Lethal Attraction: Against the RulesFatal Affair

by Linda Howard

  Cathryn felt as if her heart had stopped beating. He hadn’t actually said the words yet, but he was telling her that he loved her as desperately, as powerfully as she loved him. It was almost more than she could take in, more than she could allow herself to believe. “I didn’t know,” she whispered dazedly. “You never said…you never told me.”

  “How could I tell you?” he asked roughly. “You were so young, too young for everything I wanted from you. I never meant for that day by the river to happen, but when it did I couldn’t regret it. I wanted to do it again, over and over, until that terrified look in your eyes was gone and you looked at me with the same need I felt for you. But I didn’t, and you ran. I regret that, because you met David Ashe and married him. It’s a good thing you didn’t come around for quite a while after that, Cat, because I’ve never wanted to take a man apart as badly as I did him.”

  “You were jealous?” She still couldn’t make herself comprehend everything he was telling her, and she pinched herself surreptitiously; the small pain was real, and so was the man who lay beside her.

  The look he gave her spoke volumes. “Jealous isn’t the word for it. I was insane with it.”

  “You love me,” she whispered in wonder. “You really love me. If only you’d told me! I had no idea!”

  “Of course I love you! I need you, and I’ve never needed anyone before in my life. You were as wild and innocent as a foal, and I couldn’t keep my eyes away from you. You made me feel alive again, made me forget the nightmares that jerked me up in bed. When I made love to you, we fit together perfectly. Everything was right, all the moves and reactions. You nearly burned me alive every time I touched you. I had to be with you, had to see you and talk to you, and you had no idea how I felt?”

  He looked outraged, and Cathryn managed a small laugh as she snuggled closer to him. “It’s that stone face of yours,” she teased. “But I was so afraid of letting you know how I felt, afraid you didn’t feel the same way.”

  “I feel the same,” he said gruffly, then demanded, “Tell me again.” He slid his palm up her side and cupped a breast. “Let me hear it again.”

  “I love you.” She complied gladly, joyously with his demand. Saying the words aloud was a celebration, a benediction.

  “Will you tell me that when we’re making love?”

  “As often as you want,” she promised.

  “I want. Now.” His voice had roughened with desire and he pulled her to him, his mouth clinging to hers. The old familiar magic seared through her veins again and she melted against him, not noticing when he unbuttoned her shirt, only aware of the intense pleasure she felt when his hand touched her bare skin.

  A dying glimmer of caution prompted her words. “Rule…we shouldn’t. You need to rest.”

  “That’s not what I need,” he murmured in her ear. “Now, Cathryn. Now.”

  “The door is open,” she protested weakly.

  “Then close it and come back to me. Don’t make me chase you down.”

  He probably would, she thought, broken leg and all. She got up and closed the door, then came back to him. She couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t satisfy her need to feel his hard, warm flesh beneath her fingers. She made love to him, lavishing him with her love, trailing kisses all over him and whispering “I love you” against his skin, imprinting him with the words. Now that she could say the words aloud, she found that she couldn’t say them enough, and she made a litany of them as she loved him, lingering so long in her caresses that suddenly he couldn’t take any more, lifting her bodily above him and fusing his flesh with hers in a quick, strong movement.

  She danced the dance of passion with him, attacking and retreating, but always pleasuring. She was aware of nothing but him, the hot desire in his dark eyes, and something else, the glow of love returned.

  “Don’t stop saying it,” he commanded, and she obeyed until the words wouldn’t come, until all she could do was gasp his name and writhe against him. His powerful hands on her hips took over the motion, driving her higher and higher, until with an almost silent wail she collapsed, shuddering, on his chest.

  In the quiet, sleepy aftermath he smoothed her tousled hair and held her tightly to him. “I’ll need to hire more hands,” he said drowsily.

  “Mmmm,” said Cathryn. “Why?”

  “To take up the slack. I can tell right now that I won’t be spending as much time on the range. I’ll have a major problem just getting out of bed in the mornings. Taking care of a woman like you will be time-consuming, and I intend to do my best.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” she toasted, lifting an imaginary glass.

  “We’ll get married next week,” he said, nuzzling his face into her hair.

  “Next week?” She made a startled move away from him. “But you’re still—”

  “I’ll be up by then,” he soothed. “Trust me. And ask Monica if she and Ricky will stay for the wedding. Always mend your fences, honey.”

  She smiled. “I know. I don’t want any bad feelings between us. And who knows? Lewis may keep Ricky here.”

