Under Threat by B.J. Daniels (reading the story of the .TXT) 📕

outexercise his thoughts. He needed to stay sharp physically as well, and the more he exerted himself, the better he slept for the short snatches he allowed himself. Which kept him better rested, all in all.

It has nothing to do with the fact that you can’t seem to help fantasize about Natalie as you’re drifting off.

Yeah, it had nothing to do with that.

The fact of the matter was, they couldn’t stay here indefinitely. More important, he didn’t want to stay here indefinitely. They had to get somewhere in this case so he could go back to his life, and Natalie could go back to hers—what little was left of it. But surely she wanted to rebuild. Surely she wanted to get back to normalcy. God knew he did.

He pushed up and down, and up and down, and up and down, his arms screaming, but his mind still going in circles. How did they prove there was a connection? How did they get the answers they needed? And how did he take Natalie back to Austin once their time ran out, knowing she would be in imminent danger if they didn’t figure it out?

Just another case you can’t solve, the obnoxious voice in his head taunted.

Did it ever occur to you that police work might not be your calling, Vaughn? I mean, really. If you need to focus your whole attention on it, and none on me, how can this be what you’re good at?

He went down and stayed on the ground, more than a little irritated that Jenny’s doubts were creeping into his own mind. They’d ended their marriage because he hadn’t been able to give her what she wanted, but it had really ended when he hadn’t wanted to fight for someone who refused to believe in his lifework. Because becoming a police officer had never been just a thing to do, or something frivolous or unimportant. It had been a calling. It had been something that he excelled at. Her doubts had eaten away at what little was left of the feelings between them.

“Are you asleep?”

Vaughn pushed up into a sitting position and glanced at Natalie, standing there in the opening of the hallway. She was wearing shorts today, which seemed patently unfair. Yesterday she had worn the clothes she’d been wearing the morning they left, but the day before she’d been wearing his sister’s clothes again.

On the days she wore his sister’s clothes, he pretty much wanted to walk around blindfolded so he didn’t have to see the expanse of olive skin, or notice how the casual fabric clung to the soft curves of an all too attractive body.

Most of all, he had to work way too hard to ignore that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so attracted to someone. And the more time they spent together, the less that was just physical.

“No. Not asleep. Just resting.”

“Right. Well. I thought we could practice shooting a little bit more before you go back to sleep.”

“You need to eat something. Then I thought maybe we could work on a little bit of hand-to-hand self-defense.” Which was the absolute last thing he wanted to do with her—touch her. But he thought it was important. If he had to take her back to Austin without cracking this case, she needed more than a gun to protect herself. She needed every possible tool in his arsenal.

And he wanted to give it to her. He needed to make sure she was going to be safe. No matter what happened here. Even if his superiors ended up calling him back before they could figure this all out, he would consider Natalie under his protection. He wouldn’t look too far into why that was. It was just his nature. He was a man of honor, and seeing things through to the end was why he was in unsolved crimes, because he didn’t give up on things. He didn’t walk away when things got hard.

“Hand-to-hand...self-defense?”

She sounded unsure, so as he grabbed his shirt, he tried to give her a reassuring glance, but he noticed where her eyes had drifted.

Not to his face, not to anything else in the room. She was staring at his chest, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth in a way that made him all too glad he was wearing loose-fitting sweatpants. Because no matter how hard he had to ignore that little dart of arousal that went through him, it was still there. Prominently.

“There are a variety ways to protect yourself,” he managed to say. “I think you should know them all.”

Slowly, way too slowly for his sanity and giving him way too much pleasure, her eyes drifted back up to his face. Her cheeks had tinged a little pink, and she blinked a little excessively.

She was attracted to him. Which he needed to not think about.

“So, there haven’t been any breakthroughs in the case, I’m assuming?”

This was his chance to tell her about her mother’s burglary. He couldn’t do it. Natalie had started to relax, and she didn’t seem nervous, most of the time. He didn’t want to add to that. He’d tell her before they went back, but not now. Not now when she was on some kind of solid ground.

“Not so far. Callihan continues to come up clean, but we’re looking more into your sister’s case, and cases similar to it that are unsolved. Herman did say girls, plural.”

“So, you’re doing exactly what I’ve already been doing for the past eight years?”

He frowned at that. “You don’t have the access to information that we have.”

“You’d be surprised at what I found out.” She laughed, but it was a kind of bitter, sad sound. And he wanted to comfort her. He could keep ignoring that want, and he would certainly keep not acting on it, but he was having a hard time denying that it existed.

“Maybe we should sit down and talk about it. You can tell me your assumptions, and I can match them with