Just One Look

Joanne Rock

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Bernice Rock,

the best mother-in-law in the whole world.

Thank you for all the great dinners, the moral

support and the many times you’ve watched the

boys so I could attend writer conferences or go

out on a date with your son. I would have never

gotten my porch painted without you!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Prologue

RED TOOK GREAT PLEASURE from hiding in plain sight.

The assistant producer mingled with the B-movie star’s entourage, an invitation to another studio’s set never difficult to procure if you had connections.

God bless connections. In New York’s underground film industry, you could buy your way to the top faster with the right contacts than you could with a big schlong or double D boobs. And while Red might not have the kind of star power that dingbat John de Milo possessed in the industry, at least Red knew how to make friends and blend in on the bedroom set of a cable after-dark special that wasn’t quite porn but wouldn’t make the cut as an R-rated movie. In a business full of insecurity, appearing nonthreatening to all egomaniac parties concerned was critical to longevity. That fine art of flying under the radar helped when it came to treading the outside borders of what was legal in filmmaking. Plus, the anonymity allowed Red to lurk right underneath Tabitha Everhart’s nose.

“Quiet on the set,” the director called to calm the din of the crowd in a studio that had more of a party atmosphere than any Hollywood production.

Actor John de Milo was the last one to shut his trap, but then he looked like he was tripping on the sidelines of the set—not a good thing for a man who’d been privy to sensitive information once upon a time. Red would have to do something about that.

Tabitha Everhart hadn’t opened her mouth all day, her visit to the set where she’d been hired to act as a body double next week just a chance to observe the filming in action. But just because Tabitha was quiet today didn’t mean she would be forever. Tabitha was one of very few people who had all the necessary pieces to uncover Red’s secrets.

“Action!” The director’s call started the sex scene in motion and the bedroom backdrop became a playground for the three so-called actors intent on using the cable movie for a jump to more legitimate shows.

This was the upscale version of porn? Red’s producer’s eye took a jaundiced view of a piece that wouldn’t make nearly as much as something spicier.

If only Tabitha had consented to making that erotic film long ago. She would have been one of the industry’s stars and she’d never be hungry for work again. Her high-profile divorce wouldn’t have hurt the kind of career she could have had. As it was, Tabitha struggled financially.

A damn shame she had missed such an opportunity. And an even bigger shame that she knew too much. There was an old-school sweetness about Tabitha that everyone admired—even her egomaniac colleagues. In this business, that was saying something.

The actors moaned and sighed over one another as they bent over the bed without really taking off anything substantial yet, their bodies just needed for close ups of skin and lips, closed eyelids and scratching fingernails. But the sexual pantomime continued for an audience of at least twenty-five, with John de Milo acting out an exaggerated version of the male star’s hip-driving thrusts in the shadows of the set well behind the director.

Tabitha ignored the guy, studiously observing the scene in front of her rather than acknowledging the actor’s dry-humping technique. Red suspected she’d flee the set as soon as the director called cut.

Then Red would be back to following her more discreetly. No more hiding in plain sight.

Because no matter that Tabitha didn’t realize she’d walked away with a key piece of information about Red during her divorce, the body double would have to be silenced.

1

KEEPING A CLOSE REIN on his dog’s leash, Warren Vitalis rounded the corner of Bank Street and Greenwich Avenue with the same wary alertness of any cop who’d been on the job for at least a decade. Around every bend lurked the possibility of danger, even for an off-duty detective out taking his mutt for a run.

“Hi, Warren.” Two middle-aged men strolling down Bank Street arm in arm greeted Warren instead of any danger.

“You guys are done early,” Warren shouted back as he sped past the partners who shared ownership of a restaurant and an antique store on the route Warren and Buster ran every night. “Is business slow?”

“Bite your tongue, Detective,” the slighter man—Scott—called back. “We just hired help to close up at night so we can turn in early. We’re not the party boys we used to be.”

Warren flashed a thumbs-up before gaining speed through a construction zone where the street was covered by a temporary wooden tunnel. Notorious places for crime, the passageways provided plenty of nooks for thieves to hide, but Buster didn’t look worried. The Akida-German shepherd mix charged into the darkness with typical speed. Warren might not be on duty tonight and he wasn’t in his own precinct, but he still considered this section of the West Village to be his beat since he lived a couple of blocks over. If he could provide a little extra safety for Scott and DeShaun, the restaurateurs, or for the handful of people who were out for a walk at 11:00 p.m., he felt a little more worthy of his badge.

Either that, or maybe riding a desk at the precinct for half his shift hours lately simply made him itchy to be back on the streets. His ballistics expertise had made for a fast career rise after a rough start, but it had also tied him to cold case files more often than he cared to remember. As rewarding as it might be to catch a perp roaming free ten years after the guy committed his crime, Warren missed the adrenaline rush that came with working cases in progress.

Slowing down at a shuffling noise between the scaffolding posts inside the construction tunnel, he spotted a homeless guy catching a few z’s on a length of cardboard. Buster circled back to stand by Warren’s legs, vigilant even when the threat level was low.

“Hey, Larry.” In his twelve years on the force, Warren had learned you couldn’t save every homeless guy on the street. That didn’t stop him from at least recognizing them, since one of the biggest threats to a vagrant’s already tenuous grip on their pride was fading from the public consciousness all together. If society refused to see these people, sooner or later they vanished.

There was a time in Warren’s life where he’d identified more than Larry would ever know.

“Larry?”

Warren started to lean down to make sure the guy was still breathing at the same time Buster’s ears straightened. A low growl started in the dog’s throat, but the warning wasn’t directed toward the drunk passed out with a bottle of Night Train still clutched in one hand. Buster’s sudden wariness was focused at the far end of the construction tunnel.

Straightening, Warren listened to the night noises outside the thin plywood walls that housed the laborers from cold winter winds whipping past. Cars rushing by, tires clunking over maintenance hole covers, and the music from a nearby bar were all the usual sounds of this block.

Until a shot fired.

Sprinting toward the echo the same time as his dog, Warren raced headlong through the tunnel, past endless scaffolding and walls that prevented a clear sight of the street. Tires squealed outside as a car took off, but by the time he emerged from the Gotham City passageway, the vehicle must have already turned up Hudson or a road farther down.

He would have followed his sense of hearing to chase a potential license plate, his pace as fast as any detective in the city thanks to numerous Ironman competitions over the years, but already he could hear a woman screaming from a building nearby.

Déjà vu.

It was the worst night of his life all over again.

LONG, FROZEN MINUTES passed before Tabitha Everhart could take a breath. In reality it had probably only been half a minute. The shriek of squealing tires had faded to the normal rush of late-night traffic outside her street-level living room window. The methodic thump of cars flying over a maintenance hole cover echoed the erratic beat of her heart in the aftermath of the shot that had pierced her window, shattering it in a vast network of cracks that radiated out from one perfectly round hole in the window.

Time seemed suspended, her gaze locked on the horrible glass spiderweb that meant her world wasn’t nearly as safe a she’d been hoping.

“Police. Open up!”

The pounding at the door rattled its way through her momentary daze, startling up full-blown panic. If the police were at her door, wouldn’t she have heard sirens? Seen a flashing light outside the broken glass?

Oh, God.

She scrambled toward her phone. Dialed. Fumbled. Dialed again.

The pounding continued. Harder. More ominous.

The man at her door broke through, half falling on the floor in a roll he leaped out of, his gun drawn.

“Has anyone been hit?” He asked the question with the weapon trained on her as his gaze spun around the room.

Words failed her. He was going to shoot her.

She clutched the phone in her hand, her body half sprawled across her coffee table in the race to dial 911.

“I—” Her throat closed. And then the strangest words came to mind despite her fear.

“Since when do the cops point guns at the victims?” Anger at long-ago police officers who’d once shown up at her door for a domestic dispute couldn’t help but influence her reaction to this man.

