Crime Of The Heart

by Allie Harrison

  “Do you think we need to worry about it considering Mrs. O’Malley doesn’t have our real names?” Erin asked.

  “Probably not,” Lee replied, never opening his eyes.

  He heard Erin speak softly into the phone, but he didn’t concentrate on her words, only the soft sound of her voice. Several moments later, he heard her gently replace the receiver.

  “Well, you were right,” she said.

  Lee opened his eyes to find she had turned to face him. The smile she wore was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

  “What?” he forced out.

  “Burke is planning an art showing and an auction tomorrow starting at two-thirty, followed by a big dinner at six. The showing is open to the public and the auction is open to anyone who can show proof that he’s able to pay for whatever he bids on. So do we go to an art showing?” she asked.

  “Yes. And we’ll go shopping again in the morning. We want to be dressed for the occasion,” Lee replied.

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Their gazes touched and held, almost like a tender caress. Then the spell was broken when Lee made himself close his eyes once again. He had to shut her out before he got out of the chair and swept her into his arms.

  Erin cleared her throat. “Do you mind if I go take a shower and a dip in the whirlpool?”

  “No, go ahead,” he muttered. “I’ll probably do the same after you’re done.”

  A moment later, she was gone. Even though Lee never saw her go, he was aware of every move she made. He should just be glad with the news they had regarding Burke. He should just be happy there was a possibility that things could all be cleared up as early as tomorrow, providing they could find something out about Burke at the showing. But all he could think about was Erin.

  He heard her move past him to go into the bathroom. Her soft scent touched him like a gentle breeze as she went by. A moment later, he heard the water running in the shower. He thought he even heard her sigh softly.

  It would be so easy, he realized, to get up and join her. He could wash her back; she could wash his. His breath caught at that thought and he gripped the arms of the chair to keep from moving. He resisted the urge to laugh. For the past eight months, he’d done whatever necessary to keep his leg propped up to ward off the pain. Now, suddenly, it seemed as though that same leg was. crying to take him right into the bathroom. And without any pain at all.

  “You’re just overtired, that’s all,” he whispered out loud.

  But his words, even spoken out loud, didn’t convince him in the least. He wanted her more than ever. His arm was beginning to ache, but not from the minor flesh wound that was healing rather nicely. No, it was from the way he was gripping the chair. Taking a deep breath, he tried to relax. And finally, after using every technique he’d ever taught himself when he’d played the waiting game as a cop, he was able to do it. Not completely, but enough to rest.

  For the first time, he felt free of so many things. There was no pain in his leg to remind him of the one day in his career he wanted to forget. There wasn’t some criminal witness he had to protect for his testimony. If it wasn’t for Burke, he could almost convince himself that here in this cozy room with Erin so close and still safe, life was as he wished. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought. He could even smile through the hurt of Tom’s betrayal. He could do it because he knew there would be a time and a place to deal with Tom.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Erin’s voice brought him back to earth in a snap. He was suddenly wide awake, looking at her. He grew warm instantly seeing she was wrapped in nothing but a giant yellow towel.

  “Nothing,” he answered just as quickly.

  “Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I thought maybe you knew something I didn’t. The bathroom’s all yours.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered, despite the fact that he no longer felt like getting up. He wanted to stay right where he was and look at her. Her skin was pink, her wet hair glistened with a coppery sheen and her eyes were shining.

  “I can rebandage your arm with the gauze we bought, too, after you’re through,” she offered.

  “Okay.” Lee still couldn’t stop looking at her. Seeing her this way was almost enough to make him forget the way she’d hurt him before, or the fact that she was probably going to hurt him again when this was over.

  “So how did you get shot—the first time?” she asked. Her question hit him like a bucket of ice water being thrown in his face. For a moment, he couldn’t reply. He could hardly breathe. He stared at her, and she stared right back at him.

  Lee knew that look. Knew it all too well. It was the look she got in her eyes when she was searching for answers and determined to get them. He would have liked to have seen that look in her eyes before now. Witnessing Jenkins’s murder must have scared her enough to erase that look. Well, now it was back. And as much as Lee was glad to see it, he wished to hell it wasn’t directed at him.

  “Why do you ask?” he asked, trying to put her off.

  “Because I can’t imagine it happening to you. You’re so good at your job, the best.”

  “It happens to the best sometimes,” he said, forcing his voice to remain free of any emotion.

  “I know. So how did it happen to you?”

  He should have known he couldn’t deter her.

  “I was protecting a witness whose testimony would put away some major underworld criminal. We were holed up in one of the best hotels in Chicago. It was almost time for a shift change and I was waiting for my relief. When the elevator arrived, I thought it was that very relief stepping out. It wasn’t. After that, things happened pretty fast. One minute, I was reaching for my gun, the next minute, I was on the floor, thinking my leg was gone.” It was the shortest explanation he could give, and he hoped it would be enough. He should have known it wouldn’t be.

  “What happened to the witness?” she asked.

  “He was fine. He managed to hide in the bathtub and the thugs didn’t get much time to search since my backup got there pretty quick.”

