If he’d said such a thing to my mother, she would have been all over it. Clear believed that Michael regretted his crimes and would never even dream of repeating them. She firmly believed that we could be a real family if he was ever released. Me? I wasn’t so sure of that.
I wanted to tell Linton that I thought he was wrong; that if his theory was true, surely other serial killers who were fathers and husbands would be able to fight their urges. But I said nothing. I wasn’t there to share my thoughts or feelings with him. I was there for one reason only. And that reason had just walked inside the bakery.
I looked up and smiled as Blake appeared at our table. “Hey.”
He pressed a light kiss to my mouth. “Morning, baby.”
“This is Noah Linton.”
“Is it now?” Grabbing a chair from a nearby table, Blake pulled it over and sat down. Laying one hand on my thigh, he said to Linton, “You were lingering outside the parking garage of my club. I’d like to know why.”
Linton straightened, fussing with the lapels of his jacket. “There is nothing illegal about—”
“I said, I’d like to know why.” Blake glared at him, expectant.
Linton cleared his throat. “I wanted to speak with Miss Lyons. I thought that maybe if I approached her in a more relaxed setting, such as your club, she might be more comfortable speaking with me.”
“That doesn’t explain what you were doing outside the garage,” Blake pointed out.
“I didn’t realize until I tried to enter the club that it was exclusive to members. I thought it might be possible to use a different entrance.”
He made me think of a reporter who’d once contacted me, wanting an interview. The asshole had trailed me everywhere, refusing to back off. He’d had no compunction about lingering around whatever buildings I entered and always did his best to get inside. Thankfully, he eventually got bored and returned to whatever hole he crawled out of.
Blake raised a brow at Linton. “You were planning to sneak into my club?”
“I doubt I was the first,” said Linton.
“No, it happens on a weekly basis,” Blake confirmed. “That doesn’t make it fucking acceptable to me, especially when your objective was to get near my woman.”
Eyes glinting with interest, Linton turned to me. “I must say, I really do find it fascinating that you would gravitate toward someone such as Mr. Mercier.”
“I’m right here,” Blake ground out.
Linton blinked. “I don’t mean to be rude. But it is fascinating. There are some similarities between you and Michael—”
“Don’t try fucking with my head, Linton,” I snapped.
“I’ve insulted you.” Linton sounded sincerely surprised by that. “It wasn’t my intention. I was of the understanding that you loved your stepfather.”
Blake leaned forward, eyes hard and flinty. “You and I are going to come to an understanding here and now, Linton. You will not try to approach Kensey again—not in any kind of setting. You will leave her be. You will stop calling and leaving messages on her phone. You will, effectively, disappear from her life. If she changes her mind and wants to speak to you, she’ll call you. Unless that happens, you’ll leave her be. That understood?”
“I don’t mean to cause her any upset, I just—”
“Is that understood?”
Linton’s jaw hardened. “It’s understood.” Adjusting his tie, he stood. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Miss Lyons. I’m sorry we weren’t able to talk longer.”
Watching him walk away, I sighed. “He didn’t say anything that made me think he’s Smith. Of course, it’s worth considering that he wouldn’t say anything that might clue me in.” Groaning, I put my head in my hands. “I was really hoping that talking to him would help, but it hasn’t.”
Blake rubbed my back. “Like I’ve already said, we can’t assume it’s anyone. Whether he’s Smith or not, I want him gone from your life. Hopefully, this little chat will be enough to make him leave you alone.”
I lifted my head. “Hopefully.” But, being a writer myself, I knew there was nothing easy about dropping a story. If Linton was in fact writing a book, I doubted he’d walk away from it so easily.
“Don’t let this get you down, baby. You’re strong. Brave. Don’t let this situation make you forget that.” Blake gave me a soft, lingering kiss. “Hmm. You taste like muffin and chocolate.”
I smiled, despite my mood. “Want seconds?”
His mouth curved against mine. “Always.” And then he kissed me again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Watching Blake charm my mother, I could only shake my head in bemusement. As we’d eaten dinner, he’d cruised his way through her interrogation in much the same way he dealt with everyone’s questions—with a whole lot of evasions and answering without really answering. Clear hadn’t even noticed, because she was so used to having Michael control their conversations.
It was right then, as Blake expertly circumvented my mother’s line of questioning, that I realized how little he did that with me now. Oh, there were still no-go subjects and stuff, but he didn’t use that politely distant tone or rapidly change the topic of conversation anymore. We were making progress.
I could see that she liked him a lot. More, she liked him for me. Each time Blake massaged my nape, played with my hair, or even smiled at me, Clear just about melted.
“Kensey, you didn’t tell me you’ve met Blake’s family,” said Clear. To her, meeting his family signified something huge. It implied that I was important to him on a level that overjoyed her.
“Well, it wasn’t planned,” I told her. “I just happened to be in his apartment when his stepsister showed up.” And eavesdropped into Blake’s conversation with her, just as I had with his midnight call from Tara.
