Because You Love Me ; Journey to My Heart

by Terra Little

  But not today.

  Today, she thought as she rolled back onto her stomach, plopped the nearest pillow over her head and reached for her body pillow again, not even the steady growl of a nearby lawn mower was strong enough to beat back her fatigue. Determined to get at least a couple of hours of sleep before she had to get up and hit the ground running again, she closed her eyes and imagined that one of the Chippendales was outside, mowing the lawn naked, and that she had a front-row seat for the event.

  In no time at all, she felt herself dozing.

  Chapter 2

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Olivia thought about the question for a second and then nodded at the open MacBook in her lap. “Possibly,” she admitted, thinking probably. Then again, if you considered the fact that she had gone down to the federal courthouse first thing this morning to bail a college friend out of jail and then brought that friend home with her, then definitely was more like it. “But keep your voice down, will you?” She leaned closer to the screen and stage-whispered. “Shannon will be back down any minute now, and she’s already anxious enough without you making her feel unwelcome.”

  The frown on Elise’s face deepened. “Shannon’s not the one I’m worried about here,” she went on, completely ignoring Olivia’s request for quiet. “You were friends with her in college, but how well do you really know her right now? You have no idea what she’s capable of but—hello!—here’s a hint—she was just accused of taking part in a bank robbery! What were you thinking, inviting her to stay there with you, alone?”

  Cringing, Olivia darted a glance at the doorway and wilted in relief when she saw that it was still empty. But that didn’t mean that Elise’s voice wouldn’t carry out into the hallway, or worse, the foyer, where the stairs were. Suddenly the idea to pass the time chatting with her sister while she waited for Shannon to join her for tea in the study was the worst she’d ever had.

  “What was I supposed to do, Elise? Let her sit in a jail cell with seven other women and one community toilet, while the powers-that-be sorted everything out? Besides, her court date is Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, so what’s the harm? It’s actually kind of nice to have some company around here, for a change.”

  “You should have left her in jail, where she could be supervised at all times!” Elise cried.

  “Why? She wasn’t accused of anything, only questioned, which—” she held up a finger for patience when Elise would’ve interrupted “—is standard procedure for any employee who’s present during a robbery. The teller who was also there when it happened was questioned, too, as a matter of fact, so that’s a moot point.”

  “Well then, what is the point? And why in the world does she have a court date if she was cleared?”

  “Apparently she kicked an FBI agent after she claimed that he shoved her from behind. He charged her with misdemeanor assault.”

  “Violent tendencies,” Elise sputtered incredulously. “Oh, well that’s nothing to be concerned about, is it?”

  Olivia giggled. “As usual, you’re overreacting.” She leaned sideways and scooped up a floral-print bone-china teacup and saucer from the end table next to her, bringing the cup to her mouth to blow gently on the steam rising from it. “Relax,” she suggested, sipping carefully. “Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

  “You’re sure?” Elise looked and sounded less than convinced.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t believe you, and don’t think I didn’t catch your little comment before, about having some company for a change, because I did.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes to the ceiling and stifled a sigh. “She’s my friend, Elise. That’s all I meant. She has no family and she’s been through a traumatic event. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, at around eight o’clock this morning, her mug shot went viral. I think there are even a couple of very unflattering memes floating around cyberspace, too. After all that, I figured that Shannon could use a shoulder to cry on right now, and what else are old friends good for?” She sipped again and then hummed with appreciation. Sweetening her freshly steeped orange pekoe tea with a few drops of her homemade apricot-peach marmalade had been a stroke of pure genius. “And you were right, by the way—her mug shot does look worse than Nick Nolte’s.”

  “Don’t make me laugh right now, Olivia. Let’s just hope that’s the only thing I’m right about,” Elise snapped. “Promise me you’ll be safe.”

  “I will,” Olivia promised. “I am.”

  “And you’re sure she’s only staying there for a couple of days?”

  Olivia set down her teacup and saucer and held up three fingers, close together. “Scout’s honor. There’s nothing to worry about, sis. I promise.” She caught a flash of movement in her peripheral vision and looked up at the doorway just as a tall, willowy blonde woman walked through it. To the screen she said, “Shannon just walked in. I’ll call you back.”

  “All right, but...”

  “I will.”

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” They traded air kisses before Olivia ended the call and closed the MacBook. Setting it aside, she unfolded her legs and sat up to pour a second cup of tea from the antique sterling-silver serving tray on the coffee table. “Did you find everything okay?”

  “Yes, I did, thank you.” Freshly scrubbed and dressed in jeans and a tank top that Olivia had borrowed from Elise’s closet, Shannon Bridgeway dropped into a seat at the other end of the sofa and murmured her thanks when Olivia passed her a steaming cup of tea. An uninterrupted nap and a long, hot shower had softened the worry lines around her eyes and mouth, and two helpings of Olivia’s eggplant Parmesan during dinner had put a little color back into her cheeks. “I know I’ve said it a hundred times already, but this house is amazing. I remember you mentioning to me that you’d moved but I had no idea that it was into this place. I feel like I’m staying in a luxury hotel. Your parents gave up all this to move to—where was it, again?”

