Connor ground his molars together against the adrenaline spiking through his nervous system. Had it really only been last night that he’d worried about his demons coming out to play? Here he was, less than twelve hours later and he felt dizzy with the need to expend energy. And not in a healthy way. This wasn’t good.
When Erin hadn’t walked in at ten o’clock for the meeting, his skull had started to buzz. It had been bad enough waking up this morning to realize she’d sneaked right past him, bad enough that she hadn’t answered the other apartment door when he knocked. She’d confessed to him last night that someone wanted to “trap” her, and the possibility of that happening on his watch had conjured up a feeling he knew too well. Helpless anger. Impotent rage.
If something happened to her…if somebody touched her…
No amount of breathing exercises or happy place visualization had been able to ease the buildup of rampant anxiety. He recognized this part of himself. Thought he’d had a handle on the hereditary violence that had whirred inside him since adolescence. But he hadn’t anticipated Erin blowing in and rearranging everything. If this didn’t send a loud and clear signal to his brain to stay away from her, nothing would. He required order or the careful layers he’d pasted together over his damaged insides would strip away, little by little, and reveal what was hidden beneath. Too bad she was chaos personified. Disorder on two albeit sexy legs. She’d rip those layers off so fast, he’d get whiplash.
Two other times in his life, he’d felt responsible for another person. One was his mother. She’d been through enough in fifty-five years and deserved to finally start over. Find some peace. That peace is why he continually sold his soul. First to the navy, then to his power-hungry cousin. Now, to the Chicago police. Anything to make up for what she’d been through at the hands of his father. Anything to atone for the fact that he’d been too small, too weak as a child to help her. To save her.
The second person he’d felt responsible for had been his one-way ticket out of the SEALs. Coming to Chicago was supposed to mean a clean slate, leaving that shit in the past. He could sense impending disaster ahead when it came to the girl beside him. She was a wild card. An unknown variable. He couldn’t control her. Couldn’t keep her in one place without worrying if she’d vanish. Fuck, he couldn’t even touch her.
As Derek started talking at the front of the room, Erin smashed her nose against the side of his neck, breathed deeply, and sighed. He tried to ignore her when she pulled back to look at him, but the lure of her gaze was too strong to resist. Christ, she was even more compelling up close. She smelled like hair dye and matches, not exactly the most intoxicating of scents, and yet he couldn’t get it into his lungs quickly enough. A deep satisfaction rolled through him when he saw that the bags under her eyes were gone. She’d slept well in his sheets. Her hair spread out on his pillow. Unbelievable. The storm inside him had ceased with her near. It never happened this quickly, usually taking hours to subside.
“What?” he asked, needing a distraction from the kick of lust the image of her sliding around in his sheets had conjured.
“I drank all your orange juice this morning.”
“I noticed.”
She propped her chin on his shoulder. “Can you get the kind without pulp next time?”
How could he concentrate when their mouths were so close together? “Are you planning on making a habit out of drinking my orange juice?”
A beat passed. “If you stop buying it, I’ll know you don’t want me over anymore.”
“I’ll buy the damn juice.”
God, her smile. “I was going to come over anyway.”
Derek cleared his throat, drawing both of their attention. “I don’t repeat myself, so I’d suggest paying attention. Especially you, Connor. I can’t be here twenty-four-seven and it’ll be everyone’s ass if you don’t know what’s going on.”
Erin bristled. “I drank his juice.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Kool-Aid?” Austin drawled from his lean against the wall. “We’re all expected to drink that, apparently.”
Polly snorted and went back to inspecting her nails.
“Continue,” Connor bit out. Not even his time in the navy had made him comfortable with authority. “You were giving us a profile of Maxwell Stark, but hadn’t gotten to why.”
“That’s right. Stark.” Derek crossed his arms over his chest. “City treasurer for Chicago. He came up through the ranks quickly and we have a good idea why. He’s running for mayor at the end of his term as treasurer. We believe he used city pension funds to finance a private project in exchange for campaign donations.”
“A crooked politician,” Bowen said from his usual place behind Sera, who was busy taking notes on a legal pad. “The shock might kill me.”