Almost nothing in the room was undamaged, except the windows and blinds.

  He was sane enough to know he didn’t want to risk being seen by a neighbor.

  “Glass breaking would have made some noise.”

  Niall grunted. “We might get lucky.” He tilted his head. “The troops are here.”

  After a last look at the devastation, Duncan followed his brother downstairs, where Jane was letting two uniformed officers inside.

  Niall dispatched them immediately to knock on neighbors’ doors. Duncan had gone straight to Jane, who stared up at him with eyes near black with shock, and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her to his side.

  “You’re coming home with me,” he said gruffly.

  She didn’t argue, only gave a little shiver and said, “I suppose I should pack some things.”

  Duncan’s eyes met his brother’s over her head. After a moment, he asked, “How far did you go into the room?”

  “I didn’t go in at all. I saw enough…” She broke off. Her fingers clenched Duncan’s shirt under his jacket. “There’s more.”

  “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” When he hesitated, she tipped her head to stare at him.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to need a new wardrobe.”

  She stared. Swallowed. “Paint? Or…?”

  “He cut your clothes up. I doubt he had time to get everything, but… He did a lot of damage. Smashed mirrors and the bottles on your dresser, too.” He paused. “You can sleep in one of my T-shirts.”

  Her self-possession remained formidable although he could feel the quivers running through her body. She gave a stilted nod. “Maybe I could…get some things out of the bathroom?”

  Duncan raised his eyebrows at Niall, who nodded. “Sure,” he said easily. “You got a bag you can use, so you don’t have to go in the bedroom?”

  “Oh. Yes. I keep my suitcases in a hall closet.”

  He accompanied her while she retrieved an overnight-size bag from the closet and packed a few things in the bathroom. He noticed she was careful not to so much as glance toward her bedroom as they came and went.

  “Do you need us?” Duncan asked Niall, who shook his head.

  “Jane,” Niall said gently, “I think you’d better plan to stay with Duncan for at least a couple of days. I’m going to treat your bedroom like a full-blown crime scene, plus we’ll need to figure out the entry point and hope for fingerprints. I don’t suppose you accidentally left the front door unlocked?”

  Her scathing look brought a fleeting grin to his face. “Didn’t think so.”

  She left her keys for Niall, and then Duncan hustled her out the door and bundled her into his SUV, not letting her do more than exchange a couple of words with the next-door neighbors standing in a fearful cluster out on their lawn, staring.

  “You doing okay?” Duncan asked her a couple of times during the ten-minute drive, and she nodded or mumbled assent.

  They were almost to his house when she said, “It wasn’t paint, was it?”

  He didn’t want to lie to her, ever. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Where would you get so much…?”

  “Kill something.” He glanced sidelong at her. “An animal.” They weren’t dealing with a serial killer here, he reassured himself. The blood had to be from an animal, although something bigger than a rabbit, he thought. At least raccoon-size, given the volume of blood used.

  She hunched farther in on herself, for which he couldn’t blame her. When he parked in his own garage, she sat like someone in a waking sleep, waiting until he came around and opened her door. As he herded her into the house, she seemed more docile than grateful to be here.

  “You had dinner,” he remembered, awkwardly.

  Jane swallowed, as if she’d rather not have thought about food. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I think a hot shower or bath would be good for you. You’ve got to be suffering from some shock.”

  “That…would be good.”

  He delivered her and her overnight bag to the guest bathroom, checked to be sure there were towels and shampoo and anything else she’d want, then went to get something for her to wear. He didn’t have anything like a robe. Sweatpants, maybe? Flannel pajama bottoms? He had a couple of pairs he rarely wore. Eventually he offered a pair of each along with a T-shirt and some warm socks, all of which she accepted without comment. Then he went to the kitchen to heat water for tea or coffee and waited.

