Kitabı oku: «The Baby Chase», sayfa 3

Three

The way Rebecca was charging down that hall, Gabe naturally assumed demons or monsters were after her—or a killer. Maybe he’d been retired from the Special Forces for the past seven years, but certain responses were as well-honed as instincts for him. He was braced to yank her behind him, out of harm’s way, and protect her. He was braced to confront serious danger.

He was braced for just about anything but the damn fool woman throwing her arms around him. The exuberant hug was so sudden. And maybe she aimed that sassy smack for his cheek, but it collided an inch short. On his mouth. With the impact of a bullet.

Gabe had been shot. Twice. The experience was something a man never forgot, although it hadn’t hurt either time—not at the instant of impact. It had felt more like a sudden burn, a burst of stunning heat.

Bullets had nothing on Rebecca.

He’d known she was trouble. Known at some gut-instinct level that keeping his hands off her could avert the core source of that trouble. But initially he grabbed her because his brain was responding to the threat of danger. Initially adrenaline was pumping through his veins at the speed of light. A millisecond later, that adrenaline rush was sabotaged by the flooding pump of straight testosterone.

The long hall was dim and dark, so empty that his heartbeat echoed loudly, bouncing off the silence. Whyever in hell she’d hugged him, her head suddenly reared back. Velvet green eyes connected with his. The huge smile curving her lips suddenly faded, softened. She didn’t drop her arms. She didn’t do anything any sane, normal, rational woman would do. She lifted up on tiptoe, not unlike a kitten hell-bent on being curious, and kissed him.

She tasted like spring winds and innocence. She tasted like nothing that had been in Gabe’s life for a long, long time…nothing he’d missed or even wanted, dammit. Until that moment. Her mouth was softer than a baby’s behind, the scent of her skin as wholesome as Ivory soap, and something was in one of the hands that scratched his neck. Paper? But her other hand suddenly clutched the dark hair at his nape, and her small breasts flattened against his chest, and suddenly Gabe couldn’t breathe.

All right, he tried telling himself. It’s all right. There was nothing happening here but a little overflow of testosterone. Just hormones. He’d been celibate for a while, and he damn well hated being celibate, and even if Rebecca drove him nuts, she was two-hundred-percent female. The sizzle of desire bolting through his system was natural. Simple biology.

Nothing seemed real simple at that moment, though. His fingers found their way into that messy tangle of red hair, so silky, so soft, and her mouth opened under the pressure of his. Her tongue was wet, as small as a secret, and if that woman had a repressive instinct in her, it didn’t show. She kissed with abandon. She kissed like pure, untouched emotion. She kissed like she’d never been on a roller-coaster ride before and was utterly captivated by the whole experience.

Rebecca could totally immerse a man in quicksand in three seconds flat—if he let her.

Gabe twisted his mouth free, and sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Then tried sucking in another lungful. Then tried a more intelligent move—like removing his hands from her body and swearing.

Swearing worked. She opened her eyes, staring at him as if her vision were submerged in a fog, but her hands slowly dropped from his shoulders. It seemed a year or two later before she got around to rocking back on her heels. “Well,” she murmured.

He didn’t like the way she said that “Well.” He didn’t trust the way her right eyebrow suddenly arched, either.

“If I’d known you kissed like that, cutie pie, I’d have pressed for a sample long before this,” she announced.

God give him strength. “It was an accident.”

“I know.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“The wonder was that it happened at all. Every time I’ve been around you before, I was pretty sure you were more tempted to kill me than kiss me.”

“I was. I am. And if you hadn’t been living a sheltered life hunched over a keyboard, you’d have known the chemistry was there. Where I come from, you don’t wake up a sleeping lion. Now I assume, five miles back, you must have had some reason for throwing your arms around me?”

“Reason?” She said the word like it was alien. With Rebecca, that was certainly possible. For one long, horrifying minute, her soft green eyes stayed glued to his face, studying him, making him feel aggravatingly…naked. But then she blinked, and abruptly lifted her hand, as if just then remembering she was holding a piece of paper. “Of course I had a reason. A superb reason. Gabe! You won’t believe what I found!”

Well, she was diverted from talking about all that touchy, tricky chemistry business, but calming Rebecca down when she was excited had a lot in common with containing a rumor in Washington.

