Dangerous Attraction

by Susan Vaughan

  “We had a Scotch together while we talked. That was all.” The older man’s lips compressed, and his eyes darkened.

  More guilt. This family sure spread it around. Farnsworth blamed himself for his part in his son’s death. Michael knew the amount of alcohol in Jonathan’s system hadn’t amounted to enough to affect his driving. “And you have no idea why he went out there?”

  “I just told you that, I believe. We spent an hour or so talking business. He didn’t say anything about Cliff Road.”

  “Or to you, Mrs. Farnsworth? You did speak to him before he left, didn’t you?”

  “Only…only to say good-night.”

  “That’s all, Mrs. Farnsworth? You and your stepson were close friends, I thought. He didn’t discuss his plans with you or mention going to meet someone?”

  Her delicate countenance tightened, grew brittle with anger. “I told you, he said only good-night and left. If he didn’t confide in me as he used to, it was her fault.” Her eyes flicked a stiletto at Claire. “I don’t know how she did it, but she killed Jonathan. Sabotaged the car, the brakes or the steering or something.”

  The cops had found no evidence of tampering, Michael recalled. Of course, a night of rinsing by ocean swells might erase evidence. They’d found no paint chips or tire tracks from another vehicle. Maybe it was a damn accident. “Did either of you leave the house after Jonathan?”

  “Just what are you getting at, Mr. Quinn?” Newcomb said, his eyes glittering with indignation.

  “Nothing.” Michael shrugged elaborately. “I’m simply gathering facts. Did you leave the house that night?”

  “Certainly not,” Martine said. “We went to bed soon afterward. That’s all we can tell you.” She rose and led them toward the door.

  “You’ll excuse us now,” Newcomb added in final dismissal. “We have a trip to pack for.” He strode up the stairway without a backward glance.

  Michael figured it was a toss-up which of the cousins would win the ice-queen competition. Martine had haughty disdain down perfect, but Claire’s untouchable, remote act was damn good—except for her trembling. He hooked her elbow with his hand so she wouldn’t bolt out the door without him.

  While they waited for their coats, a painting in the foyer caught Michael’s eye. Father and son. Suit-coat formal.

  Jonathan, tall and boyishly slim, posed beside his father’s chair. While an air of command and power radiated from the elder Farnsworth, in Jonathan’s eyes Michael saw humor and easy charm. The kind of charm, like Cruz’s, that could melt even an ice queen.

  Martine had married a man twenty years her senior. Stood to reason she’d be jealous when her younger cousin snagged the firstborn son and heir.

  Didn’t the biggest—and most dangerous—part of an iceberg hide beneath the water’s surface?

  Chapter 6

  Although the snow had stopped, Claire plunged mindlessly toward home, head down as if she were fighting her way through a driving blizzard.

  Without warning, a hard arm plucked her off her feet and yanked her solidly against a large immovable object. Her breath blew out in a whoosh, but she managed a breathy “Quinn! What the—”

  He set her on her feet again but held on to one arm. “The car. It almost hit you.”

  She glanced up to see a station wagon slithering away in the wet snow. Shock at what might have happened tripped her heart into an erratic tattoo. Fleeing the smothering hatred of the Farnsworth household, she’d paid no attention to where she was. Or to traffic.

  “Mon Dieu, thank you, Quinn. I had to get away from there,” she said, hugging herself. “I couldn’t breathe.”

  She didn’t resist when he guided her across the street toward her house. Having that familiar, warm pressure on her elbow grounded her, calmed her.

  “You need to be home,” he said.

  “No, I like the air, the snow. Some activity is what I need.” She hadn’t realized it until she uttered the words. Instantly she knew where to go and what to show the big man beside her. “Quinn, you have cross-country skis in the back of your Cherokee. How would you like to use them this afternoon?”

  His jaw worked, and his lips twitched toward a smile. “If you don’t think it would compromise our employer-employee relationship, boss.”

  Touché. She felt the flush rise to her cheeks. She said, more sharply than she intended, “You’ll be on duty. I’ll need protection, won’t I?”

