Alec lowered his shoulder before Sergio hit him, sheltering his body from the worst of the blow. They crashed to the stone pathway leading up to the house and then half fought, half rolled their way into the wet grass.
“Alec!” The anguished feminine cry from the porch steps didn’t distract Vanessa as she hurried after them, gun drawn. She wouldn’t use the 9 mm with Alec locked in the guy’s pissed-off grip, but God help him if he let Alec go.
Fear pulsing through her, she flashed her badge with her other hand and shouted at the rolling tumbleweed of arms and legs while fists flew.
“Stop! NYPD, you’re under arrest.” Cramming the badge back in her jacket pocket, she figured she’d done her duty to alert him to her presence.
If anything happened to Alec…
“You brought a cop with you?” Sergio’s muffled shout came from underneath the pile and Vanessa noticed it looked as if Alec had regained the upper hand despite Sergio’s fingers around his throat. “That’s some kind of freaking loyalty, you double-dealing dumb ass.”
His foot kicked out, knocking over a statue of a fat cherub keeping vigil over a bed of purple irises.
“We’re here to see—” Alec’s voice sounded strained from the pressure to his throat, but then he managed to slam Sergio’s head against the stone path, forcing his attacker’s fingers loose “—Donata. Not you, you crazy bastard.”
He freed himself from his uncle and stood up while Vanessa kept her gun trained on Sergio, her heart still slamming with leftover fear for Alec.
She never should have denied Alec’s request to go to the police now that he had his disks to back up his story. Damning her need for evidence at the risk of his life, she stepped closer to Sergio.
This charade of an investigation would end right now. Training her weapon on the gangster, she planned to make herself very clear to the man.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”
The realization reminded him how important she’d become in a short amount of time.
“I’d take her at her word, Serg.” He played it cool, not wanting to bust Vanessa’s cop groove or mess with her concentration when she looked so utterly focused on her target. “I’ve seen her in action and I’m pretty sure she could take you down with or without the gun.”
“Is that a fact?” Donata stepped off the porch toward them, lingering just close enough to the circle of light to silhouette her body underneath a floor-length dressing gown. The hip-jutting pose she struck looked a bit too calculated to be an accident, and despite the mild spring weather, she had to be freezing with the ocean breeze blowing up the shore. “Come to think of it, she does look a little rough around the edges.”
Alec’s eyes flicked over to Vanessa but she never gave any sign of reaction. Instead, he saw hints of the cool ice princess who’d walked into his rec center and flipped him on his ass, as Vanessa shouted back to Donata.
“Because I’m not flitting around the front yard in my nightie?” A slow smile spread across Vanessa’s face while she kept the gun trained on Sergio. “I’ll leave the pneumonia to you, thanks just the same. Besides, I’d rather not attract any attention from pea-brained mob lackeys.”
Sergio groaned louder, possibly to cover up the name Donata chose to call Vanessa. Yeah, this was going really well. Alec turned his back on Donata as she huffed her way back inside the house and slammed the door.
Just as well. Alec lowered himself to sit on the front-porch steps between a few more cherub statues, while Vanessa watched over Sergio on the walkway. Alec’s throat ached like hell from where his uncle had jammed a thumb into his windpipe. Sergio was approaching fifty, but he worked out and he’d always been a big guy. Alec could take him, but he’d be willing to bet there were plenty of thirty-year-old guys who couldn’t. Of course, it helped that Serg had probably mixed it up in his line of work a few times.
Experience was still the best teacher.
“Look, we came out here to get some answers from Donata about what the hell is going on with your people following me.”
“I’ll bet that’s all you want from Donata, you mother—”
“Hey. Would you watch your mouth if you want to spend the night in your own bed? I don’t think my friend the detective is going to be moved to let you off the hook if you’re spewing filth like a backed-up toilet. You hear me?” At least Vanessa hadn’t arrested his uncle yet. Alec wanted his answers now. Tonight. “And for the record, I never laid a finger on Donata.”
More swearing ensued, followed by a heavy sigh. “Can I at least get up off the god—the ground?”
Vanessa shifted her stance, backing up a step. “You just take it slow. Easy. Hands where I can see them. And don’t even think about standing up.”
