Flashback Read online

  Kyle moved inside and closed the door, locking it. She was staring at the big semi-automatic in his hand. Kyle placed it on a side table and spoke quietly, “Take it easy, Rachel.”

  She was shaking and cold when he tugged her into his arms, tucking her face into the curve of his throat and shoulder. “You might not like this, but I’ve got to hold on to you—”

  Kyle lifted her into his arms and walked to the couch, sitting down with her in his lap. To his surprise, Rachel didn’t struggle. Her body still shook in his arms. He tilted her pale face up to his. “Tell me about it. What happened?”

  For a moment words didn’t come and then she said, “I was lying on the couch…I tried sleeping, but I couldn’t. Someone was at the door. I thought it might be you with some smart-ass comment about Buttercup. I…I think he might have come in if I hadn’t been awake…. The door knob rattled—”

  She gripped his bare shoulders, her fingers digging in. “I thought it was you,” she repeated. “I said a few things and then he ran down the steps. So I called to leave a message on your machine to tell you off—and you answered. You had been asleep. You couldn’t have been whoever has been prowling—”

  “Wait a minute. ‘Whoever has been prowling’? Some one has been in here?”

  “It’s just small things. Nothing specific, but I feel that someone has been in here, looking for something…. But I had the locks all changed, so no one else could have gotten in. Mallory hid the doll and the tape and—”

  “And? What else?”

  “A scrapbook, mementoes, things like that. The sweet things a woman would keep, pictures—”

  She’d stopped speaking too quickly…there was more, and Rachel didn’t trust him enough to tell the rest. “This place is getting to you, Rachel. Get out of here. Live somewhere else.”

  “That’s not going to happen. I made a promise to Mallory and I’m going to keep it,” she stated fiercely, the wide-eyed fear gone. “But I know there is potential danger in stirring up things, so I’ll be careful. I’m going to find that son of a bitch and ruin him. I’m going to find his weak spot, or find evidence that he was hurting Mallory, or—What are you looking at?”

  Her hand flattened over her breasts where the cord had come free. “You’re a dog, Scanlon. Here I am scared and—”

  His hands were open now, smoothing gently, his fingers gently pressing into the outer softness of her breasts. “No bra, huh?”

  “Oh, I get it. It’s take-advantage time, right? FYI, Scanlon: Heroes don’t do that when women have been—and you know what? I don’t remember inviting you over here. You just said you were coming.”

  “Suspect the worst, why don’t you, Rachel? It seemed the thing to do when a lady calls—and she’s so scared that her voice won’t come. For a minute, I thought someone had you by the throat.” Kyle leaned back and put his hands behind his head, leaving Rachel with the option of leaving, or staying on his lap.

  Instead, Rachel leaned her head back on the couch’s arm and studied Kyle. For the moment, he felt strong and safe and she wasn’t going anywhere. She resented the feeling that she could always depend on Kyle, that she could trust a man she’d always disliked, and that he actually had good qualities. She’d almost told him about the poetry book and the wedding ring.

  At Mallory’s funeral, Kyle’s dislike for Shane had been evident and he’d been furious with whoever had been beating her. If he knew about the ring and the poetry book, he’d make a direct connect to Shane, the man who had wanted to reform her, and the outcome could be bloody.

  Rachel’s planned chat with Shane would be less straightforward, but might get better results…. For now, she would play Kyle’s game, flip it over, and distract him. “I don’t like you, you know.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve been working on that one for years. You think that matters with what we’ve got going on?”

  Rachel followed her instinct and smoothed his cheek, sensing the wariness that Kyle immediately pulled around him. Her fingertips followed his broad cheekbone, traced a tiny half-moon scar there and she lifted to kiss him lightly, to give him the gentleness she sensed he had missed along life’s way.

  Kyle’s head went back, breaking the kiss. Beneath his lashes, those silvery eyes were wary. “What was that?”

  “Just a little something I thought you needed,” she whispered unevenly.

