Simply Sinful

CHAPTER SIX

KAYLA SUSPECTED HE’D fight her by erecting barriers so high, she’d have to learn to mountain climb to achieve her goal.

“Kane?” He turned at the sound of his name, his hands tucked in his front jean pockets.

“Thank you.”

“For?”

“If you’d come over here, I’d tell you.” She couldn’t trust herself to stand and she couldn’t talk to him if he stood so far away. She had more than physical barriers to breach. She just hadn’t yet learned what the others were.

He walked over and lowered himself onto the bed, causing the mattress to dip beneath his weight. Kayla drew her legs up and scooted closer to the edge. Closer to him.

She placed a hand on his arm. Muscles tightened beneath her fingertips. She didn’t loosen her grip. “I appreciate your being here.”

“Why? I lied to you from the second we met.”

She’d expected to have to force truths out of him. Instead he’d given her the opening she sought. “Because you were doing your job. I realize that now.”

“If I was doing my job, you’d have been protected before you got hurt.”

She laughed, but knew better than to shake her head. Eating had helped, but she still felt drumbeats when she moved too fast. “Sometimes we mistake what our jobs are. I remember one night when I was younger. Catherine wanted to go out with her friends. I knew these friends were trouble, that she was headed in the wrong direction. So I snuck into her room and stole her wallet and what little money she had inside. She went anyway, and got caught sneaking out of a restaurant without paying the hefty bill.” Kayla gnawed the inside of her cheek, remembering the night the police officer had brought her sister home.

His strong hand touched her cheek. “What’s your point?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“We raised each other. It was my job to look out for her and I blew it.”

“Was she arrested?”

“No. The owner refused to press charges. He gave her a job washing dishes instead. The point is, I didn’t do my job, but looking back, it wasn’t mine to do. Just like the minute I walked out of that hotel room, I wasn’t yours to look out for anymore.”

“I agree with you about Catherine. As for me, I was still on a case.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sleeping with me was work-related?”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“Then let the guilt go.” Kayla couldn’t reach him if he hid behind his job and sense of duty. “Look, when you were a teenager, did you ever get in an argument with your mother, then storm out into the street?”

He met her question with a vacant stare.

Curious she pushed on. “At that point, there wasn’t anything she could do to stop you from getting into trouble.”

“There wasn’t a damn thing she could have done about anything. She was dead.”

Her mouth opened and closed again just as fast. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for her. She killed herself. Took herself out of the game.”

Leaving her child behind. Kayla knew better than to voice pity for the boy he’d been. She was grateful enough for the revelations. She wasn’t about to discourage them by suffocating him in emotion. “And your father?” she asked.

“Took a hike when I was five. Is there a point to all this?”

A smile tipped the edges of her mouth. “There was, but you’ve cut off every one I was about to make.”

Kane let the tension ease out of his shoulders. She didn’t treat him with the sad look or pitying expression his friends, teachers and the authorities had used in his youth. He hadn’t voiced his story again until now, but wasn’t surprised he’d confided in Kayla.

He’d known many women. None affected him on any level other than physical. None attempted to challenge him. He’d met his match with Kayla and he respected her for it. Respected her far more than women who played the weak heroine to get his attention and into his bed.

He’d begun having sex early in his teens, too often he’d come to realize. Later he’d become smarter, more discriminating. Only one thing remained constant. He came and went with no thought to looking back or revealing inner truths. Not so with Kayla. After all she’d been through-thanks to him-she deserved a little honesty.

But that wasn’t the sole reason for his confidences now. He didn’t want to think about why he wanted to share the most painful parts of his life with this woman.

She shifted, the movement revealing pale skin and an expanse of thigh that aroused him in an instant.

“My point is you aren’t responsible for me,” she said, meeting his gaze.

Primitive possession flooded his system. “The hell I’m not.”

In the face of his roar, she didn’t blink.

He admired her spunk. “You’re my responsibility at least until this case is over, so let’s drop that part of the conversation now.”

