In her own defense, her whole life had turned upside down in the past week. Starting with Grimm's release from prison. She absently fingered the Celtic cross, her last link with her mother. Alice Perkins was gone, her death still a mystery—just like her life, Janey thought sadly.
Then there was Max's sudden departure from her day-to-day life. And Baby Blue's unsettling insurgence into both her life and her dreams. Now this. Grimm was definitely back. No denying that now. And a nightmare she'd never wanted to relive had hacked its way back into her life again.
All right, fine. Just deal with it.
She'd had her little moment of weakness. It was over. And she wouldn't let Grimm or anything else get to her again.
Her bodyguard sat across from her on the sofa, poring through a file folder. Full of information on Edwin Grimm, she'd guess.
At least Jason Wilson provided a different type of diversion. She wished she had a folder on
him
so she could get a bead on what made him tick. She wasn't used to underestimating men. She'd underestimated him, though.
He kept surprising her. The erection at the beach had been a helluva surprise. And she wasn't yet sure what to think about that. Just like she wasn't quite sure how to handle the battalion of butterflies that, despite the gravity of her situation and her determination to keep things on a professional level between them, had started taking flight in her stomach.
Oh yeah. She'd been trying to ignore them, but they attacked at the oddest times.
Like when she looked at him. Or when he touched her—like he had just before her shower. All that strength, but his hands had been gentle. His muscled chest had been a refuge. And yet the scent of him—all sweaty and salty and warm and male—hadn't felt one bit comforting in the final windup.
Unsettling, yes. Comforting, well, no.
He hadn't intended the embrace to be sexual. She knew he hadn't. But somehow that was what it had become. When he'd looked down at her, those incredible blue eyes so intense and searching ... well. For a minute there, she'd thought he was going to kiss her.
And she was pretty sure she would have let him.
Pretty sure? Who was she kidding? She'd have latched onto those amazing lips like a Hoover.
She'd thought about that a lot during her shower. And finally chalked things up to the high anxiety of her situation. It was as good an explanation as any. And it worked to steady her.
The butterflies were settled now, too. At least they were until he glanced up at her and little wing beats tickled her from within. He'd showered, too. And that clean, masculine scent she had begun to associate with him reached out and put a touch on every erogenous zone in her body.
Chapter 8
"Miss Perkins?" Janey blinked, tuned back into their conversation, and realized that Wilson had been talking to her.
"S ... sorry, what?"
"I said I believed you the first time," he said, and went back to his reading.
She drew a total blank, mostly because she had become completely transfixed by his face. By the beauty of it. By the contrasts. Gentle blue eyes and soft, sensuous lips juxtaposed intriguing angles and hard planes. Fascinating.
And she was staring. So was he—like he was wondering what the hell was wrong with her.
She'd missed something. "You believed
what
the first time?"
"That you don't usually let things shake you."
"Oh. Oh yeah," she said, feeling foolish because she'd completely spaced out of their conversation.
Because he was gorgeous? Had amazing muscles? And incredible baby-blue eyes? And the sexiest smile?
What are you, sixteen?
This was so high-school.
She had a problem. A much bigger problem than renegade hormones. And the name on the folder he was reading was finally enough to sober her up. "Grimm's a real whack job, isn't he?"
He grunted in agreement. "In spades."
"I wasn't ready for him the first go-round," she said, staring at the fingers on her left hand as she plucked absently at a thread on the upholstered chair. "I was totally unprepared."
"I'm thinking there's no way to prepare for a loose screw like Grimm."
"And yet I fool myself into believing that I have," she said with a self-effacing smile.
He frowned, then got her meaning. "The kickboxing?"
She nodded. "If I ever meet that bastard face-to-face again, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to kick his nuts up through the roof of his mouth."
He blinked, then blanched. "Oo-yeah. That'll send a message, all right. In the meantime, I'll live with the hope that I never land on your bad side."
He had a way of making her laugh. So she did. Which made him smile.
Which sent the butterfly squadron in flight again when their eyes met and held for another one of those searching, assessing moments.
A red flush stained his cheeks just before he looked away, and Janey experienced an "Ah" moment.
Having some trouble with this attraction thing, too, aren't you, Baby Blue?
She still wasn't sure what she thought about that. Or what to make of it. Or more to the point, what to do about it. Although some very interesting images came to mind.
"Tell me about Grimm," he said, shuffling the sheaf of papers, then setting them aside.
Nothing like a cold, hard slap of reality to jar a girl out of an erotic daydream.
"Can't imagine that everything you need to know isn't in that stack of reading material." She nodded toward the folder he'd tossed on the coffee table.
