Secretive Stranger

by Jennifer Greene

  Through those quiet calls and work, he watched her with her sister nonstop. How she moved. When she winced. When she smiled. How she was doing, really doing. The caretakers-that’d be him and Cate-completely fell down on the job by nine that night, both crashing in the living room before some stupid chick flick was even halfway over. Cate, of course, hadn’t slept the night before.

  Cord almost forgot. He hadn’t slept, either. And he only caught a couple hours that night, because he was up and at it after a few-hours crash.

  He met Cate, bleary-eyed, at dawn the next morning. It was a meeting of the minds by the coffee machine. “She’s insisting I go home,” Cate told him.

  “I think you’ve been exactly what the doctor ordered. She needed you.”

  “Of course she did. Sometimes a woman needs another woman-especially a sister. But I see her laughing and all. I see she’s okay. Not-” there was Cate’s royal finger wagging at him again, even though it was a wobbly waggle before she’d had her first dose of caffeine “-that I’m any less worried.”

  “I’m worried, too. Hell. I wish I were being targeted instead of her.”

  “I don’t get it all. But someone sure as hell thinks she knows something important about your brother-that you don’t know. That no one else apparently knows. This has to get solved, Cord.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m thinking-I’ll get a flight out Saturday morning. I don’t mind leaving. As long as I can trust you.” Cate handed him his mug, took hers. “Which I do. Sort of. To a point.”

  Cord wanted to laugh. Cate trusted him to the exact point he trusted himself. Sophie needed no more dangerous events. Ever. For the rest of her life.

  Particularly since she hadn’t done a single thing wrong-except for being a damn fine woman with a little too much nonjudgmental kindness and compassion for others.

  Like toward him, for instance.

  They took Cate to the airport on Saturday morning, hit a store for food, headed back to his place. If he hadn’t already trekked into town both days to make sure the damn cat was fed and watered, Sophie would undoubtedly have pushed to return to the brownstone…but Cord knew she was not ready for that yet. Plus, he needed to fill her in on a number of things.

  First, though, while he carried the two grocery sacks from the car, she volunteered to make dinner-but beforehand she wanted to take a long shower, if he didn’t mind.

  He thought the idea was perfect. A shower would refresh her; then they’d have a quiet dinner…and the atmosphere would make serious talk much easier.

  For the first time in days, he found himself whistling. Stupid. Nothing was solved. Everything was still wrong. But as he scooped stuff out of the grocery bag, seeing peppermint ice cream and fresh basil and the whole assortment of foods he’d never have thought to buy…it just felt good. Being alone in a house with her. His house. Just her.

  That rare high mood lasted all of three or four minutes.

  She’d been in the bathroom long enough, so he figured he’d bring her a mug of something. Mulled cider. It was one of the things in the bag-a half gallon of cider, and then this container of what she called mulling herbs. He got it. It was a drink she liked, hot, on a chipper fall afternoon. So he heated it all, stuck a cinnamon stick in the mug, then carted it to the closed bathroom door.

  He could hear the water running full-on. His intention was to open the door, leave the mug on the counter, leave before he let in any chilled air.

  The first part worked out as planned. He barely cracked open the door before fragrant steam billowed out. He reached in and silently set the mug on the counter. Unfortunately, he glanced up. Even through the thick steam, even through the distorted glass of the shower doors, he could see her.

  Instead of standing up, she seemed to be sitting on the shower floor with her knees drawn up.

  Smells scented the air. Something like oranges and vanilla-definitely not scents he used for soaps or shampoo. He thought…well, maybe she was sitting because she was plain old tired. God knew, she’d been through enough in the last two weeks.

  But the water was beating down on her head like rain. The steam kept getting thicker, harder to see, more pervasive. If he hadn’t been spying, hadn’t been right there at that moment, he’d never have heard the choked cry escape from her throat. She so obviously didn’t want to cry.

  Didn’t want him to know she was crying, either.

