Slow Burn

by Jamie Denton

  All of which confused the hell out of him. The time they did have together would end once she no longer needed him. Then what was he supposed to do? Let her go?

  Then ask her to stay.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked suddenly.

  He wrapped a wavy lock of hair around his hand. “Hear what, sweetheart?” he asked cautiously, worried he’d spoken aloud.

  She laid the novel open on her tummy and looked up at him, frowning. “That repetitive, clicking sound. It’s similar to what I heard the other night.”

  On the television screen, shots rang out in the classic good-versus-bad-guy battle. “Maybe it was the movie,” he suggested, breathing a quick sigh of relief that he hadn’t spoken.

  She turned her head to watch the set, her frown deepening. “No,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think so.” She shrugged, picked up the book and went back to reading.

  He went back to admiring the length of her legs and the shape of her calves.

  Not two minutes later, she snapped the book closed and swung her feet to the floor. Frustration lined her gaze. “Dammit. What is that noise?”

  In his line of work, when a patient reported hearing voices or noises that weren’t there, he normally proceeded with a great deal of caution. With Maggie, he’d begun to accept her episodes as typical and not the least bit alarming. “You’re still hearing it?”

  She put the book on the table before turning to look at him again. “It won’t go away and it’s driving me crazy. It’s so familiar, but I just can’t place the sound.”

  With a push of the button on the remote, he turned off the television. “What about now?” he asked, hoping the sound from the movie he hadn’t really been watching was the culprit and not another wacky incident from her unexplainable past.

  She let out a gusty sigh and closed her eyes. After a moment she opened them. “Yes.” Annoyance tinged her voice. “But I can’t figure it out and I can’t shake this feeling that I’m supposed to know what it is.”

  Every memory, every vision that emerged from her mind carried the threat of her leaving that much sooner. As much as the very idea of losing Maggie filled him with dread, he couldn’t ignore the fact he’d promised to help her, even if doing so brought them that much closer to eventually saying goodbye.

  “I have an idea,” he told her, wishing like hell he didn’t feel as if he were signing his own death warrant. “Provided you’re willing to give it a shot.”

  “At this point, I’ll try just about anything.”

  He didn’t doubt she would. “Have you ever heard of word association?”

  She nodded in response. “Why?” she asked. “Do you think it’d help me figure out what the sound is that I keep hearing?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. But only if you’re sure you feel up to it.” The last thing he wanted to do was tax her by adding pressure to what she already put on herself, but he couldn’t stand to see her so miserable and confused.

  “Absolutely.” She scooted to the opposite end of the sofa and rested her back against the thickly padded leather arm. With her legs crossed, she snagged one of the throw pillows and hugged it to her chest. “I’m ready. Especially if it means getting rid of that stupid noise rattling around in my head.”

  “Are you relaxed?” he asked. He was completely turned on, but kept that thought to himself. Now was not the time for another sensual exploration, no matter how tempting.

  His body had other ideas, so he moved into a more comfortable position.

  She closed her eyes and pulled in a few deep breaths. Finally, her lashes fluttered open and she smiled. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  He decided to start with the basics to see where it led them. “Boy.”

  Her lips twitched. “Man.”

  “Woman.”

  A grin filled with enough wicked sensuality to start his pulse pounding spread across her adorable face. “Sex.”

  “Maggie.”

  Her sweet laughter filled the room as she pointedly ignored the warning note in his voice. “You were supposed to say yes.”

  The thought had crossed his mind—and made his body flex in response.

  “Okay, okay.” She tossed the pillow aside, straightened her shoulders and pushed up her shirt-sleeves. “Let’s try again.”

  “Woman.” And what a woman, he thought, unable to keep his eyes off all that bare skin peeking out under the hem of his shirt.

  “Mother,” she countered.

  “Father.”

  A soft gasp escaped her lips and her eyes widened.

  Apprehension filled him. “What is it?” he asked.

  She nibbled her bottom lip. “The first word that popped into my head was thief.” A wealth of caution tinged her voice. “Let’s keep going.”

  The slight frown creasing her brow had him hesitating, but she waved her hands at him in a little shooing motion for him to continue. “Thief,” he said, against his better judgment.

  “Art.”

  “Museum.”

  Her frown deepened. “Blueprints.”

  How she managed to pull blueprints from museum he couldn’t say, but damned if he wasn’t intrigued by her response. “Building plans.”

  “Security system.”

  “Security system?”

  “Uh-huh,” she nodded slowly. “As in, using the building plans to determine the layout of the museum’s security system.”

  He couldn’t deny she’d told him some strange tales recently, but he felt more than a stab of nervousness about where this game was heading. Especially considering the conclusion he’d drawn last night. “We should stop.”

  “Not a chance,” she said emphatically. “I want to know where this is going.”

  He wasn’t exactly sure he agreed. What was it he’d said about Maggie and endless possibilities? He relented in the face of her sheer determination. “It’s your call.” he finally said, but decided to shift the focus to a less-incriminating subject.