Gabe saw the letter, read the letter, was dragged into Monica’s bedroom closet, where she’d found the letter, but even after they headed back downstairs, she was prancing with energy—and trying hard to make him eat crow.

“Did I tell you I’d find something? Did I?”

“Now listen, shorty, you’re getting your hopes sky-high. This really isn’t proof of anything—”

“It’s proof that there could have been another factor involved in Monica’s murder. It’s proof that someone besides my brother was butting heads with Monica in the same general time period around her death.”

Yeah, he saw it that way, too. And it burned his butt that an idealistic, altruistic hopeless dreamer of a mystery writer had managed to find the clue instead of him—especially since he’d turned the damn mansion upside down himself three times now, and come up with nada.

Because Gabe wasn’t born yesterday, he carefully sneaked the letter away from her and folded it neatly in his pocket. A Los Angeles address for this Tammy Diller had been on it, an address Rebecca had certainly seen—but hopefully wouldn’t remember. The back of his mind was already clicking with plans. As soon as he got home, he could probe the data bases on the computer for info on that name and address. If anything panned out, he’d need to make travel arrangements for a trip to L.A.

First, though, he had to get rid of Rebecca. How a woman could still be so fired up in the middle of the night was beyond him—especially a woman who looked like she’d tangled with a whole gang in a back alley. Her face was as white as a virgin’s wedding dress, and the gash on her forehead was clearly swelling under the bandage.

“You never believed I’d find anything, now did you? Just like you didn’t believe me about my mother months ago. Logic isn’t always more valuable than intuition, love bug. A woman and a man simply think differently. Even if I hadn’t read a ton of reference books on crime-solving, sometimes a woman can just sense things—”

When she had to stop to take a breath, he broke in.” I admit it. You did good. But it’s going on 4:00 a.m. I think it’s time we called this a night.”

“You mean go home?” From the look on her face, the idea was as appealing as a case of chicken pox.

“I’m beat. I’m ready to pack this in, and I’m sure not leaving you alone here. You got a good lead—” he hastened to get that in, before she could praise herself for another hour and a half on the subject “—and as soon as I catch a few hours’ rest, I’ll run with it.”

“Well, I agree, if you’re beat, you should go home. But I could stay and keep looking a little longer. Maybe Monica had some other hiding places—”

“Maybe she did. But that’s a needle-in-a-haystack possibility, considering all the people who’ve been over this place. And the letter is something concrete that can be pursued immediately. Besides which, we’ve been at this for hours—”

“I’m not tired,” she immediately assured him. He saw the mutinous thrust of her chin.

His chin was bigger, and his scowl had a long history of intimidating potential mutineers before. “The hell you aren’t. You look like the battered loser in a cat fight, and you’re not going to tell me that you aren’t starting to feel those bruises. That bump on your forehead alone has to hurt like a bitch. Now where’s your car?”

She didn’t look even nominally intimidated, but the question effectively distracted her. “About a mile past the main gate. There was a bunch of big old walnut trees that made for a perfect dark place to park. And if I parked that far away, I figured no one would see me when I climbed the fence—”

“I don’t want to hear any more about your breaking-and-entering debacle.” God, she was going to give him gray hair. Until meeting her, he’d considered himself a relatively young thirty-eight. There’d been nothing to turn his hair white but death, destruction, and a few terrorists from his Special Forces days. “Wherever your car is, it sounds too far to walk. Mine’s parked out front, so I’ll just drive you there. Now where’d you leave your wet sweatshirt?”

“In the kitchen.” She glanced down at the black V-neck sweater, and abruptly clutched the neck closed. Heaven knew why. He’d seen her bra, seen her cleavage, seen every inch of her long white throat more than once tonight. Geronimo persisted in responding to her, no matter what repression techniques Gabe tried.

“I’d better put my sweatshirt back on, but where should I put the sweater back?”

“Just keep the sweater. I can’t imagine anyone would know or care if you borrowed it. I’ll get it from you and return it sometime, but putting on a wet sweatshirt on a cold night doesn’t make any sense. Just grab it—and that packsack you carried in with you—so we can go.”

