Kitabı oku: «My Favorite Husband»

Chapter One

“Oh, no!” In the stillness of the Dallas summer night, Katie Logan’s exclamation carried quite clearly through the open window to where Travis Rider crouched in the overgrown shrubbery. “John, this is terrible. Isn’t there any way you can get the next two days off?”

“I’m sorry, Katie, but you know how strict the hospital is about these schedules. I’d do it for you if I could.”

“I know you would. I just don’t have a clue what to do now. The custody hearing starts tomorrow. I’ve already told the social worker we’re married. How am I ever going to find somebody to be my husband by then?”

In spite of his cynical nature, Travis couldn’t sup press a brief flash of disappointment at those words. Katie Logan was bright, charming and witty, not to mention that she had long, slinky legs, a nicely rounded rear that matched her higher endowments and big blue eyes in the face of an angel. He hadn’t wanted to believe she was completely irresponsible, a total flake, but this conversation destroyed any vestige of doubt.

Holding the directional microphone of his tape re corder as close as possible to the open window, he shifted from his uncomfortable position and eased another couple of inches through the scratchy but concealing foliage. After years of detective work, Travis had developed an almost photographic memory for conversations, but it never hurt to have a backup recording, especially of something as important as this dialogue.

“Katie, I’m sorry,” the would—be husband said. “I was all ready to go when I got the new schedule. My bags are packed and in the car. I tried every way I could to get out of it, but I’m just an intern. I don’t have much say in scheduling.”

“Didn’t you tell them how important this is?”

She sounded devastated. If Travis hadn’t known better, he could almost feel sorry for her. But he did know better. He knew Katie’s type.

“What was I going to tell them? That I had to have the next couple of days off so I could pretend to be your husband? That’d look real good on my record.”

Travis smiled grimly into the darkness. This would be just the evidence his clients needed to insure that Katie didn’t get custody of her eight-year-old nephew. He hadn’t been overly impressed with the Logans when he’d talked to them on the phone, but thank goodness he’d taken the job anyway. Thank goodness he’d kept after Katie until he uncovered the truth. He knew he shouldn’t get personally involved in his work, but in this instance, it was impossible not to.

Katie Logan had no business raising her nephew…no more than his own equally irresponsible mother had raising him. From the age of six, when his parents were divorced, he had gone through five stepfa thers and probably twenty schools across the country. If he could stop that from happening to another child, then his own experience would have been worth it.

Travis realized he was gritting his teeth…and not listening closely to the conversation inside the house. He consciously loosened his jaw and focused on what Katie’s friend was saying.

“It’ll be all right. Just show them the marriage license. It looks like the real thing. How can they doubt you? Besides, you’ve shown your stability with this house and your job, and the caseworker told you her report would be favorable. You have nothing to worry about. You’re a terrific person. I can’t imagine why your parents are trying to do this.”

As Travis scanned the scene inside the house, he realized he could no longer see Katie. She must be there, however, since her friend continued to talk and gesticulate—nervously and nonstop—and Travis was getting every word of it on the tape recorder in his hand as well as the one in his head.

Though the late May night was warm, especially since he was wearing a leather jacket for protection against the bushes, an inexplicable chill darted down his spine, a warning that all wasn’t right. He shook off the sensation. Things couldn’t possibly be any more right.

Before this night was over, he’d have all the evidence the Logans would need to get custody of their grandson. Maybe they weren’t bubbling and effusive, but they’d give the boy a good, stable home. Tomorrow he’d file his report and make plans to testify at the hearing, if necessary. Katie Logan would never be able to ruin her nephew’s childhood the way his mother had ruined his.

While John kept talking as though she were still in the room, Katie took her iron skillet from the top of the stove and crept stealthily out the back door. During the year she’d spent assisting a study group in the Amazon rain forest, she’d learned to listen and ob serve. For the past couple of weeks she’d had the ee rie feeling she was being followed, though until tonight she’d never seen any hard evidence. But now she was pretty sure some pervert was hiding in the shrubbery outside her living room window.

