Evidence Of Attraction

Chapter 2

Fear shot through Wendy. But she wasn’t afraid of the man who’d entered her bedroom with his gun drawn. She was afraid that the two men in her room would kill each other. Hart was already reaching for his weapon as he tried shoving Wendy behind him for her protection.

But who would protect him?

“Daddy!” she yelled as she jumped between the men and their guns. “Don’t shoot!” She held a hand out to each of them, pushing Hart back as she held off her father. “Either of you! Don’t shoot each other!”

Her father blinked dark eyes that were still bleary with sleep as he focused on her and the stranger in her bedroom. “What’s going on, Wendy? Who the hell is he?”

“He’s my…my…” She couldn’t say “bodyguard” because her father’s next question would be why she needed one. And she didn’t want to tell her father about Luther Mills and the threats. Not yet. She trusted the police department to keep them safe. But if Hart was telling the truth and someone within the department couldn’t be trusted…then she might have to tell her father, to implore him and her mother to leave town until after the trial. As long as she didn’t have to worry about them, she would be fine.

Despite Luther Mills and those threats, she didn’t need a bodyguard. She didn’t need Hart Fisher. But since he was there, in her bedroom, in the middle of the night, she needed to explain his presence.

“Wendy?” her father prodded.

She felt like a teenager who’d been caught necking on the living room couch with her boyfriend. Except her father had never caught her with anyone when she was a teenager. She’d been too busy studying back then.

“Boyfriend,” she blurted out. “He’s my boyfriend.” Mortified, her face flushed with heat, especially when she felt Hart staring at her in astonishment. She turned to him and silently implored him to play along with her.

She didn’t want her parents to learn about the threats because they wouldn’t be worried about themselves. They would be worried about her, and they already worried too much about her, about if she was taking care of herself, if she was working too much, if she was eating right…

Her father’s brow creased with more lines than he already had. Her parents had been well into their forties when they’d finally had the baby they’d wanted for so long. It didn’t matter that she was twenty-seven now; Wendy would always be their baby.

Her father had kept the gun grasped in his hand. But with her standing between him and Hart, he’d lowered the barrel. “You were arguing,” he said, suspicion in his voice. He wasn’t readily accepting her explanation, but then, it was no wonder since Wendy could not even remember the last time she’d had a boyfriend. “I heard raised voices.”

“He, uh, surprised me,” Wendy said. “Scared me…” That was no lie.

“Of course he did, breaking into our damn house like this!” her father angrily exclaimed. Then he turned his focus on Hart and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“Shh, Daddy,” Wendy implored him. “You’re going to wake up Mom.”

And if the police noticed all the lights coming on inside the house, they would probably storm in with more guns drawn.

She glanced down as she realized she wore only that big T-shirt. If the officers saw her like this, she would never hear the end of it around the station. Wendy grabbed a pair of yoga pants and quickly pulled them on.

“Your mother’s knee was bothering her, so she took some pain pills,” Dad said. “She won’t wake up for another six hours.”

That was good. At least, if the police stormed inside, her mother wouldn’t wake up.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Hart said. “I hadn’t wanted to disturb either you or your wife.”

That much Wendy believed was definitely true. Could she believe the rest of what he’d told her, though? That the chief had hired the Payne Protection to guard the principals in Luther Mills’s trial?

It made more sense than his working for Luther. Part of the reason she’d had a crush on him, besides his movie star good looks, was that he’d been such a good cop. He’d made so many arrests.

“I just really needed to see Wendy,” he continued. Then he holstered his weapon and held out his hand. “I’m Hart Fisher.”

Her father stared at his hand for a long moment. “And how do you know my daughter?”

“We used to work together,” Hart replied. “I was a River City detective.”

“Oh.” Her father nodded. “Of course…”

Had she mentioned Hart to him? She might as well have. She’d told her mother about her crush, and her parents told each other everything. Her face heated even more as her discomfort increased. She tended to share too much with her mother.

Her father extended his hand and heartily shook Hart’s. Maybe a little too heartily. Even though he was pushing seventy, her father was a big man, and the former football coach still worked out regularly.