But oh, God, would he answer her stupid question by shooting her?

“Since we have no way of knowing who’s a victim and who’s a whacked-out killer, ma’am. Warren Vitalis, NYPD.” He dug in a back pocket and came up with a leather case that unfolded to show a badge and official-looking identification.

Some of the unreasonable anger fizzled away. Fear returned to weaken her knees.

“May I see?” She kept the phone to her ear and told herself she needed to put 911 on speed dial even though she prayed she’d never have to use it again after tonight.

Her heart still raced from the rush of adrenaline and mind-numbing fear that had robbed her of the ability to remember three simple digits. Nine. One. One.

“Look all you want.” He winged over the badge like a Frisbee while he glanced around her humble apartment and makeshift decorating before slowly lowering his gun. “You’re alone in the residence?”

She blinked and nodded quickly, a wealth of unexpected emotion suddenly clogging her throat. She ought to know by now that if you suppress your fears long enough they’ll come out to bite you in the butt even harder when you’re not looking.

Her brain still didn’t seem to be functioning as she stared at his identification labeling him as Detective Warren Vitalis of the New York Police Department, true to his word. If she’d only seen his headshot, she would think he looked like a cold, hard man despite the attractive features. He wore his hair so tightly cropped he could have been a marine, the shorn hint of dark hair making him appear dangerous.

A round diamond rested in one ear, moving him more in the category of gangster than military man. She looked up at him now to see the bright white stone wink in the muted streetlight filtering in through sheer curtains that fluttered in the wind now that a hole had been blown through the window.

He studied the broken pattern of the glass for long moments before busting out a pocketsize plastic ruler with a hinge in the middle that allowed it to fold in half. But then she watched him angle the two sides near the bullet hole and realized the tool must have been a protractor since it seemed to measure angles, too.

Deep-set green eyes looked over at her suddenly, as if he just remembered her presence.

“Feel free to call my department, Miss—?”

“Everhart.” She stood, dropping the phone back into its cradle before returning his badge. “Tabitha Everhart.”

He took the leather case from her hand, their fingers brushing briefly. The current of awareness surprised her since it was something she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Had he felt the jolt?

Yanking her hand back, she recalled her promise to herself when she first realized she needed to leave her ex. No more men for a while—sizzle or no sizzle.

“Warren Vitalis. I’m not on duty tonight. I just happened to be walking my dog when I heard a shot. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Just startled.” She felt as though she’d been living on too much sugar and caffeine—all spun up but shaky and empty. “You said you were walking a dog?”

“Buster’s outside. He’s not a police dog so he didn’t get to come in.” The detective packed up his protractor and shifted his attention to the back of her sofa. He frowned at a dark mark in the middle of the worn fabric. A bullet hole. “Got a plastic bag or some household gloves?”

Tabitha could only stare at the bullet lodged in her couch. The bullet that had invaded her privacy, her life, her safety.

“Ms. Everhart?” His voice softened on the syllables of her name, making her eyes burn with the realization that she could be in serious danger.

“Yes.” Grateful for a job that would pry her eyes away from the tiny bit of metal that could have been deadly, she raced into the kitchen before she lost control of her emotions. Ten seconds with her head under a faucet pouring cold water on her face and she’d be okay.

Please God, let her be okay.

It wasn’t until a bit of lace around her thighs snagged on a shelf in the pantry as she leaned in for the sand-wich-sized plastic bags that she remembered she’d been wearing a silky little nightgown around her apartment tonight. In an effort to ward off a dark mood she’d tried to pamper herself and feel beautiful, to soak her toes in a foot bath and luxuriate in her best silk nightie, instead of hanging out in a ten-year-old T-shirt and flannel pajamas with her hair in a ponytail.

No wonder Detective Vitalis had quickly busied himself with crime-scene investigation instead of asking her about what happened.

She’d been giving the man a free show he’d been too polite to point out.

WARREN THANKED JESUS, Mary and Joseph for the clothes Tabitha Everhart had decided to put on while she’d been retrieving a plastic bag and he’d called for backup. At least now, he could make eye contact with the sizzling redhead for more than two seconds. The inherent male need to check her out had eased since she’d ditched a mostly transparent swatch of lace and silk for the thorough coverage of flannel pajama bottoms and a bulky fisherman’s sweater that hid a truly stellar set of curves.

If only his memory hadn’t recalled the sight of her half-naked quite so well.

Petite and delicate-boned, she’d inherited the superfair skin that often goes with red hair, the bridge of her nose dusted with light freckles. Thin, arched eyebrows outlined wide brown eyes and her high cheekbones glowed a pink shade that hadn’t been there before she left the room.

He sat across from her now on a battered wooden rocker draped with a pink silk scarf, making a few notes while she scratched Buster’s head. He’d tried to tell her that Buster was a dog he’d rescued, a candidate for doggy death row because he’d bitten his former owner, even though Warren had never seen any evidence of viciousness. The dog was protective—sure. But what cop wouldn’t appreciate a canine that didn’t let anyone get the drop on him? And Buster had always liked women best anyway, the damn player. The animal lay with his head on Tabitha’s thigh, giving Warren surreptitious looks of superiority out of one contented brown eye.

“You can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt you or even just harass you? Since the curtains aren’t completely opaque, I have to think the shooter didn’t aim to hit you. Did you realize how visible you are from the street?”

He didn’t mean to censure her for her wardrobe choices, but damn. She needed heavier curtains if she was going to wander around in a street-level apartment dressed in that outfit she’d been wearing. Residual heat flared to life all over again at the memory.

“Oh. I guess not.” Her hand stilled on the dog’s head. “And no one I know would resort to such openly brutal actions. In my business, people tend to do more damage to one another at a social level. You know, slight someone at a party or start a rumor about an enemy.”

He wondered if people like her had any idea how privileged they were to live in that kind of world, a far cry from the open cruelty Warren had witnessed his whole life.

“A patrol car will be here soon to go over the scene more thoroughly, but as long as I’m here we could get a few of the questions out of the way.” When she didn’t protest, he followed up on her last comment. “Where do you work?”

“I’m a body double.” The answering lift of her chin was slight but noticeable.

He wondered why the job was cause to be defensive.

“Is there much call for that kind of work in New York?” He pictured that as a Hollywood profession, but he could certainly see this woman fulfilling that kind of role.

And thanks for the reminder of the high, full breasts and sweetly puckered nipples that he’d glimpsed beneath her negligee. He’d be lucky to get through this interview without breaking into a sweat.

“I keep busy enough. A lot of the soap operas are shot in New York and now that they allow more skin on daytime television, the actresses are put in more compromising positions than ever before. If they don’t feel comfortable with a shower scene or a love scene, I stand in for the most brazen moments.”

“Any resentment among your peers for how much work you get or jealousy from the women you stand in for?”

She looked down at Buster and cupped his ear as she stroked his fur. Was she thinking or stalling?

“My ex-husband had affairs with a few of the women on daytime TV, but I don’t see why any of them would resent me these days. My husband and I parted ways nearly a year ago and the divorce has been final for months.”

That sounded like a recipe for disaster. And what kind of scumbag landed a wife like this woman and then turned around and sabotaged it by screwing around behind her back?

Even Buster lifted his head long enough to look incensed.

“Was the divorce contentious?” He tried to maintain an open mind about the woman. She might be hot, but for all Warren knew she could be possessive or high maintenance. Women in film had a certain reputation, after all.

“He cheated on me with multiple women, Detective. It was definitely difficult.” Her lips pursed tight. Held.

“But you don’t think he’d want to hurt you?”

“Not with violence.”

