“Something wrong?” Sam asked, concern in his voice.
She pasted on a calm smile. “Just trying to talk myself out of this nice, comfortable car. It’s been a long day.”
“I set up the spare bedroom for you. There are fresh towels in the bathroom if you want a shower.” Sam’s hand settled on the car door, his knuckles brushing lightly against her upper arm. Awareness rippled through her, even though a layer of cotton separated her skin from his.
It had been such a bad idea to agree to stay here with Sam and his daughter, she thought. But it was too late to back out now.
It was too late for a lot of things.
Chapter Nine
Sam settled deeper into the welcoming cushions of the sofa, worrying through what Kristen had just told him. It didn’t seem likely that the school photographer could be the man who’d been stalking his daughter. “Surely the school vetted him before letting him get anywhere near the kids,” he said aloud.
“Probably,” Kris agreed. “But people fall through the cracks of background checks all the time. And besides, the photos notwithstanding, since this guy is really targeting you, not Maddy, he’s likely not a pedophile.”
“So a background check wouldn’t flag him as a risk.”
“Probably not. I’m going to check with the school in the morning to get the photographer’s name.” She reached for the cup of decaf he’d poured for her, closing her fingers tightly around the mug. He saw her hands tremble.
“Are you cold?” He reached behind her to grab the knitted throw from the back of the sofa. As he did so, his chest brushed against her shoulder, and he felt her whole body jerk as if she’d just touched a live wire. Coffee sloshed onto his leg, not quite hot enough to burn.
“I’m so sorry!” Kristen twisted away from him, setting the coffee mug onto a corkwood coaster on the coffee table. She pushed quickly to her feet, a look of mortification on her face as she gazed down at him.
“It’s okay. These jeans have seen worse.” He wasn’t as sure about his mother’s cream-colored sofa, although many more days of Maddy Jane Cooper and the sofa wouldn’t have escaped unscathed anyway.
“I’ll get a towel.” She hurried out of the room toward the bathroom just off the kitchenette, returning with a fluffy green towel. “I’ll pay for the sofa to be cleaned. If it can even be cleaned.” Her brow furrowed. “I’ll buy you a new sofa.”
He laughed softly. “My mother will know how to clean it.”
To his surprise, she looked as if she was on the verge of tears. “My mother used to get really angry at us when we spilled things. I’m usually so good at being neat and careful.”
Something inside him seemed to break open, spilling sympathetic pain into his chest. “Kristen.” He stood, taking a couple of steps toward her until they stood facing each other, only a few inches of space between them.
Her gaze lifted to meet his, and he saw a battle going on behind her dark blue eyes. But he couldn’t tell what parts of her were at war, or which side was winning.
“I should go to bed now,” she said, but she didn’t make a move toward the spare room.
The tone of longing in her voice seemed to echo inside his own head, a match for the restlessness pacing the center of his chest like a hungry wolf. The overwhelming need to touch her eclipsed the myriad reasons why he should step away and let her go, and he reached up to slide a strand of golden hair away from her cheek.
She closed her eyes as his fingers brushed against her skin. Her lips parted, a soft, trembling breath escaping. When he trailed his thumb over the curve of her jaw to settle against her bottom lip, her eyes flickered open.
Fire burned there, out of control. It seemed to draw out the fierce flames coursing through his blood, until his whole body burned with hunger. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and drew her to him, covering her mouth with his.
Her response wasn’t tentative or shy. She wound her arms around his waist, pressing her body hard against his. Her mouth moved wildly, matching his passion until his head spun from the sensation.
He ran his hands down her back, tracing the curves and planes, drawing a map of her body in his mind and memorizing the landmarks-the lean, hard muscles of her back, the dipping valley of her waist, the sweet swell of her buttocks.
He tasted coffee on her tongue, dark and rich, with just a hint of sweetness. Lifting one hand to the back of her head, he held her in place so he could deepen the kiss, drinking in the taste and feel of her. She answered, kiss for kiss, sliding her hands up his chest, gathering bunches of his cotton T-shirt in her trembling fists.
She dragged her mouth away for a moment. “I can’t-” She didn’t finish before she rose to her toes and kissed him again, threading her fingers through his hair and drawing him closer.
“Daddy!” Maddy’s voice, tinged with panic, broke through the heated haze overtaking his brain. He felt Kristen’s body jerk against his, as if the sound of his daughter’s voice had hit her like a bucket of cold water. She scurried away from him, nearly tripping over the coffee table. She caught herself and moved toward the door to the spare bedroom.
“Good night,” she said, her voice strangled.
He didn’t want to leave things like this between them, not with the stricken look of horror on her face. But Maddy called for him again, a rising tone of distress in her voice.
“Don’t go to bed yet,” he urged Kristen, and hurried to his daughter’s room, switching on the overhead light.
Maddy sat upright in her bed, blinking at the sudden flood of brightness. He could tell she was only half-awake, gripped by whatever nightmare had dragged her out of her peaceful sleep.
He sat on the bed beside her, and she crawled into his lap, wrapping her little hands tightly around his neck. “Don’ wanna go with Mommy,” she whimpered.
“It’s okay, baby. You’re staying right here with me, you hear me?” He kissed her moist cheek, his heart twisting inside. He’d thought it would be good for her to have Norah in her life, but maybe they’d left it too late. So soon after the attack on Cissy, having her mother come to town had been just one more disruption in her life at the worst possible time.
She settled against him, already drifting back to sleep. When he felt her grip on his neck loosen and her breathing grow slow and even, he laid her back against her pillows. Standing, he tucked her blanket firmly around her and stepped back, looking down at his sleeping daughter with his heart trapped firmly in his throat.
The last few days had turned their lives upside down, but one thing hadn’t changed: he would do anything in his power to protect his child, whether it was from a mystery assailant or her absent mother.
Or a mercurial, enigmatic police detective with a troubled past, he added silently, the phantom touch of Kristen’s mouth still lingering on his lips.
He closed the door quietly behind him and headed back to the living room, bracing himself to have a long, honest and almost certainly uncomfortable talk with Kristen Tandy.
But she was nowhere to be found.
STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.
Kristen stopped her car at the intersection with the main highway, pressing her hot forehead against the cool curve of the steering wheel, the last five minutes of her life running through her mind like a recurring nightmare.
How could she have let Sam Cooper kiss her? Hadn’t she just been warning herself about the danger of entanglements with crime victims she was trying to help? It broke every rule of ethics in the book, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration the extra-special problems that Sam Cooper and his motherless daughter posed.
No way in hell could Kristen ever let herself get involved with a man with a kid. She had figured out a long time ago that she was a bad risk for motherhood. Her genetics alone, with her crazy, homicidal mother and her