“I’m Ben Thompson.” He greeted Hart, but he wasn’t smiling.

“I am really sorry,” Hart said again. “I just need to speak with Wendy for a few moments, if that’s all right with you, sir?”

Her father grunted. “That’s not up to me.” He looked at Wendy, really looked at her in that way fathers had that made their children squirm. Or in the way that coaches made their players squirm. “Do you want him to stay, Wendy?”

Now she felt compelled to apologize. “I’m sorry, Dad…”

“You’re an adult,” her father said.

Sometimes she wondered if he really believed that, though. But he must have been trying to prove that he did because he stepped into the hall and pulled her bedroom door shut—leaving her alone with Hart Fisher. Her bodyguard.

That was what he was. Not her boyfriend.

She didn’t want him as either. Not anymore. Now was not the time for her to start dating anyone, not when everyone and everything she cared about had been threatened.

Her face was still so hot that she probably could have melted an ice cube on her forehead.

“I don’t want my parents to know about the threats,” she explained. “That’s why I told my dad that you’re my boyfriend.” She didn’t want Hart to think she wanted that—that she wanted him. Just a short time ago, when he’d been lying on top of her, she’d thought he might have wanted her, too.

But that wasn’t possible. He still wouldn’t have noticed her if he hadn’t been assigned to protect her.

Hart nodded. “I get it,” he assured her. “And now I need to get you to that meeting.”

She shook her head.

He sighed. “Do you still not trust me, even after I covered for you with your dad?”

If he was working for Luther, he probably would have shot her father instead of apologizing to him. But just because Hart wasn’t working for Luther didn’t mean she should trust him.

He groaned at her hesitation and reached for his cell. “I’ll call the chief—”

“That’s not it,” she said with a glance at the closed door. “I can’t just walk out of here with you in the middle of the night.”

Her father was bound to have questions if they left the house now. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised to open her door and find him waiting in the hall outside. She had never been a very good liar, so she was already pushing her luck with all the lies she’d already told.

“We’ll go out the way I came in,” Hart told her as he headed toward her open window. After slinging one leg over the sill, he held out his hand to her.

Wendy was scared. Not of falling out the window. She’d climbed out that window a time or two in her youth, but not with a boyfriend. Not even to meet a boyfriend. She’d just climbed out to go to movies that had opened after her midnight curfew. She knew it was a short drop from the window to the porch roof below. Then it was an easy climb down the trestle at the end of the porch to the ground.

No. She wasn’t scared of falling.

She was scared—of spending too much time with Hart Fisher. She suspected she was in almost as much danger from him as she was from Luther Mills.

“You’ve definitely got a problem,” Hart told Chief Lynch as he and Wendy joined him in the conference room at the Payne Protection Agency.

The chief arched a gray brow over blue eyes that were bright and alert despite the late hour. “Did something happen at Ms. Thompson’s home?”

Besides her not waiting outside for him like he’d thought she would be? Besides his making the risky move of breaking in and nearly getting shot?

Hart shook his head. “But that’s the problem. Nobody noticed me sneaking in and out of that house.”

“My father did,” Wendy chimed in with a slight smile.

Hart shuddered as he remembered the older man throwing open the door and training that gun barrel on him. “It’s good that he can protect himself and your mother.” He turned back to the chief, who stood at the end of a long conference table. “Because I don’t trust that unit you have stationed outside their house to protect them.”

The chief flinched.

Hart felt a twinge of regret that he had offended the older man even though Woodrow Lynch shouldn’t have been offended. He hadn’t had much to do with the existing police force. He hadn’t hired or trained them. He’d just recently taken the position of River City police chief after giving up his role as an FBI Bureau chief.

Wendy must have been offended, too, because her elbow jabbed his ribs. Now he felt a twinge of pain—from where her elbow had jabbed him earlier when he’d tried helping her out of the bedroom window. After elbowing him aside, she’d easily slipped over the sill and had moved silently across the roof to the trestle. He’d insisted on going down first, to catch her in case she fell and to make sure nobody could grab her on the ground.