“I think I may have left a light on upstairs. And I have some stuff to clean up in the closet. And I’d better wash out that shot glass—”

There was a reason Gabe always worked alone. His employees were good at teamwork, and often enough his staff paired up for different projects. Not him. He just didn’t like depending on other people. He liked being able to move fast and streamlined.

By the time Rebecca was “done” with all her messing around, he could have finished a slowpoke sucker.

He ushered her outside, turned to lock up the front door, and motioned her toward the long, low antique Morgan.

She wolf-whistled. Almost as good as a man. “What a darling,” she murmured.

“Yeah, she is. ’55. But she was cosseted as a showpiece for most of those years, so she doesn’t have that many miles on her.”

“You can still get parts?”

“Not easily. Parts are not only hard to find, they cost an arm and a leg. Damn few antique dealers even know this breed of car anymore.”

“But you don’t care, do you? She’s worth all the trouble.”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t expected Rebecca to understand. He opened the passenger door and watched her long, slim legs disappear under the long, slim console. The aggravating thought crossed his mind that she was made for the car.

Lack of sleep was obviously the reason he wasn’t thinking clearly. He closed her in, locked her door and hiked around to the other side. The engine purred as soon as he turned the key.

“What a beautiful baby,” she murmured.

Her comment about babies inevitably reminded him of the comment she’d made earlier about sperm banks. He told himself to keep quiet, that it was none of his business…but the comment had nagged at the back of his mind all night.

For a few minutes, he stayed silent. The storm had died, but a fine silver mist was still drizzling down. Grass and trees glistened in the ghostly night as he tooled down the driveway, stopping to unlock the gate with a set of keys. No one seemed to be awake or alive for miles. There were no lights, and no sounds but the rustling trees and the whisper of that diamond-studded mist.

Locating her car was easy; there were no other vehicles on the road. He pulled up behind the cherry red Ciera and glanced at her. She’d raved pretty enthusiastically about his car, and coming from the Fortune family, she could probably have owned a fleet of Morgans if she chose. Instead, she’d picked solid, reliable wheels. A wholesome four-door, yet. A capital F family car—for a lady who made no secret of her desire and love for family—and somehow he just couldn’t let it go.

“You aren’t serious about looking into sperm banks.”

“Sure I am.” While the engine idled, she ducked her head to gather up her things.

“The last I knew, a husband was sort of the usual way to get a baby. Or at least some guy in the direct picture.”

“Usually,” she agreed wryly. “Believe me, I haven’t quit looking. But being a Fortune has a few disadvantages—a lot of guys were more interested in courting the family money than me. And sitting home writing books doesn’t make for meeting a lot of new men, either. It just isn’t that easy to find a white knight—or it hasn’t been for me—and I’ve got a biological clock ticking loud and strong.”

“I’ll bet you have been prey to a lot of fortune hunters…but you’re hardly ancient.”

“Old enough. Thirty-three is a good, healthy age to have a child. And, thankfully, this is the nineties. No one’s going to look sideways if I choose to be a single mom. This is an ideal time for me to have a baby—I’m ready, I’m healthy, I’m financially prepared to be a parent, and I’m dying for a baby. Or six.”

Six? Gabe swallowed hard. “You don’t think sperm banks are a little…drastic?”

“I think marrying the wrong man just because I’m hungry for a family would be ‘drastic.’ I’m sold on true love, cutie, and have absolutely no interest in settling for less. But I also want a family. Children to love and care for. For sure it’d be better if there was a loving dad in the picture, but if that’s not in the cards, there’s no reason I can’t deal from another deck.”

“Have you talked this out with your mama?”

“Kate?” Rebecca’s grin was amused. “You think my mom would talk me out of this?”

Damn straight he did. Sperm banks, for God’s sake!

“Well, I hate to disillusion you, darlin’, but my mom would back me up all the way. She always has. From the day I was born, Kate encouraged me to take my own roads. I know on the surface no one sees us as alike—she’s a hardheaded, practical businesswoman, a high-profile achiever. No accident that she’s the head of a financial empire. I’m not like that, Gabe, never will be. But she pushed me toward writing, pushed me toward living my life on my own terms, my own way, and taught me never to back down from what I wanted and believed in. Believe me, my mom wouldn’t give me any argument over this.”

