Engaging Sam Read online

  Sam wasn’t going to hurt her.

  Sam wasn’t a bookkeeper, he was a cop.

  He’d snuck into her apartment in order to use her phone.

  He hadn’t let her scream because he hadn’t wanted to let the men who were after him know he was over here.

  A police lieutenant named Jones had thanked her for her assistance....

  So things weren’t as bad as she’d feared. She wasn’t being accosted in her bedroom by some roving madman. No, instead she was trussed up in a sheet like a cartoon mummy, lying beneath a stark naked cop while criminals bent on murder were clunking around on the other side of her bedroom wall.

  Well, that certainly made things all better, right?

  Sam terminated the call and stretched to hang up the phone. “I apologize again for frightening you, Audra,” he said. “I hope you understand now that your silence was essential.”

  “Mmph!” she mumbled.

  He brought his face close to hers, trying to read her expression. Her eyes weren’t as wide anymore, and her breathing was growing steadier, so hopefully she wasn’t going to try biting or kicking him again.

  Damn, she was a dangerous woman. He’d run into her often enough over the past two months, but he’d never suspected her sensible, no-nonsense exterior concealed such a wildcat.

  Then again, she had plenty of provocation for the damage she tried to inflect.

  With a chagrined sigh, he carefully eased his weight onto his knees, straddling her hips as he sat back on his heels. “I really am sorry for all of this, Audra.”

  “Mmph!” she repeated.

  “I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth now. For both our sakes, I hope that you won’t scream.”

  Her lips brushed quickly over his palm as she shook her head in an emphatic negative.

  “Okay, then.” He pulled his hand away slowly, prepared to silence her immediately at the first indication of trouble. Bergstrom had relayed his request for assistance as soon as he’d transferred the phone to Lieutenant Jones, but with those two goons still next door, they weren’t in the clear yet. Now that he’d involved Audra, it was more important than ever not to alert anyone to his whereabouts until help arrived.

  The moment he dropped his hand, she inhaled sharply. He tensed, but her inhalation turned into several deep, soundless breaths. He eased back farther and watched to make sure she wasn’t about to go into hysterics.

  To her credit, she didn’t. Apart from the way she moistened her lips, and the way the sheet rose and fell with her rapid breathing, she remained motionless, apparently watching him as carefully as he was watching her.

  His gaze sharpened as he took in the details he’d done his best to ignore until now. Above the tightly wrapped sheet, her shoulders gleamed in the moonlight, bare except for the lacy straps of her nightgown. Her hair was a mass of pale curls, spread out like a cloud around her head. Sam hadn’t realized her hair was that long. Whenever he’d seen her before, she always had it tightly braided along the back of her head. It was soft, too. He’d felt it brush his cheek as he’d angled the telephone receiver so she could listen to Lieutenant Jones.

  Although she was handling things better than could be expected, he couldn’t afford to assume she was as calm as she appeared. Until help arrived, he wouldn’t be able to let himself relax.

  Still, there was no longer any excuse for him to keep her pinned to the bed like this. Warily, conscious of the solid kick she’d landed on his kidneys before he’d finally subdued her, he slid off her body to kneel beside her.

  She took a few moments to wriggle her arms free, then clutched the crumpled sheet to her breasts and sat up.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, concern deepening his voice. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m all right.” She brushed her hair away from her face with unsteady fingers and moved toward the other side of the bed. “You did frighten me for a minute, though.”

  That had to be the understatement of the century, he thought. Too bad she’d awakened when he’d come through the window. Otherwise, he could have taken the phone into the next room and avoided all this trouble.

  But rolling around on a queen-size bed while he held that warm, womanly form hadn’t been all that much trouble. Just as he’d never realized how long and delightfully soft her hair was, he’d never suspected what a luscious body she had, either. He’d noticed her walk, though. With her long legs and slim hips, she had a certain grace to her movements that always caught his notice despite the loose clothes she usually wore.

