Just Pretending

by Myrna Mackenzie

  But Lily Mae’s voice was breaking. “If I had a man living with me, he wouldn’t treat me this way. If I weren’t alone—”

  Immediately Gretchen’s heart tipped over. “Lily Mae, I’m sure he doesn’t even realize he’s upset you. Mr. Vernor is really a very nice man,” she said, realizing that Lily Mae was referring to her newest neighbor. “He’s kind. If you’d only talk to him.”

  But the woman was apparently too upset to think about talking to anyone but Gretchen right now. It was a full fifteen minutes before Gretchen could convince the woman that her best course of action was to invite Mr. Vernor over for lemonade and a friendly “chat.”

  It was well past the time she should have been picking up her menu when she actually did so. She’d barely flipped open the laminated booklet when a shadow fell over her table.

  “Hi, sweet heart,” David said in that slow, sexy drawl of his. He leaned forward, resting his palms on the table, his lips a breath away from her ear. “How’s my sweetest fiancée today?”

  She looked up, her eyes wide. She opened her mouth but saw he was nodding toward Lily Mae. “I’m sure you were a help to her, darling Gretchen,” he said. “And you’ve made me the happiest of men.”

  He took her hand in his own as he sat across from her.

  Emma came up, a big smile on her face. “Anything I can do for you two?”

  But Gretchen simply sighed. She rested her chin on her fist and stared at David as she shook her head. “I think I’ve done enough for myself today, Emma.”

  “You’re not a happy woman, Gretchen?”

  Gretchen looked at the innocent expression on David’s face. “I’m feeling a bit foolish, but I’m okay. You won fair and square,” she told the man who had known her better than she’d apparently known herself.

  “And I intend to hold up my end of the bargain, sweet lady,” he said. “We’re going to enjoy our selves at that wedding. We’re going to make people talk. You can bet on that.”

  Gretchen couldn’t hold back a small chuckle. “I think I’ve bet enough lately, David, so I’ll take you at your word.”

  “You don’t want me with you at the wedding?”

  She looked across at the mischievous gleam in his eyes, at that bold I-dare-you-to-be-wild-and-crazy expression on his face, at the stunning magnificence of the man, and she shook her head.

  “I’m beginning to think maybe I do want you at the wedding.”

  “We’ll have fun, Gretchen.”

  And suddenly she was looking forward to the day she’d dreaded up until now. She had the feeling that David Hannon could turn any dull occasion into something special.

  “Then I’ll look forward to it,” she agreed. “Partner.”

  He shook his head as Emma wandered off. “Not this time. This time we go as our selves. A man and a woman.”

  And suddenly Gretchen felt as if everyone in the room faded away, as if she and David were alone. A man and a woman.

  That feeling tagged after her all day as she and David returned to the office, made calls, and talked with each other and Rafe about Storm’s likely whereabouts.

  It was still with her when she wandered out onto the street at the end of the day, as she walked to her car, David at her side.

  She reached down for the handle and suddenly his hand was over hers.

  “Gretchen?”

  She turned to look into his eyes, but he’d come up behind her and when she turned, she was almost up against him, her eyes just beneath his chin, her lips just a finger’s breadth from his throat.

  David groaned low.

  “Come here,” he said, slipping his arms around her. And it was as if she had been waiting for this for hours. She leaned nearer, went the extra distance to shape her lips to his own. She felt the world dissolve in heat and need as David moved in close and claimed her mouth again and again.

  “I haven’t kissed you in days,” he whispered.

  She nodded, kissing him again.

  “We decided we shouldn’t,” she said, the words barely out of her mouth before she was crushed to his chest again.

  “I know, but we weren’t engaged then.”

  She smiled against his lips and placed her palms against the warmth of his chest. “David, we aren’t engaged now,” she said, finally pulling back slightly.

  He smiled, snagging her for one more kiss. “Gretchen, you know that and I know that, but the world?” He brushed her jawline with his strong, gentle fingers. “What do you think the world thinks?”

  Gretchen didn’t know. Right this second she wasn’t sure she cared. But she did know one thing. She and David were playing a game, and games always came to an end.

  That was good, she reminded herself. That was the way she wanted things. Still…

  “We’re supposed to be pretending at the wedding, not here in town,” she reminded him, disentangling herself from the warmth of his arms when what she wanted to do was to open his shirt, lean in and bury her face against the muscles of his bare chest. She wanted to breathe in the seductive male scent of him.

  “I know that, love,” he told her. “But I thought maybe we should practice.”

  A thought occurred to her. A niggling uncomfortable thought. “Not used to being without a woman for any length of time, David?”