  “Don’t put any money on it. They both have too many hurts bottled up inside. He may want her, but I don’t think he could live with her. Things don’t always work out the way you want them to.”

  Silence fell again, and she felt herself slipping into sleep. A thought nagged at the edges of her consciousness, and she muttered, “I’m sorry about the tack room.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he comforted, his arms tightening about her.

  “You called me stupid.”

  “I apologize. I panicked at the thought of you going into a burning stable, fighting with those horses to get them out. What if something had happened to you? I’d have gone mad.”

  “You don’t blame me?” she whispered.

  “I love you,” he corrected. “I couldn’t stand it if you were hurt.”

  She felt as if her heart would burst with happiness. So that tantrum had been purely because he didn’t want her taking risks! She opened her eyes and looked up at him from where she lay with her head cradled on his powerful shoulder, and softly, as tenderly as a dream, she said, “I love you.”

  Rule’s arms tightened around her even more, and he murmured, “I love you.”

  A moment later his deep voice drifted into the silence. “Welcome home, honey.”

  And at last she was home, in Rule’s arms, where she belonged.

  *

  FATAL AFFAIR

  MARIE FORCE

  Acknowledgments

  When I first began work on the book that became Fatal Affair, I quickly realized that I couldn’t begin to replicate the District of Columbia’s complex Metropolitan Police Department. So the department portrayed in Fatal Affair is my version of the MPD and is in no way intended to mirror the real thing.

  I want to thank my husband, Dan, who loves a good excuse to surf the internet. He did tons of research for me, and I appreciate his help. My children, Emily and Jake, put up with me when I’m writing and have learned not to ask me any important questions when I’m lost in thought.

  To the rest of my home team: Christina Camara, Paula DelBonis-Platt and Lisa Ridder, thank you for reading, critiquing, editing and proofreading. To Julie Cupp, thank you for braving the cold to take me to Eastern Market, for answering my many questions about Washington and for your help, as always, in naming characters. The shed is set for you to move in whenever you’re ready to become my full-time assistant.

  Thank you to Newport, Rhode Island, police lieutenant Russell Hayes for reading the book, providing critical input and taking me on a memorable ride-along. To my friend Newport police sergeant Rita Barker, thank you for reading and introducing me to Russ. Thanks to my WIP buddy Theresa Ragan for coming up with the perfect name for the book.

  Special thanks to my agent, Kevan Lyon, and my Carina editor, Jessica Schulte. Both of you helped to make this a much better book than it would have been otherwise, and
I’m grateful for your contributions. To Angela James and everyone on the Carina team, your energy astounds me, and I’m delighted to be a part of this grand new adventure.

  For Sam and Nick, who’ve taken me on an unforgettable journey—

  in more ways than one.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  The smell hit him first.

  “Ugh, what the hell is that?” Nick Cappuano dropped his keys into his coat pocket and stepped into the spacious, well-appointed Watergate apartment that his boss, Senator John O’Connor, had inherited from his father.

  “Senator!” Nick tried to identify the foul metallic odor.

  Making his way through the living room, he noticed parts and pieces of the suit John wore yesterday strewn over sofas and chairs, laying a path to the bedroom. He had called the night before to check in with Nick after a dinner meeting with Virginia’s Democratic Party leadership, and said he was on his way home. Nick had reminded his thirty-six-year-old boss to set his alarm.

  “Senator?” John hated when Nick called him that when they were alone, but Nick insisted the people in John’s life afford him the respect of his title.

  The odd stench permeating the apartment caused a tingle of anxiety to register on the back of Nick’s neck. “John?”

  He stepped into the bedroom and gasped. Drenched in blood, John sat up in bed, his eyes open but vacant. A knife spiked through his neck held him in place against the headboard. His hands rested in a pool of blood in his lap.

  Gagging, the last thing Nick noticed before he bolted to the bathroom to vomit was that something was hanging out of John’s mouth.

  Once the violent retching finally stopped, Nick stood up on shaky legs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and rested against the vanity, waiting to see if there would be more. His cell phone rang. When he didn’t take the call, his pager vibrated. Nick couldn’t find the wherewithal to answer, to say the words that would change everything. The senator is dead. John’s been murdered. He wanted to go back to when he was still in his car, fuming and under the assumption that his biggest problem that day would be what to do about the man-child he worked for who had once again slept through his alarm.

  Thoughts of John, dating back to their first meeting in a history class at Harvard freshman year, flashed through Nick’s mind, hundreds of snippets spanning a nearly twenty-year friendship. As if to convince himself that his eyes had not deceived him, he leaned forward to glance into the bedroom, wincing at the sight of his best friend—the brother of his heart—stabbed through the neck and covered with blood.

