Assumed Identity (13 page)

She was talking unsolved crime, extending that protective maternal shield to include him in her fierce compassion. But the stroke of her fingers across his skin was eliciting something far more sensual than anything he’d feel for somebody’s mother. And he hadn’t been thinking about the clue he’d inadvertently revealed about his blank slate of a life. He hadn’t been thinking, period.

“Robin,” he prompted, trying to convince them both that that endearment and any mention of his past had been slips of the tongue and nothing more. His body was still warm, his concentration still misfiring, after holding her. He didn’t need her to keep putting her hands on him, touching him the way a pretty woman touched a normal man. If he was smart, he’d put some distance between them. Jake pulled her hands from his hair and face and retreated to the door, ostensibly checking to make sure no one else was in the building. “What’s going on? You didn’t get locked in by accident, did you?”

“I don’t think so.” She swiped the tears from her face and picked up a bulky, plain white business envelope. “I mean, at first, I thought my staff had forgotten I was still here. But I got this in the mail today. There was no message like the others.”

“Others?”

Robin handed him the envelope and backed away as though its touch repulsed her. Then she nodded toward the stack of papers on the corner of her desk. “I’ve gotten something every day, ever since that article about my attack was in the paper. Phone calls, too. I reported them to Detective Montgomery. But he said until the creep actually does something, there’s not much KCPD can do.”

“Do you think Houseman is behind this?”

“I don’t know. He calls me every day, saying it’s urgent we talk, but it has to be in person. At least he identifies himself. I keep putting him off.”

She hugged her arms around her waist as Jake picked up one letter and unfolded it. “Son of a...”

It was a photocopy of Robin, a blurry image taken of her pushing Emma in her stroller on the sidewalk outside the shop. Robin’s face had been x’ed out with a marker and a cryptic message had been scribbled across the bottom.
You
don’t
deserve
her
.

“Are they all like this?”

“Variations on the same theme. I’m an unfit mother. I deserved what happened to me. He’s coming to take my baby away.” Her gaze fixated on the envelope Jake still held. “There aren’t any words in that one, but I get the message loud and clear. He can get to us. He
has
gotten to us.”

He opened the envelope to find shredded bits of soiled yellow yarn inside. The frayed strands were of the narrowest skein— The remnants of a baby’s knit cap? “Is this Emma’s?”

The tiny cap hadn’t just unraveled and gotten dirty. Someone had taken scissors or a knife to it. Someone who’d been very, very angry. “She was wearing it the night of the attack. I wondered why I couldn’t find it afterward. He must have taken it as a souvenir. I thought an attempted rape was frightening enough, but this...this scares me.” She moved back to the bassinet to watch her daughter sleep. “I thought he’d locked me in the fridge room tonight so that he could kidnap her. I don’t know how he got in. I was running late, but there should have been someone else here, waiting for us in the parking lot.” She spun around as a new concern hit her and hurried toward the door. “Are they all right? Did anyone else get hurt?”

Jake grabbed her arm before she could get by him and blocked her exit. Before she could voice a protest, he placed the envelope back in her hand and released her. “They all left.”

“They left?”

“Ten minutes after closing, your parking lot was empty.”

“You
were
watching. But...” She seemed to be having a tough time processing that she’d been abandoned by her employees. Shaking her head, she returned the envelope with Emma’s cap to her desk. “It must have been a miscommunication. Mark thought Leon was waiting for us—Leon thought Mark was.”

“One of them could have locked you in and then driven away.”

“I refuse to believe that.” Would she refuse to believe her employee was selling pictures that could have been of her or Emma? “Everyone here cares about my daughter. We celebrated her arrival. They all want to take care of her when she’s here. They wouldn’t put her in danger. What would be their motive for the assault and these threats?”

“You said you suspected someone was cooking the books.”

The fire in her eyes was coming back as she got defensive of her people. “Why go to all this trouble to cover up an embezzlement? We’re talking about two thousand dollars, not millions.”

“I’ve seen people do worse for less.” Had he?

“The people I know don’t act that way.”

“Then someone you
don’t
know waited until he could sneak in unnoticed.”

