TWELVE
THE intruder paused in the doorway, his heart
pumping.
Ellis raised his head
and stared blankly. “What are you doing here?”
Did he suspect? But
there was no awareness in his face. No awkwardness. No
fear.
Was it possible, after
all, that he wasn’t a threat?
“I was hoping we could
talk.”
“Now.” Ellis didn’t
sound alarmed. Maybe curious, and a little drunk. Perfect. He sprawled in one of the room’s big
leather chairs, his legs stretched out on the Oriental carpet. The
desk might have been even better, but the chair was positioned a
good three feet from the bookcase behind him.
Plenty of
room.
“I wanted to catch you
without an audience around.”
“If you mean my
darling stepdaughter, she’s upstairs.” Ellis set an empty brandy
glass on the table beside him. “You know she wants me out of the
house.”
“I heard.” Hands in
his pockets, he walked behind Ellis’s chair, pretending to study
the books on the shelves. “These your books?”
“Some of
them.”
He scanned the spines.
Breathing Space. Murder-in-Law. A Time to
Die. Ellis was a clever guy. Just not clever
enough.
“Shame about Billy
Ray,” he offered.
Paul rested his head
against the back of the chair. “Shit happens. It won’t affect
me.”
He looked down at
Paul’s full, graying hair, a little taken aback by his dismissive
attitude.
“It will affect your
book. Unless you plan to write about the Dawler murders without
talking to the murderer.”
“But I did talk to
Billy Ray. Several times, in fact. And I have other
sources.”
“What other
sources?”
“You want names,
you’ll have to get in line to buy the book. Just like everyone
else.” The bastard had the balls to sound amused.
Rage rose like bile in
his throat, but he controlled his voice carefully. “If you’ve
discovered new evidence, then it’s a matter for the courts. Or the
police.”
Paul sniffed. “I’m not
an officer of the court. I don’t have to do your dirty
work.”
“You’re bluffing,” his
visitor decided. “You don’t know anything.”
Paul smiled. “I know
there was a witness.”
He froze, his hand
curled in his pocket. “To the killings?”
“Not quite. But
according to Billy Ray, someone else was in the house that
night.”
His heart threatened
to choke him. He dragged in air. “Did he tell you
who?”
“He told me . . .
enough to figure it out. Sooner or later.”
Really, Ellis left him
no choice.
He brought this on
himself.
“Sooner, I think,” his
visitor said.
Hooking his arm around
Paul’s neck, he jammed the gun to his temple. Quick.
Hard.
Paul’s body arched.
His eyes went wide.
He turned his head,
the way he would from a camera flash, a popped balloon. And
squeezed the trigger.
The blast shook him.
Hot. Loud. Noisier than he’d reckoned. He had considered using a
silencer, but Ellis was the type who would choose to go out with a
. . . well, with a bang. Anyway, Regan was dazed with drugs and
alcohol and grief. The noise wouldn’t rouse her.
Slowly, he
straightened, quelling the lurch in his stomach, and looked. Not
bad. A round black hole to the side of the head, welling blood. A
.22 was only one step from a BB gun. The bullet tumbled inside the
skull without sufficient force to exit.
But it certainly did
the job.
He eased his hold on
Ellis. The body slumped, the head dropping forward. Very natural.
If not for the blood and the spatter on his clothes, he could have
been drunk or asleep.
Carefully, he took out
his handkerchief and wiped the gun. He wrapped Ellis’s flaccid hand
around the butt of the revolver and, pressing the unresponsive
index finger to the trigger, held the barrel to the small neat hole
in Ellis’s head. Done.
He released the hand
and the gun together, surprised to notice his own hands shaking.
Ellis’s arm fell to his lap.
He stepped back to
survey the scene. One gun. One glass. No sign of struggle. He
didn’t worry about footprints in the carpet. People had been in and
out of every room of the house all day.
Ellis slouched almost
as he’d found him, a suicide, overcome by grief or
guilt.
Let the police decide.
He tucked his handkerchief back in his pocket. Either theory suited
him fine.
