Dangerous Attraction

by Susan Vaughan

  She nodded in reluctant agreement. “Jonathan and Paul invited me to a few parties with them during the holidays. When Martine could give me the evening off.”

  “They? You dated them both at the same time?”

  When she shook her head, unruly tendrils escaped from the single long braid. Curls twined around her delicate ears and begged for his fingers. Or his tongue. Exasperated, he stared deliberately at the lobster boat.

  “No, not dating.” A sign of her annoyance was that she spoke slowly and distinctly, as if to a child. “It wasn’t like that. We were all three friends at first. The three of us went to parties together.”

  “But that changed.”

  “Yes. When they came home for the summer, a rivalry sprang up. It was…oh, tense. I should have seen it coming. They were rivals in everything—sports, academics. Both had scholarships to Yale.”

  “Did they actually fight over you?”

  “No, for some reason, Paul backed off. By the end of the summer, Jonathan and I were engaged. A year later we were married. I didn’t know until after Jonathan’s death how much that hurt Paul. He concealed it well at the time.”

  Two buddies in love with the same desirable woman. That might have led to bloodshed. Perhaps it did, but not in the typical way.

  Jonathan Farnsworth, son and heir of the town tycoon, versus Paul Santerre, son of a lobsterman. No contest. Did Santerre realize that? Is it why he backed off?

  Perversely, he asked, “Did you love Jonathan?” Love the boy? When they met, he was only about twenty.

  Her delicate chin trembled a beat before she controlled it. “Whatever I say, you’ll believe what you want.”

  Her carefully blank expression told him how much she strained to control her feelings.

  “Ask me for whatever facts you need to solve this, Quinn, but some things are too personal.” She started toward the Cherokee.

  Michael stepped in front of her. She’d have to navigate the slush to pass him. “As far as the cops are concerned, personal reasons are the key.”

  “I see Pratt told you his theory that I planned all three deaths from the start. He has no evidence to back that up.”

  “No evidence against anyone else, either,” he countered.

  “That’s because he hasn’t investigated anyone else. Only me.” Anger colored her cheeks and narrowed her eyes. “Merde! Are you so obtuse you don’t understand why I’ve hired you? Maybe Fitz was wrong about your abilities.”

  Michael drew a deep breath, recalling the financial statements he’d snitched from the police files. The only evidence of motive they had. “I’d bet a poll of every couple under forty in Weymouth would find fewer than ten percent with wills. Most young couples are thinking about a happy future together, not about dying.”

  “What are you getting at, Quinn?”

  “Isn’t it strange that all three men made out wills leaving everything they owned to you?”

  “Coincidence.” Her dark eyes snapped with fury and something else he couldn’t decipher. “You’re blocking my way again.”

  Her gaze lowered to his chest, as if she could bore her way through him. Then she wheeled and plowed into the slush.

  With her second step, a patch of hidden ice sent her into a skater’s glide. Her arms flailed as she tried to maintain her equilibrium. Then, out of control, she reeled sideways.

  He caught her around the waist and pulled her tightly to his chest.

  She was pressed so closely against him that he felt the warm puff of her breath and smelled the coffee she’d drunk. So close, that if he bent his head, he could kiss her soft red lips, temptingly parted.

  And damn, he wanted to. Even through layers of wool and insulation, the plush softness of her breasts penetrated to his body. The reaction in his loins was instant and intense.

  And damn troublesome. Attraction could derail his assignment, blow apart the case. He had a strong sexual drive, but control had always been his middle name. With her he couldn’t trust himself.

  Sympathy for her was plowing inroads into his natural skepticism, but now uncertainty set up a roadblock. His years as a cop and in the DEA had trained him to read people. Usually that didn’t help him a hell of a lot with Claire. Just now, however, he observed the gamut of emotions on her usually wary features. Anger. Pain and pride. Desire and uncertainty. And more. Secrets hid in Claire Saint-Ange’s dark eyes.

  “In a span of seven years, you’ve moved from poor relation to one of the wealthiest women in Weymouth, living in what this Boston southie thinks is a damn mansion.” His voice sounded thick with desire. Could she tell?

