by Raye Morgan
“Your people?” She was fairly quivering with outrage at that one. “Are you some sort of cult leader, then?”
She thought he’d react with anger, or at least with annoyance, but he laughed and stepped closer to her. The fact that she wasn’t falling into line seemed to keep alive the interest he felt in her.
“Listen, I’ve got a little time before my next appointment,” he told her. His smile was patently seductive in a practiced way that must have worked often in his past. “Would you like to go get a cup of coffee?”
She looked at him steadily. By all rights, she should slap his face. The nerve of the man—trying to pick up his own ex-wife.
“No, Dr. Richie,” she said loud and clear. “I most definitely would not.”
As luck would have it, her bus arrived just at the right time. Giving him a parting glare, she boarded it and made her way to a seat near the back without looking over her shoulder to see his reaction. Her heart was thumping and she was damp with sweat. But she’d told him what she thought. She hadn’t weakened on that score.
Closing her eyes, she tried to let the swaying of the bus calm her nerves. Her cell phone rang and she fumbled for it.
“Hello? Oh, Jason.” She relaxed. It was her son. “Yes, darling. Don’t you worry. I’m taking care of it.”
“Mother!” Jason obviously caught the tension in her voice and it worried him. “What are you going to do?”
Her voice hardened and she stared straight ahead. “Take care of business, Jason. Something I should have done years ago.”
“No, Mom. What’s the point? Leave the man alone. Come home. Get on with your life.”
“I can’t leave him alone.” She turned and muffled her voice so that others on the bus wouldn’t hear her conversation. “He’s become a monster. I’m the only one who knows just how far he’s come from what he used to be. I feel it’s my duty to do something about it.”
Jason was silent for a long moment, then he asked ominously, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m just working that out myself. But I’m going to do something. And it’s going to be soon.”
Eight
A huge silver moon hung in the sky. Magic? Could be. Daniel was certainly feeling as though something was pulling his strings. The funny thing was, he sort of liked it.
Every time he let himself look at Abby he felt control slipping further away. He’d managed to stay away from her all weekend, but his date for the opera was hanging over him the whole time. She was gorgeous, dressed in something that fit like a second skin—a very sparkly second skin—with long, glittering earrings that swayed as she walked. She’d added a tiny little white furry thing that was supposed to act as a wrap of sorts and really served to frame her pretty face in a way he found completely irresistible. The ends curved down and followed the line of her breasts, opening at the front to reveal a generous portion of those lovely items. Every time he caught a glimpse of that white, untouched skin, the pit of his stomach dropped as though he’d taken a roller-coaster ride into the night.
He was a sad case, a lost cause—and totally happy about it.
“Now that was quite something,” he said, referring to the performance of Madame Butterfly they’d just seen. They were walking slowly through the courtyard on their way to the parking lot. They’d loitered inside so long, they practically had the place to themselves by now. Neither one of them seemed to want to hurry the evening toward its conclusion.
“I loved it,” Abby declared to the world.
“Did you?”
“You didn’t?”
“Hmm.” He looked at her sideways. “A lot of the music was pretty good. I don’t know. As long as they keep to tenors and mezzos I’m okay, but sopranos tend to blow out my ears and leave me a quivering mass of jelly.”
She laughed. “Your quivering was politely subtle. No one noticed.” She threw out her arms to the night. “I thought it was all just wonderful.”
“Well, it’s an event,” he responded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit coat. “Something everyone should try at least once in his life.” He gave her a quick smile, his gaze lingering on those white breasts, then pulling quickly away. “Now you can add it to your list of experiences.”
“It’s a pretty short list,” she said as they paused to gaze into a decorative pond. “Going to the opera will be a major entry on it.”
“What do you mean?” He turned and looked at her quizzically.
Instead of answering his question directly, she smiled at him and said, “It’s funny to think I’ve been to the opera but I’ve never been to a rock concert.”
He stared at her, thunderstruck. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No. Actually, I haven’t done a lot of things that most people my age have done.” She looked out at the moon. “I had sort of an unusual childhood.”
“Raised in a convent?”
“Not quite. But I was raised to believe hard work and academic success were the only things that mattered. Fun was out. A waste of time. My parents were loving in their own way, but they saw me more as an asset than as a kid. And I realize now that a little more balance in my life would have been better.”
He was quiet for a long moment, gazing into the water of the pond. Finally, he turned to her.
“You know what? I’m not going to criticize them.”
Her eyebrows rose. “No?”
He shook his head. “No. Whatever they did, they ended up with one pretty great daughter. So who am I to complain?”
She laughed and turned her face up and he kissed her.
It began as a lighthearted gesture. That was all he meant to do, kiss her lightly and move on. But she tasted so sweet he couldn’t pull away. Somehow his tongue got involved and her arms came around his neck and his hands were sliding down her sides, cupping her bottom and pulling her close, and there he was, swept with an urgency to have her for his own.
