Falling for His Suspect Read online

  A fear he’d heard so often...and could never assuage. I’m afraid you’re going to leave me, Greg. Are you going to leave me, Greg?

  “You made this one right, Liv. You always do. He knows that. Just as he knows what he signed on for. So why would you think he’d leave you?” He had the thought that maybe Rick had finally had enough. Hoped he was wrong about that.

  “You did.”

  He’d wanted to. God, he’d wanted to. He had a bit of a savior complex—him always feeling like he needed to rescue people. Made him good at his job, but not so good in relationships, as he never factored in his own needs until it was too late.

  “No, Liv. You left me, remember?”

  “Only because you made me feel unwelcome.”

  He probably had. There’d been days he’d dreaded going home when he’d known she was going to be there.

  “You’re a smart, capable woman,” he told her. “You’re witty and loyal and nurturing. You’ve increased product sales by more than fifty percent in the five years you’ve been at your current position. Your team loves working for you. Think about those things, Liv. Think about the fact that you have way more good days than bad.”

  It’s what had kept him sane when they’d been together.

  “Yeah. You’re right. I just...when the fear takes over... I feel like such a freak...”

  “Talk to Rick. Ask him how he feels about you.”

  Another twinge as Greg considered the idea that Rick’s feelings might have changed in the past forty-eight hours, but he didn’t think so.

  God, he hoped not.

  “He’s just getting out of the shower. I have to go. Thanks, Greg.”

  Rick was getting out of the shower. Greg was getting in. Wondering if he’d ever find someone who fit him as well as Rick fit Liv.

  Chapter 2

  Just seeing her brother in his typical dress pants, shirt and tie made Jasmine feel better. Business as usual. With a little sidebar trip before the day really got started. They’d sort this out.

  “It’s just another ditch in the road,” she told him after he’d carried his daughter in and settled her, still sleeping, in her room.

  Another ditch in the road. A line from a Savage Garden song they’d been drawn to as teenagers. Abuse. Destruction. Mom takes kids and leaves. And then, because there are bills to pay, goes back.

  Until, in their case, she didn’t. Jasmine had been seventeen, Josh fifteen, when Mary Taylor had finally found the courage to stand up to her soft-spoken, powerful and abusive husband. She’d made a deal with him—she wouldn’t go to the police as long as he put a million dollars apiece in a trust fund for each of their children and didn’t ever contact her again. She’d taken a hell of a beating for her efforts while he told her he’d make mincemeat of her reputation, say she was crazy. He even threatened he’d have her committed. Until Josh had walked in the room and shown him a picture he’d just snapped of his father’s fist raised over his cowering mother. Oscar Taylor had been so enraged with Mary that he hadn’t heard Josh come in.

  One look at the photo and that anger had seeped out of him. A balloon without air. He’d sagged right before their eyes, still staring at the photo. As though, until that moment, he hadn’t known who he’d become.

  When Josh had turned twenty-one, he’d taken a good chunk of his inheritance to start Play for the Win. Not only was he chairman of that board, but he was also now into various other investments, helping their trusts grow. Until he’d gained sole custody of Bella, he’d been at the Santa Barbara Play for the Win facility, working with the kids, at least three times a week. Just as she spent so much volunteer time at The Lemonade Stand. They’d survived their youth and were paying it forward.

  In her kitchen that September Tuesday morning, with a cup of coffee in his hand, Josh hadn’t yet said a word. Putting ice in an insulated glass, she poured herself the one caffeinated soda she allowed herself a day. She wasn’t a coffee drinker.

  “You know this is just more of Heidi’s crap,” she told him. That was her job, to make sure the funk didn’t get him. Just like he was the person she called when fear tried to play with her.

  He looked her in the eye. Her silent gaze told him what he needed to know. When he nodded, she knew he’d heard. Took a sip of her soda.

  “I need you to keep Bella, Jas.”

