Page 20 of Sweet Temptation

“We’ve never met,” I told her. “I’ve actually hired out guys to events you’ve played. But I’ve never been at those events myself.”

“Oh. Cool.” She gazed at me, looking… impressed? “So, you’ve been protecting me all this time? And I just didn’t know it?”

“Well—”

I was cut off by a knock at the front door, and Summer jumped to her feet. I put up a hand to stop her.

“Shit,” she breathed. “I’m jumpy.”

“Allow me.” I crossed to the door and took a look through the frosted window alongside. I let Brody in, and shook his hand.

“Ronan. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Anytime.”

He toed off his shoes and went straight over to Summer, who gratefully accepted the hug he offered.

“Jesus, why didn’t you just call everyone,” she teased, but I could tell she was relieved to have him here. “Did you get a hold of Ash?”

“He didn’t answer his phone.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed, and as I watched her cling to Brody, it became brutally obvious how shaken she really was.

Brody said something in her ear I couldn’t hear, and I caught his eye. I pointed over my shoulder in the direction of a hallway and he nodded.

I slipped away to take a look through the house.

The main floor sprawled in two directions off the living room. One hall led along the front of the house, to three guest bedrooms and a washroom. On the other side of the house, the other hall led behind the garage, to a music room that was probably originally a bedroom but was now dominated by a set of massive speakers. Beyond that was the door to the basement and a flight of stairs leading upstairs.

The finished basement consisted of a laundry room, what looked like an unfurnished rec room that was mainly used for storage, and a small music studio.

I went upstairs last.

I knew from what Summer had said that her bedroom was up here. And I could tell that the upstairs wasn’t part of the original bungalow-style layout, that it had been added on later. At the top of the stairs, I found one large room, the master bedroom.

This was where she was sleeping when the intruder woke her. When he tried to climb the wall to get to the balcony.

Really, there were easier ways to break into a house. Especially if someone was home, and you didn’t want to run into them. I’d told her all that stuff downstairs about typical break-ins because it was true, but unfortunately, that MO didn’t seem to fit this situation.

This felt personal.

Why climb to the second floor, specifically to get onto the balcony off a woman’s bedroom in the middle of the night, if all you wanted was to rob the place?

I took a walk through the bedroom. The bed was as she’d left it, the covers tossed back. There was a large adjoining bathroom and a huge walk-in closet filled with beautiful clothes. Shoes. Jewelry. It smelled faintly of perfume.

There was a set of clear built-in drawers practically overflowing with lingerie.

And I wondered. Did DJ Summer have herself an obsessed fan or something?

A stalker?

Someone who’d gotten close enough to suss out her lack of security, and tried to take advantage of it?

Along the back wall of the bedroom, there was a set of glass doors covered with filmy curtains, which obviously opened to the balcony. I headed over there… and something moved outside. I stopped, tensing and scanning the area for possible weapons.

It was instinct, and it happened in a fraction of a second.

Then Maddox stepped in through the curtain from the balcony. He saw me and raised his hands. “Don’t shoot,” he said sarcastically.

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