  “Did anyone else get shot?”

  “The cops who’d been in the lobby were killed. It was a very professional hit. And we never found out who leaked the information about where we were hiding the witness,” he said. He’d told himself over and over that there was nothing else he could have done, but it didn’t make the idea that it happened easier to swallow.

  “You’ve protected witnesses and dealt with various emergency situations before. What made this one so different?” she asked.

  In one smooth move, Lee stood up, needing to move away from her. Not wanting to face her probing questions. “I don’t know. Someone leaked the information. Those guys with guns knew the setup. They knew when to come up. They knew everything.” He paused. Then without thinking, he added, “It was the most terrifying moment of my life.”

  There, he’d said it. He’d actually admitted his fear.

  That search-for-answers look left her eyes in a flash. Those same eyes widened. “You make it sound as though that’s a terrible fault,” she returned, her voice now hardly more than a whisper.

  “It is a fault. I froze up. I was so afraid, I couldn’t even move. And all I could think about for a split second was you, telling you that I still loved you and telling you that I was sorry because your worst nightmare was coming true. It turned out to be my worst nightmare, too, and I just didn’t know it until I was lying there in my own blood, thinking that the guy was going to finish me off any moment.”

  “But you wouldn’t let me stay at the hospital with you. It’s like you blame me for something,” she probed. “You do, don’t you?”

  “You left,” he said, keeping his voice flat. “Yes, I blamed you for that. Maybe I still do, no matter how much I try, I can’t stop loving you.” He forced himself to walk to the bathroom, leaving her there, ignoring the stunned look on her face.

  Closing the bathroom door, he locked it and leaned against it
, not believing what he’d just admitted. Hell, he might as well just put a sign on his back telling the whole damned world that Erin Flemming had broken his heart and left him to bleed to death. Looking up, he caught sight of his reflection in the large mirror over the sink. “Why can’t you get over her?” he whispered to his reflection. “Why can’t you get beyond this?”

  He knew the answer just as he knew the sea was salty. He still loved her, even more than before, that’s why. He loved her more than his own life, more than he’d ever loved anyone else.

  Lee didn’t want to love her, not anymore. Love meant nothing but pain and emptiness. He knew that firsthand.

  She knocked on the door and it vibrated against his back. “Liam?”

  “Go away, Erin.” He couldn’t let her in. Not now, not after his admission.

  “Let me in.”

  Lee moved away from the door and turned on the water in the whirlpool, hoping to drown the sound of her voice, hoping she’d take the hint and leave him alone.

  She only knocked harder. “Liam, let me in so we can talk about this. You can’t throw this in my face and then walk away.”

  Watch me, he thought. True, he couldn’t walk as well as he once did, but he could still walk. He ignored her, unbuttoning his shirt.

  “If you don’t let me in, I’ll call Mrs. O’Malley and ask her to get a locksmith!”

  “You would, too, wouldn’t you?”

  “Damn right!” she yelled through the door.

  Lee reached over and unlocked the door, but didn’t open it. And he only did it because he knew she’d be on the phone to Mrs. O’Malley. He was determined to draw as little attention to the two of them as possible. She opened the door herself.

  She was still wrapped in nothing but a towel. Lee looked at the water filling the tub.

  “You shouldn’t have kicked me out of the hospital. You should have let me stay with you,” she said.

  “Why? So you could rub my nose in the idea that you didn’t want to live with me anymore because you were . worried I might get shot?”

  His bare chest must have bothered her, he realized, for she seemed to be at a loss for words as she stared at it for a long moment. “I wouldn’t have rubbed your nose in anything. I thought you needed me,” she said, her voice softening.

  “I did need you. But I didn’t need the pain that came along with needing you,” he admitted.

  “I stayed at the hospital,” Erin said. “Even though you wouldn’t let me in your room. I stayed and questioned the nurses and the doctor, making sure you were going to be all right.”

  That was enough to get him to look at her. His dark gaze met the clear green of hers. “When?”

  “I was there every day until they sent you home.”

  “You were so worried that you never tried to call after that?” Lee asked.

  “I did call, not that it made any difference. I’m sure you were too busy,” she snapped.

  Her eyes were flashing green fire, her arms crossed tightly against the top of the towel. She was suddenly angry, no furious, and Lee didn’t have the vaguest idea why. He stared at her, wondering what had set her off. “Talk about going from zero to bitch in less than five seconds,” he muttered.

  “What?” she nearly screamed at him.

  “Erin, listen.” He tried his best to speak calmly. “I know this business with Burke is getting to you—”

  “This has absolutely nothing to do with Burke!”

  “Then what does it have to do with?”

  “You, Liam! It has to do with you! And me! I called you. I had to tell you—” She stopped suddenly, and Lee knew she meant to say something but caught herself at the last moment.

  “Tell me what?” he probed.

  “Just things, just daily life things.”

  That wasn’t all. He could see much more in her flashing eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she went on. “You were obviously busy.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “I was too busy? I never even knew you called. Why didn’t you call back?”

