by Lisa Jackson
“Christ, Marla. You always have.”
“I figured that’s what you’d say.”
“Don’t you remember what happened last night?”
Her fingers clenched around his sleeve. “Help me, Nick.”
His jaw slid to one side as he studied her. His lips flattened in self-deprecation. “For the record, I think this is a big mistake, but what the hell, as you said, you want it.” In an instant he stepped into the doorway of a closed shop and in that tiny alcove, he wrapped his arms around her, gathering her close to his body, squeezing her tight. Lowering his head, he slanted his hungry lips over hers in a kiss as brutal as it was desperate. Hard. Unyielding. Breathtaking. Firm and demanding, his mouth rubbed insistently against hers and she felt a second’s pain where the wires in her teeth had been removed. She caught her breath and in that precise moment, his tongue slipped between her teeth, the tip intimately, forcefully probing. He tasted of coffee, his skin was warm, the stubble of his beard rough against her cheek.
Pain diffused into pleasure.
Deep inside she quivered. Her blood ran hot. The night disintegrated around them. She closed her eyes and ignored the warnings screaming through her mind. Her blood tingled, her heartbeat thundered and she was lost to him. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she held tight as his tongue touched and mated with hers.
She couldn’t get enough of him, clung to him, to this moment on the crowded street.
Heat, wild and hot and anxious, began to run through her veins. Her skin flushed in the cool air. Images of lying naked with him flashed through her brain and she saw in her mind’s eye his bare muscular body straining over hers, his tongue running deliciously down her throat, to her breasts and lower still, along the flat slope of her abdomen, to taste the most intimate regions of her, to plunder her body and soul. She moaned softly, imagining the feel of his body joining with hers, of him thrusting deep . . . so hot, so hard, so . . . He lifted his head from hers and she blinked back the erotic images to face the cold reality of the San Francisco night, the fog, the other pedestrians, the sounds of traffic zinging past on the wet streets.
“I knew it,” he muttered, his eyes mirroring the guilt of her own despair. “I knew it would be like this with you.” He dropped his arms and she was suddenly standing alone. Bereft. Her heated skin cooling with the breeze that tossed dried leaves into the gutter and brought the scent of rain. “Damn it all to hell, Marla, we just can’t do this.”
“Don’t you think I know it?”
“Then don’t push it.” Angrily he grabbed her hand and started for the truck. She yanked her fingers from his and shoved her fists deep into her pockets as she half ran to keep up with his longer, swifter strides.
“Don’t blame me, Nick,” she said as they crossed the street and she had to duck past a woman with a huge umbrella.
He cast her a hot, unguarded look. “I don’t.”
“You sure as hell act like it.”
“I just don’t want things to get any more complicated than they are.” He took her hand to help her sidestep a man in a wheelchair. Then Nick let go.
“You were as curious as I was,” she insisted. “You wanted to know if the spark was still there. Admit it.”
“No way. I already knew. Last night proved a lot.”
She didn’t believe him and was about to tell him so, when he looked over his shoulder and stopped short. “Hell!” She nearly ran into him.
“What?” Whirling, she searched through the mist to see what it was that had caught his attention. Nothing but the lamppost and the crowd on the sidewalk.
“Come on.” He grabbed her wrist and this time there wasn’t any warm familiarity in his touch. Now he was running fast, dragging her with him, dashing through pedestrians and bicyclists, nearly tripping over a young mother pushing a stroller in the opposite direction.
“What is it?” she yelled, nearly breathless.
“I think we were being followed.”
Her blood was suddenly frigid, her heart a tattoo. “By whom?”
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out. Come on. Let’s see if we can catch him.” He darted through the side streets and around corners of buildings, cutting across traffic and causing more than one driver to slam on his brakes or honk his horn.
“Hey, watch out,” one man in a cap and overcoat reprimanded from the open window of a van.
“Where’s the fire?” another one joked.