Moving as quietly as possible, she circled around behind the bushes. Her heart rate went up dramatically as she saw the crouching figure. Knowing somebody was out there was one thing; actually seeing that somebody was quite another.

She stood paralyzed, rooted to the spot by shock, not daring to breathe lest the person turn and see her. The cool handle of the skillet suddenly burned her fingers, and she could feel the perspiration making it slippery. This time her impetuosity had gotten her into a real jam. Whatever had possessed her to come outside alone in the first place?

Then she noticed a hand extending from the shrubbery toward the window, a hand holding a gun pointed at John. Adrenaline surged through her, fear and anger releasing her from shock, sending her forward in

a mad rush, her iron skillet swinging wildly.

The prowler turned toward her, eyes widening in surprise, just as her weapon connected with the side of his head. His eyes closed, and with a groan, he crumpled to the ground.

Katie dropped her skillet in horror and sank to the ground beside the prowler.

“Katie!” John called from the window. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“No! Oh, John, I just killed a man! Call an ambulance! Come do CPR!”

She lifted the man’s wrist and felt for a pulse, but all she could feel was her own heart pounding.

The front door slammed, and John ran up beside her.

“He had a gun,” she said. “He was going to shoot you.” Then she groaned more loudly and more painfully than the man had when she’d whacked him. “This isn’t going to look so good at the custody hearing, is it? Being a murderer probably won’t help establish my stability.”

Nathan needed her to look stable. Her nephew was counting on her. If she let him down, he’d have to live with her father. She shivered. No, that was unthinkable. She wouldn’t let him down in spite of this sudden catastrophe. Somehow she’d save him.

John knelt beside the man and pressed his fingers to his neck.. “You didn’t kill him. He’s still very much alive. A good strong heartbeat. Probably works out regularly. Where’d you hit him?”

“On the left side, kind of in front, I think. I don’t know. It happened so fast. I was aiming for the back of his head, and he turned around.”

John pushed the man’s hair off his face, then ran his fingers over the scalp. “I can’t tell for sure in the dark, but I don’t think you did much damage. I can’t feel any bleeding. He should be coming around any minute. You go call the police while I stay here and watch him.”

Katie closed her eyes for a second, daring to take a deep breath of relief. When she’d left home ten years ago, her stated goal in life had been to experience everything at least once, but that everything hadn’t included murder. She started to get up and follow John’s directions, then stopped and knelt back down.

“What’s this?” A small tape recorder lay beside the man. “The pervert was going to record your murder!” She snatched up the machine and stood. A wire with a small cylindrical object on the end dangled from it.

John looked up at her uncertainly. “A murderer with a tape recorder? Katie, I don’t see a gun. Are you sure he had one? Are you sure you didn’t maybe see that microphone?”

Katie reeled up the microphone and studied it closely. “No,” she said quietly, “I guess I’m not sure. In the dark, I could’ve been mistaken. He could’ve been holding this thing. Even so, he had no business prowling around my house and recording our conversation. I’m going to call the police.”

But she didn’t move. The temperature seemed to rise ten degrees. The air pressed heavily against her chest, making it hard to breathe. In the quiet night—far, far away, it seemed, in a world where normal people lived—a dog barked.

“Prowlers don’t usually have tape recorders, do they?” she said after a long moment.

“How would I know? I haven’t had much experience with prowlers. I once took a bullet out of one in ER, but that’s about the extent of my knowledge.”

Katie turned the recorder over, studying it as closely as possible in the faint light from the living room window and from the street lamp. Oddly, in the summer heat the object felt cold. “This thing’s got some kind of a plate on it, maybe a nameplate, but I can’t read what it says. Would a prowler put his name on his equipment?”

“I don’t know. Maybe this guy stole it.”

“Maybe.” There it was again, that niggling feeling she’d been trying to discount for the past week, that sixth sense that things were out of kilter. A horrible suspicion—a fear greater than when she’d thought herself faced with a. man holding a gun—darted around the edges of her thoughts.

Tossing the recorder aside, she once again knelt beside the prone man. “Help me roll him over.”

“Are you nuts?” John protested, leaning back on his heels. “We’ve got to call the police. Knocking him out is one thing, but rolling him around afterward just won’t do.”

