Irresistible Force (13 page)

Instead, Jaylynn had tried to destroy him.

The memory of Shay laughing and rolling in the grass with Bogart flashed through his mind, tugging a smile from him. Shay’s love of Bogart had no calculation. He doubted she was capable of fake emotions.

He thrust that thought aside as Jaylynn started down the hall.

She didn’t notice him until she was within half a dozen steps. “Well, look who’s turned up? If you’ve come to apologize, it will have to wait. I’m busy.”

James smiled but it held no humor. “I didn’t come to apologize.” He signaled with his hand and Bogart, who was sitting out of sight, padded softly into view.

“Oh my God! How—I mean, you found him.” Her voice was full of false emotion. “It’s a miracle. Hey there, boy.”

She reached out a hand as if she meant to pat him but Bogart rolled back his muzzle until all his teeth showed. She jerked her hand back. “Where—I mean, how did you find him?”

“Cut the crap, Jaylynn. I know. Everything.” James’s voice was pitched low so that others moving through the hall couldn’t hear him. But she got the message.

She blinked twice. “Okay, I have an admission to make.” Her perfect posture slipped as her shoulders rounded in feigned regret. “Your dog wasn’t stolen.” She glanced across at him. “I was too ashamed to tell you the truth. So I kind of made up that story about him being stolen.”

“Really?”

She nodded, staring now at a spot on the floor halfway between them. “I stopped on the way to the groomers to pick up a new nail polish. When I opened the door, he took off.” Her lower lip, scarlet-lipstick perfection, trembled. “He never liked me, you know. I think he ran off just to upset me.”

“Cut the shit, Jaylynn. You drove him all to the way to an animal shelter near Raleigh to have him put down.”

She straightened her spine, thrust out her perfect breasts, and shook out her hair. The stare she leveled at him said she was done with explanation. “Like I said, I’m busy. If you want to discuss this—no, you know what? We have nothing to say to one another.” She tried one last time for her “Charlotte’s Sweetheart” smile. “It was good while it lasted but it’s over. Let’s not waste each other’s time and spoil it by making bad memories.”

James watched her take three steps to the nearest doorway. “If you leave this hallway before we’re done, I’m going straight to the station’s general manager to tell her the story you don’t have time to hear.”

She turned around slowly. “What do you mean?”

He gave her the “come here and sit” hand signal he used with Bogart, and he was pleased to see by her insulted expression that she recognized it.

All pretense of flirtatiousness vanished as she retraced her steps. “Make it quick.”

James gave her the account of how he’d found his animal, his voice level and unemotional. She grew paler with every sentence but her expression remained neutral.

When he was done, she gave him her trademark blink and then a coy big-eyed “oops” glance. “So, I made a mistake. What do you plan to do about it?”

“It’s not me you have to worry about. You lied to the police, alleging the false charge of dog-napping. You could be cited for false allegations, for starters.”

Her expression relaxed. “What is that? A fine? I can pay it.”

“You also stole and tried to destroy police property.”

Her gaze flicked to the very much alive Bogart, panting by his side. “But I didn’t actually do anything.”

“Then there’s your public relations problem when this gets out. People love their pets. Your ratings soared when Bogart was on. Remember all those crayon pictures of him you got? ‘Dog killer’ isn’t going to look so good on your resume.”

“You and that damned dog.” Her voice was bitter. “I wish I’d never set eyes on either of you.”

“Ditto.” He held her glare. “I could press civil charges, too. But I won’t.”

Jaylynn closed her eyes for a moment, as if in prayer. When she opened them the old Jaylynn was back, the silky siren pose slipped into place.

“So, you’re just toying with me, trying to make me sweat. I should be very mad at you.” Her lashes fluttered and her mouth turned pouty as she placed a hand on his chest, nails bent to make playful indentations in his uniform. “I forgive you. I knew you were a good guy.”

“I’m not that good.” He brushed away her touch. “I have a police report to file. Specialty-trained dogs like Bogart are worth upward of twenty thousand dollars. The department could bring charges against you for grand larceny.”

“My God!” For the first time she seemed to understand that she was in jeopardy. “What can I do?”