  Jasmine coughed, sending carbonated liquid into her nasal cavities. Her eyes watered while her mind flew. Take Bella? What kind of nonsense was he talking?

  Heidi had done a number on Josh for sure. But Jasmine had thought he was beyond it. Beyond Heidi’s ability to get to him.

  “Heidi would rather see her with Child Services than with me.” Her brother’s tone was firm, calm as he looked at her. “She’s descended to a new low.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll—”

  He shook his head, cutting off her fight call before she’d uttered it.

  “I won’t have Bella pulled into this.”

  Of course not. Neither would she. That little girl was going to grow up abuse-free. Not just physically, but psychologically, too. That wasn’t negotiable. For any kids either of them brought into the world. Patterns that might have some pull on them would not repeat themselves. They’d promised each other. If either of them ended up in a situation like their mother, they’d get out.

  She nodded. Listening for any sounds emanating from the handheld child monitor receiver sitting on the counter. When Bella had been a newborn, Jasmine had carried the device even into the bathroom with her when she’d been on babysitting duty. More recently, she had to know when the little girl was out of bed. Bella had a curiosity that didn’t quit and almost no sense of fear.

  Both Jasmine and Josh celebrated that lack of fear—even as they’d acknowledged that the little girl needed to develop just a healthy dose of it.

  “Don’t you think this is a little drastic?” she asked softly, hoping Josh could tap into her calm, like she’d tapped into his so many times in the past. “Even if you’re not home before she’s due to go to her nanny, you’ll be home sometime today...”

  “She’s asking for Bella to be removed from the home immediately. They could make that a condition of my release. I can’t risk it, Jas.”

  Sickness spread through her. Insidious fear. Powerlessness. “She always has a home here. You know that,” she said. Bella could slide right into her life with very little effort. That wasn’t the point. Josh didn’t deserve to lose the brightest bulb in his life. And Bella didn’t deserve to lose him, either. They weren’t powerless.

  Evil couldn’t do this to him. He shouldn’t have anything real to fear. Which was why she had to keep Bella like he’d asked. It dawned on her why he was asking. “Heidi doesn’t have any family for her to go to, so I’m it,” she said. “If she’s already here, moved in, with daycare in place, chances are Child Services won’t disrupt her while they investigate Heidi’s allegations.”

  Josh wasn’t running scared. He was thinking clearly. Practically.

  “Exactly.”

  “And if she’s here, you’ll be able to see her whenever you want.”

  He shrugged, turning enough that she couldn’t see his face as he sipped his coffee and picked up his keys. “Depends on what the court decides, initially. I won’t let Heidi push me into making a mistake. If I have to go a few days without seeing Bella while they investigate bogus charges, then I do. I’m going to play by the rules.”

  As she’d expect him to.

  The whole thing sucked.

  Other than that, she had the unexpected gift of Bella for a few days. Having come to the painful conclusion that, because she’d made the choice not to have a partner relationship, she might never have a child of her own, she’d poured every bit of nurturing instinct into Bella since the day her niece was born.

  “I’ve got a couple of suitcases and bags of h
er things out in the car,” Josh said, setting down his cup and heading for the door. “I want to get her moved in, and get me out of here, before anyone comes after me and grabs her, too.”

  Taking things from her brother at the front door as he made a couple of trips, Jasmine tried not to cry. How it had to hurt him, turning over his daughter’s things. He adored Bella more than anything on earth. From the second she was born, Josh had glowed with love and pride for her.

  “I’ll keep her happy,” she told him as he stood on her porch, ready to take off.

  “I know you will, sis. That’s why she’s here.”

  “You sure you don’t want a second cup of coffee?” Dawn had come, but it was still early.

  Shaking his head, he reached a hand behind her neck and gently pulled her to him for a quick hug. “I want to get ahead of this. Turn myself in before they come for me. Danny says that’s the best way to keep it low-key.”

