Release (7 page)

“I’m sorry about all this,” she began. “I know it’s an inconvenience for you. And about last night, I’m sorry I—”

He straightened from the counter and came toward her. “You don’t have to apologize for any of it. Just consider it an unfortunate turn of events. Let’s just get things settled as far as the house and finding you a new place
. Forget
about last night.”

Forget about it?
She wished she could. She sensed his almost palpable concern. God, she must look like a wreck for him to be looking at her like he was. She touched her hair self-consciously, recalling she’d gone to bed with it damp. It probably looked wild—

“Just do me a favor, okay?” Sean asked, interrupting her stupid ruminations about how she looked to him.

“What?” He came closer yet. He leaned his hip against the counter, the fly of his jeans lightly brushing her hip.

“Let me stay here for the next few nights, as well.”

She could see the thousands of cobalt, sapphire, and steel blue dots of pigment that colored his iris like a pointillist painting. His lashes were long enough to make a female jealous. His spicy, subtle male scent filtered into her nose. Sean always smelled so damn good. Just his scent used to make her wet, like her brain recognized him on some deep level where words and logic couldn’t penetrate.

The surge of heat between her thighs told her nothing had changed.

“I’ll think about it,” she told him gruffly before she hurried out of the kitchen.

“Wait, Genny.”

Against her better judgment, she paused again on the threshold. This time, she kept her back to him, resisting the urge to look her fill of him . . . to touch him. She knew it was unwise, but the fact of the matter was, Sean was a temptation unlike anything she’d ever known in her life.

And the past three years had been so cold.

So empty.

“They finished their preliminary report on what started the fire. I spoke with the fire chief this morning up in Lake Forest.”

“You did?” she asked, turning in surprise. “I didn’t realize you’d left.”

He nodded as he folded his arms beneath his chest. “McGruder said the fire was started by faulty wiring in the wall between the garage and kitchen. That house was built over fifty years ago. Sometimes those ol’ power boards and wiring can’t support some of the modern energy demands made on them.”

“But why now?” Genevieve asked. “What happened that was so different last night?”

He shrugged. “It was a weak point in the house. It was bound to start a fire at some point. We had that cold snap last week. Must’a reached its limit after all this time. I’m just glad you and Jim weren’t asleep in the house when it did.”

“Jim will be so relieved it wasn’t anything he did,” she murmured.

“I brought a copy of McGruder’s report for your insurance claim. Have you called your agent yet?”

“Yes, I called her last night. Thank you for getting the report, Sean. Everything is going to halt to a standstill with this snowstorm, so it’s helpful to have the report in hand.”

“If you give me your agent’s card, I’ll fax the report downstairs.”

Genevieve nodded and set down her coffee. He came and stood at the threshold of the kitchen while she stepped into the foyer and dug in her purse for her insurance agent’s card. She wasn’t used to having someone do an unwelcome task for her when she was tired or overwhelmed. It felt nicer than she’d expected.

Too nice.

She handed him the card and moved past him to grab her coffee, all the while hyperaware of how close Sean stood.

“Genny?”

She glanced up to meet his eyes. He hesitated.

“I’ll fax the report, and then go around the corner while you’re in the shower and get us something to eat.”

“Okay,” she said. She got the distinct impression that wasn’t what Sean had been planning to say when he’d said her name.

“And Genny? Just . . . just think about what I said. About me staying for a couple nights.”

“Sean, I want you to know that I’m seeing someone.”

Her cheeks flushed with heat when she realized what she’d just said. It’d suddenly felt imperative that she put up some kind of boundary between them—no matter how flimsy that boundary was.

His expression flattened. “Seriously?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“No . . . I mean are you serious about this guy?”

Genevieve pretended to consider. “I don’t know. We haven’t been seeing each other for that long. I like him, though. Are you serious? About that woman . . . from last night?”

His brows knitted together in puzzlement.

