McLain's Law

by Kylie Brant

  Bruce was silent.

  “I’m certainly not dating her. You can get that idea out of your head. Hell, she’s practically a suspect.”

  “Practically a suspect.” The way Bruce delivered the statement demanded an answer.

  “Like I said, she shouldn’t have had the information she gave us. I thought she’d come by it more deviously, but now it looks as though she might be in danger, and after seeing her last night . . .” Connor’s voice drifted off.

  “After witnessing her dream, you believe she may have extrasensory powers.”

  “Hell no! I don’t believe in that shit. But I’m beginning to understand that she believes it. I saw what it did to her. I just wanted to know if you could give me some more information about it.” Connor was rapidly becoming convinced that he had made a mistake in coming here. He should have remembered how difficult it was to get straight answers out of Casel.

  “She sounds like someone who may have clairvoyant powers. That’s the ability to be aware of an event happening far away,” Casel clarified. He looked soberly at Connor. “What about you, Lieutenant? Do you believe her?”

  Connor looked away at the question. Did he believe Michele? He didn’t know what to think anymore. Except that, as hard as he tried to hold on to his original suspicions about her, they were rapidly slipping away. Though he still doubted the reality of clairvoyants and psychics and the rest of that nonsense, he could no longer doubt the reality of the experience for her. He had seen firsthand how it shook her. No, whatever else, he didn’t doubt that something happened to Michele Easton when she slept. But more than that he was unable to give her.

  He became belatedly aware that Bruce was regarding him quizzically and realized he hadn’t answered. “I don’t know,” he finally said honestly. “Thanks for the help, Bruce.” He rose to leave the room, but Bruce’s voice stopped him.

  “Lieutenant?” Connor turned back to the psychologist.

  “Whatever you might believe or disbelieve about this woman, I want you to keep one thing in mind. If, in fact, she is clairvoyant, those dreams are more than deeply disturbing to her. They’re probably best described as the equivalent of a psychological mugging.”

  Connor digested that last bit of information before turning silently and leaving the room.

  * * *

  Michele was running late when she finally locked up her office. She never would have dreamed that she would be thankful for such a busy day, but it had served to keep disturbing thoughts of Connor McLain at bay. And now she was still in a rush, her schedule threatening to make her late for her meeting with him.

  Her heels clicked loudly on the tile floor as she passed through the shadowy corridors of the darkened office building. She steadfastly refused to consider this appointment with him as anything as intimate as dinner out. In fact, the less time she spent thinking about it, the better off she was. Once she had this out of the way, she fervently hoped that she would never have to see the man again.

  As she rounded the corner of the hallway, she banged her shin painfully on an unseen obstacle.

  “Ouch!” she gasped loudly. What the heck? She peered more closely in the dimness and recognized the culprit. She had gracefully run into the wheeled bucket the janitor used to mop the floors. Even as she recognized it, Scott appeared from a nearby doorway.

  “M-m-m-miss Easton. You h-h-h-hurt?” he stuttered in solicitous inquiry.

  Michele gave a tight smile as the young man hurried over. “Only my pride, Scott. I should have watched where I was going.”

  “I sh-sh-shouldn’t have left the b-b-bucket there,” he apologized.

  Michele shook her head. She would have to reassure Scott or he would berate himself about this for days. He was, as Lieutenant McLain had so crudely put it, somewhat slow. But he was an extremely conscientious employee. “It wasn’t your fault, Scott, really. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m all right, though. No harm done.”

  “I d-d-didn’t know anyone was st-st-still here.”

  “I was working late. I’m on my way out now, and I was careless.” She laid a gentle hand on the anxious young man’s arm. “It’s all right, really. I appreciate your concern, but I’m okay.”

  “R-r-r-right, M-m-miss Easton. S-s-s-see you tomorrow.”

  Michele waved and smiled as she strode away. Now she was really going to be late, and no doubt the detective would have something appropriately sarcastic to say about her tardiness. Oh, well. If he didn’t believe her, she was sure she was going to have quite a bruise on her leg as evidence of her haste.

