Love by Association

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  What he said made total sense. She didn’t like it, but she knew he was right. “Okay, but we tell the captain, right?” He was their go-to on the assignment.

  When Wayne shook his head one more time, Chantel realized just how deep this assignment had taken her.

  She wasn’t a member of a team right now. Not part of the brotherhood that had become her family. Except for Wayne, she was completely and totally on her own.

  With no one to run to. And no one who had her back.

  She had to call Max. Just in case.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS SOON AS his flight landed, when everyone around him was turning on cell phones, texting and calling their people, Colin thought about calling Chantel. He didn’t, of course. They weren’t at the text-as-soon-as-you-land point in their relationship. He’d never been at that point in a relationship.

  But he was thinking about it now.

  His plan was to call her on the way home. And then he’d text Julie. His sister would be in LA, having lunch with a couple people on the Sunshine committee—hoping to get their support for her child-life specialist project at the Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital—but she always wanted to know when he was back in town, which she defined as back in Santa Raquel.

  He didn’t call Chantel on the way home. He returned a couple of business calls, texted his sister as soon as he was in the house. And then took a shower.

  Twenty minutes later he was back out the door. She worked all day, she’d said. On her book, in her hotel room. But she had to break to eat, didn’t she? Maybe, if he got lucky, she’d be ready for a late lunch. If she’d already eaten, at least he could say hello. Apologize, again, for his abrupt departure the other night.

  Who was he kidding? He wanted to look her in the eye and get the feeling he got every single time she looked back.

  Pulling into the resort, he left his car with the valet and went straight for the front desk. He wouldn’t take up much of her time. Hell, he didn’t have but a few minutes to give. Just enough to solidify another date.

  Another chance to be alone with her.

  She hadn’t answered his text. If she wasn’t interested in pursuing time with him, he’d know the minute he saw her and leave her in peace—of that he was certain. He was enchanted by her. He wasn’t a stalker.

  Rejection would be a new experience for him. Maybe one that he needed and should have had long ago.

  Lord knew he was acting like a lovesick schoolboy. The whole thing would be humiliating except that for some god-awful reason she meant something to him. Enough that he was willing to face whatever came next.

  “Can I help you, sir?” The black-suited gentleman behind the counter spoke in a way that instilled confidence.

  “I’m here to see Chantel Johnson,” he said. “She doesn’t know I’m coming, and I was hoping you could ring her room for me.”

  He could have called her cell phone, but the man behind the desk didn’t know that.

  This was probably a bad idea. One of his worst. He should have just called, had a casual conversation, then determined from there if she had any interest in furthering their association.

  At least he hadn’t come bearing flowers. Or chocolate...

  “I’m sorry, sir, we have no Chantel Johnson staying here.”

  On a good day, Colin didn’t have a lot of patience with inefficiency. With very little sleep and suffering from jet lag besides, he wasn’t on a good day. “Could you check again, please? I know she’s staying here. For an extended period,” he said, keeping his tone even. “I dropped her off here myself on Saturday night. Walked her in and watched her get on the elevator.” He spelled Chantel’s name. Just as he’d seen it on the email Leslie had sent out to the library committee. Leslie had been formally introducing her before the lunch on Saturday.

  He waited, glancing over the counter to the keyboard to see that the man typed the name correctly.

  He did.

  Good. Any minute now...

  “I’m sorry.” The man shook his head. “We have no one registered under that name. I can call a manager for you if you’d like.”

  Colin shook his head. He wasn’t going to cause a scene. He’d just call her cell. “That’s not necessary, thank you,” he said, turning to leave.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he heard as he retreated, head held high. Until that point, he’d figured he’d left some dignity intact.

  But no. It was pretty obvious that the front desk clerk at a hotel he could probably afford to purchase had just pitied him.

  * * *

  CHANTEL AND HER current partner, Daniel Lewis, a gray-haired twenty-year veteran, didn’t have a lot in common. They rode well together because they didn’t get into each other’s personal shit. Daniel, who’d acquired somewhat of a paunch, was the type of guy who went by the book, did his job well, but didn’t do anything he didn’t have to do. If the call didn’t come to him, he didn’t take it.

  When it did, he was rock solid.

  She could learn a thing or two from him, Wayne had said. Both good and bad. Monday’s shift—a four-to-midnight crossover—was more good than bad. They’d had a domestic-violence call that turned out to be a vindictive girlfriend who’d tried to get her man in trouble and had confessed to the childishness three minutes after Daniel had sat down with her in her living room. He’d been taking her report, had shown compassion and, after looking at the clean apartment, the worried-looking boyfriend and the girl’s unmarked skin, had gently explained to her how she could ruin someone’s life if she made reports that were untrue.

  This opened the door for Chantel to make clear to her that when she cried wolf, she made it more difficult for true victims to get the help they deserved, as people were less likely to believe them.

  As they were leaving, Daniel, in an aside to the boyfriend, suggested that he might want to move on down the road.