Sergio must have been tired because he didn’t argue, settling for giving her the evil eye through his dark-rimmed glasses as he sat up. He liked to brag that his vision had gone bad because he’d read too many books in his youth, sort of a self-styled know-it-all. But Alec happened to know he wore glasses just because his grandfather once predicted he’d be as dumb as his father before him, a curse Sergio somehow figured he’d beat by wearing spectacles.
Sergio’s solution only seemed to confirm his grand-pappy’s point.
“My people aren’t following you.” Sergio adjusted the glasses on his nose, which Alec now noticed was bleeding. “Where do you get these dumb-ass ideas?”
Alec glared a warning, grateful Vanessa still had the gun on him. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you threatened to kill me six months ago and then turned my partners against me.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He swiped his shirtsleeve across his bloody nose. “Your partners are as crooked as the day is long. McPherson ripped me off last summer when I asked him to install a new shower in Donata’s house. You think he could do a favor for a friend?”
“He’s not a contractor, Serg.” His uncle had probably asked Alec to fix twenty different things in the past ten years, everything from installing a new roof to replacing a furnace. He’d never gotten it through his head that Alec just bought the land and planned the spaces to build. He didn’t build them himself. “I keep telling you, we hire out jobs like that. And if you weren’t following me six months ago, then who was leaving all the threatening messages on my machine and sabotaging my job sites?”
“Well that was me, obviously.” Sergio shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I had to convince you to stay away from my girl.” He peered around Alec to the vacant porch and then shouted through the night. “Donata! Get your butt back out here.”
“Quite the charmer, aren’t you?” Vanessa shifted positions again to give herself a clear view of both the front door and Sergio.
Smart woman.
Alec stared at her a moment longer, reassuring himself she was okay. She’d had a hell of a twenty-four hours and not much sleep, but she looked steadier now with her gun in hand and her posture utterly straight than she had in her car earlier when she’d told him about her sister.
No wonder she functioned so well in a crisis. She’d already survived the most frightening kind.
That strength of hers was what called him to her, attracted him in a way no other woman had before. Alec’s convoluted life called for a lot of strength, too, and he couldn’t help but admire someone who could breeze into his world of divided loyalties and divided identities and still come away with her head screwed on damn straight.
The front door banged open, revealing Donata in the same silk robe and matching nightgown she’d been cavorting around the yard in earlier. Alec wondered why he’d ever bothered trying to help a woman who was that oblivious to making smart choices for herself. As she clicked her way down the walkway in high-heel slippers complete with fluffy fur at the toes, Alec decided she couldn’t be a day older than Vanessa. She was an attractive woman with chin-length platinum-blond hair, her petite frame padded with lush curves. Alec had never understood why she’d stuck around with his uncle for nearly a year.
“I was getting you an ice pack, baby.” She made kissy faces at Sergio while she tossed him a bag of frozen green beans. “For your nose.”
Vanessa made a threatening noise that sounded like a low growl. “Not smart to toss things into my firing range. Bad, bad idea.”
Sergio clamped the frozen vegetables to his big mug of a face. “Donata, tell Alec I was only threatening him to keep us together.” He turned to Alec and shrugged. “You and me—we’re family. I wouldn’t whack my own sister’s kid.”
Unless Donata convinced her lover that she’d slept with Alec.
Alec watched her go to Sergio’s side now, her white gown dragging through the damp grass as she entered Vanessa’s firing range and knelt by the guy.
Did the woman have no sense? Or were all her manipulative games part of some larger scheme?
Vanessa angled back, accommodating her bigger target now that the two of them knelt together. “I’d like to remind you that Alec has proof of these threats filed with my precinct. Harassing him any further will jeopardize your bail.”
“Sore subject, lady.” Sergio dropped the beans as he slid his arms around Donata and shoved her closer. “Those DEA guys and the DA must think I’ve got cash coming out my ass for what they asked in blood money to let me out of jail today.”
Alec was in no mood to watch Donata kiss up to the man she swore kept her in fear for her life. He’d had enough lies and deception to last him at least another decade or two.
