Release (20 page)

She nodded.

“
Good
idea,” Franklin agreed, suddenly all unaffected ease. He stood and held up his hand in invitation for them to pass in front of him. “I glanced at the police report you made over the phone this afternoon, Ms. Bujold. It didn’t indicate if anything was taken from your boutique.”

“I didn’t notice anything missing. Whoever broke in just made a mess,” Genevieve said as she stood.

“Hmmm, not too surprising, I guess,” Franklin said.

“How’s that?” Genevieve asked.

“If he found what he wanted, he wouldn’t have to break in here, would he?” Franklin asked.

“Assuming it was the same person,” Sean said as he went to open the office door.

Franklin nodded. “Right, right. Well, it probably is just a bunch of strangeness clumping together on the calendar. It happens that way sometimes. Either way, it was nice to be able to see both of you again.”

Genevieve held her breath, her eyes glued on Sean’s back. She was extremely glad that Sean didn’t turn around at Franklin’s casually spoken words. He continued walking down the hallway without pause. Her heartbeat began to throb in her ears as she followed him down the dim corridor, Detective Franklin bringing up the rear.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

S
ean pulled into his reserved parking space, switched off the ignition, and placed his gloved hands on the steering wheel. Neither he nor Genny moved in the tense silence that followed.

“Sean, I can’t stay here anymore.”

He exhaled the breath he’d been holding as he waited for her to say precisely what she’d just said. He’d actually been waiting for her to say it ever since they both got into the car and drove in silence back to the penthouse. Neither of them had uttered a word until that moment.

“You can. And you will,” he stated quietly.

“Then
you
can’t.”

His head swung around when he heard her desperation. “Don’t be afraid, Genny. There’s no law that says we can’t be together.”

“But Detective Franklin—”

“Detective Franklin was fishing. He might have thought it was interesting to see us together, but just because we’re together tonight doesn’t make a case for something that happened three years ago. Besides, he didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that you were staying at Sauren-Kennedy because your house had burned down.”

She stared at him, aghast. “You don’t really believe that. If he ever discovered what went on between us back then . . . what’s happening between us now, he’d think he had a motive, Sean.”

Sean shook his head. “
No
. Because we were together tonight because of the circumstances of the fire doesn’t mean that you and I were having an affair back then.”

“But we
were
together,” she exclaimed, her eyes looking a little wild. It pained him to see her so afraid. He had to reassure her that just because Franklin saw them together didn’t mean he was going to throw her into jail for Max’s murder. He
had
to convince her, because he wasn’t going to let her go off by herself until he figured out what was going on. The fact that Franklin had entered the picture again wasn’t what Sean was most worried about at the moment.

He was more worried about the fact that someone was after something Genny had. And that someone just might hurt her if she got in their way.

He brushed a wavy strand of hair off her cheek, wanting to soothe the fear he saw in her big eyes. “He doesn’t have anything, Genny. He’s just a good cop who was following the trail of some unusual circumstances, hoping it would give him a lead that would help him break the case. I said it once, and I’ll say it again. Seeing us together tonight doesn’t mean anything substantial.”

She opened her mouth to argue but he shook his head resolutely, halting her. “It doesn’t. Sure, it might prick his interest, but us being together one night three years after Max’s murder
doesn’t
consist of a motive, especially when there’s good reason for it given the fire.”

He saw her swallow convulsively. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he replied steadfastly.

“It just seems foolish for me to stay here, given what Franklin might make of it.”

He closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “He can make of it whatever he damn well wants, it’s not any proof of anything. Besides, I’m not going to let you stay anywhere else.”

“You’re not going to
let
me?” Eyes that were usually soft as a luminous gray cloud hardened to steel.

“Don’t fight me on this, Gen. Please?”

“Sean, you can’t really believe that someone wants to harm me. I mean . . . all this stuff with the break-ins is weird, but no one has tried to get at
me
.”

“What about the fire?”

“You yourself told me that the fire chief thought it was caused by faulty wiring.”

Sean shrugged and dropped his hand to her shoulder. “Yeah. But reports have been wrong before. I’m in complete agreement with Franklin about it—there’s something going on. And I plan to make sure you’re safe until I found out what that something is. Come on. Let’s go on up to the penthouse.”

Her sigh sounded frustrated, but Sean was glad to see that she didn’t argue anymore. She reached for the door handle.

“And Genny?” he asked as they walked toward the garage elevators.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want you to go anywhere for the next couple days, unless I’m with you.”

“Sean,”
she scolded as she paused and gave him an irritated look. She didn’t stamp her booted foot, but he got the impression she had.

“Please?”

She just studied him for a moment before she rolled her eyes and resumed walking. “Oh, all right. I’ll stay put for now.”

He raised his brows expectantly.

“I
promise
,” she replied irritably when she realized what he waited for. “I still say you’re being overly cautious. Everything I need to do is pretty much put on hold until this snowstorm is over, anyway.”

“Great.”

He wasn’t going to let her go anywhere until he understood the landscape one way or another, but he figured it was best to ask politely for her agreement as opposed to locking her in the penthouse without her consent.

 

 

 

It seemed strange to walk back into the living room, to see the blankets on the floor and their bowls still sitting on the coffee table where they’d left them before going to meet the police. Everything looked the same, but Genevieve felt different. She pictured herself sitting there on the floor next to Sean, watching the snow coming down and feeling so peaceful. She recalled in breathtaking detail their heated, emotional lovemaking.

So much tension had risen in her muscles over the past hour, she couldn’t imagine who that woman had been who had let go so wholly . . . trusted so completely.

She started slightly when Sean came up behind her and wrapped her in his arms.

