Damaged Goods (7 page)

“Hey, Red,” he said. “How’re you holding up?”

She startled a little and gave him big eyes when she turned to him. He could tell when recognition set in by the way her shoulders relaxed.

“Hi, Brice…um, detective.” Her smile was slight and didn’t come close to quenching the misery in her emerald eyes. “Not well, I’m afraid.” She motioned to the items in front of her. “Can’t sleep, and yoga didn’t help, so…”

Brice looked at the choices of over-the counter sleep aids and reached out to rub a hand over her shoulder. He meant to keep it brief, but Terryn laid the side of her face on his hand before he pulled away. The soft skin felt like satin to him and he turned his palm until he cradled her cheek. Her eyes closed and a tear slipped out of the corner of one to trickle onto him. He stepped around the cart to bring her into his arms with a shushing murmur when she tensed, and then settled her against his chest.

With a sob, Terryn wrapped her arms around Brice and clung. It’d been two days since she found out about Katie. For two days she’d been alone with her grief. Nothing made it go away, nothing made it hurt less. She had tried eating, only to find it impossible to get food past her lips without gagging. She tried to just let herself cry, thinking it would empty her out and leave her blessedly numb, but the tears never stopped and it didn’t help the pain. It was relentless. Yoga and jogging were equally useless and even the ancient exercise video she tried had failed.

“Nothing helps. Nothing makes it better.” It wasn’t until his arms tightened around her and he murmured a “Shhh” in her ear that she realized she’d said the last thought out loud.

She heard him whisper, “C’mere.” Then he was leading her toward the café area, his cart forgotten. He guided her into a booth and sat next to her. Without reasoning the how or why of it, she just accepted the comfort he offered and snuggled into his side with a hiccupping sigh.

“I moved here from Nevada right after college.” She didn’t know why the words came pouring out of her, they just did. “We lived there my whole life. Not too far from Las Vegas. My parents still live there. It’s a small, dusty town with nothing to do and nothing to look at but sagebrush. I wanted out of there so bad.” Someone had left an empty water bottle on the table, so Terryn reached out and fiddled with the label as she spoke.

“I was sick of the desert and sick of small-town living. I wanted adventure and skyscrapers and a big city life that my mom could brag about to her friends. I thought I was prepared for this. I thought New York would be such an exciting and great place to live.” It was easy to look back now at how frightened and dismayed she’d been. She shook her head and told him, “I was scared out of my mind. How can such a small city be so big? It’s crowded and grimy and people are everywhere.”

Terryn snuggled closer and wrapped her arms around him again. “Katie was the first real friend I made here. We met at the Surf-N-Slurp. I was going to go back home that weekend and then Katie was so sweet to me. She made eye contact and when she asked me how I was doing, I thought she actually wanted to know.” When Terryn smiled at the memory, she realized that it was the first time she’d smiled in two days. 

“Funny. We hadn’t even really made friends yet, but that night I cancelled my moving truck. Katie showed me that there was hope. New York wasn’t all bad.” Tears started steadily trickling down her cheeks again and Terryn said, “Now New York killed her.”

Brice clutched her tighter in his arms. “Aw, baby,” he said. “Not New York. New York didn’t kill her. Just one twisted asshole. I’m gonna find that asshole and put him in a cage.”

Terryn tightened her arms around him again and whispered, “Promise?”

“Promise,” he whispered back, and Terryn was sure she felt his muscles quake with his vehemence.

Chapter Seven

I can’t believe how brainless they all are! She was just another slut! Putting out on the first date? Why aren’t I getting a medal for this? She was pathetic and stupid. All she did was curl up and scream like a baby. “Ooohh! How could you do this? Oooooh! Please stop!” Ooooh, what a bitch. She wasn’t near as good as Amber. Maybe next time I’ll try a baseball bat. That should be fun.

Terryn got ready for the funeral all alone in her basement apartment. As she dressed, it was with the careful slowness of a woman much older than her own twenty-six years. Each movement and action was chosen with an almost ritual concentration that she somehow felt reflected how much Katie had meant to her.