She drifted a step closer. “I thought you were watching.”

Jake braced his hands on his hips and squared off against her. “I thought you’d have enough sense to leave with the others.”

“If you’re going to spy on me, at least do a thorough job.”

“You’re not my responsibility, lady. I don’t owe you anything.”

He raised his voice to match the accusation in hers. The baby cooed in her bassinet, stirring in her sleep.

Robin palmed Jake’s biceps and nudged him out the door. “Could we take this out in the hallway so we don’t wake Emma?” She stepped into the shadows with him, resuming the discussion in a more rational tone as soon as she closed the door. “Are you sure you didn’t see anyone come inside?”

She’d come to him for help, and now she was blaming him? “I left for a few minutes to see if I could find the car that was watching you the other night.”

“Did you see it?”

Jake scraped his palm over his stubbled jaw, stifling a curse. He
was
to blame. He’d dropped the ball tonight, getting distracted while the real danger was close at hand. “I thought I saw something suspicious, but I can’t be sure. There was a car out front pulling away when I ran back. Still couldn’t make out the driver. A guy in the car I’d been tailing snapped a picture of me and drove off in a hurry.”

“There were two men?”

“Possibly.” Maybe her assistant’s rendezvous hadn’t been about the pictures at all. Maybe it had been a ruse to get him away from the shop so an accomplice could get inside to Robin and Emma. Jake had suspected two people had been involved the night of her assault—the attacker and a getaway driver. Maybe the tag team had been back at work tonight.

“Jake. What are you thinking?”

“That it’s a good thing I came back.” He pulled the knife from his belt and slipped it back into the sheath inside his boot. “I may have scared off the guy before he could get to Emma. I made a lot of noise running through the alley.”

“Why would he want your picture?”

“That was the other guy. He may have been using the flash to blind me.”

When Jake pulled his pant leg down over the top of his boot and straightened, he could see she wasn’t listening to his explanation. She was staring at the weaponry attached to his leg. “Is that a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

Too well, perhaps. “Yeah.”

She tilted her eyes up to his. “Are you some kind of cop?”

I
honestly
don’t
know
. “Don’t worry. The safety’s on. It’s not going to accidentally go off around Emma. Or you.”

She touched her fingers to the middle of his chest. “That’s not what I asked. Why are you carrying a concealed gun?”

“Because I can in Missouri.”

She drew in a soft gasp that echoed in the hallway. “That’s not an answer.”

The security lights were too dim to tell what emotion darkened her eyes, but he could see them darting back and forth. She was trying to figure him out.
Join the crowd, honey.
She was trying to resolve the dangerous man he was with the hero she wanted him to be. Allow him to clarify. He leaned in, pressing his chest against her open palm, backing her into the wall without moving a step. He moved into her personal space and watched her pupils dilate with fear. “Don’t mistake me for Prince Charming.”

“I dated Prince Charming. It didn’t work.” Her voice hushed to a throaty whisper. Uh-oh. Backfire. Was she flirting with him? Even worse, was he playing this game with her? Their emotions must be too on edge for him to be thinking straight. “You’ve been watching the shop every night? Most people would think that’s creepy—you, armed and dangerous, spying on me from the shadows.”

“I am creepy.”

“No, you’re not.” She brought up her other hand to rest it against his chest. Only, her hands weren’t resting. They were moving, smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt, petting him. “Don’t say things like that.”

Jake shrugged. She thought that
telling
him to stop being such a wiseass would get him to stop? He could snap her in two like a toothpick if he wanted to. Yet she somehow saw past the attitude and the ugliness, and never once backed down from arguing with him. Either she was a fool, or he was. And he was beginning to think it was the latter. “I’ve been coming over on my dinner break. You made me feel guilty that day at the bar.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“Wasn’t it? Didn’t you want me to get involved?” Jake flattened his hands on the wall on either side of her head and leaned in another fraction of an inch. He was making one last try at intimidating her out of this hero-worship thing that toyed so recklessly with the emotions he normally kept in check. But he breathed in her flowery, feminine scent and knew he was toast. His whole body buzzed with anticipation and he hadn’t even touched her.