Marla raced to keep up with Nick, her lungs burning, her legs beginning to cramp. All the while Nick’s eyes were trained ahead, focused on the back of a tall man in a black parka who cut in and out of the crowd. The stranger darted unevenly as if he favored one leg. “You’re crazy,” Marla wheezed as they sprinted past the Cannery to Jefferson Street and finally, just when she was certain her lungs would burst, around a final corner, across a street against the light, and into the throng milling along the piers of Fisherman’s Wharf.
“Shit!” Nick spat, his eyes scouring the throng milling on the waterfront.
“He’s gone?”
“Ducked into one of the shops or restaurants, I’d guess.”
“Or into his car.”
“Jeep. I’ll bet he drives a Jeep.”
Marla’s heart stopped for a second. “Like the man you were looking for earlier.”
“Exactly,” Nick slowed to a brisk walk and Marla gasped to catch her breath, her mind racing frantically.
Sweeping his head side to side, his eyes trained on the faces of the people he passed, Nick’s gaze raked over the crowd, all the while keeping Marla’s smaller hand clasped tightly in his. Nervously, taking in deep breaths, Marla, too, scanned the faces of the people collected on the waterfront, but discovered nothing out of the ordinary in the tourists and locals who strolled around the docks and shops on the piers. Nothing sinister or evil was evident in the faces that she met.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but there was a man, a tall thin man, who was lingering at the coffee shop. I didn’t think much about it, but I’m sure he came in a few minutes after us. Later, while we were walking, I caught a glimpse of him again about a block behind us when I’d looked over my shoulder to check a street sign. He disappeared around a corner and I thought I was imagining things. Then, right after I kissed you, I looked up and thought I saw his reflection in the windows of a shop. When I turned, he was taking off.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” she said, relieved. “Come on, Nick, now you’re the one acting paranoid. You’re trying to muscle in on my psychosis.”
Nick didn’t so much as crack a smile. “You don’t get it. I think I saw him once before,” he said, obviously bothered. “At the hospital when you were still in a coma and there was something about him that was familiar. I felt like I should have known him.” Nick squinted into the false illumination of the city lights. His gaze scoured the piers and street. “That same night, I caught a glimpse of him in the hospital parking lot. He drove off in a dark Jeep. Black or maybe navy blue. I’d bet it was the same as the one that was parked at the church today.”
“You think that whoever was driving it followed us to the police station and then here?” she asked, the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
Nick’s fingers tightened over hers and they began walking along the waterfront, through the gauzy layers of fog rolling inland. “I’d be willing to bet my life on it.”
“But why?”
“That’s what we need to figure out. I don’t know the answer yet,” he admitted, pulling her closer, “but I’m sure it has something to do with you.” He looked down at her and his face was set in grim, uncompromising determination. “Paterno thought someone might be trying to kill you. I’ve thought the same thing. So have you. Whether you want to believe it or not, your life might be in danger. I think you should move out of the house. Tonight. If an intruder got in the other night, nothing’s going to stop him again.”
“But I can’t leave
,” she said, fear squeezing her heart. “My children are there.”
“Take them with you.”
“They’re Alex’s, too,” she pointed out. “I can’t kidnap my own kids and I can’t tell him because . . . oh, damn, it’s so crazy.”
“Because you don’t trust him,” he finished for her, and she fought a sudden urge to break down.
“I don’t know whom to trust.”
“Me, darlin’,” he insisted, gathering her into his arms again and dropping a kiss on her upturned lips. “You’d damned well better trust me. I could be the only friend you have.”
His lips were warm and insistent, the hands that pulled her tight strong and yet, though she wanted to trust him with all her heart, wanted to lie naked with him, wanted to feel his hands on her body, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was being a traitor, that throwing in with Nick Cahill was as good as making a deal with the devil.
And that some day she would have to pay.
Chapter Sixteen
“So what did Mrs. Cahill have to say?” Janet Quinn asked as she stopped by Paterno’s office. She was sliding her arms through the sleeves of her jacket and was on her way out the door.
