Page 16 of Baby Take Me Home

“Penn and team, I’m coming to relieve you. You’ll ride home with Jensen and Bond, and I’ll trail Ms. Armand.” I threw my headset onto the desk and stalked to the back of the van to exit.

Samantha laid her hand on my arm. “What’s the rest of the plan, TJ?”

“To talk some sense into her, and if that doesn’t work, to tell her just enough of the truth to scare it into her instead.”

CHAPTER 7

Ashlee

I’d been homefrom the gym for about ten minutes and was pouring myself a glass of iced tea when I noticed a movement in my backyard. It could have been a neighbor’s cat or a random raccoon, but my amygdala pegged it as human. And since the incident, my brain equated sneaky humans with danger.

I pulled a sturdy, sharp kitchen blade out of the knife block and inched toward the sliding glass doors that looked out over my tiny patio and the small patch of grass beyond it. My neighbors on either side had 6-foot tall wooden fences, and the neighbor behind me had a row of mature evergreens. My yard was private. Secluded. A warning chill ran down my spine. Remembering the lessons from books I’d read after the incident that advised using fear discriminately and appropriately, I channeled the adrenaline surge into alertness and strength. I mentally reviewed my kickboxing combinations, calmed my mind, and prepared for a fight.

But the yard was empty and still in the hot afternoon sun. There were no voices, no car noises drifting in from the street, no animals on the prowl.

I eased away from the door. I held onto my knife but dropped my arms from my fighting stance, and took a few deep breaths, thanking my fear for trying to protect me but asking it to leave now.

The doorbell rang. I jumped six inches, lost my grip on the knife handle, and sent it clattering across the kitchen floor. With my heart lodged in my throat and fear pulsing in every inch of my body, I dropped to my hands and knees and scrambled to recover my weapon. The doorbell rang again.

With my knife firmly back in my hand, I stood, dropped my shoulders, and even laughed a little at myself. It was probably a delivery person, or maybe Amy, my best friend and colleague at the Sun, checking on me. After all, if someone really meant me harm, they were unlikely to be polite enough to ring the bell.

I hurried to the front door and peered through the side window. I was met by a pair of big, brown eyes fringed with long black lashes staring back at me. I gasped, but this time, the adrenaline rush through my body wasn’t fear. Without looking away from him, I eased open the drawer in the table in the front hall and dropped my knife into it, then pasted on a smile and cracked open the front door.

“Mr.... uh, TJ, isn’t it?” He hadn't fallen for that the last time, and of course, I knew the man’s name, now his full name, Thomas James Russo. I'd been investigating him for days.

Judging by the look on his face, he knew all about it.

“Ashlee.” My name in his smooth voice slid over me and sent a whole new—and this time enjoyable—set of chills down my spine. He wore light gray dress slacks and a button-down white shirt with the top two buttons open. Business casual, but sexy as hell.

I ignored those open buttons and took charge of the exchange. “Did we have an appointment?”

“You should invite me in,” he responded.

It wasn’t a request, it was a command. I remembered that about our last exchange. There was nothing polite or cajoling about him. He demanded, and judging from his sense of entitlement as he did so, I could only assume people obeyed.

Which made me want to disobey him so very, very badly. And yet, I found myself backing up into my foyer, opening the door wider, silently allowing him entrance to my home, my sacrosanct space.

He closed the door quietly behind him, blocking out the late afternoon sun and leaving me momentarily blinded by the lost light. His warm skin and his fresh, earthy scent told me he was close to me. Indecently close. When my sight adjusted to the dim light, I realized we were just inches apart. I was in bare feet and he stood at 6’3”, which I knew from my research on him, making him a full half a foot taller than I. I had to tilt my head up to meet his gaze.

I slowly gathered a few remnants of clear thought. “Were you sneaking around in my backyard?”

“Just making sure we have privacy.”

That could be taken many ways, from a veiled threat to a sexual invitation. I reminded myself again about professionalism and withheld judgment.

His eyes swept over my face and hair. Without the benefit of make-up and a hair straightener after my shower at the gym, I was woefully au naturel, far from the polished look I’d sported Saturday night. His lips curled up at the edges and I wondered what he was thinking.

“You’ve been a bad, bad girl,” he whispered.

That sent a jolt of attraction through my veins. I’d never before been turned on by a man just talking to me, so that couldn’t be what was happening. But the longer I stood rooted to the spot, barely able to breathe, willing him to speak again, the more I doubted my own assessment. So much for keeping this professional.

I fixated on the pulse in his throat beating firmly and steadily. Not racing like mine. I wanted to even the score, send a shockwave through his veins, and pull him into my wild imagination where we were tearing off each other’s clothes.

I leaned closer to him and whispered, “Are you here to punish me?”

His pulse kicked up. He drew in a long breath, and his pulse returned almost to normal. It wasn’t that he was unaffected by me, it was that he was controlling it. Being the boss of it. Dominating it.

My little game had worked to draw a response from him but the heat of embarrassment crept up to my cheeks. I cleared my throat and took an awkward step backward. I pulled out another weapon in my arsenal, having spent part of my childhood in the Carolinas while my mother, a dynamo chef set up Michelin-starred kitchens in multiple restaurants there. “May I offer you some tea? I have sweetened and unsweetened.”