  Damn, what was the matter with him? How could he be thinking about her body when he’d just escaped Fitzpatrick’s enforcers by nothing but dumb luck and an open window?

  “I’m really sorry, Audra,” he said, wrenching his thoughts back on track. “I didn’t want to involve you, but it was the best option open to me at the time. I’ll be out of here as soon as the backup arrives, okay?”

  “Is there any chance that those...killers are going to come here?”

  “Not as long as we keep quiet.”

  “But—”

  “Shh.” He slipped off the bed and padded to the window, listening to the furtive noises coming from next door. From the sound of things, they were searching his apartment, probably looking for the evidence he’d gathered.

  Sam squatted down to peer at the floor, frowning as he tried in vain to penetrate the shadows. He extended his hand to run his palm along the baseboard, then smiled grimly when his fingertips brushed the hard, flat edge of the floppy disk he’d dropped when he’d squeezed through the window.

  Even though his cover was blown, and he’d have to find a completely new angle to go after Fitzpatrick again, at least he’d managed to save this. Names, dates, dollar figures—all the dry details that hopefully would add up to enough evidence to close down this particular branch of the money-laundering operation. It had been a quick decision, grabbing the disk instead of his gun. He’d had less than a second to consider his alternatives, yet he’d probably made the right choice. With a gun, he could put away only a few of Fitzpatrick’s men, but with the evidence on the disk, he still had the chance to build the case that would eventually get them all.

  Eventually? It had taken Sam months to establish the Tindale persona and infiltrate the warehouse, a minor operation as far as Fitzpatrick was concerned. What they really needed was a way to cut through the subsidiary companies and get close to the man himself.

  “S-Sam?”

  At Audra’s shaky whisper, he straightened up. Carefully, ready to stop at the first indication of a squeak, he eased the window closed. “What?”

  She hesitated. “I’ve got so many questions, I don’t know where to start. Are you really a cop?”

  “Yeah, I’m a cop. Sorry, but I don’t have my badge on me right now.” Hooking his thumb on the edge of the curtain, he surveyed the street for any signs of movement.

  “So you’re not a bookkeeper at all?”

  “No. That was the cover I was using because of the case I’m working on.”

  “And your name is Sam Tucker, not Tindale?”

  “That’s right. Tindale was my cover.”

  “This is unbelievable. I never would have guessed you weren’t...who you said you were.”

  “Someone did.”

  “How...how did you get over here?”

  “I used the ledge.”

  “The ledge? It’s only two inches wide.”

  More like four inches, he thought, but he didn’t want to argue about it. He also didn’t want to remember the nerve-wracking, painstaking process of clinging to the cracks in the bricks forty feet above a cement sidewalk. “I was lucky my feet were bare so I could grip with my toes.”

  There was a long silence before she cleared her throat with a delicate cough. “Yes, I noticed your bare, um, feet.”

  He glanced down at himself and grimaced. All right. Help was on the way and Audra didn’t show any signs of impending hysteria, so for now
there was nothing he could do but wait. Maybe he could finally spare the time to take care of one last little detail.

  Well, maybe not that little.

  He always slept in the nude, but tonight it had been too hot to sleep. He’d gone into the kitchen to get a cold beer when he’d heard the footsteps outside his door. One glance through the peephole had been all the warning he’d had. There hadn’t been time to get dressed. And he’d never have been able to negotiate that ledge if he’d been burdened down with an armful of clothes. Modesty had been the least of his worries when his case, not to mention his life, was at stake, but now—

  God, talk about being caught with your pants down. If the guys at the station ever found out about this...

  “Audra, would you mind if I borrowed a towel or something?” he asked.

  “A towel?”

  He clenched his jaw and gestured, keeping his back toward her.

  “Oh. Of course,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll be right back.”