“Nothing much more than she told me on the phone,” he said, tapping a pencil on the edge of his desk. “Except that she thinks someone broke into her bedroom and threatened her. Maybe he poisoned her and she ended up nearly choking on her own puke because her teeth were wired together. That’s why 911 was called.”
Janet rolled her eyes. “You believe her?”
“To tell you the truth I don’t know what to believe,” he admitted. “But she showed up here with her brother-in-law, not her husband. She and he were an item before she married the older brother.”
“The husband was probably working.”
“Maybe.” Paterno didn’t like it. “But I got the sense that these two—Nick and Marla—they had something going again. I could feel it.”
“Oh, yeah, you, the great romantic,” Janet chided with a smile and rolled her eyes.
“I’m tellin’ ya, those two have the hots for each other.”
Janet shook her head, her short brown hair feathering around her face. “As if you’d know.”
“I know plenty,” he grumbled and she chuckled deep in her throat, the way she always did when she had managed to yank his chain—which happened far too much in Paterno’s opinion. “And I’m gonna call the highway patrol, see if they’ll send someone up there with a dog. Marla Cahill claims her purse is missing and the way that car hit, it could have been flung to hell and gone in the impact.”
“Those boys are pretty thorough. I think they would’ve found it.”
“Doesn’t hurt to check,” he said as she waved and headed out the door. Paterno reached for the phone. He wouldn’t mind taking a peek inside the missing handbag himself. No telling what he might find.
“Did you have a chance to check out those files we found in Pam Delacroix’s computer?” She and he had gotten a search warrant, looked through the house and come up with nothing but some notes and computer records.
“Looks like she was trying to put together a book. About adoption law. Using real cases. Some fact, some fiction, but I need to go over it in more detail.” He fiddled with his pencil. “I think it might be a good idea to stake out Alex Cahill’s house, too,” he said frowning. “Just to see what we can see.”
“Why?”
He scowled and spit his gum into the trash. “I think someone might be trying to kill off Marla Cahill.”
“Jesus, Tony,” Janet said, leaning a shoulder against his door frame. “Why?”
“I’m checkin’ into that. Near as I can tell she has some life insurance on her, not a whole helluva lot by those people’s standards, and if her old man was pissed because she was involved with someone, why the hell did he have his brother come running down here when he and the lady were an item way back when?” He sniffed in disgust. “Too bad she can’t remember jack shit. That way maybe we’d be able to figure out who’s after her, have a chance to save her.”
“And now?”
Tony Paterno leaned back in his chair. “Right now, we don’t have squat.”
“Where the devil have you been?” Eugenia asked as Nick and Marla entered through the front door. Looking frazzled, the older woman was holding James to her shoulder and the baby was fussing. “It’s been hours.”
“I’m sorry, it’s my fault,” Marla said and took the baby from his grandmother’s arms. “How are ya, big guy?” she asked, her heart melting when his crying stopped and he observed her with wide, curious eyes. “Isn’t that better?” To her mother-in-law, she said, “I had a couple of errands to run and I stopped by and gave a statement to the police about what I remember about the accident. It took longer than I thought.”
The older woman’s lips pursed in prim, unspoken accusation, but Marla wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of feeling guilty.
“Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Good. I could eat a horse.” Marla’s stomach rumbled at the thought. This would be her first real meal since the wires had been ripped from her teeth. “Where’s Cissy?”
“She had a riding lesson.” Eugenia checked her watch. “Lars went to pick her up. They should be back any time now.”
“Good, I want to talk to her. If anyone sees her first, let her know.” The baby fussed and Marla carried him to the kitchen where she searched for a bottle and formula.
Standing over gas burners, Elsa the cook was stirring a cranberry-orange sauce with a wooden spoon while potatoes simmered in a kettle. The smell of roasting pork wafted through the cavernous room where copper pots, stainless steel utensils and baskets of herbs hung from the beams. It was all Marla could do not to ask for a taste.
