Chapter Four
C lay stood frozen for a long second, and then his body took over.
His hands caged her hips, pulling her against him as he took over the kiss.
She went pliant beneath his hands for a moment, then gave as good as she got, surging against him before she gave a little jump and wrapped herself around him.
It was like being enveloped in pure happiness, pure sensuality, and something that’d been lying dormant within him for so, so long flared to life.
He mapped her mouth with his own, drenching himself in her taste when she opened her mouth, took him even deeper into sensuality, tapped into an area of himself that had been dying of thirst.
Without even being aware that he’d moved, they were suddenly against one of the walls, the solidity shocking him for one brief second, bringing him back to time and place long enough to pull his head away, to take a gulp of air that didn’t give him clarity, simply a lungful of the vibrant scent of her and that quickly he was swept away again, diving into the lushness of her, the taste that promised sin and salvation all at once.
Ivy made a noise, somewhere between a moan and a laugh that took his control to the very edge, hovering there on a knife’s blade.
It would be so easy to slide underneath her t-shirt, so easy to push past her shorts, so easy to feel her desire beneath his fingertips. And he wanted it so badly, more than he could ever remember wanting anything.
It was that want, that driving need, that pulled him back from the brink. Made him disengage their lips and drop his forehead to hers, his breathing choppy, his hands full of her very delectable ass.
She looked up into his eyes, her pupils blown wide with desire, her lips wet from his, and he knew he could take her. That she was a free enough spirit to give him this and not hate him in the morning.
But he just might hate himself.
It took every fiber of his being, but he loosened his hands, pushed her in a long, lush slide down his body that made his cock throb in response, forced a pained grunt out of him.
And then he stepped back, smoothing her shirt into place.
When he spoke, his voice was rough. “I’m on the job,” he said and knew the words were wrong the second they came out of his mouth. But it was the truth. It didn’t matter that he’d never been so tempted in his life. Because she was sunshine and light, and he was the exact opposite. Had always been. Sleeping with her would bring them both nothing but misery. And he was here to protect her, not spend hours lost in what he was sure would be the best sex of his goddamned life.
Her jaw set in an obstinate line, and he was pretty sure she was going to argue, so he spoke first. “I can’t do my job if all I'm thinking about is fucking you.”
There. It didn’t get more bald than that.
Except she didn’t get angry, or offended, as he’d expected. As she had every right to be.
Instead she cocked her head and looked at him for so long it became discomfiting. Then she smiled, and it lit up her whole face. Made him want to taste her all over again. Feel the light.
She barely disguised her laughter when she replied. “So that’s how it is, huh? Tough macho dude can’t compartmentalize? That’s too bad, since I have no such problem.” She turned away, walked toward the stairs, her body moving with such feminine fluidity he was sure she was doing it on purpose.
“I’ll be thinking of you tonight,” she said over her shoulder with a wink, and climbed the stairs, the sway of her hips completely capturing every ounce of his attention.
Clay stared after her, wondering what the hell had just happened. Had she really just blown off his good intentions and thrown down a gauntlet?
He blew out a breath, followed her up the stairs and turned off the lights.
She’d not only thrown down a sexual challenge, but she’d also ensured what would fill his dreams, if he even got to sleep.
~
Over the course of the wee hours, Clay wondered more than once if he should have taken Ivy up on her offer.
It wasn’t as if he was getting any sleep.
But he wouldn’t, couldn’t succumb to that temptation. Because he was on the job. Because he wasn’t sure he could take her innate openness, the fact she saw everything with a rosy glow.
That glow had been stripped from him, if he’d ever had it, on the desert hardpack in Syria. The forty-five minutes it'd taken the PJs to reach them had been the longest and most painful of his life. Having to look at Dylan, hearing the copilot actively die, wondering if he'd be forced to opt out instead of being taken prisoner.
Knowing that if he had to make that final, horrible decision, there was no one to truly mourn his loss.
He shook himself out of thoughts of the past. They’d gone over those things in therapy ad nauseum, both in group and in solo sessions.
He was in the here and now and he had a job to do. Right now that job was to find Katie McAlister, and, if needed, protect Ivy Foster.
And Clay always did his job.
~
Clay was already on his second cup of coffee by the time Ivy came out of her room. She looked like she’d gotten as many hours of sleep as he had.
That gave him a perverse bit of satisfaction.
