Serve ‘N’ Protect by Tee O’Fallon
Chapter Sixteen
With her long blue robe securely in place and covering all her essential girlie parts, Cassidy joined Markus and three stern-faced state troopers in her living room. Huge, all of them. Even the female officer had to be pushing five-foot-eleven. Markus looked completely comfortable with them. Not that she should be surprised. He was one of them. Even if they didn’t know it.
Outside, red-and-blue lights flashed, illuminating the street and her front yard, reminding her, in a morbid kind of way, of Christmas decorations. The living room was like an icebox, thanks to the busted window. Shards of glass lay all over the rug, some landing as far away as the sofa. Wonderful. One more thing in her money pit of a house to be fixed.
Cassidy held back a snort. Now they both had broken windows. She shivered then tightened the belt on her robe.
While introductions were made, Markus handed her a gel pack he must have retrieved from her freezer. She held it to her bruised cheekbone and flinched, partly from the pain but mostly from the cold.
“Ma’am.” The female cop taking notes, Trooper Collins, gave a slight nod. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Sensing her discomfort, Markus put a comforting arm around her shoulders, while Ghost padded to her other side and leaned his head against her thigh in a show of canine support that she sorely needed.
“I woke up and heard a noise. I thought it was a bat. Turned out to be a burglar.” Briefly, she shut her eyes, remembering the horrifying moment when she realized she wasn’t alone. “It was dark, but with the Christmas tree lights I could see a man in the living room. I tried sneaking back upstairs to call 911, but I don’t move very fast these days.” She held up her cane. “He caught up to me, grabbed my ankles, and dragged me back down the stairs.”
Markus’s hand tightened a fraction. When she glanced at him, his stubbled skin tightened over his jaw.
“And then?” Trooper Collins asked.
“And then”—she took a shaky breath—“he punched me in the face.” Every bit of Markus’s body that was snugged up against hers went as rigid as a steel beam. “I didn’t pass out and no, before you ask, I’m not going to the hospital. The next thing I knew, Mar—” Whoops. “Alex and Ghost broke in and scared the guy off.” She sent Markus a silent I’m sorry at nearly calling him by his real name. His only reaction was a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.
Ghost huffed.
“I take it that’s Ghost?” The trooper indicated with her pen.
“He’s mine,” Markus said. “We heard her scream and rushed over. I broke in through the window and by the time we got inside, he’d already escaped out the back door. We chased him down the street to a black cargo van. I didn’t get a look at the tag. Looks like he jimmied the lock on the kitchen door. It’s pretty old.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Some, but I didn’t see much,” Markus said. “He was about five-eleven, 180 pounds, wearing jeans, a dark blue or black shirt, and a ski mask. Blond hair was sticking out from under the mask.”
Trooper Collins stopped scribbling, her pen poised over the pad as she regarded Markus. “For someone who didn’t see much, that’s pretty specific.”
Markus didn’t miss a beat and shrugged. “Yeah, well. I watch a lot of cop shows.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, Cassidy had to roll her lips inward to keep from laughing.
Trooper Collins lifted a sculpted brow and shifted her attention back to Cassidy. “Do you know if anything’s missing?”
“I haven’t checked. May I?” she asked, uncertain if she was allowed to touch anything yet.
The trooper nodded. “But try not to touch anything. The tech team will want to dust for fingerprints. They’ll want a sample of both your prints to rule them out.”
Cassidy and Markus exchanged looks, and he winked at her. Actually winked. As though pointing out he’d been right about everything.
“Wait!” she blurted out, remembering something critical. “There’s no need to look for fingerprints. He wore gloves.”
Trooper Collins frowned. “How do you know? You said the only lights on were from the Christmas tree?”
“I think his eyes were blue. The glove on his hand was definitely blue. I couldn’t miss it right before he rammed it in my face.”
“Okay, then.” The trooper made another notation. “It’ll be up to the detectives as to whether or not they need to take your prints or send over a tech team.”
