Page 36 of Chilled

The scent of herbal shampoo and soap filled his senses. Her sandy-blond hair spread across his chest and arm, the silky strands tickling his skin. He leaned a cheek against the top of her head, giving in to instinct.

Brenna nuzzled closer into the crook of his neck, her mouth touching his skin.

Nick sucked in his breath. The tender texture of her lips sent his nerve endings into overdrive. Jeez, the woman was sexy even while she slept. He held that breath and willed his body not to react, but it was a losing battle. All the blood in his head dove southward, filling his loins, making him tight with need.

It was a good thing Brenna was asleep. Nick could imagine how pissed she’d be if she could feel the evidence of his arousal. They were strangers, for Pete’s sake.

Nick hefted her up a little, marveling at how solid she was. Her thigh muscles were soft but firm beneath the flannel pajamas. His gaze traveled the length of her legs to trim ankles. This tough-as-nails agent’s one claim to femininity was her pink toenail polish.

He smiled as he carried her to her room and laid her on the bedspread. Immediately, she turned to her side, her hand reaching across the empty bed, a frown gently dipping between her eyes. The tank top did little to disguise the turgid peaks of her breasts.

Like a teenage voyeur, Nick couldn’t help himself. He drank his fill of the sight of Special Agent Jensen, the satisfaction he gained far outweighing the guilt. If he wasn’t careful, he could fall for this woman. And where would that get him?

Fatigue pulled at his eyelids, but Nick couldn’t leave her in here, and he didn’t feel like sleeping on the couch in the sitting room. Too tired to care about consequences, he lay down beside her, determined to leave the bed before she awoke the next morning. What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

CHAPTER 9

An electronic chirpstirred Brenna from a wonderful dream in which a strong, sexy man held her throughout the night, keeping the bad guys away.

Faint fingers of light slipped in through the sides of the curtains, letting morning inch its way into a room she didn’t recognize at first. When the electronic chirping persisted, Brenna rolled to her back, memories of all that had occurred over the past few days flooding her mind. Where was that sexy stranger of her dream to rescue her from this nightmare?

“About time you got up.” Nick strolled into her room, wiping residual shaving cream from his chin with a hand towel.

“What time is it?” she croaked.

“Six-thirty.” He sat at the edge of her bed. “That was Melissa. She’s at the station, going through the news articles and video clips.”

How could he look so awake and perky, not to mention incredibly sexy with his bare chest and clean-shaven chin? She, on the other hand, probably had a terrible case of bed hair. Brenna wanted to slide further under the sheets, but he was blocking her feet. “Could you call her back and tell her to look for any articles pertaining to the victims?”

“Sure. I’m done in the bathroom. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” When she slid out of the bed, she noted that both pillows were dented. Had her dream been more than a dream? Her heart skipped into overdrive as she gathered toiletries and clean clothes.

Nick stared out the window, his cell phone pressed to his ear.

Not like Brenna would ask him if he’d slept with her. A girl should know these things, not guess or ask. For that matter, she didn’t recall getting herself to bed. She glanced at the laptop. The last thing she remembered was going over the list of names in the files.

With a glance her way, he nodded then turned back to his conversation. “Hey, Mel, while you’re looking for stories on arson, Special Agent Jensen wants you to look through the archives for any reference to our victims. Apparently, one of them was in the news recently. Pull anything you find. We’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

Brenna shrugged aside her dream and trudged into the bathroom to repair her face and hair and scrape the layer of morning breath off her teeth and tongue. Ten minutes later, she stepped out of the bathroom.

With her hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, and wearing black jeans and a black pullover sweater, she felt more presentable and less the tumbled bed-head. Not that she cared what Nick Tarver thought. They were here for the job, nothing else.

Heading straight for the coffee maker, she stopped to glance at the notes she’d made before falling asleep. Some of them she could read, others were scribbled and undecipherable. Her eyes had crossed with fatigue before she’d gotten halfway down the list of patients.

But there was a star next to one of them. She leaned close. Klaus. Her sister’s married name. There were probably a dozen or more Klauses in the German-Scandinavian town of Riverton. The name was as common as Smith or Jones.

“Anything interesting?”

Brenna jumped and fell back against a hard chest.

Nick’s strong arms came around her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” His voice rumbled against her ear and the tantalizing scent of aftershave blended with coffee-scented breath.

A gulp of air caught in her throat. These were the same arms that had held her yesterday when she’d thought she’d fall apart, and they felt like the same arms that had held her in her dreams. Her world rocked, and it took a full five seconds before she could pull herself together and out of Agent Tarver’s arms.

“Interesting? No, not yet.” And really, she hadn’t found anything that had jumped out. “This’ll take time. We don’t really know who or what we’re looking for.”

“I’d start with any names you might recognize. The killer knows you.”

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