“Ms. Everhart, I’m going to be honest with you and say I think there’s a decent chance your window was pierced by stray gunfire from a dispute that didn’t involve you. But you can’t be too careful when there was only one bullet fired in a neighborhood that doesn’t see a lot of random criminal mischief.” He asked her for the names of the women her husband slept with as well as the ex himself before scribbling them down on a pilfered piece of paper from a stray notebook on her overloaded coffee table. “So let the police help you decide who might be violent and who isn’t before you withhold information about a recent divorce. Are you sure there’s no one else in your life that might want to make trouble for you?”

“No one that I’m aware of.” She clutched a bright yellow satin throw pillow to her chest, the movement jerky. Uneasy.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right alone tonight?” He hated it that this had happened on his block, the same route he jogged every night and considered his backyard. “You definitely don’t want to stay in your apartment with the window compromised and the lock broken on your door.”

He regretted the need to bust in here, but she could have been hurt…or worse.

Tonight’s incident with Tabitha hadn’t exactly mirrored the hellish night of his sixteenth birthday, but the scream and the gunshot had freaked him out for a few minutes, had him busting into her apartment like a SWAT guy. But the mental trip down memory lane never failed to bring out his inner vigilante—the need to protect that went beyond his badge.

“I’ll be fine. I’m sure the shot wasn’t meant for my window and I’ll call tomorrow to have the glass replaced.”

“But you won’t try to stay here.” He didn’t want her anywhere near the apartment until they’d had the chance to go over everything in detail.

He’d seen the shell casing embedded in the back of her couch earlier and he’d toyed with the idea of removing it but it had been lodged tightly in a hardwood interior and he didn’t want to compromise the scene without the proper tools. Besides, seeing a bullet pried out of their possessions tended to freak some people out and he hadn’t had enough time to accomplish the task while she’d been out of the room. As a longtime ballistics expert, Warren already knew the shell belonged to a .38, a weapon that wasn’t exactly the firearm of choice of today’s bigger-is-better street thugs.

“I can stay at a hotel tonight. I’ll be okay.”

Something about her tone made him think she was trying hard to convince herself more than him. But then, Warren would bet his badge this woman was an expert in talking herself through hardship. Her whole apartment spoke of hard times covered over with brightly decorated facades, optimism in the face of anguish. He had to admire that kind of grit.

“Fine. There’s just one more thing. I’ll run a few tests on the bullet just to see if anything unusual comes up, but is there any chance you know anyone who carries a .38?”

She stilled. Buster nudged his snout back under her hand to restart her attentions.

“Ms. Everhart?”

“Call me Tabitha.” She scratched the dog idly but didn’t meet Warren’s gaze. “I don’t know any sane person who would carry a gun around the streets of New York, Detective.”

That answer begged a follow-up question, but she stood abruptly and strode toward the kitchen, her bare feet falling with the smallest of sounds on the hardwood floors covered with thin throw rugs.

“Can I get you some water? You said you were out running.” She came back with a bottle for him and then hastened to the sink to fill a bowl for Buster. “You both must be thirsty.”

When she had run out of activity and stood awkwardly beside her dining room table some twelve feet away from him, Warren asked the question she so obviously didn’t want to answer. The lights of an approaching squad car reflected blue and red through the window, broadcasting the arrival of his backup.

“Who owns a .38, Tabitha?”

She paused for a long moment, then cocked a hip against a lopsided table propped up by a stack of books on one end, the movement of her body a subtle reminder of the famous curves that hid beneath the big sweater.

“Honestly, Detective? I do.”

2

TABITHA SAT ON the fire escape outside her on-location shoot the next afternoon and tilted her face up toward the sun’s rays. Wrapped in her winter coat over a bathrobe, she waited for her call to the set and tried to swallow down the attack of nerves that always came with her body double work.

“We’ll be ready for you in just a minute, Tabitha,” one of the set assistants called out the door where she sat in a cast-iron patio chair chilled from months of a New York winter.

“Thanks.” She smiled weakly, her game face not quite assembled yet after last night’s stray bullet scare and a sexy cop diving headfirst through the front door.

Oddly, she half wondered which event had rattled her more. The bullet had been scary, no doubt. But the man…wow. After her divorce, warm feelings for men in general had sort of disappeared. And there was a certain comfort in that lack of emotion after life kicked your butt. Last night had been a wake-up call to her snoozing hormones, however. Warren Vitalis ignited some serious heat with just one look.

In the distance she heard a police siren. Would she ever see the hot detective again? Or had he handed over her case to the patrol cops who had shown up later in the evening after she’d admitted the only person she knew with a .38 was her? Detective Vitalis’s suggestion that her ex could have been involved in the shooting last night was ludicrous since her former husband had always been far too concerned with appearances and what other people thought of him to lower himself to gangster tactics.

No, Manny Redding had too many other more subtle weapons to hurt her. The cheating creep.

“We’re ready now, Tabitha,” the set assistant called out, ending any time for psyching herself up for this scene.

Damn it.

Today wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill soap opera shower scene. Tabitha had been a little nervous about this gig—a prime-time movie special for a cable network—from the moment she’d learned she would be standing in for the actress playing a prostitute. Worse, the prostitute was in her late teens and Tabitha’s body was clearly that of a woman on the far side of twenty-five. She’d be thirty next year. Could she still pass off her bod as a nineteen-year-old’s?

Planting one foot in front of the other, she congratulated herself that at least she hadn’t resorted to any of the unhealthy eating tactics she’d struggled with in the past. She’d worked her tail off for the lean muscle tone she had these days. One of the best benefits of her spectacularly messy divorce was the clear head that allowed her to be healthy again. She’d silenced her ex-husband’s voice in her head telling her she wasn’t cut out to be on film. That she shouldn’t share her talents with the world when he needed her working behind the scenes for him.

And finally, that no other man should look at his wife.

The subtle possessiveness that started off as sort of endearing eventually became suffocating and for a few dark months toward the end she’d staved off the anxiety with food. The bulimia she’d struggled with as a teen resurfaced with a vengeance.

She was under control again now. Every day that she bared her body for the camera now soothed a little more of her wounded ego and healed the part of her that knew she’d stayed in a bad marriage for too long. Besides, body double work was just a means to an end to finance her return to filmmaking.

Allowing her coat to slide off her shoulders, she didn’t bother counting the number of people on the closed set the way she used to when she first started life as a body double. By now, she didn’t care how many people saw her mostly naked because she was stronger. More fearless.

And screw them if they couldn’t appreciate an almost thirty-year-old’s body forged of sweat and discipline.

Letting the bathrobe slip from her shoulders, she allowed the world to see her flesh-toned body stocking that covered only the most crucial parts. The custom-made nude thong matched her skin color exactly. The pasties she wore on her nipples weren’t half as cute as the one Janet Jackson had once famously displayed to the world, but Tabitha’s more functional brand made sure her nipples didn’t show up unexpectedly in any camera shots.

There were no costume malfunctions when Tabitha was in charge.

Tabitha walked toward the bed where the scene called for her to fake a sexual encounter with the aging former Hollywood bad boy who’d been relegated to made-for-TV movies after hitting rehab too many times. He was handsome enough, she supposed, if you liked a guy in makeup with a sock covering his privates.

But as Tabitha strode toward the bed, her mind suddenly replaced the actor with a vision of Detective Warren Vitalis lying between those sheets waiting for her, his virile male body taking up much more of the bed than her current co-star.

A wave of want halted her in her tracks and sent pleasurable shivers over her bare skin.

Ooh.

There couldn’t have been a more supremely bad time for her mind to play tricks on her or for her hibernating libido to come roaring back to life. Her cheeks flushed, not from embarrassment so much as that preorgasmic full body tingle she’d only vaguely remembered until this moment. Her nipples tightened beneath their cover-ups and she half feared the self-adhesive pasties would pop right off her suddenly excited body.

