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She processed that, visibly struggling with whether he'd just paid her a compliment or insulted her. He almost had to bite back a grin at her expression. Yeah, she wanted that punishment now, but she was going to be spitting and clawing all the way, just to get back at him at the same time.

  "Go pack a bag," he said. "Now."

  She sniffed and pivoted, but he caught her arm, pulling her back to kiss her sneering mouth until it slackened and the claws she put into his forearm eased into a sensual bite. When he lifted his head, she was staring at him. As he stood still, she put her hand on his face, outlining his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. Wariness had turned into that vague panic mixed with irritation he was beginning to recognize as her bratting cue. Or, given they had no time for that kind of interaction right now, the prelude to an actual fight. But he was betting she was where he was on it. It wasn't a day for fighting.

  "It's all right," he said quietly. "We'll work it out, Celeste. It is what it is. Don't question it today."

  She bent her head, which put her temple against his jaw. When his arms closed around her, she let out a little sigh. Her willingness to accept his comfort gave him an injection of strength he didn't expect. She whispered something against his shirt he couldn't decipher, so when she pushed away, he caught her fingers before she could head for her bedroom.

  "What was that?"

  "Nothing. I called you a jerk."

  "No you didn't." He only had three of her fingers in his grasp, and those only at the last knuckle, but he saw her discomfiture when she couldn't get him to let go. "Tell me, Celeste."

  Her gaze lifted at that, because he'd deliberately employed the tone he would have used with her in session. She pursed her lips, started to shift her gaze.

  "No. Look at me when you answer me."

  That increased her discomfort. When he felt a tremor go through her, saw the sudden misery in her eyes, he relented. It wasn't a time for pushing, so he set aside his Dom nature and let her go, though he gave her an even look that said they'd pick it up another time. Her hand slipped from his and she moved across her small living room toward the hallway, but when she reached it, she paused. Looking over her shoulder, she met his gaze. Her lips quivered, uncertain petals, her eyes too large for her slim face.

  "'Yes, sir.' That's what I said."

  Then she vanished like smoke.

  To settle his own reaction to that, Leland went back out on the porch. He nodded to Mike, leaning on his car, talking to Billy, and both men gave him a brief acknowledgment in return. Leland took out his phone, dialed. The guy he was calling always answered his personal cell, an indication that the very small selection of people who had that number were those he'd consider a priority call. Not surprising, since Matt Kensington, the CEO of Kensington and Associates, was pretty particular about who he let into his inner circle.

  "Leland." The Yale-educated Texas drawl on the other end was filled with warmth. "Always a pleasure to hear from you. If you're calling to tell me you can make it up here Friday night, Peter's got a Kentucky bourbon with your name on it. You're welcome to join our gathering to keep Ben from bolting."

  "I've met his fiancee. If he even thinks of bolting, shoot him between the eyes because he's too stupid to live."

  "I wouldn't dare deprive her of that pleasure. But she'll let us hold him down for her to do it."

  "Marcie's a Southern belle through and through."

  Matt chuckled. "What can I do for you?"

  That was another thing he liked about Matt. The man knew Leland wasn't much on chitchat and wouldn't be calling without purpose.

  "You know Celeste Lewis."

  "Very well and with great fondness. I subscribe to her blog and follow her articles in the papers when she freelances. She's a hell of a reporter."

  "Yeah, she is." And he meant it. "She's run into some trouble up here."

  Briefly, Leland explained the situation. Normally the details of an ongoing case weren't discussed with a civilian without clearance, but he considered Matt and his four-man executive team trusted confidants.

  "What can we do to help you protect her?" Matt's tone had changed in a blink, now sharp and serious. "What do you need?"

  "A safe place for her to go for a few days. I don't know if he's going to have gang support on this or not. They're small time, but there's always the chance they might have their own sources for hacking email accounts and tracking credit card use. I'd like her to stay somewhere where they won't expect her to be and where she doesn't have to have a paper trail."

  "Marcie's back at Lucas and Cassandra's this week. Something about the tradition of the groom not seeing the bride before the event, though I think there's more to it than that, because Ben's been broody as hell. Nothing the wedding won't fix. Celeste could stay with them."

