This time he recognized it for what it was…an intense physical attraction. Although he didn’t know her at all, made it a habit never to get involved with any of his cases, something about her made him think of tangled sheets and hot kisses.
“So, are you going to call this Loucan and tell him you found me?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I figured I’d wait to contact him until you’ve decided what to do.” The elevator doors whooshed open and together they stepped out into a narrow hallway.
They walked down the hall and stopped in front of apartment 505. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out her keys and quickly unlocked the door, then turned back to him. “If I did agree to go to California, it would take a couple of days for me to arrange for somebody else to take care of my current patients and for me to clear my schedule.”
“Loucan has waited three years for me to find you. I’m sure he can wait a little while longer.” He fought the impulse to reach out and touch the smooth skin of her cheek, stroke a silky strand of her hair.
Instead he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Call me when you’ve made a decision,” he said. “Good night, Phoebe.”
“Good night, Kevin.”
He’d just turned to walk away when he heard her gasp. It wasn’t the gasp of a woman happy to be home, but rather it was a gasp rife with surprise…with fear.
He whirled around and flew through her apartment door. Immediately he saw what had made her gasp. The place was wrecked and she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who would live in such utter chaos.
“You creep!” Without warning she picked up a sofa cushion from the floor and flung it at him. “Was this your plan? You meet me at Myrtle’s and while you’re buying my dinner your accomplice comes in here and robs me blind?” Her eyes flashed with temper and her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped as he pulled his gun from his ankle holster. “Call 911 and don’t leave this room.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, but moved deeper into the apartment, wanting to make certain no perpetrator was still inside.
He checked the cabinets and pantry in the kitchen, the closet and shower in the bathroom, then moved into the bedroom.
The room was a vision in blues and peaches, but the dresser drawers had been emptied on the floor and a jewelry box on the top of the dresser had been upended.
Confirming that there was nobody in any of the rooms, he returned to the living room, where Phoebe stood in the middle of the mess looking shell-shocked.
“Did you call the police?” he asked as he put his gun away.
She nodded. “They should be here any minute.”
“Phoebe, I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with this,” he said. He walked over to where she stood and placed his hands on her shoulders. He realized she was trembling. “You must believe me,” he said.
She stepped away from him and he dropped his hands to his sides. She sighed, her gaze darting around the room. “I’m not sure why, but I do believe you.”
Relief flooded through him. “While we wait for the police to arrive, you might want to look around and see if anything has been stolen. But try not to touch anything.”
He watched as she walked around the room, a frown marring her forehead. By the time the police arrived, she had discerned that nothing had been taken.
Kevin wasn’t surprised. His gut instinct told him this hadn’t been a random burglary. Instead, it looked as if a frantic search had been conducted.
While Phoebe spoke with the officers, making out a report, Kevin’s mind raced with possibilities. Was it merely a coincidence that he had found her today and her place had been searched this evening? Or, was it something more sinister? In finding Phoebe, had he also found her for somebody else?
It was after eleven when the police left and Phoebe shooed Kevin out the door. He’d offered several times to stay and help her straighten up the mess, but she’d declined. She needed time alone…time to assimilate the craziness of the day.
First there had been Kevin, with his amazing story of a man in California trying to find her, then the break-in. She felt as if she was in overdrive and what she needed more than anything was a good night’s sleep.
But, there was no way she could give into sleep until her apartment was put back into some sort of order. Chaos made her nuts.
As she worked, she thought of everything that Kevin had told her. The thought that someplace out there she had a brother and sisters, pulled forth old emotions of want and need that she had spent years trying to repress.
As a child she’d been hungry for family, but by the time she’d reached twelve and with no family coming forth to claim her, she’d shoved away her hunger and focused instead on getting where she wanted to be, alone.
The idea of returning to California evoked in her an enormous dread. Her years spent there had not been happy ones.
But could she forget about a man named Loucan who might have knowledge about her mother and father, about any siblings she might have?
It was after one in the morning when she finally fell into bed, exhausted but comforted by the fact that her apartment was relatively back to normal.
Still, sleep remained elusive, her thoughts haunted by the knowledge that somebody had been in her private space, somebody had violated her home.
What had they wanted? If it had been a simple burglary why hadn’t her television disappeared? Her stereo equipment or her computer? As far as she could tell, absolutely nothing had been stolen.
She fell asleep with questions nagging at her and awakened at six the next morning, gasping for air and covered with a light veil of perspiration.
The dream. It had been a while since she’d had the recurrent nightmare that had plagued her all her life. But, the moment consciousness claimed her, she knew she’d just suffered it again.
She didn’t move from the bed for long moments, instead waited for the last vestiges of the dream to leave and her heartbeat to return to normal.
Eventually when she pulled herself from the tangle of sheets, she refused to dwell on the nightmare images and headed directly for the shower, hoping a cascade of hot water would effectively banish any lingering bad feeling the dream might have left behind.
Standing beneath the hot spray of water, her thoughts immediately turned to Kevin Cartwright. She wasn’t sure what she thought about him. Granted, she found him very attractive, but she was certain they couldn’t be less alike.
She was devoted to her work and he seemed rather irreverent about his. In fact, he’d seemed pretty irreverent about everything. Despite that, as crazy as it sounded, she trusted him.
And for just a moment when the police had left and the two of them had been standing in her living room, she’d desperately wished he would wrap his arms around her and pull her tight against his broad chest.
The wish had been nothing more than a crazy impulse brought on by the trauma of the home invasion. Definitely not likely to happen again, she thought moments later as she dressed in a pale-blue uniform.
She’d been taking care of herself since she’d been very young. As a foster child, she’d learned early on that she had nobody to depend on but herself. She learned to rock herself when she needed comforting, whisper to herself when she was lonely, and wrap her arms around herself when she desperately needed a hug. And the handsome Kevin Cartwright wasn’t about to change old habits.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon as she left her apartment. She stepped out on the sidewalk and drew in a deep, cleansing breath.
She