embarrassment, she continued, “Like that nonsense about us...”
“Nonsense?”
Her skin heated again and not just on her face; she was warm all over. “Of course. All his drunken comments about you and me. That was just craziness...”
“What was so crazy about it?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath to brace herself for honesty. “It’s crazy to think that you’d be attracted to me.”
“It is?” That green gaze was intense on her face and then it slid down her body.
Now her warm skin tingled. “Of course it is,” she said. “I’m so fat and unattractive...” And he was the most beautiful man she’d ever met.
“You’re pregnant,” he said. “And you’re beautiful.”
She laughed at his ridiculous claims; they were as outrageous as Mr. Doremire’s. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments. Really. I know exactly what I look like—a whale.”
He laughed now as if she were trying to be funny. She had just been honest. He was not being the same as he replied, “I would not be attracted to a whale.”
“You’re not attracted to me.” She wished he was. But it wasn’t possible. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, she knew he would never go for a woman like her—a woman who talked too much and didn’t think before she let people get close to her.
He stepped closer to her, his gaze still hot on her face and body. “I’m not?”
She shook her head. But he caught her chin and stopped it. Then he tipped up her chin and lowered his head. And his lips covered hers.
Maybe he had intended the kiss as a compliment or maybe it was just out of pity. But it quickly became something more as passion ignited—at least in Maggie—and she kissed him back.
She locked her arms around his neck and held his head down for the kiss. Her lips moved over his before opening for his tongue. He plunged it into her mouth, deepening the kiss and stirring her passion even more.
Making her want more than just a kiss...
It had just been a kiss. But even though it had happened hours ago, Blaine still couldn’t get it out of his mind. Probably because it hadn’t been just a kiss. It had been an experience almost profound in its intensity.
And he hadn’t wanted to stop at just a kiss. He had wanted to carry her upstairs to one of the bedrooms and make love to her all night long.
But he’d summoned all of his control and pulled back. His cell had also been ringing with a summons from the Bureau chief to come into the office for an update on the case.
“You’ve lost your objectivity,” the chief was saying, drawing Blaine from his thoughts of Maggie.
“What? Why?”
“The witness,” Chief Special Agent Lynch said.
Blaine glanced at the clock on the conference room wall. He had left her alone too long. Of course, he hadn’t actually left her alone. He had left her with two agents guarding Ash’s house—one patrolling the perimeter and one parked in a chair outside her bedroom door. They were good men, men for whom both Ash and Dalton Reyes had vouched. They weren’t special agents yet; they were barely more than recruits. But Truman Jackson had been a navy SEAL and Octavio Hernandez had worked in the gang task force with Reyes.
She should be safe...
But he had thought that when he’d left the local authorities to protect her.
“The witness is in danger,” he said. “That was proven today—” he glanced at the clock again and corrected himself “—yesterday when someone tried running us off the road.”
“The van was processed.”
“Any evidence?”
“Not like in the first one,” the chief replied. “No blood.”
“Have you gotten a DNA match yet?”
The chief shook his head. “We’ll check some other databases—see if we can find at least a close match.”
“Good—that’s good.”
“What leads have you come up with?” the chief asked. “Or have you been too busy protecting the witness?”
“She is the best lead,” Blaine insisted.
“You checked to see if her fiancé is really dead,” the chief said. “She’s leading you to a dead man as a suspect?”
“She didn’t think he was alive. It was the man’s father who raised some questions...”
“You think her fiancé’s family is involved in the robberies.”
He sighed. “Her fiancé’s brother is a viable suspect. Reyes even confirmed him as having bought the van recovered after the robbery. The one in which the blood was found.” Someone else had ordered the black cargo van. Why? Was Mark already gone?
“Where is he?” the chief asked, as if he had read Blaine’s mind. “Why haven’t you brought Mark Doremire in for questioning?”
“We haven’t found him yet.”
“We?” the chief asked. “You’re having the witness help you do your job?”
“I have an APB out on him,” he said. “The witness is helping me figure out places where the man could be hiding. We checked out his dad’s house.”
The chief studied him through narrowed, dark eyes. “So you’re only using her to lead you to a suspect?”
Blaine tensed as anger surged through him. “I’m not using her. I’m trying to keep her and her baby from getting killed.”
“Is it the pregnant thing that’s getting to you?” the chief asked.
If this was the way this chief ran this Bureau, Blaine wasn’t sure he would want to stay in Chicago after all. And he’d considered staying here, putting down roots. Chicago wasn’t that many miles from his sister Buster, who had settled in west Michigan.
“What?” he asked, offended that his professionalism was being questioned.
“I’ve read your history. I know you have a few sisters. Is that it?” the chief persisted.
He didn’t feel at all brotherly toward Maggie Jenkins. And he suspected that neither did Mark Doremire. “The robbers keep trying to grab her. One of these times that they’re trying, we’ll be able to catch them.”
“So you’re using her as bait.”
He tensed again. Furious and offended. “You
