Hard Case (Hard as Nails #2) (4 page)

I step onto the pristine marble floor as he rounds the corner to head up the winding staircase with my bags.

“I’m taking these up to the guest room for you.” His voice rings through the open house.

I don’t say anything. I’m in awe of the view. Directly ahead are two rows of floor to ceiling windows facing the backyard with its patio and in-ground pool extending out of view around one of the corners of the house. A couch and two love seats are positioned around the fireplace.

To my left, there is another, more intimate sitting room with a full entertainment center and glass doors leading to a separate patio covered by part of the second floor. This patio has a fireplace, outdoor kitchen, full dining set, and a view of the pool.

Inside, there are more doors than I can imagine rooms for. It feels excessive for just one person, and I make note of the absence of any family photos.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Slate asks as he descends the stairs.

“It is,” I admit, feeding his ego.

He comes down the stairs like a prince, an air of royal vanity present in his perfect, undisturbed features. Today’s events have obviously not shaken him.

“The best place isn’t how luxurious the house is, but how secure. I’ve got the best security system money can buy. No one can get close to you here without me knowing about it, and you may stay as long as you need to,” he says to me.

Slate’s unsolicited kindness is discomforting, and my first instinct is to tell him I can take care of myself. But after the stresses of today, the best I can manage is a meek, “Thank you,” spoken like an uncertain child.

“Believe me, it’s not a problem,” he says. “This house could use some company,” he continues to charm me and ease my concerns.

Despite how alien this world feels – with its gunfire, high-speed chases, and knights who may actually be dragons – I do appreciate his efforts to comfort and protect me.

“Would you like to see your room?” he asks.

“Sure.” I follow him up the carpeted stairs to a hallway overlooking the living room. We veer off to the left, past a series of arched doorways, until we reach the end of the hall.

He opens the door to reveal a bedroom furnished with a dark wooden queen-size bed along with a matching nightstand and dresser. My overnight bag sits on the bed.

He crosses the room and opens the curtains, revealing a sliding glass door leading onto a private balcony. “The balcony overlooks the pool and is only accessible by this door.” He crosses the room again and opens another door, revealing a small bathroom. “And you even have your own bathroom. It only has a shower, but there’s a larger tub in the one down the hall if you’d rather use that one for a bath. That’s two doors down. My room is just past that,” he says.

I linger in front of him in the bathroom doorway, relishing the closeness of his body to mine. We’re almost close enough to touch, and my body aches to feel another against it. Slate’s body is all taut muscles and lean lines. He looks like a rich billionaire in his suit, but suddenly all I see is a wild animal. I imagine him naked. I imagine him inside me. Moving. Pumping. Fucking me on my hands and knees so aggressively the bed shakes and my headboard bangs against the wall.

I’m horrified. My thoughts are a twisted mix of past and present. Horror and grief for Josh. Curiosity and sexual attraction for Slate. I feel like I’m living in a dream and I desperately want to wake up.

I bite my lip hard to ground myself but it’s as if the fantasy flipped a switch, and I can’t stop thinking of him naked.

Obviously, the months of loneliness are catching up with me, but I can’t give in. I swore I wouldn’t let another man in after being betrayed by my one true love. Despite how it feels to stand near the confident protector who bailed me out of jail and saved my life, I can’t break that promise.

“Thank you,” I tell him again, trying to sound genuine this time. “You really are too kind,” I add.

“It’s the least I can do.” He steps around me and walks to the bedroom door. “If you need anything, anything at all, let me know,” he says before leaving my room, and I get the feeling he means
anything
.

I feel heat rush to my cheeks as I blush. I shake it off and open my bag.

First order of business now that I’m alone: take a shower.

The hot water rushes over my body, washing off the anxiety and worry of the last few days. I stand under the showerhead for a few minutes before bathing, letting the water rain into my tangled hair and flow down over my skin. I run my hands over my breasts, enjoying the feel of my fingers cupping and squeezing as the water rushes down over me.

I close my eyes and imagine Slate coming to check on me, to make sure I’m getting settled in. He finds me in the shower and steps in to join me. Except, when he pulls the shower curtain back and steps in, it’s not him. It’s Josh. He’s naked in front of me with two gunshot wounds in his chest.

I open my eyes as I get an unexpected serving of guilt with my shower. Josh is dead, and I’m showering in my defense attorney’s house, exactly the kind of house Josh had always wanted.

Chapter Five

Rose

Standing at the top of the stairs, I hear Slate talking to someone. I can’t tell what he’s saying. His voice rings through the house, but his words are lost in the reverberations.

I creep slowly down the stairs in jeans and a black blouse, not ready to really dress down in front of this stranger yet. I realize he’s standing at the front door. His voice isn’t moving around the way it would be if he were on the phone and walking around the house.

Then I hear another voice, accompanied by the crackle of a radio. He’s obviously talking to law enforcement. I stop before I reach the bottom of the stairs and try to listen in, but the acoustics of the house continue to devour his words, robbing me of the opportunity to eavesdrop. When the door closes, I finally take the last few steps down to meet him.

The marble floor is cold and hard under my bare feet. Its smooth surface makes the living room feel more like an office and makes me want to put on shoes before walking around on it.

Slate walks into the room with a troubled look on his face, but it is quickly replaced with a smile when he sees me.

“Hey, Rose. I was just about to come up and see you.”