  On her way to the little restaurant she thought of her encounter with Scott. His stutter had seemed worse than usual tonight, but it got that way when he was nervous, she knew. James, in an unusual pique one day, had suggested that it was Michele who made Scott nervous, indicating that the boy had a crush on her.

  James. Michele’s mouth turned down at the corners as she pulled up in front of the restaurant. Perhaps she had been too imaginative. His dinner invitation might have been exactly what he said, a collaboration between professionals. She certainly hoped so. She didn’t want to have to extricate herself from a sticky situation.

  As she entered the restaurant, Michele spotted Connor right away and approached him. Despite her best intentions, her mouth went dry at the sight of him, and she mentally damned her nervousness.

  Sliding into the booth across from him she murmured, “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long, Lieutenant.”

  His mouth quirked up on one side. “I think we’ve gone a little past formalities, haven’t we, Michele? He stressed her name. “After last night, I would certainly expect you to call me by my first name.”

  Michele gritted her teeth, but said saccharinely, “All right, Connor. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”

  “I’m used to waiting for women like you,” he said cryptically.

  She frowned. She didn’t know exactly what he meant, but she was sure it wasn’t a compliment.

  Connor handed her a menu, and Michele snapped it open, already annoyed, and she had only been in his presence a few seconds. After less than a minute she closed it and gave her order to the waitress Connor had summoned. The waitress had turned away with their orders when Connor said, “Oh, and bring us two margaritas, would you?”

  The woman nodded and walked away even as Michele protested, “I don’t really want one, Lieu—Connor.”

  Connor made no attempt to call the waitress back. “You could use one. Looks like you had a rough day. And we know you had a rough night last night.”

  Michele drew in her breath. Did he have to keep referring to last night? It was embarrassing enough for her to have to remember it. She cringed every time she thought of how she had let him touch her, kiss her. She responded in the only way she knew, the way she had practiced as a child to hide her feelings from the rest of the world. She deliberately blanked her expression.

  Connor’s brows lowered as he watched the lovely cool mask descend over Michele’s perfect features. It was unbelievable, he thought bitterly, how she could do that, don her porcelain mask at will, like a princess at her most haughty. She was probably regretting agreeing to meet him. Well, that was too damn bad. She was going to sit here with him until he was finished talking to her, and she’d better hope that what few better instincts he had took hold. Because when she looked like that, something inside him wanted to shake her up, mar that cool composure, and he wasn’t too concerned about how he did it.

  The waitress returned then with two huge glasses filled with icy frothy margaritas. Michele looked at the glass in astonishment as it was placed before her, then raised her eyes to Connor’s sardonic gaze. “Am I supposed to drink this?” she inquired mischievously. “Or bathe in it?”

  Connor was unable to respond. Her unexpected humor had caught him off guard, especially when he saw how it transformed her face. He’d never seen her smile before, he realized. Really smile, with her pretty eyes all crinkled up and her face
alight with amusement. Some of his belligerence drained from him, leaving him momentarily disarmed.

  “Feel free to do whichever you prefer,” he invited.

  Michele shook her head. “I wouldn’t want to get thrown in jail for indecent exposure.” She ducked her head and peeked up at him wickedly. “I’ve heard the Philadelphia police are real sticklers about things like that.”

  One side of Connor’s well-formed mouth kicked up in a lopsided smile. “I happen to know one cop who would smooth things over for you. And I doubt very much that anything you exposed could be called indecent.” Tempting, maybe. Seductive. Erotic. But never indecent.

  Michele blushed but was unable to lower her gaze from his. This was a very different kind of conversation than she ever would have dreamed of having with this man, but she was unwilling to shatter the shaky truce they seemed to have reached in the past few moments. She leaned forward to sip from the icy drink, and Connor did the same. For a few minutes they sat in silence, enjoying the frosty beverage.

