Under Wraps (12 page)

Lianna remembered how easily he fell into a role from their time playing servants together at the Marquis.
She had no doubt there would be sexy games in their future.

“Yes.” She reached between their bodies to palm the hard ridge she wanted inside her. “The more stripping, the better.”

He dispatched her panties on cue, dragging the imported silk down as he dropped to his knees in front of her.

Um…if this was his idea of delaying her fantasies, she couldn't imagine what fulfilling them might look like.

Then he spread her thighs to make room for himself and kissed the pulsing center of her. She would have fallen if not for the door behind her and Rico's hands bracing her legs where he wanted them. Liquid heat pooled inside her, gathering, swelling. Her fingers trailed helplessly along his shoulders as each stroke of his tongue propelled her higher.

When the release hit her, the pleasure swept through her so fast and so hard she twisted mindlessly against the door. Wave after wave of lush sweetness had her calling out his name, her fingers twisting in his dark, silky hair.

She'd only just barely come back to reality when he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the couch. Aftershocks still hummed through her when he sheathed himself with a condom. He loomed over her, gloriously naked. Deliciously hungry for her.

She reached out to him, trailing her fingers down the chiseled muscles of his chest. Down to the rigid length of his arousal. He sucked in a breath between his teeth
as he followed her down to the couch, bracing his weight on one arm.

He came inside her slowly, allowing her to get used to him as he moved deeper. Deeper. He parted her thighs farther before he claimed her completely. His chest met her breasts. His teeth nipped her ear.

And then he started to move. The hot glide of his body inside hers sent ribbons of pleasure through her, making her shiver in delight. She ran her hands through his dark hair and over his broad shoulders, wanting to touch him everywhere. He treated her like a woman he wanted to take care of. A woman he wanted to please. And
oooh,
did he please her. No man had ever tried to give her just what she wanted before. Just what she needed.

Rico anticipated her every desire. The thought sent her hurtling over the edge as surely as the drive of his hips into hers. She clutched him close, holding on tight as her release rocked her whole body.

He came with her, surging impossibly deep. She wrapped her legs around his waist, holding him right where she wanted him, her ankles locked.

There were no barriers. No masks. No games. Just a gorgeous, generous lover who made her feel special. Blissed-out. Sexy.

As she lay beneath him in the firelight, trying to catch her breath, Lianna knew another woman might have been simply counting her blessings in the wake of incredible sex. But she had never been particularly lucky in life, and fairy tales didn't happen to her.

So she squeezed Rico tight and soaked up the scent of
his aftershave, hoping she'd remember this moment forever. Because her lawyer instincts were up and running again, and they told her that anything this good couldn't last for long. A smooth-talking criminal had tried to frame her as surely as he'd tried to frame Marnie.

And she didn't doubt for a second that Alec Mason would be back when she least expected it.

M
ARNIE COULDN'T SLEEP.

After her trip to the bathtub with Jake, he'd carried her back to bed and held her while she dozed off. But she'd become immediately alert when Jake moved away from her; it seemed he had no intention of sleeping himself while Alec was still on the loose and possibly looking for them.

He'd only gone to work on his laptop in a chair a few feet away from the bed, but just knowing that he wouldn't relax made her restless. Worried.

Well, that coupled with the sensation that the closer she got to Jake, the further he slipped away from her. She felt herself falling for him—knew she wanted more from him. Yet he retreated each time they touched, no matter how earth-shattering the sex was or how much he shared with her in bed. The thought of returning to Miami only to get dumped scared her. But the optimist in her told her he was a man worth fighting for. So she would try to walk that line between getting closer to him and not totally losing her heart to him.

Finally, she snagged her own laptop and cracked it open, figuring she'd at least catch up with her friends or check her work email.

“Am I keeping you awake?” Jake asked, peering at her over the blue glow of the electronic screen in front of him.

“The idea that you think you shouldn't sleep is what's keeping me awake, if that makes sense.” After firing up the machine, she waited for it to boot up. “It makes me nervous to think there's a possibility—well, actually, I don't know what there's a possibility of at this point. I thought we agreed Alec was more of a white-collar criminal.”

Or had that just been what she wanted to believe?

“As the stakes get higher, people stop thinking rationally and start getting desperate.” Jake punched a few keys with excess force before he met her gaze again. “Too many good people have been hurt by this guy for me to rest until he's behind bars.”

Marnie was reminded of his friendship with Vincent Galway and the fact that Jake had resigned from the force when he had gotten screwed by corrupt cops and “missing” evidence.

“You're really determined to settle this score for Vince, aren't you?” While she admired Jake for being the kind of man who championed his friends, she was reminded of yet another reason that Jake might find it easy to walk away. He hadn't started pursuing Alec to avenge her. When it came right down to it, he had Vince's interests to protect, not hers.