  She didn’t hear him, didn’t see him, when he pushed off his shoes, closed the door. If he’d had a brain, he’d have peeled off his clothes. But right then, he didn’t have a brain. He felt like two hundred pounds of dumb male instinct.

  Her head jerked up when the shower door opened.

  “I’m okay,” she said immediately. Sophie’s favorite mantra.

  He wasn’t about to argue with her. He wasn’t about to talk at all. He bent down, sat down, pulled her onto him.

  “Cord…” Her voice was strangled, trying to laugh. “You’re getting soaked.”

  He kissed her. Hard. Just the top of her head. Then wrapped her up so tight that it hurt his ribs. Damn shower blinded him. He didn’t care. And she tried to say something else, something funny, but then out it came. Tears like a river. Fears like a storm.

  “I just keep trying to understand. I never did anything to anyone. At least nothing I know of-”

  “You never did anything. Stop thinking that, right now.”

  “But I keep trying to figure this out. Why anyone would hate me. Why anyone would think I’d do something to hurt them, or was a risk to them-”

  “No one hates you. No one could possibly hate you. And no one’s going to hurt you again.”

  “But what did I do?”

  “Nothing, baby.” Hell. He’d have given anything to erase that exhausted, haunted look in her eyes. Roses. Rubies. Rivers. Anything she asked for. All that laughter and chatter with her sister had fooled him completely. He had no idea what it had cost her to bury what was really going on in her heart.

  “I keep thinking about the day Jon was murdered.” When she lifted tear-soaked eyes, he brushed the wet hair from her brow. “Something must have happened, Cord. I mean, something that specific day. There had to be a catalyst, some event, something that provoked the person to kill your brother. If we knew what that was, maybe we could figure out the rest. Look. How about if we find all those people on the CDs, those women, and just give them back the darn things? We could have kind of a mass mailing. From Blackmails ’R Us. Or Ex-Blackmailers Anonymous. Or-”

  Okay. He couldn’t take any more. She was trying to laugh at the same time her eyes were running with tears. She was scared when she should have been angry. Trying to make sense of something that made no sense. And all Cord could think was that she’d been through it before-her life turned upside down by circumstances she had absolutely no power or control over-so the whole mess was extra traumatic for Sophie.

  Only this time, the cause wasn’t a fire.

  This time, the cause was linked to him, and he hated it.

  Kissing her didn’t exactly make him feel better. But it sure as hell diverted her. And if they were both going to sit there in the steaming shower, it struck Cord that this made more sense than he thought. Kissing her. Forever. With the warm water sluicing down, cleansing, soft. Her lips were slippery wet, jewels of water beading on her eyelashes, down her cheeks. Steam cloaked them in privacy.

  She murmured something. A winsome cry, a song of longing.

  His one arm had her nested against him, but the other traced the length of her, from collarbone to breast to abdomen to hip. He wanted to soothe, to reassure. He wanted to take, to own. He wanted to tease, to arouse.

  Hell, he wanted everything. All she was, every way she was. Till kingdom come and then some.

  “Cord…”

  “Nothing’s going to hurt you again. Nothing. Whatever it takes, whatever I have-”

  “Cord…”

  “Hell. Did I hurt you? The bruises on your back
?”

  “Cord. The water’s turning cold. You didn’t notice?”

  Of course he noticed. Or he would have. Eventually. Maybe…

  He flicked off the faucets, grabbed a towel, then two, to wrap around her. Peeling off his sodden clothes took an annoying minute beyond that, and the chill of air should have cooled his jets…but didn’t.

  He carried her into the bedroom, hooked around his waist, taking utmost care not to press against the sore spots on her back, but forgetting a small detail-which was to uncover her head. When he yanked off the towel, her hair was an incredibly silly tangle, but she had a siren’s smile. A Sophie smile. The wrong kind of smile, if she’d been trying to quell his mood.

  His landline rang in the other room.

  Then his cell rang from some coat pocket somewhere. The way things had been, both calls were likely connected to murder and mayhem.

