Complete Mia Kazmaroff Romantic Suspense Series, 1-4 Page 18

  “Mia, Keith regularly whaled away on Trish. He put her in the hospital just this week. There is no way she would give a shit what he was doing with Dave.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack. I know it doesn’t make sense but just because he hit her doesn’t mean she didn’t love him.”

  “Okay, this is all nonsense.” He turned away and pulled another bowl out of a cabinet as if to end the conversation.

  “Every time I try to talk to you about doing something I want to do to further this investigation, you shut me down. Have you noticed that?” She tugged at his sleeve to get his attention, her fury shooting a long blush up her neck to her face. “I’m sick of you pushing aside my ideas so we can sit and do nothing!”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mia, we are sitting as you put it so you can recover from the last great idea you had about ‘moving the investigation forward.’”

  “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You’re pissed because I inconvenienced you. I didn’t do what you told me to do and so you had to break a few dates to sit by my mother’s side in the hospital.”

  “I don’t know what it means that half the time I’m with you I want to throttle you but yeah, if you’d’ve stayed put like I told you to, it would’ve saved everyone a lot of pain, not the least of which was yours.”

  “I’m going out, Jack, and I don’t need to get permission from you to do it. That’s the end of that. I have a direction I’m going and you are not going to stand in the way of my going there—”

  He threw a dish into the sink where it shattered, throwing shards across the counter, and then turned on her, his face red with his attempt to control himself.

  “Those bruises that make you wince every time you sit? Keith gave you those. That scrape down your side that bugs you every time you pull on a shirt? That’s from a cattle prod that was held against your bare skin.”

  “Stop it, Jack!” She turned to leave the kitchen but he reached out and grabbed her hands. “The skin rubbed off right here? That’s where the cuffs held you as you hung by your hands.” When she tried to pull away, he grabbed her shoulders, hating the look of pain on her face when he did. “And did I mention you were totally naked at the time? Not a piece of fabric between you and his filthy, disgusting hands.”

  “The…cops said I wasn’t…he didn’t…” She was crying now but he couldn’t stop.

  “No, he didn’t because I got there before he could. But trust me, he did everything else.”

  “I can’t remember any of it,” she said, her tears splashing down her face.

  “Thank God for that. But I remember.” He looked into her eyes with a fevered ferocity he never remembered feeling before. “I remember your body stripped and ready for him and for whatever he wanted to do to you. I remember and I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

  Jack took a long breath. Describing it to her forced him to relive it. He noticed his hands still gripped her, and he released her but she didn’t move away. She took the step that closed the gap between them and he folded her into his arms as he’d been longing to do since the night he’d turned her away. He held her gently, trying not to press on her bruises, but she tightened her embrace.

  “Hold me like you mean it,” she whispered.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Too late for that.” She pulled back to look at his face and then raised up on her toes and kissed him. Without realizing he was doing it, he brought her up close and hungrily probed her mouth with his tongue. The need to be with her, to own her, was so strong it was all he could do to stop, not to throw her down on the couch and make her his.

  The image of what he wanted to do clashed painfully with the image of the bruises and welts that covered her body and he forced himself to push away and hold her at arms length.

  “You’re killing me, Mia,” he said hoarsely. “Just fucking killing me.” He let go of her and rubbed his hands against his jeans as if trying to keep them busy doing something else, anything else.

  *****

  An hour later, Mia sat on the couch again, the dog in her lap, the television on. Jess was in the kitchen baking as usual. Jack was…Mia closed her eyes to relive the kiss and felt a tingling that started between her legs and made her squirm. Jack was tromping the perimeter of the yard looking for clues to a crime that wouldn’t be committed.

  Keith was locked up. Nobody was coming after her. But she knew that relentlessly checking the boundaries of her mother’s yard made Jack feel like he was doing something.

  She leaned over to pick up her cooling cup of tea from the coffee table and a stitch of pain shot through the muscle in her arm. The ache in her arms had been the worst. She’d been living on ibuprofen since she got home from the hospital because of the damage done to her subscapularis muscles from hanging by her hands.

  It felt surreal to her that Jack had experienced her ordeal more than she had. She didn’t even have an image or a dream to bring it to mind. Not that she wanted to remember torture, but it was discomfiting to have endured it, survived it, and not remember it.

  She nestled back into the pillows on the couch and turned to look at the fire in the hearth, snapping and popping with the seasoned wood. And then there was the kiss. Today’s incident in the kitchen, not just the kiss but his explosion, showed her without a doubt what she should already have known.

  He loved her. And even if he never says the words, I know that’s true.

  She looked at the little dog watching her with worried eyes. Unless. He just picks up wounded strays and that’s his thing. She frowned and put her hand on the dog’s head.

  That would really suck if all this is just his pathology and has nothing really to do with me.

  “Hungry, Mia?” her mother called to her from the kitchen.

  Mia sighed. Why is it that eating always makes your caretakers feel better than it does you?

  “Yeah, starving,” she said, picking up the remote control again and wondering why she no longer felt her father any more when she did.