STEVE’S Inscrutable
Cop Face set like stone.
Bailey’s stomach
sank.
“It didn’t mean
anything,” she said, pushing away the memory of Paul’s wet,
invasive kiss. Of his erection prodding her belly. “But Regan saw,
which makes the situation a little . . .”
Compromising?
Damaging?
Disastrous.
“Awkward,” she
repeated lamely.
“It meant something,”
Steve said in his flat, neutral voice. “To make you
quit.”
Bailey straightened
her spine. “It means Paul was drunk, and I was
stupid.”
Steve shook his head.
“Not stupid. Set up.”
Great. He thought she
was so undesirable even a drunken wife-murderer wouldn’t want to
kiss her.
But there was no way
Paul had faked his hard-on.
“I don’t think he was
acting,” she said.
Steve went very still.
His eyes narrowed. “You don’t think so?”
And no way she was
telling him why.
“Anyway,” she said
hastily, “Paul couldn’t count on Regan coming downstairs at that
moment.”
Steve shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. He sets the stage. He makes his move. Or another
move. He has no reason to believe you’ll reject him. Sooner or
later, stepdaughter’s going to get the idea.”
He has no reason to believe you’ll reject
him.
Oh, God. Her face, her stomach, her whole body
burned.
“But why would Paul
want Regan to think we’re . . .” Bailey choked on the words. She
swallowed and forced herself to continue. “It just makes him look
more guilty.”
“Of cheating on his
wife.”
“Of killing her. An
affair is a motive for murder.”
Steve shrugged.
“Depends how he plays it. He can argue that while Helen was alive
he had it all. A wealthy wife. A willing, adoring assistant. All he
has to do is convince the police you were pressing for more and he
told you no. Then, when the weapon is found in your possession . .
.” He leaned forward. “Are you all right?”
She couldn’t breathe,
she was about to throw up, but other than that she was
hunky-dory.
“Fine,” Bailey assured
him. It was sweet of him to be concerned. She struggled to form a
coherent thought, to frame a coherent sentence. “I still think it’s
risky for Paul to pretend to have an affair with me.”
“As long as he could
sell his wife’s death as an accident, sure. But once we start
treating it as a possible homicide, he has to divert suspicion. Who
else benefits from Helen’s death?”
“Her children.
Richard—”
“Was sleeping it off
in a drunk tank in Chicago,” Steve interrupted.
“Then . . .
Regan?”
“Didn’t leave the bank
until five-thirty that night and went to her gym after dinner. Even
assuming she could get into the house without somebody noticing,
she couldn’t make the drive from Atlanta in time.”
Bailey gaped at him.
He’d just shared actual information with her about the case. He was
investigating other leads.
She felt—not safe—but
suddenly less alone. Hot tears burned her throat and rushed to her
eyes. Oh, God. Like she wasn’t
embarrassed enough already. She crossed her arms over her chest and
stared at Eugenia Burke’s white-painted ceiling, willing the tears
not to fall.
When she looked down
again, Steve was watching her, his eyes unexpectedly kind. “I told
you I was keeping an open mind.”
“Yes, you did.” She
cleared her throat. “Thank you. What happens now?”
“Tomorrow I’ll contact
the DA. He can authorize emergency testing at the state lab in
Raleigh.”
“You can’t do it
yourself?”
“I could spray it with
Luminol, check for traces of blood. But that would jeopardize the
value of the evidence when we go to trial.”
When, not if. It was
suddenly hard to breathe.
“How long will testing
take?”
“If the chief pushes
the request through, I could have results in a day.”
Her stomach churned.
“And then what?”
“You’ll have to come
in. Sign a formal statement.” His gaze was sympathetic, his tone
neutral.
That didn’t sound too
bad. She’d done that before. She nodded.
“And we’ll need to
take your prints,” he continued, still in that kind, neutral tone.
“For the purposes of elimination.”
“Are you going to read
me my rights, too?”
He frowned. “You’re
not being detained. Technically—”
Disappointment and
fear made her sharp. “I’m not asking you a technical question. I’m
asking you as a . . .” What? Friend? He wasn’t her friend. “I’m
asking you,” she repeated. “Do I need a lawyer?”