  She wrenched her arm from his light grasp to tromp up the snow-caked walk to her house.

  Behind her, Quinn’s rumbling chuckle triggered a sensual ripple through her, but his words stopped it.

  “I thought I was the target, not you, babe.”

  Half an hour later, following Claire’s directions, Michael drove them north on Route 1 to a small state park a few miles outside Weymouth. Occasional glances in his rearview mirror told him no one but Cruz had followed them out of town.

  Frosty vanilla-daubed pines and spruce arched tunnel-like over the closed park’s narrow road. The scenery barely earned a glance. Michael forced his concentration on his driving, away from the woman beside him.

  Constantly clad in mourning colors, Claire aroused him. But in her ski outfit of deep rose splashed with lightninglike streaks of bright orange, her vibrancy and her lush, sensual beauty set him ablaze like the sunset she resembled. The soft rose fabric clung seductively to her breasts and hugged the flare of her hips so intimately he wanted to rip away the damn outfit. Anger at his adolescent craving chased desire through his veins.

  “You can pull in here.” Claire pointed to a small parking lot where two other vehicles already sat. “Though the park is officially closed, the rangers groom the trails with snowmobiles.”

  While Claire fastened her skis, Michael laced gaiters over his jeans. Out of habit, he’d left his skis and boots in the back of the Cherokee, but he hadn’t brought the rest of his gear. A windproof anorak over a sweater and the borrowed leg coverings would suffice for their short trek.

  “All this time I thought you didn’t like being out in the cold,” he said. “You’re dressed like you do this every day.”

  Her sexy wind-and-waterproof outerwear looked barely used, but the fleece lining, her skis and boots had seen many miles of trail.

  “Idle standing in arctic sheds is what I hate.” She pulled her fall of mahogany hair back with a stretchy headband that covered her ears. “I grew up cross-country skiing. We had no money for fancy downhill ski resorts or equipment, but using my father’s old skis set me free, allowed me to escape. Gliding across new snow like this through forest and field is wonderful, like discovering some new, wild place no one has ever been before.” Her cocoa eyes grew dreamy.

  Michael longed to touch his lips to her eyelids. He cleared his throat and inhaled deeply of the crisp, evergreen-scented air. “I know what you mean. Out in the Whites where I was camping, I felt I was on another planet, maybe the moon. Or I was the only person alive.”

  She angled her head in the way that always got to him. Then, without warning, her lips curved in a smile.

  His breath stuck somewhere behind his breastbone, and his heart skipped a beat. Poleaxed. There was no other damn word for how it hit him. The smile painted roses on her cheeks and danced lights in her eyes. Like the sun coming from behind a cloud, its pure gold eclipsed her brightly colored ski suit.

  “Let’s go,” she said. Before he could recover enough to comprehend her words, she swished away into the woods, her arms working the poles in rhythm with the gliding skis.

  Michael planted his poles and did a racer’s lunge. He was the stronger skier and could easily pass her, but then he’d deny himself the pleasure of keeping that firmly curved backside in his sights. So he hung behind her a few paces.

  The groomed track zigzagged over the rolling terrain of the park’s nature trails and then through the open camping area, past snowcapped charcoal grills and up-ended picnic tables. They passed two other skiers, a teenage couple in ragged
and baggy jeans, but he saw no one suspicious.

  After the last campsite, he followed Claire into the woods again. Moments later, she burst through an opening and disappeared.

  Icy panic froze his gut, and Michael surged forward. When he emerged, he found the edge of the earth.

  A treeless snowfield sloped down, then dropped off. To nothing.

  Nothing but cold white. Ivory-clouded sky and alabaster snow merged to complete the illusion.

  “Over here. Follow me.”

  The only color in a monochromatic world, Claire stood to his right at the edge of the trees. Only then did Michael exhale the breath he’d been unaware of holding. What the hell!

  “Take off…your skis,” she puffed out breathlessly, her cheeks flushed from the exertion. “It’s safer on foot from here to the edge.” She bent to unhook her ski boots from the bindings, then stepped away from the skis and headed downward along the tree line. “I want to show you something.”