“Look, we’ll get out of here if you can just tell me what’s up between you and my partners.” He figured he’d keep the question nice and open-ended to see how his uncle tackled it.
“That money-grubbing McPherson won’t be back around since he knows I’m pissed about the shower he installed for a boatload of cash. But Vercelli is another story since he’s the latest bum to come sniffing around Donata.” This time Sergio’s grip on his girlfriend looked a little less endearing, a little more threatening.
Shit.
Alec wouldn’t let himself get sucked back into their problems. He stole a look at Vanessa, who seemed to be keeping an eye on Sergio’s hands, too.
“Serg, Mark’s married and I’ve never known him to cheat on his wife. I think you’re worrying for nothing.” His partner might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t a player.
“Tell that to Donata who’s stuck fighting him off every time I go into the city. My neighbors will tell you how many times his truck has been here in the last month.” Sergio swung his glare from Alec to Vanessa. “I’m going inside and taking my girl to bed, and the two of you can go screw yourselves if you don’t like it. I’ve talked to enough guns today between the cops and the feds.”
Vanessa never lowered her weapon, but she did back toward the Land Rover. “Nice to meet you, too, Sergio. And don’t forget what I told you about staying away from Alec.”
Sergio forced a sarcastic grin before he walked into the house. “That Alec is quite a guy isn’t he?” He cursed under his breath and pried open the front door. “Why don’t you spend a little less time chasing down innocent guys with guns and a little more time keeping my nephew busy in the sack so he stays away from my girl?”
Alec opened the passenger door of the Land Rover to help Vanessa inside, thinking that was the only semi-intelligent thing his uncle had ever had to say.
He turned to share the joke with Vanessa when he touched her arm to help her inside. The words on his lips dried right up when he realized that cool, calm and collected Vanessa was shaking.
“You okay?” His voice rumbled in time with the engine coming to life.
“I’m fine.” Never been better. Just coming to terms with the ten years Sergio had knocked off her life when he tackled Alec into a bed of irises.
He remained quiet for a long moment as he backed out of the driveway and headed toward his beach house a mile up the road. Vanessa cracked the window to allow the ocean air inside, inhaling deeply to settle her frazzled nerves.
“You don’t seem okay,” he pressed a minute later as they rolled to a stop in front of his house and waited for a break in oncoming traffic. “I hope he didn’t rattle you, Vanessa, because I swear I’d never let him get near you.”
She resisted the urge to pound her head on the dashboard as he crossed the road and pulled into the garage. Could he be that clueless?
“You think I was scared for
myself?
” Frustration steamed through her as he clicked off the ignition. “Damn it, Alec, I had a gun. I also happen to have more training than ninety percent of New York’s police force, so I didn’t think for a moment that Sergio and his bag of frozen green beans posed a threat to me.”
Alec was a smart guy, but even with that intelligence on his side, it took a surprisingly long moment before realization dawned in his expression.
“You were scared for me?”
Bingo. “I get a little frazzled any time someone is in danger on my watch. You heard me today when I talked about my sister’s accident, right? I can’t stand the idea of missing something, of being oblivious again during a surprise attack. And let me tell you, I wasn’t prepared to see Sergio there tonight.”
His silence went on for an uncomfortably long time.
“What?” Impatience nipped her along with just a little bit of self-consciousness. Had he read something into her fears? Some emotion she hadn’t fully grappled with yet? “Cops aren’t allowed to be scared sometimes?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not hardly. Fear is healthy in your line of work. But you were shaking just now like a Chihuahua in winter.”
“Not when it counted.” She’d held her gun steady, damn the man, and that’s all that really mattered. Except now that they’d slept together he probably deserved more of an explanation than her knee-jerk defensive posturing. “But you’re right, I don’t usually get that shaken up in your everyday average street tussle.”
He waited, patient and unmoving in the darkened car inside his garage. The setting seemed an unlikely spot to trade confidences, but the inky blackness made it marginally easier.
Taking a deep breath, she offered what little understanding she had of her unwieldy emotions. “I don’t know what happened last night in bed—okay, technically I
do
know, but there was more to it than just the barrage of orgasms.”
“For me, too.”
