From the garage he heard a car pull into the driveway. He slipped back into the house and grabbed his knife from the kitchen table. He had another lesson in an hour. There would be no time to waste on meaningless chitchat.

“Ryn.” He tried to sound excited to see her as he strained to see if Mrs. Baker had pulled in too.

“I know you have a lesson, but I need to talk to you. Do you mind if I wait here until you’re done?”

“Uh … or I could meet you at your house?”

“Well I’m already here so …” She looked at his hand. “You’re holding a knife … a scary-looking knife.”

He looked at his hand as though he’d forgotten about it. “I am.”

“You’re not planning on killing anyone, are you?” She grinned.

“Ha. Well, now that you’re here I’m not.” Jackson gave her his sexy grin and winked while slipping it into his back pocket.

Ryn shook her head as she stepped inside. “Seriously. What are you doing with a knife?”

“I’m … changing the batteries in a clock. It was easier than looking in Jillian’s tool chest for a screwdriver.”

“The tools belong to Jillian?”

“She likes working on cars and motorcycles. I like working on computers which don’t require anything with the word Craftsman on it.”

She pressed her finger to the taped center of his glasses that were supposed to keep any spurting blood from getting in his eyes. “You’re such a geek.”

He grabbed her hand and bit her finger. “Watch it, hot pants.”

The doorbell rang, the daunting reminder that Mrs. Baker would live to see another day.

“I’ll wait downstairs. Maybe practice some pull-ups.” She leaned up and pecked his lips before slipping around the corner.

“Mrs. Baker.”

“Jackson.” She beamed her flirty teeth-covered-in-lipstick grin at him as she stepped inside wearing expensive everything—right down to her Manolo Blahnik shoes.

He inspected her head to see if it was her real hair or if the red hair had been a wig. “You have a bug in your hair.”

She rolled her eyes toward her brows as he yanked on a few strands of hair. The delayed “ouch” confirmed that it was a wig.

“Sorry.” He smirked. “Got it.” With a flick of his fingers he sent the nonexistent bug flying absolutely nowhere.

“That’s fine.” She eased her hand over her wig. “Is that Jillian’s car in your driveway?”

“Why do you ask, Mrs. Baker?”

She took a seat at the piano. “Just curious I suppose. If it’s not hers then you might have company.”

“You’re my company, Mrs. Baker.” He slipped the knife under a magazine on the table and walked toward the piano giving her the you-should’ve-been-dead-by-now stare.

She averted her eyes. He grinned at the thought of how easily she would squeal like a pig, spewing out everything he needed to know before removing her from the equation. A necessary casualty.

“I’m not company. I’m your student.”

Jackson sat in the chair next to the bench, resting his ankle on the opposing knee. “You are. So please…” he gestured “…let me hear your progress.”

She played each song with perfection. Too much perfection. Mrs. Baker was his only student who practiced, although he suspected she knew how to play before taking lessons with him, in spite of claiming to be a novice. At the end of her thirty minutes he told her to have a good week—her last week of course.

After replacing the knife in its leather sheath in his drawer, he took a deep breath to expel the anxiety before going downstairs. If he didn’t control his sexual urges with Ryn, he could scare the mother of his children away before he had a chance to implant them inside her.

*

Ryn braced herself for the sexual hurricane that she knew would come tearing down the stairs at any moment. Jackson had ripped the zippers off two pairs of jeans, disintegrated four pairs of panties, and broken the clasp on her newest bra. She couldn’t even complain about him being selfish because his first stop was always between her legs. Lips, tongue, teeth, and she was gone. Every. Time.

“I started my period.” The words came out so fast it all sounded like one long word instead of four.

Jackson paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Jillian probably has something in her bathroom.”

“No … I just mean I or we can’t … you know.”

He smirked then nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets, pulling the waist down to tease her with the wide band of his sexy briefs. “Is that what you needed to tell me?”

“No.” She laughed at herself. It had probably sounded like that was her important news. “Preston was waiting by my car for me when I came out of barre class this morning.”

“You need me to kill him? Done.”

“No. Well, it’s not a bad idea, but I’m certain that would guarantee I’d never see Maddie again or you for that matter because you’d be in prison.”

The corners of his lips curled like he had the best secret ever. She trusted him, ninety-nine-point-nine percent. Yet that point-one percent held her heart captive in the hands of fear. Would she ever be completely free of that fear?

“I’m not happy that my ex-husband thinks you’re his business, but after you sent him to the hospital on my birthday he’s taken it upon himself to make you his business.”

Jackson shrugged. “Then tell him to call me and we’ll set up a business meeting, but until then he needs to stay the fuck away from you, or I’ll be the first one to make contact and it won’t be in the way of a phone call.”

There it was—that point one percent.

“I can call the police if it becomes a bigger issue.”

“I’m sure they’ll slap him on the wrist. They might even take away his favorite toy for a month or so.”

“Whatever, that’s really not my point. My point is that Preston did some looking into your past and he said it’s like you didn’t even exist before Omaha. Don’t you think that’s kind of odd?”

“Yes. I think it’s odd that your ex-husband is looking into my past.”

Ryn tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s not what I mean.”

Jackson narrowed his eyes a mere millimeter. That minuscule change in his expression, that may not have been anything more than a muscle twitch, left Ryn feeling guilty for bringing it up.

“So I haven’t left my fingerprints all over my past. So what?”

Coughing out a sarcastic laugh, she gawked at him. “Fingerprints? What are you, a killer?”

“Do I look like a killer?” He smirked.

“I don’t think killers have a certain look, personality maybe, but not a look.”

“Well, if you think I have a killer personality then I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Ryn shook her head, unable to keep a straight face.

“What do you want to know?” He moved toward her with slow predatory strides that sent tingly goose bumps shooting up along her skin.

She retreated, the thick mats under her feet mixed with that look made it impossible to balance. Her back hit the wall, saving her from stumbling, but trapping her in his larger-than-life presence as he wet his lips.

“Do you want to know my favorite color? The first girl I kissed? How many comic books I owned? The longest book I’ve read?”

Gulp.

“Yes,” she whispered, embarrassingly breathless.

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Blue, like your eyes.”

He kissed her right ear. “Stephanie Mills, third grade.”

He kissed her left ear. “Three hundred and seventy-one. Batman was my favorite.”

He kissed the hollow area in between her collarbone, circling his tongue around it. “The Bible.”

“No way.”

He nodded while unfastening his jeans.

Ryn swallowed hard, her body stiff. “M-My period.”

Sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, he bit it with a chilling intensity as he stroked himself. “Don’t worry. That’s not where I’m going to put it.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine