Chapter 17 #2
The door was all of twenty feet from where she parked, but who was she to argue?
Maybe he’d even kiss her good-night. Although if the way his hand fell away from her in the laundry was any indication, she’d need to initiate it.
Which seemed like a good idea to her. Surely a planned kiss couldn’t be as good as the surprise kiss she’d laid on him earlier.
And if it wasn’t as incendiary, maybe she could stop obsessing about it.
Collin opened her door, startling her out of her thoughts. She hadn’t even noticed he’d exited the car.
“Ready?” he said, holding out his hand. Not a kiss, but she’d take the offer, and she slid her palm into his. She’d always liked the subtle, almost innocent yet intimate, connection.
Hand in hand, they strolled toward her front door. She’d left the lights off in the house, but the motion-sensing one on her porch flickered on when they approached. She blinked at the sudden bright glow in the dark night, then stumbled as Collin hauled her behind him.
She hadn’t seen anything, but his reaction triggered her fear instincts, and she tucked herself against his back. Curling her hand into his flannel shirt, her heart running like a conga line in her chest, she asked, “Collin?”
“Did you close the door when we left?” he asked.
She tried to peek around his wide shoulders, but he nudged her back with his arm, his hand resting on her hip.
“Yes. And locked it. I always do. Force of habit when you regularly have strangers partying on the property.” She hesitated. “Why?”
A cricket chirped somewhere out in the vineyard.
“Go back to your car, get in, and lock the door.”
“Um, no.”
He didn’t shift from his protective stance, but his eyes met hers over his shoulder.
“No?”
“No. What’s going on? And if it’s dangerous, I’m insulted you think I’d leave you.”
“You do realize that I spent ten years chasing and hunting terrorists and really, really bad guys. And gals.”
“But you don’t do that anymore. You’ve closed that chapter, started a new one, now you’re a business owner, brother, friend, and so many other things that don’t involve hunting terrorists and really, really bad guys and gals.
You’re also my friend and I’m not leaving you.
” She lifted her chin for good measure. She had no doubt that if he wanted, he could throw her over his shoulder and dump her in her car. But he couldn’t make her stay.
She waggled an eyebrow in challenge.
“Now is not the time for that,” he grumbled. “Your front door is open.”
“What!” she gasped, moving to get a glimpse. Again, he forced her behind him.
“When I tell you a building is burning, you don’t run to it, woman,” he said.
“What were you saying about hunting terrorists?” She might have heard a snort.
“Fine, stay behind me,” he conceded.
She had no problem with that. Gripping his shirt, she shuffled forward with him, inching toward her house. When they reached the door, he stood to the side, sandwiching her between his body and the wall, and set his hand on the wide planks.
She held her breath as the heavy wood swung slowly open.
Collin paused, maybe to listen, although the rush in her ears muted most sounds.
A million years seemed to pass before he stepped around the frame and into her living room.
Pulling her in with him, he gestured for her to keep her back to the interior wall.
“Stay there. I’ll check this floor.”
Before she could answer, he was halfway across the room, silently moving through the space. She watched him check furniture, the hall closet, and the bathroom, before he disappeared into the kitchen.
Less than a minute later, he reappeared. “It’s clear down here. Any chance you’ll lock yourself in the bathroom while I check the rest of the house?”
She weighed her options. “Will it make this go faster?”
His head tipped an inch to the left. “If I find something, yes. Dealing with it will be easier if I know you’re safe.”
She made a face. “That’s such a cliché.”
His brows dipped. “What is?”
“That you can do your job better if you don’t have to worry about me.”
He frowned. “Not sure if it’s a cliché, but it’s true.”
“I’m not a damsel in distress.”
“No, you’re a damsel who doesn’t know the first thing about hand-to-hand combat. I’m a guy who doesn’t know the first thing about planning a four-hundred-person event. We have different strengths.”
Well, when put like that… “Fine, I’ll stay down here.”
She tried not to read too much into the look of relief on his face as she crossed the room.
Letting herself into the small powder room, she locked the door, then leaned against the vanity.
She didn’t hear Collin’s footsteps on the stairs, but the distinctive creak of her closet door traveled to her with the subtlety of a banshee’s screech.
True to his word, not five minutes passed before he jogged down the stairs, this time not cloaking his steps. “You can come out,” he called.
“Nothing?” she asked, opening the door a slice. A dumb question since he wouldn’t have told her to come out if that hadn’t been the case, still, she felt compelled to ask.
“Well, someone was here, but they aren’t now,” he answered, stopping in the middle of her living room and crossing his arms. She probably shouldn’t be noticing his biceps, but it was hard not to. He was primed for a fight, and they were bulgier than usual.
“How do you know? Other than the door?” she asked, focusing on the more important, if far less interesting, topic.
“Unless you’ve grown sloppy in the past seventeen years, you never would have left the closet the way it looks now.”
She sucked in a breath and stilled. Then like a rubber band snapping, she bolted upstairs to her room. Halting in the door, her gaze swept over the space. Her bed hadn’t been touched; neither had her bedside tables, lamps, and dresser. But her closet…
Nausea churned and boiled in her stomach. Gentle and steady fingers landed on her back.
“That wasn’t you, was it?” Collin asked, the words sounding pained.
She shook her head. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t as bad as she expected.
Several dresses hung halfway off hangers, three coats lay strewn across the floor, and several shoes were tipped over and no longer in matching sets.
Taking a second, slower look, she also noticed three button-down blouses, still on their hangers, lying on top of the coats, and her robe crumpled and shoved against the back of the closet.
“No, this wasn’t me,” she said.
“Do you want to call the police?”
She stared at her things. She’d need to go through it all to see if anything was missing, but nothing obviously stuck out to her as being gone. The relief she should feel was tempered, though, by the knowledge that someone had rifled through her belongings.
She set a hand on her stomach in a futile attempt to still the drunken butterflies stumbling around inside. A warm palm settled on her neck, Collin’s fingers gently rubbing some of the tension away.
She inhaled deeply, held it to the count of four, then let it out. “Do you think they left prints?”
Collin didn’t answer right away. “Hard to know. Why?”
She turned to face him. He kept his hand on her neck, and she settled against him. “If nothing is missing and there aren’t any prints, I don’t want to get the police involved. Not after…” Not after they questioned me about two murders remained unsaid.
A look she couldn’t describe crossed over Collin’s face. “Why don’t you look through everything then we can decide. What can I do?”
She leaned forward, resting her forehead on his chest. “Nothing, you’re doing it,” she murmured as his other hand swept soothingly up and down her back. “I just need a minute.”
“Take all the time you want.”
She breathed deeply, inhaling his scent and warmth as she pulled her shit together. Twenty breaths later, she stepped away. “Okay, I’ll tackle the closet, but then what?”
“If anything is missing, we call the police.” She nodded. “Either way, though, you shouldn’t stay here tonight.”
An entirely different type of butterfly swarm took flight in her stomach. “Where should I stay?”
“Helia.”
“The castle,” she said. “You want me to stay at the castle.”