by Louise Clark
He reached out, gently brushing back her wet hair. "When someone disappears, there are usually painful reasons behind it. But it's better to know what actually happened to them than to speculate forever."
Liquid trickled down Christy's cheek and she wondered, was it seawater from his touch or her own tears? When he put his arm around her, she sighed and leaned against him. It felt good to be held by a man.
Cocooned by the warm, silky water, she was very aware of his heat as their bodies touched. "I've been in limbo for three months. Three awful months of rumors and wondering. Three months of one bit of bad news after the other. I'm tired, Quinn. I do need closure. If Frank is still alive, he and I have to work out an arrangement that causes Noelle the least pain and gives me the freedom to live my own life. If that means divorce well, it does. If he's not alive... I need to know."
Cupping her head in his hand, Quinn gently stroked her hair with the other. "That's why we are here. We'll find out, Christy, one way or the other."
"Thank you," she whispered.
He nodded, then slowly, giving her time to pull away, he drew her in. Her lips parted. Inches away, he paused.
She said huskily, "Don't stop."
He obeyed her. His lips touched hers, a featherlight caress that was followed by a teasing nibble. Her pulse pounded while her body sang with anticipation. She put her hands on his shoulders, needing his support, wanting to feel the texture of his skin beneath her fingertips. The nibbles firmed into a kiss that took and demanded more.
Christy gave it. She pressed her body against his, scraped her teeth over his lip. Her touch was rough enough for him to feel, soft enough to tantalize. His quick intake of breath brought her pleasure and encouraged her to use the tip of her tongue to caress the place she'd nipped. That roused him to a quick response. His hand pushed through her hair to the back of her head, holding her fast while his mouth hardened over hers and his tongue stroked her lips.
Her blood pounded in her head, chasing away inhibitions. Christy was vaguely aware that she shouldn't allow this to go any further. The cat's claim that Frank was dead aside, she was still married to the man and she'd promised to be faithful to him throughout their lives together. If she allowed the wonderful sensations Quinn was creating to go further, she'd break that promise. Then, as pleasant as the physical act would be, she'd have to deal with the emotional aftermath. Guilt. Recriminations. Regret. Was she ready for that?
He slid his hand up her bare midriff to her bikini top. Her breath caught. He broke the kiss to look into her eyes. "You want me."
"Yes." She wanted him to push the fabric aside, to fondle her breast. She wanted him to kiss her again. And, worst of all, she wanted him to use the erection she could feel hard against her. So what did she do?
Her body was shrieking, Yes! Yes! Go for it! But her emotions?
He was a reporter. Yes, he was helping her now, and he'd said something earlier about being off the record, but what about the future? "Quinn..."
He stroked her lips with the pad of his thumb. "I didn't expect this, Christy."
"Neither did I." She groaned, fighting herself. "Quinn," she whispered.
He smiled at her. "Yes?"
He was giving her time to think. To decide. "I... we're on a beach."
"Yes." He kissed the edge of her mouth, that tender, sensitive spot where her lips joined.
"Stop. No, don't stop. Oh! We're in the open. Anyone could walk by and see us."
"It's dark. We're in the water. No one can see us."
She sighed. For a time she allowed herself to fall into the sensation. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with the pent up need of months of abstinence and a great deal of attraction. It would be so easy to sink into the water together, or walk up the beach to her room. Easy and intensely pleasurable.
Too easy. Completely wrong.
She pulled away. Putting her forehead on his shoulder she said, "I'm sorry. I can't do this."
His body stilled. Catching her chin, he forced her to look up. In the darkness his expression was shadowy, hard to read.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I... I'm married. I don't fool around, no matter what my husband has done, or is doing. I... I want you, Quinn, but I can't. If we made love now, here or in one of our rooms, I would be angry at myself, guilty I suppose." She untwined her arms and put them on his shoulders to push him away.
He stopped her with a gentle touch on her lips with one finger. "Sh."