  She was so long he went down the hall, but he heard water running in the bathtub so he didn’t knock to say, You okay? Of course she wasn’t. He wasn’t okay. Duncan had seen a lot of ugly things in his career in law enforcement, but this one had been a strike against Jane, and that made it different. This was probably like a doctor whose wife had been diagnosed with some insidious disease. Cancer. That doctor wouldn’t be cool and thoughtful. He’d feel like any other scared husband.

  She’s not your wife.

  No. But right now, she might as well be, for the impact her shock and fear were having on him.

  The sound of the bathroom door opening brought his head around. Jane appeared hesitantly in the kitchen, her cheeks flushed pink from the bath and her hair hanging loose and damp. She’d decided on the green plaid pajama bottoms, which didn’t fit her too badly, what he could see of them. She was long-legged enough, they didn’t even bag at the ankles. His T-shirt hung to nearly midthigh on her, though.

  Giving an uncertain smile, Jane said, “I don’t suppose you have a ponytail holder? I didn’t think to grab anything.”

  “Uh…” He touched his own head, his hair tousled but short. “No. Would a rubber band do?”

  “They break your hair. I’ll leave it loose.”

  “Tea?” he offered. “English Breakfast or herbal.”

  She decided on herbal. “I don’t need any more adrenaline,” she said ruefully.

  He didn’t, either. Duncan poured himself the English Breakfast, anyway. He couldn’t remember why he’d bought the herbal. It tasted like tainted water to him. It was probably worse now, as it had been sitting in the cupboard so long.

  His socks looked cute on her, he decided, when she hoisted herself onto a tall stool at the breakfast bar. Saggy on her much-smaller feet. Even so, he could see her toes curl over the rung.

  Setting out a saucer for their tea bags, he carried both mugs to the breakfast bar and hitched himself onto the one right next to her. Jane stared into her steeping tea with unwarranted concentration. Duncan had gotten to the point where he was trying to think of something to fill the silence when she spoke, so quietly he barely heard her.

  “I feel so violated.”

  He swiveled so he was completely facing her. After a minute she raised her head to meet his eyes.

  “That’s normal,” he said. “People sympathize when your house is broken into, but they’re talking about your new flat-screen TV and the hassle of dealing with an insurance claim. Unless it’s happened to them, they don’t think about what it feels like. And this…is worse. Way worse.”

  She bit so hard on her lip, he almost protested, expecting to see blood. “If only it wasn’t my bedroom,” she burst out.

  God. He wanted to take her in his arms and not let go. But she was holding herself together, and he sensed that she needed to keep on doing that.

  “I know.”

  She shuddered and reverted to staring at her tea. He watched for a couple of minutes then lifted her tea bag out of her mug and dropped it on the saucer. “Drink,” he murmured. “The warmth will do you good.”

  They didn’t talk much. He had the furnace cranking so that he was sweating, but she seemed comfortable. The tea helped, he thought, maybe only the comfort of cradling a hot mug, breathing in the steam, sipping. It occurred to him how rarely he’d had a woman in his kitchen. Beth Pannek, a lieutenant on the traffic side who, along with her husband, a county deputy, had become friends. A couple of others who’d come to dinner, none to spend the night. He didn’t bring women here for sex.

  He’d never had one sitting here in his kitchen wearing his pajamas.

  Duncan couldn’t tell if she had any consciousness of him as a man right now. He shouldn’t be thinking about how much he wished he was taking her to his bed, but he couldn’t help himself. Where was his vaunted self-control?

  Slosh, slosh. Iceberg becomes ice cubes become meltwater.

  And he wasn’t as disturbed about it as maybe he should be. He wanted her, yes, but…mostly he wanted to hold her. Waking and sleeping. Something he’d never done.

  “I wish I had a sleeping pill to offer you,” he said finally.

  Jane gave him a funny smile that was all askew. “I wish you did, too. But I think I’m ready to go to bed, anyway.”