  Leland felt a twinge of conscience. "She said she and Marcie were friends, but I'm not sure how well." He for damn sure was aware of how well she knew Ben. It was absurd to have any territorial growls over a one-night session she had with another Dom, but he knew that was exactly what had prompted him to strip the condom the other night and take her without it, marking her in a way as primal as the Neanderthal she'd accused him of being. He'd told Celeste she'd show him that video eventually, but it would be as tough for him to sit through it as it would be uncomfortable for her, for far different reasons.

  Yeah, okay, he was a caveman. Whatever.

  "When Celeste lived here, they used to spar at the gym together weekly," Matt said. "They exchange birthday gifts and usually grab lunch when Celeste comes here for a story. So I'd say pretty tight. Celeste came up for one of the wedding showers a few weeks ago." He paused. "What's the likelihood this bastard would track her down and try to get at her in that kind of environment? That will tell me how to reinforce things there."

  "I wouldn't ask if I thought it was anything more than a lightning strike possibility. This guy is starting to unravel fast, and my guess is his associates will give him up pretty quick rather than risk him jeopardizing their day-to-day."

  "All right. Unraveled can be unpredictable. I'll assign Max there for night duty. I'm sure he'll ask his friend Dale to take shifts with him so one of them is on the property or with her at all times."

  Leland felt a surge of emotion at Matt's generosity. Max, the head limo driver at K&A, was a former Navy SEAL, and his buddy Dale was a retired SEAL.

  "Janet will make me pay for that. Are she and Max married yet?"

  "Still considering it, but it's a moot point for them. They know they're it for each other."

  "Yeah. It can be like that, I guess."

  "I guess." The amusement in Matt's voice as he parroted him had Leland hunching his shoulders. "Okay. I'll bring her up in the next few hours. Should I call Marcie?"

  "No, I'll handle that. She and Cassandra are out until late tonight doing some things, but Lucas will be there. You just focus on Celeste."

  "Thanks, Matt. I know this is bad timing. I'm sure you're all up to your eyeballs in wedding planning."

  "The women are up to their eyeballs. They just want us out of the way. Janet is the head of that ship, so she'll probably be fine having Max assigned elsewhere for a few days. I had to type up a memo by myself this morning because she was resolving some worse-than-famine-or-flood crisis involving wine glasses."

  "Memo typing. Can't imagine anything more traumatic than that."

  "Janet put far less effort into hiding her sarcasm when she said almost the same thing." Matt's amusement registered through the phone. "I appreciate your restraint. Oh, and Lucas said to tell 'The Duke' he'd have a hitching post set up to park your white horse at the wedding."

  Leland chuckled, tension easing. "Asshole. Listen, Matt, I know Celeste is going to resist the idea, so if it's at all possible for Marcie to give her a quick call and ask her to come, I think it would go over better."

  "That's what I was thinking. She'll see through it, as will Marcie, but Marcie likely can use an additional hand."

 
"I wouldn't ask, except--"

  "You're sure it's necessary." Matt sobered again. "Don't give it a second thought, Leland. Marcie would be the first to tell you that keeping a friend safe trumps everything else. Especially if that person is more than a friend."

  Leland pursed his lips. "Yeah."

  "So how long have you two been seeing one another?"

  "You asking for me or for your wife?"

  "My wife, of course."

  "Good. I thought I was going to have to pull your man card."

  "You know if I crack the seal on that bourbon, it'll be long gone before you get here. Answer the question."

  "Long enough." If there was anyone who could understand that statement, the man on the other end would. Like everyone else who knew Leland, Matt was aware he hadn't been dating much these past couple years, so if he was seeing someone now, she mattered. It wasn't casual. Matt was a Dom through and through himself, which meant he'd deduce the nature of their relationship, or at least the way it seemed to be headed. As that Yes, sir went through Leland's mind again, he increased his grip on the porch rail. Did she know that every step she made toward opening up to him like that just made him want to bind her to him all the more?

  "Fair enough," Matt said smoothly. "We'll be having a more intimate get-together that night after the reception, at Ben's Garden District place. You and she are welcome to join us if you feel comfortable. It will just be the core group plus a very small handful of trusted friends. Ben's converted the whole floor into a private dungeon. You'd have some excellent options to explore together."

