Reluctantly, Max finally drew back, holding Laura at arms’ length to study her features. “How are you, baby?” he crooned deeply, drawing a slow but steady smile of happiness to Laura’s glossy lips. Nothing had changed—not the warmth of his eyes, nor the strength of his smile, nor the tenderness of his hands, nor the very essence of masculinity that so entrapped her. Regardless of what had happened since she’d been with him in Rockport, he was just the same and she loved him dearly.
Sensing that some crisis had been resolved in his favor, he swung her around beside him, an arm across her shoulders, guiding her upstairs to the living room. Laura had not yet spoken; with Max, communication took a different form. Her insides jangled with excitement as he shed the sheepskin jacket and turned to face her. He smelled newly showered and shaved—that clean smell that she adored tantalizing her. His gray slacks were finely complemented by a heavy wool sweater, which added even greater breadth to his shoulders as its dark, charcoal shade gave him an air of mystery.
Laura was only marginally aware of Max’s corresponding assessment of her, so occupied was she drinking in his phenomenally good looks. He, however, was fully cognizant of her examination—and pleased by it. A broad smile flashed white and wicked across his face in wordless teasing. Then he spoke, deep and sonorously.
“I was worried about you. Are you all right, Laura?”
Once before she had cut short her response to this question. This time she gave full vent to her love. “I am now,” she murmured softly, her eyes willingly drowning in his.
She heard his groan, a low sound akin to a marathoner’s agonized exhalation at victory, then she was hauled against his chest in a hug so fierce her breath was stolen. “God, how I’ve wanted you,” he growled against her hair, moments before possessing her lips with his searching mouth. Laura gave to him all he asked, and when she found herself a short time later in her bedroom, being undressed slowly and sensually by her lover, she could have imagined no other course of events.
If their first adventure in lovemaking had been driven by an intractable hunger, this night’s coupling was to be one of mutual exaltation. As they lay atop fresh pink sheets, Max’s dark body in sharp contrast to Laura’s soft, creamy one, they explored their very differences—feeling, seeing, tasting in near worshipful admiration. As hungry as each was, the need went deeper than pure lust and its physical gratification.
Laura urged Max on with soft words of encouragement, overcoming all inhibitions beneath his masterful tutelage, growing increasingly confident both of her right to enjoy the pleasures of his manhood and of her ability to pleasure him with her womanhood. He coaxed her on with words of passion as his ardor mounted, his excitement enhanced by the knowledge that she was eager and ready to receive him. When he moved between her thighs and they were finally one, she gasped aloud at the beauty of the union, marveling that anything could be so very precious. Indeed, it was to be a night for marveling, as he took her to height after height of orgasmic ecstasy, each more profound than the one before.
Dinner was late, rock Cornish hens and spinach soufflé taking a back seat to this more pressing, nonculinary delight. So divine was his company, as he insisted on hearing every detail of the armed robbery case she’d tried, then filled her in on the facts of the Wilkins Home case, that Laura forgot the woman she’d seen with Max on television, even the purgatory of uncertainty in which she’d spent too much of the past two weeks. The only thing of import was that he was with her now.
However, he did confront her about the phone call he’d made to her the previous Sunday night. “What was that all about?” he asked pointedly, his dark eyebrows lowering in concern. “You sounded strange, as though you were frightened.”
Impulsively, she blurted out the truth, in search of comfort from this man who held the key to it. “I was—I mean, not really frightened—but hesitant. I’ve been getting crank calls, and thought that might just be another.”
“What kind of calls? What does the caller say?” he prodded gently, listening soberly as she recounted the history of the calls. “Heavy breathing? No words at all?”
“Nothing! I’ve never heard a voice. The caller may be either male or female, young or old. I have no hint whatsoever. But”—she chided herself aloud—“I’ve made a big deal out of nothing. It’s annoying, that’s all. I’m sure there’s no real problem.”