  “Animal.”

  She gave him a stern look and folded her arms. “What does animal have to do with security systems?”

  “Not a damned thing,” he told her. “Humor me, okay?”

  She cleared her throat, but eyed him suspiciously. “Fine. Dog.”

  “Cat.”

  Her sharp gasp made him decidedly nervous. “What?”

  “Burglar,” she answered carefully. A blanket of sadness entered her eyes, turning them a pale shade of blue. “Oh, Cale. I think my father is a cat burglar.”

  He tried to laugh it off, but the sound was more strangled than humorous. “Stop kidding around,” he told her, but he had a feeling she was dead serious.

  “I’m not. Think about it for a minute.” She reached for the throw pillow and hugged it to her chest again. “The dreams, the memory I had yesterday. You can’t tell me it doesn’t add up. My father is, or maybe was, a thief.”

  She hesitated, looking away. “And I took the fall for him.”

  “No.” He shot off the sofa and started pacing the room hoping to dispel the edginess he felt. “You can’t believe that.” No matter how much he wished he could discount her theory, even he had to admit, on the surface, it didn’t look good.

  “Why not?” she argued. “The glass wall, me being led away by someone. My father mouthing an apology. I remember feeling afraid for him for being there.”

  “Being where, Maggie?” He stopped pacing and faced her. “Where were you?” he demanded.

  He was sure he already knew the answer. Dammit, he wanted her to deny the nagging suspicion that hadn’t completely left his mind since he’d drawn his own conclusions about the information she’d imparted before he’d gone to work last night.

  “Prison.”

  Memories and emotion flooded Maggie, racing through her mind with such lightning speed she was powerless to catalog them all. Except one that stood head and shoulders above the rest…her worst fears had just been realized.

  Cale stood in the middle of the l
iving room, his hands braced on his hips, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had this time. How could she believe otherwise when the memories swamping her were too vivid to be anything but reality?

  He leveled her with his gaze and she watched in amazement as he wrestled with the truth.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “I’m not buying it. It’s just not possible. Not the Maggie I know.”

  “I wish I could agree with you, but I can’t.”

  He circled the table and dropped onto the leather sofa next to her. “I’ll admit I drew a similar conclusion, but sweetheart, it can’t be true. There isn’t a corrupt bone in that beautiful body of yours.”

  She appreciated his staunch support of her moral fiber, but the truth of the matter wasn’t quite so simple. “I’m definitely a chip off the old cell block, and I learned my trade from the best in the business…renowned jewel thief James LaRue.”

  His mouth fell open as her words registered.

  She knew the feeling.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Back up. Learned your trade?”

  As much as it pained her to do so, she nodded. God help her, she’d wanted to learn the truth, and now she had, she wished her memory had remained forever hidden. “We used to work together. The family business, he used to call it.”

  “And what was your mother? The ring leader?”

  She didn’t appreciate his sarcasm, but she could hardly blame him. After all, she’d just admitted to a life of crime.

  “I don’t think she was around,” she said, overcome by a wealth of sadness she had yet to understand. Had her parents divorced? Or had her mother passed away? The answer eluded her, but that didn’t quell the sense of loss clinging to the fringes of her mind.

  “We’ve been over this ground before, Maggie. You are not a criminal.”

  She opened her mouth to disagree, but he shot her a dark look filled with frustration, effectively stilling the argument hovering on her lips.

  “How did you supposedly end up in prison?” he demanded.

  She traced her finger over the binding of the pillow she held to her chest. “The Arden Collection.”

  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Never heard of it,” he said, the skepticism in his tone obvious.

  “It’s a collection of rare Egyptian jewels the Arden family loaned to…oh, I can’t remember where, but the family allowed the collection to be put on public display. Henri Arden was an archeologist back in the thirties, credited with unearthing the tomb of an Egyptian princess. Only it wasn’t Arden who actually discovered the tomb, but his partner Phillipe Wendell, whom I might add died rather mysteriously.”

  The words flowed from her with such ease, she had no choice but to trust their authenticity. “Legend has it that Arden murdered Wendell and took credit for the find. James LaRue was hired by…” She tapped her fingers on the pillow, struggling to call up a name. “I can’t remember that, either, but I’m pretty sure he’s a grandson or grandnephew of Wendell. Anyway, he hired us to recover the collection and return it to the Wendell family.”

  She attempted to gauge his reaction. He remained remarkably stoic; she wanted to squirm. Silence stretched between them. God, she wished he’d say something.

  He smiled. The man had the audacity to smile at her. Just a little tug of his lips, but a smile nonetheless. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?”

  She didn’t appreciate the condescending tone of his voice one iota. “Of course I do.” Sure, she knew her story sounded absolutely insane. The fact that she couldn’t deny it made her feel perfectly crazy, too. And at least a half dozen cards shy of a full deck. “But it’s all in here.” She tapped her index finger against her temple, half expecting to hear an echo.

