by Nora Roberts
intelligent, charming and everything a man could want in a woman."
But not what her father had wanted, she remembered. In disgust, for herself, she marked the sample down for cloudiness. "I wouldn't worry about it if she'd talk to me. But all she'll say is she and David enjoy each other's company."
"Gee, you think?"
"Oh, shut up!" She nosed her wine, noted down her opinion, then sipping, letting the wine rest inside her lower gum, touched it with the tip of her tongue to register the sweetness first before moving it to the sides, to the rear of her mouth to judge its acidity and tannic content.
She swished it around, allowing the various taste elements to blend, then spat it out.
"It's immature yet."
Tyler tested it himself and found he agreed with her. "We'll let it age a bit. A lot of things become what they're meant to if you leave them alone awhile."
"Is that philosophy I hear?"
"You want an opinion, or just somebody to agree with you?"
"I guess wanting both was expecting too much."
"There you go." He picked up the next glass, held it to the light. But he was looking at Sophia. It was hard not to, he admitted. Not to look, not to wonder. Here they were in a cool, damp cave, a fire snapping, the smells of smoke and wood and earth surrounding them, shadows dipping, dancing.
Some people would have said it was romantic. He was doing his best not to be one of them. Just as he'd been doing his best for some time not to think of her as a person, much less as a woman. She was, he reminded himself, a partner at best. And one he could have done without.
And right now his partner was worried. Maybe he thought she was borrowing trouble, or sticking her pretty nose where it didn't belong, but if he knew absolutely one thing about Sophia, it was that she loved her mother unreservedly.
"His ex-wife dumped him and the kids."
Sophia's gaze lifted from the wine she held, met his. "Dumped?"
"Yeah, decided there was a big old world out there, and she was entitled to it. Couldn't explore it or herself with a couple of kids and a husband hanging on. So she left."
"How do you know this?"
"Maddy talks to me." And he felt guilty for repeating things he'd been told. The kid didn't say much about her home life, but enough to give him a clear view. "She doesn't blab about it or anything, just lets stuff drop now and again. From what I gather, the mother doesn't contact them often, and Cutter's been running the show since she took off. Theo got in a little trouble, and Cutter took the position out here to get him out of the city."
"So he's a good father." She knew all too well what it was to be dumped by a parent. "That doesn't mean he's good for my mother."
"That's for her to decide, isn't it? You look for flaws in every man you see and you're going to find them."
"That's not what I do."
"It's exactly what you do."
"I don't have to look very deep with you." She offered in a sugary voice, "They're all so obvious."
"Lucky for both of us."
"Which is a step up from your pattern. You barely look at all. Easier to keep yourself wrapped up in the vines than risk getting wrapped up in a human being."
"Are we talking about my sex life? I must've missed a step."
"You don't have one."
"Not compared to yours." He set down the glass to make his notes. "Then again, who does? You go through men like a knife through cheese. A long, slow slice, a nibble, discard. You're making a mistake thinking you can set those standards for Pilar."
"I see." Hurt rippled through her. He'd made her sound cheap again. Like her father. Needing to punish him for it, she moved closer. "I haven't gone through you yet, have I, Ty? Haven't even managed the first cut. Is it because you're afraid to try on a woman who's able to think about sex the way a man does?"
"I don't want to try on a woman who thinks about anything the way a man does. I'm narrow-minded that way."
"Why don't you expand your horizons?" She tipped her face up, invited. "Dare you," she teased.
"I'm not interested."
Still testing, she wound her arms around his neck, tightening them when he lifted his arms to pull them away. "Which one of us is bluffing?"
Her eyes were dark, fiery. The scent of her slid around him, into him. She brushed her lips over his, one seductive stroke.
"Why don't you sample me?" she asked softly.
It was a mistake, but it wouldn't be his first. He gripped her hips and ran his hands up her sides.
The scent of her was both ripe and elusive. A deliberate and effective torment for a man.
"Look at me," he ordered, and took the mouth she offered.
Took what and how he wanted. Long, slow, deep. And he let the taste of her slide over his tongue, as he would with a fine wine, then slip almost lazily, certainly pleasurably, into his system.
His lips rubbed over hers, turning her inside out. Somehow he'd flipped it all around on her, and the tempted had become the tempter. Knowing it, she couldn't resist.