Somehow Gabe thought otherwise. Somehow he was damn sure Kate would like her youngest married off, preferably to a guy who could keep her impulsive baby safe and under control. Sperm banks didn’t fit in that scenario, no way and nohow.

Rebecca’s gaze roamed his face. Something in the way she probingly studied him aroused an uneasy feeling. “You don’t have a male biological clock ticking of your own? No desire to have a son, a daughter, family to come home to at night? A new generation of Devereax?”

“The past generation of Devereax wasn’t anything worth repeating,” he said shortly. “I don’t have your idealistic view about families. They only read great in storybooks.”

“That’s an awfully cynical view, cutie.”

“Realistic,” he corrected her, and abruptly leaned across her chest to open her car door. The whole personal nature of this conversation was crazy. It was past time to cut it off. “You go home, soak out those aches and bruises, get some sleep. Don’t even think about that letter—I’ll follow through with it. Stay out of it from now on, Rebecca.”

“I’ll be darned. Did you suddenly get elected my boss?”

Four in the morning, and she still had the energy to dish out grief. “Look, you came up with a lead. You did really good. You did more toward helping your brother than a whole team of people have done so far. But that letter also changes things, because it potentially—potentially—puts another suspect in the picture.”

“So?”

“So, if there is another potential suspect, that person is also a potential murderer. And dammit, shorty, that’s nothing to take lightly.”

“Yes, Gabe.”

“Even if this Tammy Diller had nothing to do with Monica’s murder—something was wrong there. She doesn’t sound like anyone you need to be messing with. You stay away from her. You hear me?”

“I sure do, cutie.”

She pushed open the door and climbed out, but for a few moments she poked her head inside the darkened car and just looked at him. She’d been smiling before then. Smiling in a distracting, mischievous way that made him unsure how much she was putting him on and how much she was telling him straight.

But suddenly she wasn’t smiling. This strange, warm, intense look shone from her eyes, making his pulse chug with alarm. For one horrifying moment, he was scared she was going to throw her arms around him again—and for damn sure, it was alarm that was chugging through his pulse, not anticipation.

“I know you don’t believe this,” she murmured, “but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself. Get some sleep yourself, Gabe. And for sure don’t waste your time worrying about me.”

Not worry about her? Gabe watched her sprint toward the red Ciera—she dropped her backpack, picked it up, stubbed her toe when she almost tripped—and then finally made it into her car, which, he noted without surprise, wasn’t locked. She didn’t lock her door. She believed in love and white knights. As far as Gabe could tell, she really believed that right would prevail and nothing could hurt her.

And he wasn’t supposed to worry about her?

Rebecca parked the rented Ford Taurus in the only spare spot she could find in three blocks, then gulped a breath as she peered out the window. It was incredibly warmer in Los Angeles than in the bitter March winds she’d left in Minnesota that morning. But she was really unfamiliar with this part of the city. Late-afternoon sun glinted on the Randolph Street sign. She was on the correct street. There was no way to park any closer to 12970, but she could walk the few blocks.

The neighborhood, though, left a tad to be desired. A cluster of tattooed skinheads were monopolizing one corner. Kids of all ages were hanging out in doorways. Graffiti spray-painted on all walled surfaces offered a free sex education. A man lay sprawled on the sidewalk, either dead or dead drunk; garbage spilled and reeked from rusty containers, and if she wasn’t mistaken, this street was sort of owned by the Tigre gang…judging from the tough young fellas sporting that tag on their bandannas and Ts.

Boy, are you a long way from home, Toto. Gulping hard again, Rebecca stepped out of the car and locked it up tight, thinking that she’d written about scenes like this a zillion times…but never directly experienced one before. Through all the nuisance travel arrangements it took to get here, from the flight to L.A. to getting maps and renting a car, she’d considered that Gabe would probably have an eensy stroke if he knew she was here.

But then, Gabe had no reason to guess that she’d memorized Tammy Diller’s address before giving him the letter…or that she’d be up at first light, putting travel plans in motion.

A hispanic boy—maybe twelve?—whistled when she walked past. He’d make a tempting father, she thought objectively. Not the child. Gabe. It was relatively more comforting to concentrate on Gabe than to have a heart attack over the blank-eyed guy flicking open his switchblade just off to her left.

