“If you’re staying, you’ve got the chair. You can use the coffee table for an ottoman.” She tossed him the pillow and sleeping bag, then stopped for a moment, regarding him seriously.

“What?”

“Just to be clear. I need one more week before I tell Dad or Portia Laurent what’s up. By then, I should have more information for the police, but if we go to them with what we know now, my hands will be tied. To Detective Laurent and the Baton Rouge PD, I’ll just be Rick Bentz’s daughter playing amateur detective. To Dad, I’ll be risking my neck again and he’ll freak.”

“He should.”

“I need some time,” she stressed.

“I can’t give you any, Kris.”

“Sure you can. It’ll ultimately make the case stronger.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. It’s you who has doubts.”

“We should both have doubts,” Jay retorted. “There’s a lot we don’t know. We’re just surmising, Kris. Let the police handle it.”

“I’m only asking for a week. No one seems to have cared about these girls all this time. One…week.” Crossing the room, she walked up to him, only stopping when the toes of her shoes touched his.

Jay tried not to be affected but he smelled some kind of soap mingled with sweat on her skin. Her flesh was so near to his, and in this light her hair was shot with streaks of red. It was a potent combination. Craning her neck to look up at him, Kristi offered the faintest of smiles, that little, sexy grin that always cracked his armor.

“Please, Jay, it’s important. You can keep the vial and all of Tara’s things, if it makes you feel better. But give me a few more days, one lousy week.”

“And then you’ll cease and desist?”

“Then I’ll take a back seat to the cops.”

Oh sure. Like that was her style.

“It could be dangerous.”

“I won’t do anything stupid.”

That, he didn’t believe. “Kris—”

“Come on,” she begged.

He felt it then, that little twinge of desire when he looked into her wide eyes, watching her pupils, dark and large, as they pleaded with him. Damn the woman. She knew what she was doing to him. His gut tightened and deep inside the wanting began, a light tattoo beating inside his skull, a wave of heat expanding within his chest. Desire grew as he caught a glimpse of the slope of her cheekbones, the intelligence in her gaze, the quirk of her lips.

“You’re trying to seduce me into this,” he stated flatly, trying to keep a rein on his emotions.

“That’s just plain insulting.”

“Is it?”