For a moment, I think maybe I should have stayed in the shower a little longer to give him the chance to join me after all. Once again, I’m horrified by the thought. What is happening to me? I’ve never felt this instant, overwhelming attraction to a man before, and the fact I’m experiencing it now, after the horror of what I’ve been through, fills me with self-loathing.

Then again, maybe it’s only normal after such a tragedy to fantasize about feeling something stronger than grief or guilt. But fantasies are one thing. I can’t let Slate see how I crave his touch. Can’t reveal how much I want to lose myself in the pleasure he can give me. Or how I want him to hold me in his arms and comfort me until I actually believe everything is going to be okay.

“That was the police,” he says. “I filed a report on the men who shot at us.”

“What did you tell them?”

He shrugs. “I told them I didn’t get a good look at the guys, but I gave them a description of the car, told them about the condition your house was in, and gave them the license plate number.”

“You got their license plate number?” I don’t remember him saying anything about it or taking it down earlier.

“You don’t do this for as long as I have without paying at least
some
attention to detail.”

“Why didn’t you get me? I could have given them a statement.”

“No need,” he tells me. “I told them you were resting after the ordeal, that it had stressed you out and you needed your sleep.”

“And they were fine with that?” It seems a little suspicious he would want to keep me from talking to the police with him.

He steps closer and puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder and despite myself, I lean into his touch. “Look, all they need to know is that we were both there. I told them what happened, and I did what I could to paint you as a victim. I’m not doing anything that’s not already part of the bigger picture for you,” he assures me.

But I’m not feeling reassured. Slate has an answer for everything. It seems there’s not a situation he either hasn’t experienced or hasn’t thought through yet. Suddenly, I feel like there’s something wrong with this fancy, slicked-back lawyer. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out.

* * *

Slate

I don’t know how long she’s been standing on the stairs or what she’s heard, but when I walk back in from my discussion with the police, Rose is standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me.

She has showered and changed clothes. Her auburn hair, still wet, falls to her shoulders in waves. The black blouse she’s wearing hugs her curves, accentuating her breasts. Her jeans hug her hips.

She greets me with questions in her eyes, asking who was at the door without saying a word. But when I explain why I didn’t ask her to speak to the officers, I get the feeling she doesn’t believe me. She knows something is up. I try to calm her suspicions and assure her I’m looking out for her.

What I don’t say is I’m also looking out for King. I don’t know what she’ll tell the police if given the chance, and King isn’t someone we want to piss off.

I’d called him as soon as I’d left her in her room, and the conversation had disturbed me so much I’d actually been able to focus on something other than the image of her naked in my guest room shower.

While King reassured me he had nothing to do with Rose and I being shot at, he’d also dropped a bomb on me. “It was probably my new associates,” he’d said.

“New associates?” I’d questioned.

“Josh Carter wasn’t only working for me. He also did work with some of my newer compatriots. And he stole money from both of us.”

“And you didn’t think it was important to tell me about these people?”

“I didn’t think they would move on their own. Especially after I’d told them I had it under control.”

“You were obviously wrong. And you need to tell your new partners to back the fuck off.”

He sighed. “Slate, I’m in negotiations with these people. Critical negotiations. I can’t control them. The best I can do is reassure them she doesn’t pose a threat to us. I’m counting on you to reassure me that she’s not.”

“It’s going to take some time to build her trust,” I’d told him, keeping my voice low and checking over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t coming downstairs.

“I’ll see what I can do to slow them down,” he’d told me, “but I can’t make any promises. Get to work, Slate.”

Get to work
. King’s words echo in my mind as I stare at Rose. My attempts to allay her suspicions failed. I just hope if she really doesn’t know what her husband was mixed up in, I can keep it that way.

Refraining from complimenting her for her keen instincts or addressing the suspicion in her eyes, I hold out an arm to suggest we walk towards the kitchen. “You must be hungry.”

She cuts me a sidelong glance as she walks by, pointedly ignoring the arm I held out for her. “I am,” she says with a guarded tone.

“Hold on.” I put my hands on her tense shoulders and turn her around. Unlike when I touched her earlier, she doesn’t lean into my touch. This time, she tenses and shrugs away.

I narrow my eyes. It’s time to nip this in the bud. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I get it if you find it hard to trust anyone right now. At the same time, Rose, you’ve got to cut me some slack here. I know I’m just some random attorney who showed up ready to defend you, and you don’t know me from Adam, but here’s what I want you to consider. I’m doing this pro bono. After being shot at, presumably by someone with connections to your husband, I invite you into my home and tell you to stay as long as you need to. You’ve got to understand, I’m taking you at your word that your husband’s drama was his alone, that you weren’t involved. So, ease up on the distrust and suspicion a bit.”

I’m not really angry or offended by her suspicions of me. Whatever they may be, there’s a good chance she’s right. But it’s important that we can depend on each other until all of this is over and she can return to her life.

She looks down at her bare feet, and I follow her gaze. Her toes aren’t polished and her feet look small and delicate. They look sweet, which isn’t a word I’ve ever connected with a woman’s feet before. I can’t help but think Josh Carter was an idiot to screw up his marriage to this beautiful woman. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “It’s hard, you know. Everything seems a little suspicious right now.”

I put a finger under her chin and gently lift her face to meet her eyes. “I understand. Suspicion and I have a professional relationship,” I tell her with a wink.

She studies me for a moment and seems to visibly relax. She laughs a little, a tinkling feminine sound that makes me think of her pink cardigan and navy dress with the cherries on it.

I turn and walk toward the kitchen before she realizes the sound of her laughter has made me hard.