His quiet words threw her. He probably meant it to reassure her, but if anything, the confession only made her more rattled. If it hadn’t been about just sex for him, what
had
it been about?
Not ready to think about those unsettling thoughts, she shared what she understood. “I’ve been switched off inside for a long time. Ever since my sister’s accident, actually. And somehow, between the carjacking and the wild sex last night, I seem to have gotten switched back on. Kind of like I’m feeling everything around me firsthand now, whereas up until then, I’d been experiencing life through a veil. No deep pain. But then again, no real big joys either.”
“That’s because we touched each other.” He shifted closer; she could sense him coming closer even if she couldn’t see him in the pitch-black car interior. “Inside.”
A whisper of fear wiggled up her spine, but it wasn’t the kind that Sergio’s fists inspired. This had more to do with insecurity and uncertainty, a fear she could never find any sort of future with a man like Alec.
Still, fear or no fear, she suspected he was coming closer to kiss her. And she definitely didn’t want to stop him. More than anything, she wanted his taste on her lips, his hands all over her body. Then she wouldn’t have to think. She could simply feel.
A ringing in her ears kept her from falling into him. An annoying, repetitive ringing.
Emanating from her jacket pocket.
Damn.
“I’d better take this just in case it’s Wes.” She pulled out her phone and flicked open the case to read the caller’s number by the dim green light in the digital screen. “It’s my sister.”
She answered automatically, trusting Alec to recognize why she would need to speak to Gena at any time of the day or night. Even if they’d been two seconds from kissing.
“Hello?” She blinked from the brightness as Alec opened his door and stepped out of the vehicle.
“Don’t hello me.” Her sister’s brusque voice launched directly into conversation. No time for niceties in her hurry-up world. “I stopped by the precinct tonight since I knew you’d be on duty.”
“I called in sick.” She accepted Alec’s hand as he opened her door and helped her out of the Land Rover. Where did he get such nice—though totally unnecessary—manners when his uncle seemed like such an obnoxious pig of a man?
“Wes told me he’s worried about you. Where are you and what gives?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that right now.” Vanessa allowed herself to be tugged along the narrow walkway into Alec’s house. “But I promise I’ll give you a call back tomorrow and explain everything.”
After she’d thought of a good cover story.
“Did I just hear the sound of crashing waves in the background, Vanessa?” Gena’s voice sounded just like their grandmother’s when Nana decided to be stern with them.
An unexpected smile tugged at Vanessa’s lips as she dropped into a kitchen chair at the tiny café table across from Alec’s refrigerator. Beneath Gena’s brusque tone, Vanessa could make out the sounds of an old Earth, Wind and Fire tune. One of their favorites when they’d been kids.
A million years ago.
“Let’s make a deal. I won’t ask you why you’ve got out Nana’s collection of old 45s tonight if you don’t ask me why I took a sick day to spend at the beach, okay?” Vanessa knew her sister hated to be seen as sentimental. She equated nostalgia with weakness—an idea she’d picked up somewhere along the way during her recovery.
An idea Vanessa usually shared, until recently. God, how had she morphed into Miss Emotional all of a sudden?
On the other end of the phone, Gena sniffed. A haughty sniff? Or was she more upset than she let on?
“Fine. But I need to hear from you before I leave the office tomorrow, or I’m calling that know-it-all lieutenant of yours and spilling the beans that you’re not really sick.”
On Gena’s end of the phone, Earth, Wind and Fire faded into Donna Summer. No question, her sister was having a bad night.
“I promise to call.” Vanessa didn’t know what she’d be able to tell her sibling interrogator then, but she’d come up with something better when she wasn’t reeling from too many emotions churned up by seeing Alec go fist-to-fist with a gangster. “Although I can’t imagine you’d suffer Russell Durant on the phone long enough to rat me out.”
Her sister had gone enough rounds with the lieutenant in court cases over the past two years to cement an official rivalry. Russ liked to call her Attila behind her back.
“To keep you safe, I can handle him. Besides, he’s less insufferable when he’s not on the witness stand.”
Russell Durant? News to her since Gena usually went out of her way to avoid him.