Max pacified her. “You’re probably right.” His expression, however, mirrored the same uneasiness she felt. “Let’s watch it a little longer and see if anything changes. Then, if necessary, we can put a tap on your phone to record and trace the source of the call.”
“Oh, Max,” she protested feebly, “I’m sure it’s nothing!”
“I hope so,” he echoed, more skeptically than she might have wished.
That night Laura slept within the protective circle of Max’s arms, curled against his leanly masculine shape, their legs intertwining. He had given her a token, wickedly mischievous argument when she’d insisted he stay the night, but her possessiveness pleased him.
To her utter delight he was to spend the whole weekend in Northampton, working with his client in the county jail while she went about her usual Saturday business, then meeting her back at her apartment later in the day. Ironically, the phone did not ring once.
“Hmmm…no calls while you’re here. Maybe you’re the one who’s been terrorizing me,” she quipped impishly.
He saw no humor in her words. “Sometimes you are a little too smart for your own good,” he said, angry. “You take this as a huge joke, I find it disturbing.” The flashing in his eyes eased immediately upon seeing Laura’s distress.
It was a begrudging “Sorry I mentioned it” that slid through her lips. But there was a fine thread of tension that penetrated their remaining time together.
Laura suspected that the business of the crank calls had little to do with the real source of the tension. Rather it was their own relationship and the fact that they would have to come to grips with it in some form before the start of the Stallway trial, two weeks from Monday.
Additionally, as much as Laura fought its intrusion on the time they did have together, there was the constant knowledge that this weekend was only that, and would be over much too soon. Whether Max’s occasional remoteness stemmed from the same source, she didn’t know. But intermittent distraction there was, on both sides, and it was not to be easily dismissed.
Bacon and eggs were frying noisily late Sunday morning when the phone rang. Laura reached for a dishtowel to wipe her hands and answered it, fully expecting the booming voice of her father, stunned to hear the wretchedly exaggerated breathing that so repulsed her. Instantly she hung up.
A sharp glance up caught Max at the door of the kitchen, wearing only snug denims. “Same thing? Just heavy breathing?” Quite accurately he had interpreted her pallor and the hardening of otherwise gentle features. He read her well, she mused ruefully, merely nodding her head.
The squared jaw was even more sharply defined when she darted a second glance at him. “Laura,” he began, coming to stand closer by her side, “I think we should report—” only to be cut off.
“No, Max! There’s no need. I’d feel like a fool making a major issue out of it.” The actual concern in her own eyes was hidden from his view as she drained the bacon onto some paper towels.
“Why not just change your number? Very simple.”
A very simple solution it was, but it had been vetoed for precisely the reasons she now outlined. “It would be an inconvenience to change my number at this stage. And besides, if that person is intent on harassing me, it would be an easy matter to get the new number as well.”
“Have it unlisted—” he persisted doggedly.
“And remain incommunicado? Not a bad thought,” she murmured, tongue-in-cheek, then recalled the delight of the isolation at Max’s house in Rockport. But that had been different. There Max had been the only one she’d needed.…
Suddenly, the very
source of contention rent the air with its shrill jangle. This time Max’s hand flew to the receiver before Laura had even released the frying pan.
“Hello!” he barked angrily into the phone, then his furrowed brow, nearly hidden by the haphazard array of brown hair that sleep had mussed, relaxed as the voice identified itself as that of the D.A. A grin of devilry appeared as Max realized he’d been caught with his hands in the cookie jar. “Frank, it’s Max Kraig…”
Laura gasped. What was Frank going to imagine, with Max here at her apartment on a Sunday morning. Worse, she mused, whatever he could imagine was true! She reached for the phone, only to have Max back out of reach, a solid grip on the mouthpiece.
“What am I doing here?” he repeated Frank’s query for Laura’s benefit as he sent her a wink. “I’m about to have breakfast for one thing,” he began, to a second gasp from the cook, “and, for another, I’m trying to convince this stubborn woman to have her phone number changed.” Max had decided to take things into his own hands. “Are you aware…”
Laura listened with acute mortification as the tale of her mystery phone calls was retold along with a detailed list of options for what should be done to remedy the situation. At one point Laura, previously rooted to the kitchen floor, hands on jean-clad hips in disgust, reached again for the phone, only to have her embarrassment magnified.