  “If that was a crime, they’d have locked me up long ago. Quinn, why are you—”

  At that moment, a dark blue Explorer making a U-turn swung past them, spraying slush. When Michael realized that the sports utility vehicle might sideswipe them, he lunged away, dragging Claire with him.

  A rental car. He couldn’t be certain, but the three men inside appeared dark, maybe Hispanic. Colombians? El Halcón’s men?

  Mopping at her coat hem, Claire appeared not to notice the car’s occupants. Were they attempting to contact her?

  Or attack her?

  Chapter 3

  When Claire recovered her composure, she allowed Quinn to hold her arm for the walk to the Cherokee. The sensation of his big hand on her elbow gave her an incongruous sense of security beyond mere physical support.

  The inconsiderate driver had barely dampened her coat and boots. Her protective shell suffered far more damage.

  Quinn seemed to relish baiting and badgering her about Jonathan and Paul, as if investigating her, instead of investigating for her. Both hot and cold glittered in his gunmetal eyes. He desired her as well as distrusted her.

  In spite of annoyance at his accusations, she’d clutched at his rock-hard arms and melted against him after her misstep. What was it about him that roused her emotions so?

  “Well, well, well. Looks like the Widow Spider’s wrapping up her next victim.”

  At the sardonic voice calling to them, Claire noticed the man beside the Cherokee. There stood the last person she wanted to confront, even if he might have helpful information.

  Hard and lean, with shoulders burly from a lifetime of physical labor, he looked younger than his seventy-odd years except for his ruddy, weathered face and sparse hair. If the expression in his arctic blue eyes could kill, she’d be stretched out on the icy ground at that moment.

  “Hello, Russ.” Turning to Quinn, she said, her voice edged with frost, “Michael Quinn, meet Russell Santerre, my former father-in-law. Russ bought Paul’s business from me.”

  The two men shook hands warily.

  “Don’t be fooled by her,” Russ said to Quinn. “The female of the species is more deadly.”

  “Quinn is an investigator I’ve hired to look into Paul’s and the others’ deaths,” Claire said evenly. She would not rise to his taunts. She would not.

  Russ gazed at Quinn with renewed interest in his eyes. “Investigator, huh? Plain to see what you were investigating a few minutes ago.” His mouth twisted in bitter disdain.

  Apparently seeing no point in explaining their embrace, Quinn said mildly, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Santerre. I hope to uncover how Paul died. Will you answer some questions?”

  Quinn maintained his grip on her elbow. Could he feel her trembling? She understood Russ’s antagonism, but that didn’t keep her stomach from knotting. The warmth and pressure helped. Quinn’s coolly efficient manner reassured her of his investigative skill. As a bonus, judging from his reaction, it disarmed her father-in-law.

  “’Course I want the whole truth,” Russ insisted, “but I’m surprised she does.” He eyed her balefully and tucked his thumbs in the pockets of his quilted vest. Sour-faced, he leaned back against the Cherokee’s tailgate.

  “This is no place for an interview,” Quinn said. “Is your office nearby?”

  Russ snorted. “Office? Ayuh, you can come over to
my office.” He waved a callused hand toward the other side of the landing where a metal chimney puffed smoke from a cedar-shingled shed. Beside it stood a large refrigerated, straight-body truck, Paul’s truck. “It’s warm inside, at least.”

  When they fell into step beside him as they walked to Santerre Seafood, as the truck’s sign proclaimed, Russ wheeled stiffly, belying his robust appearance, and raised one palm. “Whoa! Just you, mister. Not her. Not the Widow Spider.”

  Quinn slanted an I-told-you-so glance at her. But he said to Russ, “My client insists, Mr. Santerre.”

  “Ain’t my problem.” His chin jutted stubbornly.

  “I’ll just have to tell her everything later.”

  “Russ, I’ll listen only,” she said. “Pretend I’m not there.”

  “Suit y’self, but you might hear things you won’t like.” With that, he stomped ahead of them to the shed.