She walked straight to the coffee maker, poured herself a cup and drank it down like she was mainlining it. Meanwhile, Clay sipped his very, very light coffee. He'd found creamer and sugar in her cabinets but no tea bags, so had to make do.
While he’d waited for her to get up, he checked in with HQ.
Dev had nothing, and it was making him particularly cranky. “I don’t like that the call came from South Carolina,” he said. “We’ve got a few scenarios to consider. First, it could be an actual crank call that just happens to coincide with our investigation. Which I don't find plausible at all. But we can't discount it."
"Agreed," Clay said. "If the call had come from Vegas, that'd be different, but it didn't. I'll keep it in mind, though. What else?" He figured he knew where Dev was going with this but wanted to hear his thoughts.
"It could also be someone from South Carolina looking for McAlister and because they know of Ivy and Katie's past, is trying to narrow down her location. Or our worst fear, human trafficking, and this was a warning of sorts for Ivy to back off. I’m diving into social media now that we’ve got a first name and an occupation on the past boyfriend.”
The last two scenarios were completely plausible, and both put Clay on high alert. Now that he'd gotten to know Ivy a bit, he was even more invested.
“I’ll check out Katie’s apartment as soon as Ivy gets up,” he told Dev. He should have done it yesterday, but staying with Ivy had been a priority. Now, with the phone call and the fact Dev was frustrated, it had become an imperative.
"Jordan offered to help on her day off," Dev said. "Given what might be an emerging threat to Ivy, I asked her to sit surveillance outside the studio, at least for right now. If we need it to be longer than one day, we'll look at moving Tate over there, but Jordan is the best at surveillance."
That made total sense.
Jordan’s job as a cop for both the Air Force and then the LVMPD made her the obvious choice if she was available.
There were too many variables right now that made it impossible to make more than the most rudimentary contingency plans, and making plans was where Clay excelled. Where he was most confident. The circumstances surrounding Katie McAlister’s disappearance were the definition of nebulous.
His disquiet didn’t stop him from looking his fill at Ivy now, though. Of taking pleasure in the simple action.
She flowed into the antique dinette chair like water, her hair completely askew. She was wearing a mouthwatering little camisole and shorts that left very little to the imagination. He doubted it was for him; he was pretty sure she dressed like that all the time.
And just like that his thoughts were back to the wee hours of this morning, to the kiss that had burned down his world.
But Ivy didn’t seem to care about her surroundings. Her attention was one hundred percent on her coffee. It was only after she finished her second cup in record time that she raised her head and acknowledged him.
“Thanks for making coffee,” she said. “I’m not really a morning person.”
That he could see. But it wasn’t really morning anyway. It was closing in on twelve-thirty.
He’d slept late, later than he was used to, but after the late night of watching her paint and the explosive kiss, he could justify the strange hours.
She, however, had slept an additional three hours past his wake-up time.
“You didn’t get any other texts or calls last night, did you?”
She shook her head as she poured her third cup of coffee. “Quiet as a church mouse,” she said.
Clay stifled a laugh. She had no idea that they were based out of a church. It was one of those weird synchronicities.
She looked him square in the eye now that she was caffeinated, her gaze full of that disconcerting honesty from yesterday, and again last night when she’d lip locked him. He wasn’t used to such openness from a woman; he was usually the one who was direct.
He wasn't sure if he liked it or not.
“So what do we do today?” she asked.
“You,” he said, “stay put. I need to check out Katie’s apartment, see for myself what it looks like. Given your mysterious call, the fact it was on a burner, and out of South Carolina, I’d prefer it if you stayed here. I won’t be gone very long.”
She studied him, her changeable hazel gaze steady on his.
“Okay,” she said.
She’d surprised him once again. He’d banked on her arguing.
“I have a dog portrait to finish.” She sipped her coffee and then went to rummage in her junk drawer, pulling out what he assumed was a key to McAlister’s apartment.
“A dog portrait?” he asked, a little bit of incredulity in his tone. He hadn’t seen anything like that in the array of paintings along the studio walls, but he hadn’t really looked all that hard.
She shrugged. “It pays the bills. Plus, I like dogs.”
It was hard to argue with a woman who liked dogs. Or cats for that matter.
He stood, strode to the sink and washed out his cup, acutely aware of how close he was standing to her. The heat from her body seemed to throb off of her. All he wanted to do was soak himself in the scent of her, in the vitality that radiated from her even as she was waking up.