“Okay.”

He hadn’t expected her to give in without an argument. “So you aren’t angry?”

“Not about the initial investigation.”

“And what came after?”

“Pheromones,” she explained.

“What?”

“Two people attracted to each other by stimuli they can’t control.” He’d forgotten the intellectual side of this beautiful woman. “A chemical reaction,” she went on. “So if you’re still blaming yourself for losing focus, don’t. I’m equally at fault.”

“Meaning?”

“I wanted you, too.” She fiddled with the hem on her jersey without meeting his gaze. This was the Kayla he’d first met. The innocent that threatened to chip away at his heart, if he let her.

Which he wouldn’t. But he couldn’t let her last statement go unchallenged. He had to know. “‘Wanted’ as in past tense?” he asked.

She shrugged and leaned back into the pillows. “Why ask? You’re a man of your word. You said it won’t happen again. Does what I want really matter?”

He could drown in emotion, in her. “Everything you want matters.”

Her expression grew still, then a tear spilled from the corner of one eye. “No one’s ever said that to me. I’m thankful for you, Kane.”

A low growl escaped from his throat. “I don’t want your gratitude.”

“Then what do you want?”

“That’s a loaded question.”

“I know. That’s why I asked.” An impish smile played around her mouth, even as she wiped away a tear.

Kane knew what he wanted. Kayla, soft and giving beneath him. But she was right. He’d laid down the law. It wouldn’t happen again. But he knew what Kayla needed-to be reassured that she counted. It was the only thing he could offer her.

He looked into her eyes-eyes that displayed her soul and mirrored his need. He braced his hands on either side of her face. He caressed her cheek, careful to keep her head steady. “Are you sure you want to know what I want?”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.” She touched a hand to the stubble on his face and ran two delicate fingers down his cheek. “You count, too, Kane. I wonder if anyone’s ever told you that before.”

No one had. No one would again. He leaned over and covered her mouth with his. To block out the truth…and to accept it at the same time. Her lips opened and her tongue sought his, not hesitant but eager. She licked his lips, ran her tongue over his teeth, learning and growing bolder with each taste.

He craved her. She was a drug he couldn’t get enough of. He threaded his fingers through her still damp hair, then eased his lower body over hers. His arms shook with exertion, from the need to keep a safe distance between them, else he lose control and hurt her more.

Her hips jerked upward without warning. She brushed his erection with nothing more than the flimsy cotton he’d found in her drawer. He exhaled a harsh groan and eased himself on top of her, settling himself between her thighs.

It wasn’t enough. He was too damn hard. He wanted to rip off those panties and…A soft moan penetrated the haze of desire. He flipped over fast. Damn but he’d made a mistake.

It wouldn’t happen again. Yeah, right. One battle lost, Kane thought, but the bigger war raged on. He rolled onto his side and glanced over. “Are you okay?”

“Too much too soon,” she whispered, echoing his earlier words.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him. Once again, his need had gotten in the way of common sense. “Get some rest,” he said in a voice rough with unslaked desire, and self-disgust.

“I’m sorry.” Her shoulders remained stiff.

“For?” He worked the muscles beneath his fingers, kneading her soft skin. As a distraction, it didn’t work. He had a sexy woman in his arms and his body knew it.

“I’m a lot of things, Kane. But I’m not a tease.”

“Did I say you were?”

“No. But I’m sure you’re thinking it.”

He sensed the source of her concern was based in her past and understood. “As a matter of fact, I’m not.”

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

That she didn’t need to dig into her old insecurities. Not with him. He respected everything about her. “That I pushed myself on a poor, frail, injured woman,” he said with a crooked grin.

She laughed. His attempt to lighten the mood had obviously worked. “No, really.”

“That I wasn’t in the mood anyway.”

This time she treated him to a snort of disbelief. “Seriously.”

“I was thinking,” he said, pausing to smooth her hair and inhale the fragrant scent that was Kayla. “That what just happened…”

“Yes?”

