Hot Secrets (9 page)

Her hands settled on his
shoulders and she laughed softly, surprised yet again by this man.
She didn’t remember Roger, or any of the other men she’d dated for
that matter, ever making her smile this much. They darn sure didn’t
make her warm all over like Royce did. “You’re asking? After last
night?”

With an easy step, he managed to
back her against the wall, spreading his legs and pinning her with
body. “Last night was driven by champagne and emotion. Tonight is
just about you and me.” His eyes were hot, his voice warm, gentle.
He leaned toward her, intending to kiss her, and she couldn’t wait.
She lifted up on her tiptoes to meet him halfway, but he didn’t let
her have his mouth. He pulled back just enough to tease her with
what might have been, what she hoped would be, and asked, “Is that
a yes?”

Lauren responded by reaching for
his mouth with hers again. This time he didn’t stop her. At first
he didn’t move, and for the briefest of moments, she felt nervous
about her actions. But she’d come this farlast night, tonight. No
way was she backing down now. Instead, she pressed into him,
wrapped her arms around his neck and ran her tongue across his
bottom lip in a sensual move that, to her delight, made him
moan.

Suddenly, he was devouring her
mouth, kissing her as if he were trying to possess her. And God,
she wanted to be possessed. Her hands went to his waist, and she
tried to pull him closer, but he wouldn’t move. He nipped her
bottom lip and pressed his cheek to hers. “Dinner first,” he said
and this time, he sounded hoarse, his voice raspy with desire.
“Then… we’ll talk.”

She jerked back and he laughed.
“You have a real thing about talking, don’t you?”

He kissed her. “Get your purse
and let’s go eat. Wait. I meanplease go get your purse so we can
eat.” He grinned. “I did say I’d work on the bossy thing.”

She laughed. “Yes. You did. And
good thing you added that ‘please’.” She turned on her heels, and
headed to the bedroom, thinking that she might let Royce give her
an order or twounder the right circumstances, under the most
pleasurable of circumstances. She smiled and snatched her purse,
heading back to where Royce waited, looking forward to both dinner
and what came after dinner in a way she hadn’t looked forward to
anything in a very long time.

***

Thirty minutes later, with her
arm linked with Royce’s, Lauren walked into the door of “Eden” and
stopped at the hostess booth. Her gaze traveled the dimly lit
restaurant, decorated in rich green colors with plants running
around high ledges that lent to the tropical-island ambiance, that
Royce said he couldn’t wait for her to try.

“It’s such a cool place,” she
murmured after he put their name on a list.

“I thought you’d like it,” he
said, but before he could continue they were greeted robustly by a
friendly thirty-something couple, with a baby on the way, who not
only obviously knew all three of the Walker brothers well, they
owned the restaurant. With energetic, friendly conversation
surrounding her, and Royce frequently touching her, Lauren felt a
new kind of warmth fill her. She was realizing the
significan
ce
of his
actions. He’d brought her to a place that was so clearly a part of
his life, after he’d taken her to his apartment and
invit
ed
her to be
nosy.

“Let me get you two a table,”
Shannon, the wife, a pretty, petite brunette, every bit of eight
months pregnant, said before she grabbed two menus and motioned for
them to follow her.

“Don’t let Royce get out of
line, Lauren,” John, Shannon’s husbanda tall blond who looked more
lethal weapon than the lethal chef she’d been assured he was,
warned. “Bust his chops freely. You have my permission.”

Lauren laughed and exchanged a
look with Royce who quickly explained, “I call him ‘Shannon
whooped.’ He doesn’t like it.”

Shannon rubbed her belly. “Oh,
he likes it.”

Lauren laughed again, pretty
sure her cheeks were going to hurt if this night continued as it
was, something that normally only Julie and a rare girls’ night
out, could do for her.

Shannon led them down a hall to
a private dining area and circular booth, waving them forward. “Our
VIP seat.” Once they were seated, Shannon placed the menus on the
table. “Enjoy.”

Lauren reached for her menu,
when Shannon’s gaze caught on her wrist. “What a gorgeous
watch.”