He didn’t answer right
away. Her stomach pitched and rolled.
“You can get one if
you want,” he said finally. “I need to talk to the chief and the DA
before I move forward on this.”
“And Regan,” she said.
“And Paul. You have to talk to them, too.”
His jaw set. “I will.
Believe me.”
“Regan saw Paul kiss
me.” It was a relief, Bailey discovered, to get all the bad stuff
out, all her sins and fears. Like popping a blister. Or going to
confession. “Even if you don’t think I’m guilty, even if the DA
doesn’t think I’m guilty, Regan believes I killed her mother. Or
conspired with Paul to kill her mother, which is just as
bad.”
“You were the one who
came forward.”
He leaned forward
across the table, big and solid and competent with his deep drawl
and seductive sympathy, his muscled arms and macho readiness to
take her problems on to his broad shoulders.
Everything she’d never wanted.
“Why did you come here
tonight, Bailey?” he asked quietly.
She couldn’t admit,
even to herself, what she wanted from him. But she gave him as much
of the truth as she dared. “I didn’t have anywhere else to
go.”
Something—could it
have been disappointment?—flickered in his eyes. “So you decided to
cooperate with the police. Smart.”
“Only if you believe
me.”
He raised his
eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
She swallowed hard. “I
might just be trying to get a lesser sentence.”
“You might,” he
agreed. “If I had any kind of case without the murder
weapon.”
“Or Paul and I could
have had a falling out.”
“You did,” he said
without inflection.
“Oh, God.” She covered
her face with her hands. “See? Even you think I could be
guilty.”
“I think,” Steve said
slowly, and stopped.
Had she offended him?
She lowered her hands.
But he wasn’t even
looking at her. His attention fixed over her shoulder. Turning,
Bailey peered into the shadows of the hall.
“Gabrielle? What are
you doing out of bed?” Steve asked.
The nine-year-old rose
from behind the hall table, four feet two of injured dignity in
pink-and-gray striped pajamas. “I didn’t want to interrupt your
date.”
Steve raised his
eyebrows. “So you decided to eavesdrop instead? Apologize to our
guest and go upstairs.”
“I’m not a date,”
Bailey said. Not unless the kid was talking court
date.
Gabrielle slipped
forward into the kitchen light, her heart-shaped face creased in
concentration. “I remember you.”
“Hi,” Bailey said. “I
remember you, too.”
“Are you still in
trouble?”
Oh, yes. And she was getting in deeper by the
minute.
“Not as much as you’ll
be in if you don’t get up to bed,” her father said. “How long were
you down here?”
Bailey flushed. What
exactly had she heard?
“I heard you talking
about work.”
“And?” Steve asked
sternly.
Gabrielle grinned.
“Bor-ing.”
Steve narrowed his
eyes with mock severity. “Did I ask for your critique of my dating
technique?”
This wasn’t a date,
Bailey wanted to protest.
“Hey, I’m just trying
to help,” Gabrielle said. “You are out of practice.”
“To. Bed,” Steve said,
enunciating each syllable.
The girl rubbed one
bare foot on top of the other, looking at him through her lashes.
“Isn’t somebody going to tuck me in?”
Steve’s hard face
softened. Amazing to watch the big, tough detective totally
manipulated by a nine-year-old girl. “Right. Up we
go.”
The Look turned on
Bailey. Once again she had the sense of being sized up for . . .
something. “Can she do it?”
Bailey was flattered
but wary.
Steve simply looked
wary.
Of course. Whatever
kind of show he was putting on for his daughter, he wouldn’t
want—what had he called her?—a person of interest in an ongoing
investigation tucking his precious only child into bed. No matter
how open-minded he was.
“I’m a lousy
tucker-inner,” she said, to get them both off the hook. “But thanks
for asking.”
“Maybe you could both
do it,” Gabrielle suggested, still shifting from foot to foot. Her
toenails were painted sparkly blue to match the blue stones in her
ears.
