The Cop

“Let’s try this instead.” He covered her mouth with his.

4

THE KISS WASN’T AT ALL what she’d been expecting. There were storms inside this man. She’d sensed them, seen them in his eyes, and she’d anticipated that his mouth would be hard, demanding, and that it would set off answering storms in her. Instead, he barely brushed his lips against hers.

J.C. moistened her lips with her tongue and tasted him. His flavor reminded her of something rich and forbidden. When she leaned closer for more, he released one of her hands and raised his to cup the back of her neck. Then he took his time, sampling, nipping, tracing the shape of her mouth with his tongue. A stream of thick, liquefying pleasure moved through her. His mouth was so soft, so warm. She could feel her blood heat, her muscles grow lax, her bones begin to melt.

When he drew away, she grabbed his shoulder with her free hand, absorbed the sensations of smooth, hot skin and hard muscle. “More.”

“I’m with you there, Pipsqueak,” Nik murmured as he leaned in again.

This time the kiss wasn’t quite so gentle. And she didn’t want it to be. His body was so lean and hard. And his hands—she could feel the pressure of each individual finger. But they weren’t where she wanted them to be. Still the storm she’d expected, was beginning to crave, was building.

More. The sound of the word, the tone she’d used became a drumbeat in Nik’s head. He’d intended to keep the kiss gentle, exploratory, but there was something inside of him that badly wanted to break free. When he nipped her bottom lip and heard her quick gasp, he very nearly released it.

On some level, he knew that he was losing his mind. Kissing a material witness to a murder when he should be walking the crime scene? He had to stop right now—but he didn’t. Shifting onto his knees, he drew her up to hers and pulled her closer until her body was molded to his, soft and yielding. Heat flared. Her fingers dug into his shoulder, and he took the kiss deeper, devouring her.

Each little response—her throaty moan, the movement of her tongue on his—fueled the fire that was growing within him. She was so responsive, so generous. Her flavors weren’t sweet. He’d been right about that. But he hadn’t expected the endless variety that he was discovering as he probed one recess after another. Her mouth was every bit as eager and demanding as his.

Her body trembled, and in one quick move that shuddered through his system, she wiggled onto his lap until her thighs straddled his. He heard his heartbeat raging in his chest as he plunged deeper still.

More, more, more.

Need clawed through him. Anything he asked, she would give him. He could feel his control slipping and he at last found the strength to pull back.

They were both gasping for breath, both trembling. Nik wanted nothing more than to grab her again and finish what he’d started. Her eyes were dark, misted with pleasure. Pleasure that he’d given her, pleasure that he wanted—no, needed—to give her again.

“What—?” The word came out on a breath, and she shook her head as if to clear it.

His reckless streak threatened to break loose again. He could have her. He could shut the door all the way, turn the lock and take her. It would be wild and crazy and…absolutely impossible.

Dammit. He had a job to do, and she was interfering. He eased her back onto her knees. When he rose, he didn’t like it at all that his own knees felt weak.

“Where are you going?”

Her voice was stronger now. He hoped that his would be, too. “It’s been fun, Pipsqueak, but I have to do my job.”

He walked out, pulling the door behind him and heard the thud of what he suspected was the little silver bowl as it made contact with the wood and plunked to the floor.

Nik almost grinned. Kissing J.C. Riley had been a mistake. Big-time. Instead of getting her out of his system, he’d embedded her in it—deep. He was going to have to figure out just what to do about that.

But first, he was going to do just what he’d said. His job. And number one on his list was bringing his captain up to date on what he knew or had surmised so far. He punched numbers into his phone as he strode back to the altar.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Nik and Kit were studying the taped outline where Roman Oliver’s body had lain only a short time before. Nik had known when he’d called his brother that Kit would come immediately, and it had helped him to talk to Kit and to view the evidence through a second set of eyes. A glance at his brother’s face told him that Kit was thinking the same thing that he was thinking.

There was no way around it. Roman was involved in what had gone on here. Sadie Oliver might be involved also. She hadn’t come with either Roman or her sister Juliana—J.C. would have spotted her if she had. She’d probably come in through the front entrance. Now she and the bride and groom were all missing, and her purse had been left behind.

The best scenario Nik could come up with so far was that Roman had gotten wind of the wedding and had come to the church to talk his sister out of it. Then he’d gotten into a fight with Paulo Carlucci, and had shot the man in the sacristy, hopefully in self-defense. Then he’d followed Paulo up the stairs into the choir loft, where they’d struggled again and Roman had fallen or been pushed down the stairs.

He didn’t have a theory about what part Sadie had played in all of this. But it wasn’t going to look good to his captain that she’d left the scene of a crime. When he’d first gotten the call, the dispatcher had mentioned two 911 calls. He’d be able to find out if one had come from Sadie.

He shifted his gaze to the choir loft overhead. Of course, once one started theorizing about the blood on the walls of that little storeroom and the presence of J.C. Riley’s Snake Eyes, the scenario got worse because it suggested that Kit’s best friend and the man who’d once saved his sister’s life had come here with murder in mind, and he’d brought some extra firepower with him.