They stood like that, still bound by desire but slowly easing apart emotionally. The sea lapped around them, cooling the heat in their bodies. Finally Quinn drew a deep breath and let it out in a long, hard sigh. "It's okay. We're okay. I'm not going to pretend that I don't wish we were ending this differently, but I can't argue with a woman who is faithful to her vows. I will promise you one thing, Christy Jamieson."
"What is that?"
"When this is over, when we've found Frank and you know where you stand, we'll finish this."
"What if Frank and I decide to get back together?"
He kissed her. "Then we'll have to see who is the better match for you, won't we?"
Chapter 14
People did stupid things in the heat of the moment. Quinn shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the steward explained safety procedures at the front of the cabin. There'd been a lot of heat in that moment in the surf. Desire, passion, need—they'd all been there, softening him up, providing him with the opportunity to open his mouth and say something reckless.
And, oh man, he'd really done it.
The plane powered up, rushing forward. The nose tilted and, with a great leap, it was airborne. The engines throbbed. The ground fell away below them. Quinn stared out at golden beaches fringing the perfect aquamarine of the sea as the jet circled. Then it headed northwest, over the dark, rich green of the lush vegetation. He'd come to Mexico with Christy intent on finding her husband. He was leaving pretty much convinced that Frank had never been in this part of Mexico or any other of its many regions. Which could leave Christy Jamieson a free woman, a prospect that terrified him.
The plane leveled off. The cabin crew made noises in the galley, and a drinks cart appeared in the aisle. When it reached him, Quinn ordered a scotch. He didn't know which was worse, having Christy off limits because she was married and faithful, or having her free and open to new relationships. Like a relationship with him.
The problem was, Christy was a commitment kind of person, and he was not. Commitment was permanent. Committed relationships lasted a lifetime, like the one his parents had had. Committed relationships meant bending and shaping your life to fit it into someone else's. Commitment meant staying in one place, bonding with one person, sharing their pain, watching them grieve. Commitment meant sacrifice.
Been there, done that.
He swirled the scotch in his glass and turned his attention to the window. They were higher now, flying through gossamer wisps of pure white cloud that probably looked thick and solid from the dark, lush jungles spread out below. It was all about perceptions, wasn't it?
Two years ago his mother had died. At the funeral he'd watched his father stare at her casket, his expression empty. Not vague, not lost in his imaginings, just blank, as if the essence of Roy Armstrong was not at home. In that moment he'd decided he would take a leave of absence so he could stay in Vancouver with Roy, to help him over the first raw pain of his loss. That's how he'd sold it to his father anyway.
What a crock.
The truth was that on assignment in Africa he'd met a woman, a doctor working in a refugee camp, who believed her role in life was to tend to those displaced, dispossessed, and all but destroyed by the savagery of wars they didn't start and couldn't end. Her name was Tamara and she was brilliant, furious, and stubborn. He'd fallen for her passion, for her need to right the wrongs around her. He'd loved the way she fought against the restrictions surrounding her and the intensity with which she protected those she cared for.
&n
bsp; He knew her for two months. Two months of fierce lovemaking and heart-stopping moments when the war came to them—or when she went to the battlefields in some quixotic errand of mercy.
And that was how it ended, in a hot, dry place where the necessities of life—food, water, and shelter—were scarce and the rules of war didn't exist. She had been a civilian, a healer, her goal to help, not to harm. That hadn't mattered to the group that ambushed her temporary camp.
He hadn't been with her when she was killed. He regretted that. He wondered if he could have saved her if he'd been there. He would always wonder.
Now, three years later, the questions didn't hurt so much. He'd come to Vancouver to heal his father, to help him grieve. Instead, he'd allowed himself to grieve. Now he was able to look back at what was, rather than what might have been. Tamara had been fierce in her beliefs, exciting to be with, and driven by such passion that she dragged everyone along with her. He doubted she was a commitment kind of person, at least not the kind of commitment that created families, nurtured kids, and lasted into old age. She had lived her life in the moment, intensely, so that every emotion was magnified.
