You Must Remember This

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Romeo? Romeo? Oh, no. Uh-uh. I’m not having a dog, and I’m certainly not having a dog named Romeo. For heaven’s sake, I get enough jokes as it is. Do you think I want my neighbors to see me outside with that mutt and say, ‘Oh, there’s Romeo and Juliet’?” She came through the door, stopped abruptly and scowled at the dog stretched out on her bed with his head on a pillow. “Oh, please… He’s on my bed, and he smells.”

  “Of course he smells. He’s been on the road a long time. I’ll give him a bath.” Eventually. When the dog trusted him enough to actually let him touch him. Maybe in a month or so.

  “He’s probably not housebroken.”

  “I’ll do that, too.”

  “I bet he has fleas.”

  “I’ll take him to the vet and get those flea pills.”

  “I work all day.”

  “He’ll sleep all day once he has a safe place and doesn’t have to be constantly scrounging for food. He’s half-starved, Juliet. You can’t put him out.”

  “If I did, you would take care of him.” She heaved a sigh, and a little of her dismay slipped away. “He can’t sleep in my bed.”

  He certainly couldn’t, because if luck ever turned his way, Martin intended to claim half of that bed for himself. “Just give him a bed of his own and tell him no when he gets on yours. He’ll learn.”

  “And what would I feed this creature?”

  “Dog food—though he’s partial to green beans and club subs.”

  “He’ll probably dig up my flowers.”

  “You haven’t planted any yet. He’ll learn to leave them alone. Come on.” Claiming her hand, he pulled her to the side of the bed. “Hold your hand like this—” moving behind her, he folded her fingers “—and hold out your hand. Romeo, meet your new—”

  “Not Romeo.”

  “Okay.” He moved a step closer, inched her hand a bit farther. “Not-Romeo, meet your new mother—”

  “Owner.”

  “Juliet. She may be a little prickly at first, but you’ll warm up to her. Trust me.” He certainly had. In fact, right now, with her body pressing against his, he was damn near steaming.

  The dog lifted his head from the pillow, sniffed, then licked her hand.

  “Hey, he likes you.”

  The look on her face was closer to disgust than delight. “And that’s how he shows it? With his tongue?”

  “Darlin’, people have been expressing affection with their tongues since the beginning of time.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Oh, right. Any kiss that’s worthy of the name…” He turned her so she was facing him, so that she was close enough for some serious dancing. For some serious loving. “Like this…” He raised her hand to his mouth, touched his tongue to her palm and felt her shiver. “And this…” Brushing her hair back, he traced the shape of her ear. “And this…”

  Her mouth opened to his as if they had kissed a thousand times before. After a moment, she slid her arms around his neck and swayed naturally, subconsciously, against him as he stroked her tongue with his. He remembered this kind of kissing, as if it were an ingrained part of him, but not this kind of pleasure. Sure as hell not this kind of need. One kiss, one sweet little unending kiss, and he was hard and hot and all too aware of the bed only a few feet away. All he had to do was move her a step or two, lower her to the mattress, get that dress off of her and—The mattress dipped under their weight, and the dog growled a long, low threat. Startled, Juliet pulled away. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth soft and well kissed, and she looked as guilty as any schoolgirl caught in the middle of something naughty. She was so damned innocent…and he found that so damned erotic.

  She got to her feet and would have fled to the door if he hadn’t grabbed her hand. She kept her back to him, her head bowed. “I—I’m sorry. I—I don’t normally do this….”

  “You don’t normally kiss men in your bedroom? I’m glad.”

  “I didn’t mean to— You don’t have to— I’ll still help you—”

  “Juliet.” He gently turned her to face him again and ducked his head to peer up into her downturned face. “I kissed you, darlin’, and I did it because I’ve been wanting to ever since the first time I saw you. I did it because you’re a beautiful woman and you’re sweet and you have a voice to make a man ache and I like your bare feet and your dresses and your blushes. It’s got nothing to do with your help. I did it because I wanted to. Hell, I did it because I wanted you. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  Silently she shook her head.

