"What about kids? A husband?"
"I plan to have both, one day, but not in that order," she teased.
"One day," he said softly.
"I can"t think about that now," she answered seriously. It was too much. She knew women who tried to have it all, but it never worked. Something suffered. The career. The family. The marriage. "I mean, I see other people with kids and they seem very happy, but I can"t imagine myself taking that route." Not now, maybe not ever.
"You"d make a great mother." Nick leaned into her as they reached the top of the stairs.
Her heart hitched. "And why would you say that?"
"You"re taking very good care of me, and you don"t take any c.r.a.p from anybody." There was a touch of teasing in his voice again. "Every boy should have a mother who can tend a b.l.o.o.d.y wound without throwing up, and then send him to bed with no supper when he misbehaves."
No one had ever told her she"d make a great mother before. Surprisingly, she took it as a grand compliment. And then Nick grinned down at her, and her heart nearly pounded through her chest.
* * * Luther leaned back in his chair and glanced up at the three men who hovered over his desk. He didn"t need this, not today. The one with the ponytail was an ex-cop, a P.I. now. The one in the crisp gray suit was a Fed. The other one was a d.a.m.ned cowboy. They were Shea Sinclair"s brothers, and they were all very angry.
"Anything I can do to help find Shea, I will," he said. "I"ve offered my a.s.sistance to the FBI, but they don"t seem to want any help." Since Shea"s brother was a federal agent and the kidnapping had actually taken place on camera, the FBI had eagerly jumped all over it. The case was too high-profile to allow a local to partic.i.p.ate. He"d been rudely brushed off. "But if I can help you guys, just say the word."
"You called her Shea," the cowboy said, narrowing one eye. "Do you know her?"
Luther recalled their one disastrous date, set up by the ever hopeful Grace Madigan. "She"s a friend of a friend."
"I want to see everything you"ve got on Taggert and the Winkler murder," the P.I. demanded.
"It wasn"t my case," Luther explained, reaching for a peppermint in the candy dish by the phone. "I"m afraid I don"t know much."
"Whose case was it?" the Fed asked in a deceptively low voice.
"Daniels"s," Luther said as he unwrapped the peppermint. "He"s out sick today." The coward. His case had blown up in his face, a killer had kidnapped Shea on camera and Daniels decides to stay home pretending to have a tummy ache.
"He"s gonna be sick if he doesn"t get his a.s.s down here," the cowboy grumbled.
"Let me give him a call," Luther said calmly, popping the candy into his mouth and reaching for the phone.
Daniels answered on the third ring, sounding tired and sleepy, but not exactly deathly ill.
"Shea Sinclair"s brothers are here looking for the Taggert file," Luther said, his eyes on the Fed.
Daniels"s response was obscene.
"One of them is a Deputy U.S. Marshal," Luther added. "I think he"d like to discuss the case with you."
Daniels was quiet for a moment, then he hemmed and hawed. All the while, Luther watched while Shea"s brothers got stonier and more eagle-eyed. A vein in the Fed"s temple bulged. The P.I. flexed his fists. The cowboy cracked his knuckles.
"Just give him the folder," Daniels finally said. "It"s in my bottom right-hand drawer."
Luther was a little surprised Daniels folded so quickly, but he agreed and hung up the phone.
"You"re in luck," he said as he led the Sinclair brothers across the room to a messy, folder-laden desk. "Daniels is actually willing to share."
"He can"t get his sorry a.s.s down here?" one of the brothers muttered behind him. Luther"s money was on the cowboy.
Luther retrieved a slim folder from the bottom drawer and handed it over to the Fed. "It"s all yours."
The man in the gray suit practically sneered. "This is it?" He opened the manila folder and flipped through. "This is all he"s got?"
Daniels was a lazy cop, always taking the easy way out. Sinclair was right: that folder should"ve been three times as thick. Would"ve been, if Daniels had done a decent job of investigating the crime.
"This Daniels might"ve been the primary, but he must"ve worked with a partner, right?" the P.I. asked angrily.
" He had a partner at the time," Luther said, searching his memory. "But Fred was about to retire, and I don"t think he spent much time on this case."
"Where is this Fred?" the cowboy asked through clenched teeth.
"Arizona, I think."
Together the brothers glanced through the thin file. The scant information there did not improve their moods.
"You know," Luther said, sucking on his peppermint, "Daniels probably kept a lot of the information on the case in his head." He tapped his own temple as he returned to his desk. "You should talk to him directly." He sat down, grabbed a notepad and scribbled down Daniels"s address.
He ripped the piece of paper out of the notebook and handed it to the closest Sinclair-the P.I. with the ponytail. "I"m sure he wouldn"t mind if you fellas dropped by to discuss the case."
