Lover Undercover

chapter Fourteen


Trevor was the one who had suffered a concussion, so Kylie wasn’t really sure why she felt so light-headed. But she did. From the moment she’d seen him standing beside the tub, all roughed up and naked, he’d stolen her breath and left her equilibrium asking which way was up. Even now, lying beside him in his big bed with her head cushioned in the curve of his shoulder and afternoon sunlight filtering in through wooden shutters, she couldn’t seem to draw the right amount of air into her lungs. Her head felt as weightless as the dust motes floating in the sunbeam slanting across the foot of the bed.

After mind-blowing sex, he’d switched things up, holding her captive with his molten gaze while his hands traveled intimately, yet innocently, over her skin and hair, bathing her. She’d returned the favor, reveling in the vitality of his body.

She could happily revel forever, drifting along blissfully as his fingers threaded lazily through her hair, and his heart pounded strong and steady beneath her ear. But reality kept pricking her brain with pointed questions until she couldn’t ignore them any longer.

“What happens now? With the case, I mean,” she quickly clarified, glancing up at his relaxed face.

He frowned slightly and sighed. “Not sure. Ian and I will continue digging through backgrounds tomorrow on all our maybes, and hope to God we hit on something. Otherwise, we start fresh Thursday night with a new man undercover.”

She sat up and looked at him. “A new man?”

“I’m blown. This guy took a swing at me, and suddenly cops were everywhere. Unless he’s a complete moron, he realizes I’m a detective working a sting.”

A chill scrambled along the back of her neck. “Do you think he suspects I’m part of the trap?”

He gave her a serious look and cupped her cheek in his warm palm. “I don’t know. My gut says no, because our guy thinks you’re Stacy, and if he knows her at all, he knows she’s not going to willingly cooperate with the police. But even if he suspects, you’ll be safe,” Trevor stressed. “This guy’s activity has been limited to the area around the club. We’ll have someone at Deuces before, during, and after your shifts. Until we catch him, you’ll never be unprotected.”

Kylie refrained from mentioning Stacy would most likely be back on the job in a few more weeks. She fervently hoped they’d have the killer in custody before then. Unfortunately, hope didn’t erase her concerns. “He nearly got caught last night. What if he decides to just…stop?”

“I doubt he can. This man is obsessed with protecting you from violent clients. Most people in the grip of an obsession can’t simply walk away. Still, I’d call it a red flag if one of your regulars suddenly stops showing up, or one of the long-term employees gives notice.”

His explanation troubled her on several levels. Obviously, the notion of an obsessed killer disturbed her. But his unconscious slips upset her, too. The killer was obsessed with Stacy, not her. Likewise, the regulars weren’t hers, they were Stacy’s. His failure to draw the distinction substantiated her original fear about his feelings all too well—at best, Trevor was attracted to a woman who didn’t really exist—Kylie playing Stacy. At worst, he wanted Stacy, but just didn’t know it yet.

Not his fault, her conscience reminded her, even as her heart bled from the realization. How could he want Kylie? You never showed him the real you—you were always trying to convince him you were Stacy.

Not that it mattered, really. Her plans at this point in life didn’t include romantic complications. She had too much to accomplish first—build up her yoga practice, open her own studio, prove to everyone in Two Trout she could amount to something. Her mother had shown her time and time again how easily an attachment to a man disrupted the best-laid plans.

She had to get out of there before she did something stupid—like give in to this self-defeating compulsion to cling to him. God, deep down she really was just like her mom. And if that thought didn’t get her moving, nothing would. She scooted to the edge of the bed. With her back to him, she said, “Ian’s going to be here soon. I have to go.”

Silence greeted her announcement, and then the sheets rustled as he sat up. His hand settled on her shoulder.

“Stay. I’ll call Ian and tell him not to bother.”

“No, don’t.” Uncomfortably vulnerable, she reached down and grabbed the towel she’d borrowed earlier. Wrapping it around her body, she tried for a teasing tone. “The doctor instructed you to rest. Based on what I’ve seen so far, you have a better shot at following his orders if I don’t stick around. Besides, Stacy might need me.”

“She’s a big girl. She knows how to dial a phone if she needs you.” He trailed his hand down her arm and threaded his fingers through hers. “You take care of Stacy. You’re here, looking after me. I’m wondering, do you ever let anyone take care of you?”

His words, the thumb slowly stroking her palm, made her want to curl into his big, warm body and beg him to hold her for hours, days…forever. And there was the problem. If she gave in to this urge to feel sheltered, and protected, and yes, taken care of, would she ever want to stand on her own two feet again? Would she toss her goals aside in order to hold on to those feelings?

