Still Waters (Greenstone Security Book 1)

  I pushed my chair back to my desk, clicking to send my story to Carrie. After a much longer than normal silence between a barb like that and response, I turned to glance at Stephanie. “Of course, I didn’t kill her for a story,” I replied evenly. “I’m more than capable of finding stories without resorting to murder. I only kill people who do things like piss me off or stab me in the back.” I gave her a faker-than-her-Rolex smile and stood, bending to retrieve my bag—fabulous and not fake at all.

  I treated her gaping and pale face as the victory that it was and then turned to leave the office behind in the direction of the place where I lived—and more importantly where my wine lived.

  “Yes. Of course,” I muttered to myself as I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building in West Hollywood to see a large truck parked right beside my designated spot.

  I wondered how he knew that was my spot. Then I remembered he owned a security company.

  Irritation bloomed in the bottom of my stomach.

  Then traveled all the way up to my face, which I was more than sure was pinched into my number one bitch stare underneath the huge aviator sunglasses I reserved for hangovers and bad moods.

  Finding a dead body and then running into the ex who broke your heart filled the quota for a bad mood.

  I planned on wearing them the following day too, when I was grossly hungover. At least the murderer had the grace to kill on a Friday, when I didn’t have work the next day.

  He was leaning against his truck, his attractive face hard underneath his own glasses. They glinted with the quickly disappearing light of the Californian evening. His arms were crossed over his chest, one booted foot crossed over his ankle. He pushed off the truck the moment my heeled and bloodstained shoe hit the asphalt.

  He was in my space the second the car door closed behind me.

  I didn’t blink.

  Or maybe I did, but luckily my sunglasses disguised it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked before he could speak.

  His jaw hardened as his presence whirled around me like a hurricane. His scent assaulted me with the brutal and cruel reminder that came with it.

  “What am I doing here?” he repeated.

  I nodded once. “Yes. Here. Being my apartment. Where I live. Where you, being my ex… whatever, should not be. Under any circumstances,” I said firmly.

  His glasses moved slightly with the eye twitch I knew came when he was furious. I’d seen it exactly twice.

  Once after the whole shooting thing at Gwen and Cade’s anniversary. Once after the car bomb and then the subsequent metaphorical bomb that shattered whatever we had and left it in pieces.

  Good things were not associated with that eye twitch, no matter how hot he looked doing it.

  “Why are you only here now, three fucking hours after you left to come here, is the more apt fucking question,” he clipped, his voice low but still somehow a roar, the accent harsh around the words in a way that happened when he was furious. “You leave a fuckin’ murder scene and go missing, Snow. You think that’s okay?”

  I pursed my lips against the storm inside me at his irrational anger. “I wasn’t missing. I was working. Have you been taking dramatics classes now that you’re in Hollywood?” I asked evenly. “If so, they’re paying off. Money well spent.”

  He stepped forward, a gesture that had parts of me wanting to meet his hard muscled body and run from it at the same time.

  I flattened myself against my car as the logical part of me, bent on survival and sanity, won out.

  He didn’t stop, just kept it so that either of his hands rested on the top of my car, much like that time, lifetimes ago, outside the coffee shop.

  “I know you weren’t missing, Snow,” he murmured, his voice velvet. “I know that, instead of coming home to your apartment that is protected by a keycard entry and a passable lock system, you went to your offices which border the most crime-ridden part of Westwood and filed a story on a murder that most likely has ties to shit that could get you tangled right in the shit storm I’ve been trying to fuckin’ negotiate for the past six months.” The veins in his arms pulsed as his voice rose past the deadly but quiet velvet to a near roar.

  I didn’t flinch in the face of his anger. I wasn’t afraid of him. Or rather, I wasn’t afraid of this part of him. In fact, I would have preferred if this was the only part. Then I wouldn’t have anything to fear from him.

