house has been sitting vacant for too long,” Annalise said.
She had been dead for almost a year now.
“You should let me either rent it or list it for you,” she said. Annalise was a real estate agent and property manager. She’d done well for herself—probably because of her natural warmth. People trusted her.
Even Nick trusted her, and he’d never trusted easily.
She moved around the room, picking up things. The overhead can lights glinted off her pale blond hair and made her pale skin even more luminescent. She looked like an angel.
“Give it away,” he said. “Maybe the fire department will take it and burn it down for practice.” He liked the idea of burning up all those horrible childhood memories—of coming home from school to find his mother drunk or drugged out of her mind.
If not for the Huxtons living next door...
Annalise and Gage’s parents had taken care of him like he was one of theirs. But they didn’t live next door anymore. They had retired and left Chicago for a warmer city—in Alaska. They’d found a friendly little town they loved. With Gage gone, Annalise was all alone now.
She sighed. “If you don’t want to keep it, let me sell it for you. I can make you some money.”
“I don’t want it,” he said. “The house or the money.” He had the only thing he’d ever wanted from his mother: the truth. She’d written it down in a letter he hadn’t been given until after her death.
“I took some things out of the house that I thought were yours,” she said.
He shook his head. “I didn’t leave anything here that I wanted. I don’t want any of it.”
“Nick...” She obviously didn’t understand his bitterness. She couldn’t. She was too kindhearted to harbor resentment.
“I’ll sign it over to you,” he said. “You can do whatever you want with it.” Maybe that would keep her busy enough to keep her mind off Gage.
The skin beneath her green eyes was dark—as if she hadn’t been sleeping. And her full lips weren’t curved into their usual smile. He missed her smile. He had missed her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded—too quickly. “Of course. I told you no one was here when I found the house like this last week.”
“I wasn’t talking about the house.”
Her lips lifted now, just slightly, as if she forced the smile. “You’re talking about Gage.”
He’d tried to bring Gage up earlier, but she hadn’t let him. She’d changed the subject. He waited for her to do it again.
“You know he’s fine,” she said.
“I hope so.”
“I know so,” she said. And her smile widened as she summoned her faith. He’d never known anyone as optimistic as Annalise. “How about you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
He was worried about Gage. But he wouldn’t admit that to her.
“Tell me about them,” she said. “About your family.”
She’d been there when he’d read the letter his mother’s lawyer had given him. Annalise had always been there. Maybe that was why he’d missed her so much the past several months.
“The Paynes are not my family,” he said.
“You all have the same father,” she said.
“And they resent me for that.” Like she should have resented him for Gage joining the Marines.
“Then they’re idiots,” she said.
“They’re not,” he said. And his instant defense surprised even him. But the Paynes were good people who’d been hurt—whom he’d hurt with his mere existence. They had every reason to resent him—to look at him like they did—with anger.
Annalise looked at him now, and her green eyes filled with warmth and compassion and something else—something he’d seen in her gaze and no one else’s. “Nick, I know you don’t like it, but I have to...” And she hugged him like she always had, her arms sliding around his waist.
But it didn’t feel like it used to. Annalise wasn’t a child anymore. She hadn’t been one for a long time. Her breasts were full and soft against his chest.
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” he said. It was that he liked it too much. Maybe because it had been so long since anyone had showed him warmth. Or maybe because it was Annalise.
But he lifted his arms, and after holstering his weapon, he slid them around her. She tensed in his embrace and glanced up at his face. “Nick...?”
Then he lowered his head and brushed his mouth across hers. And the chaos wasn’t just in the house anymore. It was in his heart, his mind, his body. He knew he was about to make another mess, but he couldn’t stop himself. He couldn’t stop kissing Annalise.
Six months later
The soft metallic click echoed in the eerie silence of the ransacked living room. FBI Special Agent Nick Rus tightened his grasp on his weapon, but he knew it was too late. Whoever had broken into his place had already cocked his gun, and the barrel of that gun was dangerously close to his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the metal glinting in the faint light of the lamp overturned on the hardwood floor.
Was this it? He had lived most of his thirty-one years on the edge. As a Marine, he had been deployed to the most dangerous places in the world. As an FBI agent, he had taken on some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. But he was going out in the living room of some River City rental house?
Hell, no. He ducked and jammed his elbow back—into the ribs of the intruder. Then he wrapped the fingers of one hand around the barrel of that gun and shoved it up while he swung his own gun around and jammed it hard into the other man’s chest. “Who the hell are you?”
“Your friend—I thought,” Gage Huxton murmured before uttering a low groan of pain.
“My friends don’t pull guns on me.” But then he remembered a few instances when they had. “Well, at least they don’t trash my place.” He released Gage’s weapon and holstered his own. “I’ve had some bad houseguests before, but you...”
Gage chuckled, but it was rusty-sounding. “Funny. I walked in here just a few minutes ago and found this mess.”
Nick picked up the lamp from the floor and shone the light around. The couch cushions and pillows had been slashed, the stuffing pulled from them.
“Looks like somebody was looking for something,” Gage remarked.
Nick
