Blood and Roses (Shadow Stalkers 3)

Unfortunately, she wasn’t normal and neither was her family. Her brain was filled with a variety of larcenous information, which was how she’d come to be an insurance investigator specializing in fine art and jewelry theft—her mind worked like a criminal’s.

Keeping Jake had never been an option for her, despite how much they loved each other. His brain had always worked out problems from the opposite side of the law, and he’d always planned on working in law enforcement. She couldn’t imagine him being anything other than a cop.

How could she ever ask someone like him to connect his life to those of a band of criminals? The reason she’d come back only proved how right she had been to walk away. What would it do to him, to his career, to their love if she went to jail? She’d known that one day Tilly or Frankie would land into trouble and when that happened, it would impact Jake. She couldn’t do that to him. In the end, she’d loved him enough to leave him.

“Yet here you are at his place,” she murmured to herself, grabbing her weekend bag from the passenger seat. She slung it over her shoulder and opened the gate, admiring the cobblestone pathway to the front door and knowing Jake must’ve laid it himself. She imagined him outside on a sunny day, shirtless and sheened with sweat, the muscles of his back and arms flexing as he worked his way across the lush lawn.

She wondered what he’d been thinking of while he was working. Had he imagined a wife waddling over it while pregnant with his child? Or his kids skipping along it on the way in from school? Or a dog bounding over it as neighborhood children played in the yard with his own?

Her hand clenched around the keychain she’d made for him when she was just sixteen.

Been that way for twelve years now, Ana.

Jesus. That was a heartbreaker. And yet she was touched that his love was as true as hers.

She let herself in, dropped her bag on a black leather couch, and took in the surprisingly modern style of the furnishings. He’d gone with pale blue and chrome with black furniture, and the cool palette went remarkably well with the warmth of the gleaming hardwood floors.

If she’d had any sense at all, she would have stayed at the inn. Leaving had shattered her last time. What would she suffer through this time? What would Jake?

Taking a deep breath, Ana pulled the much-loved scent of him deep into her lungs, her entire body tingling with awareness. Jake had been her first lover and her senses were trained to be attuned to his. He’d trained them, first with his hands and mouth, and later with restraints and the delicious bite of pain. It was a lifestyle they’d fallen into together, both of them realizing that she had a deep-seated need to surrender to his authority, and in the process, he’d ruined her for other men. Sometimes, when she was lying in bed at night, she wondered if she’d ruined him for other women.

Ana dug out her laptop from her bag and carried it into the dining room. Jake had a square, high table and she kicked off her heels before climbing onto a barstool. As her laptop powered up, she pulled out her cell phone and his business card, and texted him.

Password for your wi-fi?

A moment later, he replied. [email protected]

She stared at the code and smiled. “Ana-mine-69, huh?”

Wishful thinking or a hint? she texted back.

He answered fast. An order.

“Well. Some things never change.” Ana flexed her fingers and rolled her shoulders back, focusing her mind on the work ahead.

She was going to dig up information on Terence Parker and she was going to break the law doing it. She pushed aside her guilt, knowing it had to be done. “I hope you pull through, Terence.”

Ana had decided to focus on his relatives. She could imagine how it would feel to go into the heist as the lone outsider in a family group—a mother, her son and his best friend. Although Eric wasn’t technically related to them, he was practically a brother to Frankie. Terence would understandably want someone similarly close to him on his side.

God... Frankie. Her throat tightened with fear and her eyes stung. Her baby brother had never really had a chance to walk the straight and narrow. And if something happened to Eric, it would destroy Jake.

“One step at a time,” she muttered to herself. “Find the fourth.”

“You’re making the rest of us look bad, Jake.”

Jake looked up from the paperwork he was trying to clear so he could take the next day off. Luke Stiles—one of his fellow deputies and a longtime friend—stood in the doorway, grinning. “I heard Ana’s back in town and staying at your place.”

“Ah, Whisper Creek, where the whispering about other people’s business never stops.” Leaning back in his chair, Jake gave himself permission to think about the woman who was as much a part of him as his badge. She’d been the most important thing in his life since her family drove into town when she was sixteen. Together they’d helped each other cross the threshold from adolescence to adulthood, and they’d discovered what they needed from the person they loved. A lot of people never figured that out.

And some never found their soul mates.