Sex had been great. Fierce and fast, the kind of passion that left marks on the body from rough loving. There was no tenderness between them. Tamara hadn't wanted it, and it had never occurred to him that she would. But tenderness was a facet of loving, part of commitment, something they didn't have.
After her death, he had wanted to believe he would have had a continuing relationship with Tamara had she lived. He'd told himself that as he wrote her story. His words shone a light on a dirty civil war that made children into killers and leached the humanity out of all who were trapped within it. It was her cause and, for a time, his crusade. The article had won him awards, but no satisfaction.
Which brought him back, in a roundabout way, to Christy Jamieson, because he'd met her when he was in pursuit of a story, as he had met Tamara. Six weeks ago this had all been so easy. Frank Jamieson was potential unused, money misused, and relationships based on wealth, not caring. By all accounts his wife was a gold digger who had found her pot and then lost it. Some stories about Christy Jamieson were sympathetic, others downright hostile. All assumed that she only used her head to support her mane of bright blond hair.
There was little to like in that image, and he'd gone to the Jamieson mansion prepared to do a scathing exposé of the highlife gone bad. Instead, he'd found a single mom doing her best to raise her daughter when the world had turned against her. The highlife gone bad was there, but it wasn't Christy who was the example, it was her husband, the charming, well-liked heir of the Ice Cream King.
Quinn had never been one to avoid plunging into the emotional soup of whatever stories he worked on, or causes he believed in. When he committed to something, he believed in becoming actively involved. If a cause was just, it deserved the best each participant could bring to it.
And now his cause was Christy Jamieson and her quest to discover what had happened to her husband. And he had dived right in. Oh yeah, he was right there, emotionally involved and every day he worked with Christy he swam into deeper water. Though she didn't rush off to undeveloped corners of the world to rescue the downtrodden, she was the kind of woman he was attracted to. Strong in the face of adversity, yet loving and gentle with those around her, and passionate and willing to fight for what was important to her.
Quinn downed a slug of scotch, enjoying the burn in his throat. He'd blown it that night on the beach. He should have suggested sex, kept it light, but he'd heard the sadness in her voice when she started talking about her husband being dead, and he'd ached for her. He'd begun with the intention of comforting her, but those feelings he didn't want to admit to grabbed hold, and he allowed himself to make a promise that shouted "relationship!"
So now what? Should he stay away from her once he got back to Vancouver? Cut the connection so he could make sure that a relationship—the committed, family kind of relationship—would never grow between them?
He sipped again, more slowly this time. That wouldn't be fair to Christy. She needed closure. He understood that. She needed his help to find the information that would allow her to achieve that closure. He couldn't cut out on her now.
There he was, he thought wryly, deep in her emotional soup. No objectivity. What he should do was step away. Remember that this was the story that would bring him back into the public eye, net him a posting to one of the hotspots of the world. He didn't have time for relationships, particularly committed relationships.
In fact, he'd better stop fretting over his emotional future and get to work. The cabin crew had finished the drinks service and had retreated to the galley to take a break before preparing the flight for landing in Mexico City. He pulled out the pictures of Brianne and Crack Graham on the off chance that this might have been the crew that flew them on the first leg of to their trip back to Vancouver.
He was in luck. One of the attendants remembered Brianne. She'd been flying first class and had had too much to drink. She'd had a fight with the man traveling with her. Loud and nasty, their battle had the other first class passengers groaning and complaining.
When Quinn showed the attendant the picture of Frank and asked if he was the man Brianne was with, the attendant shook her head, but she nodded emphatically at the photo of the small-time hood, Thaddeus 'Crack' Graham. "That was the guy," she said. "About as mean as they come, I'd guess. If they hadn't been in the middle of a crowded cabin, I bet he would have taken a swing at her."
"Anything else you think might help?" Quinn asked.