  Nick’s eyes burned with tears, but he refused to give in to them. Not now. Later maybe, but not now. His phone rang again. This time he reached for it and saw it was Christina, his deputy chief of staff, but didn’t take the call. Instead, he dialed 911.

  Taking a deep breath to calm his racing heart and making a supreme effort to keep the hysteria out of his voice, he said, “I need to report a murder.” He gave the address and stumbled into the living room to wait for the police, all the while trying to get his head around the image of his dead friend, a visual he already knew would haunt him forever.

  Twenty long minutes later, two officers arrived, took a quick look in the bedroom and radioed for backup. Nick was certain neither of them recognized the victim.

  He felt as if he was being sucked into a riptide, pulled further and further from the safety of shore, until drawing a breath became a laborious effort. He told the cops exactly what happened—his boss failed to show up for work, he came looking for him and found him dead.

  “Your boss’s name?”

  “United States Senator John O’Connor.” Nick watched the two young officers go pale in the instant before they made a second more urgent call for backup.

  “Another scandal at the Watergate,” Nick heard one of them mutter.

  His cell phone rang yet again. This time he reached for it.

  “Yeah,” he said softly.

  “Nick!” Christina cried. “Where the hell are you guys? Trevor’s having a heart attack!” She referred to their communications director who had back-to-back interviews scheduled for the senator that morning.

  “He’s dead, Chris.”

  “Who’s dead? What’re you talking about?”

  “John.”

  Her soft cry broke his heart. “No.” That she was desperately in love with John was no secret to Nick. That she was also a consummate professional who would never act on those feelings was one of the many reasons Nick respected her.

  “I’m sorry to just blurt it out like that.”

  “How?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Stabbed in his bed.”

  Her ravaged moan echoed through the phone. “But who…I mean, why?”

  “The cops are here, but I don’t know anything yet. I need you to request a postponement on the vote.”

  “I can’t,” she said, adding in a whisper, “I can’t think about that right now.”

  “You have to, Chris. That bill is his legacy. We can’t let all his hard work be for nothing. Can you do it? For him?”

  “Yes…okay.”

  “You have to pull yourself together for the staff, but don’t tell them yet. Not until his parents are notified.”

  “Oh, God, his poor parents. You should go, Nick. It’d be better coming from you than cops they don’t know.”

  “I don’t know if I can. How do I tell people I love that their son’s been murdered?”

  “He’d want it to come from you.”

  “I suppose you’re right. I’ll see if the cops will let me.”

  “What’re we going to do without him, Nick?” She posed a question he’d been grappling with himself. “I just can’t imagine this world, this life, without him.”

  “I can’t either,” Nick said, knowing it would be a much different life without John O’Connor at the center of it.

  “He’s really dead?” she asked as if to convince herself it wasn’t a cruel joke. “Someone killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  *

  Outside the chief’s office suite, Detective Sergeant Sam Holland smoothed her hands over the toffee-colored hair she corralled into a clip for work, pinched some color into cheeks that hadn’t seen the light of day in weeks, and adjusted her gray suit jacket over a red scoop-neck top.

  Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and settle her chronically upset stomach, she pushed open the door and stepped inside. Chief Farnsworth’s receptionist greeted her with a smile. “Go right in, Sergeant Holland. He’s waiting for you.”

  Great, Sam thought as she left the receptionist with a weak smile. Before she could give in to the urge to turn tail and run, she erased the grimace from her face and went in.

  “Sergeant.” The chief, a man she’d once called Uncle Joe, stood up and came around the big desk to greet her with a firm handshake. His gray eyes skirted over her with concern and sympathy, both of which were new since �
��the incident.” She despised being the reason for either. “You look well.”

  “I feel well.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He gestured for her to have a seat. “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Pouring himself a cup, he glanced over his shoulder. “I’ve been worried about you, Sam.”

  “I’m sorry for causing you worry and for disgracing the department.” This was the first chance she’d had to speak directly to him since she returned from a month of administrative leave, during which she’d practiced the sentence over and over. She thought she’d delivered it with convincing sincerity.

  “Sam,” he sighed as he sat across from her, cradling his mug between big hands. “You’ve done nothing to disgrace yourself or the department. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Not everyone makes mistakes that result in a dead child, Chief.”

  He studied her for a long, intense moment as if he was making some sort of decision. “Senator John O’Connor was found murdered in his apartment this morning.”

  “Jesus,” she gasped. “How?”