  Right. Because while Bella was by far his greatest concern, she wasn’t his only concern. As founder and chairman of Play for the Win, he had well over a thousand kids benefiting from his good reputation. A scandal could hurt them all.

  Because of one damaged, bitter and vindictive woman.

  “Call me as soon as you can,” she called to Josh as he strode, head high, down the walk. With a backward wave, he acknowledged her request.

  “We’ll video talk every night before Bella goes to bed,” she told his already retreated back.

  She wasn’t sure he heard her. And, feeling helpless in spite of herself, she let the tears fall.

  * * *

  The house Greg was headed to was nice. He’d been to Santa Raquel many times in the past. Liked the small, beachside town. And had never been in any of these moneyed neighborhoods with expanses of private beach. Not a lot of crime happened there and he didn’t run with the kind of crowd that would produce invitations to gated communities. He was the guy who came to town for a few hours on the public beach.

  Nineteen eighty-five. He found the address. Jasmine Taylor’s home, while on a stretch of private beach, was set a quarter of a mile up from the water. And it was fenced off.

  Not that safety was on his roster of concern. Child Services had already had their go at the perp’s sister over the past few days and deemed her suitable for temporary custody of the toddler. Greg was there to interview the sister for evidence against her brother.

  Vibrant flowers lined her walk and trailed out of large terra-cotta pots on either side of the massive double front door.

  Unlike most of the homes spread far apart on the secluded street, 1985 was single story. But still had four bedrooms.

  Ms. Taylor lived nice for an elementary school teacher. But then he knew she, like her brother, had a trust fund to back her up. The brother had hired a snake of a lawyer, refusing to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office in any way.

  Greg knocked. Not sure what to expect in a woman who was worth more than a million dollars and still spent her days at work teaching young children how to add and subtract.

  The police had arraigned her brother on a single misdemeanor charge of domestic violence. At the status conference the prosecutor had offered a no brainer plea agreement. Even Josh Taylor’s lawyer had told him that if he pleaded guilty, he’d get no more than a slap on the wrist and probably some mandatory counseling. It was his first offense and he contributed an inordinate amount of good to the community.

  Josh had refused to listen to any talk of deals or settling out of court. He seemed certain he was going to prove his innocence and had the money to spend doing it.

  Which meant Greg had to work all that much harder to see justice done. Josh Taylor had nearly broken his ex-wife’s wrist. The guy had to be accountable to that. At least by an admission and submission to counseling.

  The door opened. Greg stood still, forgetting for a split second why he was there. There was nothing that remarkable about the woman standing before him. Nothing shocking about a woman wearing a long, black skirt that looked like it was made out of lightweight material. Her white T-shirt with black lace flowers hugged her figure nicely, but in Southern California nice curves were the norm. The dark hair that curled around her shoulders looked clean, the big brown gaze...everyone had eyes.

  He’d broken out into a sweat in his light gray suit.

  “Detective Johnson?” Her voice, quiet and yet somehow laced with authority, drew his gaze to her mouth. What in the hell was wrong with him? She wasn’t his first good-looking interview. Not by a long shot.

  Liv’s drama must be rubbing off on him. Another reason to get himself fully out of her life.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I’m a few minutes late.” He found his spiel in the nick of time as he held up his badge. “I didn’t count on so much traffic on the freeway.”

  “Yeah, the number of people who live up here and work between here and LA is growing every year.” She didn’t really smile, but it kind of seemed like she had.

  “Auntie JJ! Auntie JJ! Look what I drawed!” A tiny, lisping little three-year-old voice came barreling around the corner and out to the foyer with the little girl carrying some kind of board that had a pencil-type article hanging from it by a cord.

  “Come on, kiddo! Auntie JJ told you she had to work for just a minute and would be right back.” Another female voice, slightly garbled and older, sounded just before another woman came into view.

  “It’s okay, Maddie.” Jasmine—he assumed Auntie JJ was the woman who’d answered the door, and that the toddler was Anabelle Taylor—took the board from little fingers as the pudgy cheeks, framed by dark hair, turned up to her. “That’s really good, Bella!”

