Читать книгу The Rebel - Adrienne Giordano, Misty Evans - Страница 9

Chapter Four

While David stood beside her at the lab table, Amanda stored her drawing boards, wondering what kind of coward buried a woman and walked away, leaving her body to be ravaged by animals and the elements.

She didn’t know. Didn’t care to. All she knew was sitting in that lab, staring at the skull, sketching based on estimations of tissue depth, she’d experienced a buzz, the high of having the ability to change the course of an investigation—something her mother used to talk about. Amanda had never experienced it. Never quite understood the lure of forensic work. As a kid, she’d thought it all seemed...morbid...and she hadn’t grasped what her mother found so intriguing.

Until today.

She thought about her workbench back in the studio where a forensic workshop registration—the one she kept putting off—was weighted down by a giant conch shell she’d found on a trip to Florida when she was nine. A shell her mother had uncovered while wading in the surf.

I know, Mom. I know. Every day she’d been without her mother, she’d never doubted her presence.

Beside her, David stepped closer and she glanced up, their gazes locking because when he pinned those haunting dark blue eyes on her, she couldn’t resist the pull of them reaching right in and paralyzing her.

Something she didn’t want to feel. With anyone.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine.”

Breaking eye contact, she studied the intricate stitching on the shoulder of his jacket and the way the seam fell at exactly the right spot, the cut so perfect for his big body that she realized it might be nice, sometime soon, to have sex.

And wow. What a mess her mind was today. She couldn’t deny there was a certain heat between them. From the time she’d opened her front door, she’d felt it. That simmer.

“This project,” she said, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t be overheard by Paul, who patiently waited for them to get packed up. “It’s complicated.”

Receiving her message that she didn’t want Paul eavesdropping, David dipped his head lower. “The sketching?”

No. You. “It’s more than that.”

Because with him she felt things, tingly things that made her system hum, gave her a little high. If only she liked that high. Highs and lows, in her experience, shattered lives. But it had been so long since she was beyond her personal safe zone. Since she allowed herself to immediately feel a certain way about a man. About this man. Feelings like that messed with her emotions, brought her to places that terrified her. For ten years she’d worked to not turn into a person tortured by her own emotions.

But David kept surprising her. In a good way. In a way that made something warm and gooey chase away the cold, empty heartbreak she’d felt in the lab. That alone was worth...she didn’t know. She’d simply never met anyone who affected her this way. And so quickly.

Needing to get her mind right, she shook her head and stored her iPod in her bag while the quiet in the lab made her arms itch. Too quiet.

“When I was nine,” she said, “my mom found a conch shell on the beach in Florida. I have it on my workbench where I can see it every day. It’s a paperweight for important things. Right now one of those things is a registration form for a forensic workshop I’ve been thinking about taking. Pretty high-level stuff. I keep putting off registering.”

“Why?”

She gave up on packing her things and faced him. “My mother was a forensic artist.”

His eyebrows lifted. “She doesn’t do it anymore?”

“She died. Ten years ago. Killed herself.”

Wow, Amanda. Totally on a roll here. That miserable fact had only been spoken a handful of times and each time to people who’d proved their loyalty. People she could trust. Apparently, David was now one of those people.

“I can’t imagine that. I’m sorry.” He stood, unmoving, his face completely neutral, no judgment or horror, just a mild curiosity over whether she’d continue.

“Thank you. But I’m only telling you so you understand. She did a drawing once that helped convict a man of murder. He went to prison for a few years and was later exonerated. She never forgave herself.”

His head snapped back and Amanda held up her hand. “She didn’t kill herself over it, but it didn’t help. My mother always battled depression. She may have been bipolar. I’m not sure. All I know is that there were tremendous highs followed by days she couldn’t get out of bed. Work was her savior. She loved making a difference. After that man was exonerated she never did another sketch. Never. I think the loss of her work sent her into a spiral she couldn’t come out of.”

“And now we’re asking you to do a reconstruction.”

“Yes.”

David cracked his neck, finally showing some indication of his thoughts. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have pressured you.”

“I’ll do the sculpture,” she said.