  He looked over his shoulder in time to see her shadowy figure move gracefully toward the hall. If this apartment had the same layout as his, then there would be a linen closet just on the other side of that doorway. He crossed the room, but the hall was empty. Shuffling noises came from the direction of the living room, as if someone were dragging something across the floor.

  Sam increased his pace, concerned that he’d misread the situation. “Audra?” he called softly.

  There was a bump, then a muffled exclamation and the click of a switch. Light flooded the living room from the fixture over the front closet. Audra was standing on a low stool, stretching to grasp a cardboard box that was on the top shelf.

  Sam blinked hard, and it wasn’t only because of the sudden light. He hadn’t been able to see what she was wearing before. He’d known she’d been wearing something, since he’d seen the lacy straps and felt the folds of fabric as he’d wrapped her in the sheet. If he’d stopped to think about it, he would have assumed her nightgown would have been as voluminous and concealing as the clothes she wore in the daytime. But it was just as well he hadn’t thought about it, because he would have been wrong.

  Her nightgown was as pale and sheer as the moonlight that spilled through her window. While she lifted herself up on her toes with her arms over her head, what the raised hemline didn’t reveal, the thin fabric did. He tried to tell himself not to look. And for a noble split second, he didn’t. But somehow the picture she presented got burned into his brain.

  She looked as good as she’d felt. Long, slim legs, pert bottom, slender waist...and a pair of sweetly curved breasts that strained against the front of her nightgown just enough to reveal a hint of dusky rose in the center—

  This was nuts. Crazy. What was the matter with him? he wondered for the second time in as many minutes. How could he waste even a split second ogling her body at a time like this? Muttering a curse, Sam strode across the floor before his own body had a chance to display the inevitable reaction.

  Audra wrestled the cardboard box off the closet shelf just as Sam reached her side. She sucked in her breath, her gaze darting toward the ceiling, the floor, the box, anywhere except at him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, setting the disk down on a table beside the door so that he could take the box from her arms.

  “One of my nephews left some things here when he helped me paint the living room. Jimmy’s only fifteen, but he’s big for his age. Not as, um, big as you, but...” Her gaze finally steadied on his face. “There might be something in the box you could fit into that would be less embarrassing than a towel.”

  Before he could think of a reply, there was the sound of screeching tires from the street in front of the building. Car doors slammed. Clearly the cavalry had arrived.

  Wasting no more time, Sam put the box on the floor and ripped it open. He rifled past a pair of tennis shoes that looked four sizes too small, a purple baseball cap and a paint-spattered T-shirt. His fingers closed around a pair of jeans, but as soon as he yanked them out, he could see that he’d never be able to get into them.

  Audra brushed his hands aside and leaned over the box. “I think there’s...yes, here they are.” She held up a pair of ragged knee-length gray fleece shorts that looked as if they had begun life as jogging pants.

  Without hesitation, Sam took them from her hand. “Thanks, Audra,” he said, balancing on one leg as he jammed his foot into the shorts. “You’ve just saved my life for the second time tonight.”

  Footsteps sounded from the corridor. Sam sucked in his breath and tugged the shorts over his hips. Despite the stretchy fabric they were a tight squeeze, and he’d be singing soprano if he did any deep knee bends in them, but they were better than nothing. Thrusting Audra behind him protectively, he moved toward the door. “Get back,” he ordered firmly.

  He felt the warmth of her breath against his skin as she shuffled closer. Frowning, he glanced over his shoulder. “Audra, I think it would be better if you move away from the door.”

  There was a sudden thud from the direction of his apartment, followed by the sound of splintering wood. Damn, some overeager rookie must have taken the call. There was no reason to break down his door. The whole point of getting out when he had was to prevent this from happening. There were too many innocent citizens around to risk a confrontation. Regulation ammo wouldn’t go through the walls, but—

  Muttering a curse under his breath, he spun around and grasped Audra by the arms. Hooking his ankle behind her legs, he pulled her off her feet and carried her down to the floor with him. Before she could draw a breath to protest, Audra was flat on her back with Sam spread-eagled on top of her.

  Again.

  Chapter 2

  “This evidence almost crossed the line from acceptable to inadmissible, but that’s pretty much what I’ve come to expect from you, Tucker,” Xavier said, his fingers a blur as he typed commands into his computer. “As it is, though, I’ll be able to pass this disk on to the D.A. as soon as he gets in. Good work,” he added gruffly.

  Suppressing a yawn, Sam shifted his weight to one leg and leaned back against the office door. Despite the sunrise that was seeping through the venetian blinds, Xavier Jones didn’t look like, a man who had been up all night. His tie was still neatly knotted, his back was military-straight under his white shirt and not one of his steel-gray hairs was out of place.

  That didn’t really surprise Sam. During the seventeen years that he’d known him, including the past four when he’d worked on Xavier’s special task force on organized crime, he had never seen his superior lose his composure. The man was the epitome of the dedicated career cop—his decisions were swift, his perceptions accurate and his energy endless. He was like a cross between a rock and a pit bull: solid, stubborn, and completely immovable once he sank his teeth into something.

  Being assigned to the task force didn’t suit everyone. Several other members of the team had burned out or quit because of the havoc that prolonged undercover work could wreak on an officer’s personal life—Epstein and O’Hara had transferred to Homicide and Prentice had vanished into some small town in Maine. But this kind of work suited Sam perfectly. He liked the challenge of playing out a deep cover and the adrenaline rush that came from making split second decisions. Although like last night, help was usually a phone call away, as a rule he was on his own.

  That was another reason this work suited him. Being on his own was the only way he wanted it. Technically he’d been on his own from the time he’d been sixteen, but in reality it had started years before that. And that was fine with him. There was no one else to answer to or worry about, no one else to let him down. That’s the way he did his job, and as he’d learned long ago, that was the best way to live his life.

  Audra lived alone, too. During the two months Sam had lived next door, he’d never seen any sign of a boyfriend at her place. Even with the windows open because of this heat wave, he hadn’t been disturbed by any noise from her apartment. Yet he could
tell when she was home, since from time to time the smell of her cooking would drift into the hall. There would be homey, mouth-watering aromas like fresh bread, or sometimes the scents were tantalizing and exotic, conjuring up images of foreign markets and rich, dark chocolate....

  A faint gurgle came from his stomach, and he reminded himself yet again not to have any more of the sludge that passed for coffee at the station. He rubbed his hand over his jaw, feeling the rasp of whiskers against his palm. He needed a shave and a shower, but he’d settle for an hour of uninterrupted sleep. Maybe then his concentration would improve and his thoughts wouldn’t keep straying back to Audra McPherson and the smell of her cooking... and her baby-soft hair, and her wide blue eyes...and the unforgettable sensation of having her lying beneath him.

  She had felt good. Damn good. And if she’d made such a lasting impression on him when there had been so many more important things going on, what would it be like to feel her pressed so close to him when he could give her his full attention?

  That was one question he’d probably never be able to answer. No matter how good she had felt, it was unlikely that they’d get the chance to try it again. He was in the middle of an investigation—until Fitzpatrick was put away, Sam didn’t have time for distractions. Besides, Audra didn’t date. And if she ever did, it sure wouldn’t be a quick, no-strings fling with a man like him. Despite the dynamite body he’d glimpsed through her filmy nightgown, judging by her appearance and her behavior the rest of the time, she probably was as wholesome as the bread she baked.

  Forcing his attention back to the conversation, Sam straightened up. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  “We’ll have the warehouse shut down by the end of the day,” Xavier said, clicking to another screen.

  “Then what?”

  There was a pause as he read the list of addresses in front of him. “Bergstrom’s in charge of mopping up. You’ve been in deep for sixty-one days now. I’ll expect your report by tomorrow morning.”