Gabe was patient, principled, protective. Outstanding father qualities. No fortune hunter—or skinhead—would ever get near his daughter. As far as she could tell, Gabe didn’t give a rat’s tail about money, wasn’t swayed by anyone with it—or without it. He’d teach a son or daughter the right values. She couldn’t imagine him losing his temper. The only thing she’d ever caught annoying him was…well…her.

That kiss had lingered hard in her mind. It had been a lonely kiss. Hungry. Hot. Sexy. She’d always loved the idea of being blown away by a man’s kisses, but it had never happened to her. Of course, the vast majority of her experience had been kissing frogs—fellas with their minds more on her family’s money than on her—or nice guys who seemed to prefer their bathwater tepid. Not hot. Not risky. Not dangerous.

The delicious wickedness of that kiss had nothing to do with his having seriously good father potential…but, unfortunately, his attitude did. He’d never said why he was so antifamily. Actually she didn’t know him well enough that they’d ever had a chance to talk about it. But his feelings had always been clear.

She wondered if he was equally dead set against playing a lover’s role. With her. She wondered whether he’d be as thorough under the sheets as he was with his job. She wondered if he’d feel as hot, and make her feel as delectably, wantonly dangerous—and immoral—as the emotions he’d inspired so damn effortlessly with a few kisses.

She wondered if she’d lost her mind, to be thinking about sex and Gabe when six fellas—all wearing Tigre T-shirts—were walking shoulder-to-shoulder toward her. Even from twenty yards away, she could see the cold eyes, the strutting postures, the attitude. They were staring straight at her. And all the loitering bystanders who’d been milling all over the place seconds ago seemed to be scattering like leaves in the wind.

Possibly wearing a green silk dress and heels was a less-than-practical choice, but she’d had no way to know ahead of time what kind of neighborhood the address would be in. Whoever this Tammy Diller was, the woman knew Monica. Rebecca had never anticipated that any acquaintance of the ostentatious, image-obsessed Monica would be living in this kind of down-and-out neighborhood.

She’d assumed it would be a good idea to dress nice. Now she wished for running shoes instead of three-inch sucker heels. And a bulletproof vest instead of a short, thin dress. The charm bracelet jangled from her wrist, catching the bright L.A. sunlight, and probably the gold at her throat was a bit noticeable, too.

The six guys were closing in. One was definitely looking at her throat. One was definitely looking at her legs. All six of them certainly looked like an impenetrable wall. Throwing up was looming as an option. She wasn’t sure if there were any statistics on whether throwing up discouraged thieves or murderers, but when Rebecca was scared enough, she was an excellent thrower-upper.

The tall one with the spiked black hair said something to one of his cronies. The sly whisper appeared to be about her, and set off a set of chuckles that rippled through the rest of them. Her stomach clenched in rope knots. They were within ten yards of her. Five. Forming a semicircle now, not just a wall.

She swallowed bile. Cocked up her chin, stocked up all the bravado she could muster and met the tall one’s eyes with her best company smile. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “Could you help me?”

Perhaps the lad had never heard the words before. Perhaps none of them had, because all six of them seemed momentarily too startled to look tough. Then the tall, skinny one cocked a leg forward. “You bet I can help you, babe.” His voice was low and rough, making the others laugh again.

If she’d worn her red shoes, maybe she could have tried clicking the heels three times in the hope of landing safely in Kansas. Bravado didn’t seem to be getting her real far, but right then she seemed real short on other choices. “Well, good. That’s just great,” she said heartily. “Would you happen to know a woman named Tammy Diller? She lives in this neighborhood—” ducking her head, she reached for the piece of paper in her purse with the address on it “—at l2970 Randolph. Right up the next block from here?”

“Don’t know no Tammy Diller. But I’d sure like to know you, babe. Real, real well.” A hand covered with snake rings reached out, etched her collar with a long, slow fingertip.

Well, so much for fake courage. She was going to throw up on him, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

Abruptly, though, he dropped his hand. Just as swiftly, the slow, insinuating smile on his face disappeared. He stepped back. Suddenly none of the six were smiling. They all stepped back.

Instinctively Rebecca whipped her head around. And there was Gabe, standing behind her as if he’d appeared out of nowhere. His scowl was darker than a tornado cloud. In fact, he looked mad enough to shred steel with a single glare.