  “London. Apparently my father was homesick and my mother was ready for a new adventure.”

  “I see,” Shannon said, though it was clear that she didn’t.

  After thirty years of dominating courtrooms around the country, Lance Carrington had announced his plans to retire from his lucrative criminal-law practice and enjoy the fruits of his labor. In addition to the trust fund that he’d inherited as a child, his aggressive courtroom prowess had amassed him a sizable fortune over the years. The house, which had been built and furnished to Yolanda Carrington’s exact specifications, was a tangible reward for his life’s work: phase one of his and his socialite wife’s transition into their golden years. Among the list of lifestyle amenities that the two-story, Colonial-style home offered were a sunroom out back, a music room on the west wing of the second floor and a wine cellar just steps away from the state-of-the-art kitchen. Her father had insisted on crown moldings, hand-laid hardwood and Spanish tile floors throughout; her mother, recessed lighting and an indoor wading pool.

  It had taken months to fully decorate the place, because most of the furniture had been purchased from overseas estate sales, and every piece had been carefully placed for maximum effect. Then, seemingly overnight, her parents had decided to chuck it all and fly off into the sunset, leaving their post-retirement showplace standing empty and their twin daughters baffled.

  Fortunately Olivia had managed to recover quickly from her shock.

  Never one to pass up a golden opportunity, she hadn’t wasted any time taking her parents up on their offer to trade in her South St. Louis County condo for their extravagant West County residence. Elise was a little harder to convince, but once Olivia pointed out that the pros in favor of the idea far outweighed the short list of cons against it, she had eventually come around. For her levelheaded sister, it had all boiled down to simple economics. While it was true that there was more than enou
gh room for them to peacefully coexist under the same roof, what had ultimately sold Elise on the idea of giving up her townhouse in nearby Clayton, Missouri, was the fact that, with Carrington Consulting still in its infancy, living together made working together that much easier. And with a few minor adjustments, it completely eliminated overhead expenses. Put that way, it was a win-win situation for everyone involved.

  Four years ago, neither of them could’ve predicted just how successful Carrington Consulting would be, but in hindsight the move was a self-fulfilling one. Ironically enough both she and Elise had walked away from their respective careers because they’d grown weary of glass ceilings, bureaucracy and red tape, only to stumble their way into the field of professional private investigations, a field that was riddled with the very same bureaucracy and red tape that they despised. But this time around, their perspectives were different—a little more unorthodox—and so were their approaches.

  And so were most of their methods for getting results, Olivia thought as she topped off her tea and stirred in a generous dollop of marmalade. But that was neither here nor there, because Carrington Consulting was operating firmly in the black, with an impressive client list and an enviable success rate, and the house, with its stately exterior and sumptuous interior, was partly responsible for that.

  “Was that Elise’s voice I heard just now? Is she off somewhere, working a case?”

  “I guess you could say that. She’s in Abu Dhabi right now, with her husband. He’s working a case there and she’s assisting, but it’s looking like she may never come home.”

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I’m glad she isn’t here. I heard what she said about not wanting me here, and I know I wouldn’t be here if she were. And honestly I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up when you did. I still can’t believe you did.” Shannon’s face creased with gratitude and a watery smile curved her lips. “Olivia, I can’t begin to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  “Please.” Wanting to avoid a mushy exchange, Olivia flapped a dismissive hand and then focused on stirring her tea for a few seconds, to give Shannon time to compose herself. “Don’t give it another thought. Harriet—that’s the lady you met this morning—and I were starting to run out of things to talk about anyway, so it’s good you’re here to shake things up a little bit. I think we could both use the company, even if it’s only for a day or two. Oh, that reminds me...” She settled back into her corner of the sofa and sat crossed-legged, cradling her cup in her hands and sipping carefully. “While you were napping, I put a trace on your missing cell phone. It’s inside your car, which will be delivered here tomorrow morning. Until then, I’m sure I have a spare around here somewhere that you can borrow, if necessary.”

  Shannon looked as if the weight of the world had just been lifted from her sagging shoulders. “Oh my God, thank you so much.”

  “Yeah, well don’t thank me just yet. It was pretty short notice, with your court date being just two days away, so the attorney that I hired to represent you isn’t all that pleased with either of us right about now. She has a wait list a mile long, but she owed me one, so she’ll be here tomorrow, too, after lunch, so brace yourself. Her name is Sabine Barnes and her reputation for being a bitch more than precedes her. The bad news is that you’re on your own when she gets here, because as it turns out, I have a meeting in Collinsville around that time.”

  Shannon’s blue eyes narrowed suspiciously over the rim of her teacup. “I’m almost afraid to ask what the good news is.”

  “The good news is that Sabine is the best at what she does, so you’re in very good hands. We go way back to grade school, and if anyone can make this mess go away, she can.”

  “I hope so, because if I never hear the term FBI again, it will be too damn soon.”

