Undercover Heat (9 page)

“If you were in love with me, you should have been able to resist,” Kyra shot back.

Keith had been nonplussed. “She's
hot
, Kyra,” he'd repeated. “I mean, come on. You don't even compare.”

That had been back when she wore lots of makeup and dressed more suggestively and had been actually trying to capture the man's attention.

“I'm going to go make something to eat,” she said now. “You can keep explaining everything to Quinn.” She needed to get away from Whitney, put some space between them. The memories, now that she'd crossed that same line with Quinn, were too raw. She had a sudden fear he would fall into the same trap that Keith had.

It's all pretend, Kyra. You split half a bottle of Jack Daniels with the man and you fell into bed together. It means nothing. When this case is over, you'll go your separate ways, if not before
.

She shouldn't care whether or not he would fall for Whitney's charms, but she did.

Quinn slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her down onto his lap. She squirmed uncomfortably, while Whitney watched the exchange with unabashed interest.

“You're the financial expert in the family, remember?” Quinn reminded her. She slumped back against his chest. He wrapped an arm around her waist and seemed content to hold her like that. Whitney paused, gave them a considering look, and then continued extolling the virtues of her financial empire.

“Listen, Whitney, I think we're good,” Quinn interrupted. “We trust you. You're our neighbor, right? You won't steer us wrong. We'll let you invest our money. Let's set up a time when we can come into your office and make everything official.”

Whitney blinked owlishly, clearly taken aback by his abrupt attitude. “I don't actually have an office,” she said. “I can bring everything to you.”

“Excellent.” He pushed Kyra to the side and climbed to his feet, striding over to the door and giving Whitney an expectant look. “Tomorrow, then? Say six or six thirty?”

Whitney gathered her supplies and moved toward the door. “Sure. That sounds lovely. I'll see you then.” She gave them both a quizzical look, but Quinn slammed the door in her face.

“What was that—” Kyra did not get to finish the sentence because Quinn was suddenly on her, rolling underneath her and pulling her down on top of him.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting you back into my lap,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he groaned and lifted his hips. “Yeah, right there.” He sighed, closed his eyes, and let his hands roam over her body.

Kyra grabbed his hands and pushed them back against the couch cushions. “Quinn, you all but pushed her out the door. We could have closed the deal tonight. All we needed was to hand her a check, and then trace the money until it implicated her. We're so close to wrapping up this case.”

Quinn slipped his hands out from underneath hers and clamped them onto her hips, grinding their groins together.

“Yeah, I know. Let her stew for a little while. Remember, she thinks she's about to land the scam of the century. We shouldn't appear too eager. Besides, I really, really want to have sex with you again, and if we close this case tonight, I probably won't get the chance.” He slipped his hands under her shirt and cupped her breasts.

“Why do you say that?”

He rolled his hips again. “Oh come on, Kyra. You know this is just happening because we're living in such close proximity at the moment. Whatever the hell dream state we're living in will go away the second we have to go back to the real world. Can't we just enjoy it for one more night?” He slid his hand into her pants, then cupped her ass before sliding his fingers through the wetness at the apex of her thighs. She hissed and arched and grabbed his shoulders to keep herself steady.

“Quinn,” she gasped.

He thrust two fingers into her. “I'm right here, baby,” he promised.

He was right. The case could wait.

Much later that night, as they lay side by side in the bed in the master bedroom, Kyra brought up the information she'd read in his file.

“Did it really happen the way it's written?” she asked.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the dim glow of moonlight shining through the bay window jutting from the window seat. Kyra was on her side, curled into him, with one leg thrown over both of his. He lay on his back, one arm around her shoulders, the other bent behind his head. He stared into the darkness, reveling in how comfortable the situation felt. Even with Phoebe he did not just lie in bed and talk like this. Especially not about this subject.

“More or less,” he responded. “Of course, the feds left out all the emotional bullshit and the fact that he had been abusing my mother for decades before then.”

He knew the file by heart. He'd lived it as well, so he knew what wasn't in there.

“He finally just cracked and shot her?”

Okay, Kyra had a pretty fucked-up idea of what constituted pillow talk. And oddly, he was inclined to tell her what she wanted to know, which was definitely a first for him.

“It was way more than that. He was pissed that I'd gone into law enforcement when he had been a career criminal and was damned proud of that status. After I solved my first case, I went to my mom's house to tell her the news. I was only twenty-two. Seriously wet behind the ears. And I was so damn proud.” He paused, flexing his fist for a moment before expelling a breath and forcing himself to relax. As much as he could while discussing this particular topic.

“He hadn't been living with her at the time. Even though she was miserable with him, she was too afraid to kick him out or divorce him. She just enjoyed the small bits of freedom whenever he took off to go hang out with one of his other lays for a while.

“Anyway, when I got there, he was there too. In the middle of the living room, holding her by the hair. She was just hanging there. He'd obviously beaten the shit out of her before I arrived.”

He paused as his chest tightened, that familiar feeling of guilt mingled with fury and disgust bubbling up inside him. But unlike every other time he relived that moment in time, he did not have the urge to reach for a bottle of booze. Instead, he tightened his grip around Kyra's shoulders. She did not protest. She did not say anything at all. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. He plunged ahead nevertheless. For the first time in his life, he wanted to tell the tale. He wanted to hear Kyra's response. It was important to him, which was bizarre enough in itself, but what was really interesting was that he wasn't sure what sort of response he expected or wanted to hear.

“He held her hair, shaking her, like she was some kind of life-sized rag doll.” He spoke into the darkness, into the quiet, as he stared at the ceiling.