Nik had a hunch that his captain was going to favor the latter scenario. Hell, he’d favor it himself if he didn’t know Roman.

He studied the frown on Kit’s face and knew that his brother’s mind was traveling along the same path.

There was going to be pressure to close the case as quickly as possible. No one wanted any violence to erupt between the Oliver and Carlucci families. Sure, they’d been legit for half a century now, but Mediterranean blood ran hot. He ought to know, being Greek.

The press, once they got wind of it, was going to have a field day. The secret wedding of the children of two rival families, murder and mayhem—not to mention the disappearance of the bridal couple—was fodder for the kind of media circus that would keep the twenty-four-hour news channels going for days.

“Mind if I take a look at that room upstairs?” Kit asked.

Reining his thoughts in, Nik sent his brother a frown. “Of course I mind.” But wasn’t that why he’d called Kit in the first place—to fill his brother in on the evidence? He didn’t want to believe that Roman Oliver was behind this any more than Kit did. More than that, he wanted to make sure that Roman had someone working on the case who was on his side. As a cop, he had to be objective, do his job. A P.I. had a lot more leeway. “When has that ever stopped you once you set your mind on something?”

“Never.”

Still scowling, Nik handed Kit a pair of shoe covers. “The room’s at the top of the stairs. Don’t get in the way of my people, and don’t touch a thing.”

“Thanks, bro. I’ll be careful.”

Just then, the front door of the church blew open behind them, and a voice boomed, “There you are, Detective Angelis.”

“Shit,” Nik muttered under his breath. “It’s the commissioner and my captain. Make it quick up there. There’s a second staircase from the loft that leads down to the sacristy. Use it when you leave.”

J.C. YANKED ON THE HANDCUFFS for about the tenth time. With each tug, she’d entertained the hope that she might be able to break free. Her Grandmother Riley had always told her to dream big. Evidently, getting out of police issue handcuffs was too big a dream.

Too bad Detective Angelis’s brother Kit hadn’t been carrying a spare key because he would have helped her. Although her conversation with him when he’d stumbled across her in the stairwell had been brief, she’d found Kit Angelis to be both kind and charming. She’d even accused him of being the “good cop” Nik had sent in to interrogate her. But unless she missed her guess, Kit Angelis had come to St. Peter’s with an agenda of his own.

And except for the pretty face and those incredibly blue eyes, she wouldn’t have guessed that the two men were even remotely related. When Nik Angelis had tapped the family gene pool, he’d passed on kindness and charm and loaded up on arrogance and rudeness instead.

Scowling at the radiator, J.C. vowed that she was going to make Detective Nik Angelis pay for his high-handed treatment of her. The little room he’d imprisoned her in was hot and stuffy. And he’d closed the door on her, so that the window air conditioner that had been fighting heroically to cool the sacristy couldn’t even reach her. At least Kit had propped the door open when he’d left. But so far the cooler air hadn’t made much progress into the room.

Worst of all, the handcuffs didn’t even allow her to pace her anger off. There was no way that she was going to let Nik Angelis get away with this. Even if he had kissed her into a puddle of lust.

Okay, that could be the true cause of her anger with the hunky detective, J.C. silently admitted. Or perhaps it was because he’d stopped kissing her and sauntered off to do his job as if he did that kind of kissing every day and it didn’t affect him in the least.

The problem was he’d simply destroyed her. Maybe had ruined her life. What if she never met another man who could make her feel that way?

Oh, God. She sat down on the radiator and dropped her head in her hands. The absolute worst of it was she wanted him to kiss her again. It didn’t even seem to matter that on some level, she hated his guts.

The fact that she’d reacted to him the way she had simply didn’t make sense. Unless it was due to an adrenaline rush. At the idea, her spirits perked up. Maybe that was it—because Nik Angelis was definitely not her type. He had a ton of qualities she didn’t like in a man. He was pushy and impossible. Just like her father.

Oh, she loved her father dearly, but he was an Olympic contender when it came to manipulation and getting his own way. Patrick Riley was a big, gruff bear of a man whose hero in life was Joe Kennedy, and like J.F.K.’s dad, he wanted to found a dynasty. His second marriage to Alicia Hensen, heiress and socialite, had brought an aura of prestige and money to his political aspirations, and now he wanted his children married and bearing children. And her stepmother, oddly enough, was cut from the same cloth. They gave lie to the theory that opposites attract.

Her current plan as far as her parents were concerned, was to fly under both of their radar screens by devoting all of her energy to building up the reputation of her catering business. “Have an Affair With J.C.” wasn’t the talk of San Francisco yet, but it would be. In the meantime, it kept her too busy to date the sophisticated, eligible and incredibly boring males her stepmother was volleying at her like so many tennis balls.

Her two older brothers had fallen in and they’d already produced two grandchildren each. Her younger brothers, the twins, were finishing at Annapolis and had been granted a reprieve. That meant that Patrick and Alicia Harwood Riley were focused on her. She’d managed to slip out of their sights for a year by attending culinary school in New York. But now that she was back in San Francisco, her only excuse was her work. The weddings she was catering thanks to Father Mike were little plums that fate had dropped right into her lap, especially because they occurred on the weekends—prime date time.