“Was the best almost sex I ever had.” Just being with her was beyond good. Kane accepted how much he needed her, even as he knew he’d ultimately let her go.

No matter what emotion and softness she offered him, he’d take none. But for the duration of the case, he’d protect her with his life.

FRESH FROM AN UNEVENTFUL shower, Kayla made her way to the family room. Kane sat staring at the boxes she recognized as holding her aunt’s things. “I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “You should be resting.”

She scowled. “I slept half the day yesterday and all last night. I’m fine.” Or as close to fine as she could be with the thug’s threat still echoing in her brain, her aunt’s reputation and her business in jeopardy…and having shared her bed with Kane McDermott for the past dozen hours.

Like her, he’d showered and changed. Judging by his appearance, she realized his clothes must also have arrived with the boxes. She wouldn’t be female if she didn’t admit she liked what she saw. Faded blue jeans stretched across his muscular legs. A bleached sweatshirt, navy with white patches that looked as if they’d occurred more by accident than design, covered his broad chest. The detective might not know much about cleaning his clothes but he knew how to wear them. He just plain looked good.

She walked into her family room and knelt down beside him. Her thigh brushed his, a brief and accidental contact. Her stomach muscles curled into twisted bands of excitement and need. What should have been innocent wasn’t.

“You’ve got some color back in your cheeks,” he noted.

And it had nothing to do with good health, she thought wryly. “I feel better. Up to tackling those boxes, anyway.” She gestured to the opened cartons spread around the room.

“You showered.” He fingered her freshly washed hair.

She grinned. “Even I couldn’t share the bed with me a minute longer.”

“You should have called me.”

“So you could stand guard outside the bathroom? I’m not an invalid,” she assured him. And she didn’t want him treating her as one. His attention was nice, but she didn’t want his pity.

“I started without you.”

“Find anything interesting?” Her initial inspection of the contents had been cursory at best.

He shook his head. “There’re three huge boxes here.”

“I packed two of those myself. They lived in an apartment and the landlord wanted it emptied as soon as possible. Economics.” She grimaced. “Anyway, Catherine and I gave most of their belongings to the Salvation Army. My uncle had a niece that wanted some of his personal things. Catherine and I boxed the rest to go through later.”

“So the crossword puzzles…” His hand settled over the box nearest him.

“Anagrams and things. My aunt loved them. So did my mother. I used to do some when I was younger. I figured maybe I’d get back into them myself one day.” She shrugged. “The other box has knickknacks that have been in my family for years.”

“How old were you when your mother died?”

The question surprised her. It was as unexpected as it was unnecessary. “Didn’t your investigation reveal such a minute detail about my life?” she asked.

“Yes.” He had the grace to look ashamed despite the fact he’d merely been doing his job.

“So why ask?”

“Because I like hearing about you from you.”

She glanced down at her hands. It was her turn to be ashamed. She’d already forgiven him. She believed what he’d told her earlier-that when he’d slept with her, his job hadn’t been on his mind. It had brought him into her life but it hadn’t kept him there. When Captain Reid had denied protection, Kane could have walked away. He hadn’t.

“What about the business books?” he asked, obviously noting her silence and respecting her wishes by changing the subject.

“I was twenty, Catherine was twenty-one.” She answered his earlier question. “It was as if Mama chose the optimal time to let herself go. Neither one of us had to face social services or being separated.”

“Wouldn’t your aunt have taken care of you?”

“I suppose, but Mama loved us and wanted the best for both of us. Aunt Charlene never had kids and only related well to me because we both had that-” she tapped her head “-extra intelligence, I guess you could call it. But she had a harder time with Catherine because they had less in common.”

“I’m sorry-for both of you.”

She shrugged. “What you lived through was worse.” His eyes grew shuttered. His face cleared of expression, almost as if a curtain slammed down, closing out any audience to his soul.

