Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel

by JoAnn Ross

  In the cold light of day Tess wondered why on earth she had allowed Nate to stay in the first place. After all, her house was well secured—there were locks on all the windows and double bolts on both the doors. Her caller wouldn’t have been able to get in even if he wanted to.

  For the sake of argument, Tess chose to ignore the fact that no lock would be able to keep out an individual determined to gain entrance. She preferred to concentrate on all the reasons she was going to throw Nate Breslin out of her house the minute she went downstairs.

  Work. That’s how she was going to spend her day. Preparing for the Vasilyev hearing and Schiff trial.

  As she went through the living room, she noticed that he’d folded his sheets and blanket and put them on the end of the couch with the pillow squarely on top. Wondering if he’d learned that at Marine boot camp, she continued into the kitchen, only to find that he wasn’t alone.

  “What are you doing out of the hospital?” she asked Donovan.

  “Strategizing,” he said easily. He was sitting on the barstool, crutches beside him. The hand that wasn’t wrapped in fresh white gauze lifted a mug in greeting. “Good morning to you, too.”

  “I can’t believe they let you out so soon.” A thought occurred to her. “You didn’t drive here, did you?”

  “No, although legally I could have, since my left leg has the fracture, I hitched a ride from a patrol cop. As for getting out this morning, there wasn’t any reason to keep me. If they hadn’t been afraid of swelling from the concussion, they would’ve sprung me from the ER as soon as the doctor put the cast on my leg.”

  “You should at least be home. In bed.”

  There was a sudden suggestive glint in his eyes that told her he’d immediately thought of a too-easy, snappy comeback to that, but, with the Marine standing on the other side of the island, thankfully kept it to himself.

  “Why don’t you have some coffee?” Nate entered into the conversation, holding out another mug toward her. “Before you pack.”

  “Pack?”

  Donovan looked as surprised as Tess was. “You haven’t told her?”

  “Told me what?”

  Nate didn’t immediately respond, first directing his answer to the detective. “I’d planned to fill her in on it when she came down for breakfast.”

  “She just happens to be right here in the kitchen.” Tess positioned herself between the two men. “Fill me in on what?”

  “Maybe you’d better tell her,” Nate said to Donovan. “She seems to take orders better from you.”

  “I don’t take orders from anyone!”

  “I don’t know.” Donovan eyed Tess as if she were a powder keg about to explode. “I’ve never seen her so close to losing her temper before.”

  “It’s probably just the stress,” Nate suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Donovan allowed.

  “If one of you doesn’t tell me what you have up your sleeves right now, you’re going to see an explosion that will make Mount St. Helens’ eruption seem tame by com-parison,” Tess warned.

  “See what I mean?” Donovan said to Nate. “Okay, okay,” he said, turning back to Tess. “You’re going to spend the next ten days at Shelter Bay.”

  “I’m what?”

  “Just until the Russian mobster’s hearing,” Nate added.

  Tess threw herself defiantly onto a barstool. And took a long drink of coffee, which, dammit, was better than she made.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said. “As for you, Donovan Quinn, how could you have forgotten that the Schiff trial starts Monday? You investigated that case. You’re due to testify.”

  “You’ve gotten a continuance from Judge Lawson,” the detective said with a reassuring smile. “So, you see, there’s nothing to stop you from going to the coast with Breslin.”

  “Except for the small fact that I don’t remember asking for a continuance.”

  “Tom got it this morning. After I told him about your latest phone call. And the slashed tire.”

  “Tom? As in Thomas Barnes? My boss?” The fact that the district attorney would pull rank on her, going behind her back to get a continuance on a case she had slaved on for months, was even more irritating than their plan to hide her out in Shelter Bay.

  “Someone had to. And I had a hunch you would have refused to request the time.”

  “You’re right. I would have. But continuance or not, I’m still not leaving town.”

  “You don’t have a lot of choice,” Donovan informed her, reminding Tess of her father when he put his foot down. Cops.

  “The Vasilyev family’s undergoing a lot of internal strife with the boss on the inside,” Donovan said. “It’s not just your snitch who’s willing to share information. More than one member has come to us, volunteering to talk just to get others in the gang put away. It’s imperative that we keep the boss from getting out of prison to smooth things over.”

  “Keeping him in prison is exactly what I intend to do,” Tess reminded him.

  “And you will. Thanks to Judge Conklin’s helpful pen, Tom managed to get a continuance on the appeal, too,” Donovan said. “So you can either spend the next ten days in a hotel room with a couple of uniforms guarding you around the clock or go down the coast and take some R and R in Shelter Bay. Breslin’s house is remote enough that you should be safe until the hearing.”

  “And of course I’ll be there to protect you. Day and night.” Nate’s wicked grin didn’t make Tess feel very safe at all. He was hot when he grinned. And worse yet, he knew it.

  She didn’t want to go to Shelter Bay.

  But she knew all too well that she would never be able to stand being essentially kept prisoner in a hotel room for ten long days. And even longer nights. Ever since her abduction she’d had a deep-seated aversion to being confined in even the most spacious hotel room. Tess knew it was silly—over the years she’d attempted various types of behavioral therapy, even resorting to hypnosis, to no avail. Nothing had ever worked.