“Fine,” Steve said
before Bailey could think of another excuse. “But no more getting
up.”
“Yes, Daddy,”
Gabrielle said, all demure obedience now that she had her way. She
flashed Bailey another grin. Bailey smiled back
cautiously.
They all trooped
upstairs.
Gabrielle’s room, like
the rest of the house, was conventionally feminine, with ruffled
curtains at the windows and botanical prints on the walls. Bailey’s
gaze traveled over the polished mahogany furniture to a fuchsia
chair, glaringly out of place against the seafoam
carpet.
“Nice paint job,” she
said.
Gabrielle beamed.
“Thanks.” She jumped on her mattress, making the items on her
nightstand bounce. “That’s my mom.”
Bailey studied the
framed photograph beside the bed. Gabrielle’s mother was exotically
lovely, with her daughter’s heart-shaped face and dramatic
coloring.
Bailey felt plain and
tongue-tied. “She’s very pretty.”
“Dad put her picture
there so I can see her when I say my prayers. But it’s not the same
as really talking to her.”
“Lights out,” Steve
said.
Gabrielle sniffed and
scrambled between the floral print sheets.
“You could write her a
letter,” Bailey suggested before she thought better of
it.
Gabrielle gave her a
patient look. “No, I can’t. She’s dead.”
“Um.” Bailey didn’t
dare turn around to see Steve. She could just imagine what kind of
look he was giving her. “Right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t put
down how you feel to her in words.”
“If she’s dead,
doesn’t she already know how I feel?”
Bailey was so out of
her depth here. Totally over her head. But she had plunged in, so
she floundered on. “Yes, but the letter’s not only for her. It’s
for you to feel closer to her.”
Gabrielle flopped
against her pillows. “But you couldn’t mail it.”
Clearly, she had
inherited her father’s logical mind.
“You wouldn’t have to
mail it,” Bailey said, acutely conscious of Steve listening. “You
could burn it. Or bury it.” Did that sound too depressingly
funereal? “Or . . . or tie it to a balloon and let it go. The
important thing is getting your feelings down in
words.”
“The balloon thing
could be cool,” Gabrielle conceded. “Are you spending the
night?”
“Gaah,” Bailey said,
which was bad, but better than asking if her daddy had sleepovers
often.
“No,” Steve said from
behind her. “We’re just going to talk awhile, and then Bailey has
to go home.”
Which apparently
satisfied Gabrielle. She snuggled into her pillow. “Okay. Thank you
for tucking me in,” she added politely.
“Thank you for
inviting me. It was . . . fun,” Bailey said, because she wasn’t
going to be outdone by a nine-year-old in the manners department,
and it was also weirdly true.
Steve leaned past her
to kiss his daughter on her forehead. The sight of that tough,
stubbled face so close to the delicate, smooth one created an
emptiness low in her stomach, a fullness around her
heart.
“Goodnight,
sweetheart. Sleep tight,” Steve said.
Gabrielle grinned and
pursed her lips to kiss his cheek. “ ’Night.”
Bailey followed him
down the darkened stairs, still with that odd, aching fullness in
her chest.
“Thank you,” Steve
said.
She found her breath
and her voice. “I didn’t do anything. She’s very . .
.”
Pretty? No, she’d said that about the
mother.
Precocious? That sounded presumptuous.
“Friendly,” Bailey
settled on.
“She would be.”
Steve’s smile gleamed in the shadows of the hall. “She wants me to
get married again.”
Bailey stopped at the
bottom of the stairs, one foot in the air. “Excuse
me?”
“Gabrielle’s convinced
herself—or maybe my mother convinced her—that if I had a wife, we
could all move back to D.C.”
O-kay.
Bailey released her
grip on the banister. “Do you want to move back to
D.C.?”
He rubbed his hand
over his face. “This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what’s
best for Gabby.”
Not her problem,
Bailey reminded herself. None of her business. But what actually
came out of her mouth was, “Did you ask her?”
“She’s nine years
old,” Steve said. “What does she know?”