She hadn’t reached his inner depths yet, but with time and patience, she would. “I have all the books,” she said, accepting his parameters. “That’s what’s so strange. On the phone, he said he wanted the books. But I’ve been doing them for the past year. Nothing unusual. No extra income, nothing unaccounted for…”

“They stashed the money somewhere.”

Although she hadn’t reached his emotions, his words tapped into her own. Kayla grabbed his sweatshirt, desperate for him to understand and believe. “They didn’t stash anything. Whatever my uncle may or may not have been up to, my aunt wasn’t into prostitution.”

He met her gaze, his eyes darkening to the color of a stormy sea. “That remains to be seen.”

“No. My family may not be as fine as some, but I assure you we draw the line at sleaze.”

“I wasn’t accusing her…or you. But the fact remains someone wants something from you…and he doesn’t much care how he gets it.”

“I know.” Just the thought of her attacker’s voice sent tremors of fear spiraling through her.

Kane grabbed hold of her wrists. His protective warmth eased the terror. “Nothing will happen to you, but we have to find out who these people are and find the books they’re looking for. To put an end to all this once and for all.”

All this included them. She could read the truth in his eyes and planned to fight it. She just wasn’t sure how.

Needing distance, Kayla placed her hands on her jeans and stood. Kane’s gaze followed the movement, his eyes traveling the length of her and back. A sensual gleam lit his expression. Swiping a black V-neck Lycra top from Catherine’s closet had been a good idea for more reasons than warmth. She doubted her own silk blouses would have elicited the same heated response.

Apparently the trail toward Kane’s heart began with sex. Under normal circumstances, Kayla wouldn’t offer herself as an object; she’d spent too many years fighting the idea. But Kane was different from other men. For the first time, she intended to use her God-given assets to their best advantage.

“I started with this box,” he said. “I figure maybe there’s something hidden in one of these puzzle books.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She wanted answers as much as she wanted Kane. Kneeling beside him, each movement she made was deliberate and calculated. She reached inside the large cardboard carton, bending close enough to smell his cologne and far enough over to give him a glimpse inside her shirt…if he cared to look.

She darted a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. He didn’t notice her watching him. His gaze was glued to her cleavage, his eyes cloudy, his cheekbones pulled tight.

She suppressed a smile. Despite the less than perfect circumstances and the threat hanging over her, she had Detective Kane McDermott just where she wanted him. The last time he’d lost his focus, they’d had sex. And she had every intention of making it happen again. Only this time, it wouldn’t be just sex. After she coaxed him into opening up to her, it would be nothing less than making love.

For now, she would tackle what was within her control. She perused each page, smiling as she remembered how both her mother and her aunt would curl up for hours with this pastime. Her mother had been hiding from life. Her aunt had just plain enjoyed the escape. Kayla shut the paperback and laid it on the floor. “Nothing here.”

“The ones I’ve looked through are all completed. Your aunt was an expert.”

Kayla grinned. “Easier to be an expert when you work in pencil. Erase your mistakes, cheat a little by checking the back.” She laughed aloud. “Aunt Charlene was pretty good. Mama did more cheating than her sister. She made more mistakes, too.”

“And you made none at all?”

“I’m not perfect, Kane.”

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

She glanced at the book in her hand, one that looked like a dime-store crossword, but held precious family memories. “This one’s completed, too.”

“Let’s cover them all. I don’t want to miss anything important.”

Half an hour later, Kayla wanted to scream. They’d been through more than half the box. The pencil-smudged books were all the same. Most finished, the last few half-finished. She grabbed for the next book in the box. “This is ridiculous.”

“Just keep looking.”

She curled into a more comfortable position, picked up a pencil and grabbed the next book. This time, she started working the puzzles, much as her aunt had probably done. She chose puzzles and individual questions at random and, just as she suspected, her answers matched Aunt Charlene’s. They would, of course, since her aunt had been as intellectual and meticulous as Kayla was.