  No matter how much she wished otherwise, suddenly it all made perfect sense, especially when she factored in the dream she’d had that afternoon when she’d fallen asleep in Cale’s arms. The sense of not belonging hadn’t been because the blood running through her veins wasn’t blue, or even that she’d been one generation away from white trash in the eyes of the girls at the boarding school. They’d scorned her because she was the daughter of James LaRue.

  Unlike the other memories of her past, the realization she’d gone to boarding school hardly came as a surprise. More like acceptance, she thought, wondering at the difference.

  Cale’s hand settled over her knee, drawing her attention to the warmth against her skin. His expression patient, he asked, “You said you took the fall for your dad. How?”

  She thought for a minute, waiting for the answer to come to her. “He made a mistake,” she said eventually, not one-hundred-percent certain she was right. “I created a diversion so he could get out.”

  “You want me to believe you were busted, sent to prison and now you’re walking around free? At least there’d be a record of your fingerprints.”

  “Yes. Why won’t you believe me?” The fingerprint argument stumped her, too.

  His frown turned ferocious. “Because dammit, I…” The anger in his expression dissipated as quickly as it arose, replaced by tenderness and something else she could only name as fear. “Because I care about you.”

  Caring wasn’t the same as loving, but the tenderness and fear in his eyes said what he could not voice.

  His fingers drew a lazy circle over her knee. “How long ago did this happen?”

  When he touched her like that, her ability for coherent thought tended to evaporate. “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “You can’t be any older than twenty-six, maybe twenty-nine tops. You couldn’t have done more than a couple of years time. I’d bet an attempted robbery of a priceless collection is a serious crime, with a steep sentence.”

  She shrugged and looked away. “Maybe I was paroled.”

  “I doubt it.” He took the pillow from her and clasped her hand tightly in his. “Sweetheart, I see human nature every day, the good and the bad. Not all the lives I save are upstanding citizens. Trust me on this. You don’t have the killer instinct.”

  Lord, she wanted to believe him, but she was afraid to put stock in the twinge of hope the possibility gave her. The details were simply too specific for her to believe otherwise.

  She lifted her gaze to his, awed by the unwavering conviction shining in his eyes. Her heart stuttered behind her ribs as realization slammed into her and shook her—hard. When was the last time someone close to her had believed in her the way Cale apparently did now?

  As with everything else in her life lately, the answer remained out of reach, but she didn’t blame her faulty memory. This time she knew for certain the answer lay deep in her heart.

  She twisted her hand in his to lace their fingers together. “Then why am I having these memories if they aren’t real?” she asked him. “There has to be some truth to them.”

  With a gentle tug on their joined hands, he urged her closer. He pulled her into his arms, and she clung to him and held on tight, accepting his support and his unconditional belief in her. And yes, even the emotion he could not, or would not, name.

  A lump lodged in her throat.

  He pulled back and urged her chin up with the tip of his index finger, giving her no choice but to look into his eyes and see the determination there for herself. “I wish I had an answer for you,” he said gently. “But I will get one. Somehow, I’m going to find a way to prove you’re wrong.”

  Her heart filled with a warmth that ran right past caring and sprinted straight into territory so virgin it nearly took her breath away. She recognized the feeling and welcomed it into her heart. Into that place Cale had taken up residence when she hadn’t been looking because she’d been too busy chasing dreams of a past he refused to believe belonged to her.

  She only wished she had his faith.

  13

  BY THE END of the week, Cale was no closer to fulfilling his promise to Maggie than when he’d made it. Not only had he not been able to disprove her theories, he ha
dn’t come close to proving them, either. So far as he could tell, her theory about the Arden Collection was the legend behind Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of King Tut’s Tomb.

  Maybe she was simply confused, he thought, drumming his fingers on the computer desk. A twisted combination of history and some other factor they’d yet to determine.

  Trinity Station had remained relatively quiet for most of Friday morning, so he took advantage of the opportunity for another trip down the information highway.

  Thanks to the electronic age, he’d found a wealth of facts at his fingertips, but every search he’d conducted thus far had been fruitless. He’d searched the online archives of old newspaper articles from the country’s biggest publications and come up with nothing. No Arden Collection seemed to exist, nor could he find details on a seventy-five-year-old archeological expedition that resulted in the supposedly famed collection, other than what he’d already found on Carter’s dramatic discovery. Surely if there was some truth behind Maggie’s story, even a small amount of information would exist on the subject.

  He ignored the sound of male laughter coming from the kitchen, logged on and started his search. Thirty minutes later, he knew as much about James LaRue as when he’d started. Maggie claimed her father was a renowned jewel thief. If he was so damn well-known, why the hell couldn’t he find an ounce of data on the guy?

  He leaned back in the chair and laced his hands together behind his head.

  My name is Maggie LaRue.

  “Hey, Cale?” Brady called from the kitchen. “You gonna eat or what?”

  “Be there in a minute,” he answered, then leaned forward and started another search. Even though Maggie had told him she’d already tried to confirm her identity online, he decided to cover the same ground.

  Slowly he straightened. The search wouldn’t lead him to solid answers because…