Scavenging every bit of willpower she possessed, she forced herself to see the makeup line on her co-star’s neck, to remember where she was and that she wanted to get this scene over with. The sexy detective might have her fantasizing, but she couldn’t allow wishful thinking to cloud her vision ever again.

Lust had landed her in the worst sort of marriage. She’d be damned if something so insubstantial as sexual attraction would ever steer her into the arms of any man who didn’t see beyond the surface to appreciate the woman inside.

WARREN STALKED THROUGH the old building a block behind Central Park West in search of the camera crew. In search of one woman in particular. Tabitha’s casting agent had given Warren a hell of a runaround this morning, but once he’d finally pried an address out of the guy, Warren had hightailed it to the shoot to have another crack at the closemouthed body double.

She hadn’t been totally honest with him the night before and that pissed him off. She’d admitted to owning a .38 that had been a gift from her husband while they’d been married. What she hadn’t bothered sharing was the fact that it had been reported stolen long before her divorce was finalized.

She also hadn’t bothered sharing the fact that her divorce had been acrimonious and high-profile since her ex was a powerful New York producer. Why would she want to protect a guy who—judging by the claims volleyed at her in the tabloids—had been determined to drag her name through the mud during divorce proceedings?

The questions gnawed away at him after he’d gone to the station to file an incident report and do a little homework. Tabitha’s vacant eyes when he’d first entered her apartment had eaten at his conscience, telling him she’d probably been in shock when he dove into her apartment and pointed a gun at her.

“Detective Vitalis, NYPD.” He announced himself at the door once he found the right apartment and then flashed his badge a few more times to gain access to the room where Tabitha was shooting.

Several crewmembers tried to explain the concept of “closed set” to him on his way in, but he’d always been good with people and adept at using the authority of his position to get where he needed to be. He didn’t want to stop the shoot, but he had to admit a definite interest in seeing Tabitha Everhart at work.

And when was the last time he’d felt that kind of intense interest in any woman? Occasional nights with holster groupies had never engendered the kind of heat Tabitha had with nothing beyond her presence.

Slipping silently into the huge master suite where her scene was being shot, however, he began to realize maybe he didn’t need to see this. The room was darkened but crowded with camera people and crewmembers despite the “closed” label. At the center of the silent movement on the fringes of the room, Tabitha Everhart sat on top of a smug-looking bastard in a bed of rumpled white sheets and fat pillows. The two of them were highlighted by umbrella lights and spotlights with diffusers stretched over the lamps. The perfect lighting illuminated every square inch of Tabitha’s barely covered skin.

Warren had thought for one heart-stopping instant that she was buck naked on top of the guy, but soon he’d spotted the tiny cups that hugged her nipples and the hint of flesh-toned strap around her hip that gave away she must be wearing panties.

Her deep red hair was pinned up, possibly to make sure it was kept out of the shot. The director seemed fixated on filming the actor’s hands on Tabitha’s back, judging by the monitors stationed near his camera. The shoot seemed focused on body parts instead of facial expressions. That made sense given Tabitha’s job, but it was disconcerting as hell to watch lovemaking broken down into a step-by-step pantomime that seemed cold and calculated, stilted and awkward.

Once the fascination with the strange process wore off, Warren could focus on details besides the fact that Tabitha was mostly naked. He studied her expression and found her miles away from her job as if she consciously disconnected from the work. It bothered him to realize he liked that idea because her co-star looked totally into the moment, the guy’s superior “I’m the stud of the free world” expression really getting on Warren’s nerves.

But Tabitha was clearly distracted, her body moving automatically when the director called for her to slide her hand up her own thigh or—worse—slide her hand up the actor’s thigh.

How had she learned to disassociate herself from those touches, the practiced intimacy of the camera shots? Was it simply the mark of a professional body double to perform her duties with such clear distance? Or had Tabitha Everhart learned to remove herself from her work for personal reasons? Maybe she was unhappy with the job. Bored. Did she take it for granted that she was a beautiful woman whose curves were so perfect that other women clamored for her to stand in their place?

The thought bugged him almost as much as the fact that she’d lied to him through omission the night before. After growing up in a violent household based on keeping up appearances, Warren didn’t appreciate people who hid dangerous secrets. It wouldn’t matter how many thieves, dealers or murderers Warren kept off the streets through his job. He’d never bring his father back. He’d never fix the fact that he’d kept his family’s secrets until all their lives imploded.

“That’s a good take,” the director shouted, interrupting the dark directions of Warren’s thoughts. “Let’s get Maureen back in here,” the director continued, releasing Tabitha from her close clinch with the actor who held her a second too long after the shot was finished.

Was there something going on between her and the actor? Warren realized he didn’t like that idea at all. Not that he had any designs on the hot divorcée, especially if a deceptive personality went along with those killer curves.

But Warren recognized her cohort actor as a former big-league star who’d been a notorious womanizer and drug user.

The guy smiled wolfishly at Tabitha’s back view as she walked away from the set toward the door to the makeup room behind where Warren stood. She didn’t see him for a moment, her eyes blinking against the change in light, and Warren did all he could to keep his jaw off the ground at the sight of her. Heat rushed south along with his blood and his sense.

She had the kind of body men went stupid over. Lush, high breasts that swayed just enough when she walked to advertise the wares were 100 percent authentic gifts from God and not a surgeon. He’d only just begun to take the scenic journey to her hips when an assistant hurried over to give her a long white bathrobe to wrap herself in. A good thing since it was time for Warren to go to work.

He cleared his throat and breathed in a steadying gulp of air. Too bad her scent filtered through, seducing his senses with the knowledge of how she smelled.

Clean. Like soap rather than fragrance. The intimate realization made him want to know what her hair smelled like, too. Hell.

“Tabitha, may I speak to you a moment if you’re done with your day?”

He already knew she was finished since one of the assistants had told him the bed scene was her only responsibility to the production today. But after she’d given him half answers the night before, he was curious to see how far she would go to avoid speaking to him again.

“Detective.” Her hand flew to the collar of her robe, where she clutched the neckline just long enough to be sure it was closed. An odd response from a woman who’d just walked around a bedroom mostly naked in front of at least ten other people. Did he make her uncomfortable? Or was she as aware of the heat between them as him?

“Do you have a minute?” he pressed, struggling to keep his thoughts on the investigation. He was ready for some answers about her gun, the shot through her window and a marriage that had gone down in flames in a very public fashion.

“Of course.” She tugged at the clip in her hair and brought the whole red mass falling down around her shoulders in unruly disarray. “Just give me a minute to change and I’ll meet you by the front door.”

Nodding, Warren headed to the living area of the spacious apartment that someone had given over to the day’s shoot. He settled in on a sofa to wait for Tabitha and tried not to imagine her peeling off those tiny pasties in a room down the hall.

WHEN SHE CAUGHT HERSELF swiping a brush through her hair for at least the fiftieth time, Tabitha realized she couldn’t stall any longer on the inevitable talk with Detective Vitalis.

She’d changed into a long khaki skirt and a yellow tank with a sweater over it, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of nakedness around him since he’d first seen her in a skimpy nightgown and now he’d watched her work, for heaven knew how long, in little more than a thong. Surely if she made it through today’s interview with her head held high she could call her old insecurities dead and gone.

And there was a chance she could have done it if only she had a few more layers of clothes. A burka maybe. Or a poncho at the very least. Her attraction to the man made her feel far more naked and aware of herself than her body double gig.

Tucking her brush back in her work bag, she said goodbye to the stylist and the makeup person before venturing out into the ultramodern living room furnished with white plastic cubes for tables and white sectional pieces that could be moved all around the room for optimal seating. Manny had hired a decorator to do their house in all white once, a decorating palette as cold and unforgiving as their marriage had eventually become.

Tabitha’s apartment as a single woman looked like a living patchwork quilt with colors thrown everywhere as vivid reminders she’d survived the isolating hell of marriage Siberia.