  “It’s Daddy and me riding horses to supper!” Greg thought he heard. From what he could see, the board was covered with scattered scribbles.

  “What are you having for supper?” Maddie asked in that unusual voice, taking the board from Jasmine and leading the little girl down a hall. “I’ll close the door this time,” the blonde said, glancing back at Jasmine, who nodded.

  “Maddie and her husband and kids live at The Lemonade Stand with Lynn Bishop, our full-time nurse practitioner,” Jasmine said, leading Greg out through a set of French doors at the back of the house to a deck furnished with upholstered wicker furniture. Wicker. For a two-hundred-pound guy.

  He briefly noticed the large expanse of yard beyond, followed by as much beach and then the ocean. Paradise.

  “Maddie works at the daycare and offered to sit with Bella while you’re here,” Jasmine was saying.

  His job was to find out anything pertinent that wasn’t in the formal reports. And to get her to tell him whether or not her brother had ever exhibited signs of domestic violence. During initial plea negotiation it had come out that they’d grown up in an abusive home—not that that fact alone made someone suspect. At all. Taylor’s lawyer had offered the information in his client’s defense, saying that Josh had helped save his mother and sister and was determined to live a violence-free life. As was his sibling. But fact was, victims often grew up to have victims. He didn’t make the facts; he had to know them, to use them, to do his job.

  She didn’t offer him anything to drink—in spite of the nice teapot centerpiece on the wicker-wrapped glass-topped table in front of the couch. She took a rocker off one corner of the table. He lowered himself carefully to the couch, facing the ocean in the distance. He could barely make out waves moving in the dusk but didn’t hear their sound.

  “Maddie was a victim of domestic violence. First at home, when she was growing up, and then she was a victim of her husband.”

  Maybe she thought he needed a crash course in the world of domestic violence. No way she’d know that he’d successfully investigated—and earlier in his career, prosecuted—more cases of it than he could count.

  “I’m not here to investigate you or your choice of babysitter,” he t
old her, the first words he’d been able to get in since he’d shown her his badge. “I’m a detective, employed by the prosecutor’s office.” He’d told her so earlier when he’d called to make the appointment.

  She nodded. “I know.” Both hands on the arms of her chair, she rocked. Back and forth. Back and forth. Slowly. Portraying a sense of calm he wasn’t sure she really felt.

  Because she was a woman with secrets?

  Could she hide something without appearing to be doing so?

  She was a survivor. He heeded that knowledge.

  But Liv was a survivor, too. And had moments of utter control.

  “I’d like to have Maddie back before eight,” she told him, not ungently. “She’s happier when she can tuck her kids into bed herself.”

  That gave him an hour. For a five-minute interview.

  For the first time in years, Greg wasn’t sure of himself. Wasn’t getting a good read on his interviewee.

  There was no way he was thrown off balance by the woman in front of him. Wouldn’t happen. Not after Liv.

  Damn straight.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  Ever again.

  Chapter 3

  The second she realized she was feeling relaxed, Jasmine put herself on notice. The man sitting across from her, while recognizably attractive with his short, thick dark hair and surprisingly vivid green eyes, was huge. As in tall. And broad. One good shove from his index finger could send her backward.

  And he was there to get her to turn on her brother. Not to find out the truth. His job was to assist the prosecutor to build his case.

  Not to help her and Josh.

  She usually felt safe around law enforcement. Was drawn to them. You’d think she wouldn’t be, after an unsuccessful relationship with a cop who’d taken his street persona of being in charge way too far. He’d once told her he’d handcuff her to the kitchen table if that’s what it took to keep her from going out with some friends he thought were bad for her. But no. Jasmine was attracted to people who exhibited confidence. People with power. Most particularly to cops. They’d always been her symbol of safety. She just had to call the cops. Just had to get to them. The police would help her.