  Finally she interrupted their peaceful silence. “You said you were going to tell me about the lab results on that letter I received.”

  Connor took a long time answering. “I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell.” He briefly relayed what little information Dave had been able to give him.

  Michele felt her heart sink. “Well, you warned me of this.”

  “We’re not done yet,” he added. “They did find some hair follicles in the adhesive. I told them to go ahead with the tests on those.”

  “What would that tell you?”

  “It could tell us quite a lot, especially when we have a suspect to match them with. We can also see if they match other samples we’ve found in the case. But don’t get your hopes up. The lab’s so backed up it’ll probably be a while.”

  In spite of his warning, Michele felt her heart warm. “Thank you,” she said, impulsively reaching across the table to touch his hard arm. “Maybe I overreacted, but it . . . it frightened me.”

  Connor shifted uneasily in his seat. He was unused to gratitude from this woman. Hell, make that any woman. Most of his intimate relationships started out with blatant physical interest and invariably ended with bitter acrimony when the women found how little he had to give them emotionally. Reflexively he drew away, both physically and mentally. He had to remember, for his own sake, just what she was. He might no longer consider her a suspect, but she was still far too high-society for his comfort. He would do best to remember that and not let her get too close. He’d been put through an emotional wringer by a woman just like her, and he would be damned if he’d let that happen again.

  Michele recognized his withdrawal and was inexplicably hurt by it. She busied herself stirring her drink, sipping cautiously. Connor McLain was an impossible person to read. No sooner did she think she had reached him on some level than he withdrew and the distance between them grew wider than ever.

  The waitress placed steaming plates of food in front of them then, and Michele gratefully occupied her hands with something else for a while. The silence stretched between them, and she watched Connor as she fiddled with the food on her plate. His strong white teeth showed briefly as he took each bite, and she watched the column of his throat hypnotically as he swallowed.

  Connor became aware of her interest, and it inspired instant irritation. “What’s the matter?” he asked testily. “Am I eating with the wrong fork or something?”

  Michele flushed at being caught staring at him, but she responded acerbically. “You certainly have a gigantic chip on your shoulder, do you know that, Lieutenant McLain?”

  He grunted. “Well, if I do, my wife put it there.”

  Michele was appalled. His wife? He was married?

  “My ex-wife,” he corrected himself. Connor read the amazement on her face and didn’t know whether or not to be insulted. “Yeah, I was married a long time ago, for a blessedly brief duration. Don’t look so astounded. Believe it or not, I do have a personal life.”

  She didn’t doubt it for a minute. With that face and body, she was willing to bet that his after-hours were very personal indeed. She only had difficulty figuring out how he fit his women into his work schedule. “You sound bitter,” she managed lightly.

  “Hardly,” came his response. “That’s gratitude you read in my voice, not bitterness.”

  “What happened?”

  Connor looked at her silently, but her face was sympathetic. She didn’t seem to have any morbid interest but genuine empathy. He decided to show her that she shouldn’t bother expending any such emotion on him.

  “She decided that being the wife of a Philadelphia policeman wasn’t going to be as exciting as she had imagined. That it was going to be, in fact, lonely, boring and poor. She wanted out.” He shrugged. “I can’t really blame her. There’s a high incidence of divorce in the department, and Tricia was less willing to work at a marriage than most.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she went into it for the excitement, because it was as far removed—I was as far removed—from what her family wanted for her, as she could get. But her period of rebellion was as short as her usual attention span.”

  Connor picked up his fork again, intent on finishing his meal, already regretting his uncustomary freedom of speech around her. What was it about this woman that made his tongue loosen? He certainly didn’t have a reputation for being especially forthcoming about himself. Last night he could excuse; Michele had just needed something else to focus on for a while. He doubted she’d heard or remembered anything he’d said to her. But he certainly couldn’t say the same now. And because he was feeling touchy about exposing this much of himself to her, he allowed his usual sardonic tone to creep back into his voice as he pointed his fork at the woman sitting across from him, silently watching him with calm gray eyes.