  "Appreciate that." The idea definitely sparked some interest, now that he was feeling a little less uptight about her whereabouts for the next few days. But he wouldn't get ahead of himself. She still had to agree to stay with Marcie, let alone agree to anything else. "We'll keep it in mind. Thanks, Matt."

  "Not a problem. See you in a few days. Marcie will call her within the hour."

  Leland clicked off, putting the phone at his belt as he stepped back inside. He heard Celeste moving around in her bedroom, so now that he had some time, he took a closer look at his surroundings. The night he'd picked Celeste up, she'd practically met him on the curb, but he could see why she'd been reluctant to let him into her house.

  She didn't have a home. She had an office and storage facility. Clippings were spread out on the kitchen table, some fanned out together, some grouped in stacks. The back wall of her kitchen nook was all corkboard, covered with clippings, pictures and sticky notes.

  He swept his glance around the room. The couch had a bed pillow and a rumpled blanket on it, a fitted sheet over the cushions telling him that was where she preferred to sleep. No pictures on the walls. Just bare and white, not that the starkness was too noticeable with the magazines, books, notebooks and files stacked up on chairs and scattered over the top of the entertainment center and coffee table. Her TV was a painfully small flat screen, sitting on top of some books in the middle of the much larger opening provided by the entertainment center. From the furniture's scarred appearance, he expected she'd picked it up from a secondhand store.

  Except for some pretty little figurines on her kitchen window ledge, he didn't see any indication she was into decorating or personalizing her space. However, she was conscious of cleanliness. No dirty dishes in the sink, and the one countertop in the kitchen she wasn't using for her work was clean. The place smelled good, like her, that vanilla flower fragrance, mixed with the smell of books and paper. The wood floor was vacuumed. She didn't mind clutter, but she didn't like dirt. Other than her bedroom, it looked like the house had one other room beyond the hallway bathroom. That room was probably a guestroom she'd turned into additional office space.

  He was curious about her bedroom and backyard, to know if anything more personal could be found there. She'd had a couple potted flowers on the front porch, lush groupings of purple-and-gold pansies, easy to find in a city devoted to its LSU Tigers. He could hear drawers opening and closing, the occasional mutter as she talked to herself about whether this or that might be the right thing to take. He only caught snippets of that, but he registered the tone of her voice. Still unsettled by the situation, but doing okay. He'd rein himself back, stay out here, give her space.

  Stepping closer to the corkboard wall, he saw that her surroundings might be cluttered, but her mind was extremely well-ordered. He quickly found the relevant pieces she'd used to put together Dogboy's involvement in the murders of the hookers and Loretta Stiles. Who would have thought to connect animal control reports on dead dogs to two murders? And she'd asked the right questions, been in the right places to find out about Dogboy, his involvement in the store owner beating.

  Figuring out crimes was the detectives' bailiwick, but looking at the details she'd put together, Leland understood why the captain had a good opinion of her. Her generous heart was evident here as well. She'd pinned up a school picture of Loretta Stiles, a pretty fifteen-year-old with a shy smile and intelligent eyes who would never get any older. Leland remembered her face had been severely beaten, her body stabbed both by knife and rape. He put his hand on the picture. When his gaze shifted to another picture in the same section, he fished out his reading glasses and leaned in to get a better look.

  The snapshot had been taken outside. The woman, obviously a prostitute, had struck a sassy pose and smiled at the camera, a tight-lipped gesture likely to hide bad teeth. She had sharp cheekbones and a delicate wrist, revealed under her sleeve because she'd lifted her hand to hold the side of her head as she threw it back, a jaunty starlet pose with her hip cocked. He saw a drug habit in the set of her face, the look in her eyes, but there was also laughter in her expression. As if it had tickled her to be asked for a picture.

  "When I get to know my sources well enough, I take a photo of them," Celeste said, coming to stand beside him. She folded a garment bag over a chair and propped a small rolling suitcase next to it. "DeeDee obliged."