Rosa was unloading a stainless steel dishwasher while Carmen, her usually smooth brow furrowed, her lips tight in a frown, was searching through drawers and muttering under her breath.
“Anything wrong?” Marla asked as she mixed the powdered formula and distilled water in a clean bottle.
“Mrs. Eugenia is missing her keys and thinks someone must have taken them from her,” Carmen said.
“Someone?”
Rosa’s eyes rounded as she stacked the plates in a cupboard. Her face was paler than normal and she nodded her head furiously. “Si. Señora Cahill, she is . . .”
“Loco,” Carmen said, then slammed a drawer shut and lifted a palm in surrender. “I didn’t mean it that way. She’s upset, though, about the stupid keys and I know they’ll turn up.”
“Of course they will,” Marla said, balancing James in one arm while placing the bottle in the microwave with the other.
Carmen opened an unlikely cupboard where measuring cups were stacked. “She must have misplaced them. No one on the staff would ever steal from the family.”
Marla wanted to melt through the floorboards at the thought that some of the servants were under suspicion. The keyring in her pocket felt as if it suddenly weighed a ton. The microwave bell chimed. Shifting James to one arm, she withdrew the bottle and tested the contents on her wrist. Satisfied with the temperature of the formula, she said, “I’m sure Eugenia will find the keys soon.” Holding James and his bottle, she hurried upstairs while Carmen began pawing through yet another drawer.
Nick was already seated in a high-backed chair, a drink in his hand. Eugenia stood at the window, frowning into the night, her back to the room.
“. . . I wish I knew,” the older woman was saying, unaware that her daughter-in-law had entered. “These days it’s impossible to keep track of everyone. That’s one of the reasons I wanted you back here, Nick. I thought . . . no, I hoped that you would be a stabilizing force. You were good at finding out what was wrong with a company—a troubleshooter, isn’t that what they’re called these days. In mine they were auditors.”
“Auditors are a little different.”
“Doesn’t matter. When Alex confided in me that Cahill Limited w
as having financial troubles, I thought of you and what you’d done for other corporations.” She rotated her neck, as if to relieve a stiffness in her shoulders, and continued to stare through the glass. “But, the truth of the matter is that the corporate finances weren’t the only reasons I wanted you back home. I guess you can see by now that Alex and Marla aren’t as close as they used to be. They’ve been having trouble for years and I prayed that the new baby would change things, but . . . oh, well, it’s obvious they’re drifting farther and farther apart. Even though I knew that you and Marla . . . well that you were involved a long time ago, I still thought that you being here might help.”
“How?” Marla asked, unable to hold her tongue, her cheeks flaming, her mind screaming with questions.
Eugenia whirled on one high heel and blushed to the roots of her apricot-colored hair. One hand, fingers splayed, covered her heart. “Oh, my, I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.”
“Obviously,” Marla said dryly. She sat on a sofa and held the baby in her arm, offering him the bottle. “But, please, go on. This is fascinating.” She couldn’t keep the bite from her words. “Why would Nick help?”
“Let me guess,” Nick suggested. “Alex and I have always been rivals and you thought if I came back here and showed even the slightest bit of interest in Marla, Alex would realize what a prize she is.”
“Now, I didn’t say anything of the sort,” his mother argued, but guilt chased across her eyes.
“Jesus, Mother, that’s right, isn’t it?” Nick’s disgust showed in the tic over his temple. “What if your plan backfired? What if Marla and I ended up together? How would you feel then?”
Marla’s heart pounded and Eugenia, paling, looked from Nick to Marla. “Of course . . . of course, that would never happen,” she said, clearly not convinced. “Marla has the children and you . . . you have that warped code of ethics . . . You always swore that you’d never be involved with a married woman and so I thought . . .”
“Son of a bitch. Who’re you to play God?” Nick drained his drink then crunched on an ice cube in frustration.