“Excuse me for a minute, Frank,” Max began, then barely palmed the mouthpiece as he chided Laura in a loudly seductive tone. “Not now, sweetheart, not now. You will have to be patient.” Gallantly he cleared his throat. “Now, where was I…”
As it happened, Franklin Potter never did get Laura on the phone. When Max finally hung up, he informed her that the D.A. wanted her in his office early the following morning to discuss the matter. “Said he didn’t want to disturb our…er, breakfast.”
“You’re horrible, Max!” she finally exploded in exasperation. “Why did you make those…those leading statements…all but dangle your motel check-out slip in front of his nose. That was unfair!” Her cheeks, no longer pale, bore the bright blush that Max loved, and he told her so—only adding further to her indignation.
“What did Frank want in the first place?” she finally asked helplessly.
Max grinned sheepishly. “Beats me!”
As morning turned into the afternoon hours, the sheepish grin became a bittersweet memory. The unexpected call from the D.A. had brought reality crashing down upon their heads. Max had said it—“we have a problem here of conflict of interest”—and it was truer than ever. Franklin Potter’s call had only brought the matter to a head. Once again Laura wondered why Max had been so blatantly suggestive of their personal relationship to the D.A. It was as though he had been flouting fate, as though he had actually wanted to challenge the situation. Laura’s mind whirred back to the first night she had spent in Rockport, when he had likewise been unnecessarily provocative. Had it been callousness or, as she had suspected then, the evidence of a much stronger feeling within him with which he struggled?
As he had stated, Frank was expecting Laura when she arrived at his office first thing the next morning. The very sight of his ruddy cheeks, his formally controlled wisps of thin gray hair high atop his forehead, and his tight, businesslike pose behind his desk signaled the seriousness of his mood.
Beyond the perfunctorally genial greeting which he could never deny her, he made no pretense of pleasantries. “Tell me what’s going on between you and Kraig, Laura,” he demanded firmly, determinedly. There would be no putting him off this time, she admitted sadly, as her thoughts returned to the heartache of Max’s farewell the evening past.
The afternoon had been increasingly tense, each snapping over seemingly petty issues. By the time the evening had arrived and Max packed to leave, Laura was as confused as ever, not about her own feelings, which were unswervingly and pathetically clear, but about those of this enigmatic man for whom she had fallen. As his moods swung from open and caring to cryptic and irritable, so she swung, hanging helplessly at the end of his lifeline.
At the door as she bid him good-bye, he let the punchline fall softly and gently, but nonetheless commandingly. “I think we’d better go our separate ways for a while, Laura.” Then in response to the wide blue eyes that involuntarily blinked their distress, he added, “You didn’t really think we could go on like this, did you? There is a matter of ethics involved.”
Of course he was right. But that made the farewell no easier, the prospect of separation no more bearable. He hadn’t kissed her good-bye, but had merely lifted a hand to caress her cheek for a brief, adoring moment before he muttered an oath beneath his breath, turned, and stalked away.
Now, sitting before her good friend and mentor, the pain was as great as it had been at that moment of parting and throughout the night. Emptiness, sadness, loneliness, frustration—it was all back with a vengeance.
“Damn it, I was worried about this!” The D.A.’s vehemence jolted her momentarily out of her torment. What had he seen in her uncurtained gaze of a daydream? “It’s written all over your face, and I know you well enough to recognize it, so don’t give me that I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about look.” He paused, eyeing her strangely, obviously uncomfortable with what he felt impelled to ask. “Do you love him?”
The game was up. There was no longer any point in beating around the bush. “Yes.” Her tone was soft but filled with certainty.