There was so much more here than she'd imagined. More than she'd ever been offered, or had accepted.
He watched her, intensely. Even as he toyed with her mouth, sent her head spinning and her body churning, he watched her with all the patience of a cat. That alone was a fresh and shocking thrill.
He ran his hands down her sides again, those wide hands just brushing her breasts. And drew her away.
"You push my buttons, Sophia. I don't like it."
He turned away to take a pull from the bottle of water used to cleanse the palate.
"A vintner's also a scientist." The air felt thick as she drew in a breath. "You've heard of chemical reactions."
He turned, held the bottle out to her. "Yeah. And a good vintner always takes his time, because some chemical reactions leave nothing but a mess."
The little stab disappointed as much as it stung. "Can't you just say you want me?"
"Yeah, I can say it. I want you, enough that it sometimes hurts to breathe when you're too close."
Like now, he thought, when the taste of her was alive inside him.
"But when I get you into bed, you're going to look at me the way you looked at me just now. It's not going to be just another time, just another man. It's going to be me, and you're going to know it."
There was a ripple along her skin. She had to force herself not to rub her hands over her arms to chase it away again. "Why do you make that sound like a threat?"
"Because it is." Moving away from her, he picked up the next glass of wine and went back to work.
Chapter Thirteen
Contents - Prev | Next
Claremont studied the Avano file. He spent a great deal of what he could eke out as spare time studying the data, the evidence, the crime scene and medical examiner reports. He could nearly recite the statements and interviews by rote.
After nearly eight weeks it was considered by most to be a dead end. No viable suspects, no tangible leads, no easy answers.
It stuck in his craw.
He didn't believe in perfect crimes but in missed opportunities.
What was he missing?
"Alex." Maguire stopped by his desk, sat on the corner. She already wore her coat against the misery that was February in San Francisco. Her youngest had a history project due the next day, her husband was fighting off a cold and they were having leftover meat loaf for dinner.
Nobody was going to be happy at her house, but she needed to be there.
"Go home," she told him.
"There's always a loose end," he complained.
"Yeah, but you're not always able to tie it off. Avano stays open, and it looks like it's going to stay that way unless we get lucky and something falls in our laps."
"I don't like luck."
"Yeah, well, I live for it."
"He uses the daughter's apartment for a meet," Claremont began and ignored his partner's long-suffering sigh. "Nobody sees him go in, nobody hears t
he gunshots, nobody sees anyone else go in or out."
"Because it was in the neighborhood of three in the morning. The neighbors were asleep and, used to city noises, didn't hear the pop of a twenty-five-caliber."
"Pissant gun. Woman's gun."
"Excuse me." She patted her own police-issue nine-millimeter.
"Civilian woman's gun," he corrected with what was nearly a smile. "Wine and cheese, late-night meet in an empty apartment. Sneaking out on the wife, apparently. Victim's a guy who liked to cheat on the wife. Smells like a woman. And maybe that's the angle. Maybe it was set to smell like a woman."
"We looked at men, too."
"Maybe we need to look again. The ex-Mrs. Avano, as opposed to the widow Avano, has been seen socializing in the company of one David Cutter."
"That tells me her taste in men has improved."
"She stays legally married to a philandering son of a bitch for nearly thirty years. Why?"
"Look, my husband doesn't run around and I love him like crazy. But sometimes I wonder why I stay legally married to him. She's Catholic," Maguire finished with another sigh, knowing she wasn't getting home anytime soon. "Italian Catholic and practicing. Divorce wouldn't come easy."
"She gave him one when he asked."
"She didn't stand in his way. Different thing."
"Yeah, and as a divorced Catholic she wouldn't be able to remarry, would she? Or snuggle up with another man with the approval of the Church."
"So she kills him to clear the way? Reaching, Alex. On the Catholic sin-o-meter, murder edges out divorce."
"Or somebody does it for her. Cutter's brought in to the company, over Avano. Got to cause some friction. Cutter likes the look of Avano's estranged and soon-to-be-divorced wife."
"We ran Cutter up, down and sideways. He's squeaky."