  Once inside, Claire slipped to a small window to gaze out at the docks. Keeping her back to the two men would restrain her from interjecting her own questions, would allow Quinn to do what she’d hired him for.

  “’Tain’t fancy, but it beats standing outside,” Santerre commented. “Belongs to the harbormaster. He lets me use it while I’m waiting for my suppliers.”

  Michael surveyed the jumble of mooring buoys, rope coils and cartons of motor oil and paint in the corners of the tiny shed. Wood smoke mingled with the odors of old fish and new paint. The only other contents were a scarred wooden desk and a few folding chairs. If the drug smugglers had a base in Weymouth, this sure as hell wasn’t it.

  “Is that what Paul did? Did he use this shack?” Michael asked, keeping it friendly.

  “Sometimes. Mostly Paul met the fishermen at sea in that boat of his. A real go-getter, my son. That way he could brag to the buyers about freshness.”

  “So he must have bought the Rêve for business reasons.” Michael wondered if the drug cartel bought it for him.

  “Ayuh, had her built special. He hustled more business after that. Struck it rich. Seems like he—” Santerre’s glance slid away as he dropped whatever he’d been about to say. He wiped a meaty hand across grief-filled eyes. Was it grief or was the man holding back something?

  “But you let the fishermen come to you?”

  “Have to. Sold my own boat when my arthritis got too bad to keep haulin’.” He rubbed his hands together, then held them over the wood stove. The knuckles, weather-reddened, were swollen, the fingers twisted.

  “Do you have a real office someplace? Or a warehouse?”

  The older man responded with a derisive hoot. “My home phone’s my office, and the truck’s my warehouse. Santerre Seafood’s a one-man operation, mister.”

  “But you do a good business?” Michael prompted.

  “Still have most of Paul’s customers, restaurants and markets in Boston. Folks is always eager to buy Maine seafood.” His gaze flickered away, and he bent to add wood to the fire. “It’s a comfortable enough living, even if I don’t make near the money Paul did. I got no need to work my butt off to buy fancy furniture and clothes for a grasping bitch. Didn’t even take her husbands’ names. Not Farnsworth’s neither.”

  At the window, Claire stood motionless. If not for the tight set of her shoulders, he’d think she wasn’t listening. Seeing her so determinedly strong filled him with unwanted admiration and tenderness. Later he’d ask her about the name.

  “You think Paul worked so hard just to please his wife?”

  “Damn straight. To please her. To win her. To keep her.” His face contorted with vehemence.

  Stiff-spined, Claire remained at her inconspicuous post but bowed her head.

  Santerre continued, “You seen that big house young Jonathan Farnsworth set her up in, the one Paul renovated?”

  “First-rate,” Michael said without elaborating. He wanted to steer the conversation another direction. “Did you see your son the day he died?”

  The older man lowered himself painfully into one of the folding chairs. “He come over to the house for coffee before he took the Rêve out.”

  “Do you remember anything unusual about your conversation? Or about your son?”

  “Unusual? Nope. Cops asked me the same thing.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Hard to remember now. It was five years ago, you know.” He scratched his head and glanced away. “He had a lead for some new supplier out on one of the islands. I think that’s where he was headed that day—the day she whacked him over the head and killed him.”

  Preparing to leave, Michael stood and zipped his parka. “How do you account for that, Mr. Santerre? Can you suggest how Claire could have gotten on and off the Rêve? There’s no trace of anyone with her description renting or borrowing another boat. An old seaman like you must have some ideas.”

  Claire pivoted slowly, her gaze glued to Michael. The pallor of her cheeks signaled her emotion.

  “I’ve thought on it some, I admit,” Santerre said. “Must’ve been a boat. Cops found nothing back then. But trying to track something like that five years after a murder’s like tracing the course of a ship after the wake’s disappeared.”

  Michael thanked him for his time and suggested that they would talk again.

  On their way out, Claire continued to avoid her former father-in-law’s gaze.

  Had she feared what the old man might say? Could she be innocent and genuinely want to solve the crimes? Or did she hear what Michael heard between the old man’s words?

  Russell Santerre was hiding something.

  “Stop! Stop here!” Claire shouted.