“Shhh,” he soothed. She shivered at the sensation of his warm breath brushing her neck. His hands transferred to her shoulders and upper arms, rubbing her muscles. “You’re so tense. Everything’s going to be okay, Genny.”

“I don’t see how,” she whispered. She felt Sean’s rib cage expand against her back as he inhaled slowly.

Regret coursed through her. Why was she being so selfish, saying things like that? Sean had to be ten times more anxious than she was, knowing that Detective Franklin was nosing around again . . . knowing Franklin had seen them together. She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t dump all my jitters onto you.”

He gave her a wry glance from beneath his lowered brow. “I forgive you.”

She laughed and touched his whiskered jaw. “You look a little disreputable with all those whiskers. Sexy as hell, though.”

“If you think so, that’s all that matters,” he murmured, turning his chin and nuzzling her hand. “You look tired. Why don’t you go and get ready for bed. I’m going to go downstairs to my office for a little bit.”

She traced one of his eyebrows with her fingertip. “Are you sure? You look exhausted yourself.”

He gave her a lingering kiss. “You taste so good. I’d rather stay here with you, but I just need to do a couple of things, and I’ll be right up to bed.”

“Bed?” she whispered. Genevieve didn’t know how he’d done it, but suddenly she was hyperaware of every point of contact between their bodies and their conversation had turned hushed and intimate.

“Oh right . . . I’ll be right up to the
floor
,” Sean rumbled, a small smile pulling at his lips.

She laughed and went up on her tiptoes to press her lips to his grin.

After Sean’d secured the penthouse and left, and Genevieve had prepared for bed, she turned on the light in the spare bedroom. Had it really only been last night when she’d stood here and watched Sean make love to another woman?

A mild feeling of nausea swept through her at the thought. Her gaze flickered over to the bedside table where she’d seen him pull out the dildo. Her cheeks heated when she considered what else he might keep in there—implements to torture a woman with pleasure.

The arousal that coursed through her confused and shamed her. How could she be both sickened by the thought of Sean touching another woman and turned on by it as well?

You wish he’d been doing those things to
you
,
said a voice in her head.

She rushed into the room and whipped the padded comforter and two pillows off the bed. Her actions had been so hasty and pressured that she was panting slightly by the time she deposited the bedding on the living room carpet in a great heap.

Genevieve knew very well that people everywhere enjoyed adventuresome sex lives, and she thought that was great. It wasn’t that she had some kind of hang-up about kink. But in her case, the only night of truly wild, uninhibited . . . experimental sex she’d ever experienced had become associated with a nightmare of murder, loss, and fear.

So yeah . . . might as well admit she had just a bit of a hang-up about the idea of letting go, about the prospect of releasing all her inhibitions. She’d been afraid about giving into her powerful attraction to Sean. But more important, she was afraid of her own desires. Afraid of the consequences that might follow.

And Genevieve didn’t like being afraid by principle.

When she was a girl, she’d gotten into the habit of forcing herself to face her fears alone. It wasn’t that her parents were negligent, by any means, but they’d had her when they were in their mid-thirties. Neither of them was college educated, and while they were proud of her accomplishments, they had little understanding of what was required of Genevieve to excel academically in one of the most crime-ridden public school systems in the country, the mountains of paperwork she had to fill out for scholarships, or the anxiety-provoking interviews she endured in order to get into a prestigious art school. Genevieve had learned early on that no one was going to hold her hand. She’d have to face her fears head-on, or admit defeat.

She walked down the dim hallway and stood outside the master bedroom. Her heart drummed unnaturally loud in her ears. She took a deep breath and plunged inside, flipping on the light before she had a chance to second guess herself. Her gaze immediately went to the large bed. She forced her eyes off it.

She slowly walked over to the built-in cherrywood wall system that took up the entire left side of the room. A vivid image played across her mind’s eye—the image of Sean’s powerful buttocks flexing as he fucked her, his hands on top of the custom-made, cherrywood headboard, supporting his upper body. The camera must have been to the left and several feet above the bed. She’d seen Max’s, Sean’s, and her own faces in profile, but it was Sean’s image that was the most obvious figure on the screen.

The most dominant.

Genevieve sprung into action, grabbing a desk chair and hauling it over to the built-in shelving and cabinet system. She glanced back at the bed, trying to gauge the angle correctly, before she planted the chair and climbed on top.

She looked everywhere, opening cabinet doors and shelves, checking the two built-in closets, running her hand over nooks where her eyes couldn’t reach. She wasn’t really expecting to find anything—surely Max had removed all of the recording equipment when he retrieved the tape itself—but she searched anyway. Besides, with the type of expensive technology used by Sauren, Genevieve seriously doubted the camera was the type that would be perched inside a cabinet.

It was as much an exercise in facing her fears as it was a search for the camera that had recorded their ménage à trois that night.

When she’d exhausted herself by searching for something that wasn’t there, she sat on the edge of the bed, panting.

It was perhaps one of the most painful, anxiety-ridden moments of her life, those minutes when Max had beckoned her to look at his computer screen.

The fact that he’d been dead within several hours of the event only made the memory that much more potent in her mind.

That much more
poison.

Max had been in his study when he’d called out to her as she passed in the hallway, telling her to shut the door behind her. He’d smiled warmly as she entered. She recalled he’d been smoking a cigar, and the pungent smoke had made her eyes water as she approached his desk.

She had no hint of what was coming. If anything, Max had gone out of his way to be extra kind, careful and tender with her following that New Year’s Eve, as if he’d sensed her confusion and agitation about them making love with Sean. In reality, he must have known she was considering leaving him.

But who really knew what Max Sauren was ever thinking?

She’d been relieved when he’d called her in to talk privately in his office. Their silence about that night had been like a toxin in her blood. Genevieve longed to clear the air, even if it did involve a difficult, heartbreaking ending with Max.