  But this was only the smallest part of him, and there were things like crunchy peanut butter and bungee jumping and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. And the stillness and the chaos.

  Because of that, I had more to fear from him than the man reeking of Old Spice who liked to slit women’s throats.

  I jerked my chin up, against the anger and everything else. “You stalking me, Keltan? From what I hear, that’s a crime. I do have a police officer who seems very intent on helping me out. His card is right in my bag, in fact. Do I need to call him?” My voice was no longer flat; it was teasing, poking the bear.

  Silence yawned from my words as Keltan regarded me, fury rolling off him in waves. His hand moved from the top of the car to push my sunglasses up onto my head. The waning light meant I didn’t squint at the unfiltered daylight. It did mean I had to school my expression quickly since my heavy shades weren’t there to cloak them. Though I didn’t have to cloak much; I was pissed the hell off, and I wanted to make sure Keltan saw that.

  “Did your manners go the way of your sanity?” I asked. “Stalking me means you’ve gone off the deep end, and manhandling some of my favorite and most expensive sunglasses means any decorum you had is gone too.”

  He pushed his own on his head so those swirling chocolate irises were visible and inviting to get lost in. Luckily pure fury worked well to keep my feet on the ground.

  “You’re not hidin’. Or runnin’. Not now. Not ever again,” he said by way of explanation. Although not just an explanation.

  A promise.

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was working,” I corrected. “And those sunglasses complete an outfit.” I gestured to my black dress and blush shoes that laced up my calves, and now stained with blood.

  A glimmer of hunger reflected in the light as Keltan took in the outfit.

  That glimmer was all my panties needed to dampen despite everything else.

  “And I’m not running,” I continued, my voice thicker than before. “The man who stalked and then accosted me in my parking lot has seen to that.”

  He watched me in that way he had that had ruined me before. That was ruining me all over again. “Not stalkin’, babe. I think keeping my eyes on the woman who almost got killed today, my woman, is considered the sanest thing I’ve ever done. Insane is taking my eyes off her in the first place.” He paused, letting those words find root. “And you don’t need to be movin’ to run from me. We both know that.”

  I swallowed. “I wasn’t the one who left,” I argued. “And I’m not yours,” I added as an afterthought.

  His eyes hardened. “Yeah, babe. You were. Not letting you go anywhere again, though.” He paused. “And you are mine. Have been since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

  I tilted my head. “You going to keep me pinned against my car for the rest of my life?” I asked through the pain of his words, and the truth to them. “Because I’m thinking that’s not the best long-term plan. And you overbearing alpha male types get antsy when you don’t have new and interesting ways to throw your testosterone around. Plus, I’m not one to let a man keep me in one place without a fight.”

  He leaned forward even closer. So close that every inch of him brushed against me so my heart became a roar in my chest and goose bumps erupted on my bare skin, despite the balmy air.

  “You want a fight, Snow?” he murmured against my mouth, his eyes never leaving mine. “Oh, you’ve got one. I’ll enjoy every fuckin’ second of fightin’ with you. And fightin’ for you? I’ll do that. To the death. So just so we’re clear, no more running. From either
of us.”

  The words hung in the air for an extended amount of time, so even though neither of us was speaking, the evening was far from silent. And I wasn’t talking about the background noise of traffic, sirens and general chaos of L.A.

  It was those ghosts from before. The ones that trailed after the living.

  It was them I blamed. For the insanity that overtook me, making me grasp Keltan’s now long hair and yank his mouth those last couple of inches to secure it against mine.

  The second our lips touched I drowned in it. The kiss. The one I may have started but lost control of the moment he made a feral sound in the back of his throat and yanked at my waist to imprint every inch of himself onto me while he kissed me to ensure the only breath I got was from him.

  It lasted long.

  I didn’t know how long.

  Long enough for me to end up on the hood of my car, my dress riding up to almost my waist and Keltan standing between my legs, the hardness in his jeans pressing against my delicate lace panties.