  He gave his most endearing grin. “Consider yourself warned.”

  Chapter Six

  Juliet now knew more about Martin Smith than she had an hour ago—that he had a soft spot for helpless creatures. That he was far and away the best kisser she’d ever had the luck to know. That he made her want more than ever to be a brave, wicked temptress. And that he was certifiably insane.

  He was the best-looking man in town, probably in the entire state. He could have anyone, but he wanted her. Even if he hadn’t told her so straight out—it still made her shiver that he had—she would have known. Heavens, she’d been pressed against his body from chest to thigh. She had felt every bit how much he’d wanted.

  Maybe it was a gratitude thing. Maybe he’d been celibate since his accident and was looking for someone whose expectations wouldn’t be so high, who wouldn’t know if he was less than fantastic. Maybe—

  “I think he needs to go out.”

  Shaken out of her thoughts, Juliet turned to see the dog pacing the kitchen.

  “Let’s go out with him—give him plenty of time to take care of business so you don’t have any messes to clean in the morning.”

  She dried her hands, left the sink full of dishes from their dinner and followed them outside. The dog immediately raced away while Martin walked to the edge of the light that spilled through the doorway. “He needs a name.”

  “I know. I was trying to think of something dignified,” she lied. Better than admitting that she’d been trying to figure out exactly what it was Martin wanted from her and why.

  “Oh, yeah, he’s a dignified sort of guy. He’s peeing on everything in sight, but he’s dignified.”

  She pretended to ignore his teasing, but it made her feel warm inside. In her experience, men didn’t usually tease with her. They teased about her. There was a lovely difference. “What is he besides mutt?”

  “He’s not mutt at all. I think he’s half hound, half Lab.”

  “Lab. That’s a retriever, isn’t it?”

  He grinned. “You really don’t know much about dogs, do you?”

  “I told you, I’ve never had one. But I’ll find out. There must be a site for Labs.”

  He shook his head. “You know, the Internet isn’t the answer to all of life’s questions.”

  “No, but it’s close. It entertains me, educates me, informs me, amuses me—”

  “It can’t arouse you.”

  She gave him a smug look. “Obviously, you haven’t been to the places I have.”

  He moved into the shadows, shifting into a faceless form and a throaty, aroused and arousing voice, drifting out of the darkness to wrap around her. “It can’t hold you or kiss you. It can’t make you weak. It can’t turn your blood to fire. It can’t make you want and need so desperately that you beg for release, and it can’t give you that release. It can’t satisfy you, Juliet.” But I can.

  Those last words were soft, a whisper, maybe a wish of her own creating. He was all too right. The Net could do wonderful things, but it couldn’t replace a man in her life. It couldn’t satisfy her. But he could. If he wanted. If she trusted him enough to believe.

  The dog came toward them, nose to the ground, stopping periodically to bend one front leg. “He’s tracking,” Martin commented.

  So are you, she wanted to reply. The only difference between her and the rabbit or squirrel whose trail had caught the dog’s attention was that she wanted to get caught.


  She just didn’t want to lose.

  “How about Hunter?”

  She glanced at him. “Hunter who?”

  “The dog. Labs and hounds are both hunting dogs. Why not name him Hunter?”

  “I can live with that. I’m just not sure I can live with him.”

  “If you can’t, I’ll take him. I’ll find him a home.”

  She’d been teasing, she realized. The dog was the first gift, such as it was, she’d ever received from a man not related to her, and she would learn to appreciate him. Besides, he was kind of cute—or would be once his skin no longer drooped from his bones and that awful smell no longer emanated from his coat. He had soulful eyes, a tail that curled like a big question mark and the biggest feet she’d ever seen on an animal. He might prove good company on lonely nights.

