LITMIR.BIZ

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      The huffing noise of a panting dog made Trip’s heart sink.

      He spotted the red glasses and muddy jeans as soon as Charlotte appeared in the archway to the dining room. Max sat beside her, his leash held in a white-knuckled grip. She’d heard every word out of his big, stupid mouth. “Interesting plan. Maybe someone should ask me first.”

      “AND YOU WONDER WHY I have trust issues. Now I can’t even mourn in peace.”

      Trip stood at the bathroom door watching Charlotte, leaning over the edge of the tub, rinsing the last of the mud and suds from Max’s fur. Her bottom bobbed up and down as she moved, and he rolled his eyes away so he could concentrate on the discussion and not the distraction of all those curves emphasized by her clingy wet clothes. The woman really did have a seriously sweet figure, and a surprisingly sharp tongue for someone the rest of the world considered an introvert.

      “I can’t believe it, all of you eating breakfast, plotting ways to intensify my nightmare or even get me killed.”

      “I was the one defending you in there.”

      She shut off the water and warned Max to stay put. “Because I’m too incompetent to defend myself?”

      “Because you weren’t there.” Trip picked up one of the towels stacked on the toilet lid and handed it to her. She wrapped the towel around Max and rocked back on her heels as the dog climbed out of the tub. “Personally, I think Montgomery’s plan sucks. There has to be more investigating he can do, more suspects he can bring in, more clues he can uncover before resorting to surveilling you and hoping something new breaks on the case.”

      Max licked her face while she toweled him dry—the perfect excuse for not making eye contact with him, the perfect barrier for keeping Trip at a distance. “Detective Montgomery told me he’s been investigating the RGK murders for two years now. I suppose he’s getting desperate. He must be if he thinks I can help him.”

      “You don’t have to do this, Charlotte. Your father thinks catching the killer is the only way to save your life. But I don’t think he fully realizes the risk he’s taking.”

      “And you do?”

      “You do, too.” She was the only person in this house who’d been the victim of a violent crime. She knew better than any one of her well-meaning family the emotional and potentially deadly price they were asking of her. “Tell them no.”

      Charlotte’s cheeks paled at the grim reminder. But her only response was to let the dog loose. The dog took two steps and shook himself from nose to tail, spraying water all over the bathroom—and Trip’s uniform. Point made. Discussion over. Shut up, already.

      Or not. After letting out the stopper in the tub, Charlotte picked up a second towel and crawled around the bathroom, wiping splatters of water off the cabinets, walls and fixtures. “You said I could change things. That I didn’t have to be afraid the rest of my life.”

      “I didn’t mean this.” Trip stepped aside to let the dog trot into the sitting room to find a warm spot on the rug to take a nap.

      “How then?” Charlotte shifted her attention to the floor, mopping up the trail Max had made across the tiles. “One thing I agree with Detective Montgomery on is that this sicko will come after me again. He’ll leave a note or make a call—I haven’t revisited everything that happened during my kidnapping yet, and he’s enjoying the game too much. It’s like he was there. But those men are all in prison. How can he know so much about those weeks I was a hostage? Why is he doing this to me?”

      “Charlotte.” Trip knelt down and pulled the towel from her hand.

      She snatched the towel right back and kept working. “If I’m the one he’ll make contact with, then maybe I should help capture him. That’s being strong, isn’t it? I’d be taking control of my life, instead of the life outside these doors controlling me. Right?”

      “It’s a crapshoot. I wasn’t talking about risking your life yesterday.”

      Her hands stilled for a moment and she looked straight at him. “But catching him would make him stop, right?”

      Oh, God. Those had better not be tears glinting in her eyes. Now Trip was the one rocking back on his heels as her pain, her bravery, her desperation twisted something deep inside him. But this was a woman he couldn’t lie to. “I think the threats will only escalate until we arrest him or—”

      “—he kills me.”

      “I don’t like that option.”

      Trip’s husky whisper held her attention for one hushed, intimate moment in time.

      And then she reached beneath her glasses to wipe the moisture from her eyes and resumed her work on the floor. “That’s why Dad is paying you to be my bodyguard, isn’t it?”

      “I work for KCPD, not your father.”

      After a brief hesitation, she ran the towel over the toes of his boots, drying the water droplets off them as well. “So I’m just a plain ol’ citizen of K.C. that you’ve sworn to protect and serve. Just like anyone else.”

      He finally realized that all her cleaning was busywork, avoidance of him. And he very much wanted her attention. He needed to touch her and have her be okay with it. He took the towel away and tossed it on top of the hamper. Then, with a hand beneath each elbow, he rose, pulling her to her feet in front of him. “Honey, there’s nothing plain or old or like anyone else about you. I’m here because you’re in danger. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you get hurt.”

      “There are plenty of guards around here. Dad hires the best.”

      Her hands hovered in the space between them before finally, cautiously, coming to rest at the placket of his black uniform shirt. He liked that, feeling the gentle heat of her fingers seeping through the crisp material to warm his skin.

      He dared to pull her closer, to turn her cheek into the pillow of his chest and wrap his arms around her. He rested his chin at the crown of her wild silky curls and savored the small victory of feeling her lean against him. The smells of wet dog and shampoo didn’t matter. Damp clothes soaking into his didn’t matter. Holding Charlotte mattered. Feeling her softness—under his chin, against his body, in his arms—mattered.

      Trip felt stronger, yet oddly more vulnerable when Charlotte snuggled against him like this. Purely masculine instincts were stirring behind his zipper at the decadent sensations of heavy breasts and generous hips fitting up against his harder frame. Yet something scarier and completely unexpected was waking deeper inside him at the fragile trust she was showing by simply letting him hold her.

      At least, he hoped it was trust. He prayed it was the beginnings of trust—and not some fear of what he might do if she resisted that allowed him to hold and inhale and feel and touch. That notion alone kept him from tightening his arms around her the way every sensitized cell in his skin yearned to. The idea that Charlotte wasn’t completely sure that his attraction to her was genuine kept his hands securely in the middle of her back instead of sliding up to test the weight of a luscious breast or dipping down to that sweet bottom to pull her more firmly into his masculine heat.

      Instead, he rubbed his cheek against the caress of her hair and whispered into her ear. “You need someone from the outside looking after you. Because the threat is right here, in this house. We just can’t see it. I want to look after you.”

      He didn’t mind when she curled her fingers more tightly into his shirt, pinching a bit of skin underneath. She was holding on, moving closer. “Don’t take away the one place I feel secure, Trip. I need my things, my work, my routine.”

      “That doesn’t have to change. I won’t ask you to go to a safe house.” It would be a hell of a lot safer and easier to defend than leaving her to serve as the bait in her gilded mousetrap. But he hadn’t had any luck convincing Detective Montgomery or Jackson Mayweather. He doubted he’d have any more success making Charlotte see reason. So that left plan B. “But

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