  Long enough for me to almost have an orgasm.

  From a kiss.

  In a parking lot.

  On the hood of a car.

  “Get a room,” a cheerful voice filtered through the layers that came with Keltan’s touch.

  And kiss.

  And general presence.

  “Or at least a camera crew,” the voice continued as I swam to the surface and yanked my head back. “You’d make a lot from this situation. People love exhibitionist porn. Especially when the actors look like the two of you,” Jon said, his attractive face stretched into a grin. Or as much as his recent Botox injection allowed.

  Jon was beautiful. Not in a female way, or even a male way. Just in a human way. He was tall, although not as tall as he usually was considering he was wearing sparkled loafers instead of his usual heels. They went much better with the black tailored pants he was wearing. He was thinner than I was because he ate nothing but coffee, cigarettes and the hearts of young men who fell in love with him. Okay, not really. He might eat a wheel of cheese every now and then.

  He had his hand on his hip, a handbag dangling in the crook of his arm, false eyelash–laden eyes on us. More precisely on Keltan, hungry and alight with the look that I was far too familiar with. One that captured the hearts of young men throughout Hollywood.

  I moved my gaze from Jon to put my hands, which were still tangled in Keltan’s hair, to his chest. I appreciated his pecs for a split second in my flustered state, then pushed. Hard.

  He frowned deeply at the motion, his eyes near black, and his pause had me slightly panicked that he wouldn’t move.

  He did. Though he took me with him. His hands at my hips, he lifted me from the car, set me on the ground and pulled my dress down to its proper position, covering my panties in one smooth move.

  After I found my bearings, both too soon and not soon enough, I frowned at my bag, which was lying on the ground. I snatched it up and brushed the dirt from it, then scuttled back towards Jon.

  He wouldn’t offer much safety; in fact, he was more likely to push me back in the direction of the man he’d caught me almost having public sex with. But it was a risk I had to take.

  He didn’t push me, though his paper-thin brow rose in question.

  “You’re running from that?” he asked.

  I scowled at him. Then I moved it to Keltan, whose arms were crossed once more, his jaw hard but eyes still liquid.

  “You need to go back to whatever it was you were doing before you were lingering in my parking lot,” I informed him. “I have a life to live.”

  He gave me a long look. “Yeah, Snow. So do I. One that does include lingering in your parking lot. And your apartment. And then finally settling where I belong—in your bed.”

  On that promise, he turned on his heel and walked back to his truck.

  Both Jon and I watched his journey. Or, more appropriately, the journey of his ass in those jeans.

  I was processing the fact that he even said that, both unhesitatingly in front of Jon and at all, after six months of nothing. I was still processing it after the truck roared from the lot.

  “Well,” Jon said finally, and I waited for it. The barrage of questions about the guy I’d told him nothing about but who was obviously more than nothing. I saw the cogs working in his mind. Jon was never one to bite his tongue. But apparently there was a first time for everything. “Wine?”

  I glanced up at him. “Yeah. Wine. And witness protection.”

  He linked his arm in mine. “Honey, I don’t even think Homeland Security will protect you from that. And I don’t know why you’d want it to.”

  My heels clicked against the ground as we approached the gate that did, as Keltan said, require a code for entry. “Oh I want to. For simple things like breathing and sanity.”

  He scoffed. “Who needs oxygen and lucidity when you’ve got a man who looks like that, kisses like that and has an accent to boot? And who is obviously in love with you?”

  “Who indeed?”

  “It’s six fucking thirty in the morning. On a Saturday. Whoever this is better have witness protection on speed dial,” a throaty and very pissed-off voice answered the phone.