But he didn’t because he had a job to do. He pulled out his phone and texted her. “This is my personal cell, so you won’t be forwarded through HQ to get me. If anyone calls you or texts you, or if any stranger comes to the door, you contact me.” He looked her dead in the eye as he hit send. “I mean it, Ivy.”
She studied him, took another sip of coffee, and nodded. “Okay. You’re the pro. But before you go, we need to talk about payment. There was so much going on I didn’t even think about it.”
“That won’t be an issue,” he assured her. When she would have protested, he stopped her. “SMS is charitable more often than it isn’t. You only need to pay what you can afford. No matter what happens.”
She scrutinized him for a long moment, then shrugged. “That’s the worst business plan I’ve ever heard of, but I’m not going to argue.”
He took the offered key giving her a long look promising dire retribution if she left the building and headed to Katie McAlister’s apartment.
~
Ivy fanned herself the second Clay closed the door behind him.
The man was a menace to her hormones.
Oh, she knew she should be concerned with her own welfare, and she was, but having a bodyguard like that? Whew .
She still wasn’t sure that she was buying the whole pro-bono bit. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, the whole concept was just a bit too fantastical to believe. Not in today’s day and age.
When it came to sitting tight, though, she’d been honest. She had more than enough work to keep her busy until his return, and she wasn’t keen on letting anyone into her home right now.
Seeing the best in people was her default perspective, but until they found Katie and figured out who’d called her, she was just fine with being anti-social.
When a private number flashed on her phone display an hour later as she was finishing up the portrait she hesitated. It could be the heavy breather again. Or it could be Katie. Or even a client.
She answered with pure trepidation, feeling foolish and then angry when it turned out to be someone trying to sign her up for an extended warranty for a car she’d sold five years ago.
The call had snapped her out of her creative vibe, so she put together a quick salad and adjourned to the roof to eat her lunch beneath the sunshade.
It was already hot, the summer sun pounding down on the desert city.
But she loved it like this, preferred the oven to ice and snow. She always had, even as they moved around the world for her father’s job. She’d loved to immerse herself in the culture of each country they’d lived in, but when they’d arrived here for his last assignment, Vegas had immediately felt like home. Like the place she needed to be.
The crisp salad was just right along with the iced hibiscus tea she’d switched to right after Clay left.
Clay.
The name fit him. One syllable, sounded like it got shit done. A bit biblical. A lot hot.
As she absorbed the heat of the day, she thought about their kiss last night.
Vegas in the height of summer had nothing on that kiss. He’d scorched her with every touch of that sculpted mouth. Had made her hotter than she’d ever felt before.
She sampled enough of the dating pool to know that their chemistry was something extraordinary, but she also knew enough about men to know he’d pulled back big time, not because of the fact she’d been a willing partner and he’d been turned off by the fact she wasn’t leading him on a chase. No, he’d pulled away reluctantly, because she was a job.
She could be offended by that but wasn’t. She got it.
Putting things in neat little boxes was important to some people. She’d be happy to let Clay compartmentalize for now, because they were in the middle of trying to find Katie. But after they found her friend? She was going to taste Clay Andrews again and see if there was more to their attraction than chemistry.
~~~
He lowered his binoculars, staring at the two-story building the artist called home. Her security was good enough that he wouldn't be attempting B&E as recon, it was just too dicey. Plus, she had a man hanging around.
None of his research had shown that she was shacking up with a guy, especially one who was ex-military. It took one to know one, although he could tell this guy hadn’t been in the Corps like him. No he was slick, walked with a barely discernible limp, rode a really nice motorcycle. Definitely Air Force, considering that Nellis was right down the street. Pussy.
He briefly considered liberating the bike from the flyboy but figured it was just an extra complication he didn’t need. So instead, he waited and watched, even though everything in him wanted to just barge in and smash.
He'd watched them walk next to each other, saw the sparks coming off of the both of them. They weren’t banging—yet—even though it was written in every line of their bodies that they were going to.
He didn’t know how he could use that to his advantage, but he was going to.
~~~
She worked steadily for the next hour, her creativity back with a vengeance, and put the last touches on the portrait before calling her client to arrange a pick-up at the café she’d met Clay at later that afternoon. Surely, he’d be back by then.
It was her preferred meeting spot—public, tasteful, with just enough neighborhood history to make it interesting.
He finally showed as she was starting to get fidgety, as she started to wonder if she was going to have to break her word and leave the studio without him.