For a moment he stood in his spot, his face deadpan, not even a flinch as dead air clogged the space between them. “I’m... Wow. What made you change your mind?”

So many things. My mother. An unidentified dead woman. She pointed at the image she’d created still sitting on the lab table. “Look at her. She was a beautiful girl. At least from my interpretation.”

He reached for the sketch, then stopped, his hand in midair. “May I?”

“Sure.”

“Your work is amazing.”

He set the image back on the table and angled back to her. “Are you okay?”

“I am. I thought doing the work my mother loved would be this big dramatic scene where I’d be doomed by my own emotional sludge. Turns out, it wasn’t so bad. If anything, I got a taste of what my mom went through each time. It’s odd, but it was like I had a piece of her right there with me, and that made me come alive a little bit.” Oh, what a thing to say to a man she barely knew. “I’m just babbling.”

“You’re not. I get it.” He winced. “Ew. Sorry. No, I don’t get it. Not really. What I should have said was I can see where, in a weird way, you’d connect with the work.”

All she could do was nod. Talking about this, letting him dissect her and examine her motivations, wouldn’t help her stay detached.

From the work or him.

“If they’ll give me the cast of the skull, I’ll try it. The reconstruction will be 3-D and have much more detail than my sketch.”

Appropriate or not, and definitely not caring that Paul sat just across the room, she stepped closer, slid her hand under David’s jacket around his waist and went up on tiptoes to hug him. “Thank you for being a pushy Hennings. After spending the afternoon in the lab, I believe my mother is letting me know it’s time I use my talent for more than what I’ve been doing.”

He backed away from the hug and hit her with one of his amazing smiles, not lightning quick but a slow-moving and devastating one that creeped across his face and kicked off a tingle low in her belly.

“Well, we Hennings people like to do our civic duty. How about as a thank you for saving me from my mother’s wrath, I buy you dinner one night this week? I can’t do it tonight because I’m expected at my mother’s.”

“You don’t have to feed me.”

“Yeah, I do. You’re doing this for us despite what you’ve been through. Besides, what I really want is a date with you, so a dinner kills two birds with one stone. As they say.”

So slick, this one. Total charmer. And such trouble. But trouble, right now, might be nice. “I think I’d like that.”

* * *

“JUST PULL UP in front and drop me off,” Amanda said as David turned the corner leading to her building.

He double-parked and turned off the engine. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“David—”

But he’d already hopped out to get the door for her, which, the girlie-girl buried deep inside admitted, gave her a little thrill.

The door flew open and he waved her out, adding a little bow that made her laugh. How she loved a man who could make her laugh.

“Do you need help getting upstairs?”

“No.” She retrieved her briefcase and tote from the backseat. “I’m all set. Thank you, though.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.”

Early-evening darkness had fallen and the streetlamps gave her building a creepy glow. Having been gone all day, she’d neglected to leave any interior lights on. As she approached, she spotted something white stuck to the front door of the building. Vendors were constantly leaving bagged flyers hanging on the door handle, but no one had ever fixed anything to the door. The nerve.

Using the flashlight on her phone, she read the notice—what the heck?—marked City of Chicago, Building Department. Below the letterhead in thick, bold letters the sign left no doubt of the city’s request. OFF-LIMITS. DO NOT ENTER.

She tilted her head, pondering this not-so-minor development. It had to be a joke. She glanced back at David a few steps behind her, thinking maybe he’d have... Nah. He hardly knew her well enough to pull this kind of prank. One she wouldn’t think funny.

At all.

“What’s up?” David asked. “Did you forget something?”

“I...” Stumped, she held her hand to the door. “I don’t know. There’s a sign from the city telling me not to enter.”

Has to be a joke. Right? Because if it wasn’t, she had big problems. But why would her building be sealed? Something odd squeezed her stomach, shooting tension right into her chest. Without access to the building, she’d be locked out of her studio and home. Out of her life.

Frowning, David looked up at the door. “Why?”

As if she knew. She shone the flashlight on the paragraph below the big block letters and scanned it while the pressure in her head skyrocketed and a sharp throb settled behind her eyes. “It says the building must remain vacant until further notice. Are they kidding me? My entire life is in this building.”