The detective stood as she entered the room that suddenly reminded her of a padded cell for crazy people. And while Tabitha appreciated the well-bred manners of a man who stood when a woman came in the room, she needed to be out of this apartment without delay.

“Hi, Detective. Sorry it took me so long, but I wondered if we could move our conversation to somewhere more private and less…white?” She didn’t know how else to say it, but getting away from the inside of this icebox room was high on her list of immediate priorities.

Being shot at made a woman feel vulnerable enough without having the added complications of knee-weakening attraction and memories of a bad marriage to go with it. The attraction she couldn’t help. But the surroundings had to go.

“No problem.” He didn’t hesitate, only moved toward the door to open it for her. “Where would you like to go?”

“There’s a coffee shop a few blocks down. I got a latte there on my way in this morning.” She could breathe again once they left the apartment behind them.

“Not exactly more private, is it?” They took the stairs down two flights since the old-fashioned building had a beautiful staircase central to the residence, instead of the emergency stairwells built on new structures like an afterthought.

“Actually, it was really quiet earlier, but if you have another idea?” She adjusted the strap of her work tote on her shoulder as they left the building and strode out onto the street into mild afternoon pedestrian traffic. The neighborhood was more residential than commercial, with elegant facades and a wealth of domestic help walking dogs, parking cars and carrying groceries into the buildings where they worked.

“No. That’s fine. But what have you got against white?”

“It’s a long story I refuse to bore anyone with. Not even a detective intent on asking me questions.” Her mood lifted out on the street, her comfort level higher hanging out with dog walkers and personal shoppers than the high-powered people who could afford those luxuries.

“I wouldn’t be here today, Tabitha, if you’d been honest with me last night.”

That halted her in her tracks.

“I was very honest with you.” She’d admitted she owned a gun—a weapon forced on her by Manny as a Christmas gift one year.

She pointed out the coffee shop as they cleared the next street, her apprehension returning as quickly as it had fled. Her state of agitation wasn’t helped by the fact that Warren’s strong arm reached around behind her to open the door, his torso coming in momentary contact with her back. Awareness skittered down her spine to pool at the base and tingle through her hips.

“You neglected to mention you and your ex were at one another’s throats during your divorce when I asked about enemies.”

Just when Tabitha had caught her breath from feeling his chest close to her back, he lay one palm lightly on her spine to steer her toward a table in the far corner of the shop. The place was decorated with Italian marble and granite tabletops, but Tabitha would venture into the most upscale of businesses if there was good coffee to be had. The colors were yellow-gold and brown with a few muted blues mixed in the Venetian artwork. Best of all, there were several empty tables spaced far apart.

Tabitha waited until Warren’s hand disappeared from her spine and they were seated safely across from one another to respond.

“I didn’t mean to suggest my ex-husband and I like one another, Detective. I just wanted to make it clear that my ex wouldn’t purposely try to hurt me. Physically.” He’d sure as hell put her through the wringer other ways, but violence? Not his style.

“Are you sure about that?” He held up a hand to the waitress who approached and the woman backed off to give them more time.

“Yes.” She didn’t appreciate his tone that implied she would lie. “Look, if Manny Redding wanted to hurt me he would have done so when I broke up his Valentine’s Day rendezvous with an up-and-coming actress. He’d been angry enough then at my public meltdown in the foyer of a friend’s house party where Manny had been banging his starlet in a downstairs bathroom.”

“Ah, hell.” He scrubbed a hand through his shorn hair, not moving the bristly strands one bit. “I know the questions must suck, but—”

She interrupted, unable to tamp down the old fury that still surprised her sometimes.

“You have no idea. But if Manny wanted to hurt me physically, I guarantee he would have done it right then. If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means, please share it.”

“Fair enough.” The detective leaned forward over the table to reach for her hand. He glided his fingers over the back of hers for a moment before he seemed to catch himself. He backed off slowly.

The gesture caught her off guard coming from the man who’d pointed a gun at her the night before and who seemed to think she’d deliberately withheld information. Still, the misplaced nature of the touch didn’t make it any less potent. The heat he’d started inside her last night simmered again, reminding her it wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“Tabitha, when you told me last night that you owned a .38, you didn’t say anything about the gun being missing.”

Blinking, she tried to ignore the hedonistic wants of her body to make sense of his words.

“It’s not missing.” Confused, she waited for him to explain what the hell he meant by that. “I keep it in a gun case in my closet. The same place since I first moved in to the apartment.”

“Have you opened the gun case lately?”

A sick feeling bubbled in her stomach and not even the scent of coffee couldn’t take away the impending nausea.

“I—I’ve always hated the sight of that thing.”

“Your ex reported the weapon stolen from the home you shared over a year ago.”

3

HE NEEDED TO BACK the hell off.

Warren scrolled through old newspaper archives on his home computer the next afternoon and told himself he shouldn’t be spending his day off digging through Tabitha’s past after the flood of inappropriate thoughts he’d been having about her from their first very unorthodox meeting. But then, if he was being honest with himself, hadn’t he taken the day off from work purposely to see what he could find out about this ex of hers?

“Producer’s Partying Puts Wife Over the Edge” read one headline on his most recent search, making Warren incensed that tabloid journalists could soft sell infidelity as partying.

Technically, a stray shot through a woman’s window was not an official NYPD investigation yet. He’d filed a report in case she had any more trouble, but without any concrete reason to suspect she’d been targeted, the work Warren did this afternoon was strictly out of personal interest.

Personal because—hell, he couldn’t deny it—he was attracted to Tabitha. When they’d parted ways at the coffee shop the day before, he’d had to hold his tongue firmly beneath his teeth to keep from suggesting he escort her home and be there at her side when she looked to see if her gun was in its case. He wanted to be there for her because he knew what she would find—a gut hunch confirmed by her phone call an hour after he’d gotten back to the precinct. There was no gun in the case, just a pile of bullets nestled in the foam cutout of the gun to weigh down the pouch.

“Aspiring Actress Loses Prime Part Amid Blackball Accusations.” The next headline that caught his eye was taken from a more reliable source than the article about Tabitha going “over the edge” about her ex’s partying.

Apparently Tabitha had wanted to be a character actress at one point—a more prominent role in the community where she now worked as a silent participant. According to the story, she’d lost a recurring role on a popular soap opera after she’d filed for divorce, and she’d publicly accused Manny of pulling the strings to make it happen. Bastard.

The more stories that Warren scrolled through, the more pissed off he became at a guy who would try to railroad his wife’s career simply because she didn’t let him get away with flagrant adultery. Warren couldn’t help but relate to the woman whose life had been steered off course by someone hell bent on revenge. But it wasn’t until he discovered an old photo of Tabitha in a decorating magazine ensconced on a pristine white couch in the middle of a snow-white living room that he knew he couldn’t back off Tabitha Everhart.

She sat alone and off center in the photo of a palatial living room, a vibrant woman with flaming hair and a heart-stopping smile. A woman with dreams she’d been forced to reroute because she’d gotten involved with a man who thought what she wanted didn’t matter.

Shutting down his computer, he whistled to Buster and decided to take his run early today—right past Tabitha’s place. There was no law against what he was thinking about doing, no code of ethics that prevented him from seeing her again on a personal level since there hadn’t been an official investigation into the incident at her place.

He had no idea what he was going to say to her, but then, if things went his way, maybe they wouldn’t be talking at all.

MAYBE THE GUN really had been stolen.

Tabitha stared at the empty case on the middle of her coffee table and tried to remember those last few days in her old house before she’d moved out. Manny had hardly spoken to her. His fury at the scene she’d made had embarrassed him, putting an impenetrable wall between the two of them. So maybe he’d just been too angry to let her know there’d been a break-in, too caught up in his silent grudge to speak to her about anything, but he’d done the right thing and phoned in the missing weapon to the police.