He still didn’t get why they weren’t together. He understood that she’d needed to get out of Whisper Creek to spread her wings, but he couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t let him go with her. He’d cajoled and begged and threatened and teased, making her tell him a hundred times over that she’d never leave him. But in his heart he’d known she would go; he’d seen the truth in her eyes.

She loved him; he knew that and didn’t doubt it. There would never be another man for her, not one who knew her as deeply and completely as he did. They’d experienced so much together, raw and searingly intimate encounters that bound them tighter than gold rings and vows.

But as the years passed and she didn’t come back to him, he realized something was keeping her away and today proved it. The love was still there in her beautiful green eyes. She still wanted him and obeyed him, still craved his hunger for her. If she left again, he’d have his

answer—it wasn’t him; it was Whisper Creek. And if location was what was keeping them apart, he’d paddle her ass for not saying so.

Luke leaned against the front of Jake’s desk. “Is she back for good?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Ah... okay. You two coming into town for dinner?”

“She’s cooking.”

“Really? You should know I was in Home Ec with her for a semester. She couldn’t crack an egg.”

Jake smiled. “Warning noted.”

“You sure about that?” Luke’s smile faded. “She did a number on you last time, Jake. I don’t want to see you like that ever again.”

“I’m not the only one who got hurt. Guess Ana and I can’t quit each other.”

He waited until Luke left the room, then pulled out his cell to call Eric. His younger brother was supposed to check in twice a day, but he hadn’t called since yesterday morning. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t totally unexpected.

“Hey, Eric,” he said, when he reached voicemail. “You’re supposed to be checking in. Yes, I know you’re a grown man now, but this isn’t about what’s good for you, it’s about doing something good for me. I worry.”

He took a breath, thinking.

“Text me when you get a chance or leave me a message. Shit, send me a picture if you can’t be bothered to type or talk. But don’t send me a damn mug shot or I’ll be kicking your ass all the way to jail.”

Ana finished her report and emailed it to her contact at the insurance agency. It was difficult showing progress when she didn’t want to give up any names. Even using the guard’s name was tricky, because he might flip on Frankie or Eric if he felt the heat. So she’d reported that she was researching the backgrounds of all the store’s employees, which didn’t make her look any more competent that the local cops, but she’d dug up a couple dark

spots that would’ve been viable leads if she didn’t already know who was responsible for the crime. The information should be enough to make it look like she was worth her fee... at least for today.

As for her hunch, she’d discovered that Terence had two brothers—one was a tenured professor in Virginia and the other had a sealed record that she’d hacked. Richard Parker had a previous armed robbery conviction when he was fifteen and a variety of petty larceny and drug charges. His record was clean as an adult, but her parents proved that not getting caught didn’t mean you were straight.

Shutting down her laptop, Ana slid off the barstool and went to check on dinner. She’d done a quick check of Jake’s fridge and pantry earlier and hadn’t been surprised to find both well stocked. After debating her options, she’d put a pot roast in the oven and a salad in the crisper. Then she’d opened a bottle of red wine and left it to breathe on the counter. Because she’d prepped in advance, she had time to take a shower before Jake got home.

She grabbed her bag off the couch and headed to the guest bathroom, admiring the tile work in the shower that she knew was another of Jake’s projects. When he’d inherited the place from his parents, it hadn’t had such upgrades. It had been a cookie-cutter house, one of the first homes built by a developer who’d thought the town would grow much faster than it had. Now it had Jake’s stamp over most of it, but the guest bathroom was clearly Eric’s domain. The razor on the edge of the sink was a bright lime green and the men’s body wash in the shower was the kind marketed to hormonal young men.

Jake had assumed responsibility for his brother at the tender age of nineteen, when the Monroes had been killed by a collision with a drunk driver. Ana had supported him through that rough time and offered him what comfort she could, considering how young she herself was, but he’d been good with Eric from the beginning. Jake was a born leader, firmly anchored by his moral compass and unshakeable confidence.

She’d needed his quiet strength as much as Eric had, having been raised by two of the flightiest people ever to be parents. And even after all these years, Jake was still her touchstone.

Ana scrubbed, shaved, and perfumed herself like a woman bent on seduction, a mindset she hadn’t adopted for a very long time. She hadn’t packed anything sexy, so her simple cotton baby doll nightgown would have to do.

“Ten years,” she murmured to her reflection in the mirror, fluffing out her damp curls with her fingers. “You’re bound to be a little rusty.”