As the Sinclair brothers left, Luther experienced a rush of satisfaction the likes of which he hadn"t felt in a very long time. He even smiled as the door closed behind the cowboy.
Chapter 7.
I t was time to call Mark again, but she was getting nervous about the prospect. Shea didn"t think anyone would be monitoring her cameraman"s phone calls, but anything was possible.
She didn"t dare call anyone else, not yet. Her parents had caller ID, and would be no help at all in any case. Grace had caller ID, too, darn it, and her husband, an ex-cop, would surely take whatever useful information he gathered about her whereabouts to the police. Shea and Mark worked together well, but they didn"t socialize and no one would suspect that he"d be the one she"d call, given the opportunity. Except Boone, she thought with a grimace, and Grace, since she"d already pa.s.sed along a message through Mark.
Life had been much simpler before caller ID, Shea thought as she reached for the yellow phone on the kitchen wall.
It was early morning, not yet six, and she woke Mark up. He grumbled a groggy h.e.l.lo into the telephone.
"Mark?" she said softly.
"Shea!" He was instantly awake, and through the phone lines she heard his bed creak as he shot up. "Are you all right?"
"I"m fine," she said calmly. "Do you have a paper and pencil?"
She waited while he fetched what he needed, tapping her bare toes nervously on the kitchen floor.
When Mark was back on the line, she gave him the names of her suspects, placing Lauren at the top of the list and including the co-worker who"d had an affair with Winkler, Pearl or Ruby or whatever, and everyone who had stopped by Nick"s house the day after the murder. One of them had planted the evidence.
"Give this information to Boone and to Grace." Shea bit her bottom lip. "And I can"t call you anymore," she added softly.
"Why not?"
"Boone"s going to get suspicious after this second phone call. Grace, too. They"ll probably try to tap your phone. It wouldn"t be legal, but that won"t stop either one of them."
"You need to be able to call someone, Shea," Mark barked. "Dammit, we want to know you"re all right! I"ll go nuts if you just ... disappear."
Shea smiled. "He"s not going to hurt me, I swear."
"Not good enough," Mark grumbled.
"I don"t know what else to do."
"I do," Mark said, his voice brighter than before. "I have a friend who lives next door. No caller ID, and no possible reason for anyone to tap his phone. Call me there in two days. I should have something by then. Seven o"clock in the evening, after I get home from work." He rattled off the number, and Shea scribbled it down, relieved to have a point of contact.
"Take care of yourself," Mark said warmly as Shea said goodbye.
She hung up the receiver and stared down at her notes and the phone number, feeling that she"d accomplished something by touching base with Mark and setting up the next phone call. When she lifted her head and saw Nick standing in the doorway, staring at her with those cold blue eyes, she couldn"t help herself. She jumped. And surely that was not a squeal coming out of her mouth!
"You should be in bed," she chastised him, when her heart beat normally again. She tried her hardest not to stare at his bare chest. A man shouldn"t look so good in nothing but a pair of jeans. She shouldn"t be fascinated by a naked chest and big bare feet, by the height and leanness of a body. Every man on earth had legs, and arms, and a chest. She sighed, giving in and admitting that not many of them were put together quite this nicely.
"So should you," he said.
"I haven"t been shot," she countered.
But she might"ve been, she remembered. She"d been running from Nick and he"d fired a warning shot and threatened to shoot her in the leg. She remembered, too well, the blast of the gunfire, the sight of him kneeling on the ground with that pistol pointed at her.
"Back there on the mountain, right after you escaped," she began in a soft voice. "Would you really have shot me if I hadn"t stopped?"
He hesitated. Ah, he hadn"t hesitated at all when she"d asked him the first time.
"Probably," he said. He looked her up and down, and a fire grew in his eyes. Something smoldered there, and she realized belatedly that she was wearing one of Susan"s old nightgowns. It was plain, ordinary, long and white and worn. And with the morning light streaming through the kitchen window, Nick could no doubt see right through it. She nonchalantly brought the notebook to her chest, trying to cover her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His eyes remained riveted below her waist.
"But I"m glad I didn"t have to," he added huskily. "It would be a shame to scar those legs of yours." He very slowly lifted his eyes to her face, taking his time, and gave her a crooked smile that set her heart to pounding. "A real shame."
* * * He hadn"t felt this kind of raw heat for a woman in a very long time. Maybe never. Nick wrote off his raging l.u.s.t to the fact that he"d been in jail for the past ten months, and tried to cool his heated response.
Shea Sinclair was a reporter, and she was doing her job. Nothing more. She had no interest in him beyond what kind of ratings she"d get on her news broadcast when this was all over.