She hoped that’s what happened.

Still, the incident didn’t add up.

Day had turned to evening while she ventured back in time in her mind. The blanket she’d stapled over her newly replaced front window wasn’t attractive, but it provided a thicker barrier than her curtains until she could afford massive drapes that made her feel less on display.

She revealed enough of herself at work without having her whole life visible through her front window. There was only one man she might like to reveal a little more of herself to, and she knew that had the potential to be a big mistake. Besides, Detective Vitalis had seemed mistrustful of her the last time they met. What good could come from an attraction tempered by suspicion?

So it came as a surprise when she heard a bark outside her front door a few moments later, followed by a quick, efficient knock.

“Tabitha?”

Warren’s deep masculine tone penetrated the repaired door easily. And God help her but how did she end up thinking about Warren and penetrated in the same moment?

Her subconscious was working overtime.

She had the vague sense of being caught doing something naughty since she’d just been thinking about what she’d like to do with him if he wasn’t a cop poking through the skeletons in her closet. He seemed safer to fantasize about when he wasn’t close enough for her to actually act on those thoughts.

Confirming that it was indeed Warren who stood on the concrete steps out front, she unfastened the bolt and opened the door.

“Glad to see you’re using the dead bolt now.” He smiled crookedly while Buster dispensed with the formalities and attempted to push his way past her.

She noticed Warren looked over the repairs to the doorframe as he stood on her threshold.

“I figured I didn’t want any more strangers bursting in here with a gun drawn. Come on in.” She stood aside to let both man and dog inside, gesturing toward her assembly of mismatched furniture that was cast in a reddish glow, thanks to a sheer scarf thrown over a table lamp by the window.

Buster hurried right over to the bowl of water she’d left out since his last visit, a sad testament to her cleaning ethic. While the dog slurped briefly and then sniffed his way around her apartment, she closed the door behind them.

“Have a seat.” Her apartment seemed smaller with Warren in it, his presence making her very aware of how much she’d avoided men for the past year.

Maybe she was only attracted to him because she’d been severely orgasm-deprived? Yeah, right. Whatever the man did to keep fit was sure as hell working. He was all lean muscle.

“Tabitha.” He didn’t sit when she did.

“What? Is this about the gun? Did you find out anything?” She rose again, more nervous because of her inappropriate thoughts than because of the conversation about a deadly weapon. How strange was that?

“Not yet.” He came closer now, lowering himself onto the couch as if to make her sit back down, too. “I just wanted to make it clear to you before we got too comfortable that I’m not here on business.”

Oh. Her pulse jumped in response, immediately interested in this new development.

“You’re not?” She dropped back on those couch cushions with no conscious thought, landing too close to the attractive detective who wasn’t paying her a business call.

Oh my.

“No. This is strictly a social call, so feel free to boot us out if you’re busy.” He looked around for Buster, who was already walking in circles near the fireplace as if trying to find that perfect place to sleep.

Would the detective be as quick to make himself comfortable here? Her mouth watered.

“I’m not busy.” The words rushed out of her mouth so fast she probably sounded like exactly what she was—an undersexed divorcée too long deprived.

Why did men have to continue to tempt her after all she’d been through thanks to the penis-bearing half of the species? Damn biology.

“It occurred to me tonight that since there is no official investigation into the bullet through your window—just an incident on file—there was nothing stopping me from asking you to…dinner sometime.”

The way he paused over the invitation made her question what else he had on his mind besides dinner.

Especially since he looked at her for the first time in the man-to-woman way instead of the cop-to-victim way. His eyes lingered, so warm and inviting on her that she had to glance down at herself to be sure she hadn’t accidentally greeted him in her nightie again. But nope. She was respectably dressed in a calf-length plaid skirt and a short white cardigan sweater. Very Park Avenue despite her downtown address.

So it wasn’t her outfit causing any kind of sensation here. Heat unfurled between her hips. She needed to stop this before she did something she regretted.

Like tackle him to the floor and tear his clothes off. It would be fine for a one-night stand, but what if the gunshot incident turned into something more dangerous down the road? She’d hate to compromise her relationship with a man who made her feel far more safe and protected than any of the patrol officers who’d followed up on the call that night.

“Dinner? I hate to be blunt, Detective—”

“Call me Warren.”

“Warren.” She tasted the name on her lips and liked it a little too well.

“And please be blunt. I’m not a man who appreciates false facades.”

The wealth of possible meaning beneath that statement intrigued her. Who had shown Warren a false facade in the past?

“Okay. Warren.” She couldn’t resist the warmth of that name, the intimacy of calling him by it one more time. “Then I’ll be honest with you. I’m not in a good place to consider dinner dates or any kind of normal dating scenario.”

“So that’s a no?” He shifted on the couch, angling slightly closer by turning to face her.

The diamond in his ear caught her eye, making her wonder about the show of sparkle on an otherwise Spartan-looking man. The earring fascinated her, as did the rest of him. Her ex had been all about the dazzle—he probably had more carats than that in the insignia on his money clip, let alone the collection of rings he’d taken to sporting after he’d sealed a deal with a silent partner that moved him into a much higher earning bracket.

And his hair—Manny would have never had the balls to come as close to shaving his head as Warren had. She reached to touch the bristly hair at his temple and caught herself. Stopped herself.

What was she thinking?

“I’m not in a good place in my life for any kind of relationship.” And wasn’t that the God’s honest truth? As much as she’d love to indulge a few fantasies with this man, she wasn’t putting herself in a position to get her heart stomped again. Or her pride. Or any other part of her, damn it.

“So you’re not interested in a relationship. Who says this has to be more than just dinner?” His arm unfolded across the back of the couch until she could feel the heat of his skin close to her shoulders, his hand coming to rest lightly on the back of her head, fingers sifting gently through the ends of her hair until her scalp tingled pleasantly.

And that wasn’t the only tingle.

Her eyelids grew heavy at the hypnotic brush of his fingers through her hair, the solid male presence of him beside her urging her to lean on him, into him, all over him.

Oh, that sounded unwise. And tempting.

“Since when is dinner ever just dinner? I’ve been alone too long to sit through polite small talk.” Since her marriage had fallen apart, she’d given up couching her words in social niceties.

“You think you’ll be bored?” Warren was clearly on another wavelength since that wasn’t at all what she’d been thinking.

She couldn’t help the short bark of laughter that escaped her lips.

“Not likely.” Her gaze locked with his and she felt herself being pulled closer. Willed closer. But she didn’t know who was doing the willing.

“Then what does being alone have to do with you not being able to make it through dinner?” That soft scrub of his fingers shifted from her hair to the back of her neck.

“Besides sending the wrong message about my dating availability?” Maybe she should have taken him up on dinner. “I’m way too impatient to sit through chitchat when all I want—”

She still couldn’t quite put it into words. She trailed off as his fingers sought a path down the curve of her neck to her shoulder. The cardigan sweater that had seemed respectable enough when she answered the door now gave him access to bare skin since she’d left the top button undone.

If she wasn’t careful, she’d be coming undone next.

“What do you want?” he prompted, steering her gently back to the conversation they’d been having, the one in which she’d almost admitted to dark desires for a downtown detective.

Her heart pounded so loudly she couldn’t hear herself think through the noise. No. Admit it, Tabitha. She just wasn’t thinking at all.

“I don’t know about you. But I really only want dessert.” The sordid truth of the matter sat between them for only a moment before her confession ignited something explosive.

She arched up to him, drawn to him and unwilling to pretend she wasn’t. She wanted this man. Badly.

Lips parting, she kissed him. Sensation rippled through her chest, fluttering down to her belly and tingling outward.