  In other words, nothing important. At least nothing important compared to Sophie.

  “Don’t do it again, okay?” he murmured, as he lowered her onto the mattress, heaping the covers over them both so he could warm her.

  “Do what?”

  “You don’t have to hide things from me, Sophie. Not fear. Not sadness. Everybody hides stuff from the world. It’s how we protect ourselves. But you don’t have to with me, okay? No more crying in showers.”

  “No more crying in showers,” she agreed.

  And then she took him under. He’d thought she was tired. And low. And anxious and depressed and more or less beside herself. But in trying to carefully ease her to the mattress in a way that didn’t aggravate the welts on her back, he somehow miscalculated, because she ended up on top.

  He briefly suspected she’d maneuvered it that way, but of course she hadn’t. His Sophie was buttoned up, tucked up, and especially all closed up when she was traumatized-which she certainly had been. So it had to be accidental that she ended up straddling his hips, spread so far by his width that her posture was beyond provocative. It stole a man’s breath altogether. And then she dipped down, damp hair spraying every which way, and nested kisses on his cheeks, his closed eyes, his whiskery neck, his mouth. Oh, yeah-his mouth.

  She took his tongue faster than a thief, sipped and sucked, then did a wiggle thing with her hips and sank down lower.

  She never learned that move in good-girl school.

  She just didn’t seem to get it. Who was supposed to be comforting whom in this deal? Who was trying to show that possibly falling in love, deeply in love, problematically in love, was happening here? Right now. This exact second. For her. With her.

  Later he remembered scent, sound, taste. He remembered the luring softness in her eyes. He remembered her sucking in a breath when he filled her, slow, deep, owning that silken secret core of her…remembered her opening her eyes and giving him an unexpected smile before starting the ride.

  It was a smile saying “I own you.”

  A smile suggesting she was about to discover things about his body that he’d never known himself.

  She couldn’t have forgotten the trauma or fear of the closet ordeal, or of anything else that had happened over the last few weeks. But it was as if the now, with him, mattered more. As if the two of them together mattered more. As if she turned the switch on the negative, and poured out all the love and heat and energy that was in her…times ten.

  When it was over, he was wasted, stunned by the volatility of the orgasm-and even more by the connection to her. It took a while before he found the energy to open his eyes. When he did, he found her lying there with a sweet, soft smile on her lips.

  Naturally, then, he had to lean up. Give her one warning glance before pouncing. If she thought she could do that to him without retribution, well. They were just going to have to do it all again.

  Chapter 11

  If anyone told Sophie a month before that she’d be eating, naked in bed, giggling like a kid at a carnival, she’d have suggested someone was suffering from delusions-and it wasn’t her.

  But it was her. A giant tray in the center of the bed was chock-full of delicacies that Cate had prepared before her flight home. When they’d finally awakened, they discovered that they’d completely forgotten lunch-and almost dinner. They were trying to make up for it now. First, there was a wedge of brie, with hot marmalade poured over it, to be eaten with crackers. Another plate had fresh, icy shrimp keeping company with a wicked red sauce. Then there was celery, stuffed with crab and cream cheese. On the side table, sitting together, was one wine and one long-necked beer. And one very naked man on the other side of the bed-making a gooey mess out of the crackers and brie mixture, but was it good!

  “Tell me again why we’re having this here, instead of at the table, like civilized people?” she demanded.

  “We both agreed that we were never leaving this room.”

  Until daybreak tomorrow, anyway. Heaven knew, a heap of reality was waiting for them back in D.C.-the unanswered questions of his brother’s murderer, the source of the break-ins, the repercussions of all the blackmail evidence in Jon’s apartment. Sophie still had the welts on her back to remind her that fear and danger were only hours away, still waiting. But they both figured that getting back to Foggy Bottom by Sunday morning was time enough to gear up for the coming trials.

  They still had a few hours. And Sophie needed these last crazy hours with Cord like she’d never needed anything in her life before.

  “You know there’ll be crumbs all over the sheets,” she groaned.