“She seems to know
what she wants,” Bailey offered cautiously.
“But not what she
needs.”
“And you
do.”
“It’s my job to know.”
He sounded tired. “I’m her father.”
She admired his
determination to take care of his daughter. She really
did.
“My father—” she said,
and stopped.
He frowned.
“What?”
Was it her
imagination, or did he sound the teensiest bit
defensive?
Sympathy weighted her
chest. She didn’t have a lot of experience with in-control,
protective Manly Men. But she could imagine for a type like that, a
man like Steve, nothing could be harder than to be faced with a
disease he could not control and a daughter he could not protect.
His uncertainty touched her even more than his
concern.
Would he be amused if
he guessed how she felt? Or appalled?
“Nothing,” she said,
and went into the kitchen and sat, determined to restore an
appropriate distance between them. “Like you said, I don’t have any
experience being a parent.”
“But you were a kid
once, you said.”
She looked up,
startled he remembered.
He held her gaze a
long moment, his hard, dark eyes assessing. “Hungry?”
She struggled to find
her place in the conversation. “Excuse me?”
“You sat down at the
table. You want something to eat?”
Just the suggestion
made saliva pool in her mouth. “I’m fine, thank you. I’ve been
surrounded by food all day.”
“And you didn’t touch
any of it. Too busy waiting on other people. I could make you a
sandwich.”
He’d been watching
her? Closely enough to notice what she ate? The thought was
warming. Flattering.
Terrifying.
“You can’t make
sandwiches at . . .” She looked at her watch. “Oh, my God, it’s
two-thirty in the morning.”
“Eggs, then.” His
mouth quirked in one of those crooked, heart-bumping smiles. “We’ll
call it breakfast.”
They didn’t know each
other well enough for him to make her breakfast. For heavens’ sake,
she’d had sex with men who hadn’t made her breakfast.
Heat started in the
pit of her stomach and rose in her face. Not that she was having
sex with Steve. Or even thinking about it.
“I don’t want to put
you to any trouble. Any more trouble,” she corrected.
“No trouble.” He
opened the refrigerator to remove eggs and butter. “We can talk
while you eat.”
She didn’t want to
talk anymore. She was all talked out, empty and light-headed from
stress and lack of sleep.
He dropped butter into
a skillet, and the aroma rose with a sizzle that seriously weakened
her resolution. He looked very . . . not domesticated, she decided,
watching his muscled forearms and strong, square hands as he beat
eggs and added them to the pan. But he was housebroken. He looked
comfortable. Competent.
Sexy.
The toaster pinged.
Steve glanced over his shoulder as he reached into the
refrigerator. “Milk or juice?”
“Uh . . . milk,
please.”
It was like playing
house.
At least until he
started questioning her again.
“What were you saying
about your father?”
She blinked. That was
the last topic she expected him to introduce. But lots better than,
say, what she was going to do now that she had no job, no
prospects, and no permanent address. And he was feeding her. He
could question her about whatever he wanted.
“I don’t think my
father ever had any idea what was best for me.” She shook her head,
afraid that hadn’t come out right. “I don’t mean he didn’t want
what was best for me. He worked hard. He made sure I had food,
shelter, clothes.” She smiled. “A curfew.”
“All the basics,”
Steve observed, buttering her toast.
“Mom wanted me to go
to Meredith College, like Leann. We had these horrible fights when
I got the Bryn Mawr scholarship, but in the end she let me go. I
used to wonder if maybe Dad took my side, but I don’t know. We
never talked about it. We never talked about much of
anything.”
Steve set a plate in
front of her, scrambled eggs with cheese and toast. “Guys
don’t.”
Oh, wow, that smelled
so good. She closed her eyes and breathed in.
When she opened them
again, Steve was watching her, an arrested expression on his
face.
Hastily, she picked up
her fork. “You never talked to your father about your plans? Your
life?”
“Nope.”
“So the two of you
weren’t . . . close?”
Poor guy. No wonder he was having trouble
connecting with his daughter.
He looked amused.
“Sure we were. We did the usual father-son stuff.”