When he walked through the door, she saw he’d changed his clothes, so the extra time he’d been gone made sense. A backpack was slung over one shoulder, his leather coat draped over the other arm.
He was still just as dangerous to her senses as he’d been this morning.
He also looked just as serious. She wondered if he ever had different expressions, if he ever looked at the lighter side of life.
She got him a cup of iced tea and motioned him into one of the chairs, telling him about her phone call as she did.
He sat up straight at that.
“Give me your phone,” he said. She handed it over to him, and he forwarded the call info to his friend. Then he handed it back to her. “No more answering calls from people you don’t know.”
“What if it’s a client? Or Katie?” she shook her head. “No can do. I’m not gonna stop living my life over something we think might be happening. I won’t be foolhardy, and I promise not to talk to strangers in person.”
He was giving her the steely glare she was getting accustomed to, but it didn’t faze her. She knew he was trying to keep her safe. Knew that she was his number one priority, even when it should be Katie. She wasn’t sure how she knew that deep in her bones, but she did.
His phone pinged with an incoming text within minutes. “Damn,” he whispered. “The warranty call came from South Carolina as well,” he stood, took a last gulp of his tea. “It's not a coincidence. Someone’s trying to find you. How much did you actually talk to them?”
“Not much,” she replied. “He knew my name, though, and the make of my old car.” Unease slithered through her. “Do they usually know your name?”
He shrugged and the motion was anything but easy. “Sometimes, it just depends on what database they’re working off of. But neither Dev nor I think that’s the case here. Two calls from private numbers in two days, both of them coming from the same area code in South Carolina, where your friend left abruptly. It’s not a coincidence either of us are particularly comfortable with.”
Ivy thought hard. Her natural inclination was to see the best in people. To shrug off the calls as the coincidence Clay was sure it wasn't. But her gut instincts had screamed at her to call him after that first contact and had continued to keep her alert when normally she would have returned to her daily routines. So, as much as it went against her nature, she'd be suspicious.
“Okay,” she said. “I accept that these calls are fishy, but here’s the thing. Katie had a whole support network there, even after her folks died. She wasn’t alone by any stretch of the imagination.”
Clay seemed to ponder that for a while. “Unless she was embarrassed.”
Now that, Ivy could see. “Katie is really private until you get to know her. I guess it made sense to me that she wanted to move after her parents died. I know what it felt like when my dad passed, and I can't even imagine what it was like to lose both so suddenly.” Guilt began to tunnel through her. “I should have asked more questions. But I just wanted to give her some space to grieve, and then she seemed to start enjoying life again. I didn't want to bring her pain back to the surface just because I wanted her to share her feelings with me. It seemed selfish.” She buried her face in her hands. "What if she was hiding from something else entirely, not her grief?"
She felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, quit beating yourself up. If Katie had wanted to talk to you about any of this, she would have. You're her best friend, but she's still an adult who made her own decisions.”
Ivy lifted her face, looked up into his.
Eyes that had seemed distant before were now warm with compassion and a kind of haunted knowing that said he’d suffered loss as well.
As much as she wanted to swan dive into his arms, she stiffened her spine.
The whole reason he was here was to help Katie, not to comfort her.
“Thanks,” she said, bereft when he moved back to his chair.
“Did you find anything at Katie’s?” she asked, once he’d settled into the chair he’d occupied last night.
He nodded, a short, sharp dip of his head, before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a piece of paper. He handed it to her, took a sip of his tea while she looked at it.
She raised her head. “It’s a packing list for a trip. So, yeah, I guess it’s important since it shows she meant to leave.” She cocked her head, studied him. “But you think there’s more to it.”
He nodded again. “That’s a list for a go-bag, Ms. Foster.”
She snorted at his formality. “I think after last night we’re past being all formal.” Then she got serious again. “What’s a go-bag? I know what I think it means.” To her, the paper in her hand was nothing more than a list to make sure Katie hadn’t forgotten anything. It was a very Katie thing to do.
“Really look at it,” he said. “It’s not just toiletries and climate-appropriate clothes. It’s money. It’s meds. It’s stuff she can’t just go grab at the neighborhood drug store. This is a list for someone who’s going into hiding for a long time, not someone who’s going on a trip.”
Scrunching her brow, she scrutinized the paper, covered in the neat, precise handwriting Katie had used since their childhood. He was right.
“Does she have epilepsy?” Clay asked, his voice quiet. Respectful.