  “I may or may not have Googled their number on an unrelated matter, but I’m thinking you need me around for this,” I responded, sipping my second—third?—coffee of the morning. I had shared a bottle of red wine with Jon, told him the story halfway through said bottle, listened to him tell me to get my “undernourished and stylish-as-fuck ass over to that hottie’s house and fuck his brains out,” then went to sleep for approximately three hours before shaking awake to the box from the day before opening itself in my sleep. Not the Keltan one—that was still rattling dangerously—but the one where I saw a gaping neck wound, lifeless glassy eyes and a lot of blood.

  Yeah, that one.

  No sleep after that.

  Only computers and a lot of research on the thoughts circling about the murder, the circumstances and pieces of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit in with the press’s assumptions. Of course, every station, national included, had picked up the story.

  My story.

  Roger had offered to impregnate me with his child and his “supreme genes” when that happened.

  I politely refused and then agreed to not tell HR about that little nugget if he promised me a substantial bonus.

  And more flexible hours. Which meant new shoes and brunch.

  There was a rustling on the other end of the phone, muffled swearing and then the telltale sucking sound that no longer grossed me out. It was rather like white noise.

  “I’m interested to hear the reasoning for this, Walker,” he grunted.

  I told him the thoughts that had been brewing all night, Old Spice’s mention of a manifest the first. Then the public records I’d been able to search out on the deep web about debts that Lucinda had, despite turning over a tidy profit in the jewelry industry. About the extensive security detail, she had required leading up to her death.

  Up until the day before, when she abruptly fired them.

  I felt strangely guilty about that, like I was betraying Keltan somehow, but then shrugged off that feeling, banishing it to that box.

  Keltan and I were nothing; therefore, no loyalty. Kisses on car hoods notwithstanding.

  There was a long pause and sucking sound at the end of the phone once I finished.

  I waited, wandering over to the sliding door that was open, letting in the gentle breeze in of the L.A. morning, watching the dusky colors of the sunrise dancing amongst the littered rooftops of West Hollywood and the hills beyond.

  “Interesting,” Roger said finally.

  “There’s something there,” I said confidently.

  “Oh, fuck yes, there’s something there,” he agreed.

  “This could be big for us. For the publication. Legitimize us. Maybe put us in the big leagues. Give Huffington Post a run for its money.”

  “Oh ye
s, we’d blow those assholes out of the water.”

  I leaned against the cool and peeling metal rail of our tired building. It wasn’t exactly swanky and new, but it was big, had decent security, was in a good location and gave me a small spare room classed as a ‘second bedroom’—otherwise known as a closet.

  “Sooo?” I prodded.

  “So what?”

  “So, this sounds like a job for the reporter who actually discovered the story in the first place,” I said.

  “Stumbled onto a murder scene while going to talk to the victim about sparkly things. More luck than good journalism.” Roger may have been cranky in the morning, but statements like this, honesty without fluffy compliments to pad it out, were the norm no matter what time of day it was.

  “You may be right,” I agreed. “But my story was good. And this story, once I break it, will be even better.”

  There was a pause, more sucking. “The police will be investigating this too,” he said finally.

  I perked up. Him not instantly ruling it out gave me hope. “All the more reason to put me on the story immediately. I’ll work overtime. Unpaid.” I silently apologized to my credit card for that little offer.

  “Of course it’ll be fucking unpaid until you show me it’s actually worth having you on something other than frocks and fashion shows,” he spluttered.

  I ignored it. “So, I’ve got the story?”

  “You’ve got other stories,” he hedged thoughtfully.

  I waited, letting the silence do the talking for me.

  “But I suppose Stephanie can do them. That lazy bitch spends far too much time frowning at her frozen forehead in the ladies’ room than actually doing any writing,” he said.

  I grinned.

  “And if you fuckin’ repeat that to anyone I’ll banish you to obits until you need more than Botox and a tummy tuck to make you look like you do now,” he added.

  I nodded, smiling freely at the upcoming horizon. The only morning since him that I was content to be awake at such an hour.

  “Roger that, Roger,” I told him, a smile in my voice.

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “Don’t make me regret it. Get this fuckin’ scoop.”