The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  And it wasn’t something he was comfortable putting into words, anyway. Without answering her question, he stepped into the living room and picked up a small ceramic table lamp from one of the end tables. He removed the shade and held the lamp over the kitchen garbage can, aiming carefully.

  One quick downward motion shattered the glass bulb, leaving the base still screwed firmly into the socket. That ought to be a good enough excuse to ask Steve Cormier for a pair of pliers, Sam thought. He told Kelley what he was doing and made his escape into the noonday sun without pausing to look too deeply into the bottomless blue of her questioning gaze.

  Chapter 6

  Stick with the facts, he told himself as he walked into Steve Cormier’s kitchen. Going with your gut will screw you up every single time.

  The problem was that his gut was telling him very strongly that there was something wrong with Cormier’s setup.

  It wasn’t just the fact that the red-haired handyman seemed to have virtually no belongings of his own in his cottage. It was something about Cormier’s demeanor, something so watchful that Sam felt almost certain the guy was hiding something.

  The question was, what was it?

  He managed to take a quick look into the single bedroom while Cormier was searching for a pair of pliers in a kitchen drawer. There was no sign of the big carrying cases Helen Price had mentioned. But then, if the cases did contain counterfeiting equipment, it was hardly likely that Cormier would leave them’ in plain view.

  “Helen tells me you’re a photographer,” he said, as the other man carefully began to extricate the base of the lamp bulb. Sam had purposely broken it off as close to the socket as possible, so the process was a tricky one.

  “An amateur,” Cormier said, without looking up. “I haven’t had time to do much since I’ve been down here. The Prices keep me busy.” He headed off Sam’s next question with one of his own. “You and your wife getting any chance to relax?” he asked. “Seems like I hear the phone ringing every time I’m near your place.”

  And how many times had that been? Sam wondered. It was true that the phone was ringing a lot—that was what happened when you started putting out inquiries in a case and information started coming back in. But he hadn’t figured on anyone overhearing the process. He made a mental note to turn the ringer down when he got back to the cottage.

  “Just some loose business ends that we couldn’t tie up before we left the city,” he said. “Listen, you mind if I use your bathroom?”

  “Help yourself. Just step around my stuff.”

  In addition to the master bathroom off the bedroom, each of the Windspray cottages had a half bath accessible from the living room. Sam had glanced into the bigger room when he’d ducked into the bedroom, but the door to the smaller bathroom was closed tight, something that had struck him as odd.

  The “stuff” Cormier had referred to was photographic equipment, a small portable darkroom setup that occupied most of the short counter space. As he ran water and flushed the toilet to cover his real purpose there, Sam took a good look around, trying to figure out what Cormier had been developing.

  There was no way to be sure. But he’d been working in here recently, judging by the fresh chemical smells. And photography was still an integral part of most of the counterfeiting methods Sam knew about.

  Cormier had the bulb base free of the socket when Sam came out again. And he seemed eager to wrap up their conversation, in spite of Sam’s attempts to draw him out on the subject of darkroom techniques.

  That was odd in itself, Sam thought. Most amateur photographers were happy to discuss their hobby. But Cormier was putting the pliers away and reaching for a plumber’s snake as Sam joined him again.

  “Gotta go clear a drain at the Gustaffsons’ place,” he said. “The whole development is built so close to the water that things are always backing up. Time I leave this job, I’ll be a plumber in all but pay scale.”

  “You planning on leaving?” Sam kept the words as light as he could, but something in the quick flash of Cormier’s eyes made him think the other man was on his guard against any and all personal questions.

  “Not for a while,” he hedged, and gave Sam a grin that Sam recognized for what it was—a diversionary tactic, designed to show that Cormier had nothing to hide. “Although too many more blocked drains could do it to me. How Harold got a permit to build so close to the water table is beyond me, but then, I guess you can do anything you want if you’ve got money.”

  Sam went out onto the deck, but as he left he couldn’t help turning and taking one more look around the nearly bare kitchen. There might be something there, he thought, some clue, some sign of who Steve Cormier really was and why he’d come to this out-of-the-way resort.

  If Sam hadn’t been raking the room with his practiced gaze, he would have missed it. It wasn’t in the kitchen itself, it was in the way the redheaded handyman was adjusting the fit of his worn denim overalls as he stepped out of the cottage.

  It lasted only a fraction of a second—a quick motion of Cormier’s right hand toward a spot on his hip under the baggy covering of the overalls. But Sam recognized it immediately as the kind of last-minute check he’d performed countless times himself, in the years before he’d stopped carrying a gun.

  Steve Cormier was armed.

  And dangerous, Sam’s gut insisted on adding as he stepped out onto the lawn.

  Sam and Kelley’s cottage faced south, toward the ocean. The sky, shadowed now with clouds that seemed to hint at a shift in the weather pattern, was beginning to do some spectacular things as the sun set.

  Kelley watched the colors in the west change from yellow to deep, saturated orange, wondering what it would be like to stay at a place like this just for a holiday, with time to drink in the beauty and the quiet of the place.