“Turn yourself in and throw yourself on the mercy of the department.”

“But I can’t do that without exposing myself to…”

James finally smiled. “Yeah. Public opinion. Maybe it’s time to bite at one of those offers you say you’re constantly getting from other stations.”

She stared at him. “You can’t prove it was me. I’ll say you lied, that you’re a jealous ex.”

James turned and walked away.

“I’ll get an attorney.” Her voice carried after him, making the few people passing in the hallway turn and stare. “A good one who can make anyone look like a liar.”

He paused to look back. “I can prove it was you. There’s a witness.”

He and Bogart quickly turned the corner before he said something he’d regret.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Must be nice to have the kind of job security where you can just take off without notice.”

Shay gave Henry an obscene finger wave as she passed his cubicle.

He laughed in response. “Lunch?”

“If we’re still here then.”

Henry was one of two friends she had at Logital Solutions, a tech temp agency. Angie was the other. Though “friend” was more a term of mutual likability than time spent together. They were seldom in the building since temp agency employees were only doing well if they were out of the office. LS supplied the IT sprawl that was Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill with high-tech workers. On any given day, they could be cities apart.

“Hi, Shay.”

She glanced over at Angie who occupied the cubicle directly across from hers. Five foot two and amply proportioned, Angie was one of those lucky creatures with lots of curves, a sweet face, and long golden curls that made her look like Alice in Wonderland with an addiction to peppermint white hot chocolate from Starbucks.

Then there was her costume habit.

Shay leaned against the entrance of her friend’s tiny cubicle, taking in the shimmering deep blue and silver fabric tacked to the walls, and then Angie’s blue star-spangled oversized sweater and navy tights with ankle boots. “What’s this week’s theme?”

Angie dimpled in delight. “Goddess Diana.” Shay pointed to the globe light on her desk. “In honor of November’s hunter’s moon. Perry wouldn’t allow me to hang anything from the ceiling. Said it violated safety regulations.”

Shay smiled. That was about the only thing their boss Perry wouldn’t let Angie get away with. She was Logital Solutions’s star. Aware that traditional employers might disapprove of her eccentricities, Angie worked remotely, delivering excellent work even while wearing a tutu.

“How was your vacation?” Angie studied her face. “You look like you haven’t been to bed since you left. Tell me those huge bags under your eyes come from sleepless nights screwing a yummy new guy.”

Shay shrugged. “Actually the week sucked. I lost Prince.”

“Oh no! Hit by a car?”

“Taken by a Charlotte police officer. Turns out he was a stolen K-9 police dog.”

“K-9 officer? Like this?” Angie turned and opened a file drawer and pulled out a calendar of K-9 officers and their dogs. She flipped it open. “Isn’t this July shot hot?”

“Yeah, gorgeous pelt.” Blushing for reasons that had nothing to do with the gorgeous male officer in the picture, and everything to do with the one who’d shared her bed over the weekend, Shay handed back the calendar. “See you later.”

Shay had promised herself that she wasn’t going to go over it again in her mind, for maybe the zillionth time.
Screw that.

Sex with James had been—well—fan-
fucking
-tasic!

For once in her life, her overeager brain cells had checked out and let her just feel every way, every move, touch, pressure, quake, and rush of the desire that ran between them like lava.

James had smelled good, of soap—her soap—and the faint scent of shaving gel. He’d tasted of her dinner and desire. He was hot everywhere she touched, as if there were a secret fire ablaze beneath his skin. When he embraced her, he felt solid, capable, and sexy as hell. And he wanted her.

She had always wanted to be wanted like that. It was urgent and sweet and hungry. In his arms was the safest and most secure place she’d been in a long, long time. She was gloriously happy, pretending for a night that she was capable of a normal relationship with someone who wouldn’t hurt her. Only it hadn’t worked out that way.

She’d gone all “Psycho Shay” on him, and thrown him out. All because he had used the john in the middle of the night.

Shay cringed. It had been a long time since she’d had that particular nightmare. Seeing the shadow of feet beneath her bathroom door had set it off.

Now she’d never see James again.

She dragged a hand across her cheek, wiping away a tear she had not given her body permission to spill.