  “We’ll see,” she said quietly. But there really wasn’t anything to see. Hunter the Lab hound had found himself a home.

  Once they were settled in the dining room, with the dishes done and stinky Hunter curled in a corner, Martin brought up business for the first time. “The preacher is going to put us in touch with some of the older church members. It’s a long shot, but maybe we can find out something about my past visit to Grand Springs.”

  She nodded. The better she got to know him—the more she came to care for him—the less thrilled she was with solving the mystery of his identity. The mystery of who killed Olivia Stuart, though, still held her interest. “I ran the rest of the phone numbers on Olivia’s bills. They mostly belong to relatives. Some Stuarts, some Davises—her maiden name—and Eve. I’ve gone through the last three years of her credit card statements, and there’s nothing unusual there. She paid off the high-interest ones every month, ran a balance on the low-interest ones and never used her gas cards anywhere but Grand Springs and on occasional trips to Denver.”

  “When did you do all this?”

  “Yesterday.” Saturday evening, soon after he’d given her that lazy, wicked grin and that lazy, wicked assurance—I can think of a lot better games to play, darlin’, especially with you as my playmate—he had gone home, and he hadn’t come back Sunday. She had waited all morning, then spent the afternoon encouraging herself to go somewhere—to lunch, shopping, for a drive up the mountain. But she hadn’t gone, and he hadn’t come, and by bedtime she’d told herself that she was glad he hadn’t. She’d gotten a good bit of work done. She’d answered the E-mails that had gone ignored all week and spent more time on the Net in one day than she had in the preceding five. It was the way she’d spent every Sunday in the three years since her mother’s death. It was normal, routine, comfortable. She’d told herself that she was grateful for the respite, that she appreciated the hours alone with the computer.

  She had lied to herself.

  “You know, it’s perfectly permissible to take a day off and do nothing.”

  Was nothing what he’d done? Had he slept in late, kicked back and watched baseball and movies all day, or had he gone out with friends—a female friend, in particular? She was jealous enough to care, but she would never ask. She would never admit that, while he was enjoying his day away from her, she had sat here missing him.

  “I also sorted the correspondence.” She picked up a box from the floor that held rubber-banded stacks of letters and handed the batch on top to him. “Look what I found.”

  The envelopes were mostly the larger envelopes of greeting cards, and each one was addressed in Olivia’s graceful penmanship to her older son. The oldest was yellowed and wrinkled, the newest clean and white.

  “There are thirty-one of them. My guess is birthday cards, mostly, and some letters. The flaps aren’t sealed, just tucked in. You can open them if you want.”

  He flipped through the stack, then, with a shake of his head, handed them back. She hadn’t read them, either. A mother’s letters to the son she had failed, then lost, were much too personal for a stranger to read. Olivia had poured her heart and soul into every word contained in those envelopes, and if Roy Jr. ever came home, if he was alive to come home, he deserved to know that he was the first—and, if he wanted, the only—person to read them.

  “You’ve been a busy little thing, haven’t you? If I’d known you were going to work all day, I would have been over here as soon as the sun was up to drag you out of the house and away from the computer.”

  Nice idea, but the fact was, he hadn’t come over or called. He hadn’t shown any interest in spending the day with her.

  But he’d made it clear this evening that he was interested in spending the night with her. All she needed was the nerve to say yes.

  One more kiss like that one in the bedroom, and she wouldn’t have to say a word. When she stripped off both his clothes and her own, he would get the idea.

  “So what do you want to do now?”

  His question was innocent. The response that popped into her head wasn’t, and it made her blush. She had to clear her throat to speak. “Someone needs to read her letters.”

  “Not me. I’ve got bank statements to finish.”

  “I feel like such a snoop.”

  “That’s what police work is about. Cops are nosy. They want to know everything about everyone.”

  “Stone says he’s blessed with inordinate curiosity.”

  “Or cursed, depending on your point of view.”

