Kansas City Secrets (13 page)

She stopped at the bathroom to pull her robe from behind the door and shrugged into it, adding another layer of warmth and modesty now that she was done throwing herself at her downstairs tenant. “It'll clean up. I believe you think I'm a prim-and-proper prude. A little mud and water don't bother me.” Stepping into the kitchen, Rosemary flipped on the light and eyed the path of water and big muddy prints from Max's bare feet that marked her hallway. “The dogs have tracked in worse. I just like knowing the rules and what's expected of me—and what to expect from other people.” She crossed to the bank of drawers beside the oven but hesitated. “I hope I didn't put you in an awkward position before. I don't normally wrap myself around a man while I'm in my pajamas.” The burn of embarrassment crept up her neck and into her cheeks at that rather suggestive description of seeking refuge in his arms. “I mean, I don't...not without asking first. But I was scared. And I was worried about you.”

Rosemary glanced up as he leaned his hip against the countertop beside her. “Do you hear me complaining?”

She was relieved, and more disappointed than she should be, to see him dismissing her panicked indiscretion with a wry grin. She tried to match his easy smile. “You
are
very good at vocalizing what you're thinking and feeling, aren't you, Detective?”

His smile disappeared and he reached over to catch a tendril of hair that stuck to her damp cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “I thought I'd earned a Max from you by now.”

Her gaze drifted to the front of his shirt and the three buttons that he'd fastened into the wrong holes. Rosemary couldn't stop the smile from curving her lips again. This man was a tornado blowing through her controlled, predictable world, upsetting her routine, ignoring her personal barriers, waking wants and needs she thought had died long ago. And yet he was growing more dear to her, more necessary as a protector, a friend and maybe something more, with each encounter. Even if all he ever wanted from her was a drunken kiss and the chance to solve Richard's murder, she was glad that he'd barged into her closed-off, humdrum life. She opened a drawer and pulled out a box of plastic storage bags for him. “Here. Max.”

Nodding his approval, Max pulled a pocketknife from the front of his jeans to pry open the red box. “Looks like our perp took it apart to modify it somehow. Even with industrial glue, though, it didn't reseal completely. That's probably how the water got inside.”

“That horrible sound reminded me of Richard. Of that night. He laughed when he...” The scars on her chest seem to throb and she tied the robe more snugly around her damp T-shirt.

“Who would know about him laughing that night?” Max asked, pulling out a chair at the table to tinker with the box. “Somebody had to know it would rattle you.”

“I'm not sure. It's probably in the police report.”

“That's public record if somebody looks hard enough. Who else?”

Rosemary considered herself a very private person, but after that night, she'd been desperate to find someone who could help her escape Richard's tyranny. “My brother, Stephen. A couple of friends.”

“What friends?” Max glanced up from unscrewing the back of the box. “Crimes are solved in the details. I need you to tell them to me.”

Rosemary wondered if the storm outside could somehow cool the air inside the house, as well. “Otis and Arlene, when I went to their house to call the police afterward. Howard.”

“Your attorney?”

She nodded. “I told him everything when he was putting together the restraining order.”

What about a statuesque blonde who blamed her for Richard's death?

“You got a suspect for me?” he prompted, sensing her thoughts turning.

Rosemary pulled out another chair and sat kitty-corner from him. “Richard could have told one of his mistresses. I ran into one of them at Howard's office the other day.”

“
One
of...?” Max's curse was short and pungent. “Sorry. I know you hate that.”

“Not as much as I hate not knowing who's doing this to me. Her name is Charleen Grimes. She said your friends Detectives Watson and Parker had shown up at her boutique to ask her questions. She was pretty ticked off.” Rosemary remembered the hate and pain spewing from Charleen's perfectly painted lips that day. “She accused me of killing Richard.”

“And getting away with it? Like that first note?”

Rosemary nodded. Charleen's verbal attack in Howard's office that day still rankled. But the memory of the blonde woman striding across Howard's office and towering over her was triggering a different memory. “Charleen is tall for a woman. Could she pass for a man at night, in the shadows?”