  Just as he'd done with Loretta Stiles, she stepped closer to put her hand on DeeDee's picture. "She was smoking a cigarette, offered me a drag. I hadn't smoked since I was a teenager, so I said no. She acted all outraged. 'Bitch, you think I gonna give you a disease? You too good to put your lips where mine have been? Shit, can't blame you on that. You'd run screaming if you had to put your lips where mine have been.'"

  Celeste did a credible imitation of a street hustler, such that Leland's lips twitched, though he didn't smile, because her eyes didn't smile. They stayed focused on DeeDee. "So I reach for the cigarette, fine. She jerks it out of reach and smacks at my hand. 'Bitch, you crazy? You don't smoke the cigarette of a skanky ho. Your pretty lips will rot and fall off." Then she laughed at me and strolled away. 'I gotta work. You go do what you do. We both make the world a better place, right?'"

  Celeste's gaze slid from there to a clipping from the newspaper. Just a couple paragraphs, no headline to it, though she'd penned the date in the corner. She put her hand on it, two fingertips covering the scrap of paper. "When someone is killed," she said, "the killer becomes the important one. The one who gets the press as we all speculate why he did it, how he did it, how much suffering did he inflict. Rather than how much suffering she endured. It bugs me. There are so many that don't seem to matter, but everyone matters. There are all sorts of voices in dark corners of the world, where they feel like if they screamed at the top of their lungs, no one would ever hear them."

  He reached out to touch her, but she moved away. Without her hand on the article, he saw it was a clipping from the newspaper's crime report summary about DeeDee's death. No name given. He shifted his gaze back to Celeste, who had pivoted, her gaze sweeping the room as she grimaced.

  "It's like Mel Gibson's place in Conspiracy Theory. I was going to clean it up, and then I figured I'd be better off just renting someone's house for the day and telling you that's where I live. Especially after I saw your place. What guy is that neat? Makes me feel like a freak."

  "Celeste
." He stepped up to her again, closed his hand on her wrist to hold her in place. She turned her green-gold gaze to him.

  "I wish you'd killed him today," she said. "I don't care if that's right or wrong. I know he probably had a fucked-up childhood, but a lot of us do. Doesn't give him the right, you know?"

  "No, it doesn't. If I had killed him, I wouldn't be sorry in the least. Because then you wouldn't be in danger now."

  She shook her head. "I'm not dismissing your concern, but I really can't imagine he's going to go out of his way to track me down. He went the easiest route to find me today."

  "Maybe, but I'd rather not take any chances. I called--"

  Her phone started to ring and Leland stifled a curse. He should have told Matt to give him at least thirty minutes. He hadn't wanted Marcie's call to be the first Celeste was hearing of his plan for her. But when she glanced at the view screen and her expression clouded, he knew that wasn't the expression she'd have if she was receiving a call from a friend.

  "Hey, Trice. What's going on?"

  SS

  "Not a lot." But her sister didn't really call unless she needed something, so Celeste made a noncommittal sound and waited for her to continue. Fortunately, Patrice didn't make her usual effort toward pointless small talk, a pretense that she'd called for social reasons. Good. Celeste just wasn't in the mood today.

  "Can you do me a big favor, Celly? I know it's a pain in the ass. I have a small box of stuff at Mom's. I know I should have picked it up last time I was in town, but you know how she is. I was just wanting to get the hell out of there and forgot it. Well, she called to say she needs to dump some stuff because she might be selling the trailer, et cetera, et cetera, but basically she's moving another new guy in with her. I'm afraid if I ask her to hold it for me until the next time I'm in town, she'll just toss it. There are a couple things in it I'd really like to have."

  "Who's the guy?"

  "Don't know and didn't ask. She sounded in a hurry when she called me anyhow."

  As usual. Celeste closed her eyes, rubbed her temple.

  "I'm really, really sorry to ask. I know you hate going out there." Her sister sounded suitably chagrined. Celeste didn't blame Patrice for calling only when she needed something. There was no reason to pretend they were poster children for World's Greatest Family. As the oldest child, Celeste had made sure her two brothers and her sister finished high school, got out of that trailer park, but there hadn't been room for a lot of touching Little House on the Prairie scenes during that struggle.