Bailey swallowed and
asked, “What kind of stuff?”
He shrugged. “Fishing.
Catch. Cleaning out the garage. He came to all my football games.”
He looked away, a muscle working in his jaw. She remembered how he
had looked standing alone in the graveyard, all tough, broad
shoulders and lonely eyes.
“Are those the things
you do with Gabrielle?” she asked softly.
“She’s a little small
for football,” Steve said dryly. “We cleaned the garage the other
day.”
He was on the
defensive again.
“I’m sure that was a
treat for both of you.” Diplomatically, Bailey turned her attention
to her plate. “These are good eggs.”
“Look, even if we did
more together, it wouldn’t be enough.” The words burst out of him,
rough with frustration. “I can’t talk to her the way Teresa
could.”
“You don’t have to
talk,” Bailey said, her heart hurting for him. “You just have to be
there. To listen.”
“We did grief
counseling together,” he said. “For a year. It didn’t fix
anything.”
He was such a guy, she
thought, bemused. Did he honestly think of his wife’s death as
something that could be “fixed”?
“You can’t solve every
problem,” Bailey said, poking at her eggs. “Sometimes the best you
can do is share it.”
“By talking about
it.”
“Yes. Why
not?”
“Because there’s no
point talking about something you can’t fix.”
“Except to make you
feel less alone.” She set down her fork. “Do you ever talk to
Gabrielle about her mother’s death?”
“I told you, we went
to grief counseling. She didn’t talk there, either.”
“Kids don’t talk on
the clock. Or on a schedule. They find their own times. So if you
don’t make the time, they’ll never talk.”
Steve raised his
eyebrows. “Speaking from experience again?”
She leaned forward,
her eggs forgotten. “I never played football. I didn’t have the
slightest interest in football, even though my father watched it
every Sunday afternoon and Monday night of my life. I never
expected him to sit in the back of the yearbook room cheering my
great layout of the senior pages. But I wish just once he’d said to
me, ‘Hey, honey, State’s playing Florida this afternoon. Sit down
and watch the game with me.’ ”
“And that would have
been enough.”
“Probably not,” she
admitted. “But it would have been . . .” She struggled for words.
“A start.”
His eyes were warm.
“So, you’re suggesting we make a fresh start.”
Her heart thumped.
Stupid. He was talking about his relationship with his daughter.
Wasn’t he?
Her mouth went dry.
She didn’t answer.
With slow, sure
movements, he nudged back her chair and drew her to her feet. His
hands on her shoulders were warm and firm. Her heart hammered
wildly.
She could say
something. She should say something. Her mind went
blank.
He stood close enough
for her to feel the heat emanating from his body, close enough to
see the stubble of his beard give way to the smoothness of his
throat. He didn’t touch her except for his hands and his gaze like
a caress on her face. Her mouth. He was looking at her
mouth.
Her lips
parted.
He kissed her. Gently.
Firmly. Briefly.
And raised his
head.
Bailey waited. That
was it? She opened her eyes, relief and disappointment curling in
her stomach.
It was over before she
had a chance to react. She didn’t know what to do with herself.
With her hands. With him.
His gaze met hers,
serious and steady, and she knew.
She wanted him to kiss her again.
Flexing her fingers in
the soft fabric of his T-shirt, she pulled him closer and kissed
him. Like that. Like this. Again, harder, taking him in tastes, in
bites. She wanted him.
His arms came up to
steady her as she inhaled him, attacked him, pushing her tongue
past his teeth, plastering her body against his broad, hard body.
And he kissed her back, pulling her even closer to support her
weight, absorbing her clumsy assault with easy
strength.
He felt so good. So
safe. She pressed against him. Rubbed against him. If she could
have crawled inside him, she would have.
He angled his head and
used his tongue. Zings and tingles raced up her spine and shorted
out her busy brain. He glutted her senses. He filled her mind. As
long as she was kissing him, she didn’t have to think about
tomorrow.
And then his hands
came up and gripped her hands. He straightened his arms, forcing
her away from his solid, aroused body.
“Enough,” he
said.