  Hiking in slow motion through the deep snow gradually brought more into view. Between snow and sky lay the pewter sea of Casco Bay, its roiling waters stretching to the myriad fir-spiked islands and beyond.

  Claire stopped at a heavy wooden railing and gazed out. “Isn’t this magnificent?” Apparently she’d seen the view many times before, but that didn’t dim the awe in her voice.

  “The end of the earth,” he said. “You’re a good skier.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t know if I could do it again.”

  “Because of the way Alan died.”

  She nodded. “It was the last time I skied. I was out on one of the cross-country trails when the avalanche happened.”

  Michael wanted to know more details about Alan Worcester’s death, but later. Right now, they had other things to discuss. His gaze dropped from the mesmerizing sea to the cliff falling away beneath him and down to a two-lane highway.

  “That’s the Cliff Road, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “This curve is where Jonathan’s car went off the cliff and into the ocean.” Her fingers tracing rows of even lines in the snow atop the railing, she looked outwardly composed.

  Below them the highway turned sharply, then wound its way out of sight. On the curve, a sturdy guardrail stood in place as if nothing had ever happened. Yet, seven years ago, on a clear October night, a sober Jonathan Farnsworth had crashed his Corvette through the rail and hurtled to his death.

  Major questions remained. Why had he been driving so fast? Why the hell the Cliff Road at all? Had someone helped his death along? If so, who? And why?

  “It made no sense to me then,” Claire said, “and it still doesn’t. What was he doing here?” She waved vaguely at the road below. Sorrow thickened her voice.

  He longed to wrap her in his arms. Instead, he said, “You don’t think he could have just been putting his new sports car through its paces?”

  “That wasn’t like him. Unless…no.”

  “Unless what?”

  “He might have done it if he and Paul were racing each other, but back then Paul had only an old pickup. And anyway, Paul was home in bed. He was the first person I telephoned when Jonathan didn’t come home. I’d been up north and arrived home quite late, after midnight.”

  “There’s no way to know any of that now, I suppose,” Michael said. From what he knew about the relationship between Jonathan and Paul, racing wasn’t out of the equation. Even between a Corvette and an old pickup truck.

  If the two friends had sped around those treacherous curves recklessly, Jonathan’s death was an accident and not murder by some obsessive madman.

  Had Paul the grieving friend then suffered the guilt of having left the scene and assuaged that guilt by caring for the widow? Or had Paul the competitive son of a bitch conveniently helped himself to his friend’s widow?

  Michael would bet on door number two.

  The problem with that scenario was it didn’t explain the other two deaths, Paul’s included.

  Taking another tack, he said, “Are you ready to talk about what happened earlier at the Farnsworths’?”

  “What do you mean? Nothing happened. We didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know.” She spun away from the cliff. “It’s time to go back now. I have to feed Spook.”

  “Who?” A thread of panic wound around his throat at the doublespeak for spy. It was too close for comfort.

  “The kitten, of course. He appeared like a ghost.”

  Exhaling in relief, he halted her escape by clasping her hand. “Maybe you didn’t learn anything new because you’re denying what was right in front of you. Martine is hiding something. Jonathan could have told her something that night, something she’s kept from her husband. They were close, maybe closer than they should have been. If something…happened between her and Jonathan—”

  “You are implying, mon Dieu, that Jonathan and his stepmother…” He watched her struggle, unable to utter the damning words.

  “Had an affair? Possibly. Whatever it is, she’s terrified that Newcomb will find out.” When Claire jerked loose and pushed uphill through the snow, Quinn let her go but followed close behind. “You said yourself she seemed angry at your marriage.”

  “Non, I won’t believe it!” Shaking with shock and fury, Claire stumbled halfway up the hill and fell in the snow. She curled in a ball on her side.

  Michael dropped to his knees beside the sobbing woman. He reached out a hand, then drew it back. What the hell had he done? His thoughtlessness had snapped the tenuous equilibrium she struggled to maintain on her emotional high wire.