Alarmed at her faltering resolve, she stood and plastered a smile on her face. “I have things to do at home, and I have early classes tomorrow. The last thing you need is me waking you up when I crawl out of bed at 5:00 a.m.” Turning, she hurried down the hall to the laundry room, where her clothes were sitting in the dryer. She’d gotten her bra and top on, but her jeans were still around her knees when he sauntered into the small room, naked save for a towel slung low around his hips. His presence stole all the space…and all the air.

She yanked her jeans up, zipped and buttoned them, and took a step toward the door, hoping he’d move. No such luck. He held his ground.

“Stay,” he said again, and touched his mouth to hers.

The world tilted, and she really didn’t have a choice but to flatten her palms against his wide, warm chest and use him for support. He cradled the back of her head and took them both deeper into the kiss. Logic and self-protective instincts sifted through her brain like sand. With the last of her rational mind, she pulled back just enough to look into his unfairly beautiful face and whispered, “Why?”

“Because I need you,” he murmured. “I’m falling for you. And whether you care to admit it or not, you’re falling for me, too.” Pressing his forehead to hers when she would have pulled away, he stared straight into her eyes.

Panicked, she lowered her gaze and shook her head. “You’re not, Trevor. You don’t even know me.” Even as she said the words, her soul ached for him to say something—what exactly, she didn’t know—to prove her wrong. Prove he knew her. Wanted her.

He drew away, his lips pressing together in a line of frustration. “We’re back to that again? I know you,” he said firmly. “No matter which name you used when we first met, it was still you. Maybe other people in your life have had a hard time seeing a difference, but not me. I’m drawn to your bravery, your calm, your humor, and deep down, you damn well know it, Stacy… F*ck!”

Clapping a hand to his forehead, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. “Kylie,” he said calmly. “I meant Kylie. That was a slip of the tongue. The one slip I told myself never, ever to make, so naturally, it tumbles out at the worst possible moment.”

He looked so stricken, so appalled, she couldn’t help but push the scraps of her annihilated heart off to a corner to be picked through later. Forcing an I told you so smile to her stiff lips, she said, “Sounds like you’re working way too hard at keeping us separate in your mind. I don’t think it’s supposed to be quite so hard. We had great sex. Don’t try to turn it into anything more.”

When she moved to slip past him, he shifted and blocked her way. “Nice speech, but I call bullshit.” His eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about identity at all, is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You told me a while back a relationship between a cop and a stripper would never work. But we could replace stripper with any vocation, couldn’t we? The cop part is your problem, despite what you said before. Maybe a little Stacy rubbed off on you in one respect. You don’t completely trust authority, or me.”

Knee-jerk denial had her shaking her head, even as a small voice at the very back of her mind questioned, Could he be right?

“No,” she insisted, both to him and herself. “This isn’t an authority issue or a trust issue.”

“Prove it.” Backing her up against the washer, he flattened his hands on the top on either side of her and leaned in. “Stay.”

He brought his mouth down on hers, but while she expected, even braced for, aggression, he used slow, gentle persuasion. She wasn’t braced for that. Her mind clouded. Her body melted. His fingertips brushed her cheek with infinite tenderness and she felt herself going under for what might be the final time. With one last burst of conviction—or fear—she broke away and ducked under his arm. He let her.

“I can’t,” she said through a painfully tight throat.

His reply—a long look from those all-seeing eyes—kicked her flight instinct into high gear. “I have to go,” she choked out, and fled.

She stayed in high gear all the way home. In the feeble sanctuary of the Bug, compromised as it was by Trevor’s scent, her mind raced through his accusations. Did she doubt his feelings for her because cold, hard reality dictated that he didn’t really know her, or did she distrust him because Stacy’s and her mom’s experiences—and opinions—had subconsciously convinced her to be wary of not just cops, as Trevor believed, but all men?

By the time she pulled into her driveway, she’d figured only one thing out—the questions were too complex to resolve during a drive home, especially with her nerves shot and her body craving sleep. The rest of the day would be quiet and calming, she promised herself as she trudged upstairs. Her heart leaped into her throat when the front door suddenly swung open and she confronted a lean, muscular chest encased in a dark blue T-shirt. A quick tilt of her head brought Ian’s amused face into view.

He stepped out onto the landing. “Hey, Kylie. How’s the patient?”

Dazed by his presence, she traded places with him. “Fine. Um, resting comfortably. Is Stacy okay?”