“Oh,” Lauren said, wondering why
she’d worn the darn thing. “Thank you. A gift from my father.” And
that recognition of her father she’d just delivered, was probably
why he gave her the flashy diamond studded piece of jewelry, she
thought. The gift, the many gifts, weren’t about her at all. They
were about making himself feel, and look, like he cared, even if
his actions said otherwise. A point driven home today quite
clearly. She’d left his house obviously upset, claiming to be sick,
and he hadn’t even called to check on her.

Royce’s hand slid to her leg
under the table, and her gaze met his. Her chest tightened at the
understanding in his expression, at the awareness that somehow,
she’d let emotion seep into her reply to Shannon in a way she
normally would not, and he’d noticed. The sincere concern she saw
in his eyes touched her, while the contrast it held to the
insincerity of her father’s gift clawed at her.

“Well it’s spectacular,” Shannon
said wistfully and glanced at Royce. “Give me one of those as a
gift and we’ll talk about me working at Walker Security.”

Royce chuckled. “None of those
in my arsenal, but I have a desk and sturdy chair with your name
all over them.”

She snorted. “You really don’t
know the way to a girl’s gun, I can promise you that.”

A waitress appeared with a
bottle of wine. “From John,” the woman said, and set two glasses in
front of Royce and Lauren.

“I’ll leave you two to enjoy,”
Shannon said and smiled at Lauren. “Nice to meet you, Lauren. Maybe
next time we can chat more.”

A few minutes later, Lauren and
Royce sipped a rich, sweet red wine, each having ordered a pasta
dish. “What was all that about Shannon’s gun and your desk and
chair?” Lauren asked.

“The restaurant is really John’s
baby. Shannon’s an FBI agent I used to work with, and a damn good
one, at that. We’d be lucky to get her for Walker Security. And it
would be a safer job for her too, which is why John wants her to
leave the agency. I can control what jobs she gets and watch her
back. And I can make sure the job doesn’t destroy her family. The
Agency won’t do that.”

“Do you ever regret leaving the
Agency?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“Not once in two years,” he
said, but she didn’t miss the sudden flex of his jaw muscle or the
tightness of his voice. “I had some bad stuff go down at the Agency
and by the time it passed, I was one foot out the door.” He sighed
and tapped his fingers on the table, as if drumming out tension.
“Right about the time I was contemplating leaving the agency, Blake
lost his fiancée in an undercover ATF mission. He was ready to go
vigilante and there’s no good in that. I needed something to
distract him, a way to keep him under thumb, and Walker Security
was born. Truth be told, I suspect Blake’s walk through hell was
the real reason Luke went civilian. Otherwise, I think he would
have been a career Navy, like our father was career Army.”

“Did they ever catch the person
who killed Blake’s fiancée?”

“No,” he said. “That particular
Mexican drug cartel leader is still alive and well, and deep
underground, but not ever out of Blake’s mind. If he finds him,
he’ll go after him. I never kid myself about that.”

She studied him a moment. “And
you and Luke will be there with him.”

He gave a sharp nod. “Making
sure he doesn’t end up dead or in a jail cell for taking the guy
out.”

Heaviness settled in her chest.
“And your father?”

“What a lifetime of combat
couldn’t do, cancer did. We buried him three Christmas
es
ago. My mother lives in Jersey
and is thrilled to have her boys nearby. She was yet another reason
Walker Security made sense.”

“I was a teenager when breast
cancer took my mother,” she said, emotion thickening her voice.
“Seventeen when my father married Sharon.”

He didn’t say he was sorry or
‘oh how horrible’ like most people and she knew why. He knew it
didn’t help
;
he knew
from experience that “I’m sorry’ sometimes managed to open a raw
nerve. “And Sharon has been like the Energizer Bunny. She just
keeps on staying.”

She smiled. “The evil Energizer
Bunny.”

John appeared at the table with
a cordless phone in his hand. “There’s a call for Lauren.” Her gaze
went to Royce’s, her stomach suddenly rejecting the few bites of
bread and the wine she’d just enjoyed. “No one knows I’m here. I
didn’t even know where we were going before we got here.”

John arched a brow and covered
the receiver. “Muffled voice, and car horns in the background.
Sounds like a payphone to me.”

