скачать книгу бесплатно
“That’s right. Like I said, he’s not involved.”
“And there’s nobody else you can think of who might have reason to break into your house and attack you?”
“No.”
Clearly stumped, he shook his head. “Then I don’t know. Hopefully the police can figure it out.” He pushed away from the door frame. “I should let you rest.”
“And I’m sure I’ve kept you up longer than you intended.”
He nodded shortly, which she took to be a sign of agreement. “Feel free to use the TV. Yell if you need anything. I’ll leave the door open in case you do.”
“Okay.”
With another tight nod, he turned away and stalked toward the hallway. Not for the first time, she noticed the slight hitch in his step, the way he slightly favored his left leg over the right. She’d wondered about its cause, but wasn’t about to ask. It really wasn’t any of her business.
She watched his broad back receding. He was almost out of sight when she felt the outburst pressing against her throat. She couldn’t hold it back.
“Jake?”
It was the first time she’d said his name, and she immediately realized they hadn’t established if they were on a first-name basis. For his part, he hadn’t called her anything besides the “lady” he’d used when he’d entered her house. Another way of maintaining some semblance of distance between them, she supposed. She wondered if he’d take offense at her familiarity.
He stopped, his shoulders tensing. He didn’t look back.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thick, “for—”
“Don’t mention it.”
The words were tossed over his shoulder without a glance back. As soon as they were out, he started moving again, not waiting for a response. Seconds later he disappeared into the bedroom. As he’d said, he left the door open. She waited for a light to come on. It didn’t. He must have decided not to bother.
She settled back in the chair, trying not to take his reaction for the rejection it was. He was simply reminding her of a truth she’d be better off remembering. He wasn’t her friend. He was barely an acquaintance. Her neighbor, nothing more.
For tonight, though, it was enough. And she had more important things to worry about in the morning.
The reminder brought back everything that had happened that night. He’d left all the lights in the living room on for her. She should have felt safe. But the room opened onto the kitchen, and when she glanced to her right, she had a clear view of both the windows over the sink and in the back door. And once she saw them, she couldn’t look away.
The windows gaped with darkness. There was no light on outside the back door. The backyard was out there, and beyond it, the trees. Where he’d found footprints.
Anyone could be out there.
Anyone might be.
Eyes wide, Sara swallowed the hard lump that formed in her throat. Rubbing a hand over her belly, she stared at the windows, into the darkness, and desperately wished for morning to come.
Chapter Four
Sara didn’t know how she managed to get any sleep during the endless night. She only knew that she had, when she found herself prodded awake by a familiar urge.
Sunlight filtered in through the windows she’d stared at for so long. It was morning. Slowly hoisting herself from the chair, she moved toward the hallway, already having located the bathroom during an earlier trip in the middle of the night.
She’d just reached the corridor when her neighbor stepped through the still open doorway of his bedroom.
Her drowsiness vanished in an instant, her eyes going wide. Like her, he’d obviously just gotten up. He was tousle-haired and bare-chested, dressed only in a pair of skimpy shorts that didn’t even stretch halfway to his knees and hardly managed to contain his thighs. She tried to avoid looking at the impressive bulge between them. God knew there was plenty else to look at.
She’d known he was muscular; that was apparent even when he was dressed. It was something else entirely to see him without clothes, to see just how hard and toned his body was. There wasn’t a stray ounce of fat anywhere, only firm skin stretched over taut muscle. His arms were massive, as big around as his thighs.
A tremor of awareness, so unexpected, so unfamiliar, quaked through her, rumbling upward from the pit of her stomach.
He detected her presence a moment after she spotted him, coming to a stop just outside his bedroom. He dragged a hand over his face, the eyes narrowed with sleepiness only widening the slightest bit. “’Morning,” he said, his voice a hoarse rumble.
“Good morning,” she murmured. “I was just…” She waved a hand toward the bathroom.
