by Pat Warren
Jack pulled the big Lincoln out of the parking lot, aware she was in an odd mood, probably from the bad taste in her mouth after talking with four men who’d been with her sister and knowing they had ten more to question. He thought he’d try to ease her out of it, although he didn’t blame her for feeling lousy.
“Maybe your father’s got a lady love somewhere.”
“I’d thought of that. If so, why wouldn’t he be squiring her around town, unless she’s married or bad news?”
“Maybe he has, when you’re not here.”
“Doubtful. You have to know that in Whitehorn, if you sneeze twice within the hour, the news gets around that you have a cold.”
“Oh, it can’t be that bad.”
“No? Did you see that older woman at the table across from our booth look at me and shake her head before turning to her grown daughter and whispering something? Or the way Janie grinned and gushed as she showed us to our booth?”
Jack turned onto Sunnyslope Drive. “I didn’t notice the people across from us and I thought Janie was just being friendly. To what do you attribute their actions?”
“The kiss. It’s all around town. That sort of news travels fast.” She’d seen the stares, heard the snickers. Funny to realize she’d never been the object of such attention in Whitehorn before. She had no idea how many of the residents had walked or driven by as she’d clung to Jack in that mindless embrace she was having trouble ignoring, but all it took was one person. They wouldn’t soon forget, either.
Of course, she was having a little trouble forgetting that kiss herself.
Funny, she didn’t seem the paranoid type. “If that’s the case, these people really need a life. Why would me kissing you be of interest to anyone but you and me?”
Rachel shook her head as he pulled up in front of the Montgomery house. “I don’t know. I only know that, like most small towns, Whitehorn thrives on gossip. And you, being new in town, are especially fair game. And me, living in a dangerous city with mobsters as I’ve heard them describe Chicago, I’m also fair game.”
Jack turned off the engine and swung around to face her. “That’s truly whacky, you know.”
“Yes, it is, but there you have it.” She put her hand on the door handle. “Are you coming in?”
“Are you inviting me?”
He’d turned off the motor so she guessed he wanted to go in. Frankly, she wasn’t in much of a mood to be alone tonight, either. She’d be okay, Rachel assured herself, as long as she kept her distance. He was far too attractive and she wasn’t nearly as immune as she’d hoped. Still, she could handle him. “Yes, I am.”
“Stay right there,” he said, getting out. He walked around and opened her door, reaching a hand out to help her. “Just wanted you to know guys in L.A. have manners.”
Stepping out, she took his hand. “I don’t think manners are regional, but rather inbred.” But when he tucked her hand in his big grip and walked close alongside her to the door, she wondered where he’d learned that.
By the time she’d brewed a pot of coffee and carried the tray into the living room, Jack had a roaring fire going. At least tonight she wouldn’t have to stare into the fire alone, Rachel thought, pouring coffee. As she turned to sit, she noticed a stack of newspapers on the wing chair. Puzzled as to who’d put them there since she’d last seen them on the hall table, she glanced at Jack and saw him seated at the far end of the couch, patting the seat next to his.
“I promise not to bite,” he said.
It wasn’t biting she was wary of. The memory of his arms crushing her to his chest roared into the forefront of her mind and she felt heat move into her face. She hoped he’d blame the fire for her suddenly rosy cheeks. Without commenting, she sat at the opposite end of the couch and reached for her coffee.
“Where do you think we should start tomorrow?” she asked him, trying to keep the mood businesslike. She wasn’t certain how many more of Christina’s old lovers questioning sessions she could handle. But, after all, Jack was the experienced professional who’d investigated a good many such cases. Sooner or later, they’d have to seek out the other men, but she’d let him plan their agenda.
“I’ll call Sloan in the morning and see how many others on the list he’s questioned. I don’t want to step on his toes since we need him as an ally.” He drank some coffee and found it hot and strong, just the way he liked it. “Maybe we could visit that hermit, Homer Gilmore. He might be able to tell us something since you say he’s always hanging around that area. He could have seen Christina there on other occasions and, if we’re lucky, she’d been with some guy Homer recognized.”
Rachel slipped off her boots, getting comfortable. “I’m not sure how much information we can get out of Homer. He rambles on and on, not always on the subject. But we can try.” She preferred visiting Homer over Christina’s ex-lovers.
The warmth of the fire was relaxing her. She leaned back, pulled up her legs and angled her body so she could look at Jack. “So it seems that you know all about my life. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”
“There’s not much to tell.” Jack set down his cup and leaned back. He looked into Rachel’s eyes and could see her determination to know the facts of his life, as he knew hers. “Well, after I left the navy I came home and became a cop. After eight years, I got fed up with that and—”
“Fed up how?”
He shrugged. “With everything. The waste of human life, from poverty, drugs, shootings. The courts try, I guess, but the laws need changing. Smart lawyers for big bucks get criminals off on technicalities and loopholes all the time. I got tired of trying to make a difference. The week before I quit, I was in a dirty alley with a punk who had a switchblade. He’d managed to kick aside my weapon. I thought for sure I was going to buy the farm that day.”
“But you didn’t. What happened?”