  “What about my caseload? I can’t just run off and leave all my other cases in limbo.”

  “You’re well covered. You’ve currently only got a couple B and Es that shouldn’t even take a day each, and you’ve pretty much already set up the chop shop case for the guy to deal. So Tom assigned Mitchell to them.”

  That news did nothing to lift her spirits since Tess had always felt that if there were corners to be cut, Bill “The Slug” Mitchell would find them. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear she was going to be given much of a choice.

  “Does Dad know about this?”

  “It was his idea.”

  “When did you two…” Comprehension dawned. “You and he came up with it when he was in talking to you last night.” She turned toward Nate. “Then, while I was talking to this guy, you were brought into the plan.”

  “I couldn’t exactly refuse when your dad dealt me in,” he said.

  “You do realize that if you don’t accept some bodyguards, Mike will stake out your place, watching for intruders,” Donovan said.

  Tess knew how those long-drawn-out hours of surveillance spent drinking too strong coffee and eating junk food for hours on end could take a toll on men a great deal younger than Mike Brown. She wasn’t prepared to risk her father’s health for any reason.

  “You know I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Okay.” Donovan rubbed his hands together as if he hadn’t expected any other outcome. Which he hadn’t. A good detective could always create corners to box a person into. Tess just wasn’t accustomed to being on that end of the situation. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I’d better get going.”

  “I’ll walk you to the door,” Tess said, ignoring Nate, who wisely kept his mouth shut and stayed where he was.

  “Nate’s a great guy, Tess,” Donovan said as they stood together in the foyer. “And he seems to care a lot about you.”

  The question was more than evident in his tone. “He may be researching a book on my
great-great-grandfather.”

  Donovan examined her face. “Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s obvious that he’s a hell of a lot more interested in you than any one of your ancestors.”

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “But there happen to be extenuating circumstances that you wouldn’t believe if I told you.”

  “I’d believe anything you told me,” he argued. “Didn’t I accept your word that we could never be anything but friends?”

  “You agreed,” she corrected. Surely he hadn’t been carrying a torch all this time?

  “I did. Though, at the time, it wasn’t my first choice, you were right. And before you start feeling guilty about dumping me—”

  “I did not dump you!” Momentarily forgetting about his injuries and the fact that the man was, after all, on crutches, she slapped his upper arm.

  Just as Nate obviously knew his grin was hot, Donovan knew his was cute. And had never been above using it when it served his purpose. “You’re right. No one dumped anyone. Let’s just say that we came to the mutual, adult decision that sex, as stupendous as it would’ve been, could risk screwing up a good thing we had and, I like to think, still have going.”

  He bent his head, brushing his lips against hers. “Take care, babe. I’ll do my best to catch your caller.”

  Tess watched him go down the steps and to the waiting patrol car parked in front of her house, then returned to the kitchen, where Nate was waiting.

  “Well, if I’m going to be held prisoner in Shelter Bay, I may as well get packed,” she said, sounding cranky even to her own ears. The man didn’t deserve her testy mood. If they were going to survive the next ten days locked up together, she was going to have to work on her attitude.

  27

  “I love this drive,” she murmured an hour later as they drove through the fog-shrouded mountains from Portland to the coast. It had begun to rain, creating an intimacy inside the car as the tires hugged the roads on the twisting switchbacks. An intimacy that encouraged conversation.

  “I know what you mean,” Nate said with a smile. “I’m glad you’re finally willing to talk to me. I was afraid I was going to be given the silent treatment for the next ten days.”

  “I wasn’t giving you the silent treatment.”

  “Weren’t you?” He only took his eyes from the winding road for a moment, but the brief glance was enough for Tess to read the challenge in his gaze.

  “All right, perhaps I was. A bit. But you were incredibly high-handed back there,” she insisted, jerking her head back in the direction of Portland.

  “It probably came off that way,” he allowed. “But in defense, after listening to arguments from guys who know what they’re talking about and obviously care for you, it seemed like the best plan.”

  “My mother tried to escape the curse,” Tess offered, breaking the silence that had settled over them. Having already decided, while she’d been packing, to try to concentrate on the positive, she liked that Nate seemed comfortable with silence. She wondered if it had something to do with spending so many hours working alone.

  “By running away?” he asked.

  “No. That came later. In the beginning, she wasn’t anything like the woman she appears to be now. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years and came to the realization that she decided that, curse or not, part of the reason her grandmother’s and mother’s love lives had failed was that they’d put their own needs and social causes first.

  “Which is why, I suspect, Mom married my dad. It was obvious, when she still lived with us, that they were in love. Even as a child, I could sense their connection, their chemistry, without fully understanding it.”

  “Opposites attract.”

  “True.” And wasn’t that what Alexis had said about her and Nate? “I think, being a cop, Dad represented stability and strength, something my mother hadn’t known a lot of growing up.”

  “How did they meet?”