  As soon as Michael slammed on the brakes, she dashed from the vehicle and charged up the drive as if to a fire. His gaze swept the area for signs of trouble. No smoke rolled from the rooftop. He watched her scoop up something dark from the middle of the pavement. Once she’d moved out of the way, he pulled in.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Once again, he wanted to strangle her. “You could’ve been hurt, jumping out like that. What a fool th—”

  “Shh, you’ll frighten him.” Ignoring his tirade, she faced him, chin in the air.

  “Who?”

  “He was there in the drive. You almost ran him over.” In her arms she cuddled a small black kitten, its matted fur tipped with ice. In liquid tones that rippled up Michael’s spine, she said, “P’tit bébé, he must be frozen. Come in, Quinn. You can light that fire you laid.”

  The dog Alley greeted them at the door with whimpers and wags. Claire patted her and showed her the kitten, no more than a smudge of wet fur in her hands. With her mistress’s reassurance, Alley sniffed, then licked the newcomer.

  Claire’s loving, soothing tones sent shock waves of lust through Michael. Fighting off the arousal and other feelings he refused to examine, he strode to the wood stove.

  In a few moments, Claire dried the foundling into a ball of fluff and tucked it into a cardboard carton lined with towels. “I’ll let him warm up, then give him some food.”

  She set the box beside her wing chair and sipped her reheated coffee. With her legs curled beneath her and the black, flowing skirt tucked around her rounded bottom and sleek legs, she resembled a kitten herself. A kitten with sharp claws, Michael reminded himself.

  “How will you find the owner?” he asked over his steaming mug. The unspoken codicil to that question was that the neighborhood doors were barred to her. He sure wouldn’t volunteer to go house to house. Hell, his dangerous attraction to her was making him grouchy. Maybe door-to-door wasn’t a bad idea. It would be a way to question the neighbors about her.

  “Mon Dieu, I would like to find them.” A flush stained her cheeks. “The people in the house behind mine moved away two weeks ago and left behind four kittens about six weeks old. I suppose they kept the mother cat. I don’t understand that kind of cruelty.”

  “Four kittens?”

  “This is the last one. I’ve been feeding them, leaving a dish of food on the back
porch. One by one, they came to me.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “At the shelter where I found Alley. Kittens are easy to place, especially at Christmas.” Her mouth softened, and her eyes grew lambent, maternal. “But this one I shall keep.”

  “Your dog. They must have had plenty of healthy dogs at the shelter. Why choose a crippled one?”

  Chocolate eyes meltingly warm as she glanced at the little dog, Claire lifted one shoulder. “Let’s say Alley chose me. They would have euthanized her unless someone adopted her and paid for the surgery.” She stretched out her left arm to the pup in question, who nuzzled her hand. “I could afford it, and her situation was not unlike mine.”

  “Wounded and fighting for her life?”

  Her mouth narrowed in a stricken expression. As if in response, Alley whined. Composing herself, Claire rose gracefully. Her skirt swirled up to flash a glimpse of shapely thigh. “I’ll bring more coffee when I bring his tuna.”

  Alley trotted behind her.

  Once she’d left the room, Michael relaxed into the depths of his chair and looked around. She’d done more decorating. A fir garland dotted with gold stars draped the mantel. The Christmas tree sparkled with gold, silver and red. It was more formal than the ones his boisterous family threw together; on hers, every star and ball was evenly spaced, but nice.

  With Christmas only a couple of weeks away, his mom was probably baking her special Italian pastries, almond biscotti and spice cookies, enough for an army. With his brothers’ kids, they had at least a regiment.

  This Christmas would be tough for everyone. Agony for him to miss seeing them, but, hell, facing them would be worse. Especially this first holiday without their family elf. The first Christmas without Amy.

  The mug shook in his hands. Afraid it would shatter in his tight fingers, he set it beside his chair.

  He’d get through it. When this case was over, he’d return to his wilderness isolation. As a tough street kid headed the wrong way, he had turned in a new direction thanks to the same sort of survival experience. Now he counted on that and time to help dull the pain and the guilt of failure.