  “Jennifer answered the phone.” Erin said the name Jennifer as though it left a bad taste in her mouth.

  “Jennifer?”

  “Yes, Jennifer. Some woman with a French accent. I was gone hardly more than a month, and already there’s another woman in our house—your house. Are you telling me there’s been so many women that you don’t even remember that one?”

  Lee nearly laughed, but he held himself back, knowing that she wouldn’t take his laughter very well just then. “Well, actually, there’ve been four or five, and it did take me a moment to remember that one.”

  Erin let out an angry huff and rolled her eyes. “Did you forget me just as easily?” she demanded.

  Lee could only wish. “She was my cleaning woman. I called this cleaning service about a week after I was released from the hospital because a few of the guys came over to—to...” To cheer him up, to give him something else to think about besides Erin Flemming and the fact that he might never walk again. To get him drunk so he could forget her, even if it was just for a little while, that’s what, because he’d been such a bear since Erin had left him. “To have a party of sorts, you know, play cards, drink beer, that kind of thing. The house was a mess, and I couldn’t have cleaned it if I’d wanted to. So I called the first service I found in the phone book, and this woman came the next day. I’ve been calling them ever since. Sure, I cook and I put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and I can run the washing machine. But I don’t do windows or scrub floors or toilets. They do that. They helped a lot and I should have called them right after I got out of the hospital instead of waiting. Even though I had a nurse who came, her only job was to check on my health and prepare me for therapy. And yes, there’s been a lot of them over the past eight months. There’s Jennifer, the one you spoke to. She was the first and will probably always be special.” His voice was suddenly filled with amusement. “Of course, she wouldn’t go out with me. She was afraid her friends would think she was robbing the cradle. Then there was Abigail. She was cute, but she was young and not really interested in cleaning, so she didn’t last. Then there was Ed.”

  “Ed?”

  “Yes, Edwina. She had this thing for corners. Seeing dust and dirt gathered in them nearly sent her into a frenzy.”

  Erin smiled and sank onto the edge of the tub, her anger obviously gone, her eyes seeming to drink in every word he was saying.

  “And how could I ever forget Cindy,” he declared, his eyes lighting up. “She’s my favorite, and still comes every two weeks or so. She’s a woman after my own heart.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?”

  “She bakes me chocolate chip cookies.”

  Erin laughed. “I should have guessed.”

  “So you never called again after Jennifer answered the phone?” he asked, growing serious.

  “She said you were washing, and I thought...” She let the sentence fade away. “I guess after that I was scared to know what I thought was the truth.”

  “You really thought I had another woman there,” he finished for her.

  “Yes, I did,” she said slowly, meeting his gaze over the now-bubbly whirlpool. Lee had touched a switch that caused it to pulse to life.

  “I have a confession to make,” Lee said, his gaze holding hers with the strength of a vise.

  “Oh?”

  “I thought about calling you all the time.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  “Because I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to cuss you or tell you how much I wanted you and plead with you to come back.”

  Erin smiled. “I suppose it’s rather funny how we never connected. It’s almost as though something was keeping us apart,” Erin said slowly.

  Lee nodded, his expression rueful. “I remember thinking that it must have been fate or some higher power keeping us apart, too.”

  “But now it’s brought us
back together,” she said softly.

  “So it has,” he said just as softly, his gaze now seemingly lost within hers.

  For a long moment, only the sound of churning water broke the silence. Suddenly, Erin looked down at the tub, breaking the spell that had held them.

  “So are you going to get in or just watch the bubbles?” she asked.

  Lee had never taken his eyes off her. God, all the wasted months, all the time lost, he thought. But there were still those original reasons for her leaving him.

  Right now, though, those reasons were so unimportant, almost nonexistent.

  Not taking his gaze from her, he asked, “Are you getting in with me?”

  The question startled her and she didn’t reply for a long moment. “I just... Do you want me to?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Slowly, she stood up, and Lee watched her every move. With determination, he released the snap of his jeans. Her gaze moved down to follow his fingers. Lee heard a pounding and couldn’t determine if it was his heart or just the rumbling of the water. Not that it mattered.

  Suddenly, nothing mattered. Nothing but the two of them. Now. In this place. In the water.

  Lee slid out of his jeans, hardly even aware what he was doing. He was only aware of Erin, the way she watched him, the way her heated gaze touched him as she unwrapped her towel and let it drop to the floor, where it formed a yellow pool at her feet.

  As the seconds passed, all he could do was look at her, drinking in the sight of her as a man dying of thirst would gulp down water. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he breathed. At least he tried to breathe. It seemed like so long ago since he’d seen her, really seen her. At the same time, it could have been only yesterday.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said. The smile she gave him was small and inviting at the same time. Slowly, she reached out to him.

  Lee took her hand.

  “And soft, too,” he added.

  “All you’ve felt is my hand. How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  They climbed into the large tub together. Lee felt the warm water caress his skin like silky satin. And Erin’s touch had the sensual feel of velvet. It was her touch that sent a surge of heat coursing through him.