  They went from there to a bar fight, which resulted in an arrest that took far longer than it should have, as they had to wait for an interpreter.

  They shooed a couple of hookers out of a hotel lobby where two thousand people were gathered for a pharmaceutical convention.

  All in all, not a bad night. Until she was standing in front of her locker, freshly off shift, getting ready to change back into her jeans and head home. She’d left Chantel Johnson’s cell phone in her locker. And had reached for it first thing.

  She’d missed three calls. All from Colin Fairbanks.

  He’d left three messages. The first one concerned. The second one worried. And the third one...final. Unless she got back to him. He didn’t know what game she was playing, but since she wasn’t returning his calls and he now knew she wasn’t staying at the hotel she’d said she was at, the hotel he’d dropped her at on three different occasions, he was not going to call again. Before he hung up, he wished her well.

  Chantel changed in thirty seconds flat, hurried out to her car and called Wayne.

  Half an hour later, she was dialing Colin Fairbanks. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?” He’d clearly been asleep. Perhaps she should have waited. But...

  “Colin, it’s Chantel. I’m sorry to be calling so late, but I just got your messages and I feel awful. I know you’ve got meetings in the morning, but I couldn’t leave things. You said you were done, and I don’t want that. And...”

  “Chantel?” His voice grew in stature and she knew she had his full attention. Pictured him sitting up in bed.

  Then she closed her eyes as a vision of him sleeping naked sprang to mind. She’d yet to leave the precinct parking lot.

  “Yes. Listen, I won’t keep you. I just wanted you to know I’ve been out doing research today. My heroine runs a whale-watching business, and I’d been invited by a local company to shadow their resident expert oce
anographer.”

  She named the company Wayne had told her to name: a small, two-boat, six-employee venture. His sister, Ann, owned it. Chantel was going to be spending two hours with her early the next morning.

  “You were out on a whale boat?”

  “Yes. And then spent the evening over a lovely fresh crab dinner, asking Ann, my heroine’s counterpart, questions and talking about her life. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had no idea how late it had gotten.”

  That explained her absence. Her lack of phone contact.

  Now for the rest of it.

  “I’m at the Landau Resort.” A room had just been arranged, courtesy of the resort management, and would most likely be comped, as it was for official police business—details to be ironed out in the morning. Her budget wouldn’t cover one night at the place. But Wayne knew the night manager. The guy owed him a favor. “I’d asked that the information not be given out,” she said now, knowing she had to pull this off. “Not under any circumstances,” she added. “A request from my father, and because it wasn’t unreasonable or a huge inconvenience, I granted his request. You never know, in our position, who might try to find you and with my family being so far away...”

  “You’re at the Landau right now?”

  Oh, hell. The way her luck was going with him, he’d be in the lobby bar, not home in bed like she was imagining.

  A bar would be much better for her equilibrium than home in bed.

  And she could always say she’d showered after her day on the ocean and wasn’t up to seeing anyone that night. “Yes, I’m here now. Room 12334.”

  “So I can call the resort, ask for your room number and you’ll answer.”

  Shit.

  “You don’t trust me, Colin?” She put the same amount of disdain in her tone as she’d heard a woman do in a documentary she’d watched. “I just gave you my room number. Pick me up here tomorrow at noon. We can have lunch at the Beach Café. It’s down by the water and really quite nice.”

  She’d taken a tour of the resort before going undercover. When Wayne had named his contact and suggested that they use the hotel as her cover’s residence—as the place she’d use as Johnson’s drop-off and pickup location.

  “I know the place,” he said. “And you’re right. It’s quite lovely. Tomorrow at noon?”

  “If that works for you. Or any other time that’s better. If you want to, that is. If not, that’s fine, too. I just...” She’d pack some of her Chantel Johnson stuff in the morning. Arrange it around the room as Wayne had instructed.

  “No. Noon’s fine. I’ll see you then.” Warmth had returned to his tone.

  “Room 12334.”

  “I’ve got it. And, Chantel...”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you called.”

  She was glad, too. And drove home through the quiet Santa Raquel streets looking forward to a good night’s sleep.

  * * *

  COLIN WAS TEMPTED to call the resort and ask for her room. Just to wish her good-night a second time.

  Just to hear her answer the phone.

  To check up on her story.

  Which was unacceptable. He wasn’t going to be that kind of man. That kind of person.

  Don’t you trust me, Colin?

  At work, it was his job to doubt everyone and everything, to check up on every possibility, to prepare for the worst in order to protect his clients.

  At work, sometimes being lied to was a part of life, depending on the case. Defendants weren’t fond of admitting wrongdoing. Deny. Deny. Deny. That was the moniker at work.

  Where Julie was concerned, he’d stop at nothing to protect her, only trusting as a last resort.

  But in pursuit of an attractive woman? He couldn’t give in to the temptation to prove to himself that she was trustworthy. Not at every turn.

  She’d issued a very direct challenge to him— Don’t you trust me? Mostly, he did. Which was extremely out of character.