Jack gazed into the fire, seeing the filthy alley, inhaling the stench, remembering the metallic taste of fear in his mouth. “He heard a siren coming closer, my backup. He looked away for a split second and I knew I wouldn’t get another chance. I pinned him to the ground, got the knife, cuffed him. I’d had other close calls, but this one, looking into this kid’s eyes and seeing that he’d just as soon kill me as not, it meant so little to him. That really got to me.” He looked over at Rachel. “He was only fourteen.”
Rachel was honestly shocked, even though she’d read about similar accounts in newspapers. “How does a boy that young turn out like that? What happened to him, do you know?”
“Oh, yeah. He didn’t spend a night in jail. His lawyer’s suit cost more than I made in a month.”
“Where does a fourteen-year-old get the money to pay an expensive lawyer?”
“Drugs. You wouldn’t believe the amount of drugs in circulation.”
“In Chicago, too. I guess that’s one reason for living in a rural area like Montana.”
“Do you think you’d be happy moving back here?”
Rachel thought about that before answering. “Under the right circumstances.”
“Which are?”
A home, a love of her own, a child, a life. “My secret.” She wanted to shift the focus back onto him. “What about a woman? Isn’t there someone special in your life?” Which, she reminded herself, had nothing at all to do with their investigation. However, the kiss they’d shared somehow made their relationship, although quite new, a bit more personal, so she didn’t feel odd asking him.
“Someone special? No, not at the moment. I’m sort of a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. I’m like my dad that way. He couldn’t adjust to marriage and I doubt I ever could.”
“You were twelve when he walked out and yet you know he left because he couldn’t adjust to marriage?”
“My mother told me repeatedly that he wasn’t cut out for wedded bliss. He hated responsibility. He wanted to be free, on his own. I like my freedom, too. I like being on my own, responsible for just me. From age twelve to eight
een, I had a lot on my shoulders, going to school, part-time jobs evenings and weekends, watching out for Gina. Our mother had trouble keeping a job. She had no training. So I took over, way before any kid should have to. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when she remarried and I could let go.”
“You had too much at too early an age. Still, I don’t know you very well, but you don’t strike me as someone who’d run from responsibility.”
“I don’t. I honor my responsibilities. I just don’t want to be responsible for other people.”
“I see.” But she really didn’t. Picking up her cup, she sipped and gazed into the fire. He was just another man afraid of obligations, of being tied down. Like Richard had been, needing to be free, on his own.
Rachel felt her stomach muscles tighten. What was wrong with the male population? All of them, afraid of responsibilities, turning their backs on family. Yet most women, herself included, would welcome the responsibility of a child or two, a home, a relationship. Talk about a gender gap.
“Tell me about Richard,” he asked quietly, for he had a feeling he’d hit a chord with her. Had her ex-fiancé run from the responsibility of marriage at the last minute? Was that why he’d called the wedding off?
She was quiet, thinking, then finally spoke. “I was twenty-one, in my senior year, and Richard was three years older, a graduate student. Actually I believe a ‘perpetual student’ describes him better. I imagine he’s still studying somewhere. He’s very intense, very committed to his art.”
Rachel pictured that lean, asthetic face, the tall, lanky body, his sandy hair worn down to his shoulders, his long-lashed gray eyes. “He was very charismatic, or so it seemed to me at the time. You have to remember that I came from this small town with its solid values and unwritten rules and lines you never crossed. I’d been in Chicago three years and I had some friends, but I was still very green and inexperienced in the ways of the world. Richard was a rebel who lived in a loft, disdainful of rules and regulations, a man who marched to a different drummer—and that’s all it took for me to fall for him.”
Something struck her as odd. “Now that I think about those days, I believe Christina would have been a better choice for Richard. She had the guts I lacked to thumb her nose at everyone and do exactly as she pleased. I was too much of a coward to do that.”
Jack didn’t think he should remind her that perhaps Christina’s rebellious ways contributed more than a little to her early death. Instead he watched Rachel and listened, letting her talk about her past in her own way, with only an occasional nudge.
“Yet it was you he wanted,” he said, intruding on her memories.
“Yes, and I was thrilled. I moved into this really seedy loft with him and couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents. I arranged to have my mail forwarded, my calls handled. That should have told me that this alliance wouldn’t work, but I wouldn’t have listened.”
He tried to picture her five years ago living with an artist type in a crowded loft, and had a hard time reconciling that image with the sophisticated, beautifully dressed professional woman he was looking at now. “Were you happy with him?”
“You know, looking back, I realize I was living in a dreamworld. I had visions of helping this poor, starving artist, talented but unrecognized, and one day, he’d be famous and we’d travel and so on. What a fool, eh?”
“No, just young and foolish, not a fool. Youthful indiscretions can be easily forgiven.”
“Mmm, I suppose. Richard had no family and no job, so guess who was footing all the bills. I had a very generous allowance, plus I was working part-time. Funny it never occurred to me that he was using me.” She shook her head at her own naiveté and picked up her cup, then set it down. She really didn’t want more coffee.
“Did he know your family had money?”