Terryn hadn’t made a lot of friends in this city. Most were coworkers and of them Katie had been her closest. She was too focused on her work and a little shy, so making friends had never been easy for her. Katie was the only one who could ever get her out of her shell. It was her influence and support that got Terryn to explore outside her comfort zone. With a no-nonsense approach, she took the lead on the whole BDSM mystery, and without her Terryn would never have had the guts to try. Katie had always pushed Terryn to let herself go and let her inner wild child play.

She looked in the mirror and could almost hear what Katie would’ve said: “C’mon, Terryn. You’ve gotta sex it up if you don’t want to spend all your nights with a battery-operated boyfriend. Black is so not your color—why don’t you wear that bronze dress we bought in SoHo? It looks fab on you and you know it.”

The phantom Katie she visualized was dancing around the room like the real Katie had always done in life, never still for a minute. Her boundless energy propelling her from one spot to the next like one of the ballerina figurines in a jewelry box, head high, arms raised, and she never stopped twirling. With perfect clarity, Terryn could see Katie march right up behind her, put her fists on her hips and challenge, “Let your hair down, for crying out loud. And put on some makeup. What are you doing? Going to a funeral?”

With a hiccupping cry, Terryn ripped the black, shapeless dress from her body and flung it across the room. She then yanked out the clips holding her bun in place and threw them with enough force that one broke when it hit the wall. With visions of Katie’s laugh and her challenging remarks still whirling through her mind, she grabbed the dress Katie had picked out for her from the back of the closet. It was clingy and sexy and completely inappropriate for a funeral, but she didn’t care.

This was for Katie and she would do her proud.

Brice got to the funeral late. The mourners were filing by the front slowly to give their condolences to the family. It wouldn’t give him a lot of time to observe everyone but he’d hang back and see what he could. He always came to the funerals if the killer was still at large. The way people acted gave him insights that led in some very fruitful directions. He was scanning the crowd of somber and weeping mourners when he caught sight of Terryn. She stopped his breath.

Standing at the back of the room, she was dressed in killer heels with spikes that had to be five inches at least. Her long and shapely legs were displayed to mouthwatering perfection in a dress that was sin in material form. It was the color of the desert at sunset and it presented her body like a gift. Every inch of her was outlined in silk. The endless lines of her legs were bare up to mid-thigh, where the dress lovingly clung then embraced an ass that was so flawless in shape it made his palms sweat. That glorious auburn hair had been straightened and it glowed against her shoulders like polished copper. She would’ve stood out in the middle of a Hollywood red carpet, but in this setting she shone like beacon in the night.

“That’s some dress, Red,” he whispered from behind her.

She turned to him with a slight grimace and said, “I know. I had an aneurism or something.” She gestured self-consciously. “I was in a nicely hideous black dress when I looked in the mirror and heard Katie.” Tears filled and fell from her eyes, and a small smile curved her lips. “I swear I did. She was teasing me like she always did because I never dress up. Katie was always making me go shopping with her and pushing things like this dress on me. I’ve never had the guts to wear it, and she never stopped harassing me about it. So, for her…for her I wore it today.”

Brice took the time to look his fill. She was lethal. Her straightened hair was held back with some clips so the exquisite symmetry of her features was evident. He let his gaze lower past her slender neck and almost-bare shoulders, where the dress was held on by delicate straps. Her waist flowed in an hourglass curve to a flat tummy and perfectly rounded hips. He swallowed audibly when he saw that her legs looked just as tempting from the front as they did from the rear view, long, tan and slender. 

He said the only thing he could think of: “You look like a walking fantasy.”

She laughed softly. “Then I did her proud, I guess. Thank you.”

“Can I help you to your seat?” he asked, hoping there would be an empty one next to it so he could stay close even though the service was all but over.

“No, it’s almost done and I couldn’t sit still any longer. Thanks, though.” She smiled at him again. He was getting hooked on those smiles.

“Well, I’ll stay here with you then and stand guard.”

“Stand guard?” she asked, puzzled.

