She shivered. “It was…a few things were just re-arranged. Some photos. Some stuff in my bedroom.” And she was flushing again. Jeez. When she’d called the cops about that break-in, they’d looked at her as if she was crazy. The uniforms had suggested that maybe she’d been the one to rearrange things and that Piper had just forgotten that she’d moved the items.

They’d blown her off.

When they’d seen all the destruction left in her home this time, though, their response had been different.

“What stuff in your bedroom?” Eric’s gaze held her in place.

She swallowed and cast an anxious glance Ben’s way. Ben. The traitor. He knew she hadn’t wanted to involve Eric. Didn’t she go out of her way to avoid Ben’s too-fierce older brother? The guy made her nervous. Edgy. Always had.

“Piper…”

The way Eric said her name sent a shiver over her. And she didn’t even know if it was the good or bad kind of shiver.

“Don’t look at Ben,” Eric told her, voice rumbling. “Look at me. Talk to me.”

Huffing out a breath, she brought her gaze back to him. “My underwear, okay? It was moved around. So was the stuff in my nightgown drawer. I swear, someone was in my bedroom, and it creeped me out. But the cops couldn’t find any evidence back then.”

“They didn’t find jack this time, either,” Ben muttered. “Said the place was wiped down.”

“This isn’t your kind of job,” she told Eric as her spine remained perfectly straight. “There was no need for Ben to bother you about this. I’m sorry you came here and wasted your time.”

Eric gave a slow shake of his dark head. His thick hair slid back from his forehead. “This is my job. And you are never a bother or a waste of time to me.”

What? “Since when?” The words just kind of blurted out of her, but her normal self-control was gone. It had been blasted away by the stress of the last forty-eight hours. To know that someone had come into her home again. That someone had destroyed all of her belongings. She felt violated and angry and scared, and she was trying hard to hold herself together. But…bam. Now Eric was here.

And her self-control had never been at its best when he was around.

No one could make her angrier than Eric.

No one could make her feel more vulnerable.

And…deep, dark secret…no one had ever made her want more than him.

But the desire did not go both ways. He barely tolerated her most days, and on the other days, Eric just stayed the hell away from her. It was how their relationship worked. Or, didn’t work.