  Olivia smiled at her friend. “Trust me. By this time Wednesday night, you’ll be home, sleeping in your own bed and the FBI will be a distant memory.” She reached for Shannon’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  It was after eleven when Shannon decided to turn in for the night, but it was closer to 2:00 a.m. when Olivia took off her glasses, shut down her workstation and emerged from behind a false wall in a corner of Elise’s bedroom closet. She sidestepped a rack of coats as the panel secured to the other side of it shifted and clicked into place, and then rearranged a stack of shoeboxes to fully conceal the small touch-ID screen near the edge of the panel, before she left the closet and the bedroom.

  Working in what she and Elise had affectionately termed the war room wasn’t her usual MO, but both of her most recent cases were, at least by Hollywood’s and the media’s fickle standards, highly classified. With Shannon in the house and Harriet not due in for hours yet, she hadn’t wanted to risk even the slightest breach of client confidentiality. Usually reserved for top-secret casework only, the war room was both light and soundproof, outfitted with a highly sophisticated technological desk and absent from any blueprint of the house in existence—all of which was serious overkill in this instance—but given the nature of one case and the severity of the other, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  In her own bedroom, Olivia closed and locked the door and made a beeline for the adjoining bathroom. Stripping along the way, she walked into the shower as soon as she crossed the threshold and switched on the spray full blast. Determined to get at least a few hours of sleep before her alarm clock went off, she soaped herself quickly and then skipped the search for a fresh nightgown and climbed into bed naked. It wasn’t until the moment that her head hit the pillow, her eyelids drifted closed and her cell phone vibrated on the nightstand that she gave a thought to what she might’ve missed throughout the evening hours. Switching her cell phone to Vibrate or—God forbid—Silent to entertain house guests, even after business hours, wasn’t her usual MO, either.

  She pushed her hair out of her face and sat up, reaching for her cell with one hand and her glasses with the other. The glaring new voice-mail notification was the first thing that caught her eye, so she touched a finger to the screen to access the most current message and waited.

  “This message, along with all of the others that I’ve left,” a deep, authoritative voice promptly informed her, “is for Olivia Carrington. Once again, my name is Cooper Talbot, Special Agent in Charge here at the FBI field office in Knoxville, Tennessee. I’m attempting to reach Shannon Bridgeway and I was told that she was released to your custody earlier today. If this is true, then I would appreciate a call back as soon as you get this message.” He paused to release an impatient-sounding breath. “As a matter of fact, even if it isn’t true, I would still appreciate a call back, letting me know that as soon as you get this message. I can be reached at—”

  Having heard enough, she closed the voice-mail app and navigated to the incoming-calls log. Surprised to see that she’d missed a total of five calls over the course of the evening, and all from the same anonymous caller, she reopened the voice-mail app and settled in to listen to each of the resulting messages, starting at the beginning. By the time she was done, she was wide awake, several minutes had passed and her mind was racing.

  It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, she reminded herself as she listened to Cooper Talbot’s callback number once more and committed it to memory. Way past the proper time to return a phone call, no matter how crisp and impatient the caller’s voice had been. To do so now, at this hour, would be beyond inconsiderate, she told herself as she touched the callback button. But then again, she’d been given explicit instructions to call back as soon as she received the message, hadn’t she?

  Settling back underneath the covers with her cell to her ear, she listened to the phone ring on the other end, praying that it was his cell-phone number and that the thing was lying right next to him at this ungodly hour of the morning.

 
“Cooper Talbot,” a deep, gravelly voice barked into the phone a few seconds later. She smiled at the urgency in it. He’d been asleep and the ringing phone had startled him awake. Good.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, Agent Talbot,” Olivia said in her sweetest voice. “But your message said to return your call immediately, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. I just received your message and now I’m returning your call. This is Olivia Carrington, sir. What can I do for you?”

  Chapter 3

  Five hundred miles away, in Knoxville, Tennessee, Cooper Talbot took his cell phone away from his ear and stared at it in disbelief. It was almost three o’clock in the morning and his caller—Olivia Carrington, had she said?—was talking to him as if it were the middle of the day and she wasn’t talking to a special agent in charge with the FBI. Was the woman insane?

  Possibly, he thought as he glanced at the bedside clock, rolled over onto his back in bed and scrubbed a hand across his face. Except for the sheet that was tangled around his hips and legs, he was naked and, up until about thirty seconds ago, he’d been deep into his first night of uninterrupted sleep in months. “I’m sorry, who did you say this was?”

  “Olivia Carrington, sir. You called me five times this evening, leaving a message, ordering me to call you back as soon as possible after each call. You sounded so insistent that I didn’t think it was wise to wait a second longer than necessary to do as I was told.” She chuckled nervously, as if she was fully aware of just how ridiculous her reasoning sounded. “Did I wake you?”

  The question pissed him off, even more than her insolent tone already had. “I think you know damn well that you did. It’s three o’clock in the morning, Miss Carrington, so I think a better question would be, what can I do for you?”

  “In your messages, you said you were looking for Shannon Bridgeway.”