by J. D. Robb
It wasn't heat flashing now, but a slow and lovely warmth sliding. He was worried about a dog. Her dog. Any man who'd worry about a dog when he was naked in bed with a woman shot straight to the top of her list of all-time heroes. She dragged his face down to hers so she could rain kisses over it.
"No, I didn't leave him alone. I took him to Jenny's. How can you be so perfect? I'm always looking for the flaws in everything, but you're just . . ." She pressed her lips to his in a long, noisy kiss. "Absolutely perfect."
"I'm not." He didn't care for the twinge of guilt. It was a sensation he overcame or avoided. Worse, there was worry tangled with it. What would she think, how would she react when she found out just what his flaws were?
"I'm selfish and single-minded," he told her. "I—"
"Selfish men don't wander into antique stores looking for a gift for their mother, just because."
The twinge became a pang. "That was impulse."
"See, a surprise. Didn't I just say I love surprises? Don't try to convince me you're not perfect. I'm too happy with you right now to think anything else. Uh-oh, now I've got you thinking." She ran her hands down his back, gave his butt a friendly pat. "Is she trying to turn this into more than fun and games?"
"That's not what I was thinking. And it already is more than fun and games."
"Oh." Her heart tripped, but she kept her eyes steady on his. "Is it?"
"That's what I wasn't expecting, Laine." He lowered his head, touched his lips to hers. "Makes things a little more complicated."
"I don't mind complications, Max." She framed his face with her hands. "We can worry about what this is, or isn't, what it's going to be, tomorrow, or we can enjoy it. And each other. The one thing I know is when I woke up at home tonight, I was happy because I knew I wanted to be with you. I haven't felt that way in a long time."
"Happy?"
"Satisfied, content, productive and happy enough. But not dance-around-the-house happy. So about the only thing you could tell me that would make this too complicated for me is that you've got a wife and a couple of kids in Brooklyn."
"I don't. They're in Queens."
She pinched him, hard, then wrestled him over onto his back. "Ha ha. Very funny."
"It's my ex-wife who lives in Brooklyn."
She straddled him, tossed her hair back. "You've been busy."
"Well, you collect corkscrews. Some guys collect women. My current mistress is in Atlanta, but I'm thinking of branching out. You could be my Maryland tootsie."
"Tootsie? It's always been one of my driving ambitions to be someone's tootsie. Where do I sign up?"
He sat up, wrapping his arms around her and just holding on. Complications, he thought. He couldn't begin to list them. So he'd just have to deal with them. So would she. But not tonight. Tonight he was going to take her at her word and just enjoy.
"Are you going to stay awhile? Stay awhile, Laine."
"I thought you'd never ask."
***
"Don't go." The moment the words were out of Max's mouth, he realized he'd never said them to a woman before. Maybe it was sleep deprivation, sexual exhaustion. Maybe it was just her.
"It's after three in the morning."
"Exactly. So come on back to bed. We'll just spoon up here and snooze for a couple hours, then order breakfast."
"That sounds wonderful, but I'll need another one of those rain checks." She wiggled into the dress, forgoing underwear. And erased all thoughts of snoozing from his mind.
"Then just come back to bed."
"I have to go." She chuckled, dancing out of reach when he made a grab for her. "I need to go home, catch a couple hours' sleep, change, run back into town and pick up Henry, take him home, then go back into town to the shop."
"If you stay here, you could pick up Henry on the way home and save yourself a trip."
"And provide the gossip mill with enough grist to run it until next Christmas." She was small-town enough, in the woman she'd created, to be concerned about such things. "A woman strolls out of a hotel in the morning wearing this sort of dress, eyebrows raise. Especially in the Gap."
"I'll lend you a shirt."
"I'm going." She stuffed her lingerie into her purse. "But if you'd like to have dinner with me tonight . . ."
"Name the time and place."
"Eight, my place. I'll cook."
"Cook?" His eyes blinked slowly, twice, then seemed to glaze. "Food?"
"No, I thought I'd cook up an insidious plot against the government. Of course food." She turned to the mirror, pulled a tiny brush out of her bulging purse and swooped it through her hair. "What do you like?"
He just stared at her. "Food?"
"I'll think of something." Satisfied she was as good as she was going to get, she dropped the brush back into the purse and crossed to him. She leaned over the bed, gave him a light kiss. "See you later."
He stayed where he was after she'd closed the door behind her. Stayed, staring at the door with the taste of her lingering on his lips.
None of it made any sense. Not what had happened between them, not what he felt for her, not who she was. Because his reading of her wasn't off. He was never this far off, and it had nothing to do with glands.
If Laine Tavish was mixed up in a multimillion-dollar heist, he'd eat his own investigator's license.
It didn't explain why William Young had come to see her. It didn't explain why he was dead. It didn't explain why her house had been ransacked.
But there were explanations, and he'd ferret them out. He was good at it. Once he had, once he'd cleared her, satisfied his client, done the job, he'd tell her everything.
She'd probably be a little upset.
Get real, Gannon, he thought, she'd be completely pissed. But he'd bring her around.
He was good at bringing people around, too.