So why did she look at him this way? Like she felt the same attraction he did. Like she wanted him, here and now.
"Come on," she said sensibly, coming toward him with that d.a.m.ned notebook held over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the thin white cotton of her nightgown dancing around her slender legs, her bare feet stepping gingerly across the kitchen floor. "You need to get back to bed. You are a terrible patient." She didn"t look at his face as she chastised him for leaving his bed, but kept her gaze firmly on his chest.
When she reached him, she fluttered her fingers in a silent order for him to turn around, to clear the doorway so she could pa.s.s. He didn"t move.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked. "Why are you still here?"
Shea shuddered. She tried to hide her reaction, but he saw her slight response. "I told you, I can"t allow an innocent man to go to the electric chair or to prison for the rest of his life."
"So, you"re like a modern-day female Lone Ranger," he said dryly.
She lifted her head and pinned warm, hazel eyes on his face. Ah, he"d made her angry. Her cheeks were flushed pink; her eyes danced. "I don"t suppose it ever occurred to you to simply say thank-you, to be grateful that someone believes in your innocence, to be content with-"
He grabbed her chin and whispered, "Thank you," as he lowered his head to kiss her. Her lips were soft and sweet, surprised and ... yielding. She didn"t fight; she didn"t pull away from him and protest his audacity. After a moment, she kissed him back.
This would work. Maybe she was in this for her d.a.m.ned story and justice, but that didn"t mean they couldn"t enjoy one another, that they couldn"t behave as any two healthy adults who were attracted to one another might behave. s.e.x for the sake of s.e.x, something hot and memorable to break the tension and cure this heat and pain in his body. He wanted her beneath him again, in that soft bed upstairs, but this time he wouldn"t fall asleep. This time would be different.
He took the notebook from Shea and dropped it on the floor, never breaking the gentle kiss. She didn"t protest as the notebook slipped from her fingers. But then, she probably didn"t realize that her nipples were so hard they were prominent beneath the thin cotton nightgown. She probably didn"t realize what an arousing sight she was.
Then again, maybe she did.
Shea slipped her arms around his neck and parted her lips slightly, and Nick went hard, blood rushing to his loins and leaving him light-headed. Thank goodness he leaned against the doorjamb ... though falling to the floor with Shea in his arms didn"t seem like such a bad idea, at the moment.
There was nothing awkward about the way they came together, as if they knew one another well. Her lips moved, softened, sucked lightly against his. All they"d shared was one simple, sweet good-night kiss, but this heated and arousing caress seemed familiar, like a good memory any man would savor.
It was Shea who pulled away, a slight frown on her pretty face. "Why did you do that?"
"Why not? Seemed like a good idea, that"s all."
"Well," she said, trying to sound firm but falling far short, with her well-kissed lips and thin nightgown and breathy voice. "It was not a good idea."
"It was just a kiss, weathergirl. A simple thank-you."
She lifted skeptical, narrowed eyes to him. "That"s your way of saying thank you?"
"Yes," he whispered.
"Well..." She slipped past him and into the dining room. "You"re welcome, and don"t thank me again."
"Why not?"
She grabbed her notebook from the floor and headed for the stairway. "I don"t want to feel this appreciated," she mumbled.
Nick smiled as he watched her climb the stairs. He didn"t quite have the strength to leave the support of the doorway, not just yet. At the landing she turned and looked down at him. Surely she didn"t know that the window behind her made her nightgown d.a.m.n near transparent.
"And if you have the strength to ... to thank me like that, you can surely make your way up the stairs on your own." Chin high, eyes clear, she looked downright defiant.
"Yes, ma"am," he said softly, knowing it would be awhile before he could possibly climb those stairs.
* * * Once Nick started to recover, he healed quickly. In the two days since he"d thanked her, he"d eaten more, and he got around on his own with no problem but for a slight limp.
She needed to make a trip to the grocery store for more food, but what if someone recognized her? Not everyone in Marion knew her, but she had a number of old friends here, people who knew Aunt Irene and had met Shea during her summer visits. Besides, strangers really stood out in this small town.
But Nick needed protein to heal, and she"d used up all the tuna in the cupboard and they were out of eggs. He had to eat well to improve, to get his strength back.
She still felt his kiss. His "thank-you" had been different from the first kiss, when he"d been delirious and she"d only kissed him to hide his face from the state trooper. And it had been very different from the sweet good-night kiss that had kept her up half the night. The thank-you had been very ... involved. Very nice. It would be too easy to fall for Nick Taggert, and she didn"t have the time or the inclination for a romantic involvement.