“Does he love you?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was even softer as she looked nervously down at her clenched fists. “Sometimes I think so, other times I’m not as sure.” Mustering her courage, she looked up to find Frank in a faraway daze, head turned toward the credenza on which stood the years-old photograph of his wife and children. A melancholy smile tugged at the corners of Laura’s lips. “Not quite your usual legal predicament, is it?” The implied apology drew the D.A.’s attention back to her.
“Not quite. But it is a predicament, isn’t it?” She nodded disconsolately. “You know,” he went on more gently, “that the potential conflict of interest could hurt you, don’t you?” Again she nodded. “If you and Max are emotionally tied to one another, there are legitimate grounds to suggest that neither of you will perform up to snuff when that Stallway trial gets going. And although there might never be concrete evidence to that effect, you would have to live with the knowledge, regardless of the verdict on Jonathan Stallway. Can you live with it?”
The silence dragged out interminably as Laura asked herself that question. It had been the one she had doggedly avoided for several weeks now, since she’d acknowledged her love for Max. Finally, at Frank’s gentle prodding, she spoke. “I just don’t know. I keep thinking, thinking, but…I just…don’t know.” Another silence followed, to be broken by the D.A.’s sigh.
“Look, Laura, why don’t you take a day or two off and try to work it out. One way or the other, you’ve got to make a decision within the week. You can’t go on like this—and neither can we. If you remove yourself from the case, we have to give your successor some time to prepare. We could probably get a post-ponement.” These administrative details were all part of the D.A.’s job, yet Laura was several steps behind, lingering dismally on the phrase “if you remove yourself from the case.” In the farthest corner of her mind that possibility had bounced around for days; in her heart she had refused to see it. Now, suddenly, she had no choice but to face the possibility that should she decide that her love for the defense attorney would compromise her ability as a prosecutor, she might have to do just that.
“I don’t want to take any time off now, Frank,” she protested stubbornly, knowing that the time spent brooding would be devastating, that work was her only salvation. And there was plenty of that, totally aside from the Stallway case, to keep her occupied all week. “I will think it over though, and I will have a decision for you in time to prepare someone else, should that be necessary.” She couldn’t disguise the defeat that weighted her last words
. If only she knew Max’s feelings, her decision would be so much easier.
“The decision is yours, Laura. I will abide by whatever verdict you reach. I trust your ability to do what is right.”
The decision is yours. Of all the times she had wanted to be in full command of her life, this was not one of them. Yes, the decision was hers, yet she felt at a distinct disadvantage in making it, with the one-sided knowledge she possessed. If she knew Max loved her, the disappointment of withdrawing from her first murder case would be minimal and totally overshadowed by the radiant joy she would feel with the knowledge of his love. If, however, his attraction to her was but a passing fancy, the disappointment would be confounded and, perhaps, unnecessary.
In self-reproachment she caught herself short. This was not the immediate issue, whether or not Max returned her love. The immediate issue was, given her own feelings for him, whether she would be able to function in the legal capacity this case demanded.
“Now”—Frank’s authoritative tone recaptured her attention as he reached for his phone—“I want to get Chatfield in here and then you will tell both of us about these phone calls.”
Grateful for the temporary reprieve from one quandary, Laura regained her composure by the time Sandy arrived in the D.A.’s office. As commanded, she outlined exactly what had taken place during the two-week period since she had returned from Rockport.
“It’s really nothing to worry about,” she concluded lightly, only to be pounced upon by both men in quick succession.
“That’s a very naive point of view in our line of work, Laura, and you know it,” the D.A. scolded, removing his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose.
Sandy supported the contention. “Any number of the guys you’ve sent to the can in the past three years may be out for a little fun, a little revenge…or worse!”
Shuddering at his implication, Laura nonetheless persisted in discounting the possibility. Against her protestations Frank ordered the trooper to research the cases she’d tried, keeping a lookout for any defendants, convicts, or ex-convicts, who may have had a history of this type of harassment. If the calls continued, Frank declared vehemently, they would then have a tap put on her phone.
Sensuous Burgundy Page 13