When Markus glared at her, it was obvious he didn’t believe her. He thought she was lying just so he didn’t have to give a print sample and risk his identity being discovered.
“Is anything missing?” one of the other police officers, Trooper Asher, asked.
Cassidy gasped. “Oh, no. My purse.” Hastily, she clumped into the kitchen where she’d left it on the counter. Not caring whether it was okay to touch anything, she dumped out the contents, relieved to find her wallet inside and still snapped closed. She opened it, releasing an audible breath when she glimpsed her one and only credit card and the cash she’d gotten from an ATM the other day. Money was so tight, every dollar mattered. Quickly, she counted the bills. “It’s all here. Cash. Credit card.”
At that statement, Markus’s glare turned to a frown, his eyes narrowing.
“Is there anything else that could be missing?” Trooper Asher prodded. “Jewelry?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t think he made it upstairs, and I don’t own any jewelry that’s worth very much.” Not since she’d returned her engagement ring to Hugh, that was.
“What about a laptop?” This from the third officer, Trooper White, who’d remained silent until now.
For a moment, her mind went utterly blank. Her entire world was on that laptop.
Returning to the living room, her heart sank. Once neat stacks were now totally jumbled. Ledgers and invoices littered the floor. Biting her lip, Cassidy dropped the gel pack on the sofa and began shuffling documents aside left and right, not seeing the laptop. Her hands began to shake as she flipped over ledgers and papers, frantically searching and still coming up empty.
“No,” she breathed. “No, no, no, no!” It couldn’t be gone.
“Cassidy?” Seeming to sense she was about to explode, Markus came over. “What’s missing?”
“My laptop,” she cried, throwing up her hands. A new one would cost her between $500 and $1000, none of which she had to spare. Her shoestring budget was about to be decimated. “Without a laptop, I can’t finish the audit. If I can’t finish the audit, I won’t get paid.”
“Did you back anything up?” he asked. “Online or on a hard drive or anything?”
“Of course I did,” she snapped, louder than intended. He was only trying to help, and she had to remember that. “I have an external hard drive, but without a laptop to attach it to, the drive won’t help much.” With all the privileged information in the data, it wasn’t like she could walk into a library and use their computers. Not only would they not have her software, it would violate all kinds of confidentiality clauses. She wasn’t even willing to risk storing data in an online cloud system.
“Did he get the drive?”
Her jaw dropped as the horrible possibility took root. She rushed to the side table and yanked open the drawer. Relief washed over her and her muscles actually went weak as she held up the device for the police officers to see. “No. It’s right where it should be.” Now all she had to do was beg, borrow, or steal a laptop.
“Looks like he was interrupted when Ms. Morgan saw him,” Trooper Collins suggested. “Then when you broke the window,” she said to Markus, “he took off.”
“Yeah.” Markus’s eyes narrowed as he stroked his chin, deep in thought. “Could be.”
“If you want to come by the barracks tomorrow, you can file a stolen property report for the laptop,” Trooper Collins said in a sympathetic tone that told her it would be a waste of time. “If you still have the receipt, bring it with you.”
“Thanks.” Unable to stand a moment longer, she lowered to the sofa and put her face in her hands, hissing in a breath as her palm slammed into the growing goose egg on her cheek.
This was bad. Really bad. Talk about a vicious cycle. Not only was she cash poor, but she might have to sell her house. The house that she loved—the one she’d planned to start a family in—was a money-sucking pit of despair, needing repairs which would never happen in this century.
God help her if she had to move back in with her parents. She loved them, but taking a step backward in her life was something she could never do.
The cushion beside her sank, and Markus’s comforting arm came around her shoulders, once again tugging her to him. She sighed against his hard chest, wishing she could go to sleep and wake up to find this was all a bad dream.
“You’ll get through this,” he whispered against her head. “I’ll help you.”
She grunted. “How?”
“When the sun comes up, we’ll figure things out.”
We?Not you? The little pronoun had registered, but right now her brain was too exhausted to comprehend its full meaning.