For long moments, she simply breathed his air, her mouth hovering lightly against his. He didn’t press her, didn’t touch her anywhere except that feather-light caress of his hand on her shoulder.

He tasted like peppermint. The scent mixed with the vanilla lip gloss she’d put on at some point that day. Courage growing along with the liquid warmth threatening to swallow her, Tabitha couldn’t wait any longer to test the texture of the rest of his mouth. Her tongue came in brief, hot contact with his lips, darting along the fullness of the middle before she wound her arms around his neck and pressed her whole body against him.

He surprised her by breaking the contact, pulling back when she’d been debating another move forward. Had he realized she’d been about to tackle him? The twinge of disappointment startled her as much as the way her heart jumped in nervous rhythm.

“You’re agreeing to dessert then, right?” He relinquished her shoulder to smooth his way up her neck and cup her chin. “I want to make sure we understand each other before we go any further.”

“You want clarification?” Her fingers reached up to touch the open collar of his shirt and she remembered how he mentioned not liking people with false facades. Lucky for him, she was all too glad to be honest about this. “I’m interested in exploring this attraction wherever it leads, but I’m not going down the path of dinner or drinks or a standing Friday-night commitment for all the orgasms in the world.”

“I’ll make sure not to bother you on Fridays.” A hint of a smile twitched his lips before he ventured near again, but now that Tabitha had found her voice, she couldn’t seem to silence it. She had to share one more, very important thing.

“But if we’re going to follow this where it leads, could you do me one small favor?” She pressed her hand to his chest at the last minute and got to experience the solid warmth of him.

Her hand splayed against his heart.

“Name it.” His heart hammered quickly beneath her hand in a way that fascinated her. Flattered her even more.

“Just be careful you don’t touch any more than my lips until we’re ready to take this to its natural conclusion.” She’d always had intimacy problems. Bad timing with her…er, climaxes. “I’m sort of a sexual powder keg after too many nights alone and—” deep, steadying breath “—I think I have a pretty sensitive trigger by now.”

4

A STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN who was a self-proclaimed sexual powder keg wanted a no-strings relationship with him?

Warren had to check his horoscope to see if all kinds of planets were aligned because this kind of thing did not happen to him. His world was a brutal place, not some red-hot fairy tale with a curvy siren in a starring role.

He studied Tabitha in the crimson glow of the lamp. Was it just the light that suffused her cheeks with color as he leaned closer to align their bodies without touching?

Her eyelids fluttered once, twice, then closed as she tilted her chin to meet his mouth. The need to feel her skin, to hold her steady while he kissed her, rode him hard. He remembered the silky warmth of her when he’d stroked up her neck earlier, and he wanted to indulge the feel of her again. But a good man follows a woman’s rules, right? Even while he did his damnedest to ensure she wouldn’t want to follow them for long.

He just needed to make her touch him, and then all bets were off for the kind of restraint he needed to show today. Lips grazing hers, he sampled the vanilla-tinged flavor of her mouth more deeply, lingering in the places that made her squirm in her seat.

A blessedly easy task.

She sighed in the back of her throat, her hips tilting ever so slightly closer. He could tell because her body radiated heat as surely as she radiated sex appeal and every millimeter closer she got spiked the temperature in the room.

He really shouldn’t take this too far tonight since their conversation had been tinged with the attraction they’d both been feeling. Didn’t he owe her a sort of cooling-off period to make sure this was what she wanted? Not that he could necessarily walk away from her anyhow, but his sense of fair play suggested he should. But next time…he’d take her up on that dessert offer, by God. His blood was slamming through his arteries with excessive force. He couldn’t tell if he was burning from the inside out or the outside in anymore. His swim training didn’t do half the number on him that her kisses could.

Just when he figured he’d have to call uncle and admit defeat, Tabitha busted the “no touch” rule in spectacular fashion by wrapping her arms around him and drawing him down on top of her. Her breasts were suddenly pressed against his chest, the soft swells straining the buttons on her sweater as much as they strained his crumbling reserve. They’d been sitting on the couch, but now they listed to one side in an effort to connect as many square inches of their bodies as possible.

It had been too long for him. He’d hardly dated since a divorce that was a hell of a lot older than hers. Three years. A few women. None of them like Tabitha.

She guided his hand to her cashmere-covered breast and that cooling-off period started to sound like a load of crap. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, and that blew his mind. Her full breasts pressed against her clothes and toward his touch. Everything about her was soft and warm and he needed to lose himself inside her, surround himself with that kind of warmth. He popped two buttons free on her sweater before diving beneath the fabric for a handful of fragrant feminine flesh.

And she was fragrant. He’d been curious about the scent of her since he’d caught the hint of clean soapiness about her skin on the set. But the hollow between her breasts held another kind of perfume, sweetly exotic and all the more intoxicating because the knowledge seemed secret somehow. He breathed deep, losing his mind to anything but sexual thoughts.

Sprawling on top of her on the couch, he left one leg dragging on the floor, his hips in tight proximity to hers as his hands molded to the shape of her breasts through the feather-thin fabric of her bra. Her fingers raked through his hair and trailed down his back, scoring his shoulders right through the fabric of his shirt. He used his knee to find leverage between her legs, spreading her open to the touches he’d been holding back.

He abandoned her breast to reach under her skirt, stroking up one silken leg. If she had a sensitive trigger, how fair was it to make her wait? The justification made perfect sense and gave him permission to do everything he wanted to do with this woman.

Her taut calf gave way to her knee and the delicate place behind it that made her convulse just a little when he circled the soft skin. Leaving that tender spot for her thigh, he spread his hand wide to cover as much of her skin as possible, savoring the way her flesh felt hotter the nearer he came to the juncture of her legs.

His cell phone blared into his consciousness, shattering the hottest foreplay of his life with some obnoxious mechanical-sounding ring tone one of the guys at the precinct must have programmed for him.

“Damn it.” He said worse things in his mind, but he didn’t want to scare off Tabitha, who looked fairly dazed.

If he could dispatch this call in thirty seconds or less, maybe they could pick right up where they left off.

He reached into his jacket pocket on the second ring and hit the button to answer the call that he could see emanated from the precinct.

Not a good sign for handling this in a hurry.

“Vitalis here.”

He tried to blink through the raw lust for Tabitha enough to concentrate on the phone call from another detective—a woman new to the detective squad who’d made her first big arrest last month. Donata Casale had raised a lot of eyebrows in the department when she came on board since she’d been a gangster’s girlfriend at one time, but she’d clawed her way through police ranks with hardcore determination to change her life.

Warren respected the hell out of her, even if he didn’t appreciate this particular interruption.

“Got a bullet embedded in brick. The guys say they can take it out with little peripheral damage, but I wanted to check with you first to see what you thought. I’ve got a homicide in the VIP room of a club downtown and the embedded bullet is at an odd angle. The victim is apparently a well-known porn star, John de Milo.”

Warren knew Donata’s partner—a seasoned vet—was out of town this week. Detectives with more experience might be apt to just remove the bullet and let Warren work through the ballistics issues in the office, but he could see the benefit to observing the bullet in play if the angle was a concern. A good extraction could be key in a case that had a lot riding on identifying a weapon. Any schmo could figure out what caliber a bullet was, but Warren’s specialty was for matching particular bullets or shell casings with those at other scenes, or even tying them to evidence in cold cases. Knowing that the same firearm had discharged bullets in separate incidents had been critical evidence in plenty of investigations during his tenure with the NYPD.

Besides, Warren had personal reasons for making ballistics his life and they applied whether or not he was on the verge of the best sex of his life.

Not that he didn’t regret it.

“Would you rather I just have the guys remove the bullet?” Donata asked, tipping him off that he’d been thinking too long.

And wishing he didn’t have to walk out of Tabitha’s apartment tonight.

