“No,” he said, pushing the sheet away and rising to his feet.
“When you started rubbing your sweet little ass all over my hard-on, I considered it an invitation.”
“I was asleep!”
He located his pants on the floor and jerked them up his hips.
“Some parts of you were awake,” he said, glancing at the points of her nipples, poking at the front of her T- shirt.
She flushed darkly.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” he continued. “The other day you were panting for it.”
“That was before…” She gestured to the middle of the bed, where the cat had been. “And then you just took off afterward, with no explanation.” Her eyes narrowed. “If anyone’s been running hot and cold, it’s you.”
“I couldn’t stay,” he said, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Don’t you get it? I can’t be seen with you.”
“But you said-” She broke off. “Who assigned you to protect me, then?”
“I assigned myself. No one else believes you.”
“You believe me?”
His gaze moved from her bare thighs, and the pale blue panties peeking out under the hem of her T-shirt, to her face. Instead of answering, he collected the rest of his belongings, slipping on his shoulder holster and pocketing his keys.
“I can’t stay here with you again tonight,” he said.
“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t need a bodyguard. Or a babysitter.
“I’ll pick you up after work,” he added.
“Why?”
“You’ll have to spend the night at my house.”
Marc left Sidney’s, bagged cat in hand, and drove to Vincent Veterinary Clinic. After the late dinner last night, he’d slept very little, and knew from the restless sounds Sidney made upstairs that she’d had similar trouble.
Her futon couch wasn’t comfortable, but he’d slept in worse conditions, on cots and in chairs and atop the desert sand with only his fatigues between him and the sun-baked ground.
The problem wasn’t physical comfort, but his own hyperawareness of her. Every time he heard the bedsprings shift, he imagined her long, silky legs, kicking off blankets. He wondered what she was wearing and ached to know how she smelled.
He hadn’t meant to touch her this morning. Hell, he’d been half-asleep himself, and fully aroused by the time he knew what he was doing. The hand he’d reached into her panties still itched to test her heat, but he hadn’t felt anything more than her silky pubic hair under his fingertips before she pulled away. A mere wisp of a touch, the memory of which was powerful enough to make him hard all over again.
He pulled into the parking lot at Vincent Veterinary Clinic, shelving his bedroom fantasies. A glance in the mirror before he left Sidney’s showed a shadowed jaw, wrinkled clothes and bloodshot eyes. He already looked like he’d been on a bender; he didn’t need to walk in with a stiff cock, too.
Inside the clinic, Bill was as sunny and insincere as ever, chatting with a pair of pretty receptionists who gazed up at him through worshipful eyes. When he saw Marc, his expression cooled. “Lieutenant Cruz,” he said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Dead cat,” Marc replied, setting it down on an aluminum examination table with a thud.
“How delightful. Did you run it over with your car, or did your personality kill it?”
One of Bill’s girls giggled uneasily, not sure of the joke.
“I found it on Sidney’s bed, actually,” Marc said, watching the other man’s face for a reaction. “Tied up on its back. Guts all over the place.”
“Go on up front, ladies,” Bill murmured, dismissing his receptionists. With businesslike concentration, he let the cat out of the bag. “Refrigerated?”
“Overnight.”
His eyes raked over Marc’s unshaven face and disheveled clothing. The implication that he’d been with Sidney all night did not appear to sit well with Bill. “She’s not one of your two-bit bimbos, you know,” he remarked as he examined the remains.
“I defer to your greater experience with bimbos,” Marc replied, his voice laced with sarcasm.
“I mean it,” Bill said, looking up. “If you hurt her-”
“You’ll what?”
Bill’s face flushed an angry red. He was much too reserved to engage in a fistfight.
Marc wasn’t. At that moment, he would have gone a round in the parking lot with the smarmy vet, for no greater reason than he didn’t like picturing Bill with Sidney.
“I care about her,” Bill said defiantly, gaining more respect from Marc than if he’d rolled up his cuffs.
“Speaking of bimbos, Sidney’s not really your type, either, is she?” He lowered his voice. “And let’s not pretend we don’t both know exactly what your type is.”
Bill took out a scalpel, cutting into what was left of the cat’s stomach cavity.
“Did she discover you had a secret life, Vincent? Follow you to one of those late-night, underground clubs, catch you out on the prowl?”
His mouth thinned with displeasure.
“She didn’t have to, did she? All she had to do was touch you to know where you’d been.”
Bill’s patience broke. “And what will she find out about you, Cruz? How will you feel when she touches you and recoils, when her face goes pale as she unearths your dirtiest secret? Mommy never loved you? Daddy was never around? The neighborhood priest took you into his rectory for a private confession?”
“Don’t get my lurid past confused with yours, Doc. I’m sure you were every padre’s favorite altar boy.”
Bill lifted his chin a notch, maintaining a thread of dignity. “We all have skeletons, Lieutenant. That’s why Sidney’s not for you. You can’t compartmentalize her, keep her out of your personal life, hold her at a safe distance. It’s all or nothing with her.”
Marc resented being told how to treat Sidney by a man who couldn’t possibly have handled her well. “Tell me what you know about this cat,” he said, changing the subject.
Bill sighed, giving him a brief overview. “It’s emaciated. Not spayed. Nothing in the digestive tract but plant material and mouse bones. Just your basic barn cat, I’d say.”
“Why not a city stray?”
“Teeth are worn and stained. With the coyote population around here, most strays don’t live long enough to get this old.”
“A pet, then?”
“Not one that was well cared for.”
Marc nodded. “What else?”
“Died from blood loss, as far as I can tell.”
From the amount of it on Sidney’s bed, that much had been obvious. The man had killed the cat inside, but had he drugged it first? “Do you know anything about the effects of marijuana on animals?” he asked, thinking aloud.
Bill raised his brows. “Sure. I get a client in every few months with a dog that ‘ate the neighbor’s plant,’ or a cat who ‘got into something.’”
“Doesn’t anyone ever tell the truth?”
“No. It’s silly, because I have no legal obligation to report them to the ASPCA or the police. Nor would I, if asked to,” he added, letting Marc know his patients were granted confidentiality. “The effects are varied, from excitability to extreme lethargy.”
“Loss of consciousness?”
“In extreme cases.”
“As a sedative, how effective would marijuana be?”
Bill shrugged. “Unreliable, in my opinion, but I’m no expert. There aren’t a lot of clinical studies on accidental ingestion of illegal drugs.”
Marc decided it was time for another trip to the crime lab. “Can you bag the stomach contents?”
Sidney brought her cat to the kennel for boarding because she was afraid to leave her at home by herself. Those brief moments she’d thought Marley had been tortured and killed had been excruciating.
