If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

a look in his eyes, one that was dark, troubled. He rubbed a thumb over the bruise on her inner wrist, lifted it to his lips. “I don’t want to pull a Neanderthal act or anything. But I really don’t want you leaving … not when we don’t know if it’s safe,” he said.
    Goosebumps broke out over her flesh at the feel of his mouth on her skin.
    And as he stared at her from under his lashes, her heart bumped against her ribs, did a crazy little dance. “If I ask you to stay, will you?” he said quietly.
    “Depends on why you’re asking.” Oh, hell … was that her voice? That breathless little gasping voice?
    “I’m asking because I want you safe,” he said, pulling her close again. Then he dipped his head and nipped her lower lip. “And I’m asking because I’d also like you to spend the night with me … all night.”
    “Hm. Like a sleepover? Popcorn and movies?”
    His grin was quick and hot. “No. Like you in my bed,under me, while I taste every last inch of you … and then you do the same to me. Or you can go first … I’m a gentleman, you know.”
    Heat, hot and fast, hit her low in the belly even as her heart skipped a few dozen beats. Feeling more than a little breathless, she curled her arms up around his shoulders, rose onto her toes so that they stood eye to eye, mouth to mouth. “Well, that sounds like my kind of sleepover. Yeah. I guess I can spend the night. In the name of safety and all.”
    “Sure. In the name of safety.” His hands stroked down her back, cupped her butt.
    As they got busy on her ass, she nipped his lip. “And sex. The sex is important, too.”

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
     
    T HERE WERE SOME THINGS A GUY JUST DIDN ’ T WANT to tell his wife.
    Now Ezra was perfectly fine telling Lena almost everything … even the fact that he’d been speaking with a beautiful woman on the job. After all, it was related to the job.
    The one thing he
didn’t
want to tell her, though, was how this beautiful woman was somehow connected to her. It was, he knew, something he should have already told her. He hadn’t, though. For months, it hadn’t been much of an issue. After all, the case had been closed.
    But then, Nia Hollister had shown up in town and as much as he would have
liked
to brush her off, he hadn’t been able to. Every instinct inside him had started to scream when she told him why she was there.
    Joe Carson had been too easy. Part of him had suspected it all along. Which was why he’d quietly been poking into things on his own. Although he hadn’t let anybody know, he’d been doing just that for months.
    But granted, there wasn’t much he could do when no crimes were being committed, when there wasn’t really any evidence, no reason to
open
a case that had been closed.
    Not until Nia Hollister had shown back up. The hair thing—that was something, but not enough. The jewelry thing, too. Then her little nighttime visitor. Yeah, things were adding up.
    And he needed to talk to Lena. But hell, he wasn’t looking forward to it.
    As he made his way into the kitchen at the Inn, he saw Roz Jennings in the hallway, talking animatedly on the phone, her blue eyes bright with either amusement or irritation—sometimes with her it was hard to say. She saw him and gave him a distracted wave. He smiled back and kept walking. His leg was hurting like a bitch, but he ignored it, knowing it was more stress than anything else.
    A way for his brain to focus on something else.
    Like the fact that after he’d hung up the phone, he hadn’t been able to hang around the house and wait for Lena to get off work.
    Of course, he could have waited outside the Inn, but if he’d done that, somebody would have said something and it would have gotten back to Lena, and she would have come looking for him. So he might as well get it over with and let her know he was here, that he’d drive her home.
    And when she asked why he was doing that, he’d just tell her he was a paranoid son of a bitch and he didn’t plan on letting her out of his sight for the foreseeable future …
    “Yeah, that’s going to go well,” he muttered just before he pushed open the door to the kitchen.
    Puck was lying in front of the island, his head resting on his paws, but as though he’d known Ezra was coming, the retriever’s tail was already wagging. Lena’s head turned to the door. Black lenses shielded her sightless eyes. She always wore them when she wasn’t home.
    “Hey, beautiful,” he