“It's possible. The guy I chased tonight was wearing clothes so baggy and nondescript I'd be hard-pressed to confirm a gender. I just assumed it was a guy.” He wedged the tip of his pocketknife into the seam around the box. “I want to meet this Charleen... Finally.” With one more twist of his knife, the box popped open and a soggy piece of paper fell out and plopped to the floor.

“What's that?”

He put out a hand to keep her from picking it up. “Don't touch it. I'll bag it for prints and have Trent take it to the lab tomorrow.”

“You know it's not there by accident. I want to know what it says.”

He used the plastic bag to retrieve it from the floor and gently shake it open. “Ah, hell.”

It was a black-and-white photocopy of a picture. Of her.

Her thoughts instantly went to the mysterious photographer who'd snapped a picture of her in the visitors' room at the state prison. It was even more disturbing to see her wearing a different outfit than the flowered blouse she'd worn that day. She didn't have to move any closer to see the candid image of her climbing into a cab outside Howard's office building. “How long has he been watching me?”

When Max would have slipped the note into the bag and hidden it away, she grabbed his wrist and insisted on seeing every last gruesome detail.

Her eyes and heart had been x-ed out on the picture. Someone who was very angry with her had drawn a noose around her neck in black ink and typed a message neatly across the top.

I want to feel my hands around your throat, your pulse stopping beneath the pressure of my thumbs. You will burn for what you've done.

There will be justice for Richard.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

But the creepiest part was the five black marks dotting the top of the white dress she wore—five dots right across her collarbone where the burn scars Richard had inflicted upon her lay.

“How could he know? How could anyone know?”

Rosemary was only vaguely aware of Max moving as the room swirled around her. With her hand at her throat, she sank into the back of the chair and closed her eyes.

“Rosie?”

She heard the gruff voice calling to her in the distance. Someone knew her darkest secrets. Someone was using those secrets against her. To terrorize her. To punish her. To plunge her into a nightmare from which she could never escape.

“Rosie.”

Rough hands grabbed her shoulders, shook her. She was cold. So cold.

Then the hands closed around either side of her head and she fell forward until her mouth ran into something firm, hot. Something warm and moist pressed between her lips, parting them. The world gradually took the shape and form of fingers tangled in her hair, tugging lightly at her scalp. The pressure on her mouth became pliant lips that tasted of salt and heat and toasty tobacco. The taste was familiar yet new. Potent, with a tickle of sandpapery stubble on the side. Max. Max was kissing her. His hands were holding her. His tongue was sliding against hers. In one moment, she was the stunned recipient of bold passion—in the next, her tongue darted out to catch his and she leaned into the kiss. Deepened it. Came alive with it. Her throat hummed with anticipation. She stretched to fit her mouth more fully against his.

But when her hands came to rest against his chest, he pulled away. The room was still swaying when her eyes fluttered open and she looked into the damp, craggy face of the man kneeling in front of her chair. “Max?”

He stroked his thumb across her tender lips, brushed her hair behind her ears. “You checked out on me there. Don't scare me like that, okay? Stay with me.”

The disorienting fear and helplessness faded. Other emotions—confusion, hope, desire—grew stronger. She touched the lines of concern crinkling beside his eyes. She brushed her thumb across the masculine line of his bottom lip, absorbing the heat from his skin into hers. She could hear her heart beating over the drumbeat of rain outside. “Another opportunity you couldn't pass up?” But there was no humor in her laugh, no answering humor in his eyes. “You shouldn't kiss me like that unless it means something to you.”

Max's lip trembled beneath her thumb. A deep groan rose from his chest. And then he was pushing to his feet, pulling her with him. His mouth covered hers, hot and wet and full of a driving need she answered kiss for kiss.

He lifted her onto her toes and she wound her arms around his neck, leaning into his sheltering strength. There was little finesse to Max's kiss. But then, she had little to compare it to beyond Richard's smooth, practiced seduction that left her feeling unsatisfied and inadequate.