  “Okay.” Careful not to touch her, he showed her to the guest bedroom, something he’d never quite figured out why he needed. He wasn’t a sociable man. Nobody had ever slept in that bed. He’d never envisioned having guests. He’d also never asked himself why he’d set it up for guests. With faint shock he realized it had something to do with his brothers. He’d kept Niall’s room in the old house while he was in college, so he had someplace to come home to. Conall’s in turn, even though Conall never did come home. He’d wanted them to know they could, even though after he had the new house built he never actually said, I always have a place for you. He tried to imagine showing Conall to this room, and gave a grunt that earned him a startled look from Jane. “Sorry,” he said. “Just…had a thought.”

  Her eyes widened. “About what happened?”

  “No. About my brothers. Nothing important.”

  “Okay.” She peeked into the bedroom, and he wondered if he ought to offer to look under the bed for her, but she only said, “Do you mind if I leave the door open?” and went in.

  “Of course not. I’m, uh, right across the hall.” He gestured. “If you need me, call. I’m a pretty light sleeper.”

  Jane nodded, her smile genuine if strained. “Duncan…”

  He cut her off quick. “If you’re going to thank me, don’t. No thanks. Good night, Jane.”

  She surprised him by stepping closer, rising on tiptoe and kissing his cheek, the touch of her lips so soft it was barely a whisper. Then she whisked into the room and went to the bed. Duncan retreated before he had to watch her actually snuggling under the covers.

  WAS IT ANY SURPRISE THAT sleep eluded her? Jane tried to think about anything or everything but that awful scene in her bedroom, but the result felt like a too-fragile leaf circling in an eddy, being pulled inevitably toward the center where its fate awaited, like it or not.

  As always, she did best when she turned her thoughts to Duncan. Not so much wondering about him—she was getting a pretty good idea why he wasn’t married, for example. The tension between him and Niall wasn’t that hard to read, either. Sibling tension wasn’t meant to get stirred into the push-pull between father and son.

  Jane frowned in the darkness. Did that have anything to do with why her sisters had rejected her long-distance overtures with such vehemence? Did they think she was trying to be something to them that she wasn’t? After a minute she thought in resignation, Who knows? More likely they were comfortable in the pattern of their lives. Neither had been born rebellious, the way she had.

  Back to Duncan. The Duncan here and now, right across the hall from her. He’d stayed up a while longer, after showing her to the bedroom. But not long ago she’d heard his footsteps. He’d paused outside her bedroom door, as if listening for her breathing. The hall light went out. After a pause, the bathroom one went on.

  A night-light for her. Huddled under the covers, she was grateful.

  More light, from his bedroom, she supposed. The sound of a distant toilet flushing, and then his light went out. She thought it was that, rather than his door closing.

  She’d rolled so that she faced her own open doorway. Through it she knew she was looking through his, at an angle. Maybe straight at his bed, where he might be stretched out staring her way thinking about her....

  Jane muffled a moan.

  What would he do if she crept in there on silent feet and stood like a child beside her parents’ bed and said, “Can I sleep with you tonight?” Except she didn’t feel childlike. She wanted to feel safe with him, but she also wanted…more.

  Stupidly more. The kind of more that would return to haunt her. He threatened her determination to hold on to her independence as no man ever had. And all she had to do was think about the way he snapped out orders and took for granted that they’d be followed to know how wrong he was for her.

  Maybe she was getting drowsy. She could think without hurting anything, couldn’t she? Or picture? How Duncan’s harsh face would look relaxed in sleep, for example. She lingered over that one. Or his body, sprawled across the bed. But he’d said he was a light sleeper, which didn’t suggest much relaxation....

  Jane drifted.

  She woke screaming, horrors flash frozen on her retinas, blood splattering her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “JANE! SWEETHEART, you’re all right. You’re only dreaming.” Hard arms closed around her; Duncan’s heart slammed beneath her cheek when he pulled her face against his chest. “Shh, shh, shh. It’s okay, honey. You’re at my house, remember? I’m here.”

  He was. She latched onto him with a ferocity that might have shocked her any other time. Seen dimly in the fall of light from the hall, he was half sitting on the edge of the bed. She scrambled onto him and her arms wrapped him so tight it was a wonder if he could breathe.