“No. I can be downtown in fifteen minutes. What’s the address?” He wrote the street number on a corner of newspaper on the coffee table and disconnected the call, only to realize Tabitha was already inching her way out from underneath him.

He regretted the need to leave her when she looked so deliciously disheveled with her bra strap falling off one shoulder and her sweater half undone. His heart still slammed hard, his body not quite getting the message that he wouldn’t be able to have dessert tonight.

“Sorry.” He straightened, pulling her up to a sitting position on the couch beside him. “I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t urgent. There’s a homicide scene I need to check out. I don’t know if I told you before, but I spend most of my time at the precinct as a ballistics analyst.”

Her fingers moved over the buttons on her sweater, closing the gaping fabric. She nodded quickly and he half wondered if she was more relieved than disappointed since things had escalated fast tonight.

“You’re going to a murder scene. Now?” She rubbed her hands along her arms and he suspected his job creeped her out.

To his way of thinking there were two kinds of women—cop groupies and the ones who freaked out over the job. There were few and far between who could actually handle the way of life. Why did it bother him that she couldn’t be one of the few? Hell, he hardly knew the woman beyond a few conversations.

And a peel-the-paint-off-the-walls kiss.

“There’s ballistics evidence lodged in brick. The lead detective was hoping I could oversee the extraction to minimize any damage.” The news would be in the papers by morning so he wasn’t giving away state secrets.

“So the victim was shot.” Her eyes flitted over to her newly replaced living room window and Warren realized why the murder scene visit had her spooked.

Guilt pinched him for wishing she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t freak out over his work. Of course she would be uneasy when she’d had a bullet through her window. No doubt his life had hardened him to normal fears.

“This sounds like something more personal than what happened here. The victim was a porn star who met his end in a nightclub.”

Instead of easing her mind, his words made her spine straighten.

“A porn star?”

He didn’t know why it mattered, then remembered her ex-husband was a producer who’d gotten his start in low budget film that gave a few porn stars a legitimate vehicle. Would Tabitha have come in contact with anyone in adult film?

It seemed worth spilling a little more detail to find out if Tabitha knew anything that could be useful to Donata’s case.

“Yeah. John de Milo.” Warren didn’t admit that he knew who the guy was. Warren hadn’t personally checked out much in the way of X-rated films, but the names of the industry’s stars seemed to come up in men’s magazines.

Besides, he’d been reading an unsolved case file on an adult “reality” filmmaker allegedly based in Manhattan and de Milo’s name had been mentioned in the report as an easygoing guy with wide-ranging industry connections.

“John?”

Her familiarity of the dead guy’s given name disconcerted him.

“You know him?” He needed to leave, to get down to the crime scene. But this could be important to the investigation.

And it was damn well important to him.

“Yes. We moved in the same circles at different points in our careers. He always wanted to be a legitimate actor so we ended up at some of the same casting calls back when I was going that route.” She stood, her long skirt sweeping around her legs with the sudden movement. “And I saw him just a few days ago on the set of a late-night, soft-core movie in the preproduction stages.”

She bent to scratch Buster’s head, waking the dog from a snooze. Immediately alert, the animal lifted himself to a sitting position, his tail swishing back and forth across the hardwood floor.

“What were you doing there? This was a film he was making?” He didn’t know if he asked as a cop or as the man who’d just kissed her and wanted more.

Maybe a little of both.

“I assumed John was on site for the same reason I was. To scope out the body double work. Then again, he might have just been friends with one of the actors. He was there with about ten other people, making a lot of noise while the production crew was framing the shots.”

Warren didn’t know what blew his mind more. That she knew a porn star or that she’d been considering taking soft-core work herself.

“You do work like this…often?” He wasn’t about to make judgments. He’d grown up in a house full of people who’d made some seriously messed-up choices, so he wasn’t the kind of guy to cast stones.

But he was curious.

“Never. I was called to the set under false pretenses because my contact sheet makes it very clear that I don’t do that kind of work. Someone’s idea of a joke maybe, but I was very uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have stayed at all except that I didn’t want to offend the director, who shoots a lot of high-paying commercial work.”

That made more sense with what he knew about Tabitha. He remembered the way she’d clutched her robe around her neck when he’d arrived on her shoot earlier. She was obviously confident about her body and took pride in her work, but there was a sweetness about her he couldn’t reconcile with openly sexual films. He didn’t know where things were headed between them, but he was surprised to realize he wanted to know a hell of a lot more about her.

“We need to talk.” Standing, he stalked across her small living room floor to stand eye-to-eye with her. “You want to keep Buster for me while I run downtown and I’ll come by for him later?”

“That would be nice.” She smiled and her eyes lit from within. If he stood there much longer, he’d catch fire, too.

And just like that, he wanted her all over again.

“Keep the dog. I’ll be back in an hour. Two at the most.” He couldn’t keep his hands off her, his fingers grazing her hips with a possessiveness no man should feel toward a woman he’d only just met. But that kiss had him revved and ready for so much more.

He kissed her hard, savoring the taste of her until he had to tear himself away.

Her hair clung to his shoulder as he pulled back and he remembered he had taken it down while they’d been making out earlier. The mass of unruly red waves tumbled around her shoulders, taking her from delicately pretty to outrageously sexy.

“Okay.” She nodded, smiled.

He kissed her again and forced himself to walk out. He hadn’t been this gone on a woman since he’d been hell-bent determined to convince Melinda Cartwright to marry him. A colossal mistake despite his success in that particular quest.

The memory told him to proceed with caution, reminding him it probably wasn’t wise of him to go back to Tabitha’s place in the middle of the night. Especially now that she knew a murder victim.

As a good cop, he should question her further about that and maintain a certain professional distance. When the gunshot at her apartment looked like a stray bullet in a drive-by or the by-product of some street-related crime, Warren had figured there would be no ethical conflict about seeing her on a personal level.

John de Milo’s murder might make that more complicated. But unwise or not, Warren was already counting the ways he could undress Tabitha Everhart.

SEX WITH WARREN.

Should she plead temporary insanity and renege on the whole deal?

Tabitha quit pacing her living room to weigh the thought. A good thing since all her nervous ambling was making Buster agitated. She’d taken him out for a walk an hour ago, but the dog was still as restless as her in Warren’s absence. But maybe she could relax now that she’d come up with a way to back out of her bargain with Warren when he returned.

She could certainly prove the insanity defense. All she had to do was produce a few tabloid clippings from the year of her divorce and Warren would understand that she was unstable when it came to men. All the papers said so. Her jealous rages were legendary. No matter that there was only one public spat between her and Manny. Manny had a publicist, while she did not, so his spin on things got printed. No man in his right man would want to tangle with a woman like the press had made her out to be.

She could send the most intriguing man she’d ever met on his way without even having to bare a fraction of her real self. How neat and convenient for her.

Except that—in reality—she didn’t want to send Warren anywhere. Was it so wrong to hook up with a man for dessert only? Other women did it. She just had a hard time picturing how she could manage it since she’d never approached men or sex that way before. Sex had never been her strong suit anyhow, with her tendency to hit her peak too soon. Or at least, it had disconcerted her early boyfriends and pissed off Manny.

That was her first fear. But even if she and Warren got around that without too much embarrassment or frustration, then she had another worry. What if she got attached to him in spite of her best intentions? She ran the risk of getting her heart pummeled in this relationship, that wasn’t a relationship anyhow.

Sinking down into the kitchen chair on the side of the small table she’d deemed her office space, Tabitha hoped if she sat still for two straight minutes maybe the dog would, too. Opening up her e-mail folder, she scratched the dog’s head and waited for her messages to load while she wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to get involved with a man again.

Of course she would. Just not now, when her divorce was barely a year old. She hadn’t simply weathered your average marital split. Hers had been a media explosion complete with passion, jealousy and betrayal. Was it any surprise she felt unsure of herself?

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