  “I’ll choose what I need. But thanks for the offer.” He’d reverted to that sexy drawl, the one he used to protect himself when she came too close to his private emotions.

  “Have it your way.” She was wary, too, because this Kyle was new to her, his compassion revealed, though he would hide softer emotions. He’d cared deeply for Mallory, mourned her as a brother, that much was obvious; that he cared for Trina and Jada was also clear as well as Iris and Patty. Kyle might try to bury his humanity from Rachel, but now she knew….

  This new tenuous bond between Kyle and herself was chock-full of potential disaster. She’d loved Mark, or thought she had, and when she needed him most, he’d failed her…. Kyle wouldn’t do that.

  Uncertain of the more tender emotions within her, Rachel opted for another approach, a game she enjoyed very much playing with Kyle. She moved her hips, rolling slightly toward him so that her breasts were against that flat stomach. Rachel placed her hand on his bare chest, smoothing the hard planes. Kyle’s long body tightened and his nostrils flared, his expression hard. “Having trouble dealing with me, Kyle?” she asked softly.

  “Lay off.” The words came tight and grim and his hand clamped to her hip, his fingers digging briefly.

  She circled his nipple with her fingertip. “What was your last name before you changed it?”

  He shifted uneasily. “I thought you were scared about your visitor. Let’s stick to that, shall we? And you said you couldn’t put your finger on it, but that something was different in Nine Balls?”

  His chest was hard, his heart thumping solidly beneath her palm, the lines etched around his lips. Rachel considered those lips and how much she wanted to taste them…. “Things have been happening. A. I feel that Mallory is still here. I was close to her once, before she pushed me away, and I am going to get some closure…. I need it. And B. I think that someone wants that tape and that doll. C. And when I find out who it is, specifically, his butt is mine, because I’m good at paper trails and digging out what this guy probably doesn’t want to surface.”

  He trapped her hand as it moved to his other nipple. “Stop that. Any ideas as to who?”

  Kyle’s brisk, frustrated tone said she was getting to him—and just maybe herself. He was definitely exciting, a raw blend of heat and power, of textures she wanted against her bare skin. Rachel looked down his chest to where the V of hair narrowed into a thin line to his navel. Her fingertip followed that line across that six-pack stomach. “It’s just a matter of time until I find out all about you, Scanlon. Make it easy on yourself.”

  Those lines beside his eyes crinkled and his lips softened as he looked slowly down the length of her body. “You can try. What did you do with that mermaid costume?”

  “It’s somewhere.”

  “I bet your toes curl when you make love.”

  “And I know that your ‘ex-wives’ aren’t really that. I have to hand it to you—it’s a very funny joke. Your little harem out there in the garage is just because you like feeling like a sugar daddy.”

  “Every man should have a harem. I can’t help if you believe everything you hear at face value. Having fun? Seeing how far you can take this? Pushing me?”

  In a quick movement, Kyle flattened her beneath him and lay between her legs. “Push now,” he challenged softly against her lips.

  “You wouldn’t.” He was heavy and aroused and very warm, and dammit, she trusted him not to force her. Kyle was a player and so was she, and he’d make her come after him—

  She’d always held just that bit within herself, never releasing it to Mark as they made love—smooth,
automatic movements, coming to a gentle climax, just enough to keep her mildly pleasured. But her body was already responding to Kyle’s, warming, softening, moistening, and sensed that “mildly” wouldn’t suit the explosive storm she expected with this man.

  Just to push the limits, and because she felt safe enough to test him, Rachel lifted her hips slightly and Kyle’s eyes immediately narrowed and darkened warningly.

  “You wouldn’t,” she repeated huskily as she inhaled his dark arousing scent and shivered with the challenge that being near Kyle always brought. Warning bells started echoing inside her head, even as her hands opened to stroke his shoulders, tensing on the hard width of muscle and bone. While her hands were moving, her mind was warning: Step over the line with Kyle Scanlon and there’s no going back….

  Kyle’s lips slid along her cheek to her ear. “You’re right, I wouldn’t. But I like the invitation. What else are you holding, honey? The name of who you think was at your door earlier? Who do you think that doll represents? And what happened to you in New York that took Mallory flying off to be with you?”

