Run the Risk. Lori Foster

eyes and pulled her hand away. “But that doesn’t change anything. I still can’t…” She gestured from him to herself and back again. “Can’t. But if you want, we can still do dinner tonight.”

      Only dinner? Like hell. He’d squelch that idea at the first opportunity. “My place or yours?” he said as a challenge, then wanted to smack himself when she jumped on the offer.

      “Yours.”

      Figuring her out could take a lifetime. But he’d already spent considerable time getting to this point. He wouldn’t waste a minute more. “Okay, sure.”

      Maybe after he had her brother, he’d be able to nail Andrews and ultimately get justice for his best friend’s murder.

      And then he could work on unraveling the mystery of Pepper Yates.

      He looked her over in the faded jumper that she wore over a blouse with elbow-length sleeves. “What do you feel like?” God Almighty, she had horrid taste in clothes. “Besides me, I mean.”

      Her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, making them look darker and somehow more mysterious. “Besides you—I don’t care.”

      Damn. So sex was still on the table with no effort on his part at all?

      He’d never known a woman to be all timid one minute, then so verbally ballsy the next.

      The contradictions left him singed.

      “I’ll be over at seven.” Tentatively, she reached out and touched his chest again in a vague, barely-there goodbye gesture. “See you then.”

      Logan rubbed the spot where she’d just stroked him.

      What was it about her? She may as well have stroked his junk for the way it affected him.

      She hadn’t asked about his hand, or why he wasn’t at work, but then, he’d already told her he didn’t work every day. And really, with her attention on his body, who cared if she noticed a stupid injury or not?

      He didn’t.

      Before she got too far down the walkway, Logan stuck his head out the doors. “I’m cooking barbecue.”

      Her head down, her shoulders forward, she gave a negligent wave of her hand and kept going in a brisk walk.

      Almost like the hounds of hell dogged her heels.

      Logan watched her until she was out of sight. Damn it. He hadn’t even realized he was staring after her until he couldn’t see her anymore.

      He had to get it together.

      Preferably by getting her under him. Without clothes. Lights on. And with enough time for him to explore every inch of her.

      Once he had her, all of her, then he’d be better able to focus.

      But for now…what to do?

      He looked up the steps, considered breaking into her apartment to snoop around, but if Rowdy had any booby traps set, he could end up blowing his cover.

      Best not to push it.

      Tromping back up to his own apartment, he got his shoes and a shirt, and headed out to the grocery. His culinary skills were limited. He knew only how to cook what he liked best, which meant meat and potatoes. He’d pick up the barbecue, and maybe grab a cake or something from the bakery.

      He made a point of driving around the block so that Pepper wouldn’t think he followed her. They could still run into each other, but it wouldn’t be on purpose—not on his part, anyway. Along the way he thought about Morton Andrews. So far, Andrews had gotten away with a lot, including murder. So many times, in so many ways, the trail led to him.

      Unfortunately, Andrews had connections everywhere, which meant he always had an alias.

      Logan needed Rowdy Yates’s eyewitness account to nail the bastard for good. The facts bolstered his belief that he’d eventually be successful.

      Yates had worked at Andrews’s club, Checkers, a few years ago. For all Logan knew, Yates had been legitimate muscle for the club, but either way, he’d been in the right place at the right time to have the inside scoop.

      A reporter had claimed to have a breaking story about Jack’s murder—thanks to confidential info from Yates.

      That story had died with the reporter, but Yates was still around, and soon, Logan would be able to question him.

      He could hardly wait.

      Thoughts of Morton Andrews continued to plague him even as he parked and did his shopping. He could still see the smug prick: fifty years old, tall, trim, and as dirty as they came. Women seemed to find him handsome with his dyed white-blond hair, near-black eyes and slick wardrobe.

      As one of the wealthier club owners in the state, he always had a babe on his arm. The women either didn’t know, or didn’t care, that Andrews dealt drugs and was suspected of forced labor trade and everything from theft to murder.

      What would Pepper think if she knew of her brother’s association with Morton Andrews? Did she even know her brother had worked at Checkers?

      As Logan grabbed the few things he needed off the shelves, he could have sworn he felt someone watching him. Not casual curiosity but intense observation. He paid for his groceries and walked out to the parking lot.

      The sense of being watched sharpened. After slipping on mirrored sunglasses, he looked around, nonchalantly checking parked cars, customers and shadows.

      Though he saw no one in particular, he’d been on the job long enough to know he hadn’t imagined it. Only Reese and the lieutenant knew he was currently undercover, but Andrews was always a threat. For that reason, Logan remained cautious. But he was damn good at his job, and he doubted Andrews could have had him followed, not without Logan knowing it before now.

      So who then? Possibly Rowdy Yates?

      He stowed the groceries in the rear of his pickup and opened the driver’s door. The fine hairs on the nape of his neck prickled; would he end up with a bullet in his back? Anyone with a rifle could pick him off with ease. Was Rowdy corrupt enough for cold-blooded murder?

      “What are you doing here?”

      Logan jerked around and found Pepper standing there, a hand shading her eyes from the sun, a soft breeze playing with a few loose tendrils of her dark blond hair.

      When he pulled off his sunglasses to greet her, he noted her look of unease.

      Logan knew her damn brother was the most likely threat to him…but was he also a threat to her? “I had to get stuff for dinner.” To make it more difficult for anyone with a rifle scope, he maneuvered her between his body and the grocery store entrance. He had his own truck at his back. “What are you doing here?”

      “I needed some groceries myself.” Looking beyond him, expression wary and anxious, she scrunched her face against the glare off the blacktop parking lot. “I could have gotten your stuff for you, but since you’re here anyway—” she took his arm and began hauling him back toward the store “—you may as well give me a ride home when I’m finished.”

      That attitude was so different from what she’d expressed back at the apartment that his suspicions darkened. Was she hoping to protect him from Rowdy?

      He said only, “Glad to.” And he freed his wrist from her grip so that he could put a hand to the small of her back.

      The rain from the night before had ramped up the humidity, but it also left behind that stirring breeze that plastered her skirt to her legs. The skirt kicked up with each hurried step she took.

      “Stop staring,” she said. “You’re embarrassing me.”

      He’d been about to ask her why she was rushing him, but she effectively sidetracked him. “I find it hard not to watch you.”

      “Why?” she asked.

      Before,