“He started raging at me, telling me how disappointed he was that I'd chosen this career path. ‘What are you going to do, arrest your old man?' he taunted me. I told him no, because all the petty bullshit he did wasn't good enough for the FBI to investigate. He said, ‘Well, how about this? Is this good enough for my self-righteous son?' And then he pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants and shot my mother in the head. Just like that.” Quinn mimicked the action of a gun with the hand that had been behind his head.

Kyra jerked as if the finger-gun had actually gone off, and pushed up onto her hands so she could look down at him. “Oh my God,” she said, her breath coming out in a rush. She sounded horrified. “You saw your mother die. The report said you were there, but I didn't realize …”

He grimaced. “Yeah. I watched my old man shoot my mother. And he did it because he was pissed off at me.”

“You don't honestly believe that, do you?”

“What else am I supposed to believe? I told you what he said.”

“He did it because he is a cold-hearted bastard, and he probably knew you would see it that way. He got under your skin when he called earlier,” she said matter-of-factly. “I hate that he can still do that.”

Her support warmed his cold, dead heart, if only a little. “Yeah,” he admitted. “He calls periodically, mostly to harass me about some case or another. He gets off on taunting me when I can't close a case, and taunting me when I do. Says I'll never be able to catch all the bad guys, because they're all smarter than the good guys.”

“Which you, of course, know is ludicrous,” she said in a no-nonsense voice.

He smiled into the darkness. He liked her conviction on his behalf. Besides, she was right. It was ludicrous. But still, he let the old man get to him, every time.

“I should just stop taking his calls.”

“You should,” she said, so deadpan that he laughed.

“You're a hell of an advocate, you know that?” He rolled toward her, wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him, and buried his face in her flaxen hair.

“I'm sorry that happened to you,” she said after a while.

He shrugged.

“Were you close to your mother, before she died?”

His fragile, fearful mother. She used to flinch if he lifted his hand to brush a stray hair out of her face, and he'd never laid a hand on the woman in his life. He resented her more than anything, because she had been too afraid to leave his bastard of a father and seek out a real life for herself and her son.

How could he have believed that she and Kyra were alike?

“Not really,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“I'm still sorry it happened. No one should lose a parent that way.”

“No,” he said. “They shouldn't.”

• • •

Kyra wasn't sure what to expect the next morning. They spent the night together, not just having sex but cuddling as well. She woke to the feel of Quinn's hands roaming her body, gently enticing her to roll toward him, wrap her legs around his waist, and once again seek that pleasure that she was shocked to discover she quite enjoyed seeking with Quinn.

That is, until she was in the shower a short time later. As the steaming water cleansed her body, it also poured memories into the forefront of her mind, memories she would have rather forgotten. If only she could.

Keith, too, had been a fellow agent. They'd worked together for years, carrying on a mild flirtation, until one night when a small group of agents gathered together at the local watering hole to celebrate the end of what had been a very long, exhausting week. She and Keith had been the last to leave the bar, and they'd done so together, wandering along arm in arm through downtown Dallas. They ended up at Kyra's condo. One thing led to another, and she woke up to Keith sprawled on his back, one arm hanging off the side of the bed, snoring loudly into her ear.

They had continued to see each other after that, although they tried to keep their relationship a secret, as their director had a hard line about workplace relationships. Despite this, everyone seemed to know.

When she was given the case of the shady financial planner—Whitney White—Keith developed an unnatural interest in her case. In retrospect, she could see it for what it was: Her boyfriend had been attracted to the sensual thief. At the time, though, Kyra had simply thought he wanted to be involved in her case, in her life. By that point, she had already started to hear wedding bells, envision the dress, plan the reception, and move into the house with the white picket fence.

Discovering he'd been sleeping with Whitney behind her back was bad enough. Then his sleeping with the perp had—Kyra was sure of it—ultimately led to Whitney figuring out the feds were after her, thus causing her to disappear like so much smoke in the wind.

But all of that paled compared to what Kyra faced when she returned to the office after Whitney White skipped town. Kyra was called before the director and forced to explain what happened to her case. She had to admit that she and Keith were dating, and then endure the scorn as her director informed her it was her fault the case was lost.

Then Keith dumped her, publicly.

The entire office began to look at her as if she had the plague. Her career was nearly ruined. Her personal life was in tatters. And her case was still open.

“We need to talk,” she snapped as she stepped out of the bathroom, wearing a thin cream-colored robe, her hair damp from the shower.

Quinn was still in bed, although he was awake. “Uh oh,” he commented as he stretched and scrubbed his hands over his face. “I don't do relationships, but I know those words aren't generally the start of positive conversations.”

“I'm glad to hear you don't do relationships,” she said, saying the words very fast, trying to get them out before she lost her nerve. “Because we can't do this anymore.”

He froze with his hand still over his eyes, and then very slowly and deliberately shifted his hand down so that he could look at her. “I take it something happened while you were in the shower?”

She shook her head. “Nothing happened. I was just … just thinking. And I think we're getting caught up in the case, in the situation. You know, pretending to be married. But we can't … this”—she waved her hand at the bed—“anymore. It's just … We need to keep it professional.”

Quinn made a display of trying to peer around her person.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out who the hell was in the bathroom, filling your head with this bullshit. Because twenty minutes ago, I could have sworn you had one hell of an orgasm. And I'm the one who gave it to you, by the way.”

“Stop being deliberately crude.”

“Stop being deliberately obtuse,” he shot back. He climbed out of bed, naked, and made no attempt to hide that fact. She watched as he padded to the bathroom, and then she turned her head away when he stepped up to the toilet and began to pee without closing the door. She waited until he climbed into the shower, and then tried to resume their conversation from the safety of the bathroom door.