  As it was, the darkening sky made her feel apprehensive, not calm. And the isolation of the Windspray Community—all by itself at the end of this sandy point—was anything but restful. Somewhere in this attractive cluster of cottages, after all, there was a person who had tried to kill her and Sam.

  The constant tapping of the computer keys at the table behind her only added to her sense of unease. Sam had been working like a demon all day, and he showed no signs of slowing down now that night was falling.

  They’d shared a hasty lunch of leftovers from the night before and hadn’t discussed dinner yet. Something about the dimming light outside, about Sam’s silence for the past hour and her own empty stomach, was beginning to leave Kelley feeling depressed. If this had been a vacation, instead of a working trip, or if she and Sam hadn’t split apart three years ago—

  Those thoughts were useless. But they were creeping into her mind, anyway, dampening her mood.

  “There.”

  Sam spoke without warning, startling her. He sounded tired but satisfied as he leaned back in his chair, still looking at the screen of the laptop computer.

  She knew the tone in his voice. It was the one that said, Well, if nothing else, at least I’m working hard and getting results. She must have told herself the same thing on a thousand different occasions during the past three years. The sound of it in Sam’s voice didn’t do anything to lift her spirits.

  “I finally got something on the second of those references Steve Cormier gave when he came to work here,” Sam said. “The office management company he said he worked for last year went out of business three years ago. That makes two phony references out of the three, and I’m willing to bet the third one is just as bogus.”

  Steve Cormier’s job application form had finally turned up on Harold Price’s desk—“Right under his nose the whole time,” Helen had said, looking disgusted at what she clearly considered a long-standing flaw in her husband’s filing system. And once Sam and Kelley had begun to check it out, the application had given new weight to the idea that the Windspray Community’s handyman was not who he had made himself out to be.

  Not only did Cormier’s refe
rences not check out, but no one had heard of him at his previous address. “And he doesn’t show up on any of the credit listings I’ve tried,” Sam said.

  From his trip to Cormier’s cottage, Sam had brought back the news that one piece of photographic equipment in the handyman’s cottage had a label from a mail-order firm. Yet when they’d called, the firm had no Steve Cormier on its mailing list. Nothing about the man seemed genuine.

  Kelley herself had continued working on constructing a financial picture of the Gustaffsons, and she hadn’t given up on her hunch that there was something shady about Wayland Price. But there were simply too many gaps in Steve Cormier’s story to ignore.

  “I’m beginning to agree with you that he’s our first choice,” Kelley said, watching Sam lift his arms above his head to stretch out the kinks in his neck and shoulders. “And we’ve got plenty to back us up. Now, the question is—”

  She’d been about to say that what they needed now was some physical proof that Cormier was involved in counterfeiting money. But before she could say so, the look on Sam’s face stopped her.

  He’d paused with one long arm curved over his head. The other one had reached up to clasp the first at the elbow. It had been a casual movement, she thought, prompted by muscle stiffness after too many hours hunched over the computer keyboard. But it had turned into something else.

  Everything about him had gone still, including his face. His eyes were closed, and Kelley could see him fighting for the careless expression he always wore when he didn’t want to show what was going on inside him.

  But it wasn’t working this time. He didn’t look careless. He looked like he was in pain.

  For three years Kelley had held herself aloof from Sam’s pain, because it seemed like the best defense against the way he was holding himself aloof from her. But now—maybe because of that unexpected moment yesterday in the cabin of Harold and Helen’s boat—she couldn’t keep her distance from it any longer. The distress on his shuttered face was something she was a part of, whether she liked it nor not.

  And suddenly she needed to know whether she could have a hand in fixing it.

  She didn’t give herself time to change her mind. She moved quickly, quietly, around the circular table until she stood behind Sam’s broad back.

  The fiery sunset outside was dying into mere embers now. Kelley felt as though her thoughts were doing the same thing, plunging back into the darkness that was always there waiting for her whenever she thought about Sam Cotter.

  But ignoring the darkness hadn’t made it go away. Kelley took in a slow, deep breath and put her hands on Sam’s right shoulder.

  She felt him tense under her fingertips, tightening the hard knot that had stopped his stretch in the first place. At first she thought he was going to shrug her off, and she paused, waiting for his deep, gravelly voice to tell her she should mind her own business and let him mind his.

  But he didn’t speak. He just lowered both arms, slowly, in a gesture that looked almost like a silent surrender. After another long pause, Kelley began to probe, as gently as she knew how, into the tight mass of muscle that had been damaged and then slowly restored.

  It was easy to feel the places where that slow therapy process hadn’t really worked. She was reluctant to push too hard, afraid of hurting him even more, but as she pressed one palm firmly over the spot that had tightened so cruelly, she heard him exhale on what sounded like a note of relief. And that gave her enough confidence to go on.

  She leaned into his tense muscles with the heel of her hand, rubbing in slow circles that seemed to loosen the rock-hard spot. She saw Sam tilt his head forward slightly, and wondered why it was that the exposed back of his neck, with the dark hair curling untidily over his collar, should make her feel so strong, so protective.

  Was it because he was opening himself to her in a way he hadn’t done for what seemed like forever? She didn’t let herself linger over the question, but kept her thoughts focused on what she was doing, exploring his old injury with unhurried thoroughness.