She sighed. “It’s probably a
reporter.” She reached for the phone. “They’ll just keep calling if
I don’t take it.”

John handed her the receiver and
she immediately put it to her ear. “Hello, this is Lauren.”

The sound of a clock ticking
echoed through the line for a mere few seconds, before a dial tone
replaced it, and Lauren felt a chill race down her spine. Her hand
began to tremble with the understanding that these feelings she’d
been having of being watched weren’t her imagination, nor were the
calls pranks. Which meant someone had watched her tonight, followed
her to Eden.

Royce reached for the phone, and
Lauren let him take it from her hand, barely aware of him listening
to the dial tone or disposing of it, until his hand slid to her
face. “Tell me what just happened.”

She wet her lips. “The clo… ”
She swallowed the dryness in her throat, her hand going to his
wrist. “Ticking clock.”

He studied her several long
seconds, then pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re okay. We’ll
take care of this. I’ll take care of it.” He leaned back and looked
at her, trailing his fingers down her cheek. “Give me a second.” He
pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed, then snagged the
cordless and looked through the call log.

“I’m at Eden with Lauren,” he
said into his cell. “She just got a call we need traced.” He read
off the number and then barely a second later, said, “That’s what I
thought.” He hung up. “Payphone, but Luke’s headed over there to
check it out anyway.” She opened her mouth to protest and he cut
her off, “Don’t even think about telling me he doesn’t have to. He
wants to and so do I.”

“Is this when you tell me to
call the police?” she asked.

“If I did
,
would you?”

She shook her head. “No. It
would end up all over the papers and I can’t deal with that, Royce.
Not on top of everything else and not when that might be exactly
what this person wants.”

“Who are you trying to
convince?” he asked. “You
?
O
r
me?”

“I don’t think I have the
reasoning skills right now to convince anyone of anything, which
makes me wonder if that isn’t the idea. Someone wants to rattle me
before the trial.”

“We could make a list of what
this person’s motivations might be,” he said. “And of all the
things I’d put on that list, you picked the one that makes you feel
better, the one that makes you feel like you aren’t in danger.”

“Are you saying you think I
am?”

“I’m saying that refusing to
accept that you might be is danger in and of itself. You know that.
Your job has allowed you to see what people are capable of.”

“You aren’t making me feel
better.”

His hand moved down her hair.
“I’d rather make you feel safe.” He brushed his lips over hers.
“Let’s get out of here.”

***

Half an hour later, Lauren stood
at the door of her apartment, Royce by her side. He leaned in and
kissed her. “Let me check it out before you go in.”

“I’m feeling pretty good about
the bodyguard routine right now,” she said. “Feel free.” She
pressed her key into his palm and then watched while, instead of
entering, he felt around her doorjamb.

She squeezed her eyes shut and
leaned against the wall, knowing all too well that he was looking
for some sort of trip wire or surveillance equipment. It was
overkill, she told herself, suspicion and caution built into his
blood by a lifetime in law enforcement that he was incapable of
fighting. But deep down, caution felt right, and that meant
something was very wrong.

The minute he opened the door,
his gaze dropped, he squatted then stood, having retrieved an
envelope. “Does your doorman allow people to just come and go?”

Lauren stepped toward him,
reaching for it. She half expected him to resist. “No. You’ve seen
how he hovers.” To her dismay, her hands shook, yet again, as she
fumbled with the seal and opened the envelope. Inside she found a
single sheet of paper that appeared to be a calendar.

“Today’s date is marked off,”
Royce observed from over her shoulder. “Any idea what it
means?”

She shook her head. “No. Should
I be touching it? What about evidence?”

“There won’t be any,” he said,
as if he were sure.

Her heart hammered in her chest
as she let him take the piece of paper from her hands. The envelope
slipped out of her hands onto the ground.

Drawn to Royce’s strength, she
studied his profile as he examined the calendar. His jaw was tense,
his eyes probing and intense. He bent down and picked up the
dropped envelope, inserting the page back inside.

When he spoke, his voice was
unaffected. He seemed calm and collected, so very unlike her right
now. “I need to check out the rest of the apartment.” He reached
out and smoothed a piece of wild hair behind her ear. “Stay
put.”