Sensing strange things afoot in Gena’s world, between the Motown-fest and the relaxed stance in regard to her sworn enemy, Vanessa figured they were due for a visit as soon as she made sure Alec’s partner was behind bars with no chance for bail.
“Maybe we can go to lunch this week. Pedicures are on me this time.”
They never actually ate meals on their lunch breaks, using the time instead for the girly stuff they didn’t get to indulge in with anyone else in their male-dominated workplaces. Lunch had become a code word for girl talk.
“Maybe. We should go visit Nana.”
“Definitely.” Their grandmother was coping with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, but on her lucid days she kept the nursing staff hopping at her care facility by applying her repair skills to whatever she could find. Her specialty was scamming extra cable stations by working some sort of illegal magic on the wiring. “Night, Gena.”
“Take care of yourself, girl.” She disconnected, abruptly ending the seventies disco soundtrack running in Vanessa’s ear.
“Everything okay?” Alec’s voice startled her a few feet away, his body hidden behind a pantry door where he seemed to be rooting around for something. He emerged with a soup can in each hand. “I don’t have much to eat since I haven’t stocked up in six months, but there’s chicken noodle and minestrone.”
“Who can eat when your partner could be headed this way to try and take you out?” She hadn’t been thinking clearly this afternoon when he’d seen Vercelli talking to the guy who’d stolen Alec’s car the night before. “I screwed up not letting you go to the precinct today like you suggested. You deserve police protection.”
“I don’t need police protection now that I know where the threat is coming from.” He set the cans down by the stove and stalked closer. “I can handle Mark.”
“But what if he hires some drugged-up psycho like his nephew again?” She shuddered at the memory of the carjackers, hating the unpredictability factor of criminals on drugs. Bad enough people committed crimes that endangered everyone else. But when they did it under the influence of something that made them out of touch with reality, that sucked all the worse. Good cops died that way. Innocent bystanders were injured. Or worse.
“Then I’ll deal with it when the time comes, but I’m not going to borrow trouble for weeks while I wait and see what their next move will be.” Pulling her to her feet, he skimmed his hands down her arms. “I can’t change the fact that I’m related to Sergio, or that being part of his family puts me into some awkward situations with other people around me, but I can damn well change the way I relate to him and all the trouble he brings into my life.”
“Is he the reason you carry a gun?” She didn’t know many people outside law enforcement who owned a weapon. Alec had at least two.
“Construction sites are notorious places for crime. It seems safer to have the weapon and not use it than to not have it the one time I might need some backup.”
“Makes sense.” And it fit with what she knew of Alec, all the little facets of him coming together to form a more complete image in her mind.
“You trust me, don’t you?” Tipping her chin up to look at him, she met his gaze filled with more complex emotions than she was ready to see, let alone understand.
Still, she could reassure him on this much, at least.
“I trust you more than I trust some of the guys on my own force.” She knew the people in her own precinct were solid, honest. But in the past, she’d worked with other cops she wouldn’t put her complete faith in. “I’ll never forget the way you stayed by me when those dirtballs hauled me out of your car. You put yourself in the line of fire to be there for me.”
And it wasn’t even his job.
The air in the kitchen grew warm, intimate. Alec’s magnetic stare drew her in even when the warnings in her head told her that to continue this conversation would be risky for them both.
“You mean something to me, Vanessa. I know you don’t want to think about that yet, but I’m not the kind of guy to hold back when I want more. No more hiding for me.”
His lips hovered closer, persuading her to lean into him even when she knew she ought to pull away. Gather what little sanity she had left where he was concerned.
Her lips brushed his and just that barest of touches sent flashes of light exploding behind her eyelids. She’d never been a superstitious woman, but Alec’s touch wrought something damn close to magic as far as she was concerned.
Logically, she understood he wanted more from this relationship, but this newfound heat inside her urged her to simply indulge the pleasure they found together and worry about how to make sense of it later. When her job wasn’t on the line along with Alec’s life. First they’d make it through this, then they’d figure out how to cope with the fallout.
“I need a shower first.” She mumbled the words aloud as soon as she committed to the fact that they were going to be together again. No way could she sleep tonight without holding him in her arms, reassuring herself he was okay after his mobster uncle had tried to take him down. “You can join me if you want.”