That had been a mistake because, from the ground, all Hart had been able to see was her ass as she’d scrambled down the trestle. She had moved so quickly that she’d slipped. When he’d caught her, his hands cupping her ass, she’d elbowed him again.

That time might have been an accident. This time was definitely not. But Hart wasn’t out of line—not with lives at stake.

“Somebody should have noticed us leaving,” he insisted. What if he had been one of Luther’s crew?

Neither the chief nor Wendy could argue with him now. Lynch sighed. “That’s why I brought in Payne Protection.”

“Why Parker’s team?”

The question came from someone other than Hart. His former coworker Tyce Jackson. The bearded man sat at the table beside Judge Holmes and his daughter, Bella. In the same way Luther had threatened Wendy’s family, the threat he’d used to try to influence the judge was that his daughter was in danger. Woodrow Lynch had been right to call in the Payne Protection Agency. Whatever other motives the chief might have had were beside the point.

Lynch answered Tyce. “I figured Parker’s team had a vested interest in making sure Luther Mills was finally brought to justice.”

Hart winced with regret, frustrated that he hadn’t taken down Luther himself. Tyce might have winced, as well, but with as bushy as his black beard was, it was impossible to tell. When they’d worked Vice—with Parker—they’d all tried for years to bring down Luther. But the drug dealer had been too powerful then. Would he prove to be too powerful now?

“Where is Parker?” Hart asked.

Parker had been in his office earlier, but maybe he’d left to look for some of the others. Not everyone was here yet.

Even as he thought that, the door opened. The assistant district attorney, Jocelyn Gerber, walked in, her bodyguard, former vice cop Landon Myers, behind her.

Then the door opened again and Detective Spencer Dubridge entered midargument with his bodyguard, Keeli Abbott. They appeared to be arguing over who should walk first through the door. The detective might have been trying to be a gentleman, but Keeli, the former RCPD cop, would undoubtedly be offended. When they’d all worked together in Vice, the very capable female officer had accused Dubridge of being a male chauvinist.

What the hell had Parker been thinking when he’d made these matchups? Landon and Keeli might not mind if someone harmed the people they were supposed to be protecting.

“Parker was checking on someone in his office,” the chief told Hart with a smile. He must have known about Felicity.

Hart’s usual babysitter had got sick and had dropped the little girl off at his work. It was a good thing Parker had been here then and that he was good with kids. The backup sitter should be arriving soon if she hadn’t already.

“Then he was going outside to consult with the perimeter guards,” Lynch added.

Parker and the chief had been smart to have extra security for this meeting. If Luther Mills had learned about it, the opportunity of having everyone associated with the trial in one place would have been too great for him to pass up.

Since they had no idea who and where his informants were, Mills might have heard about it. He could have ordered a hit…

Hart tilted his head and listened. But he heard no sound of gunfire.

“The eyewitness isn’t here,” Assistant DA Jocelyn Gerber said, her voice rising with alarm as she looked around the conference room. “Where is she?”

“Parker is checking on that, too,” the chief said.

The woman’s already pale face lost the little bit of color it had had. “This is bad…”

“This is ridiculous,” Wendy said. “We don’t need extra protection. Not even Luther Mills can take out everyone associated with his trial.”

“He doesn’t have to take out everyone,” Gerber said. “Just the eyewitness.” She focused her pale blue eyes on Wendy and added, “And you.”

Because with Wendy gone, it would be difficult to prove that the chain of evidence had remained unbroken. Since she’d collected it from the murder scene, she was the most important link in the chain.

Luther Mills leaned back on the thin mattress in his cell and uttered a sigh. He wouldn’t be here much longer. The plan was already starting to work. He’d just been informed that the eyewitness had gone out a window.

Sure, that hadn’t exactly been part of the plan. The crew he’d sent after her was supposed to have shot her. But her apartment was on the third floor. A fall from that height had probably killed her and the man they’d said had gone out the window with her. Clint Quarters. What the hell had the former vice cop been doing there?