The attendant stared at the picture thoughtfully. "The guy was pretty mad," she said finally. "At one point he said he was glad this stupid—well, he didn't use that nice a word—but anyway, he was glad this stupid con was almost over because being with her wasn't worth the money." She handed back the photos with a smile.
Quinn took the photos and made a note of the woman's name. A con, the attendant had said. Back in his seat, Quinn closed his eyes to block out his surroundings as he tried to put the pieces together in a pattern.
Frank Jamieson, drug addict, embezzler, missing. Brianne Lymbourn, a woman anxious to become Mrs. Frank Jamieson with little hope of achieving her goal. Crack Graham, a small-time hood with the basic physical attributes of Frank Jamieson. The pattern that was forming was beginning to look pretty clear.
A con to mask Frank Jamieson's disappearance?
Or worse? Murder and a cover up.
* * *
"Thank you for meeting with us, Detective Patterson," Christy said.
Patterson shrugged. "What's up?"
Christy drew a deep breath. "Quinn and I have found some disturbing information relating to my husband's case."
They were sitting in the same dingy coffee shop where Billie Patterson had told Christy that Frank was back in Vancouver not so long ago.
"Such as?" Patterson asked. She lifted the thick white coffee mug to her lips and took a sip. Over the rim her eyes were watchful.
"Frank wasn't the one who switched declaration forms at the airport."
That made Patterson sit up. She set the coffee mug down on the table with a clunk. "Run that by me again?"
"Why don't I begin at the beginning?" Christy said. Billie nodded. "After I asked Quinn to help me, we went to the hotel where Brianne was staying. None of the staff were able to identify Frank from the photograph we took with us and he wasn't registered at the hotel."
Patterson sat back. She looked relaxed, but her eyes were alert. "Maybe the people you interviewed didn't recognize him. That's not a big deal. Hotels have lots of people in and out. They can't remember everyone."
"They remembered Brianne." Patterson shrugged again. Christy wrapped her hands around her thick, white mug. "But you're right. There's no guarantee. That's why we checked the other hotels in town. None of them had Frank registered."
"So what did Brianne say when you tracked her down?"
"We
didn't," Quinn said. He was sitting beside Christy, angled into the corner of the booth. His voice sent a shiver of awareness down her spine. Why was she so attracted to him? He was an associate, a reporter. Out of bounds!
Billie Patterson sat up. "Let me get this straight. You found Brianne Lymbourn, but she wouldn't talk to you. Nor would the man she was with. Is that correct?"
Quinn leaned forward in a lazy, fluid movement that had all of Christy's nerve endings tingling. "We never found Brianne. By the time we got to the hotel she'd already checked out, with no forwarding address. So we looked for her. I checked the places she used to go and talked to some, though not all, of her friends. A couple said they'd seen her at The Rainmaker Club and she bragged about having no money problems. No one I talked to knew where she was staying or had her new phone number."
Billie took refuge behind the coffee cup again. "Lots of people move around and don't let their friends know their new address. So Ms. Lymbourn doesn't want to get back with her old crowd. Maybe she's changed her lifestyle and no longer has much in common with them."
"Maybe," Quinn said. "But at the hotel, where they remembered Brianne, no one who could ID Frank. What they do remember is a blond guy about the same height, with the same color eyes as Frank."
The waitress showed up to refill their coffee cups. She started to chat, but Billie shot her a smile that held a warning. She finished pouring quickly, then went off to a friendlier table.
Christy opened a folder. "We have a picture of the man we think Brianne was traveling with." She pushed the grainy photocopy across the table to Billie. "He's a drug dealer named Crack Graham. We believe he met Brianne sometime before Frank's disappearance, possibly through the crowd she and Frank ran with. Most of them did drugs and most of them were pretty well off."
"I've heard of him," Billie said. She was frowning over the picture. "I suppose his physical description could be mistaken for Frank Jamieson's. But if he was using your husband's passport the picture would have had to be changed."