A knot of people started toward them from the concert hall and they broke apart, both panting softly and gazing into each other’s eyes. He took her hand in his and started toward the car again.
“Okay,” he said firmly. “Next month there’s a Journey concert. I’ve got two tickets. You’re coming with me.”
She turned her head to look at him as they walked. “Who were you planning to take with you?”
“My grandmother.”
Her jaw dropped. “You were not!”
He grinned. “Was, too.”
“Oh, you liar!”
“Yes, I really was. She loves Journey.”
“But a rock concert?”
His smile dimmed. “She’s probably not going to feel like going now that she’s had these problems,” he admitted. They reached the car and he opened the door to let her in. “So we’ll go. Okay?”
She nodded happily. “Okay. But if she feels like going at the last minute…”
“She’ll have first dibs,” he promised her.
“She’s still talking about taking that cruise,” Abby noted as they left the parking area and turned onto the street. “She told me today that she’s feeling much stronger and thinks she can make it.”
His heart fell. He hated to be the one to disappoint her. Glancing at Abby, he remembered that the retirement home he was dealing with was close by and he turned the car toward it, slowing to a stop in front of the main entrance. The entry to the five-story building was lit by a huge chandelier. The extravagant plantings that studded the grounds were lit by tiny lights. Other lights filled the windows and shone along the walkways. It looked like a royal garden, an enchanted retreat from the real world.
And that was exactly what he hoped it would be for his grandmother.
“I wanted you to see this place,” Daniel told Abby when she turned to look questioningly at him. “I know everyone’s been encouraging her to go on that cruise to Alaska. And I know you’ve wondered why I’m so dead set against it. Well, here’s one of the main reasons she can’t go.”
“She’s reached the age where she requires some extra care and extra help, things I can’t give her the way she needs. I want her to be comfortable. I want her to be happy and safe and among really nice people who will care about her.”
Abby looked from him to the residence and back again. “It…it certainly looks like a lovely place.”
He heard the doubt in her voice and he knew it wasn’t about the quality of the home.
“Look,” he said, trying mightily to keep the defensive tone out of his voice, “I took out a second mortgage on my house to buy into this place for her. I used every penny I’ve got and promised what she has. I’m in hock up to my butt. That’s how serious I am about it.”
“Oh.”
He waited, but she didn’t add anything, so he went on, wondering whom he was trying to convince, her or himself.
“They’ve reserved an apartment for her. She’ll be part of a community of people her age. They have a top chef and meals are provided, either in the dining room or in her own room if she doesn’t feel up to going down with the others. There are trips every week, concerts, plays, transportation anywhere anytime. Medical care is instantaneous. It’s a dream of a place.”
“And very expensive,” Abby murmured.
“Of course.”
“Does she know about this?”
He hesitated. “I’ve talked to her about it,” he said slowly. “A little.”
“But she hasn’t given her okay?”
“No. She’s resisting.” He turned to look at Abby, anguish in his eyes. “But it’s time. We’ve been going through this for months. Look at the way she fell and there was no one to help her for so long. She just lay there. God knows what could have happened to her. She was completely vulnerable to any crook or loony who might have happened by. She needs someone near her at all times. She just can’t handle it by herself any longer.”
Abby sat silently, digesting everything he said. This sort of dilemma was new to her. Her parents were still youthful and vibrant. But she realized it wouldn’t always be that way. Someday she would be facing these problems. How well would she handle them?
“You know,” Daniel continued, “if I thought she really was physically up to the trip, I’d do what I could to send her. Hell, I’d shake down some thugs I know if I had to.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “But she can’t go alone. She can’t go with her friend Ruthie, who’s in a wheelchair and in worse shape than my grandmother is. I can just imagine the two of them lurching around the deck of a ship together. Seven days of trying to keep from landing flat on her back? I don’t think so. If I could go with her it would be one thing, but I’ve got this…”
He’d been about to mention the hearing that would determine his fate on the force, but he stopped himself in time. “I’ve got some work I’ve got to get done,” he substituted a bit lamely.
“The article for your magazine?” she asked. “Can’t you put that off for a while?”
His laugh was short and humorless. “Deadlines are deadlines,” he said evasively.
“You know, maybe I could help you and together we could get it done more quickly so that you could—”
“No,” he said a bit more harshly than he’d meant to. He tried to soften it with a quick smile. “Thanks, Abby, but this is something I have to do on my own.”
“But…”
“Forget it,” he said.
His tone told the tale. He was firm on this, adamant. And there was no use trying to sway him.
She blinked, then tried a tentative smile. She’d read the signs and knew it was better to let the issue drop—for now.
“Oh, yeah?” she said half teasingly.
His mouth twisted. “Yeah.”
She lifted her chin. “How you gonna make me?”
“I don’t know. I guess a quick spanking is out of the question.”
Her eyes widened. “Good guess.”
He touched her face. “Oh, that’s right. Kissing is more your speed, isn’t it?”