  Chapter 18

  The next day, Jack and Mia drove back to the condo. During the entire trip he glanced at her and then away but the silence between them sat in the car heavy and oppressive. They’d said little to each other after yesterday’s meltdown—sealed with a kiss of all things. He shifted in his seat and stole another look at her. The silence didn’t seem to bother her at all. Her mouth was drawn into a straight line and her eyes never left the road in front of them.

  At the condo, he carried Daisy in one hand like he would a football and unlocked the door. He was aware that she believed he was overreacting and making things more difficult than they had to be.

  She hadn’t seen what he’d seen four days ago in a warehouse in East Cobb.

  “All clear,” he said, turning and dropping the house keys in the bowl by the door. “I’m taking Daisy out. Get what you need to bring with you to your mom’s.”

  “Still bossing everyone around,” she said under her breath, but loud enough that he could hear.

  He ignored it and shut the door between them. When he did, he felt the tension ease that had been crackling in the air ever since they’d gotten into the car. He imagined she felt the relief too—maybe more so since she hadn’t had a moment alone since she came home from the hospital.

  Hurrying down the stairs to the unmanned lobby, he snapped Daisy’s leash on her and plopped her on the only grassy spot in the whole complex—a small wedge of green that divided the parking lot from the storefronts under each condo. He caught his reflection in the store window that was Mia’s and looked in. They hadn’t gotten very far in cleaning it up but it looked passable as an office. He had no idea how this was all going to pan out but the idea that he and Mia would operate a business together—especially an investigative business—seemed more and more outlandish the longer he knew her.

  First, she’s crazy, he thought, and whatever squirrelly gift she thinks she has will always get in the way of
real investigation work. Secondly…he turned to study the little dog who was systematically sniffing the tires of the cars lined up in front of the store front. Secondly, he couldn’t work with her. He could barely be with her. How was he supposed to solve cases when all he wanted to do was make sure his partner didn’t get hurt? Would he ever feel like she was safe? Would he when they caught the guy who killed Dave?

  He tugged on the dog’s leash. “Come on, Daisy. Do something.”

  He glanced up at the condo perched over the storefront to see if he could see Mia on the balcony.

  No, he didn’t know where all this was headed but however it ended up, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like it.

  “Alright, mutt,” he said, scooping up the dog and heading for the door. “You had your chance.” He took the elevator to the second floor and jogged down the darkened hall to Mia’s door.

  She opened it immediately and the brilliance of the smile she shone on him vied with the morning sun pouring into the living room off the balcony.

  “You’re in a good mood,” he said, sorry he said it before the words were all the way out of his mouth. You don’t have to know very much about women to know that commenting on the silent treatment they just gave you, however indirectly, was a no-go. Amazingly, his words didn’t seem to annoy her at all.

  “I am,” she said. “Getting out after being stuck in that darkened living room feels amazing.”

  “Great.” He looked around the living room. “Do you want to stick around awhile longer?”

  She moved to the door and scooped the car keys out of the dish. “No, I’m ready. I was just wondering if you could do one more thing for me. Just one more thing and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Sure,” he said. “No problem. Name it.”

  “You might be sorry you said that,” she said, laughing over her shoulder as she moved through the front door.

  “I’m at your service.” God, it felt so good to be talking again, to be pretending that he hadn’t been cruel to her yesterday just before landing a serious lip-lock on her that he almost didn’t care what she asked of him.

  “Could we possibly, pretty please, go by your ex-wife’s house for just a quick, teeniest of nano-seconds?”

  I should have known.

  “You know she’s really vulnerable right now, don’t you?” he said. “And I’ve already put her off about a very important talk—the one where I irrevocably dump her for good and ever. Honestly, I’m thinking an unannounced visit from me and my latest cutie-pie will not be met with smiles and coffee cake.”

  Mia stopped and turned dramatically toward him. He waved a finger at her. “Don’t even say it,” he said.

  “Am I your latest cutie-pie?”

  “That’s what she’ll think. And I’m working really hard these days to consider other people’s feelings. You might say it’s my personal self-improvement project.”

  “And very commendable, too,” she said with a grin. She appeared to be thinking for a moment and then snapped her fingers. “Do you know where she grocery shops?”

  “I do not like the sound of this.”

  “We can stake out the parking lot, you point her out to me and I’ll grab a cart and accidentally bump into her.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  She crossed her arms. “You said you’d do this little thing for me.”

  “Running you to your hairdressers is a little thing. Sitting in the waiting room while you get a pedicure is a little thing.”

  “This is what I need for you to do,” she said firmly, only the barest hint of her smile left on her face.

  He sighed heavily. “I assume you just want to put your hands on her?”

  She nodded.

  “Saturday mornings she takes a yoga class at the Atlanta Fitness Club in Druid Hills.”

  “Perfect.”

  “If you say so. I’m sure she’ll love being manhandled on her way to class.”

  “She’ll barely know I’m there.”

  “Right.”

