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He spent several minutes discussing her case with the police officer before coming to Jane’s car, where she’d sunk into the driver’s seat, and leaning down to peer at her with his signature intensity.
“You’re really not hurt?”
“No, just my car,” she said, nodding toward the sizeable dent stretching along the left rear side of her dear old Mercedes.
“That, we can fix.” He took her hand and pulled her up from the seat. “Until we catch this guy, we need to consider more serious protection measures for you.”
Jane squeezed her eyes shut. More serious protection measures meant more loss of control. All she wanted was her old, comfortable routine back. She wanted to be able to write again, and she wanted to be able to go shopping without having to fear for her life.
“Do we have to discuss this right here, right now?”
He enclosed her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. “No, you’re right. Let’s go back to my place. Will you be okay following me?”
Jane inhaled the scent of his leather jacket and nodded.
A few minutes later, she was following his sport utility vehicle through a respectable old neighborhood of single family homes. It looked as if most of them had been built around the turn of the century and restored in recent years. After a couple of blocks, she followed Luke into the driveway of an old Georgian-style house that wasn’t at all what she would have expected him to live in.
Luke, with his black boots and leather jackets, hadn’t struck her as an upscale historic-home kind of guy. But it probably fit with his income. He couldn’t have been earning a modest living providing security for the moneyed folks of Dallas. Now she recalled little details about him—the expensive Swiss watch, his perfectly manicured hands—that were much more congruent with this upscale community than his rebel image.
Jane parked in an empty spot next to him and got out of the car, then scanned the area, unable to stop looking for stalkers or renegade minivans. She locked her car and then checked each door to make sure they were really locked, all the while aware of Luke watching her.
“You’re safe now, Jane. You can relax.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He closed the distance between them. “No, it’s not. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to you. Tonight was a failure on my part. I should have been more vigilant about your schedule.”
“How could you have known some lunatic was going to run me off the road tonight?”
“It’s my job to keep that from happening.”
Jane considered arguing, but it seemed pointless. He took her hand and led her up a short flight of stairs to his front door. Once inside, she couldn’t stop marveling at her surroundings.
This was where Luke lived. It was hardly what she had imagined. She’d pictured a spare bachelor pad, complete with empty pizza boxes and dirty socks on the floor. Maybe a recliner in front of the big-screen TV.
But there wasn’t a big-screen TV in sight, nor a recliner, nor an empty pizza box or a single dirty sock. Instead, the place exuded a warm, masculine elegance that Jane had seen only in decorating magazines. It was clearly a guy’s place—but a guy who cared about his surroundings, who paid attention to details and who was as meticulous as he was tasteful.
She thought of her own messy office and hallway littered with unopened boxes and felt a wave of chagrin. She’d had no idea she was revealing her messy side to a neat freak when she invited Luke in.
She surveyed the shiny oak floors, the pale beige rugs, the earth-toned furniture, the spare but stylish framed prints carefully placed in just the right spots on the walls. Black accent pieces broke up all the earth tones and balanced out the whole look.
Jane turned to Luke and smiled as she shrugged off her jacket. “I had no idea you were into interior decorating.”
He hung his jacket on a coat rack by the door, then took hers and did the same. “I’m not.”
“You have a gorgeous home.”
“I just buy stuff I like and put it in here. Pretty simple.”
She shook her head. “You’re being modest.”
“Okay, well, I also hired a decorator to come here and put all the stuff in the right places for me, and she added a few things to pull the whole place together.”
Jane blinked. Luke Nicoletti was full of surprises—definitely the first guy she’d ever met to hire an interior decorator for his bachelor pad.
“You have lots of women to impress, I’m sure.”
“Clients, actually. I have my office here at home, so if a client stops by, the place needs to look presentable.”
“Aha.” That, at least, made sense. “I didn’t know you worked from home.”