  “Actually,” he drawled, meeting her gaze, “she was a lot like you.”

  Chapter 6

  Michele reacted startledly to his bombshell. “Like me?” she demanded. “How so?”

  She wasn’t too sure she wanted to pursue this line of questioning. In fact, she was almost positive she would regret it. Most assuredly it would be unflattering. But she was helpless to stem the desire to learn more about him. He was usually so guarded that before last night she had doubted he experienced any real emotions. But his unexpected gentleness with her the previous evening had made him seem more approachable, more human, and she found herself curious about what made this man tick.

  Connor began naming all the similarities between the two women that he had noticed since the first time he had met her. “You both obviously shared privileged upbringings. No doubt your family is just as careful as Tricia’s about who you associate with.” He ignored Michele’s dumbfounded expression and went on. “You fill your time working on society’s latest issue of the moment, incidentally receiving the spotlight and public acknowledgment for your bountifulness.”

  Tricia had also shared that touch-me-not air that surrounded Michele, the same one that made a man long to be the one to turn the ice-cold goddess into a writhing passionate woman. He had obviously failed with Tricia; he tried to keep from remembering how close he had come to succeeding with Michele. He stopped himself from listing their further similar attributes. From the look on the lady’s face, she was already about to blow.

  But Michele did nothing of the sort. She smiled almost sadly and said, “You know, for a police lieutenant, you are incredibly close-minded. Your background check must not have been very accurate if that’s an example of the conclusions you were able to draw from it.”

  Connor stubbornly remained silent as he finished his margarita and signaled the waitress to bring him another. She could deny it all she wanted, but he didn’t need the scanty information from the check to tell him what she was. He had been able to tell the moment she walked into his office. His short time with Tricia had taught him to assess expensive clothing, which Michele wore, but it was m
ore than that. Michele had the same walk, the same aristocratic air of breeding, that had him grinding his teeth in moments, unconsciously longing to do something shockingly crude, unspeakably uncouth, just to jolt some real emotion from her.

  God knew his in-laws had always had that affect on him, so some of their dislike of him had been deserved. And ultimately Tricia had shared their view that he was a common lowlife cop, with rough edges that could never be polished away. When he had returned to their apartment that day to find Tricia gone, he’d been downright relieved.

  Michele knew it wouldn’t do her any good to take offense at his remarks. Whether he’d meant to insult her or not, he actually seemed to believe his assessment of her. It was comical, really, that someone would misjudge her hillbilly roots for origins of wealth. “I guess I ought to be flattered. I have to admit, no one has ever mistaken me for a debutante before.”

  “And you’re so different?” he mocked, obviously not believing it.

  Michele’s eyes were alight with amusement. “I was, believe it or not, Lieutenant, a coal miner’s daughter in the hills of West Virginia. My father died when I was four, in a mining accident. My mother and I . . .” Here Michele hesitated, as unwelcome memories intruded. “Well, we had a hard time making ends meet.” She cocked her head and baited him. “Surely you uncovered all this in the background check you ran on me.”

  Connor studied her silently. Cruz hadn’t completed the more in-depth check he had ordered. For some reason, a few days ago Connor had told him he could put it aside and concentrate on other things. Because the investigation was heating up, he told himself uncomfortably. That was the only reason. At any rate, he had only the preliminary report that Cruz had done. No doubt he could shock her with some of the personal things he did know, but for some reason he wouldn’t name, he wanted her to volunteer information about herself.

  Okay, so he was curious, he admitted to himself savagely. That didn’t mean a damn thing, did it? It certainly didn’t mean that he was about to let his guard down around her or let her get close to him. He only needed to be burned once to learn to stay away from fire. And Michele Easton was definitely scorcher material. Despite her very different background, she was still cut from the same cloth as his ex-wife, or close enough that it didn’t matter. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.