Had he just been checking on Rosie out of guilt? Quarters was the cop who’d got her brother killed by turning him into an informant. That kind of betrayal deserved the death sentence Luther had given Javier Mendez.

It was too bad Luther had had to deliver that same sentence to Rosie. If only she’d learned the lesson her brother should have… If only she had kept her sexy damn mouth shut…

But her testimony wasn’t Luther’s only problem. There was all that evidence from the scene, too.

Evidence that shouldn’t have been found.

That wouldn’t have been found if probably any other crime scene tech had been involved. Everybody knew not to look too closely at a crime he’d committed.

Little Miss By-the-Book Wendy Thompson was as big a pain in Luther’s ass as this damn uncomfortable jailhouse mattress.

But he would get rid of her and the evidence just as easily as he’d got rid of the eyewitness.

Chapter 3

“That’s lucky for you,” Jocelyn Gerber remarked after Rosie Mendez left the conference room with the chief and Parker Payne, her bodyguard, Clint Quarters, trailing behind them.

Wendy was so tired that she didn’t understand what the assistant district attorney was talking about. “What’s lucky for me?”

“That the eyewitness is still alive,” Jocelyn said.

“She might not stay that way if she keeps fighting having a bodyguard,” Hart remarked with a pointed glance at Wendy.

She shivered, but she wasn’t scared for her safety, despite how much Hart and the assistant district attorney seemed to be trying to scare her. She was probably just cold. A thin T-shirt wasn’t enough protection against the chill of the late autumn evening.

And maybe she was a little chilled from the threats, as well. Needing backup, she looked down the conference table at Spencer Dubridge. “Don’t you think this is ridiculous, too?” she asked the detective who had had the pleasure of arresting Luther Mills. “We can protect ourselves.”

He glanced sideways at his female bodyguard and snorted. “I certainly can protect myself better than Bodyguard Barbie can protect me.”

Keeli Abbott glared at him and Wendy suspected Dubridge’s former coworker might be from whom the detective most needed to protect himself.

The conference room door opened and the chief stepped back inside. As if he’d overheard their conversation, he insisted, “Everyone is going to have a bodyguard—” he stared hard at Dubridge “—no matter who they are, until this trial is over and Luther Mills is sentenced to life behind bars.”

Judge Holmes shook his head. “I can’t be party to this conversation.”

“You didn’t need to be here,” the chief told him. “Your daughter is the one being threatened.” Bella Holmes was not a minor; she had to be at least midtwenties.

“And she wouldn’t leave her damn party until her father told her she had to,” Tyce Jackson grumbled through his bushy beard. Even though he didn’t work Vice anymore, he still looked like he had when he’d gone deep undercover.

Hart must have never worked undercover because he’d always been clean-shaved and well-groomed. That was why Wendy had had such a crush on him. He’d always looked so handsome.

Bella Holmes glared at Tyce. “I didn’t know who you were.” Maybe she’d judged him by the way he looked.

Tyce had been one of those vice cops who’d gone so deeply undercover that sometimes it was difficult to return to the life they’d once lived. Wendy suspected that was the case with him.

“If you’d listened to your dad’s message, you wouldn’t have been at that damn party,” Tyce griped.

So Wendy wasn’t the only one who hadn’t played a voice mail that she’d needed to hear. She didn’t feel any better about the situation, though. If she’d listened, she could have spared her dad a surprise and herself having to lie to him again.

“We are not going to stop living our lives just because of these threats,” Wendy reminded the chief. “So how do we explain having bodyguards? How is the rest of the precinct going to feel that you didn’t trust our fellow officers to protect me or Detective Dubridge or even Ms. Gerber?”

“You told your father that I’m your boyfriend,” Hart reminded her. “Maybe we just tell everyone else the same damn thing.”

Heat rushed to her face again, chasing away that chill she’d briefly felt.

Dubridge chuckled. “That’ll work for her. Everybody in the department knows she had a crush on Fisher even back when he was married.”

