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While Luke inspected the rest of the car, the yard and the outside of the house, Jane disappeared into the house. Twenty minutes later, a police officer arrived and took their statements, gathered up the evidence and promised to let them know if they found any leads from it.
After the officer left, Luke followed Jane into the house. “Are you okay?” he asked as he watched her carefully lock the door.
She turned to him, hugged herself and shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like throwing up.”
“You have every reason to be freaked out. Just don’t let this creep ruin your life.”
“It’s not exactly reassuring to know I have such devoted enemies out there.”
“That’s why you’ve got me. We just need to talk about how this changes your security needs.”
She eyed him warily. Luke guessed she was even more freaked out by the mangled book than she was willing to admit, and he couldn’t blame her. Having one’s private property invaded and one’s work trashed in such a blatant way was a tactic meant to frighten and unnerve—a very effective tactic.
He made a mental note to get the names of everyone Jane came in contact with on a regular basis and run background checks to see if anything significant came up. He’d also have to do some surveillance, keep an eye on Jane’s place to see if he could catch anything suspicious going on. The thought of sitting in a car for hours on end never appealed to him, but it was infuriating to have someone break into her car right under his nose.
He had another client’s case to wrap up in the next few days before he could devote all of his attention to Jane, but he was beginning to suspect that the danger to her was real and immediate, that whoever was stalking her had a long-range plan, and that he would be patient in carrying it through. The book was just a taste of things to come.
But instead of viewing the threat with the clinical detachment he usually felt, he had to admit that Jane was a different kind of client, who evoked totally different emotions in him. He wanted to go to her and comfort her, wrap his arms around her and kiss away all her tension. He wanted to protect her in an altogether male way, by first comforting her with his body, and then defending her with every resource he had.
For now, he needed to get his head focused on the task at hand—installing her security system, but all his male instincts were pulling him in a different direction…toward Jane.
JANE LEANED against the wall and stared at the boxes in the hallway, the boxes she’d intended to unpack today. Instead, she felt like curling up in bed, or jogging ten miles, or maybe eating an entire box of Twinkies. If she’d had a boyfriend—if she’d gotten up the nerve by now to let Brad know how she felt about him—then she could have called him. She could have curled up in his protective arms and let him chase her fears away with hot, slow kisses and other, even hotter, even slower pursuits.
Instead, she had a security consultant with an attitude—one who hated her book, no less. Jane caught herself chewing on her left thumbnail, suddenly engaging in a bad habit she’d broken years ago. Not a good sign. She expelled a ragged sigh and headed for the kitchen.
After searching the pantry, she confirmed her fear that there wasn’t a Twinkie to be found. So that left what—curling up in bed? She refused to let Luke see how scared she really was.
Being alone right now felt lousy anyway, so she opted against an emergency trip to the grocery store and instead went to see if Luke could use any help. Following the sounds of hammering in the living room, she found him lying on the floor with his head inside a heating duct, wires scattered around him. She couldn’t help but admire his hard chest, his lean waistline and hips, his well-muscled thighs, sprawled out for her perusal.
“Need any help?”
“Not really. I’m just running some wire.”
“Oh.”
She was absolutely not going to let her gaze linger on the sliver of skin exposed where Luke’s T-shirt had come out of his pants. And she definitely wasn’t going to look any lower, to the bulge of flesh that she’d already seen, that she’d already gripped, hot and pulsing, in her bare palm.
No, she was just going to turn around and walk right back out of the room. Ignore the heat that throbbed between her legs. Ignore any stupid notion of what might happen if she let Luke try to prove her wrong about sex.
But then he pushed himself out of the heating duct and looked up at her with those inscrutable brown eyes. He smiled a half smile as he reclined back on his elbows.
“You were just checking me out, weren’t you?”
Jane’s first instinct was to protest mightily, but that’s exactly what he expected her to do. If she knew anything about men, she knew that the best way to keep them on their toes was to do the unexpected.