Speaking of Tara … As he’d predicted, she’d sought him out the day after her drunk call. He’d been in his office at the Vault, and I’d been in the attached bathroom. Curious as to what she’d say while not knowing I was within hearing distance—and not whatsoever caring that I was becoming a regular eavesdropper—I’d waited out of sight …
“I was hoping I’d find you here,” said Tara.
I heard Blake sigh. “Tara—”
“No, I’m so embarrassed; please just let me get this out, Blake. I’m so sorry about what I did. I shouldn’t have called you. I shouldn’t have piled my shit on you. I was drunk and missing Levi so much, and the only person who knew him as well as I did was you.”
“That’s not an excuse, Tara.”
“I know, I know. I wish I had one, but I don’t. And I’m sorry for spouting shit about K-Kensey,” she added, stumbling over my name like it left a sour taste in her mouth. “I hope I didn’t cause an argument between you. I’m sure she must have been upset that you were taking a call from another woman in the middle of the night.”
“You didn’t cause an argument.”
“Oh. Good. Glad to hear to it.” Tara sure didn’t sound glad to me. “You seem to like her a lot and, well, I don’t blame you. What’s not to like? She’s hot. Confident. I love her eyes. And she has—”
“Don’t,” Blake bit out.
“What?”
“Don’t objectify her. Don’t talk about her like she’s a faceless fuck to me. Don’t think about playing your games with her. She’s mine. She’ll stay mine. And you and I will have a big fucking problem if you try to interfere with that.”
“Okay, I hear you,” Tara clipped, defensive.
“And what is it you hear, Tara?”
“She’s yours.”
“Damn right she is.”
At that moment, I walked out of the bathroom and over to Blake, who said, “Kensey, Tara has something to say to you.”
Tara looked like she’d rather swallow glass, but she said, “I’m sorry for what happened. And I’m sorry for what I said to you on the phone. I was … I won’t bother with excuses, I’ll just say that it won’t happen again.”
> “It won’t?” I asked, my expression telling her that it had better not.
“No.”
I gave a brief nod, silently accepting her apology. Not that I believed a word of it. With that, she left. And I realized Blake was staring at me, his expression odd. I raised my brows in question.
“What did she say to you on the phone?” he asked. “You never said.”
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now.”
I sighed. “She said that I wouldn’t last long, and that I may think I know you but I really don’t.”
“You think the latter part’s true,” he sensed.
“I think she knows you better than I do.”
“She’s known me longer than you have, and she knows more about my life. But it doesn’t automatically follow that she knows me. You can know someone all your life and never really know them.”
It was a valid point, wasn’t it? My relationship with Michael was a perfect example of that.
“Yes, but you’ve met his stepmother too,” Clear said, snapping me back to the present.
“Briefly,” I said.
Smiling brightly, Clear lifted her glass. “I’m sure your family will come to love her, Blake. Kensey’s easy to love, even with her little ways.”
Blake lifted a brow. “Little ways?”
I sighed. “She’s referring to my neat-freak habits. And she has no right to judge, given that she’s a thousand times worse than I am.”
“Living together had its challenges,” said Clear.
Blake frowned, struggling to understand. “You’re both neat freaks, but you found it hard to live together? Shouldn’t that have made it easier?”
Clear shook her head wildly. “Two neat freaks can’t always live in the same house without some form of trouble, because we often have different ways of doing things. My idea of proper order is different from Kensey’s.”
Blake looked at me. “So, your idea of teenage rebellion against your mom was to develop neat-freaky ways that clashed with hers?”
I pursed my lips. “Huh. Never thought of it like that. If it was a type of rebellion, it was unconsciously done.”
“I know she went through a goth phase,” Blake said to Clear. “Any others?”
Clear frowned thoughtfully. “Not in her teenage years, so I’m afraid I have no embarrassing stories to share with you. Really, the oddest thing she ever did was refuse to play with dolls.”
“She refused?”
I gave a defensive shrug. “I just couldn’t attribute life to inanimate objects.”
Blake’s mouth quirked. “I see.” He kissed my temple and, once again, Clear melted. She also gave me a big thumbs-up. I just rolled my eyes.
A little later, when Blake and I climbed into his Maserati and I was clicking on my seat belt, I said to him, “Thank you.”
He jammed his key into the ignition. “For what?”
“Being nice to her. A lot of people aren’t.”
“I won’t pretend it’s no big deal that she married Michael Bale. I won’t lie to you and say I don’t care—I do, because it negatively affected you in several ways, and that’s not okay for me. But I can see that she loves you, and I can see she wants better for you than what she has for herself.” Cupping my chin, he took my mouth in a long, wet, drugging kiss. Pulling back, he looked at my smirk and sighed. “She’s watching, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.”
He switched on the engine. “Home.”
Home … I liked the sound of that more than I should.
After work the next day, I ate dinner and then thrust myself straight into my book. At that point, I had only two chapters to review and edit before I could officially say that the manuscript was finished. As such, I almost grabbed Sarah by the throat for showing up at my apartment when I had only three pages left to review.