His grin stretched into a wry smile. “She’s a little pissed. Probably my fault. Don’t worry though, she’ll level out once she realizes I’m right and stops fighting the inevitable.” He jogged down the stairs, calling, “See you later.”

“Later,” Kylie parroted, still bemused by his presence and his strange, cocky pronouncement. After closing the door, she dropped her bag and went in search of Stacy. She found her standing beside the kitchen window, wearing a short red robe, looking out at the street below. That alone would have warned her something was definitely off. Her sister wasn’t the type to think about a man, much less chase him with her eyes, after he left her bedroom.

“Stacy?”

Her sister jumped and turned, looking like a peeping Tom caught red-handed. “Hey, Ky. How’s Trevor?”

“He’s all right. He’ll be good as new in a day or two. What are you looking at?”

Stacy glanced out the window again and frowned. “Nothing,” she said firmly, as if willing herself to believe it.

“I, ah, ran into Ian just now.”

“Oh. Well.” She shrugged and hobbled past Kylie and into the living room. “I called him after I spoke to you—strictly to make sure he was okay. He offered to stop by before he headed over to Trevor’s to relieve you…” She trailed off, flopped onto the sofa, and sighed. “Shit. I really don’t know why he came. For sex, I thought, but we knocked that one out of the park about three seconds after he arrived, and for some reason, he stuck around. If his goal was to mess with my head, he did a good job.”

Kylie took a seat beside her. “Really? How’d he manage that?”

She shrugged. “He talked. He told me about last night, about how amped he was at the prospect of finally catching this crazy bastard, how panicked he felt when he saw Trevor go down, and how frustrated when he realized the guy had gotten away. He didn’t hold anything back, but just…he let me in. Me.” With a harsh laugh, she shook her head.

“What’s so laughable about that?”

“Oh, please. The guys I sleep with aren’t interested in talking to me about their innermost hopes and fears. And that’s perfectly fine, because you know what? I’m not interested in hearing them. I’ve got my hands full with my own hopes and fears.”

Kylie didn’t miss the edge of anxiety in Stacy’s voice. She’d never seen her love-’em-and-leave-’em sister so upset over a man, so desperate to deny any emotional connection. Normally the lack of emotion went without saying. And while she liked Ian and thought his calm, innate steadiness might actually be good for Stacy, the realization that physical intimacy hadn’t cured Stacy’s attraction worried Kylie. If anything, sex seemed to have left her sister even more muddled, oddly similar to her own tangled emotions for Trevor.

Uh-oh.

“You told me sleeping with a man was a surefire way to get him out of your head. By your own rules, you should have thanked him for playing and pointed him to the door.”

“That’s exactly what I should have done. But no, after letting him rock my world backward, forward, and sideways, I let him talk. Worse, I let myself—I don’t know—care about what he told me. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, somehow he knew. He knew I cared, the scheming bastard.”

Goodness, this was serious. Stacy had feelings for him. “What will you do now?”

Stacy stared at the wall. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should go with the flow, and see where it leads?”

“Oh, come on, the cop and the stripper? You said it yourself, Ky. Where could it possibly lead?”

Strangely, the sentiment seemed inapplicable when the stripper in question was Stacy, and the cop, Ian. “You never know,” she encouraged.

“Is that what you’re going to do with Trevor?” Stacy challenged. “See where things lead?”

She squirmed under Stacy’s pointed stare and looked away. “No, I’m not, but my situation is completely different.”

“Your situation is better. A yoga instructor is a hell of a lot more respectable than a stripper.”

“Trevor’s attracted to Stacy Roberts—sexy, sassy stripper. He doesn’t even know Kylie Roberts—quiet, responsible yoga instructor.”

Stacy’s trill of laughter jerked Kylie’s attention back to her sister. “What’s so funny?”

“You are. You couldn’t be more off base saying Trevor’s attracted to me…or someone like me. This sexy, sassy stripper spent several hours alone with him in an interview room and I never picked up even the slightest vibe of interest. He was all business. Trust me, I’m not his type.”

“He was all business because he was working.”

“Yeah, right. He was working 99.9 percent of the time you spent with him. Was he all business?”

Stacy’s assessing gaze traveled over her, making her acutely aware of her bed-hair and the tender, red skin along her neck caused by Trevor’s beard.

“I think not,” Stacy finally said with a sly smile. “It’s you he wants. Maybe he doesn’t know you completely—yet—not your innermost hopes and fears. You’ll have to decide whether to trust him with those.”