  “God, Claire,” he began, not knowing what to say, “I know you loved Jonathan. Maybe it’s something else with Martine. I spoke without thinking.” He dug in his back pocket for the paper towel he used as a handkerchief. “Here.”

  She accepted it with wordless snuffles.

  Without his permission, his hands reached out to pull Claire into his arms. To his surprise, she allowed him to comfort them both by holding her. While she cried, they remained on the snowy slope, on their knees facing each other. Michael struggled to ignore her herbal scent and his body’s predictable reaction to her nearness. Hell, lately he spent most of his time half-aroused.

  He struggled to convince himself that chemistry explained it.

  When the spasms eased, she mopped at her eyes. “Isn’t it strange? Those who hated Paul came right out with it, but the one who loved him, his father, is hiding something. And one who loved Jonathan, his stepmother, also has a secret.”

  “Do you have any ideas about that?” he asked the top of her head.

  Claire eased back enough to peer into his eyes. Hers were dark and desperate. “I’ve tried to deny it to myself for years, but you’re probably right that they had an affair before I met Jonathan. Poor Newcomb.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There were…indications. Jonathan refused her calls, made me talk to her when she telephoned. At his father’s house, he wouldn’t stay in a room alone with her. It was nothing he’d ever discuss.”

  “He must have been just a boy when it happened. The sexy stepmother and an adolescent on hormone overload. A collision waiting to happen. Don’t let it taint your memories of him.”

  She smiled, a sad, crooked smile, but it still shot heat through his system. “Thanks, Quinn,” she said, and stretched up to press a soft kiss to his mouth.

  Even that light caress rattled his cage, but he managed to contain his desire. “You’re welcome, boss.”

  She laughed, and they rose to finish climbing the hill. Claire had regained her brave face, though it must hurt like hell to think the husband she’d loved had kept such a secret.

  After donning his skis once more, Michael stared at the sea. “Could Martine have killed Jonathan to guard her secret?”

  “She might do anything to safeguard her children,” Claire mused, “but what about Paul and Alan? And the caller?”

  Frustratingly, no solution fit all the deaths. Regarding Jonathan, another po
ssibility remained, one he didn’t like mentioning.

  “No one ever suggested Jonathan might have killed himself,” he said, “but betraying his father had to weigh heavily on him.”

  “I don’t know,” Claire said, her voice wavering like the trembling pine needles behind them. She pointed a ski pole at the cliff. “But that turn…is called Suicide Curve.”

  After another spate of flurries overnight, the weather front moved on Down East to dump on the Canadian Maritimes. The next morning dawned in freshly washed blue skies and a dazzling if cold sun. Elisha Fogg coaxed his old truck to Claire’s house to clear the snow.

  As usual, Claire rose early. She waxed the kitchen floor and then dusted the living room. When Quinn suggested a meeting with the Weymouth police chief to cover his list of potential stalkers, she bowed out. He never questioned her reluctance to talk to cops, so after polishing the brass candlesticks, she was able to slip out alone on an errand she’d prefer to share with no one.

  Not even with a man she was coming to care for. To care for more than she should. Mon Dieu! Couldn’t she have a simple business association with a man? Her looks got in the way, and her own needs. Her curse. He wanted her, even believed in her now. If only desire and proximity were the reasons, she could fight the attraction. It should be easy.

  But it wasn’t.

  She returned home at noon, relieved to see that Quinn hadn’t returned and that Elisha’s truck remained at the curb. He’d been happy to stay and walk Alley after finishing the snow removal. At least this once she hadn’t had to worry about someone prowling in her house while she was gone.

  The anonymous phone calls had become rarer lately. Perhaps the stalker was more circumspect because of Quinn’s presence. Whatever his reason, she’d take the peace.

  At the police station, Quinn should be secure. If her anonymous caller posed a threat to him, his safety was her responsibility.

  It would probably do no good to advise the stalker that Quinn meant nothing to her, that he was a P.I. He was in danger any time he spent away from her. In spite of yesterday’s revelations, she didn’t believe that Jonathan had taken his own life. Nor that his death had been an accident.