  The Atlanta Fitness Club off Tilly Mill Road was less than fifteen minutes from Atlantic Station. From there, Mia agreed to be taken straight back to her mother’s for the rest of the weekend. Burton was relieved that she seemed content with a hit and run on Diane before going back to her sweat pants and Jess’s nonstop cooking and endless pots of tea.

  Surely to God, Daniels’ team is making some headway on Dave’s murder? It would help enormously to assuage Mia’s impatience if he could tell her there were developments.

  Probably too much to hope that they’d actually solve it.

  Ever since he’d painted a graphic picture of what had happened to her at Barnes’ hands, he noticed she deliberately avoided talking about Barnes. Up until yesterday, she had regularly asked about the case against him. Now, neither she nor Burton wanted to go there.

  The parking lot outside the club was packed, which wasn’t surprising for the weekend before Thanksgiving, Burton mused. They’d timed it beautifully. He pointed out Diane who was walking into the club, a rolled yoga mat in hand.

  “Wow. Really?”

  He could see Mia was impressed. Diane was a good looking woman, blonde with long hair and a good figure. Her yoga pants showed that off to perfection, he noted.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said.

  She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Of course, I do. You want me to eliminate her from suspicion, don’t you?”

  What was that supposed to mean? Did Mia think he was interested in getting back together with his ex-wife?

  “What I want is for you to be back here minus the restraining order that contact with you usually provokes,” he said gruffly. There was something about the idea of Mia touching Diane that he didn’t like. He dismissed the feeling as inconclusive emotion—never good when working a case.

  “Ha ha, Jack,” Mia said without smiling as she stood outside the car. “Keep the engine running and don’t lose Daisy. She looks like she’s about to jump out the window.”

  “I won’t lose her,” he said, motioning for Mia to hurry in and get it done. He watched her turn and speed-walk to the front door where they’d seen Diane disappear moments before.

  Exactly twenty minutes later, Burton’s anxiety and boredom collided into one unsettling burst of nervous energy. He tucked Daisy under one arm and walked briskly into the sports center.

  “Excuse me, sir, you can’t bring that dog in here.” The young man behind the registration desk wore a polo shirt and his hair shot up in greasy spikes as if he were continually being shocked.

  “I don’t intend to,” Burton said, not breaking stride. “I just need to find someone.”

  The young man ran out from behind his desk and stood between Burton and a pair of swinging doors. “Are you a member? Only members are allowed in past the locker rooms.”

  “My friend just came in here,” Burton said, shifting Daisy to his other arm in agitation, “and since I don’t see her anywhere, I assume you allowed her in past the locker rooms?”

  The young man looked uncomfortable. He glanced at Jack’s shirtfront as if expecting to see a badge or some form of corporate identity.

  “She was with a member,” he said hesitantly.

  “No, she wasn’t. You just made that up. You let a pretty girl in who wasn’t a member, didn’t you? Do you want me to report you for that?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I thought she was a member! She looked just like…like…”

  Burton began to push past him but the boy held up both his hands as if to bar his way.

  “Boy, you’re already in enough trouble…” Burton growled.

  “I can’t let the dog in, sir!” The boy looked from Jack to the dog. “I’ll lose my job.”

  Jack shoved the dog into his arms. “Fine. Hold her until I get back.” He hit the double swinging doors with both hands and ran inside, past the dressing rooms to the hallway of private rooms and jerked open each door—to gasps of the group of women lying on the fl
oor—before he ran to the end of the hall and entered the large workout arena. His eyes went to every piece of equipment, every person laboring on them, and then he turned and headed back down the hallway of yoga rooms.

  Diane was in the second to last one. He opened the door and stood there as ten women slowly presented their derrieres to him, their hands dropping to the floor. He cleared his throat and two shrieked and instantly lost their balance. Diane was on the far side of the room, oblivious. If she’d been grabbed by Mia anytime in the last five minutes, she’d recovered well.

  That meant there was a good chance that Mia hadn’t touched her. Which meant there was an even better chance that she’d never intended to.

  Cursing, he backed out of the room and ran toward the women’s locker room.

  Less than two minutes later, he had Daisy in his arms again and was walking toward his car while a set of burly female attendants from Atlanta’s premier work out station informed him at full volume that the police had been called.

  Burton didn’t even hear them. He was too busy calling Mia’s cellphone and listening to the dumbfounded voice in his head that ricocheted off the inside of his skull that said, she’s gone.

  Mia turned her phone off and tossed it in her purse. How she hated doing this! If the man would just work with her instead of making her feel like an incompetent invalid, she wouldn’t have to. He literally forced her to take these measures. How were they ever going to work together going forward if he didn’t let her do her job?

  She held her purse on her lap as she sat on the bus. When the phone call had come in that morning from Trish, it was all Mia could do to breathe a sigh of thanks that Jack was walking the dog at the time.

  What luck that was!

  Even though they’d left the Atlanta fitness center five blocks back, she felt more comfortable keeping a low profile in her seat. There weren’t many people on the bus—mostly grubby young men who looked like they’d lost their licenses or didn’t speak English well enough to have one in the first place. In any case they didn’t appear interested in her.