his legs away from her feeble kicks.

Fear soaked her, momentarily sapping her strength. The pressure against her windpipe didn’t help. She drew deep, panicked breaths down her aching throat, exhaling through flared nostrils and heating the suffocating darkness around her face. Each breath became more difficult as his grip tightened.

Beside her right ear, his face pressed against the cloth, millimeters from her clammy skin.

“Like this,” he whispered. The words were soft, feathery against the dark cloth. In one swift movement his hand left her mouth and slid below her chin. Before she could even try to scream, her jaw was forced shut by the pressure of his forearm below it, cracking her teeth together and arching her neck outward. He held her there as his free hand marked a slow, thin line on her neck below his arm. A weak scream stuck in her throat as the gloved finger drew slowly, almost lovingly, across her neck. “It would be so easy,” he breathed.

The next second the gloved fingers clamped around her trachea. Her heart thundered in terror as the last of her air was cut off. Breath rasped in her throat without making it to her lungs, and dizziness closed in. As she felt herself fading, he pushed her sideways. She fell onto the porch, one hand clutching her throat, gulping raw, harsh breaths into her lungs.

Fresh air fanned her face as the hood was ripped away. Maggie opened her eyes. Sunlight stabbed her expanded pupils, blinding her for the first few seconds. She sat still, gasping, and squinted against the brightness until her vision returned. The familiar peaceful view wavered into focus in front of her eyes. Off to her right and out of sight behind a stand of aspen trees and scrub brush, a car squealed its tires as it took off down the road. He was gone.

Her purse lay five feet away, contents spilling onto the porch. She crawled toward it and pulled out her phone.

Cal told himself there was no need to hurry, the police were already with Maggie, but he cursed under his breath at the tourists who ambled across intersections or held up traffic while searching for parking places. The last skiers of the season were using the morning to shop while the sun melted the crusty top off the ski runs. Right now, he hated every one of them.

He cut off the main road and sped up just as his phone rang. Bluetooth on his ear, he snapped out, “Hello.”

“Cal, they’re taking me to the police station.”

Maggie’s voice made heat rush through him, relief and tension in one confusing mix. She sounded composed but strained, as if it hurt her to talk. He gripped the wheel tighter. “Why?”

“Pictures.”

She was using as few words as possible, but he understood. They wanted to photograph the marks on her neck. Just imagining the red blotches on her fair skin made him want to hit someone. No, not someone—Rafe. “The station just off the interstate?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Whipping into the first driveway, he turned around and headed back through the congested downtown of Barringer’s Pass, cursing the lack of alternate routes through the narrow valley. The ten-minute drive seemed like forever to his frazzled nerves, proof that Maggie had become more important than he wanted to admit.

He never should have kissed her. Before, he’d been able to pretend she was no more than an irritant, that his concern for her was professional and platonic. He’d almost believed it. He wasn’t sure exactly what he felt now, but it sure as hell wasn’t platonic.

The thought caused a weird twisting in his gut. He forced it away, assuring himself that
not platonic
didn’t mean
love.
Desire, sure—Maggie was undeniably hot. But what he felt for her was responsibility. The woman obviously needed someone to watch out for her.

He finally cleared the downtown and gunned it to the station. He used his police shield to get past the front desk without prolonged explanations, and found Maggie standing near the wall in a large office, holding her hair up for the man who was snapping pictures of her neck. Cal strode past desks, ignoring looks from a couple of officers.

Maggie spotted him. “Cal. I was telling Sergeant Todd that—”

She broke off as he took her by the shoulders and pushed her hair aside to get a better look. Angry red blotches dotted her neck where fingers had dug in to close off her airway. A vision of Maggie gasping for breath burned through his mind. His gut clenched into a hard knot of pain and he swallowed back bile.

“It doesn’t feel as bad as—”

The rest was muffled as he pulled her against his chest, tucking her head under his chin as he squeezed his eyes shut against the image of the fingerprints on her neck. Surprisingly, she stilled, allowing him to take a couple of deep breaths as the red haze cleared from his mind. When he finally set her back, she watched him as if unsure what he might do next.

“I’m okay,” she tried.

He clenched his teeth, biting back the rebuttal that she was certainly not okay, not with those red marks on her neck. “Was it Rafe?”

Sergeant Todd stared at him. “Rafe De Luca?”

“I didn’t see his face.” She pressed her shapely lips into a tight line, obviously annoyed with the admission. “I couldn’t tell.”