The best way to work through the mess he'd gotten into was to proceed with logic. Logically, Jack O'Hara's daughter Elaine had severed ties with him, changed her name, adjusted her background and started a life for herself. Everything pointed in that direction, including his own instincts.
That didn't mean Big Jack, Willy or any of their associates were unaware of her and her location. Didn't mean there wasn't occasional contact, or the attempt to contact.
And okay, her finances still struck him as dicey, but he'd work on that. A few thousand here or there to put a down payment on a house or start up a business was nothing. Not compared to a share of $28 million and change.
Willy may have tracked her down to ask her for help, a place to hide out, to deliver a message from her father. Whatever the purpose, he was dead as Moses now and couldn't be asked. And would never cash in on his share, either, Max mused.
Didn't that up the stakes considerably?
Laine didn't have anything at the house worth worrying about. There was no question of that. Even if whoever'd broken in had missed something, she wouldn't have left the house unattended for the night to play heat the sheets if she had something hidden there.
Logically, she didn't have anything. She'd been in Angel's Gap when the jewels were stolen. For Christ's sake, she'd barely finished her first decade when she was shuffled out of Big Jack's aegis and influence.
Regardless, to clear her, to cross her name off all lists, he had to cover all the bases. He had to take a good look around her shop.
The sooner he did it, the sooner they could move on. He checked the time, judged he had a good three hours before daylight.
Might as well get started.
7.
It amazed him that anyone who shared DNA with a thief would secure their own business with standard locks and a rinky-dink alarm system any twelve-year-old with a Swiss Army knife and a little imagination could circumvent.
Really, if this . . . thing of theirs turned into an actual relationship, he was going to have a serious sit-down with Laine about home and business security. Maybe a store in a town of this type and size didn't require riot ba
rs, gates or surveillance cameras, but she hadn't even bothered with security lights, in or out. As for the door, it was pathetic. If he'd been a thief who didn't worry about finesse, a couple of good kicks would've done the job.
Her current excuse for a system made the nighttime B&E embarrassingly easy. He bypassed the alarm and picked the locks on the back door in case some insomniac decided to take a predawn stroll down Market Street. And he'd walked from the hotel, taking his time, circling the block on foot. Just because something was easy didn't mean you could afford to be careless about procedure.
The town was quiet enough so he could hear the rumble of a furnace when it kicked on inside a building. And the long, mournful whistle of a freight train that rose eerily out of the silence. There were no winos, no junkies, no homeless, no hookers or street people populating the night in what would be considered downtown Angel's Gap.
You had to wonder if you were actually in America or if you'd somehow stumbled into a postcard printed up by the local chamber of commerce.
It was, Max decided, mildly creepy.
The streetlights along the steep sidewalk were old-fashioned lantern style, and every one of them glowed. All the display windows in the storefronts were sheer glass. As with Remember When, there were no gates, no security bars.
Hadn't anyone ever thrown a brick through one and helped themselves before hotfooting it away? Or kicked in a door for a quick looting party?
It just didn't seem right.
He thought of New York at three twenty-seven A.M. There'd be action, or trouble, if you were inclined for either. There'd be both pedestrian and vehicular traffic and the stores would all be chained down for the night.
So was there more crime there on a per capita basis just because it was expected?
It was an interesting theory, and he'd have to give some thought to it when he had a little downtime.
But for now, alarm and locks dispatched, he eased open the rear door of Remember When.
In and out in an hour, tops, he promised himself. Then back to the hotel to catch a little sleep. When New York opened, he'd contact his client and report that all evidence pointed to the fact that Laine Tavish was not, knowingly, involved.
That would clear him, from his point of view, to explain things to her. Once he'd done that, and talked her out of being pissed off, he'd pick her brain. He had a feeling she'd be an excellent source in tracking Big Jack and the diamonds.
And in collecting his finder's fee.
Max shut the door quietly behind him. Reached down to switch on his penlight.
But instead of the narrow beam coming on, lights exploded inside his head.
***
He woke in dead dark with his head banging with all the gusto and violence of his young nephew slamming pot lids together. He managed to roll over to what he thought was his back. The way his head was pounding and spinning, he couldn't be sure.
He lifted a hand to check if that head was still face front and felt the warm wet running.
And that pushed temper through the pain. It was bad enough to get ambushed and knocked out, but it was a hell of another thing if he had to go to the damn ER and get stitches.
He couldn't quite clear his brain, but he pushed himself to a sitting position. Since the head he was now reasonably certain was still on the correct way seemed in danger of falling off his shoulders, he lowered it to his hands until he felt more secure.
He needed to get up, turn on a light. Take stock of himself and what the hell had happened. He wiped at the blood, opened his aching eyes and scowled at the open rear door.
Whoever'd hit him from behind was long gone. He started to get to his feet with the idea of taking a quick look around the place before following suit.
And the rear doorway was suddenly filled with cop.
Max took a long look at Vince Burger, and at the police-issue pointing in his direction and said, "Well, shit."
***
"Look, you can pop me for the B and E. It'll sting. I'll get around it, but it'll sting. But—"
"I did pop you for the B and E." Vince kicked back in his desk chair and smiled humorlessly at Max, who sat cuffed to a visitor's chair in the office of the station house.
