Sweet Temptation: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 3)

suspect?”
“I’m in my living room, at the front of the house. I can see him outside, through the windows…”
He was out there, in the shadows outside the sunroom. I watched as he reached up the glass wall again… And this time, he grabbed onto the edge of the window and held.
Then he hoisted himself up and started climbing the wall.
It seemed to take hours.
Hours inside of minutes inside of split seconds… As I stood inside my dark house, watching a man climb up the wall of my sunroom… waiting for the police to arrive in a scream of sirens and the pounding of booted feet… As the operator kept asking me to keep talking, keep telling her what was happening. What I was seeing.
“He’s up on top of the sunroom at the back of the house. He’s trying to get up onto the balcony off my bedroom!”
“Do you know him?”
“What?”
“Is it someone you know, or a stranger?”
“It’s a stranger. How would I know?”
“Just try to keep calm. Tell me where he is.”
“He’s up there. I can see his feet,” I said, my voice breaking. “He’s standing on the glass roof of my sunroom. Should I leave?” Fuck, why hadn’t I grabbed my car keys? They were in my purse upstairs. I had an extra set somewhere, but in my panic, fuck if I could remember where.
“The police are on their way,” she repeated.
“How long…?”
“They’ll be there soon. You can stay where you are as long as the suspect is outside, if you feel safe. Is there a room you can lock yourself into if you need to?”
Holy Christ.
No. No, I did not feel safe.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Is he armed?” she asked me. “Can you see a weapon?”
I started to cry.
The next thing I knew I was in the kitchen, looking for a weapon, something to defend myself with. I grabbed a big, sharp-as-hell knife from the knife block on my kitchen counter, gripping it in one hand as I held the phone to my ear with the other.
“I can’t see anything,” I said, the hysteria creeping into my voice. “I see one foot. He’s climbing onto the balcony upstairs.”
“Is he getting into the house?”
“Not yet. He’d have to cross the balcony. I don’t know if I locked the doors—”
There was a soft knock on the front door, behind me, and I jumped. I almost screamed.
“Shit,” I sobbed into the phone. “I think the police are here.”
I looked through the frosted glass window beside the front door, and I could see an officer in uniform. I didn’t even hear her arrive. I didn’t hear a car approach or anything.
I opened the door, fumbling with the lock, completely forgetting the phone. There were two of them; they stood to each side of the door, hands resting over their gun belts, one female officer and one male, looking at me. They looked at the knife in my hand.
“He’s out back,” I told them before they could say anything. I pointed with the knife toward the sunroom, my hand shaking. “Up there. He’s climbing onto the upstairs balcony.”
“Is there a way through there?” the male officer asked. He was already stepping into the house.
“Yes. The sliding door, straight through the back.”
The female officer followed him inside. She gently touched my wrist, guiding the knife down. Then she took it from my hand and stayed at my side as her partner headed through my living room, into the sunroom.
What happened next was beyond surreal. Something out of a movie, not real life.
Not my life.
The trees in the backyard shifted in the dark, and I saw two men dressed in black, obviously police officers, slipping from the shadows… with a police dog. The dog started barking furiously.
The officer in the sunroom opened the sliding door to the backyard, at the same time the man on the balcony jumped down to the ground. He stumbled and fell.
The officer with the dog let the dog loose.
I wandered forward, through the living room, watching, and the officer came with me; she put her hand on my arm, stopping me. The cops were fast, but the dog was faster. I watched as the man on the ground scrambled to his feet and tried to run.
For a split second, it felt like he looked right at me.
Then the dog tackled him against the sunroom wall. All I really saw of his face were the whites of his eyes, stricken with terror… But I recognized him.
I knew exactly who he was.

Chapter Three
Ronan
“It was nice meeting you,” I lied.
It was only polite.
The woman standing in front of me gazed up into my eyes, hers a little bleary from all the wine she’d drank and the late hour. It was well past three-thirty a.m., and I was definitely gonna regret this tomorrow.
I was meeting my trainer for a morning workout in like three hours.
“It was sooo nice meeting you,” she said, and as stone-cold sober as I was, I wondered if she was gonna puke later. She pulled her keys out of her purse, and I gauged her level of intoxication. She wasn’t wavering on her feet, and she wasn’t slurring. “Well, I guess I should say good night.” She smiled at me.
“Good night.”
Then she just stood there. Her gaze drifted down to my mouth, and her lips parted. She took a little breath and leaned in.
“Want me to get the door for you?”
That seemed to snap her out of it. “Oh. No, I’ll be fine.”
“Alright, then.”
Another awkward silence, as she seemed to be waiting for something. So, I offered her a handshake. She slipped her hand into mine.
Then she actually leaned in again.
“Take care,” I said, and released her so quick, she kinda stumbled back.
She hid her disappointment with a quick smile and went inside.
I sighed.
I waited until she was safely inside her house, then headed back to my car where my buddy Andre was, unfortunately, watching. He was reclined in the passenger seat, playing it cool. He’d put on Post