  Rachel looked away, guarding that horrible moment, but she couldn’t prevent the tear from slipping down her cheek. The attacker had held her down. He had muttered her name, where she had lived and worked and where she liked to jog and eat….

  After a ragged sigh, Kyle eased to her side, lying full length on the sofa. “Okay, sorry. Wrong question, wrong time.”

  Rachel sat up slowly. She’d experienced almost every emotion possible tonight and she was drained. Someone had come right to her door and would have come in…. Kyle’s Hummer had been sitting in the parking lot. If the man had known Kyle was inside the apartment, he would have had more sense than to tangle with him. Whoever the man was, he had known that she had driven Kyle’s noticeable Hummer, parking it and walking up the stairs. That meant that he had been watching…. Cold again, Rachel shivered lightly, the night she had been stalked three years ago, blending with tonight. “Sure. You can leave now.”

  Kyle’s hand flattened on her back, smoothing it. “Get some sleep. I’m not going anywhere tonight. In the morning, you’re going to report this.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “And do you know what the police would probably say, after poking around a bit and scribbling a report? That it was just one of Mallory’s men friends who didn’t know that the management—and the services—had changed. I don’t want the police in here again, going through my things this time. From what I’ve heard, Mallory’s male friends might have included some city fathers. I want to catch that special bastard on my own and nail him so badly that he can’t wriggle free.”

  “You’re asking for real trouble, Rachel.”

  “You’re not going to stop me, Scanlon. Don’t try,” she said as she shoved to her feet and walked into her bedroom.

  “Rachel Everly is just the same as Mallory—a tramp.”

  As the man drove by Nine Balls, the big Hummer and the yellow Cadillac, standing side by side, gleamed beneath the streetlights. “I handled Mallory and I can do the same with Rachel, if she pushes me.”

  The bricks on Atlantis Street were wet and shiny after the rain, and driving slowly he thought of how Rachel had looked earlier—tight pink sweater, tight jeans rolled up to show western boots, those big flashy earrings and all that makeup.

  “Rachel has class and if she’s dressing like that, she’s after something.” If she managed to link Mallory’s voodoo doll with him, Rachel would be digging around in his private life. She could ruin him, and he had to stop her. “Just maybe she needs another reminder to watch her step and keep out of my business.”

  His body squeezed tightly as he thought about how she’d looked in that getup, standing by that big Cadillac at the service station, waiting for the attendant to fill her tank. Rachel might be even better game than Mallory, resist more, and the thought of a woman fighting him, being terrorized as he used her, fascinated and aroused him.

  “Yes, Rachel would fight well. But she would lose.”

  He remembered the feel of her beneath him—before the men holding her had laughed at him…. They wouldn’t laugh at anyone again; he’d seen to that very efficiently in a dark quiet alley….

  The light in the apartment clicked off and fury raged through him. Kyle Scanlon was having her now—Rachel was letting a low-class mechanic have her, debasing herself with him…she was just as sinful as Mallory—all women were when their true base natures were revealed.

  The man’s hands gripped his steering wheel so tightly that it creaked. He closed his eyes as he tried to control his body, his mind picturing Rachel beneath him…. “I’ll move slow, getting to you, making you fear that you’re imagining this or that, nothing big really, just enough to let you notice—then you’ll be vulnerable and I’ll know if you found that damned doll. Or maybe Jada could be used to get my point across. You’d recognize the trademark technique, I’m sure…a lonely place at night, alone, say an invitation from you to meet her at the beach…. There are lots of tourists partying around now, and she was just at the wrong place at the right time, that’s what the report would say after an intense investigation….”

  He thought of how he’d seen Rachel drive the big Hummer into the parking lot, of how she’d raced up the stairs.

  He’d wanted to look at her—just look for now, but she’d been awake, calling out, “Who’s there? Kyle?…”

  There was more, but in flight, he couldn’t hear the distinct words. They were probably lover’s words, sexual come-ons…. He breathed harder, aware that he needed sexual relief soon, and that he’d have to arrange a trip out of town, easy enough to do for a man in his profession.

