Assumed Identity(51)
She stopped with her hand on the knob and turned. He’d braced his hands on the tabletop, framing that bag of weapons with his shoulders, drilling her with those icy eyes and looking all kinds of intimidating. All Robin saw was the effort to shut her out. “I thought things had changed between us tonight. To find out you’ve been watching over us all along? That’s...sweet.”
“Sweet?” He sneered as if the word was a foreign concept to him.
“You must care on some level. And that kiss? That was more than— I don’t let just anyone—” She tried to think of the right word to fit the tension simmering between them, and how this mysterious man had already gotten around her emotional defenses. But the words weren’t there. The answers she needed weren’t, either. “I think I have a right to know more about you. But every time I ask a question, you give me some cryptic response or nothing at all. I want to trust you, Jake. I thought I did. But the more I’m with you, the more I feel like an idiot for asking you to be our bodyguard.”
Robin pulled open the door, but in two long strides, Jake was there to reach over her shoulder and shut it again.
“I’m sorry.”
Robin held her breath, trying to ignore the way her skin leaped at the heat of his body standing so close to hers. She was as surprised by his apology as she’d been by his sudden movement across the room.
“I’m not used to people expecting something from me.” He pulled his hand away from the door, reducing that feeling of being trapped. “You’re not an idiot. You’re a desperate woman, and I’m the kind of man who can cope with desperate. And you know it. If my word’s worth anything, I promise you and Emma will be safe with me.” His big fingers hovered in her peripheral vision, hesitating for a moment before touching her hair. It was almost a shy movement, infinitely gentle as he tucked the short brown waves behind her ear. “I need you to be safe. I’ve already got enough guilt on my conscience....” At his expectant pause, Robin tipped her chin to look up into those beautiful, striking blue eyes. “How do I get you to trust me?”
Her heart went out to his plea. Okay. She was willing to try this again. She reached up and cupped her hand against his clenched jaw. “Give me a straight answer?”
She could see he had to think about it. “May I?” With her nod of permission, he lifted the baby carrier from her arm and set it back on the counter. He gazed down at the sleeping infant, and for one endless moment, his hand floated over Emma, as if he wanted to touch her, too, but was afraid to. Instead, he curled his fingers into a fist and turned back to Robin. “What do you want to know?”
Robin hugged her arms around her waist, stopping herself from going to him and showing him that Emma wouldn’t break beneath a caress as gentle as the way he’d stroked her own hair. “What’s your aversion to common civility and human kindness?”
Jake shook his head. “I can protect you, Robin. The kid, too. But this is how I work. I’m not a nice guy.”
“If you weren’t a nice guy, you wouldn’t be so good with my baby.”
He shrugged off the compliment and held out his hand. “Give me your keys. Tomorrow morning we’ll need to switch your rental to a truck or SUV that I don’t have to crawl out of, and that has a thicker chassis to offer us better protection.”
She didn’t try to mask her frustrated sigh. “You’re doing it again. You didn’t answer my question. What kind of mother trusts her family to a man who’s armed to the teeth and won’t answer a simple question?”
“What you’re asking isn’t simple.”
“Then I’ll give you another chance.” Robin crossed to him, demanding the truth, any truth, that seemed so hard for him to give. “Why should I give you the keys to my car? Detective Montgomery said you don’t have a driver’s license.”
“Just because I don’t own a car doesn’t mean I don’t know how to drive.” Robin didn’t budge an inch at the flippant reply. After a brief stare-down, Jake muttered a curse and circled around the table to unzip his bag and pull out a small plastic card from one of the inside pockets. “Here.”
She took the card he handed across the table. A driver’s license. State of Missouri. Current. So why had it been so hard for him to give a straight answer? And then she read the tiny print more carefully. “This says Ken Edscorn.” She looked up at the inscrutable mask on his face. “Did you used to live in St. Louis? Did you change your name?”