Jake punched a few more keys, but she had the feeling he was mostly avoiding her question.

He wasn't exactly the type of guy to spill his guts.

“Will you ever go back to being a cop?”

He dropped all pretense of working and met her gaze head-on.

“Why? Does it matter that I'm a P.I.?”

He couldn't have broadcast
raw nerve
any more clearly.

“Just curious. I wondered if making things right for Vincent would allow you to go back to a job you traveled halfway across the country to take.”

“I don't know,” he admitted, the electronic glow casting shadows on his face as he frowned. “Working alone has its benefits.”

Did he prefer to be alone in his personal life, too?

Marnie mulled over his statement while she opened her email and read a worried note from her mother asking why she hadn't been at the local community center's pancake breakfast with Santa, an event she normally worked every year. Shoot. She clicked on Reply to explain her whereabouts.

“Doesn't it get lonely?” she asked, wondering suddenly about more than his job. Who would take him out for pancake breakfasts with Santa?

“I'm not the most social guy.” He reached for a glass of water by the bed, his bare chest lit by the screen as he leaned.

Right now, she'd like to teach him to be a lot more social. With her. Preferably involving a scenario where
she tasted her way down his pecs to his taut, defined abs…

“What about outside work?” She cleared her throat to try to banish her sudden case of hoarseness. “Do you have plans for the holidays?”

“I don't think I'll make it back to Illinois this year since this case isn't closed and we're looking at—” he flipped his wrist so he could see the face of his watch “—December twentieth.”

“I can't imagine spending the holidays apart from the people I love.” Even if they would all show up for dinner with their happy families while she would be alone. She paused before sending her mom the email.

“Although, I do wish I could convince some of them to leave Miami and take a Christmas holiday somewhere up north. The snow is so…pretty.”

She'd been about to say romantic, but she could al most picture Jake being allergic to words like that. And she had the feeling all her talk about loved ones and the holidays was scaring him off anyhow. He stared at her from his spot in the armchair, his expression thoughtful.

Foreboding.

“What are you working on?” he asked. The question was so irrelevant to what she'd been saying that she would bet he hadn't listened to a word.

Frowning down at the laptop, she smacked the Send button and tried to keep the hurt out of her voice.

“Just emailing my mom so she doesn't worry about me.”

“Wait.” He half threw himself over the bed to grab her computer.

“What are you doing?” She didn't mind giving up the laptop, but he yanked the cord out of the back of it, turning the screen black. “That can't be good for it.”

“He could have access to your computer.” Jake sat on the bed beside her, his bare chest temptingly close.

“Alec?” She stilled as her brain sifted through the implications. “What do you mean? That he could have grabbed it when I wasn't looking? Or—”

“He's got to be great with computers to have pulled off the embezzlement and to frame both you and Lianna.” He kept the laptop closed, his grip tight on the case. “So it's very plausible he'd know how to set up remote access to your computer. In fact, he probably did it before the two of you even broke up so that he could keep tabs on you afterward. He certainly knew that you were headed to the Marquis fast enough, right?”

A chill shivered down her spine. Could Alec have been watching her this whole time?

“I let him use my computer on several occasions.” She'd never thought twice about it. “You think he…did something to it? Installed spyware?”

“My guess is he did much worse than that. Did you already contact your family tonight?”

“I had just sent an email when you unplugged it.”

“Did you tell them where you are right now?” He covered her hand with his, a gesture of comfort that didn't soothe her in the least.

“Yes.” She'd written all of three lines, but she'd
mentioned the All Tucked Inn by name. “I've traveled alone for my work for years and that's a habit I got into long ago. I always let my family know where I'll be and when to expect to hear from me again.”

She'd always thought the system helped protect her safety. But in this case, she had the feeling she'd endangered Jake, Rico and Lianna along with herself.

“We can't stay here.” Standing, he shoved her laptop in the case he kept his in, then jammed his alongside it.

“But what about the snowstorm?” She didn't look out the window since Jake had already briefed her earlier on the importance of not making herself a target to anyone watching the building from outside. But she didn't need to look out to know the snow still fell with blizzard force. “We barely made it here and the GPS didn't show another hotel for miles.”

The drawback of romantic, snowy mountain regions was that there wasn't a hotel and a Starbucks on every corner. She wasn't in Miami anymore.

“We don't know what he's capable of, Marnie.” Jake pulled on his pants over his boxers. “So I'd rather take my chances in the snowstorm than play sitting duck for this guy.”

Fear clogged her throat as she began to appreciate how serious this could be. Guilt compounded the sick feeling since it would be her fault if Alec found them.

“I'm sorry about this.” She hated that she still hadn't learned enough caution, that Jake was forced to clean up her mistakes.

“I should have thought about the computer before.” He shook his head, and the dark expression on his face made it clear he blamed himself. “I'll go next door and explain to Rico and Lianna that we need to leave. Don't use the phone, okay?”

She nodded as she rose from the bed, grateful to him for taking care of her. For looking out for all of them. If not for Jake Brennan, she could easily be behind bars tonight instead of here, falling for a hardened P.I. who might never love her back.

“Thank you,” she blurted before he left. “For everything.”

Marnie got the full impact of his undivided attention for a long moment, his green eyes inscrutably dark in the firelight.

“I want to keep you safe.” He spoke the words like a declaration, with the kind of vehemence you'd expect for a more personal sentiment.

She had an odd, disheartening premonition that this might be as much of a commitment as she ever received from Jake Brennan. She thought about calling him back when he tugged a shirt on and headed for the door, but his name died on her lips when a woman's scream pierced the night.

Jake sprinted through the dark hall of the bed and breakfast.

The scream had faded by the time he tried the handle on Rico and Lianna's room.

Locked.

Pounding on the paneled door, he heard voices from
inside. Behind him, he detected Marnie's soft, fast footsteps running toward him in the corridor.

“Go back to the room,” he ordered, needing her out of the equation so he could focus on whatever was happening here. “Lock yourself in and don't open it until you're sure it's me.”

A quick glance back revealed her worried face as she nodded and backed away. The rest of the floor remained quiet; it appeared they were the only ones renting rooms tonight.

He hated that this was scaring the hell out of her. He'd freaked her out before when he'd run around the blizzard with a weapon in hand, and again when he'd snatched her computer out of her hands. But at this point, it would be better if she was frightened and hiding out than around when trouble erupted.

“Rico, open up.” He kept pounding. “It's Jake.”

The lock clicked and the door gave way. Rico stood inside with an ashen Lianna under his arm.

“We're okay,” the other man assured him. “She saw a man's shadow at the window, I guess.”

Jake did a visual sweep of the room, taking in the open suitcase and the still-made bed. Clothes were scattered around the living area. Parted curtains against one window looked out into a darkness lit only by a security light in the front yard, half obscured by the storm.

“We're on the third floor.” He propped the door open so he could keep one ear trained for sounds in the hallway. “You sure you saw a person and not just swirling snow or something?”

“I know what I saw,” Lianna insisted, still pale, but her voice remained steady. “It was the outline of a man's upper body—from the hips up—as he moved past the window.”

“There's a catwalk outside that leads to a fire escape,” Rico explained, pointing toward the window in question. “I looked out, but I couldn't see anyone.”

Jake crossed the room to check, lifting the shade carefully so as not to give away his position. The light was dim behind him, the glow from the fireplace the only illumination in the room, just like it had been back in the suite he shared with Marnie.

Marnie.

Damn, but this was when not being with a cop sucked. There wasn't a chance in hell he'd be able to obtain police protection for her, especially when they had piss-poor little to go on other than a few strange coincidences. But he felt in his gut that Marnie's former boyfriend wasn't going to just take his money and run. The fact that he'd been angling to meet with Lianna—to spy on Marnie through her—told Jake the guy wasn't done making trouble. Although what exactly he wanted and why remained a mystery.

“I don't see anyone.” Peering through the casement, Jake sought signs of movement at the edge of the woods nearby, the backyard lit by a couple of security lights around the perimeter and the glow of red and green decor along the roofline. “But I think that snow on the catwalk might have been disturbed.”

Tough to tell with the snow falling thick and heavy.
The walkway was a wrought-iron construction with lots of open grates so the snow didn't gather there much.

The phone rang while Jake wedged open the window for a better look out into the frigid night.

“Hello?” Lianna answered while Rico opened another window a few feet away from him, the second cold blast pushing back the flames in the fireplace.

Jake kept one ear tuned into the conversation while he searched the iron path for signs of a footprint. Lianna must have been speaking with the owner of the bed-and-breakfast because she was explaining that she'd seen someone's face at the window and went on to ask if anyone would be working outside their room at this hour.

“Jake, check this out.” Rico called to him from the other window, his face barely visible through the falling blanket of white.

Closing his window, Jake moved to the next one where Rico looked out into the night.

And there, he could see the framework for the fire escape extended beyond the window, around the corner of the building. Leading anyone right to Jake and Marnie's room.

Shit.

Marnie.

Jake pushed away from the sill and plowed over a duffel bag to get out the door. Back to his room.

His feet jackhammered down the hall as hard and loud as his heart, dread pumping through him. He didn't bother knocking, instead using his key card to open the door. When the slide bolt caught—proof she'd double-locked it from the inside—he kicked the thing down.
It cracked easily, since the old home didn't contain the steel doors used in big hotels.