  “So you’ve taken up with that greasy-hands mechanic, have you, my dear? You really shouldn’t have done that. On the other hand, if anything happens to you, he’d be a perfect suspect. A lover’s spat, maybe?”

  He liked the idea of framing Kyle while getting rid of Rachel.

  But then, he wouldn’t get to play, would he? And he’d missed playing very much….

  Rachel had been terrified, shaking and cold in his arms. Kyle lay on Rachel’s couch and tried to push away that heavy, painful sexual ache, because very little kept him from joining her in that creaking bed. In purposefully distracting Rachel with a frank sexual come-on, he’d also set himself up for a whole lot of pain.

  And Rachel knew it; she knew she could get to him, and she wouldn’t be making life easy. Kyle shook his head and tried to divert his mind, and hopefully his body away from sex with her.

  He started with a big fat, obvious question—who had come to her door?

  Whoever had appeared to terrify her could have been any of Mallory’s men, who hadn’t known about her death and had stopped by for a “visit.” Obviously, her local “friends” already knew about her suicide.

  Or it could have been someone who wanted the evidence that would connect him to Mallory and whatever he did to her. The pins stuck in the doll’s chest and groin indicated Mallory’s thoughts about him—she hated the man who had hurt her.

  Kyle frowned slightly and thought of Mallory. In those early years, she had been one of those unguarded delights in life: who didn’t doubt, who could be so easily snared into other’s wills.

  Then suddenly, her innocence was totally stripped away; she’d believed in nothing, became careless with herself and, finally, at the end, with the business that she’d struggled to build.

  The bed creaked once and then the floor, indicating that Rachel wasn’t having an easy time going to sleep. The building’s old pipes groaned and water began to run, and Kyle shook his head. The image of Rachel, naked in the shower, wasn’t helping his “No” Factor.

  On the other hand, he decided, as he lurched to his feet, nothing was helping, not since Rachel had deliberately turned him on. He looked at the clock and shook his head. “Three o’clock and hours to go.”

  Fastened to each sound in the bedroom, and damning himself for letting R
achel arouse him, Kyle waited for the bed to creak again.

  Instead, Rachel walked into the living room, dressed in sweats. She plopped her running shoes on the coffee table and sat in a chair.

  Kyle looked at her; she was maddening, and she knew it. Unpredictable, sexy, and he resented the surge of frustration and anger that she could raise so easily surfacing in a hard demand. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She slid on one shoe, propped her foot on the coffee table, and tied the laces briskly. “Going for a run.”

  In a single sweeping motion, Kyle sat, stood up, and lifted Rachel from her chair. “Like hell you are.”

  She wasn’t fighting and that caused him to be suspicious. “Ooo. My master speaks,” she singsonged. “You can run with me, if you can keep up.”

  “Oh, I can keep up, honey, but you’re not going anywhere alone, not for a while.”

  Her eyes widened slightly and she frowned. “Just what do you mean by that?”

  Kyle had to get her out of his arms. Either that, or—He walked into the bedroom and tossed her on the bed. “Cool off. We’ll talk about this in the morning, over a cup of coffee when we’re both not ready to tear at each other.”

  For an answer, Rachel tightened her lips, glared up at him, and kicked off her one shoe. “If we talk, I want answers.”

  “Good enough,” he said grimly and jerked open the door to the bathroom.

  Kyle took off his jeans and stepped into a cold, stinging shower. He used Rachel’s fragrant shampoo and soap, and fearing that she might leave without him, dried himself quickly. The steam in the room shifted suddenly as the door opened and Rachel entered to lean against the doorway; she tilted her head and coolly looked him up and down.

  Kyle tossed the towel over the shower rod. “Like what you see?” he asked tightly.

  “You’re determined to play this bodyguard bit, aren’t you? I bet you did it a few times with Mallory—she trusted you implicitly.”