She held in a sigh of relief, especially as he continued to stare at her. Then he reached inside the open driver’s door and pulled out the keys. Obviously she was the one he did not trust—not to drive off without him. He knew her too well.
“I’ll check it out.” He slid the keys into his suit pocket. “And come back for you.”
With a soft click, she closed the back door. “I’ll go with you.”
As they headed up the brick walk toward the front door, she reached inside her bag for the can of mace. She would spray it at him and retrieve the keys while he was coughing and sputtering.
She could get away from him. She could protect her son and herself.
“Remember the first time you walked up this path with me?” Brendan asked, his deep voice a warm rasp in the cold.
She shivered as a tingle of attraction chased up her spine. Their fingers had been entwined that night. They had been holding hands since dinner at a candlelit restaurant.
“I teased you about playing the gentleman,” he reminisced. “And you said that you were no gentleman because you just wanted to get me alone.”
Her face heated as she remembered what a brazen flirt she’d been. But she’d acted that way only with him. And it hadn’t been just for the story. It had been for the way his gorgeous eyes had twinkled with excitement and attraction. And it had been for the rush of her pulse.
Brendan chuckled but his voice was as cold as the night air. “You really just wanted to get inside.”
That wasn’t the situation tonight. Inside his house, with its thick brick walls and leaded-glass windows to hold in her screams, was the last place Josie wanted to be. Maybe he hadn’t been a bad man four years ago, but he’d only just begun taking over his father’s business then. Now that business was his. And he’d been leaving his own legacy of missing bodies.
“You just wanted to search my stuff,” he angrily continued, “see what secrets you could find to shout out to the rest of the world through one of your father’s publications.”
“You’re so bitter over my misleading you,” she remarked. “Can’t you see why I would think you’re the one who wants me dead?”
He sighed and dragged out a ring of keys from his pants pocket. She recognized them because she’d tried so often to get them away from him—so she could make copies, so she could come and go at will in his house, business and offices.
“If you would realize why I am so bitter,” he said, “you would also understand why the last thing I want is for you to be gone.”
He turned away from the door and stared down at her, as he had that first night he’d brought her home with him. His pupils had swallowed the blue-green irises then, as they did now. “I wanted you with me that night … and all the nights that followed.”
There was that charm that had given her hope that he was really a good man. That charm had distracted and disarmed her before.
But she hadn’t had CJ to worry about and protect then. So now she kept her hand wrapped tightly around the can of mace. And when he lowered his head toward hers, she started to pull it from her purse.
But then his lips touched hers, brushing softly across them. And her breath caught as passion knocked her down as forcefully as he had earlier in the parking garage.
He had saved her tonight. He had saved her and her son. And reminding herself of that allowed her to kiss him back. For just a moment though …
Because he pulled away and turned back toward the door. And she did what she should have done as he’d lowered his head—she pulled out the can of mace and lifted it toward him.
Then she smelled it. The odor lay heavy on the cold air, drifting beneath the door of the house. She dragged in a deep breath to double-check.
Maybe she was just imagining it, as she had so often the past four years, waking in the middle of the night shaking with fear. She had to check the stove and the furnace and the water heater.
And though she never found a leak, she never squelched those fears. That this time no one would notice the bomb before it exploded.
This time the fire wouldn’t eat an empty house. It would eat hers, with her and CJ trapped inside. But this wasn’t her house.
It was Brendan’s, and he was sliding his key into the lock. Would it be the lock clicking or the turning of the knob that would ignite the explosion?
She dropped the damn can and reached for him, screaming as her nightmare became a fiery reality.
Flames illuminated the night, licking high into the black sky. The boy was screaming. Despite the ringing in his ears, Brendan could hear him, and his heart clutched with sympathy for the toddler’s fear.
He could hear the fire trucks, too, their sirens whining in the distance. Ambulances and police cars probably followed or led them—he couldn’t tell the difference between the sirens.
Despite the slight shaking in his legs, he pressed harder on the accelerator, widening the distance between Josie’s little white SUV and the fiery remains of the mansion where he’d grown up.
It had never been home, though. That was why he’d run away when he was fifteen and why he’d intended never to return. If not for feeling that he owed his father justice, he would have never come back.
“Are—are you sure you want to leave?” Josie stammered, wincing as if her own voice hurt her ears. She was in the front seat but leaning into the back this time, her hand squeezing one of their son’s flailing fists. She’d been murmuring softly to the boy, trying to calm him down since they’d jumped back into the vehicle and taken off.
The poor kid had been through so much tonight, it was no wonder he’d gotten hysterical, especially over how violently he’d been awakened from his nap.
“Are you sure?” Josie prodded Brendan for an answer, as she always had.
He replied, this time with complete honesty, “I have no reason to stay.”
“But your staff …”
Wouldn’t have survived that explosion. Nothing would have. If he hadn’t noticed the smell before he’d turned that key, if Josie hadn’t clutched his arms …
They would have been right next to the house when a staff member inside, who must have noticed the key rattling in the door, had opened it for them and unknowing set off the bomb. Instead he and Josie had been running for the SUV, for their son, when the bomb exploded. The force of it had knocked them to the ground and rocked her vehicle.
“Are you all right?” he asked again.
She’d jumped right up and continued to run, not stopping until she’d reached their screaming son. The explosion had not only awakened but terrified him. Or maybe he felt the fear that had her trembling uncontrollably.
She jerked her chin in an impatient nod. “Yes, I—I’m okay.”
“Maybe we should have stayed,” he admitted. But his first instinct had been to get the hell away in case the bomber had hung around to finish the job if the explosion hadn’t killed them.
While Brendan wished he could soothe his son’s fears, his first priority was to keep the boy and his mother safe. And healthy. “We should have you checked out.”
She shook her head. “Nobody can see me, in case they recognize me like you did. And those other men …” She shuddered, probably as she remembered