“I’ll write up the report.” Trooper Collins flipped the cover on her pad and slipped it into her breast pocket. “Just give your name to the duty officer when you bring in your receipt.”
“Will this be assigned to a detective?” Markus asked.
The woman nodded. “There’ve been a few burglaries in town lately, but none on this street. I’ll make sure this report gets in front of the detective working that case. We’ll also canvas the area around the house, in case he left any footprints or dropped anything.”
“Are there any street cameras in the direction of Point Lookout Road?” Markus asked. Point Lookout Road was the first major street Chesapeake Bay Retriever Lane ran into.
Trooper Collins chuckled. “You must not be from around here.”
“I just moved in,” Markus answered.
“This is a pretty rural part of the state. There are no cameras on this street, and even if one of your neighbors has a door cam, the houses are too far apart to pick anything up. But it was a good thought. Learned that on one of those cop shows, did you?” She arched a brow.
“There’s one more thing,” Markus said, ignoring the trooper’s comment. “A couple of weeks ago, her ex-boyfriend came to the house. He wanted to reconcile. She didn’t. His name is Hugh. He’s about five-eleven, 180 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.”
“You don’t really think…” Cassidy trailed off as the possibility took root. “I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Markus gave her a pointed look at her choice of words. He had hurt her, terribly.
The cop’s pen poised over her pad. “What’s Hugh’s last name?”
“Brady.” Her shoulders sagged. “He owns Brady Construction.”
“We’ll talk to him,” the trooper said. “I’m sorry this happened to you. We’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Cassidy managed, numbness settling in, along with her dire financial predicament. She still couldn’t believe Hugh would ever do something like this.
A moment later, the police filed out and the door shut. The blue-and-red strobes that had been lighting up the street were turned off, then the police cars drove away.
Cold air streamed in through the broken window and she shivered. Ghost laid his head in her lap, gazing up at her with understanding, sympathetic eyes. She scratched his ears, taking comfort from both Markus and his dog.
“C’mon.” Markus stood and held out his hand. “You’re sleeping with me tonight.”
Huh?His words snapped her out of her pathetic woe-is-me doldrums faster than her brain could calculate one plus one.
“You can take my bedroom. I’ll sleep in one of the guest rooms.”
Oh, right. Idiot. Not as in sleep with him tonight, just sleep in his house.
“Let’s go. It’s getting colder in here by the second.”
Only then did she notice his feet were bare, and the only clothes he wore were sweatpants and a T-shirt. Might as well take him up on his offer. Even if the window hadn’t been broken, her house felt so…violated.
She slid her hand into his, feeling the warmth of his long fingers closing around hers and liking that feeling more than she should.
Not long after, she lay in Markus’s king-size bed with the covers tucked up to her chin. The bedside clock numbers glowed red and clear. It was 3 a.m. She’d been to the bathroom twice for a glass of water, and now she was right back to where she’d been thirty minutes ago. Twisting and turning, trying to find a position that would render sleep and not put too much pressure on her goose egg. Exhausted though she was, sleep refused to come. Her mind kept replaying the shock and biting fear when she’d realized someone was in her house, followed by getting dragged down the stairs and the stinging pain of getting punched in the face.
With absolutely nothing better to do, she shifted onto her side, burying her face in the pillow and inhaling Markus’s woodsy, spicy, citrus scent. And maybe a little gun leather from where his holster had been sitting on the table.
He and Ghost were sleeping not twelve inches away in the guest room on the other side of the wall. Not for the first time, she wondered if he really slept in the nude.
Erotic visions of what his naked, powerful body looked like without a stitch of clothing swam before her eyes. Oh, come on, girl. If sleep was the goal, thoughts like that wouldn’t help any.
“That’s it,” she muttered, throwing back the covers. The only thing that might help was, of course, chocolate. Even if it didn’t, a few ounces of sweet chocolaty goodness would ease her emotional pain and suffering.