“I need to find his wallet. I’ve got to know who he is.”

“What on earth for? Katie, I’ve gone along with a couple of your schemes that sounded pretty crazy, including pretending to be your husband, but I draw the line at this. If you’re not going to call the police, I will, and I’ll leave you alone with this guy who could wake up at any minute.”

John started to stand, but Katie grabbed his arm. “Please. Just this one more favor.”

He sighed, but he grasped the man’s shoulders and heaved. Katie jumped as the man moaned when John eased him up onto his side.

“He’s still out,” John assured her. “Go on. Do whatever demented thing you think you have to do and get this over with before one of your neighbors sees us and thinks we’re all perverts.”

With two fingers, Katie reached inside the hip pocket of the man’s black jeans and tentatively withdrew his wallet. The soft leather was warm from his body, and she felt as though she were touching him intimately. Swallowing hard, she gathered her courage.

She stood and moved closer to the window to take advantage of the light, then opened the wallet. Her heart plummeted as her blackest fears were confirmed. “He’s a private detective,” she said, forcing the words from her suddenly dry throat.

“What!”

“My parents must have hired him to spy on me. I knew it! They’ve been too quiet lately. It’s not like them to stop harassing me all of a sudden. For the past week, I’ve had the feeling that somebody was following me, watching me, and I was right. Damn his sorry, rotten hide!”

She stomped back to where John still knelt beside the man—beside Travis Rider, Private Investigator. Laying the wallet on the ground, she bent over him and steeled herself to touch him again, to reach inside his black leather jacket and search his pockets.

The action stirred the masculine scents of leather and after-shave-pleasant, compelling scents in the midst of an ominous, distasteful situation. A soft

T—shirt stretched over hard, well—developed muscles that threatened to distract her from her quest.

Reaching into an inner jacket pocket, she withdrew a comb, a gold pen and an envelope with a canceled postage stamp in one corner. Even in the near darkness she could make out the bold, stern strokes of her father’s handwriting in the address that covered most of the envelope.

With numb fingers, she opened it and extracted a single sheet of paper, a form with TRAVIS RIDER, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR, in block letters at the top, CONTRACT on the next line and Ralph Logan’s imperious signature at the bottom. The printing in be tween was too small to make out in the dim light, but she didn’t need to know the particulars.

This man was helping her parents get custody of her orphaned nephew. This man would doom Nathan to grow up in the repressed, restricted, nightmarish way she’d had to grow up. She considered kicking him, but wasn’t sure he’d feel it while he was unconscious. Maybe after he woke up.

John retrieved the tape recorder and stood, offering it to her. “Katie, he probably recorded our conversation. He must know what you were planning to do. Do you want to take the tape and destroy it?”

Katie sagged back down with a muttered curse. “It won’t matter. He’s bound to have heard it all.”

She shoved at the man’s shoulder, eliciting another groan, but she didn’t care. Let him groan. Let him feel a small portion of the pain his actions would cause.

“Why’d you have to do it? Maybe I haven’t had the same job or the same address for twenty years, but I love my nephew. That’s more than my parents can say. They’ll crush the life out of him the same way they did Becky and me. Damn you, Travis Rider.” She shoved again. “May your wife run off with your best friend and all your hair fall out.”

“Jeez, I can’t believe you conked the detective who’s out to get you,” John said. “That probably won’t help your case any.”

“Probably not. Though I can’t imagine it could make things any worse.” She sighed, then cursed again. “Well, we can’t give up. I owe it to my sister. I owe it to Nathan. We have to figure a way out of this.”

“Katie, you’re licked. I tried to tell you from the beginning you’d never get away with this. Even if it worked, your parents would get visitation, and they’d find out from Nathan that we weren’t really married, then you’d be in a real mess.”

“I told you, Nathan’s a cool kid. He’d never tell those people anything. Besides, with the hours you work, even if we were married, I’d never see you.”

“Well, it’s a moot point now. You might as well give it up.”