He nodded. “Go ahead.” Before she could respond, he ducked back into his bedroom.
When she finally emerged from the bathroom, she shuffled back into the living room. He was standing at the front window, pulling a curtain back slightly with one finger and peering out. He’d pulled a T-shirt on, an impossibly large swath of cloth covering the wide expanse of his back, but hadn’t bothered with pants. He was still wearing those impossibly short shorts.
An ache started low in her belly as her gaze tracked down the curve of his back to the outline of his buttocks and those substantial thighs, firm as barrels and lightly dusted with dark hair—
She jerked her eyes up, heat filling her cheeks, even though his back was turned and there was no way he could see her. There wasn’t nearly enough of the window exposed for him to see her reflected in it. That didn’t prevent her embarrassment. What was she doing?
Hormones, she thought. She was pregnant and horny. There was certainly no denying it as she couldn’t quite prevent her gaze from slipping lower again, a rush of adrenaline surging through her.
“The car’s back.”
Her thoughts were so distracted that it took a moment for the words to sink in. “Hmm?”
“I can’t tell if it’s the same one, but I’d bet anything it is. It’s sitting in damn near the same spot it was last night.”
What he was saying finally managed to break through the heady rush of hormones, killing the delicious thrill.
The car. Last night.
All her tension, all the fear that she’d only managed to shake came rushing back. She frowned, her stomach clenching.
The reason he was only pulling back the curtain a little bit finally hit her. He didn’t want whoever was out there to know he was watching.
The same way that person was watching them.
Or was he? Did he know she was at Jake’s, or was he still watching her house?
Moving as quickly as she could, Sara crossed the room to his side. “Can you see the license plate?”
“No. It’s too bright. The sun’s hitting it just right and making it too hard to see.”
He looked down, then started, as if surprised to see her there. A flicker of…something slid along her nerve endings. She hadn’t realized just how close she’d come to him, focused solely on what he was looking at. She was standing right next to him, as close as they could possibly be without touching. Much closer than common courtesy dictated. She should step back.
Instead, she could only stare up into his eyes, feeling his closeness, unable to move.
Gray, she thought distantly. His eyes were gray. The color of storm clouds on a rainy day.
Abruptly the connection was broken. It was he who stepped back, away from her, letting the curtain fall. A flash of some unreadable emotion passed over those eyes she now knew were gray. He frowned, dropping his gaze. “Take a look.”
Strangely, inexplicably shaken, she slid over partly into the space he’d vacated and pushed the curtain ever so slightly to the side.
The bright morning sunlight blinded her for a moment. It took a few seconds for her vision to clear. Gradually the vehicle came into focus. It was as he’d said. There was a black sedan parked on the other side of the street, slightly down from her house, no doubt offering a good view of it without being right out front. The light bounced off the body and windows, making it impossible to see who was inside.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to try and confront him,” she said.
“I’d bet anything he’d drive away as soon as he saw me coming.”
She shot him a glance. “You? I think I’d like to have a word with him to find out why the hell he’s watching my house.”
Jake stared down at her. So gradually she didn’t realize it was happening at first, a hint of wry humor entered his gaze, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his mouth twitching. “You really think you could move fast enough to catch him?”
“Maybe not,” she conceded. “But I wouldn’t mind trying.”
He continued looking at her, that unfamiliar glint in his eyes, that barely discernible smile on his lips.
A strange flutter in her belly, she turned back to the window. Almost as soon as she did, she heard the sound of an engine starting. Moments later the car pulled away from the curb.
“He’s leaving.”
Beside her, she felt Jake moving away. She tried to read the license plate, only to be distracted when the driver’s door came into view. He must have had the window down, because it was sliding upward as he moved past, the raised glass reflecting the sunlight, cutting him off from view. She’d seen only enough to confirm her suspicion that it was probably a man.
In the back of her mind she registered the sound of the front door opening. When the car was gone, she turned to see Jake stepping back inside the house. He quickly moved to the table, grabbed a pen and jotted something down.