  Continuing to murmur comforting words to her, he turned them both so he could lie down on the bed beside her. She was still mostly on top of him, but he couldn’t mind much or he would have set her to the side. Instead, his hands were moving up and down her body now, crooning in a different way from his deep, velvety voice.

  She was whimpering, Jane was dismayed to realize. She made herself stop, but the result was some hitching breaths that could have been mistaken for sobs. Maybe were sobs.

  “Cry if you want,” he said against her ear. “It’s okay.”

  “No.” She sounded funny; raspy. “I…I think I’m all right now. I…I don’t know…”

  “Bad one, huh?”

  “Yes.” She squeezed her eyes shut trying to see it, and realized the nightmare had faded, the way they did. “All I can remember is blood.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  After a minute she mumbled, “Thank you.”

  “For?”

  “Um…”

  “Offering myself up?” Was that a hint of amusement?

  She bobbed her head. She was starting to be a little embarrassed, but not enough to make herself let go and roll away. Instead, under the pleasure of his hands kneading a tight muscle here, squeezing another there, her body began to loosen. She wasn’t grabbing on to him so tight anymore. She concentrated on the feel of his hands on her, strong and gentle at the same time. And his body beneath hers. What was he wearing…?

  Nothing on top. All that separated her from the solid beat of his heart was skin, muscle and bone. If she moved her cheek, the least little bit, she felt the silkiness of chest hair. And she could see his small, flat nipple.

  With alarm, Jane realized that she was suddenly, acutely aroused. No in-between state; one minute, sagging in relief, the next quivering with the need to touch and kiss and merge. What if he guessed…?

  Her eyes widened at the feel of the hard ridge beneath her belly. Whether he knew what she was feeling or not, he was aroused, too.

  Bad idea.

  Don’t care.

  He’d quit crooning at some point and been doing nothing but breathing. Now, though, he made a sound. It rumbled from deep within him. A groan.

  And his hands. They hadn’t stopped. They still kneaded and caressed, but one of them wrapped her hip and one buttock. The other, oh, it was skating up her side to the plump swelling of her breast, what he could reach of it with her flattened atop him.

  The need to touch in turn had become irresistible. Her hand slid over the powerful muscles in his chest so that her fingertips could lightly explore his nipple. And…she wriggled, trying to crawl higher on his body so she could put that ridge somewhere it could do more good.

  Duncan muttered some kind of blasphemy, his voice deeper and darker, and then he was forcibly lifting her so that she straddled him the way she longed to, and so that their mouths could meet.

  The kiss, only their second, wasn’t tentative. It seemed to take up where the other had left off. Or as if it never had left off. Hungry and practiced and insatiable. His tongue explored her mouth and then gave her a chance to do the same, though it never ceased its stroking. His hands had slid now beneath her borrowed T-shirt and stroked her bare, exquisitely sensitized skin. Then one delved beneath the waistband of the pajama pants and gripped her butt, moving her against him. No, helping her own movements find a rhythm, one that had already flooded her with heat and raw need.

  Duncan yanked the T-shirt over her head, lifted her and reared up enough to close his mouth over her breast. No preliminaries here, either; he suckled hard, and a thin, high cry escaped her.

  They rolled so he could wrestle her pajama bottoms off and take her other breast in his mouth. The deep, rhythmic pull matched the coordinated way their hips pushed at each other.

  Almost sobbing in her desperation, Jane struggled with his pajama bottoms. He kicked them off in the end and was between her legs in the blink of an eye. She had to be sopping wet. The blunt tip of his penis felt so good, so… Jane strained upward, trying to draw him in.

  He pushed, then swore. “I have to go find a condom.” There was nothing velvety about his voice now. It could have stripped varnish.

  “No!” She grabbed frantically at him when he would have withdrawn and tried to pull him deeper.

  “Jane!” Duncan sounded desperate.

  It was an effort to shape words, but necessary. “I’m on the pill.”