Chances Are(18)

They both looked down at his hand and Angela gasped. A perfect imprint of her teeth covered the back of his hand. “Oh Jake, I’m so—”

“We’ve been through this before. Don’t apologize.”

“Did I break the skin?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let me go get some ice for your nose and your hand. I’ll be right back.”

The instant she left the room, Jake stood and returned to the living room. The bathroom was too small for the both of them.

She came from the kitchen, a towel filled with ice in her hand, and then stopped abruptly when she saw him.

“I’d better get into my apartment or this entire op is going to be a bust.”

“You’re right. If he’s watching me already, he needs to think I live alone.”

Jake turned to the door that led to his apartment. One of the reasons they’d rented in this particular apartment building was this unique feature. The former owner of the building had moved his parents into an apartment next to his own. He had wanted access to the apartment without having to walk out into the hallway so he had installed a door between them. The feature was perfect for this op since it would appear that Angela lived in the apartment alone but Jake could get to her immediately if need be.

He opened the door and then turned. “You did well tonight.”

“You mean the stripping part or the beating the hell out of you part?”

Forcing his mind away from the provocative image of Angela on stage, he said gruffly, “Both. But the little show you gave on the way home could have destroyed the whole op. Don’t do that again.”

Instead of hurt or anger, he saw only acceptance. “You’re right, it was stupid of me.”

On top of being one of the most beautiful women he’d ever known, why did she have to be so dammed nice, too?

A stiff nod was the best he could manage as he went into his apartment and closed the door behind him. Leaning back against it, he ground his teeth until they hurt. Never in his life had he wanted a woman more. Even in the throes of young love when he’d first met Teresa couldn’t compare.

After Teresa’s death, Jake had existed in a vacuum. No one, not even his parents, had been able to penetrate the wall he had erected around himself. Then came the trials of all the bastards who’d chosen money over integrity and had been responsible for Teresa’s and another woman’s death. Cold fury had sustained him then. It wasn’t until the last f*cker was sentenced to life that he felt he could breathe. And when he had taken that first breath, he realized he had to get away from everything.

Taking the life insurance money from Teresa’s death, he had embarked on a journey. He hadn’t known where he was going or what he was looking for…he had just known he couldn’t be the same man or live in the same place where his life had exploded. His travels had taken him all over the world and in many of those places, he had been attracted to one woman or another. He had dated several and even had sex with a few of them. Not one of them had made him feel the way Angela did.

Jake wasn’t much of a believer in fate but he had wondered if he’d somehow been led to that bar the day he had broken up LCR’s sting and found himself a new job. And now, he had found a woman who made him feel again. Angela was breaking through every barrier he’d built. And every damn time he patched the wall up, she found a way to crack it once more.

No. He could not do this. He’d been there, done that, and couldn’t survive the pain again.

Question was, how to fight every instinct inside him telling him to dive into the deepest end of the ocean where emotions and feelings swirled like a whirlpool, just waiting to suck him in and devour him?

He didn’t know the answer. He only knew that Angela was his Achilles heel. But unlike the Greek warrior who was eventually destroyed because of his one vulnerability, Jake was determined to hide his own until it no longer existed. He refused to believe it was too late.





Chapter Ten

Wolf whistles and catcalls heralded the closing moments of Luscious Lucy’s act. Raucous shouts of praise intermingled with loud, lewd remarks. The audience was definitely wound up tonight.

Angela stood at the entrance to the stage, just out of sight. She’d been told that two different bachelor parties were in the audience. From the sound of it, both parties had imbibed more than their share of alcohol.

This was her fifth night of dancing. Each one had gotten progressively easier. The other dancers had been enormously supportive and their advice of going to another place in her mind or dancing for one man only had helped. Now, when she strutted out on to the stage, Jake was first and foremost in her mind. She heard the music but other distractions like whistles and crude remarks were greatly diminished. The fingers and hands that tried to grope her when they slid money into her clothing were a little harder to ignore. During those times, her teeth were grinding behind her smile. No one had complained that her smile was fake—her smile wasn’t what they were looking at anyway.

She had even managed to forget she was dancing to attract a killer. He wasn’t going to come after her on stage so she was able to be herself and dance the way she wanted and for the man she wanted.

In a way, this had been her communication with Jake this week. Since that first night when she had busted his nose, he’d been professional but distant. She knew it wasn’t that he was holding a grudge. He was simply acting as her partner—which was exactly as he should act. That didn’t prevent her from wanting more.

Now, as Lucy exited on the left side of the stage and Dark Angel’s music started up, Angela focused on Jake—all the things she wanted to tell him, all the ways she wanted to love him. With him firmly in her mind, she glided on to the stage, her body swaying sensuously. She let the music take over. The size of the stage made it impossible for her to close her eyes for any length of time. The last thing she needed to do was fall into the audience. But she had learned that half-closed eyes worked just as well, allowing her to dismiss the dozens of eyes watching her and picturing only one set, hot with desire, filled with need and love as they roamed up and down her body.

Grabbing the pole, she swung effortlessly around, landed gracefully on her feet, then stepped back and looked up at it. In the place of a steel silver pole, stood a tall, sexy man with a square jaw, sensuous male lips, a noble Roman-like nose and piercing blue eyes. Yes, this was the man she wanted and loved.

Jake’s image before her, Angela began to dance in earnest.



It had been the week from hell and was only getting worse. Jake leaned against the bar, his pose relaxed and indolent. He hoped he looked like a semi-bored owner of a strip joint. What was going on inside him had nothing to do with boredom and everything to do with going quietly insane.

Every night he had watched Angela come out on stage and each time she did, he could swear the temperature in the room increased by twenty degrees. Even though he watched the audience most of the time, he felt the need to check her on stage occasionally to make sure she was okay.

Mocking laughter sounded in his mind. Checking to make sure she was okay? Yeah, right. If he wasn’t looking for a sadistic killer in the crowd, Jake knew he would’ve already gone up on stage and carried Angela away. In between bouts of lust that had him grinding his teeth to control, he had wanted to knock the hell out of the some of the men because of their crude comments.

Day five of the op and nothing had happened. Not once had he detected anyone following Angela to her apartment. And even while she was on stage, the appearance and attitude of the audience was lascivious but not especially threatening.

Shea, Eden and Sabrina were working as waitresses in the other three sections the killer liked to roam and had reported the same negative results. Even though five days was a relatively short period of time, and attracting the killer so soon wasn’t necessarily realistic, Jake had hoped for a quick resolution.

The shouts increased to a fever pitch, drawing Jake’s eyes back to the stage where Angela was suspended upside down on the pole. And then, defying gravity, she spread her legs for mid-air splits. Sweat popped on Jake’s forehead.

Tearing his gaze away, his eyes roamed the audience once more. The crowd was rowdier than usual. Two bachelor parties of a couple dozen men sat close to the stage, and the more acrobatics Angela performed with that dammed pole, the louder they shouted. It was his and Kelly’s job to anticipate trouble. Something in his gut told him that was going to happen tonight.

Without any seeming haste, Jake eased away from the bar and weaved his way toward the stage. He noticed Kelly was doing the same thing. Just as he reached the table where one of the bachelor parties was seated, a drunken young man threw himself onto the stage. At the same time, another man on the other side of the stage did the same thing. They were double-teaming, probably hoping that at least one of them would get away with grabbing Dark Angel.

Even though he wasn’t the bouncer, Jake didn’t hesitate to intervene. Just as a giant hand reached for Angela’s ankle, Jake grabbed the back of the guy’s waistband and hauled him off the stage. He noticed that Kelly was doing the same thing with the other man.