I huff and pull it out of her slender fingers before she drops it. I open my mouth to say something when I see the look in her eyes and it makes my heart drop.
Fear. She glances at the caller i.d. on the phone and I yank it out of her hands. Her hands grab mine and she struggles to push my shoulder. “Give me that,” she hisses. “It’s my phone, not yours.”
“Who the hell is on this phone,” I snarl into the receiver. I hear dead silence and then a dial tone.
My eyes meet Ruth’s but she looks down, her fingers twisting together.
“Who was that?” I ask her softly. Her slender shoulders hunch and she turns away from me, moving some of the antiques back and forth.
“It was nobody.”
“That wasn’t nobody. That was a creep. How long have you been getting calls like that?”
She sighs. “A couple of months. It’s nothing. Just somebody who wants to bug a stranger.”
“You think it’s a stranger?”
“Who else would it be?”
“Your brother told me about your ex.”
She whirls and her amber eyes flash angrily at me. “He shouldn’t have done that. It’s not your business.”
“I’m a cop. This kind of stuff is exactly my business.” I pace back and forth feeling my rage build up. I can’t stand men that act like this. She may say it’s a stranger but I’d bet the farm it’s her ex. And he’s not gonna stop with just funky phone calls. Statistically it will escalate until she’s in a lot more trouble than just getting scared by a phone call.
“Hey!” she hollers and I stop and glare at her, practically vibrating with anger. “It’s only your business if I make it your business. and I don’t want to. It will stop and then we’ll all go on with our lives. If you give a person that’s trying to intimidate you verification that it’s working. That just makes them escalate.”
“You know what else makes them escalate,” I yell, my worry and anger flaring. “The need to do it. Sometimes that’s all it takes!”
She huffs and crosses her arms over her ample chest, drawing my eyes to where her soft green sweater stretches over it. I shake my head. I need to keep myself alert. She muddles my thoughts so bad. Her scent, her sweet curves and her fiery nature. All of it draws me like a fucking moth to a flame.
“I am not going to dignify this whole argument with a response. As far as I’m concerned you know nothing about what’ going on and I choose not to get the police involved.”
She stalks off and I grab her arm, jerking her around, surprised when she gasps and tenses slightly. But then she straightens and pushes at me. “Let go of me, Tate!”
But I can’t. I can smell her now. She’s so close to me, I can feel the heat of her all around me. The soft floral perfume that she wears wrapping around my senses, making me dizzy and hard as a fucking rock.
I pull her into my chest, lifting her chin and waiting, letting her tell me no. Letting her take the lead.
Her full lips open like she’s about to say something but she stops and wets her lips and that’s it. My control flies out the window like it never even existed.
I slam my mouth down on hers, my lips coaxing hers open, moaning when she parts her lips and my tongue surges forward, wrapping around hers, tangling, teasing and drawing her into my game.
She moans and her arms slide slowly up my chest, wrapping around my neck and her fingers tangle tightly in my dark hair, pulling until I feel the zing of pain on my scalp. Our bodies fuse so tight that you couldn’t slip a fraction of a piece of paper in between us.
The phone rings again and reality crashes down like a brick to the head.
She jerks herself back, her whiskey-dark eyes wide, her fingers over her lips while she catches her breath.
“I-I’m sorry, Ruth. I don’t know what got into me but I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.” I storm off, not even remembering the damn phone until I’m two blocks away.
What if that was him again? Worry gnaws at my belly and I force myself to continue to the police station. I want to know what’s the real truth about her ex. I get the feeling she didn’t even tell her brother the whole truth.
And if I find out what I think I’m going to find out, I’m going to kill that fucker if he shows up in town.
I can’t get the picture of the fear in her eyes out of my mind and it haunts me into my dreams. I no longer dream about having her. Now I can’t stop dreaming about losing her.
And that’s way more terrifying than facing off with a brutal killer with a gun. I can handle that.
I don’t think I can handle it if something happens to her.