Katie slammed her fists onto her hips. “No way. I will not let Becky’s son be raised by those cold, hard people. Help me get this guy inside the house. Maybe we can talk some sense into him when he comes around. Maybe if he understands the situation, he won’t testify against me. Or maybe we can just tie him up and lock him in the closet until after the hearing. You could come over and throw him a raw egg or a mouse now and then. That’s what snakes eat, isn’t it?”

“If the hospital finds out about this, I’m dead.”

“If this doesn’t work, an innocent child is doomed.”

“Have you been reading Charles Dickens again?”

Katie leaned over, picked up the wallet and stuffed it into her own pocket rather than have to touch the detective again, then lifted his legs. “Get his arms,” she instructed, “and stop worrying. All you’re doing is helping to get this injured man inside where you can examine him in your medical capacity. The rest is en tirely on my shoulders. So quit complaining. Where’s your sense of honor?” She wasn’t sure what type of honor she was challenging him about, but it seemed a good thing to appeal to at the time.

John grabbed Rider’s shoulders and lifted.

Travis Rider was tall and heavy. He wasn’t fat; Katie suspected the weight was almost all muscle. John had said his heartbeat suggested he worked out regularly, and she’d felt his solid chest. If they couldn’t reach him through reason, they had no chance of overpowering him physically. Unless they tied him up before he regained consciousness.

Together she and John dragged him along the rough earth, across the stubbles of grass she hadn’t been able to make grow, over to the front porch, up the steps and into Katie’s living room.

As soon as the screen door slammed behind her, Katie dropped her share of the burden unceremoniously onto the hardwood floor. John flinched as he let the man’s shoulders and head down a little more easily. “I don’t think torturing this guy is a good start toward making him listen to your side of the story.”

Rider lifted a shaky hand to his head and rolled to his side.

“Are you awake?” Katie demanded, arms crossed over her chest as she glared down at the creature on the floor.

John shook his head in consternation as he knelt beside Rider and lifted one eyelid, then the other, then examined his head. When he touched the top left side, Rider flinched and grunted.

“He’s coming around,” John said. “His pupils look okay. I don’t think you did any permanent damage.”

“Too bad,” Katie mumbled.

“You better be glad. I absolutely draw the line at helping you hide bodies.”

Katie heaved a giant sigh. “I know, I know. I’m re lieved I didn’t kill the vermin. I just don’t know what to do now. I’ve tried so hard to fix everything so the judge would see how stable I’ve become—this house, my job at the hospital, even a husband. Sort of a husband anyway. And now this jerk’s going to ruin everything.”

Rider opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. He was a good—looking specimen of vermin, she had to admit, with his chiseled features, too—long, shaggy brown hair and, she now saw, striking hazel eyes. It was too bad Mother Nature had squandered her artistic ability on someone like him.

He blinked, clutched his head and tried to sit up. John took his arm to help him.

“My head hurts,” Rider complained.

“You bad an accident.” Katie sat on the floor be side him, her tone sarcastic. The accident was that she hadn’t killed him.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She looked questioningly at John. He shrugged. “A little confusion isn’t uncommon after a head injury.”

Rider turned to look at John. “Who are you?”

“Do you know your name?” John asked.

Rider frowned. “No,” he said after a moment of thought. “What’s my name? Why can’t I remember?”

“Just relax. Minor trauma to the head. In layman’s terms, your brains are a little scrambled. It’ll all come back soon.”

“Do you know where you are?” Katie asked, drawing his attention to her again. Could she be so lucky that he had forgotten what he was here for? Dared she tempt fate and hope that his memory loss would last until after the hearing?

He looked around, then shook his head slowly. “No. Where am I?”

“Do you know what the date is?” John queried.

Rider drew a hand over his eyes and shook his head. “It’s nineteen ninety something. I’m not sure.”

“Do you know what city you’re in?”

“No! Damn it, what’s going on here? What’s happened? Who are you? Who am I?”

“Who are you?” Katie considered the question, wondering if she had the guts to carry out the daring idea that had just popped into her head.

Yes, she decided. She could and would do whatever had to be done.

She cupped his chin gently in her hand, turned his face toward hers and smiled benignly. “Who are you? Why, you’re my husband.”