“If you don’t tell me what you did right now then I’m going to call the police,”

Jamie bit out through clenched teeth.

Holly’s eyes widened in panic as she reached for Jamie. Unfortunately for her the other woman was faster and bigger. Holly had her by her arms and was squeezing painfully before she could stop her or get out of the way.

“You can’t do that!” Holly snapped, giving Jamie a good shake. “I’ll be ruined if you do, Jamie. Just let me make this up to you!” she pleaded, looking slightly crazed as she gave Jamie another shake.

“Let go of me!” Jamie ground out as she struggled to get away from the woman, but Holly refused to let her go, desperate to convince Jamie to give her a chance.

“I can fix this. I’ll get Rick to push back the date on your contract. I already planned to do that. Now that Nick’s gone and everyone else has their hands full I know that Rick would pick me to work with you,” she shot a nervous glance over her shoulder at Jamie’s computer as her hands tightened ever further around Jamie’s arms. The woman’s long manicured fingernails bit into her skin and Jamie barely bit back a wince at the stinging sensation as Holly’s manicured nails pierced her skin.

“If Nick had just backed off like he was supposed to I would have never had to resort to destroying your books, Jamie. You have to believe me. I just needed him to back off so that I could take over. He didn’t need you, not like I needed you,”

Holly said with a crazed look in her eye that actually frightened her.

“What are you talking about?” Jamie asked, trying to pull free again, but the woman refused to let her go.

“Nick’s already a senior editor. He didn’t need you, but that bastard was too selfish to give anyone else a shot. Don’t you understand?” she shook Jamie roughly to get her point across. “I had the best chance of getting J.L. Lewis. I’d been here the longest and was next up for consideration, but Nick,” the woman bit out with such distaste that Jamie momentarily forgot about the pain in her arms as she watched Holly struggle to stay in control.

“I thought you wanted Nick,” Jamie said quietly only to have Holly give her a violent shake, slamming her head into the wall that she’d apparently backed her into.

“Want him?” she asked with a humorless laugh. “Why would I want him?

He’s a whore just like his mother only he does it for free,” she said acidly. “But before you came along he was the key to everything.”

Chapter 30

“Say that again,” Nick said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he fought back the headache that he was pretty sure was coming.

“They wanted her out of the apartment,” the detective explained again with a weary sigh.

“So they sent her death threats?” Nick asked in disgust as he dropped his hand to his sides.

Detective Michaels nodded. “It seemed that they didn’t realize that Miss.

Harris had been evicted yet and decided that she needed another threat to scare her away. We caught Mrs. Briggs stuffing an envelope in Miss. Harris’ mail slot at three this morning and Mr. Ames stuffing a letter in her mail slot around four this morning and then one beneath her door just in case she missed the first one,” he drawled.

“And why were they doing this again?” Rick asked as he leaned a hip against the corner of his desk.

When the police arrived a half hour ago he’d been eager, more like desperate to go hunt down his little recluse, but Detective Michaels explained that he had a few things that he needed cleared up while his men searched the building for Holly, who more than likely already split since the police weren’t here for even a minute before word spread about the reason behind their visit.

Detective Michaels’ lips twitched as he said, “According to Mrs. Briggs, Miss.

Harris blasted her television day and night, was loud, and had drunken parties every weekend.”

Nick couldn’t help but frown as he shared a surprised look with Rick. His little recluse was loud? That was bullshit. She didn’t like the volume when she was watching television or listening to the radio up loud. In fact, most of the time while they were driving he had to raise the volume so that he could hear the damn thing.

He couldn’t even begin to describe what was wrong with the drunken party accusation.

“Apparently this last two months has been particularly bad. Mrs. Briggs complained to the manager, but nothing was done so the woman decided to take it into her own hands,” the Detective explained.

“She hasn’t been in the state in the last two months,” Rick said, sounding just as confused as he felt.

The Detective cleared his throat. “Well, it appears that Mrs. Briggs hearing aid was not only set too high, but she also has difficulty pinpointing the direction in which sounds come from. As it turned out it was the neighbor on the other side that was causing the problems, five twenty year old college kids.”

“And Mr. Ames?” Nick found himself asking when all he wanted to do was hunt down his little recluse and pull her into his arms.

“He was convinced that she’d been stealing his mail.”

“Why exactly would he think that?” Rick asked, pouring himself another drink, Nick noted. If this conversation wasn’t enough to drive a man to drink he really didn’t know what was, he decided as he snatched Rick’s drink and downed half of it in one swallow before shoving it back into Rick’s hand. With a grumble and a glare Rick finished it off and placed the glass on his desk.

“According to Mr. Ames, he doesn’t trust quiet people because they’re always up to something. So he felt it was his obligation to see what she was up to. After he broke into her mail slot and discovered letters addressed to J.L. Lewis he determined that she was a criminal and that Jamie Harris was the alias. When he didn’t win the Publishing House Clearance after sending them ten entries every day for the past year he concluded that it was because of Miss. Harris. He believed that Miss. Harris didn’t have a job because she was living off his prize money.”

“Were they working together?” Rick asked, sounding somewhat amused and pissing him right the hell off.

This wasn’t funny. These two nut jobs had gone out of their way to scare the hell out of his little recluse and almost cost him any type of a future with her. That thought made everything in him still.

A future?

Did he want a future with her? He loved her, absolutely adored her, but he hadn’t given any real thought to anything long term mostly because he was scared out of his mind that he would hurt her. It made him wonder if a future with her was even possible. Did he trust himself not to hurt her?

Surprisingly, yes.

He’d rather die than hurt her and he knew that feeling would only intensify over the years. But just to make sure he tried imagining touching another woman.

The thought left a sour taste in his mouth and he knew he would never want to stray. Jamie turned him on like no other woman and she was f**king fantastic in bed. Of course she was still pretty new to sex and would only get better in time, he thought, fighting back a huge shit eating grin.

He was a lucky bastard and damn well knew it.

“No. As far as we can tell neither one of them was aware of what the other was doing,” the detective explained, thankfully pulling him out of his thoughts before his body gave away his thoughts. The last thing he needed was a hard on with two guys in the room, he thought dryly.

“What does Miss. Johnson have to do with this?” Rick asked and Nick was thankful that the man was focused because he sure as hell wasn’t. All he could think of was grabbing his little recluse, hunting down a jar of hot fudge and letting her go to town licking it off his body.

With a silent curse he forced himself to focus again.

“We’re not exactly sure yet, but we do know that she was behind the videos in Texas. We were actually hoping that you could help shed some light on the subject before we spoke with her.”

He felt every muscle in his body go rigid at that announcement. “She was the one that threatened Jamie?” he demanded in a cold even tone as he contemplated killing someone for the first time in his life.

“It would appear so. When the boys at the IT department in Texas went through the hotel’s surveillance videos again they spotted her in the corner of the lobby watching you as you spoke with the manager, we’re presuming it was when you asked for the pool keycard. Then they went back two more hours on the employee hall surveillance camera and found her sneaking in the back door of the pool area and slipping into one of the dressing rooms. We weren’t sure until we zoomed in on that spot because the fitting room area was nearly pitch black while you were using the pool, but we spotted slight movement when you entered the pool area and spotted her running into the employee hall minutes after you and Miss.