Wendy gasped in shock that everyone else had known about the crush she’d shared with only a few close coworkers. Maybe Hart was right. She couldn’t trust them.

The detective blithely continued. “But that won’t work for everyone else.”

The judge’s daughter glanced sideways at Tyce and nodded. “I should say not…”

“You’re not my type, either,” Tyce assured her, his voice so deep it was just a rumble.

“And chauvinist pig is certainly not mine,” Keeli Abbott remarked.

The chief groaned. His voice rising with frustration, he yelled, “You’re all supposed to be professionals here. Figure it out!”

“Professional partier maybe,” Tyce Jackson murmured with a glance at Bella Holmes.

She glared at him again.

Wendy didn’t even dare to glance at Hart. What did he think of her? He probably pitied her if he had heard the rumors like Dubridge had. Did he know she’d had a crush on him even when he was married—like some adolescent girl with a crush on a teen idol?

Still arguing, everyone else filed out of the conference room, leaving Wendy and Hart alone. Even the chief had stepped out, deep in conversation with Jocelyn Gerber. But then the door opened again.

Maybe he had returned.

But it wasn’t the chief who had walked through the door; a tiny little blonde girl barreled into the room. “Daddy!” she squealed. “Mr. Parker said you were back.” She jumped onto Hart’s lap.

He closed his arms around her. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he admonished. But the rebuke was gentle, as were his warm brown eyes as he stared lovingly at her.

Hart Fisher had a child?

How had Wendy never heard that?

The little girl noticed Wendy and shyly buried her face in the doll she grasped in her delicate-looking arms. Then she suddenly pulled the doll away from her face and held it up near Wendy’s. Her blue eyes widened with shock as she looked from Wendy to the stuffed doll and then back at Wendy.

“She looks like my dolly, Daddy,” she murmured, her voice soft with awe. “She looks like Annie.”

Wendy felt her face heat all over again with embarrassment. First, she was outed for crushing on her bodyguard like a schoolgirl. Now she was being compared to a rag doll.

Her ego had taken a hell of a beating—far more painful than anything Luther Mills or his crew could have doled out to her.

“My dolly’s name is Annie,” the little girl told her. “What’s your name?”

“Wendy,” she replied. An only child who’d grown up around the teenage football players her father had coached, Wendy wasn’t comfortable around little girls. Despite her mother’s best efforts by forcing pink and frills on her, Wendy had never been a little girl herself. She had always been, and probably still was, a tomboy.

“Winnie,” the little girl repeated—incorrectly.

Wendy didn’t correct her. She just asked, “And what is your name?”

“Felicity…” she said slowly, as if she struggled to pronounce her own name. It was quite the mouthful.

“That’s pretty,” Wendy said.

“You’re pretty,” the little girl said with that slow, shy smile.

Something wrapped around Wendy’s heart, tightly squeezing it. Felicity’s mother was reputedly a former beauty queen. Why in the world would the child think Wendy was pretty?

She was obviously just a very sweet girl.

“You are the pretty one,” Wendy said. Felicity looked like a doll, but the kind made of porcelain and kept behind glass—delicate and beautiful—not one made with burlap and bright red yarn.

The little girl scrambled off her father’s lap and climbed onto Wendy’s. She held out her doll for Wendy to admire. “Grandma made me this doll when I was borned,” she said. “Now Grandma is an angel.”

That grasp on Wendy’s heart tightened even more. “I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured.

“Why?” the little girl asked. She reached out and fingered a lock of Wendy’s curly hair. But her touch was tentative as though she thought it would be hot since it was so red. Wendy smiled reassuringly at her, and the little girl smiled back.

“People say that when they find out you’ve lost someone you love,” Hart explained to his daughter.

Wendy hoped nobody would have cause to say that to her. She could not lose her parents. Luther was just trying to scare her into destroying the evidence. Right? He wouldn’t actually harm them…

But then she remembered how the eyewitness and her bodyguard had looked when they’d joined the meeting earlier. They had gone out a window, too, but not like she and Hart had. No, Rosie and Clint had been forced to jump to avoid being shot to death.