With her hand on the doorknob, a terrible thought punched her in the gut. What if he doesn’t have any chocolate in the house? Mr. Perfect Body probably didn’t eat chocolate, what with the whole carb-free thing and all. He probably didn’t even have juice. There had to be something in the kitchen that could double as a chocolate placebo.
She opened the door and slammed into something hard and hot. Markus’s chest. The shock of seeing him and Ghost right outside her door had her stumbling backward until he reached out to steady her.
“Can’t sleep?” Moonlight from the bedroom window escaped into the hallway, casting dark shadows beneath his high cheekbones.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see his fist headed my way.” That, and your perfect, naked body. “I was going in search of chocolate.”
“Sorry. Don’t have any.”
“I didn’t actually think you did, but I’m desperate.”
In the darkness, he hmphed. “Is there something else I can get you that might help?”
Um, yeah. Your arms wrapped around me for the entire night, she thought but lacked the intestinal fortitude to say. Plus, when Markus had left her and gone into the other bedroom, he hadn’t touched her again, hadn’t so much as tried to kiss her good night. Did he regret kissing her earlier? Was it just a onetime, hopped-up-on-adrenaline mistake in judgment?
She hoped not, because on a scale of one to a hundred, Markus’s kisses rated a solid 101. His kisses blew Hugh’s away.
“Is there?” he asked again.
“Would you…” She stared at his chest, feeling like a small child that didn’t want to be left alone at night because the boogie monster was hiding under the bed.
“Would I what?”
Was it her imagination or had his voice gone husky, as in, porn-star husky?
She swallowed, praying he hadn’t heard. “Stay with me?”
His minty breath washed over her face in a soft whoosh, as if he’d been holding it. “Okay,” he said after another long moment.
Cassidy turned and went to the bed, hooking her cane on the bedside table and sliding back under the covers. Her heart pounded wildly as she imagined him in the same bed with her.
Ghost strolled in and made himself comfortable on the floor by the door. The other side of the mattress shifted as Markus lay down. Instead of slipping under the covers, he tucked in behind her, remaining on top of the duvet and resting his hand at her blanketed waist. “Better?”
“Mm-hmm.” They were spooning. Actually spooning.
Through the thick covers, the heavy hand at her waist was more comforting than an entire barracks of state police watching over her. He slipped his hand lower, snugging her closer to his chest.
Her heart rate jacked up and she now suspected that her invitation might have been a mistake—sleep-wise, that was. Not only was he in the same bed with her, but he was spooning and touching and—
Don’t. Go. There.
“Thank you,” she said over her shoulder. “And thanks for understanding.”
“You’re welcome. And it’s no problem.” His lips brushed against her ear, sending a wave of delicious shivers down her back. “Given what happened, I’d be surprised if you were able to sleep.”
Awkwardly, she turned in his arms to face him. As she did, he lifted his hand from her waist, and she instantly regretted changing positions. But then he returned his hand to her waist, as if it were the most natural thing to do.
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid to fall asleep,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble. “I’ve been there myself, many times.”
“You? Afraid?” That was hard to believe. Then again, he’d been to war. “You mean when you were in the marines.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Actually, I was referring to when I was a kid. In addition to being a narcissistic asshole, Steven, my father, verbally abused Kelly and me. Once in a while, after one of his tirades, he’d get physical. I’d lie awake until the sun came up, just in case he barged in with his favorite leather belt, the one with the silver buckle so big it left welts that lasted for days.”
Her jaw dropped, leaving her momentarily speechless. “He whipped you with it?” Cassidy couldn’t imagine what kind of an animal whipped his own children. Sure, she knew it happened out there in the world but would never have suspected that Markus—a man big and strong and tactically trained—to have been one of those children.
His voice went hard. “Yeah.”
The ache in her heart was so great that, again, Cassidy struggled to find words. “My God, Markus.” She touched her fingers to his cheek, needing to feel him, to somehow transmit all the anger and compassion building inside her for the boy that he’d been. “I’m so sorry you went through that.” Her parents had never raised a hand once to her or any of her siblings. No wonder Markus was emotionally shut down tighter than a drum. “How long did he do that to you?”