“Oh, sure. I told him everything about myself. I suppose if we’d have married, he’d have found a way to get into my trust fund before divorcing me.”
“Why did he leave?”
“Because I wasn’t enough for him,” she answered immediately.
Such a quick reply, as if she’d told herself that very thing over and over. “What does that mean?”
Rachel took in a breath, as if fortifying herself. “We’d set a wedding date, not telling my family.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Richard’s, but I went along with it. I thought I could deal with them a lot better after the fact when they couldn’t do anything about it. I was over the legal age. Anyhow, I came home from work one evening and found Richard exuberant, dancing all around the place, throwing his few things into his suitcase while he drank cheap wine. It seems he’d received a grant to study in Florence and he was leaving the next day. He told me he was sorry to hurt me, but he really wasn’t cut out for marriage. Even with my substantial trust fund, he chose to go. How flattering is that?”
“Come now, Rachel, you must have realized by now how lucky you are that he left. That marriage would have only hurt you more.”
“I know that now. I suppose it was mostly my pride that was hurt. You can’t imagine how hurtful it is to have someone you’d planned to marry walk away so easily, whistling as he goes.”
“You aren’t the first or the last to be left literally at the altar, man or woman. If that’s the kind of jerk he was then, he probably still is.” He couldn’t help himself, he shifted, moving closer, touching the ends of her hair. “He didn’t deserve you.”
She found a sad smile. “You know the right things to say, don’t you?”
“I mean every word. He was a selfish creep. You’d have been miserable. He saved you from a rotten marriage.” He shook his head. “I shudder to think how many people would be happier, better off, if they hadn’t given in to that urge to marry, which is usually fleeting and temporary.”
An odd viewpoint, Rachel thought. “It sounds as if you’ve been close a time or two and you’re glad you didn’t go through with it.”
“Actually, I’ve never been close. I like women and I have a lot of women friends in L.A. But I wouldn’t want to spend every day the rest of my life with any of them. I feel that, in order to want to get married, a person should care so much that they can’t imagine a world without this person in it. They don’t want a day to go by without being with that person. I’ve never felt that way. I don’t think I’m cut out for marriage, so I’m not going to put some poor, trusting woman through all that when I’d probably leave eventually, like my father did.”
She’d watched him throughout that little speech and felt he probably believed every word he said. And maybe he was right.
“If you really want a family,” Jack went on, “you’ll find someone else. Hell, look at you. You’re beautiful, intelligent, funny, feisty. What more could a guy want?” And if she didn’t stop staring at him with those big blue eyes, he was going to pull her into another kiss because the last one had really rocked him and he needed to know if that would happen again.
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t think so. Being dropped like a hot potato, being made to feel like I lacked something vital, it’s not something I ever want to go through again. It hurts too much and the memory stings even years later.”
Jack scooted even closer, his one hand on her shoulder now, the fingers of his other trailing the fall of hair that curved along her jaw. “Don’t let it. Maybe Christina had the right idea. We should all enjoy life more and worry less.” He shifted again, slipping a hand under her bent knees and straightening her legs across his lap so he could gather her closer.
“What are you doing?”
“If you don’t know, I must be doing it wrong.” He arranged her arms over his shoulders and leaned in to nibble on her silken neck. “Mmm, you smell so good.”
“Jack, I don’t think this is a good idea.” His lips were at her ear now. “Really, I’m serious.”
“Being serious brings about premature aging.” He touched his mouth to her temple, felt her pulse poun
ding there.
“Wait! My life is too complicated right now to get involved.”
“You’ll work it out. An unexamined life isn’t worth living.” He was moving along her forehead, planting feathery kisses.
Rachel pulled back, surprised. “Socrates? You’re quoting me Socrates?”
He sent her a hurt look. “What, you thought I was just some big, dumb cop?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“Tell me, was that kiss we shared in the car so terrible?”
“No, but—”
“No more buts. Does what you felt during that kiss happen with every man you kiss?” He was taking a chance here, but he had a feeling she’d been as overwhelmed as he.
There hadn’t been that many men, not since Richard. Though she’d been asked out and even gone several times, she was mostly wary, distrustful. “No, but I don’t think—”
“That’s good. Don’t think.” And his mouth took hers, stealing her breath, effectively stopping her protest. But only for a moment as she moved her head aside and squirmed out of his hold, scrambling to her feet.
“Look, I don’t want—”
But Jack could be fast, too, rising, grabbing a fistful of her sweater and yanking her back into his arms. He’d never have gone after her if he hadn’t seen that edginess in her eyes, the beginnings of passion. He stared hard into those eyes now, but saw no fear or objection, saw instead a challenge.
He’d never been able to resist challenges.
“Maybe, just maybe, you’ve met your match, lady.” Lowering his head, he kissed her hard and deep.
Stunned, Rachel’s hands flew up only to be caught between their bodies as he tugged her close against his rock-hard chest. His hands roamed her back, his strong fingers pressing, stroking, coaxing a response. His mouth was the only soft thing about him as he seduced and tempted, his full lips brushing across hers, kissing the corners, then devouring with an ease that was as frightening as it was enticing.