  “Nah. We’ll just toss out this sheet and find another.” He motioned to the containers on the tray that neither had uncovered yet. “How can your sister make all this fabulous stuff and not weigh five million pounds?”

  “She loves to cook, but she never seems to remember to eat. You liked her, didn’t you?”

  “What’s not to like? She’d kill for you. Far as I could tell, that’s about the definition of a perfect sibling.”

  Her eyes softened. “She is. And so is my other sister, Lily. I just wish your brother had been the least bit like my sisters, so you’d know what that kind of love is like.” She added quickly, “Cate said she’d left some kind of French stew for the real dinner, but after these hors d’oeuvres, to be honest, I can’t imagine eating another bite.”

  She looked at him, her handsome lover. Cord was so sleep-deprived at this point that she couldn’t fathom how he could still be awake…much less how he’d…performed as exquisitely as he had. Twice. He loved her, she mused.

  And no, he hadn’t said it, but she didn’t need the words. She’d known the instant he climbed in the shower with her in all his clothes. She’d known from how he’d made love, from how he looked at her, from how he’d opened his heart to her.

  Still, she jumped when she heard the landline ring from the other room. She was relaxed, even happy, but even that innocuous sound of real life hit like a shot of adrenaline. It did the same for Cord. “I’m not answering it. There’s nothing that can’t wait for a few more hours. I guess we should solidify some plans, though.”

  Her blissful mood faded, but of course she didn’t expect that euphoric high to last forever. And they did want to agree on a plan of attack for the days ahead. Although Cord had done several back-and-forths to feed and water Caviar, Sophie was still fretting about the cat being alone. So they agreed that they’d head in really early tomorrow morning-where she’d pack up some clothes, her work, pick up her mail, get rid of old milk and somehow maneuver Caviar into a cage.

  The goal was for her to set up here for a while. Technically, she could do her translating work anywhere, so it was no hardship to hide out at Cord’s. “And something has to break,” he kept saying. “They’ve got more suspects and clues and information than Carter ever had liver pills. One of the leads has got to hit pay dirt.”

  She not only agreed, but being an enthusiastic coward, she was happy to hide out in Cord’s cave. The deep bruises on her back were still swollen and achy. There wasn’t a reas
on on the planet to put herself in harm’s way. She wanted to help, but being victimized by someone who mistakenly thought she was a threat was crazy.

  She heaped more of the soft, warm brie on a cracker. “Did you think about what we discussed before? That the day Jon was murdered, there had to be some kind of trigger for the killer, something unique that happened?”

  “Yeah. And I think you’re absolutely right.” He took a pull on the beer, as comfortable naked as he was fully clothed. “Something had to have happened that day. Something that provoked the person into confronting Jon. God knows, any number of women could have been motivated to kill him. But if we could figure out the trigger on that one day…”

  “The puzzle would come together,” she finished.

  “Sophie, we need to talk about a couple of the women you know. Jan Howell and Penelope Martin.”

  Cord’s head was down; he was still opening tops, finding more stuff Cate had made for them. Something looked a little green; he put the lid back on. Likely it was petrified vegetables. Sophie, though, had gone absolutely dead-still. She couldn’t say why alarm bells suddenly went off in her head. But something was…off. Cord’s tone had changed in an odd way, become too casual, too careful. And he’d brought up the two names out of seemingly nowhere.

  “Sure,” she said. “What about them?”

  Again, it seemed like an innocuous question. But they hadn’t been talking about innocuous things. Sophie felt another whistle of unease. “Well, you know how it is around Foggy Bottom. There are a lot of people living there alone, temporarily-like for political jobs, or for the schools, or for projects with the government or whatever. There just seemed a regular group who grabbed breakfast on Sunday morning at the same bistro. You start to recognize people in the same neighborhood, you know? They made the first moves, I think. Made friends. I wouldn’t say any of them are soul mates or likely to be lifelong friends, but they’ve been good neighbors. Good company.”