Gnawing on the end of the pencil, she tossed the book down and went for the next one. Fifteen minutes and three books later, she began finding mistakes. Obvious ones. Ones her aunt would never have made.

Unless she’d done so on purpose. And considering Kayla had also begun finding a pattern of last names in the puzzles, she suspected these were more than game books. The implication of that sent chills crawling along her skin, and she groaned aloud.

“Find something?”

She glanced at Kane, knowing she had to reveal her discovery, hating it at the same time. “Mistakes in the entries, names instead of answers,” she muttered.

He raised an eyebrow. “Let me take a look.”

She handed him the two books she’d made headway with and he scanned the pages along with her notes. “Looks like pay dirt.”

She frowned. “Don’t sound so pleased.”

“It’s better than coming up empty.”

“What’s the date on that first one?” Kayla asked.

“Date?”

“Every book has a handwritten date next to the first puzzle.”

“Hadn’t noticed,” he muttered.

“Marks your progress from month to month, or year to year. Didn’t I mention my family was slightly neurotic?”

“No, but you should have. We could have started at the bottom of the box and come up with something sooner. Come on.”

“Where?”

“These books need to be decoded and you need your strength to do it.”

“So I can prove my aunt guilty of prostitution and lose my business in the process?” she asked. Kayla might have been ambivalent about putting her dreams on hold for the sake of the business, but she refused to damage her aunt’s reputation to get her life back. Aunt Charlene had been the only person other than Catherine who understood Kayla and all her emotional insecurities-because she’d suffered much of them herself. Kayla had no intention of betraying her in the worst possible way.

“So we can exonerate her and save Charmed!’s reputation through you.” He glanced down at the first book she’d found with any discrepancy. “This dates back eight months. But Charmed! had been in business for a little over fifteen years.”

She nodded.

“Your aunt married your uncle a little under a year ago and took him in as a partner almost immediately.”

She didn’t question his knowledge. “Yes.” Kayla did the math. “The date on the first book coincides with Charles Bishop’s entry into the escort business.” She heard her voice rising in pitch. “Which gives him opportunity.”

“Do you have a reason to suspect the man of anything?”

She shook her head. “Nothing more than sweeping Aunt Charlene off her feet. But the names in these books began around the time he joined the business.”

“Which makes him an equal suspect.” Kane grasped her hand.

He obviously sought to reassure, but tremors of awareness acted to arouse her instead. He had no right to be so distracting when so much was at stake. “You may have to face the fact that your aunt wasn’t an innocent victim,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not without concrete, irrefutable proof.” The kind of proof she intended to get to exonerate her aunt. She didn’t want to believe her aunt’s husband had betrayed the woman he professed to love, but better her uncle be found guilty than her aunt. Kayla believed in Charlene.

Kane nodded. “Okay then. We have our work cut out for us.”

“We? Does that mean you believe me?”

“Yes.”

One little word with a wealth of meaning. She glanced at him for confirmation and found it in the warm blue of his eyes.

“Kayla…” He held his gaze steady with hers. “I believe your faith in your aunt is unshakeable unless we find out otherwise. But I have to reserve judgment until the facts are in.”

Kane the cop, Kayla thought. And that was okay. Because hidden in all that qualification was one unmistakable fact: he believed in her. No one other than Catherine or Aunt Charlene ever had.

She didn’t think. One minute she was standing beside him and the next she’d wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you.” She molded her body against his, trying to tell herself it was gratitude. She knew better.

His hands snaked around her waist. If he wanted to push her away, now was the moment, she thought. His grip tightened. The masculine groan and the unmistakable hardness pressing against her told her he wasn’t going anywhere, at least for now.

Another second’s thought and he might back off emotionally. Kayla recognized her one opportunity to reach inside Kane and make him hers. To do it, she’d have to reach inside herself as well. Take the ultimate risk, and defy every principle by which she’d lived so far. She took two steps back. With trembling hands, she reached for the hem of her shirt. She drew it over her head and tossed the garment onto the floor.