“Years.” The chuckle that escaped his lips held zero mirth. He clasped her hand, threading his fingers with hers and tugging their hands to his chest. “Until I got big enough to fight back. Steven wanted a perfect athlete, and he got one. I worked out, got bigger and stronger every year, and it showed in my performance. By the time I was seventeen, Division 1 schools were knocking on the door with athletic scholarships. But the best part was one night when I saw that buckle coming at me, inches from my face, and I grabbed it in midair. When I threw it back at him, he finally figured out that I could kick the shit out of him. He never tried whipping me again.”
“And you stayed there?” Again, she couldn’t imagine the nightmare he and sister had endured.
“Until I was twenty.”
Her stomach hardened as she grasped the horrors he and his sister must have endured. “Didn’t you and Kelly have any other relatives nearby you could go to?”
She felt rather than saw him shake his head, his hair brushing her forehead. “No, and Steven pretty much alienated everyone around him except for those who stroked his ego.”
“Wait.” Something he’d said puzzled her. “You said you got your degrees online while you were in the marines. Why didn’t you accept any of those athletic scholarships? That would have gotten you away from him and out of the house.”
“I couldn’t. I had to turn them down. If I’d gone away, Steven might have turned that belt on Kelly. She’s two years younger than I am. I couldn’t escape until she was ready to leave for college herself. By that time, all my scholarship offers were null and void.”
“So you stayed.” And missed out on what should have been one of the most exciting and wonderful times of his life.
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” He squeezed her hand. “Life is full of twists and turns. I found another path, and I’m good with it.”
Was he? Sometimes, she wasn’t so sure. He kept so much of himself tucked away in a secret compartment that he never opened. No wonder he was incapable of expressing his emotions. His bastard father had seen to that.
“Go to sleep, Cassidy,” he whispered, dropping a light kiss on her forehead.
Easy for you to say. Her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts about the man whose body she was so securely and protectively snugged against.
No one had ever shown him what it was like to be cared for and to be loved. From what he’d just told her, quite the opposite was true. And she thought she had baggage. He had enough to fill a cargo ship.
But as the seconds ticked by, her eyes became heavy, her breathing deeper. As she drifted off, she could have imagined Markus’s lips again brushing the top of her head.
…
Markus was in hell. Hot, burning, satanic hell. God had dropped him there as payment for all the sins he’d committed in his life, of which there were too many to count.
Thick, wavy hair tickled his nose, the earthy-sweet scent of honey was in his lungs, and the soft curve of Cassidy’s waist lay beneath his hand. All of which was enough for a one-way ticket to an all-nighter of sexual frustration. Being so close to her without kissing or touching her the way his body craved was absolute torture. Can anyone say giant boner?
For the third time in the last few minutes, he shifted, desperately searching for a more comfortable position that didn’t worsen the ache beneath his sweatpants and finding there was no such position.
Cassidy’s chest rose and fell evenly. The sound of her breathing was quieter than a butterfly’s wings.
Holy shit. For the first time in his life, he was waxing poetic, which forced him to face another unsettling factoid. He was in deep, deep trouble.
Being on top of the covers had seemed safer. If he was under the covers, he’d be sorely tempted to do all kinds of things he shouldn’t, things that would only end in emotional disaster. Her emotions, not his. Sometimes, he wondered if he really had any.
Still asleep, she sighed and turned onto her back. Moonlight illuminated the adorable slope to her nose and the lushness of her lower lip. The top of her camisole had risen up a few inches and now his hand rested on totally bare, completely soft, tempting-as-hell skin. It was all he could do not to lean down and kiss that creamy patch of her abdomen.
When she inhaled deeply, his gaze riveted to her chest, and his boner went stiffer than a Marine Corps cadet’s salute.