“In this dress? You need it, even if we are in a church.”

The Surf-N-Slurp was closed to the public for the day in memory of Katie. After the service and reception, a small group of Katie’s friends and co-workers gathered at the coffee shop. More to avoid going home and facing her lonely apartment, Terryn was one of them. The café was crowded with people who she could only assume felt the same. Terryn noticed that Kent wasn’t straying far from Angie and wondered if the two of them had had an official date yet. She knew Angie pretty well and didn’t think the poor girl even realized that she was in love with him.

Terryn saw Brice head her way out of the corner of her eye and sat up a little straighter in her chair. There was just something so captivating about the man that made her sit up and pay attention. She knew that it was cliché to hook up at a time like this; people needed to reaffirm that they were alive and to find that most basic of comfort. Cliché or not, she might just see if the yummy Detective Marshall could be persuaded to take her home. He’d been kind and polite to her since he’d come to the center and told her about Katie. Right now she would give just about anything to get him to drop the detective persona and bring out the Dom she remembered from that first night. She had a suspicion that if he’d tie her up again, he could make her forget everything.

“How are you holding up?” Brice asked, taking a seat next to her. He was dressed in a black silk shirt and slacks that fit him so well they had to be tailor-made.

“Um, I’m fine.” She shrugged one shoulder and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Well, not really. I want to say something about how I feel. But everything that comes to mind sounds shallow and stupid. No wonder everybody always says the same things when they lose someone—it’s all there is to say.” She looked into his eyes and asked him, “Do you want to know what I’ve discovered over the last three days? There are a total of five acceptable phrases.”

“Five?” he asked, reaching out to brush his fingers along her brow.

“Five,” she replied, tilting into his touch as chills raced up and down her arms. “Five sentences sum it all up. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone. She was so young. She had so much life left to live. I still can’t believe it’.” Her voice broke and she reached up to press his hand until he was cradling the side of her face when she said the last one. “I don’t know how I’m going to live without her.”

A tear trembled and fell from the corner of her lashes and she saw Brice watch it slide over her cheek to pool at the edge of her lips. He said, “Ah, Red,” then took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. “C’mere.” Without letting go of her hand, he walked into the hall leading to the restrooms. Terryn thought he was bringing her there so she could wash her face but when she reached out to open the door of the women’s room Brice gently turned her until she was backed into the wall and dipped his head.

At the first touch of his lips, Terryn felt all her muscles clench as she held her breath. The kiss was tender and sweet. His mouth gently nuzzled hers and when she didn’t draw away or stop him, his tongue came out light as a feather and traced along her bottom lip until she opened for him. Then gentleness gave way to more. His mouth sealed over hers with a quiet groan and his tongue delved inside to stake his claim. The tender hand on her cheek slid to the back of her neck and gripped a fistful of hair; he used it to tilt her for a better angle and turned up the heat. Terryn’s breath caught on a small moan at the mastery of the move.

She broke away with a gasp. “Wow.” And when he used his mouth on the skin just below her ear, “Oh really, wow.”

“I want you to get your coat and meet me outside. Right now.” He looked into her eyes. She guessed he was judging to see if she was scared. She wasn’t, but it was nice he wanted to make sure. “All right?”

“Yes.” Terryn was a little nervous. After all, the club wasn’t open this early, so that meant someplace private. However, she wanted this, she wanted him and she wanted to just feel something other than grief.

“Go ahead, I just have to say goodbye to my cousin and his family first.”

Riley stood between her husbands and Brice saw that each of them had a hand on her, stroking in comfort.

“Hey, beautiful, wanna run away with me?” His heart eased to see her smile at his tired line. “We are going to find this guy, Riley. I promise.”

As he clasped hands with her, he looked at first Trevor and then Cade, letting them know without words that he was hurting for them too. It turned out Katie
had
been the girl Riley had been hoping to set him up with and this was killing them all. She’d been a frequent guest of theirs these last months and was more than just Riley’s friend.

“I know you will. You’re my hero.” Riley’s face crumpled. “Now you’ll be hers too.”