I banished her to the kitchen and told her to stay out of my way as I read through the last of the draft. Unoffended and unapologetic in equal measures, she did her best to hide her smile as she obligingly disappeared from my sight.
When I was finally done, I took a long, relieved breath. No, my entire system took a long, relieved breath. My shoulders didn’t feel quite so tense or weighed down, and the chaos in my brain began to smooth itself out. Fuck, I was so happy, I dug out the tequila.
Sarah and I drank shots as she gave me yet another update on life with Bastien. It was going pretty well. I could tell that she cared for him, although she didn’t seem ready to admit it to herself yet.
“Do you still have those handcuffs I got you as a joke?”
Looking up from my shot glass, I blinked. “Say that again.”
“I want to use them on Bastien as a tit-for-tat thing. It’ll be hard to catch him off-guard, but I’m patient.”
“I may still have them.” I headed into my bedroom and searched the top drawer of my dresser, making an aha sound when I saw the brown envelope filled with photos of Blake.
Sarah tensed. “More pictures?”
“No, they’re the old ones. Blake keeps asking for them, and I keep forgetting to hand them over to him.” I threw them on the bed and went back to rummaging through the drawer. Spotting the cuffs, I announced, “Found them. Not sure they’ll—”
“Um, Kenz?”
The shake in her voice made me turn with a frown. “What is it?” I asked. She was looking at one of the photos, seeming utterly perplexed. “What’s wrong, Sarah?”
“When you threw the envelope, one of the pictures slipped out and I noticed …” She lifted the photo in her hand to show it to me. It was one of Blake with Emma. But his face had been crossed out with a red marker.
Sarah emptied the envelope onto the bed and spread out the pictures. “It’s the same on all of them. Someone put a big red ‘X’ over Blake’s face.”
I just stared at them, unable to process what I was seeing. Then my heart slammed into my chest, and my pulse started galloping. “He’s been back here,” I said. “That motherfucker has been back.”
Eyes bulging, she spluttered. “But how? If he tried getting inside, he would have set off the sensors, right? A notification would have been sent to your phone.”
“I didn’t receive anything. But how else can we explain this?”
Sarah cursed a blue streak and then pulled out her cell phone.
“Who are you calling? I’d really rather not—”
“I’m doing an internet search,” she said. Her thumbs tapped and swiped over the screen of her phone. “Says here that there are devices that can jam the frequencies of wireless security systems and block the alert signal from reaching you. The burglar would need to know what kind of system you have in order to know exactly what device he needed. It wouldn’t be easy to mess with the system, but it could be done.
“Of course, a burglar would be more likely to just choose a house that wasn’t alarmed rather than go through all that trouble.” Sarah twisted her lips. “But Smith isn’t a burglar. He’s someone who was intent on getting inside. Still, why go through all that just to draw some X’s on the photos?”
“When he called me, he said I had to know that he could get close to me. He wants me to know that he still can. Marking the pictures was just his way of ensuring I knew.” I thrust my hand into my hair. “I have no idea when he did it. No idea if it’s the only time he’s been back here.” Hot tears of frustration and anger stung my eyes, but I refused to shed them. It didn’t matter that he’d never see, the point was—
My spine snapped straight. “I’ve just had a thought. As I said, it’s important to him that I know he’s close and that he’s watching. But I haven’t seen him anywhere, Sarah. I haven’t seen a single person who looked even remotely dubious. Yet, he knows things about me.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“He’s proved himself to be pretty tech savvy, right?”
She slowly nodded. “Right.”
“Savvy enough to bypass my security system without
me knowing until now.”
“I don’t like where I think you’re going with this.”
“What if he managed to hack into my security feeds? What if he’s turned my own damn system against me and used it to monitor me?” I crossed to her and whispered, “What if he’s watching and listening right now?”
She swallowed hard. “Oh, God.”
I ushered her into the small bathroom, where there was no recording equipment, and closed the door behind us.
She gripped my arm. “Kensey, you can’t stay here. Not anymore.”
“I know, I know.” I exhaled heavily, needing to think. Plan.
“You can stay with me.”
“If I do, he could try breaking into your home and—”
“If he turns up, we’ll go crazy on his creepy ass. He won’t find it simple to get inside, though. My building has better security than this one. There are cameras all over it because my landlord’s son is ex-military and wants her safe. He’s there a lot, doing jobs for her, and he doesn’t stand for shit.”
I closed my eyes and pressed down on my eyelids. “Sarah—”
“You’d be making the same case to me if our situations were reversed.” She rubbed my arm. “Don’t think this is a win for him. It’s not. Let’s face it, Kenz, you can do better than this building anyway. You can afford a better place now. You’ve only stayed here because you don’t like change. Well, change isn’t always bad.”
I dropped my arms to my sides and opened my eyes, knowing she was right. Blake had proven that by pushing his way into my life and shoving me out of my comfort zone.
“I say we start packing right now and then move your stuff to my place. It won’t take long, considering how frugal you are.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Either that or I move in here.”