Breasts fuller than he’d realized she had mounded against the camisole’s thin fabric, the nipples jutting upward like two plump little berries. Enticing didn’t begin to describe how he’d begun viewing her. Somewhere along the way, things between them had begun to change.
Cassidy didn’t wear gobs of makeup or sexy clothes. She didn’t drape herself in expensive jewelry or spray cloying perfume on her neck. Nor had she ever thrown herself at him. Yet she was the sexiest, most desirable woman he’d ever met. Rather than actually shake his head in confusion as to why, he settled for a mental eyeroll.
When she’d asked him to stay with her, he should have said no. Dumbass that he was, he never should have gone to her door in the first place. But she’d been traumatized and he’d known the signs. Having been through it before, how could he not, and how could he have left her alone when she’d asked him to stay?
He couldn’t have, no more than he could ignore his feelings for her. Feelings he couldn’t put a label on, but they were there, inexplicable and confusing as hell. She had a way of pulling some of his worst shit out and afterward he always felt a little bit better. As if some of the weight that had been dragging him down was a pound or two less. Wasn’t his gut-spilling, TMI-moment proof of that? Until tonight, he’d never told a soul what Steven had done to him.
Again, I’m in deep shit. Because nothing had changed. Not where it counted, deep down inside the blackened, hollowed-out cavern of his soul. He could never be in for the long haul, could never share that part of himself that most people did, the part that was at the root of successful, loving relationships like his friends Matt, Nick, Eric, and Dayne had found. Lucky bastards.
Cassidy was a beautiful woman who deserved a man who would love her. Most importantly, a man who could express that love. Unfortunately, Markus didn’t know how. Where once he’d thought that essential human gene had skipped a generation, he now knew otherwise.
The psych degree he’d gotten helped him to understand the issues plaguing him as a child, a teenager, and even to this day: Steven’s shitty parenting. But knowing the source of his problems didn’t automatically gift him with the ability to solve them. That had to come from within, not from lectures or books written by doctors with fancy degrees hypothesizing about the human brain.
The most important lesson he’d learned since then was what a total asshole he’d been. He was glad Cassidy hadn’t known him in his early twenties. She wouldn’t have liked him much.
Did she like him? He hoped so. Then again, she seemed to like everyone she met. She had a heart big enough to forgive even total bastards like her ex-fiancé. Who may, or may not, have been in her house only hours ago. But why would he take the time to steal her laptop? She’d very generously returned the engagement ring which, in his opinion, Hugh had forfeited by virtue of leaving her when she was at her absolute lowest and needed him the most.
Speaking of needing… The thought of leaving Leonardtown and not being near her or able to walk next door and talk to her anytime he wanted left a gaping hole in his chest.
In her sleep, she rested her hand on his chest. A lock of hair fell across her face. Carefully, so as not to wake her, he rubbed the silky strands between his thumb and forefinger before tucking it behind her ear.
He didn’t have enough fingers on both hands to count all the reasons why starting something up with her was a bad idea. Those reasons kept stacking up higher and higher to the point where he couldn’t see over them.
What he needed was to focus on something else, like solving his own attempted murder, but with no leads to follow, he was shit outta luck. His thoughts automatically returned to the burglary.
Cassidy probably didn’t see herself as being strong, but he did. She’d been shot at and punched in the face and hadn’t shed a single tear. On top of all the other things he admired and liked about her, she was one gutsy woman.
Given that her laptop had been stolen, it seemed unlikely the incident had anything to do with who was trying to kill him. Not for the first time, though, he wondered why the burglar hadn’t taken her wallet, too. Maybe he would have if he hadn’t been interrupted when Cassidy had come down the stairs or by him and Ghost breaking through the window. That all made sense. But her purse had been right there on the counter in plain sight. Easy cash was the first thing a burglar would focus on.
No matter how many times he reviewed the evidence, nothing locked into place in a way that gave him peace of mind. He could easily have assigned blame for his unease on the fact that he was still on red alert and would remain in that condition until his own attacker was caught.
But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was at play here.