"I want to hear about him from your perspective."
She looked toward the window showcasing a blue-green view of the Atlantic and a sun so bright she could almost smell the heat through the glass. She didn't want to think about Grimm, let alone talk about him. But ignoring him wasn't going to make him go away.
"Okay. Where to start. I guess ... at first he was just a regular fan. He showed up at my concerts—always front-row. Always smiling. Sometimes with roses. Sometimes with a stuffed animal or something."
"A love-struck groupie," he concluded with a dark look.
"It seemed very... sweet at first. But then it got creepy. He'd be at every concert no matter where we played. I was thinking, man, this guy needs to get a life. And he started sending letters. Sometimes e-mails. Those weren't so sweet."
"Explicit?"
She nodded. Felt her stomach turn.
"The next time he made an appearance, Max had security remove him from the building. Grimm went berserk. From then on, we were on the lookout for him. As far as I know, he never made it into another concert. And then ... well, then the hearts started arriving."
She hated Grimm for that almost as much as for the terror he'd put her through. Hated him for ruthlessly killing something small and innocent and defenseless just to make some sick impression on her.
"According to the file, he comes from money."
"Money. Yeah, lots of it, apparently. I was told that his parents died in a car accident. When he was seventeen, I think. They were investors, savers—anyway, that's what I was told."
"So after he broke into your place, he had the means to hire a high-ticket lawyer who got him off with three years served."
Another sick feeling rolled through her. "And now he's out."
"And has access to enough cash to go wherever he wants," Baby Blue concluded. "And to grease a few palms, considering he got into the suite today."
Despite the sky full of sunshine warming the beach below, Janey felt chilled. "How long do you think it will take the police to come up with something?"
He leaned back on the sofa, his strong legs splayed wide, his bare feet flat on the tile floor, and stretched his arms above his head. "They'll question the staff and eventually hit on something to tie him to today. When they do, they'll put him away again."
"
If
they can find him." Rising and walking toward the bank of windows, she hugged her arms around her waist.
"They didn't find him before. Not until he..." She trailed off. It was still hard to talk about finding Edwin Grimm in her house that night three years ago.
His eyes had been wild. His voice eerily soft as he'd told her what he was going to do to make sure they were together forever.
She'd run. She'd hidden. She'd managed to trigger the silent alarm. The police had arrived just as he'd kicked his way through the bedroom door that she'd barricaded with a full chest of drawers. To this day, she didn't know where she'd found the strength to move it.
"He's not going to get to you again."
She started, pulled out of the terror of that night by the steady, true cadence of Wilson's voice.
"He's not going to get to you again," he repeated when she turned.
She realized that she was shaking—saw that he hadn't missed that fact. "Yeah. That's what they said the last time."
"Hey."
His hard tone snapped her gaze to his.
"This time is nothing like the last time. This time, he has to get past me. And that just isn't going to happen. Got it?"
She assessed the determination in the blue gaze that held hers. Stared at him long and hard. At this American-pie Iowa boy who had earned the right to be regarded as a man in the cold mountains of Afghanistan and the burning deserts of Iraq.
"Yeah," she said, giving him his due. Even more. Believing him. "I've got it."
Because she couldn't take one more second of a tension that was as thick as sludge, Janey made sure it went away. "Guess maybe I'm glad you're on the payroll after all."
He grunted. Grinned. Shook his head.
"What's funny?"
"The 'guess' and the 'maybe' part of your endorsement. Your unqualified confidence just makes me all gooey inside."
His sense of humor pretty much did the same for her. She couldn't help but wonder what could have happened between them if they'd met under different circumstances. Which was a ridiculous thought because they never would have met. Different circles, different styles.
He was pure country. She was rock and roll. And yet here they were. Sharing a suite. Sharing a life, for all practical purposes, and sharing a common goal: keeping her alive.
"Yeah, well, I don't often give endorsements, so consider the source."
"I have. I am." He rose from the sofa with a long, indulgent stretch that delineated the impressive breadth of his chest beneath his T-shirt.
And the butterflies revved up their engines again.
It had been so long since she'd had a man affect her this way—with fluttery heartbeats and tingling fingers, not to mention with X-rated thoughts the likes of which the tabloids would figure were status quo but she found, well, shocking.
His cell phone rang then, giving her a much-needed opportunity to regroup. But when he glanced at her mid-conversation, his jaw as hard as the Italian tile on the floor, a sense of foreboding had the bottom of her stomach dropping again.
"What?" Janey asked when he'd snapped his cell phone shut.
"That was the detective from the Atlantic City PD. He just got a call from Officer Rodman."