“Yes. If you were involved... I’m used to handling whatever life throws at me on my own, Jake. Business issues. Personal disappointments. Family responsibilities. But I can’t handle this. If you would help...” She swallowed her nerves and Jake watched the movement all the way down her creamy throat. Her eyes were dark like the twilight sky when she tilted them up to his. “I need you. You’re the biggest, baddest S.O.B. I know. I don’t think that creep will keep messing with us if you’re around.”

Jake nodded. He liked that answer. It was honest. Probably true. He was all kinds of wrong for this woman. But he liked the way she talked. He liked the way her pale skin glowed in the hazy light. He liked the fresh, pure female scent of her filling his head. And he liked the way she touched him, putting her hands on him like she wasn’t afraid to.

A better man would have pushed away from the wall and let the night air cool the heat between them. But Jake wasn’t that man. Instead of walking away, instead of doing the polite thing and retreating a step, he closed the distance between their lips and kissed her. He curled his fingers into the burlap weave of the wall behind her, bracing himself for a shove in the chest. The kiss was as gentle as he knew how to make it, and that wasn’t very. He was hungry to taste what kind of woman she was. All lady? All fire? Some combination of both? He pressed his mouth down on hers, tilting her head back. He sucked her bottom lip between his and stroked his tongue along its cool softness until it warmed and quivered and parted from its mate, releasing a tender sigh across his grizzled cheek.

Confused by her lack of resistance, Jake pulled back, his eyes seeking hers in the shadows. He didn’t realize he’d asked a question, but Robin nodded. “Like this.” Then she tugged on his chin to align his mouth more fully with hers, and stretched up to seal their lips in a decadent, openmouthed kiss.

Branded by an unexpected rush of heat, Jake threaded his fingers into her hair and cupped her head to hold her against the driving force of his desire. Her back hit the wall and his body followed as he plunged his tongue into her mouth, plundering her lips, drinking in her heat and tasting her welcome. He knew how badly he wanted Robin, but he hadn’t known how much he needed her to want him a little bit, too. Not just as some kind of monster to scare away the bad guys, but as a man.

That she’d taken charge of the kiss, that she framed his jaw and pulled him to her, that her lips and tongue were inviting him to do the same sweet things to her she was doing to him, was as heady and healing and normal as anything he’d felt since losing himself to that bullet.

Her mouth was soft and warm and delicious as he claimed it again and again. Her hair was silky and strong tangled between his fingers. Her soft, throaty moans skittered over him like a physical touch, eliciting a husky groan of his own. Her fingertips bit into his chest, his shoulders, then skimmed up the column of his neck to hold on to his battered face again.

Jake needed, and he took. Robin gave and he humbly thanked her. She was sweet and sexy and everything he could ever want. The kiss was raw and passionate and maybe just a little bit rough. They were linked by hands and lips and the fiery heat igniting between them. But Jake felt a connection being forged deep inside him, a bond to this woman that felt more real and right than any hazy memory of the life he’d lived.

And because of that connection, because it was already too late for a man who didn’t want to get involved to deny his feelings for this woman, Jake ended the kiss. He was too weak to completely break away, though, so he rested his forehead against hers. Robin was breathing as hard as he was, but she stood tall and strong with him. Her hands settled at the base of his throat, providing an unexpected cooling balm to the injured skin there. He eased his grip in her hair and opened his eyes to find her looking right up at him. Her cheeks were flushed with heat and the pink abrasion his beard had left around her mouth looked as if he’d stamped himself there. He’d expected her to look as dazed as he felt.

But there was a purpose in those gray-blue eyes, a directness that seemed to indicate she felt that same connection, too. She was asking the silent question now and Jake nodded. “He won’t mess with you,” he vowed. “Or Emma. I’m involved.”

Maybe he’d just been expertly played. Flirt with the big monster. Give him some sugar. Get his heart and hormones racing so hard that he’d do anything to get another kiss, some tender touches and maybe something more—all in exchange for getting involved in Robin Carter’s problems and making them go away.