  “He was a PPB patrolman at the time. He stopped her for speeding through Lauralhurst. She was late to a meeting with a realtor.” Tess surprised herself by laughing at a personal memory. “She was never on time to anything. But while it might have driven other more punctual people crazy, she always claimed that Italian time was different, more leisurely, than U.S. time.”

  “Having spent a memorable R and R in Italy, I have to agree with her,” Nate said. “And there’s admittedly something to be said for living life at a slower pace… So, he gave her a ticket?”

  “No.” Tess smiled at the memory of the story she’d always loved. One that seemed to have happened in a different lifetime. Because, she thought, it had. Hadn’t her entire life been divided into before the kidnapping and after the kidnapping?

  “He wrote her a warning. And told her to keep it on the dashboard so she’d remember that speeding was dangerous. And that he’d hate for her to get into an accident.”

  “And that was that. Here was this hot guy, wearing a uniform, who cared about her,” Nate guessed.

  “Because she grew up with a succession of housekeepers, while my grandmother traveled for various causes, she wasn’t used to being treated as someone worth caring about,” Tess confirmed.

  So, Nate Breslin was not only polite, neat, talented, and, his Marine service would indicate, patriotic and loyal. Along with being pretty damn hot himself, he was also perceptive. The man was racking up more and more points. Which invited the question of why she was even fighting her attraction.

  “She said she fell right then and there,” Tess continued. “Apparently it was mutual, but because they came from different worlds, and he wasn’t one of those cops who used his badge to hit on women, he reluctantly let her get away.”

  “Which meant she made the first move.”

  “She did. Dressed in a scarlet-as-sin red dress she bought that same afternoon, she showed up the next day at the police station with a plate of homemade cannoli.”

  “A beautiful woman in a red dress bearing Italian pastries and intent on seduction would be pretty damn irresistible.”

  Although it caused a little tinge of regret, knowing how the marriage had turned out, Tess laughed and was glad that her parents had some good years together before everything had come crashing down on them.

  “They were engaged two weeks later and Dad moved into the house she’d been on her way to look at. The bungalow he still lives in. They married in the vineyards that summer while the dark purple Pinot Noir grapes hung heavy on the vines. She told him that it was a sign that they’d have many children.”

  “Why have many when one’s so perfect?”

  “Again with the writer words,” she tossed back at him.

  “Those just happen to be absolutely true.”

  Despite having always had her dad’s love and support, Tess realized, for the first time, how her mother must have felt when, during that traffic stop, Portland Police Officer Michael Xavier Brown had made her feel valued.

  “Those were good years,” she said softly. Despite how everything had turned out, the memories warmed her heart. “Having determined not to follow in the footsteps of the other Lombardi women who’d come before her, my mother centered her life around her family. Looking back on it, some might consider her the Italian version of a Stepford Wife. She was always in the kitchen, and when she wasn’t cooking, she worked overtime to make our home warm and welcoming. She even taught herself to sew so she could make my Cinderella Disney Princess bedroom curtains and bedspread.

  “She restored pieces of antique furniture she unearthed stored away in an old barn at the winery, and people driving through the neighborhood would actually stop to take pictures of the front gardens. She had a definite talent for design.”

  Another lost memory came flooding back—a memory of her mother going out in the misty mornings with a wicker basket and scissors and humming happily as she deadheaded the roses.

  “Sounds as if she was a true homebody.”

  “She was. Going against tradition worked for
her. She’d found her calling. and those were wonderful years. I always knew my parents loved each other. And that I was loved. And safe.”

  Until she wasn’t.

  “After what happened…it was as if the kidnapper hadn’t just taken me. He’d stolen my mother’s spirit. And her heart. She fell into a depression and spent most of her time in bed. And even when she would join us for meals or some required family event at the winery, she became a mere ghost of herself. And I can’t remember ever seeing her smile again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So was I. She did have therapy and medication. But nothing seemed to work. Then one morning, as Dad was packing my school lunch, she came downstairs, dressed to go out, her hair and makeup done for the first time in ages, and announced that she’d decided to go out and indulge in some retail therapy.

  “I don’t know how Dad felt, but I got on that school bus happy for the first time in a long while. Because I believed that just maybe things were going to go back to the way they’d been. I watched the clock all day, waiting for the school day to end so I could see what she’d bought. I even wondered if it would be like before, when she’d return from shopping with a new lamp for my bedroom, or a unicorn for my collection, or maybe she’d even bought me a new dress for my school picture the next week. When I got off the bus, I ran the half block home.”

  “And?” Nate reached across the console and took hold of her hand. Accepting the wordless comfort, Tess didn’t pull hers away.

  “The house was empty. I thought maybe that she’d been having such a good time, she’d stopped to have lunch. Maybe with a friend she’d run into. Then I saw the note on the kitchen table to Dad. And I knew.”

  The chill was back. And although she knew it was physically impossible, Tess could feel her heart plummet, the same way it had that day.

  “I ran upstairs to my parents’ room. She must have packed after I’d left for school, because most of her clothes were gone. She’d also taken her jewelry. Except her wedding ring. Which she’d left in the holder on the dresser.