"Maybe, or maybe he didn't have a good reason to get his hands dirty before. Look, we found out Avano was in financial trouble. Unless the widow's an Oscar-caliber actress, I'd say that came as a big, unpleasant surprise to her. So, going with the theory that Avano was keeping his money problems to himself, and wasn't the type to do without his beluga for long, where would he go for a fix? Not one of his society friends," Claremont continued. "Wouldn't be able to show his face at the next charity ball. He goes to Giambelli, where he's been bailed out periodically for years. To the ex-wife, maybe."
"And following your line, if she agreed, Cutter got steamed over it. If she didn't, and Avano got nasty, Cutter got steamed over it. It's a long way from steamed to putting three bullets in a man."
Still, she considered. It was something to chew on, and there'd been precious little so far. "I guess we're chatting with David Cutter tomorrow."
David juggled the hours of his workday between the San Francisco offices, his home office, the vineyards and the winery. With two teenagers to raise and a demanding job, he often put in fourteen-hour days.
He'd never been happier in his life.
With La Coeur he'd spent most of his time behind a desk. Had occasionally traveled to sit on the other side of someone else's desk. He'd worked in an area that interested him and had earned him respect and a good salary.
And he'd been bored brainless.
The hands-on approach he was not only allowed but expected to use with Giambelli-MacMillan made each day a little adventure. He was dipping his fingers into areas of the wine business that had been only theory or paperwork before.
Distribution, bottling, shipping, marketing. And above all, the grape itself. From vine to table.
And what vines. To be able to see them, stretching, stretching, wrapped in the fogs and mists of the valley. The linear and the insubstantial that mingled light and shadow. And when the frost shimmered on them at dawn, or the cold moonlight drizzled down at midnight, there was magic there.
When he walked through the rows, breathing in the mystery of that damp air, and the wispy arms of the vines surrounded him, it was like living in a painting. One he could, and would, mark with his own brush strokes.
There was a romance in that romance he'd forgotten locked behind steel and glass in New York.
His home life still had bumps. Theo pushed and shoved against the rules on a daily basis. It seemed to David the boy was grounded as often as not.
Like father like son, he often thought. But it wasn't much of a comfort when he was in the middle of the combat zone. He began to wonder why his own father, faced with such a surly, hardheaded, argumentative offspring, hadn't simply locked him in the attic until he'd turned twenty-one.
Maddy wasn't any easier. She appeared to have given up on the nose ring. Now she was campaigning to have her hair streaked. It baffled him constantly how a sensible girl could forever be pining to do weird things to her body.
He had no idea how to get inside the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl. And wasn't entirely sure he wanted to.
But they were settling in. They were making friends. They were finding a rhythm.
He found it odd neither of them had commented on his relationship with Pilar. Normally they teased him mercilessly about his dates. He thought perhaps they assumed it was business. Which was just as well.
He caught himself daydreaming, as he often did when his mind drifted to Pilar. He shook his head, shifted in his chair. This wasn't the time to indulge himself. He had a meeting with department heads in twenty minutes and needed to review his notes.
Because time was short, he wasn't pleased to be interrupted by the police.
"Detectives. What can I do for you?"
"A few minutes of your time," Claremont told him, while Maguire scanned the office and got the lay of the land.
"A few minutes is exactly what I can spare. Have a seat."
Big, cushy leather seats, Maguire noted. In a big, cushy corner office with a kick-ass view of San Francisco through the wide windows. A thoroughbred of offices for a desk jockey, and totally masculine with its biscuit-and-burgundy color scheme and glossy mahogany desk.
She wondered if the office was tailored to suit the man, or vice versa.
"I assume this has to do with Anthony Avano," David began. "Is there any progress in the investigation?"
"The case is still open, Mr. Cutter. How would you describe your relationship with Mr. Avano?"
"We didn't have one, Detective Claremont," David replied matter-of-factly.
"You were both executives for the same company, both worked primarily out of this building."
"Very briefly. I'd been with Giambelli less than two weeks before Avano was killed."
"In a couple of weeks, you'd have formed an impression," Maguire put in. "Had meetings, discussed business."
"You'd think, wouldn't you? But I'd yet to have a meeting with him, and we had only one discussion, which took place at the party the evening before his murder. It was the only time I met him face-to-face, and there really wasn't time to talk much business."
Didn't mention his impression, Claremont noted. But they'd get to that. "Why hadn't you met with him?"
"Scheduling conflicts." The tone was bland.