“What? No . . .
no
, that was just a . . . a . . . you know.” He shut his eyelids briefly when he noticed the way she examined him. “Christ, Genny. I can’t even remember her last name. I just met her at the bar when I took a break from work and went to get something to eat over at McClinty’s.”

Genevieve stared down at the floor. She’d never done the things that Sean was doing with that woman last night in her entire life, let alone done them with someone she’d only known for a few hours. Sean and she were worlds apart when it came to sex. Bitterness seemed to rise in her throat until it burned her vocal cords like acid.

“I can’t say that I
do
know, Sean. You’re the one who regularly has casual affairs, not me.” She started when he put his hand on her jaw. He tilted her face up to meet his gaze. His manner seemed urgent.

“Genny . . . that woman . . . on the night that Max was killed. It
wasn’t
what you’re thinking. You never let me explain to you.”

Genevieve blinked. She was stunned. How had he known her thoughts had gone to Ava Linley—Sean’s alibi for Max’s murder?

On a purely practical basis, Sean’d had more to gain by Max’s death than anyone—even Genevieve. Max and she had a prenuptial agreement, which had provided well for Genevieve, but she wasn’t designated as the controlling shareholder of his lucrative intel company in the event of his death. Genevieve held the minority interest. It’d been in Sean’s hiring contract that in the case of Max’s retirement or death,
Sean
would be offered first rights on purchasing the majority interest in Sauren Solutions Inc. Sean had done precisely that after Max’s death. He’d proceeded to make the intel firm nearly four times as valuable as it had been under Max.

The only reason the police hadn’t focused on Sean as a potential suspect was the simple fact that he’d possessed a hard and fast alibi for the time period in which Max had been shot.

Sean’d been with another woman on that night.

Genevieve knew Sean had gotten the woman to lie for him. The fact that he
really
hadn’t been with Ava Linley didn’t comfort Genevieve in the least. Women acted a little nuts when it came to Sean—how well she knew. That woman had been one of his besotted lovers. She wouldn’t have blinked an eye about lying for him. Whether Ava’d actually slept with Sean on the night Max died or not wasn’t the point.

Sean’d had another lover when he’d had sex with her on New Year’s Eve three years ago. He’d seen Ava shortly afterward. Just thinking about it made Genevieve’s stomach roil.

She straightened her spine. “Your love life is none of my business, Sean.”

Her eyes flew up to meet his when he made a bitter noise of disgust. “You’re the only person on this planet whose business it
is
, if only you’d take an interest.”

His words and the profound frustration in his expression combined to freeze her lungs in her chest. She gazed at him in dawning wonder.

“It’s
true
that Ava and I had been casually involved before that New Year’s Eve. But I wasn’t intimate with her on the night of Max’s murder, Genny. Or
any
night after that New Year’s Eve. That’s a
fact.
I wouldn’t have. Not after what happened with us on that night . . . not that soon.
Not
before it came crashing down on me that you were locking me out of your life.”

Her heartbeat started to pound like a throbbing siren in her ears in the taut silence that followed.

“I may have my faults, but I’m not
that
callous.” His fingertips brushed her cheek. “Do you believe me?”

She searched his expression long and hard. Maybe she was a fool, but she’d never known Sean to mislead her purposely.

She nodded her head. He closed his eyes briefly, obviously relieved.

“Everyone’s different about how they behave in a casual relationship,” he murmured a few seconds later. He studied her face just as intently as she’d been examining his. “All I want to know is whether or not you think of this guy you’re dating as something serious or not.”

She found it difficult to lie to him while she was staring into his lasering eyes. She always had.

“
He’s
serious. I’m not so sure that I am.”

“Good.”
He noticed her raised eyebrows. “Uncertainty is a damned sight better than nothing, from where I’m standing.”

For several seconds neither of them spoke. His hand seemed to emanate heat into her skin.

She nodded her head once, turned and fled.

It frightened her a little, to think of how much power he held over her. She’d known by some instinct that Sean’d been asking her to think about more than whether or not he could be her roommate in the penthouse for a few days. She’d
known
that, but she’d agreed to consider it anyway.