  But it was worth the discomfort of forcing himself to follow through on that trust with action. He’d see her in her room the next day at noon.

  Until then, if he needed to reach her, he’d call her cell.

  Like any well-adjusted, sane man would do.

  For now, for a few hours, he’d allow himself to wallow in the pleasure of knowing that she’d called him back.

  That she’d wanted to see him, again, too.

  He wasn’t on this crazy ride alone.

  * * *

  LUNCH ON TUESDAY couldn’t have been better. Well, maybe it would have been if she hadn’t been undercover and could have actually enjoyed the ambience and the food. And the company.

  Chantel checked herself. Ambience? Not a Harris word.

  What could have been tempting danger—opening her hotel room door to Colin Fairbanks—had turned out to be innocuous. He’d called up to her room from the lobby, and she’d answered. Proof that she did, indeed, have a room.

  From there, the lobby, they walked to the café, chatting about the grounds. Over menus they talked about his trip to Japan.

  He never touched her. Nor did she touch him. Gone was the intimacy of his hand on her leg at the library, the near-kiss over dinner.

  Maybe he was touching her more intimately with his focused attention, with the look in his eyes, but she chose to brush that thought aside. Her inner critic trying to sabotage her ability to get the job done. She’d have none of it.

  By the time her chicken Caesar salad arrived—she was lusting after the open-faced meat-loaf sandwich that had been delivered to the table next to them—she was firmly at work.

  She had the name of the arresting officer from the night of Julie’s rape. She’d told Colin she’d called the Santa Raquel Police Department, looking for some information pertaining to the case in her book. She’d been invited to visit the local precinct house. And wondered if the rogue cop was still there. Colin didn’t know. But had told her the guy’s name as he advised her to steer completely clear of him.

  He didn’t want anyone associated with him and Julie to have contact with the guy.

  She’d played on his protective instincts, and the play had paid off.

  The emergency room doctor’s name was still a mystery to her. She’d been afraid to press her luck with another lie in such a short period of time.

  On her way in to hook up with Daniel an hour later, she stopped off at Wayne’s desk, giving him the name of the police officer who’d met Colin and Julie at the emergency room the night of her rape. She also had to admit to Wayne that the details of the rape, and the perp, were still unknown to her. She was going to have to get those straight from Julie, whom Colin hadn’t seen since they’d dropped her off together after lunch on Saturday. With his trip to Japan, and then her being in LA until dinnertime on Monday and him having a dinner with clients, they’d conversed only through texts.

  Apparently, she’d missed their usual breakfast together on Tuesday morning. Colin hadn’t been sure why. And had seemed a bit bothered by the lapse.

  Chantel made a mental note to try to call the woman—from Johnson’s phone—if she had a break during her shift. She was going to keep the cell on her at all times in the future, to avoid another mishap like they’d narrowly escaped the day before.

  While they could always come up with reasons why she wasn’t available at a given time, and would if they had to, the best way to keep anyone from getting suspicious, Wayne had said, was to be easily accessible.

  She and Daniel made a stop for a man driving with illegal plates on Tuesday afternoon and answered a call to a local dealership with a broken security gate and missing brand-new Mustang convertible—which they found, while out canvassing the area, nose down in a ditch a few miles away. There were no bodies in the car, no arrests to make, so t
hey left the scene to the detectives, to see about a report of indecent exposure on the beach. She and Daniel were just pulling into the precinct house, a naked perp wrapped in a blanket in their backseat, when Johnson’s cell phone rang.

  Leaving Daniel to get the perp dressed and turned over to the jail, she took the call outside in the parking lot. Colin wanted to meet for breakfast.

  And her heart leaped. Because he had breakfast with Julie every morning and she needed a chance to speak with his sister without library committee members present.

  She accepted his invitation eagerly, and asked, “Will Julie be with you?”

  “No.”

  Of course not. He was attempting to date her.

  As aggressively as she was trying not to fall under his spell.

  A small snag in her plan. An added challenge to the assignment. Not a road block.

  “I just... You said you two have breakfast together every morning and she missed this morning, and I don’t want to impinge on that time. I understand how important it is.” She slowed herself to a more refined Johnson level. “I liked her, Colin. I just want you to know that I don’t mind...if she joins us.”

  “Thank you.” He gave her that intimate tone again. The one that slid through her ear and down to her toes. “But Julie’s otherwise engaged in the morning.”

  “Again?”

  “Apparently.”

  She frowned, leaning against the brick wall of the building, enjoying the cool night air. She watched as another cruiser pulled in, and Dave Butts, an officer she’d worked with a few times, pulled a purple-haired teenager with a tattoo down his neck out of the backseat.

  “You still haven’t seen her?”

  “No. Which isn’t all that unusual, except for breakfast. When she’s working, she locks herself in her room and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “She has to eat.”

  “She has a refrigerator in her studio and a hot plate—not that I’ve ever known her to use it for anything but making tea.”