Rosemary liked this infinitely better. There was little to second-guess about a man sliding his hands down her back to squeeze her bottom and lift her off her feet into his hard thighs and the firm interest stirring in between. Max's cheek rasped against hers as his lips scudded across her jaw and pulled at her earlobe.

His words were basic. “Your skin's so soft. Your hair smells like summer and rain. It's the cleanest scent. I could breathe it in all night long.”

When he reclaimed her lips, his tongue was bold, his hands were bolder. Rosemary gasped when she felt his palms branding her skin beneath her shirt. The tips of her breasts tingled, grew heavy and tight as they rubbed against the hard wall of his chest. She wanted his hands there, soothing their needy distress, exciting them more. This kiss was the wildest, most unexpected, most perfect embrace of her life. She was an equal partner, giving, taking. She slipped her hands up into the prickly crop of his military-short hair, turning his head to the angle of kiss she liked best.

“Rosie...honey...” His fingers dipped beneath the elastic of her panties. Yes. She wanted his touch there, too. She was forgetting the past. She was unafraid of the future. There was only Max and this moment and feeling safe and desired.

But when she curled her leg around Max's knee, instinctively opening herself to the need arcing between them, he pulled his lips away with a noisy moan. Her mouth chased after his to reclaim the connection, but his hands were on her shoulders now, pulling her arms from around his neck. Her toes touched the cold tile floor again, jarring her back to common sense. Suddenly, the water that had soaked through her clothes seemed just as cold. She rested her hands at his shoulders a moment to steady herself but curled her body away from his. One moment she was alive and on fire, the next, she was shivering and confused.

Rosemary grasped the back of the chair to keep herself standing as Max determinedly backed away. “That's not why I'm here. I've got a mission. I made a promise.” His chest expanded with a deep, ragged breath. “Ah, hell. Quit looking at me like you either want to shoot me or eat me up. I'm trying to do the right thing here.”

Max's rejection instantly sent her back to the times in her relationship with Richard when he'd rebuffed her advances. “I wasn't very good, was I? I'm sor—”

“Do
not
let that man come between us.” Max swiped his hand over his mouth and jaw and spun away. Just as quickly he faced her again and grabbed her wrist. “You call me whatever crass SOB you want to.” He pulled her hand to the front of his jeans and cupped it over the unmistakable warm bulge behind his zipper. “This is what you do to me. I don't know why you and me fit together this good. If I could take you to bed right now and finish this, I would.” He released her and backed away, raising his hands in apology. “But that's not what I'm here for. Neither one of us needs that kind of complication in our lives. I have to keep the mission in mind. I'm a cop. I have to think like a cop, not a...”

“Not a what?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

But he didn't fill in the blank. “It's not your job to deal with me. I'm damaged goods, Rosie. You can do better than me.”

“Now who's apologizing?”

With a shrug of his massive shoulders, he scooped up the noisemaker and message that had sent her into shock and slipped them into plastic bags. “I'm going back outside to give everything a once-over—make sure our friend hasn't come back. I need to call this in to my team, too. My description of the perp is pretty vague, but it's a place to start. I'll have a black-and-white swing through the neighborhood, just in case he's hiding out somewhere.” He headed to the back door. “I'll be right downstairs. Just a scream away.”

Rosemary shook off her stupor and ran after him, grabbing his arm. “You're leaving me?”

He looked down over the jut of his shoulder at her, his growly voice calming. “I don't want to push my luck by overstaying my welcome.”

Right. He was being all noble, doing this for her, respecting the boundaries she'd forgotten herself. She released her desperate grasp and stepped away, rubbing her hands up and down her chilled arms. “You better go call your team. I'll be fine.”

“You're gettin' pale again. I'll stay if you want me to.”

Rosemary shook her head. “No. You have a job to do. I'll be fine. You're here for me to draw out Richard's killer, not to babysit me.”

“You know that's not the only reason I'm here.”