That was her only consolation. She’d never have to look James Cannon in the eye and see the expression of fear tinged with revulsion that had made her high school years a constant misery.

She eased into her chair in her cubicle. Her space was pristine compared to Angie’s. That was because she didn’t leave clues to her life around. No pictures, cards, memorabilia. For an IT specialist, she was very low-tech in her personal life. No social media or tweets, not much e-mail outside of job necessity. Today the only thing on her desk was a shiny brochure.

The hair on Shay’s neck lifted as she recognized it. It was for a private luxury island resort in the Caribbean.

She snatched it off her desk and glanced around quickly. It was a souvenir of the most recent of several weekend getaways Eric had taken her on, at his bank’s expense. No one else was supposed to know about it.

When her gaze came back to the brochure she noticed the slanted spidery script in the upper left-hand corner. It read: “Ready to make up?”

“Shit!”

Angie’s head popped up over her cubicle wall. “What’s wrong?”

Shay thought fast. “Ah … paper cut.” She stuck an uncut finger in her mouth for emphasis.

“Hate that.” Angie slumped out of sight.

Shay bit her lip to keep from asking Angie any of the questions chasing each other in her head.

Eric had been here? When? And why, of all the trips, would he think she’d want to repeat that weekend?

A searing flash of their final night at the private resort lasered its way into her consciousness. Eric had brought her along to an international banking convention. The executives at the after-hours party were wasted on expensive booze and cocaine when one of them suggested a dance-off with their female companions as contestants.

She had suspected many of the women were paid companions. But when a dozen of them gamely shimmied out of their clothing to bump and grind in sexy barely there undies and less, she knew.

Shay closed her eyes, remembering how humiliated she’d been when Eric had pulled her to her feet and pushed her out on the impromptu dance floor, hissing in her ear, “Act like you’re begging for sex. Don’t embarrass me. Make them believe it.”

He expected her to swing her ass for the amusement of a bunch of drunk strangers.

Worse than stumbling through suggestive dance steps to music with crude sexual lyrics was withstanding the expression on Eric’s face as he watched her efforts. Because she wouldn’t undress, she was voted off the floor first.

On their way back to their suite, in defense of his scathing review of her poor performance, she’d burst out with, “Unlike some of those women I’m not a whore.”

“True,” he’d answered. “You’re not skilled enough to survive as one.”

Shay rubbed the too-tight sensation between her brows. There were so many memories she wished she didn’t have. Then, using two fingers, she picked up and flipped the brochure into the wastebasket. If only she could lob Eric in there with it.

To distract herself, she pulled open a drawer to survey its contents. There was a half-eaten bag of chips, a partially eaten power bar, and three pieces of candy that were at least eight weeks old. She tossed them after the brochure.

The tactic didn’t work. Memory ambushed her a second time before she could steel herself.

One second she was sitting in her cubicle, the next her world was imploding, sucked into the deep shadows of an unlit apartment bathroom on a night when she was fourteen years old.

She began to vibrate as the memory moved and settled with disturbing familiarity into her psyche. Fingernails bit into her palms as her stomach cramped in fear. The phantom smells seemed to fill her nostrils until she was near suffocating.

She was alone in a new place, an apartment over a Chinese restaurant. Years of orders of stir-fried vegetables and General Tso’s Chicken had soaked into the carpeting and drapes. The odor made her feel either constantly hungry, or queasy. It was supposed to a short-term solution, until her mother got established in Raleigh.

Her mother, an LPN, was working extra shifts at the senior care nursing facility so that Shay could finish another school year without needing to get a job, too. “You make the grades that will take you out of this life, Shay. I’ll support that.”

Always a sensitive child, she locked her bedroom door when her mother was away at night and never ventured out until dawn. But tonight that extra large Slurpee she’d insisted upon with a burger dinner was pressing hard on her bladder. She needed to go. Bad.

She slipped out of bed and turned the knob.

The bathroom floor was cool under her bare feet. She didn’t turn on the light, feeling her way along to the toilet. It was ugly, cracked on the rim and stained in ways her mother couldn’t scrub away. Better to pretend it was okay than to see that it wasn’t. She had finished her business and reached for the handle to flush when she heard it.