“They must have the wrong location. Plus, they haven’t barricaded or padlocked the door.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the building isn’t going to collapse. If it was they’d block the entrances. The city can’t afford to barricade every door and window on every building. If the problem is due to contaminants and the building won’t collapse, they do signage. Which they’ve done, so don’t panic. Call your landlord and find out what’s happening.”

Yes. The landlord. The city had to have contacted him. Quickly, she scrolled through her contacts and found the number. “I’ve been trying to convince him to apply for landmark status on this building. And they want to condemn it?”

The phone rang a third time and Amanda grunted. “He never answers when I call.” She left a voice mail explaining the situation, then disconnected. “I’m calling the building department.”

“You can try, but it’s after five. They’re probably gone for the day.”

She’d try anyway. Couldn’t hurt. Not wanting to deal with searching for the number on her phone, she dialed information and was connected to the city’s building department, where—yes—she received a recorded message telling her the office was indeed closed.

Terrific. She tapped the screen and scrunched her eyes closed. Stay calm. Just a mix-up.

Opening her eyes, she once again read the sign as her thoughts raced. Work. Clothes. Checkbook. Her damned allergy medicine. Everything was inside.

Forget calm.

Forget not panicking.

All at once, her body buzzed and throbbed and itched and all this emotional garbage was so not good for her, the woman who kept her life in a constant state of neither ups nor downs. Well, this was one heck of a down. “I don’t know what to do. My clothes are all in there!” She flapped her arms. “My work is in there.”

“Hang tight.” David retreated a few steps and stared up at the darkened building, obviously formulating some kind of plan. “There’s a back door, right?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going in the back.”

“The sign says...”

“Yeah, but you just said you don’t have any clothes. We’ll sneak in the back door, hope we don’t get caught and you pack up whatever you need for a few days until this gets hashed out.”

Without the studio, she couldn’t work. Without work, she couldn’t earn. Her draining checkbook—the one inside the no-access building—filled her mind. “I lease a storage unit, but there’s not enough room for me to work in there. I have a sculpture to finish!”

David slid the tote and her briefcase off her shoulders, walked back to his SUV and stowed them. “I’ve got this. My condo is still being renovated. You can use one of the bedrooms that’s not being worked on. I’ll put you in the guest room.”

Amanda’s head dipped forward. “You’re letting me turn your condo into a studio?”

“Why not? The place is empty. You might as well use it until I can move in.” He waved his hand at the building. “This’ll get straightened out in a few days and you can move back here. No problem.” He inched closer and grabbed both her hands. “We’ve got this. We’ll load as much as we can and take it over to the condo.”

The idea might not be a bad one. It might, in fact, be a short-term solution. “We can use my car also.”

“Good. Then we’ll get you set up in a hotel for the night. Is that a plan?”

“David Hennings, I could love you.”

He threw his hands up, grinning at her. “Let’s not get crazy now or you might be stuck with me.”

At the moment, as she thought about every minute she’d spent with this man since he’d walked into her studio earlier that day, being stuck with him might not be a bad thing. She grabbed hold of his jacket, the leather Belstaff she loved so much, and dragged him closer. Going up on tiptoes, she kissed him. And it wasn’t one those tentative let’s-test-this kisses where they sort of eased into it. This one left nothing on the table. Tongues were involved.

And she’d started it. Total insanity.

But he certainly wasn’t rejecting her. He made it worth her while by wrapping his arm around her and pulling her right up against him. A few seconds later a bulge at his crotch area announced itself in a truly obvious way, and her heart slammed. What he wanted couldn’t have been clearer. No doubt. At all.

“Dude,” a guy passing by said. “Lucky dog.”

David pulled back and his amazing lips tilted into a wicked grin. “Dude,” he said, “don’t I know it?”

* * *

DAVID SET THE last box of supplies they’d taken from Amanda’s in his extra bedroom and did a quick survey of the place. The walls were still unpainted and the drywall dust left a weird coating on the floors. For what she needed, it would do. If the dust didn’t give her an asthma attack. “We’ll run out tonight and get you a couple of tables to set up. It won’t be perfect, but this is triage.”