Dangerous Surrender(38)

She found Roman still meticulously looking over her things. Considering what a private person she was, it was one of the first signs that this man had already gotten under her skin when she hadn’t been paying attention. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

Bent over the table, searching her suitcase, his arm muscles flexed, his expression intense and insanely sexy. She could watch him all night but forced herself to do something productive. She pulled her laptop from the bag they’d retrieved from her car and turned it on. “Did you search my backpack?” she asked.

“Yeah, scanned your laptop first. It’s clean.”

Good. If Neal thought he was going to get away with any of this, especially the attack that could have hurt Roman, he was about to get a taste of her wrath. Sitting on the couch, she propped her feet on the coffee table and got to work.

“What’re you doing?” Roman asked almost absently as he slipped one of his big hands into a zippered compartment, feeling around inside.

“Now that I’ve got a lot of Neal’s information and complete access to his files, I’m going to start searching for him using it. It’s very hard to go completely off the grid unless you use a new identity. Which he might very well have. But I’m not going to let him just get away without trying to track him down.” She opened up a folder in one of his email accounts, scanning old messages. Investigations could be tedious work, but she was used to it and right now she was more determined than she’d ever been to dig up information on someone. And after she plugged in some key search words, she should be able to narrow down the right files quicker.

“You should leave that to the police.” She could hear the frown in Roman’s voice without looking at him.

“The police missed a key piece of evidence in this investigation. Not to mention…” She trailed off, wondering how much she should tell him about her past. Oversharing too soon was one of those relationship no-no’s. Of course they weren’t in a relationship.

“What?” he pressed.

Because she didn’t want to see his expression when she told him, she kept typing in commands as she continued. “My stepfather was a cop. He killed my mom in a drunken rage.” The words sounded almost robotic even though saying them felt as if she was being torn to ribbons on the inside. It was just too hard to let emotion seep through when she discussed it. She was already at a breaking point after everything that had happened the last couple days and didn’t want to unleash too many long-buried feelings now.

She watched Roman still his movements out of the corner of her eye. He moved slowly and rounded the coffee table and sat next to her on the couch, still giving her some space. When he reached out and placed a gentle but possessive hand on the back of her neck, she tore her gaze from the laptop and looked at him. He watched her carefully but didn’t say anything, obviously letting her talk when and if she wanted.

She’d never told any of the men she’d dated about her mom, had seen no reason to. But she wanted Roman to know this about her. Even if things between them never amounted to anything, she wanted him to know. “My mom was…everyone said she was a sweet woman. The truth was, she was weak. I’ve felt guilty for a long time because of the way I viewed her and I know it’s hard for anyone being abused to leave their abuser, but she had me. Her daughter to worry about. And she tried a couple times to leave him, even went so far as to attempt pressing charges, but each time she was talked out of it because she could potentially ruin her husband’s career.” Taylor rolled her eyes at that, biting back the anger that surged through her any time she thought of that man.

“He eventually killed her in a drunken rage, jealous because he’d thought she’d been flirting with one of my teachers during a parent-teacher conference. He was always getting jealous about something and it was always stupid reasons. This time wasn’t any different from the others, not at first anyway. But he started ranting and raving about how she didn’t love him enough to give him a child of his own and just full-on freaking out. I’d always been pretty invisible to him, someone he had to deal with because I was my mom’s daughter. That night…he looked at me differently. Like he wanted to kill me. I saw it in his eyes and my mom must have too. I didn’t realize it until later, but she started provoking him, turning all his rage back onto her by admitting that she’d been flirting—when she hadn’t. Then she screamed at me to leave and… I did. I ran to a neighbor’s for help. By the time the police showed up it was too late. She was dead and he committed suicide by cop. Even at the end he was too weak to just kill himself.” Her voice broke and she was surprised she’d been able to get it all out.