Nico Rosso - Renegade Protector

“I don’t want a vacation.” His wet jacket tightened around him. “I want to help you.”

“And I still don’t know why.” She put his ID down on the desk and opened the laptop.

“Let me get dry first.” He nudged his duffel with his foot.

She hooked her thumb to a wide hallway leading away from the living room. Half of it was taken up by a stairway to the second floor. “First door is the guest bathroom.”

He picked up his bag and walked deeper into her house. Floorboards creaked under his feet. The scent of a woman’s soap drifted down from the top floor, where he supposed the master bedroom was. At the end of the hall was the kitchen, but he turned to the bathroom before he could investigate it or the photos that lined the wood-paneled walls of the hallway.

Once inside, with the door closed, he paused and listened. A chair shifted in the living room. Light typing. Toro’s tail thumped on a rug on the floor. At least Mariana wasn’t waiting with the Winchester outside the bathroom. He pulled off his jacket, peeled off his shirt and piled the heavy material in the narrow shower that stood in one corner. A quick inspection in the mirror revealed no open wounds from the fight.

A hot shower would’ve been heavenly, but it would’ve definitely pushed Mariana’s hospitality. He quickly unlaced his boots, kicked out of his remaining wet clothes and replaced them with dry ones from the duffel. Once his keys, wallet, knife and pistol were secured and covered with an unbuttoned denim shirt over his T-shirt, he stepped back into the hallway.

Mariana met him at the edge of the living room, the wary look in her eyes softened. Behind her, on the laptop, he recognized a San Francisco news story about an abducted girl he’d helped find. Mariana held out his ID. “The article doesn’t say what happened to her dad and uncle.”

“They were put away.” He reached forward and took hold of the ID wallet. For a moment, she didn’t release it. The two of them balanced, he felt her strength. The power of her body had been clear when they’d tumbled on the hard parking lot, but that hadn’t been as quiet as this intimate moment in her living room. Their gazes locked. He was close enough to see flecks of gold in her brown eyes and wanted to step closer and search the depth of her darkness. She released her hold on the ID, and the two of them moved apart.

“Do you drink, Detective Morrison?” She drifted to a side table next to the hallway. A few bottles of liquor stood at various levels. Two glasses had been poured with a light amber liquid.

“Ty.” The drink was so inviting. Heat in a glass. “Please call me Ty.”

She picked up one of the drinks and presented it to him. “Do you drink tequila, Ty?”

“I won’t refuse you.” He took the glass.

She took the other. “Ms. Balducci.”

An embarrassed flush heated his cheeks. “Sorry if I used your name, I...” Telling her about all the files and information he’d read on her wouldn’t help to undo the awkwardness.

A smile, tilted wicked, crossed her face. “A joke.” She laughed incredulously. “You did so much. Of course you can call me Mariana.” She raised the glass and he clinked his against it.

“To surviving another night.” Their eyes held again. The tequila was forgotten as he was drawing a new heat from a growing connection with Mariana. The first spark had started when he’d seen her in her shop. But his purpose couldn’t be chasing down this possibility with a woman he’d just met. It wasn’t fair to her and it wasn’t fair to his mission. He blinked, then threw back the tequila. The burn wasn’t strong enough to shake the fire he felt in his veins standing this close to her.

She drank hers quickly and put the empty glass down, not making any more eye contact. “I have to change.” Rifle in hand, she moved into the hallway and up the stairs, followed by Toro. The door at the top closed and a lock was thrown.

Ty set his glass down and stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the ceiling creak with her movement. His investigator’s mind always drew pictures, scenarios and possibilities based on details he collected. But that mind usually kept a cool distance so it could observe cleanly. The imagination that saw Mariana in her room, pulling the wet clothes from her body, was not at all professional. He shook the images from his head and brought himself back to task.

“One of the police officers was acting sketchy.” He pushed his voice up the stairs and hoped she could hear through the door.

“Really?” She wasn’t very muffled. The old house had gaps.

“He was unfocused, like he was carrying a distraction.” It still made Ty mad to think of how unthorough the initial investigation was. “Could he be in on this harassment?”

“Which cop?” Her footsteps creaked closer to her door.

“The taller one. White. Blond. Built like a baseball player. A pitcher.”

The door at the top of the stairs opened, revealing Mariana’s silhouette. Her hair was down, making her look mythical as she descended the stairs. The ground-floor light slowly showed that she wore jeans and a button-down flannel shirt. Toro remained at her side and she still held the rifle. “That’s Pete,” she said with a smirk. “My ex.”

That made sense. “There’s the distraction.”

“He played third base.” Dark hair framed the dusky skin of her face. All the lights in the house seemed to have dimmed to a sultry glow. “What position did you play?”

Toro finally ventured close, and Ty put the back of his hand out to sniff. “Wide receiver on the football field, forward on the basketball court.”

“Double threat.” She observed his interaction with Toro, then poured another two drinks of tequila.

“I didn’t mess with baseball.” He ventured to pet Toro’s head and the dog leaned into it. “You were a point guard, right?” It hadn’t been in any file he’d read. She raised her eyebrows as if asking him to explain. “I can see that you like to call the shots. Your orchard, your house, your rifle.”

She quirked a smile. “You should ask Pete about that.”

“I’d like to ask him why he didn’t spend another two hours scouring that parking lot for clues.” Even if they were exes, it was no excuse for shoddy police work.

“Small town.” She shrugged. “They don’t know how to handle this kind of stuff.” Her face darkened. “Or they don’t want to.” She handed his drink over and swirled hers in the glass. “I sell my spread to the developer, they put in a resort hotel, property values go up, property taxes go up, the town does better, the police department does better.”

“That price is too high.” He waited until she sipped at her tequila to taste his. The liquid fire couldn’t override the anger he felt at her situation.

She stared into the distance, eyes unreadable. “Hungry?” Without waiting for his answer, she walked into the hallway and down to the kitchen. Toro remained at her heels. Ty followed. The kitchen was larger than he expected, with a broad center island covered in a warm wood butcher block. One wall was dominated by a stove and vent hood that stretched to the high ceiling. Mariana slid a wire bowl of apples to the center of the island and picked two out. “We have plenty of apples. Can’t sell any of them without harvesters to get them off the trees or customers to show up at the shop.”

She pulled a gleaming knife from a block and quickly segmented the apples. Her hands paused as she pushed some of the slices toward him. He saw her eyes fixed on his hip. His gun. She asked, “Why didn’t you pull that on the guy in the parking lot?”

“I didn’t have it on me.” He reached forward and dragged the pieces of apple to him. “I didn’t know it would be this bad.”