  Average citizens like her were blessed that people like Stone were out there. She could see, though, how people on the wrong side of the law might consider it a curse. There was no doubt which side Martin was on now, and she didn’t care which he had been before—citizen or criminal—but she wondered. So did he. The difference was her wondering was idle curiosity. His was fearful expectation.

  Olivia had apparently been a great believer in written correspondence. There were piles of letters spanning twenty years. How many personal letters could Juliet find in her own collection? Two? Maybe three. That was what came from living in the same city with your entire family and never making a friend close enough to write when she moved on.

  She divided the letters by author, then started with the most recent and read back, finding little to catch her attention. What finally did was a brief note at the end of one letter: So sorry to hear about Hal. Hope all is resolved. I know how you worry since Roy Jr…. She read it aloud to Martin. “It’s from a woman named Dara. As far as I can tell, they were friends before Olivia moved here.”

  “Is there any mention of Hal in the letter before that one?”

  She skimmed it quickly, then shook her head.

  “What’s the date on it?”

  “November, year before last.”

  He checked the notes he’d made. “That’s when she wrote the second check to Hal. So he was in trouble and needing money. For what?”

  She shrugged. “Debts. Taxes. Gambling losses. Woman trouble. There are a million reasons people need money.”

  For a long time, he sat silent, his gaze distant. When he finally looked at her, there was a troubled look in his eyes. “We talked about getting a credit report on Hal.”

  “You can’t possibly think he was involved. Olivia was his mother. He loved her.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  Now it was her turn for silence. All she knew was what she’d been told. Everyone in town believed that Hal had loved Olivia. Maybe he had, maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he truly was grieving, as his sister had explained, or maybe it was a camouflage for his resentment. Maybe he had been desperate. He’d accepted twelve thousand dollars from her. Maybe he’d been in deeper trouble and had thought her life insurance was the only way out. Sixty-six thousand dollars wasn’t a lot to kill someone for, but maybe he’d expected half instead of only a third. It still wasn’t a lot, but to a desperate man…

  At worst, Hal Stuart’s credit history would be interesting reading. At best, it could clear him or implicate him. But how to get it? Martin could go by the credit bureau and charm it out of a susceptible clerk—meaning anyone female
and breathing. It could cost the clerk her job—and her freedom—if anyone found out, but women had done foolish things for handsome men since the beginning of time.

  Juliet could explain to Stone or Jack Stryker what they were doing and ask one of them to get it for her. Likely, all she would get was a reminder that she was a clerk, not a cop, and a warning to stay out of police business.

  She could try to get it herself. Usually, when one of the detectives wanted a credit report, they went to the bureau in person to request it, but the working relationship was positive enough that, on occasion, someone would call over with a request and get the report faxed back. If she called and convinced the clerk that she was asking on Stone’s behalf, then managed to be standing next to the fax machine when the report came in…

  She wasn’t a liar. She could never pull it off. Her voice would quaver, her hands would shake, her face would flush, and she would burn in hell. She would lose her job, and they would know nothing new.

  “I don’t know of any means of obtaining the report that doesn’t include the risk of arrest for either one or both of us.”

  “Forget it, then.”

  “The credit reporting agencies have pretty sophisticated security. There were problems with hackers a few years back, and they all upgraded significantly. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done—not by me, but there are a few people out there who are brilliant enough, determined enough.” And she happened to have gone through college with one. There wasn’t a system in the country she couldn’t penetrate, Susan had bragged. She’d been so good at it then that she now earned a comfortable living helping design those security programs.

  “Forget it,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t like jail.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  For a moment his eyes turned bleak. “I think so.”

  “How? You don’t have an arrest record. You’re not a cop. You weren’t a jailer or prison guard, because all jailers and prison guards have prints on file.”

  “Is it possible I do have a record, and by mistake they didn’t get a hit on the prints?”

  “They ran them through the FBI computer.”