  She curled her fingers around his shoulder and flexed it, still massaging it with her other hand. She had no technical idea what she was doing. She only knew that Sam’s body seemed to be telling her what felt right, and she was following his instincts, and her own.

  She heard him exhale in another deep sigh as she lifted his shoulder a little higher and pressed a little more insistently into the damaged muscle. The sound was almost a groan this time, but the edge of pleasure in it was very clear. Heartened, Kelley became bolder, flattening both palms against his skin and moving in wider circles that rocked Sam’s whole body and left her amazed at how relaxed, how trusting he was becoming under her touch.

  “You have no idea,” he said at last, “how good that feels.”

  She had some idea. The change in him was remarkable, and the sound of relief and pleasure in his voice made her feel suddenly lighthearted.

  Her gloomy mood of a few minutes ago had vanished, and even the dark night outside had disappeared from her awareness. The only thing that mattered was the warm circle of light around the table, and the ragged honesty in Sam’s voice, and the silent, certain way their bodies were communicating with each other, after all this time apart.

  That silent language of theirs had been so perfect once. They’d each seemed to know exactly what pleased the other. Their lovemaking had always opened new worlds to Kelley. It had been as though Sam had seen directly into her thoughts, into her fantasies.

  She felt her own body stirring in response to those halfforgottèn fantasies now, and realized she was in danger of letting her old feelings for Sam completely overwhelm her.

  “You must have had physical therapists who could do this as well as I can,” she said, trying to keep her thoughts practical.

  But he was shaking his head, flexing his neck like a big cat stretching in the hot sun. “Not like this,” he murmured. For a moment Kelley had the hazy impression that he was actually purring. “Nobody ever made me feel like this except—”

  Except you. Had that been what he’d been about to say? Kelley stopped moving, startled by the idea that both of them had been drifting back into deep waters without really meaning to.

  Sam didn’t finish the sentence, but he wasn’t making any move to swim to a safer harbor, either. For a long moment Kelley just stood there, feeling the rhythm of her own escalating heartbeat where her palms rested against Sam’s shoulder.

  She knew she should step away, but somehow she didn’t want to break this unexpectedly comforting contact until she’d told him she knew how he felt—knew, perhaps, better than anyone else could know.

  “It’s not enough, is it?” She said the words quietly, flicking one hand toward the green light of the computer screen. “You work and work, and there’s still something—hollow about it.”

  She felt him grow tense under her fingers again and wondered if her words had just erased whatever benefit he’d gotten from the massage. And his voice sounded harsh again when he answered her.

  But he didn’t move. And he didn’t argue.

  “No, damn it, it isn’t enough,” he said. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  Kelley gave a startled half laugh. The anger and bewilderment in his voice was exactly what she had been feeling for so long.

  “Me, too,” she told him. Impulsively she ran both hands over the broad surface of his back again, warmed into the gesture by an unexpected sense of solidarity.

  He captured one of her wrists suddenly, startling her even more, pulling her around to face him. She was drawn down onto his lap without realizing it, surrounded by his strength before she’d had a chance even to think of resisting.

  And the moment she looked into his eyes, she didn’t want to resist, anyway.

  Sam Cotter kept the world at arm’s length most of the time by making it clear—with his trademark slouch, his blunt speech, his flint-hard glare—that he didn’t give a damn what anybody might think or say about
him. Even when he smiled, his expression hovered halfway between warning and mockery. His eyes never changed when he smiled like that.

  But Sam had another smile, one he rarely used. It was slow, and surprised looking. And tender. And infinitely sexy, because it was a window into the real Sam Cotter, with none of the usual barriers and barbed wire in the way.

  It was one of the most beautiful things Kelley had ever seen.

  And against all her expectations, she was seeing it now.

  His eyes caught her, held her. She felt wrapped in his slow smile, drawn into the genuine warmth she could see in his face. She lifted one hand to smooth back his dark, tousled hair and felt herself smiling in answer.

  Neither one of them tried to put their thoughts into words. Words were inadequate, anyway, Kelley knew, for the kind of empathy they were sharing right now—the empathy that had drawn them together when they’d first met.

  And she wasn’t sure her voice would work even if she wanted to talk. The way she was nestled into the hard angle of Sam’s lap was overpoweringly erotic. When she shifted her weight slightly she could feel the masculine line of his thighs and another telltale ridge—just as masculine, even more arousing—under her body.

  His smile faded, leaving only the naked hunger in his blue eyes. Kelley ran her fingers through his hair again, wondering how she’d managed to live through these past three years without the searching adoration of Sam’s gaze. And then—she wasn’t sure which one of them moved first— their mouths met, and the same long-denied, all-consuming hunger overran both of them.

  She felt his fingers threading into her hair, holding her face against his as he kissed her. There were so many things she wanted him to do, so many feelings she knew he could arouse in her. She wanted to feel his mouth caressing every inch of her, his hands exploring parts of her that were suddenly crying out for his touch. She wanted to be joined to him forever, holding him safe in the cradle of her body, keeping the darkness around them at bay.