Her smile was genuine now. “You noticed.”
“How could I help it?” His green eyes looked smoky and his hand cupped her cheek. “You were all over me after the seminar last week.”
“What?” She pretended to slap his shoulder. “You wish! You’re a dreamer, Daniel O’Callahan!”
“Maybe.” He drew his hand away with seeming reluctance and started up the engine again, glancing back at the residence and turning away from it, then looking at Abby in the darkness. “What do you want to do now?” he asked softly.
She stared back at him, her eyes huge in the shadows, and didn’t say a thing. That in itself spoke volumes.
“Why don’t we go to your house?” she suggested after a few moments. “I want to see where you live.”
“My house?” The whole idea shocked him. He’d never taken a woman to his house. As a cop he thought it best not to let anyone know too much about his private life. Best to remain a mystery.
“Your grandmother told me about the house,” Abby said when he didn’t go on. “About how she came to live there when your parents died but that you were the one who really held things together. She’s told me all about how you took care of your three younger brothers. How you held off going to college yourself until you could put them through school.”
“You do what you have to do,” he said shortly, concentrating on his driving.
She nodded. “Hearing about that gave me a whole new perspective on what you’re really like.”
He glanced at her sardonically. “Don’t let it go to your head. There’s plenty of evidence that I’m still the same coldhearted bastard I always was.”
He didn’t look over again but he had the impression she was smiling. And for some reason that warmed him.
“Where are your brothers now?” she asked.
He took a deep breath. The fact that all three of them were in the military, in harm’s way, was a constant fear he held at the bottom of his heart, but he didn’t much like to talk about it. “The twins are on an aircraft carrier somewhere in the Persian Gulf. And Jack is a special ops officer in the mountains of Afghanistan.”
“Yikes.”
He nodded, feeling a quick sense of love for those boys, then suppressing it. “Yeah, they were all wild kids, but now they’re the greatest guys you’d want to meet.”
Abby thought that over for a moment. “So once you finished raising them, you took over caring for your grandmother.”
He shrugged. It was no big deal. “That’s only fair. She put aside her life for us.”
Abby sat quietly watching him drive, enjoying the way his strong hands controlled the wheel. She knew he was anything but an academic, the sort of man she’d always thought she would want in her life. He was a man of action, not a man of theories and contemplation. But thinking about him filled her heart with emotion. He had to be one of the best men she’d ever met. That surprised her. But the more she thought about it, the more she was ashamed of herself for being so surprised.
He pulled up in front of her apartment instead of his own house, but she didn’t protest. If he didn’t want her at his place, that was his right. She only hoped he would come inside and stay for a while, and when he showed every evidence of being prepared to do just that, she felt a bubble of happiness rising in her chest.
She made tea and they talked, first leaning against the counters in the kitchen, then sitting on the couch in her living room. Ming skulked around the corners, giving Daniel the evil eye when she wasn’t pretending he didn’t exist. Abby had every expectation that things were going to get friendlier if she just gave him a little time.
But after a half hour or so, he showed what he’d really stayed for, and her spirits drooped.
“Okay, Abby,” he said, putting on his no-nonsense face and tone, “we’ve been pussy-footing around this for days, and I did ask yo
u about it once, now it’s time to come clean. You’ve got to level with me.” He pinned her with his steely gaze. “Just exactly what products from the clinic have you been taking?”
Despite the buildup he used, the question caught her off guard.
“Me?”
“Yes.”
His green eyes seemed to see right through her skin, right into her soul. She had a sudden sense of there being no escape. She shook her head, rummaging in her mind but coming up empty.
“Nothing. Not a single thing. I told you I don’t take pills and the bars aren’t really to my taste.”
He moved closer, nailing her with that cold stare. “Abby, think. There must be something.”
“No.” She shook her head and her long earrings slapped her cheeks. Then she did think of something. She looked up at him, blinking rapidly, not sure if this would help. “Well, I did use the NoWait oil for losing weight. Though I don’t consider that ‘taking’ something since you just put it behind your ear.”
He stopped like a hound on point, motionless but eager. “The NoWait stuff?” He frowned. “Really? When was that?”
“I started using it the beginning of last week. Oh, I think it was the day you came to the seminar and got that purple juice spilled on your shirt and—”
He was up and moving toward her room. “Where is it?” he demanded.
“On the dresser.” Putting down her teacup, she rose and followed him, feeling an impending sense of doom and not sure why.
He hesitated in the doorway. “Where’s that cat?” he asked her.
“Ming’s in the kitchen,” she assured him. “I just saw her there.”
Striding into the room, he zeroed in on the little pot of oil, taking off the cap and sniffing the contents. Frowning, he turned to look at her.
“And you just put dabs of it behind your ears?” he asked her in disbelief.
She nodded. “I fit into this gown because of it. It really does work, you know.”
He looked at her, risked a quick survey of how the gown looked on her lush and lovely body, then turned his attention back to the oil.