Stupid. Idiotic.

But a heavy sensation pressed on her chest, constricting her breath, when she thought of walking away from Sean one more time. He’d shot her husband in a fit of rage. He’d never been punished for it, and never would be, if Genevieve could help it. She was still shocked at Max’s betrayal.

But that didn’t mean he’d deserved to die for his machinations.

She’d kept her silence about what she knew, but just because she’d do anything to protect Sean didn’t mean she condoned murder.

What else would you be doing if you ran into Sean’s arms?
a brutally honest voice called out in her brain. Another thought joined it, this one just as upsetting.

She shut the bathroom door and searched her reflection in the vanity. What sort of a person was she, to want to be with a man who put cuffs on a woman during sex, a man whose eyes blazed with love for her, but who had also consented to share her with another man in bed?

Sean’d never said the words, after all . . . never once said he loved her. She might have been deluding herself.

Even though Sean and she had never so much as kissed before that New Year’s Eve, their attraction toward each other had grown so thick it seemed to weight the air around them. Sometimes she’d been surprised that other people seemed so oblivious to the prickly, charged atmosphere whenever she and Sean were together.

Even toward the end, when neither of them bothered to hide what was in their hearts even though they never spoke the words, Genevieve suspected that Sean wasn’t celibate. Women gravitated to him like metal filings to a powerful magnet. She recognized the gleam of fascination and lust in many a female’s eyes whenever Sean was near. His rugged good looks, unfailing manners, soft drawl, quick smile, and a somberness many mistook for shyness, all combined to create a powerful aphrodisiac.

Was she really so self-centered as to believe that if New Year’s Eve hadn’t happened and Max hadn’t been murdered that Sean would eventually have declared himself exclusively for her? Sean’d just implied that was the case, there in the kitchen. But Sean was a man who could have just about any woman he chose on any given night.

Genevieve
wanted
to believe him, but perhaps it was her naïveté at work. She’d married too young and too impulsively, mistaking security and respect for love. She’d never really mastered the sophistications and subtleties of the adult world of dating and mating.

But if Sean didn’t care about her in the way she suspected, would he have become so angry with Max? Furious enough to kill?

She exhaled shakily and went to turn on the shower.

Did any of the circular logic that never got her anywhere even
matter
now? She’d seen Sean again, heard his voice, inhaled his scent . . . experienced his touch. And it suddenly felt like an utter impossibility to keep up the struggle. She was so tired, her spirit worn so thin.

Damn Sean for awakening this hunger inside her once again.

CHAPTER
FOUR

S
he paused upon leaving the hallway after she’d showered and dressed, her gaze drawn to the falling snow outside the windows. The gas fireplace had chased off the chill. Sean had turned on a lamp on an end table. It cast the living room in an inviting glow. She approached the floor-to-ceiling windows and searched futilely for the shadows of spires and towers that she knew were just yards away, but the storm prevailed.

The snow fell thick and silent. The city, the millions of people, the webwork of their lives—all of it seemed so far away from her.

She turned at the sound of the front door banging against the jam. Sean entered, his wavy hair dampened from melted snow, his arms stretched around three paper bags. She met him and removed the cardboard carton he held precariously in one hand.

“Where’d you get all this stuff?” she asked bemusedly, walking ahead of him as he herded her into the kitchen. He deposited the fat bags on the counter. Genevieve set down the carton with two coffees in it and peered inside a sack. She drew out a plastic bag of homemade pasta.

“There’s an Italian market and deli around the corner. Thought I’d better stock up on some supplies. They’re predicting blizzard conditions later. Most of the Loop will shut down.”

“You don’t think you can survive off rock-hard bagels and whiskey from the bar, huh?” she asked wryly, making a point of not including herself in the scenario. She hadn’t officially decided to stay here, after all. Although, considering the conditions outside, she really had no idea where else she could go. There was always a hotel, but—