Cold Pursuit - Carla Neggers [90]
“Calm down, Sergeant Cameron,” she told him as she entered his warm, cozy front room. “It’s your bathtub I’m after.”
He grinned. “Help yourself.”
Twenty-Three
Elijah sat on his favorite chair in front of the fire while Jo was in the tub, probably, he decided, not contemplating her options for the night so much as thinking about assassins. He took her choice of the bathroom just off his bedroom as a sign of where she meant to sleep.
She’d warned him not to peek while she was in the tub. Since she’d come with toothbrush, bath salts and her Sig, Elijah was heeding the warning.
He dialed Grit’s number. When Grit answered, Elijah gave him what he had on Melanie Kendall, Kyle Rigby and Thomas Asher.
“Bruni could have been hit by some senator late for a hair appointment,” Grit said.
“What about your reporter friend?”
“She has a personal stake in whatever’s going on. Something with her and the Russian, this Andrei Petrov your new friend told you about.” Grit spoke as he always did, without a lot of fanfare or emotion. “But I think Myrtle’s one of the good guys.”
“Or?”
“Or she’s the one running the thing and she’s just playing me. Moose is no help. He likes her.”
Elijah made no comment.
“Whatever Myrtle’s agenda is,” Grit said, “she’s crusty and knows how to find the right rocks to turn over.”
And Grit would turn them over. He was single-minded, and he needed a mission. “We’re not law enforcement,” Elijah said. “We don’t have to worry about building a case.”
“Jo Harper? She’s a federal agent.”
“I’ll handle her.”
“Ah.”
“There’s no ‘ah,’ Grit.” But there was, and Elijah knew Grit was already onto him.
“If the veep’s kid doesn’t ruin her career, you could.”
“Not my problem.”
He heard the bathroom door open. In two seconds, Jo was there in an oversize red-plaid flannel nightshirt his grandmother had given him for Christmas one year. He’d stuffed it in the linen closet and forgotten about it.
“Cameron?”
“Jo just got out of the tub.”
“Uh-oh.”
“She looks like a female version of Paul Bunyan.”
“Just your type, mountain man,” Grit said and hung up.
Elijah got to his feet and didn’t bother with niceties. “Jo, if I don’t make love to you soon—”
“That’s what I was thinking in the tub.”
He kissed her softly, then scooped her up as he had so long ago and carried her back to his bedroom. It was cooler in there, away from the woodstove.
She draped her arms over his shoulders. “I can’t fall in love with you again,” she whispered, not taking her eyes from him. “Except I’ve never been out of love with you. Elijah…”
“Shh,” he said, and lowered her onto his bed. “Let’s love each other right now.”
His mouth found hers again, and he held her and closed his eyes, pretending for a moment that the past fifteen years hadn’t happened and he was nineteen again and loving her, making promises that he’d keep. He skimmed his hands over her slim body, remembering all her curves, the places she liked to be touched.
She went still, then held his face in her hands and lifted his mouth from hers. “Open your eyes, Elijah.”
He did so and smiled. “Jo. Damn. It’s worth opening my eyes just to look at you.”
But she wasn’t buying it. “We’re not teenagers anymore, and you’ve never been one to go backward.”
“I would if I could. Just not to hurt you.” He kissed her nose, her forehead, her cheeks, wanting nothing more than to love her. “Ms. Secret Agent,” he whispered, trailing more feathery kisses along her jaw as her hands slid down to his upper arms and dug into his flesh. “You’re something else.”
“Elijah.”
There was a little catch in her voice that he liked. A tightening of her grip on his arms. He kissed her throat, even as he eased his hands up under her nightshirt along the bare, smooth skin of her thighs. She squirmed beneath him in just the right way.
And he said her name again and again as he had in countless dreams.
How had he let her go?
He felt the quickening of his pulse and hers as he curved his palms up along her hips and stomach to her breasts and caught a nipple between his fingertips. He’d been her first