She looked up at him in confusion. “No, why?”
“She stockpiled Keppra. That’s an anti-seizure medication.”
Ivy wracked her brain. “She did say something about seeing a doctor for foot pain a while back, but that’s all.”
Clay was busy typing on his phone. “Peripheral neuropathy. It’s a nerve disease. Treatable when caught early enough.” He looked up. “Given her age, obviously it was caught early enough.”
Ivy frowned, not liking the fact Katie hadn’t mentioned anything. Then again, she hadn’t said squat about anyone bothering her either. When had her friend become so secretive? And when had she stopped pushing?
A good dose of guilt tempered her grumpiness. Somehow, some way, she’d made Katie feel less than safe with her. Had forced her friend to keep vital pieces of herself close.
“So now what?” she asked, blowing out a breath. “I have a client meeting at the café in an hour.”
Clay started to protest, but Ivy held up a hand before he could form the words. “I wasn’t going to go alone. You’re more than welcome to ride shotgun. Just don’t scare the bejesus out of my client.”
~
Clay didn’t like the fact that Ivy had received a call from the same area code. From someone who not only knew her name, but the make of her car. It stunk to high heaven.
On the good news front, the fact someone was likely looking for McAlister via Ivy, and that Katie had packed a go-bag, made the human trafficking and fatality options move further down on the list of possibilities. Not off it altogether, but further down.
Dev had discovered the name of the ex, Greg Hamilton, a deputy with the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Department, and with each successive hour it appeared that Katie McAlister had come to Las Vegas to hide. And then gone back into hiding when she’d been found, theoretically by Hamilton.
Besides the go-bag list there had been nothing in McAlister’s apartment that spoke of a struggle or of her going to a specific location. The pictures on the wall had been of her and Ivy, of her in the high desert, of her with some of her authors. There was no man she would have run to, as a protector.
There was also no computer at the house, telling him she’d taken her laptop with her. Everything about Katie McAlister’s life had been mobile and ready to go.
Dev had put a trace on her phone and was doing a deep dive into her IP address to see if she’d logged in anywhere that was using Wi-Fi.
They had officially pulled out the stops trying to find Katie McAllister.
But the back of Clay’s neck was itching, just like it did when something wasn’t right with a cargo load he’d positioned on an aircraft. Something was definitely out of balance, and it was his job to discover what it was.
With nothing else to do until they left to drop off the painting, he searched for Hamilton on social media, knowing Dev had done the same as soon as he’d learned the man’s name. But Clay wanted to see Katie McAlister’s boyfriend for himself.
Hamilton was handsome and looked and acted like the high school football hero who’d never left home. His photo gallery showed him with a bevy of pretty girls, Katie McAllister being one of them. In the pictures her smile looked strained, as if she was trying to keep it together. There were also a slew of photos of a younger Hamilton in uniform. He'd been a Marine, back in the day. Which didn't mean anything now but might factor into any future actions they might take, if the man was indeed who Katie was running from.
He called Ivy over. “Did she ever show you pictures of him?”
She looked at the pictures, shook her head. “No, she didn’t like to talk about it much. But look at her face, you can tell that she’s not happy there.”
Clay pondered the photo for another moment. “It doesn’t just look like unhappiness to me. That looks like abuse.” He should know. His old man had been free enough with his hands back in the day. And while Katie didn't have visible bruising, there was something about her expression that looked all too familiar.
Next to him Ivy sucked in a breath. “No.” she shook her head. “She would have said something. Maybe not then, but when she came out here.”
Clay shrugged. “A lot of times abuse survivors don’t talk to anyone,” he said. “They run.” He paused, fought the urge to run a comforting hand down her back. Fought the urge to pull her close and soothe.
“Think about it. She calls and tells you she wants a fresh start. You rent the apartment for her, and she never takes it out of your name. And she never took her parents’ names off of the phone plan. Her father is still listed as the primary.”
Ivy looked at him in shock, but she didn’t refute anything that he’d said.
“Have you ever seen him before?” Clay asked. “Here in Vegas?”
She studied the picture, then shook her head. When she looked back at Clay, the shock was gone, and anger had taken its place.
“No, I've never seen him before. But if I do, I’m kicking him in the junk, if for no other reason than that smirk.” She pointed at a photo of Hamilton and Katie. “Jackass.”
And with that remark, Clay felt himself whip straight past professionalism and into a full-blown liking for Ivy Foster.