Didn't look so big city and cocky now, Vince thought, with the bandage on his temple and the sizable lump on his forehead.
"Then there's attempted burglary—"
"I wasn't stealing anything, damn it, and you know it."
"Oh, so you just break into stores in the middle of the night to browse around. Like window shopping but on the inside." He lifted an evidence bag, gave it a shake that rattled Max's burglar tools and personal data assistant. "And you carry these around in case you have to do some small home repairs?"
"Look—"
"I can pop you on possession of burglary tools."
"That's a goddamn PDA. Everybody's got a PDA."
"I don't."
"Surprise, surprise," Max said sourly. "I had reasons for being inside Laine's shop."
"You break into all the shops and homes of women you date?"
"I never broke into her house, and it's pretty damn elementary, Watson, that whoever was in the store ahead of me, whoever coldcocked me was the one who did. You're protective of her, I get that, but—"
"Damn right." The good old boy's eyes went hard as cinders. "She's a friend of mine. She's a good friend of mine, and I don't like some New York asshole messing with my friends."
"I'm a Georgia asshole, actually. I just live in New York. I'm conducting an investigation for a client. A private investigation."
"So you say, but I didn't find any license on you."
"You didn't find any wallet either," Max snapped back, "because whoever knocked me out helped himself to it. Goddamn it, Burger—"
"Don't swear in my office."
At wits' end, Max leaned his head back, closed his eyes. "I didn't ask for a lawyer, but I'm going to beg you, I may even work up some tears along with it, for some fricking aspirin."
Vince opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle. Maybe he slammed the drawer just for the satisfaction of seeing Max wince, but he heaved himself up and poured a cup of water.
"You know I'm what I say I am." Max took the pills, downed them with the water and prayed for them to break Olympic records swimming into his bloodstream. "You've run me. You know I'm a licensed investigator. You know I used to be a cop. And while you're wasting time and getting your jollies busting my balls, whoever was in her place has gone back to ground. You need—"
"You don't want to tell me what I need to do." The voice was mild enough to have Max respecting the cold fury under it—particularly since he was cuffed to a chair. "You told Laine all that? About the used to be a cop, going private, working on a case here in the Gap?"
Just his luck, Max decided, to run foul of the Norman Rockwell version of a hard-ass town cop. "Is this about my relationship with Laine or about me being inside the shop?"
"Six of one to me. What's the case you're working on?"
"I'm not giving you any details on that until I talk to my client." And his client was unlikely to be pleased he'd been busted slithering around the fine points of the law. Not that he'd slithered, but that he'd gotten caught. But that was another problem.
"Look, someone was in that shop when I walked in, and that same person tore up Laine's house. Laine's the one we need to be concerned about right now. You need to send a deputy out to her place and make sure—"
"Telling me how to do my job isn't going to make me feel any more kindly toward you."
"I don't care if you want to ask me out to the prom. Laine needs protection."
"You've been doing a good job of that." Vince settled his weight on the edge of the desk, like, Max thought with a sinking heart, a man settling in for a nice, long chat. "Funny how you show up from New York right after I end up with a guy from New York in the morgue."
"Yeah, I'm still laughing about that one. Eight million people in New York, give
or take," Max said coolly. "Seems reasonable a few of them would pass through here from time to time."
"Guess I'm not feeling real reasonable. Here's what I see. Some guy walks out of Laine's shop, gets spooked and runs into the street, ends up dead. You show up, talk Laine into having dinner with you, and while you're moving on her, her house gets burgled and vandalized. Next thing you know, you're inside her shop at three-thirty in the morning carrying burglar tools. What are you looking for, Gannon?"
"Inner peace."
"Good luck with that," Vince said as they heard the quick march of footsteps down the hall.
Laine swung into the room. She wore sweats, and her hair was pulled back into a tail that left her face unframed. There were smudges from lack of sleep under her eyes, and those eyes were full of baffled concern.
"What's going on? Jerry came by the house, told me there was trouble at the shop and that I had to come right in and talk to you. What kind of trouble? What's—" She spotted the handcuffs and stopped short as she stared at them, then slowly lifted her gaze to Max's face. "What is this?"
"Laine—"
"You're going to want to sit quiet a minute," Vince warned Max. "You had a break-in at the store," Vince told her. "Far as I could see there wasn't any damage. You'll have to take a look yourself to see if anything was taken."
"I see." She wanted to sit, but only braced a hand on the back of a chair. "No, I don't. Why have you got Max cuffed?"
"I got an anonymous call that there was a burglary in progress at the location of your store. When I got there, I found him. Inside. He had a nice set of lock picks in his possession."
She took a breath—air in, air out—and shifted her gaze to Max's face. "You broke into my shop?"
"No. Well, yes, technically. But after someone else did. Someone who bashed me on the head, then called in the tip so I'd get rousted for this."
She studied the bandage on his temple, but the concern had already chilled out of her eyes. "That doesn't explain what you were doing there in the middle of the night." After I left your bed, she thought. After I spent the night in your bed.
"I can explain. I need to talk to you privately. Ten minutes. Give me ten minutes."