“I got the make and license plate number. Did you see him?” Jake asked.
Sara shook her head, letting the curtain drop. “No. He rolled up his window.”
“I guess it’s time to try the police again. Let me get dressed and we can go.”
He moved away without waiting for her response, heading down the hall. Her eyes helplessly, hungrily tracked every motion, every shift of his shoulders, every flex of his buttocks and thighs, until he disappeared into the bedroom.
Once he was out of view she gave herself a shake. Hormones, she thought again on a sigh. She hadn’t been this aware of a man since…Well, since the night that landed her in her current condition.
And if she needed a reminder of exactly why she needed to get a grip, that certainly did it.
“AND THEN IT DROVE AWAY,” Sara said, even as she wondered why she was bothering. Detective Baxter wasn’t taking her seriously.
Worse, he was barely paying attention to her. Other than a cursory glance in her direction while she was speaking to signal he was supposedly listening, his gaze kept drifting back to Jake, seated beside her in front of the detective’s desk.
Having reached the end of her patience, she was about to say something about it when Baxter shot upright in his chair. He snapped his fingers and grinned broadly at Jake.
“Football. Linebacker, right?”
He might as well have started speaking gibberish. Bewildered, Sara glanced at Jake to see if he knew what the man was talking about.
From the tightness that gripped his features, he did. His lips thinned. “Right.”
“I knew you looked familiar. You got hurt last year.”
“Yeah.”
“I saw that game. Man, that injury looked brutal.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed. “It was.”
“You know, the local high school team’s going to start practice up again pretty soon. I’m sure they’d love it if you could talk to them.”
“Sorry. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be around, with the season starting up and all.”
The detective’s eyebrows shot sky-high. “You looking to get back in the game?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“I heard your career was over.”
“We’ll see.”
Based on his curt, mostly monosyllabic answers, Sara thought it was obvious Jake didn’t want to talk about it. The detective still leaned forward expectantly, as though he expected Jake to elaborate.
Jake stared back. He didn’t say a word.
When the silence went on too long, Sara cleared her throat.
Baxter glanced at her, annoyance flickering across his face before his expression regained its condescending coolness.
“Ms. Carson, I’ll take down your report, but I’m not sure what else I can do. There’s still no sign anybody was in your house. All you’ve given me is some footprints that could have been left there anytime and a car that could have been there for any reason.”
Sara tried to swallow her rising anger in the face of the man’s condescension. Evidently that particular trait was a common one in the local police department. “A car that took off as soon as its driver realized it was spotted.”
“No offense, but a lot of people might be intimidated seeing this guy coming at them in the dark, even if they’re not doing anything wrong.” He grinned at Jake.
Jake stared back, unimpressed.
Baxter’s grin quickly died. He straightened in his seat. “We also had a car drive by a couple of times as promised and they didn’t see anything suspicious.”
“Because whoever was out there had already been scared off. Maybe for a second time, if it was the same people who broke in to my house in the first place.”
The detective sighed. “Look, I’ll run the plate and see if anything suspicious comes up. If something else happens, let us know. Other than that, there’s not much I can do.”
Recognizing the finality in both his words and his tone, and figuring she’d wasted enough of her time with this man, Sara forced herself to offer a cordial “Thank you for your time.” She would have loved to say something more cutting, but there was still the chance she might need this man’s help, if she ever managed to convince him there was something he could help her with.
More than ready to get out of there, she started the arduous process of getting to her feet. She’d barely moved before Jake was standing before her, offering his hand. With a grateful smile, she accepted the hand and let him help her up, doing her best to ignore the jolt that shot up her arm when his large, warm fingers closed around hers and threatened to swallow them whole.
When they finally stepped outside the police station, she heaved a sigh, pleased to be out of there, if not about anything else. “Well, that was a waste of time. I’m sorry you came all the way down here for nothing.”
“We had to try, at any rate.”