  His laugh was automatic. It rumbled through his body to her fingertips where her hand rested against his chest. “You think I have no self-control, Gretchen?”

  She tilted up her chin. Green eyes met green eyes.

  “I think you’re a man who’s used to getting his own way, David.”

  He sobered instantly. He took her hand in his own and kissed the pads of her fingertips. “I’m sorry I pushed myself on you on this case, Gretchen, but that has nothing to do with this.”

  She knew that. Deep inside she knew that. But she also knew that he was a man who was made to have his way with women, and she was a woman who was wary of getting too close to any one man. She would have to be very careful around David, she thought.

  Gretchen wondered just how many women had thought that same thought over the years.

  But she refused to guess at the number. This time with David could be simple if she made it that way. She could compartmentalize things. There was work with David and there was the David she was going to have a lark with at the wedding. That was all there was or ever would be for her and David Hannon.

  And now that she’d set it out for herself so clearly, she could simply go home and forget about the man for the night.

  The slight knock at her door that night startled Gretchen. She was just about to take Goliath for his evening walk. But when she pulled open the door, David was standing there.

  He held out his hand.

  She frowned. “David?”

  He held out his hand farther. “The leash, Gretchen. The men are going for a walk. You stay here and rest.”

  Gretchen crossed her arms. “David, you won the bet.”

  Shaking his head, he gently pried the leash from her fingers. Goliath must have heard the noise of the door opening. He came running into the room, dancing and jumping and turning around in quick, chasing circles.

  “Come on, boy, just you and me tonight,” David said, lowering himself to one knee.

  Gretchen knelt beside them. She placed her hand over David’s and tried to ignore the warmth that cascaded through her in great gushing streams the way it always did.

  “David, why are you doing this? I conceded. You won.”

  But he placed two fingers over her lips to shush her, a barely there touch that still left her longing for more.

  “Not really a fair bet,” he said quietly. “Anyone could have won it. Any man could see that a woman like you couldn’t just leave Lily Mae sitting there babbling on.”

  Gretchen smiled against his fingertips.

  “Are you telling me that you’re not going through with things?” She wondered at the sudden plummeting of her good mood.

  He gave her a lopside
d, maddeningly sexy grin. “I said it was too easy, sweet heart. I didn’t say I’d gone suddenly crazy and stupid. When a man wins first rights to spend an evening touching a woman like you and whirling around a dance floor with you next to his heart, he’d have to have misplaced his brain to give that up. Oh, no, no way am I giving up my winnings. I’m just making things a bit more fair.”

  Darn. She wished he wouldn’t do that. He was hard enough to resist as it was.

  “That doesn’t seem half fair to you,” she suggested. “No matter what you say, the bet was made, witnessed and won. And Goliath’s my pet.”

  Of course, the darn animal was licking David’s fingers like crazy right now. The man was letting him, only stopping now and then to scratch Goliath’s side.

  “Well, maybe Goliath and I just need to spend some time together then. It’s a guy thing,” he told her. “This mutt definitely needs some male companionship. We won’t be long, love,” he told her. “You just get some rest.”

  And with that, he clipped the leash on and rose, swinging out the door and up the street.

  They were gone for maybe twenty minutes, but Gretchen didn’t rest. She paced. She cursed David for taking over her every thought. She blessed him for being so giving. She was just swishing past the window on her two hundredth pass when she saw him striding up her walk.

  Gretchen pulled the door open wide. David didn’t step inside. Instead he silently handed her the leash, said goodbye to Goliath, and gave her a slow smile.

  That was all it took. One look. One smile. She opened her mouth, on the verge of inviting him in, of giving him coffee and anything else he should care to want, when he curled his palm around her jaw and gently brushed her lips with his thumb.

  “See you in the morning, Gretchen,” he said softly, thickly. “I’ll be dreaming about you in my bed tonight.”

  And with those maddening words, the darn man left her standing there. Wanting. Hot and empty-handed and as far away from sleep as a woman could get. She’d just bet that he knew it, too.

  Why, oh, why, had David Hannon come back home and walked into her police department and into the middle of her case?

  Gretchen didn’t know, but she knew one thing. She was for darn sure going to be glad when he went back into his world and left hers behind, glad when she could get back to the life where she was a lot more in control than she ever was here. Until then, she was just going to—well, heck, she was just going to enjoy her time with the man, wasn’t she? And there was no use lying to herself about it. He was, after all, exactly what she was always saying she wanted. A man who knew when to have fun and when to disappear into the mists of history.

  Four days later David was on the phone in the station trying to keep his hand in on one of his own federal cases when he heard the commotion at the front door. “I want to see Detective Neal.” A man’s low voice echoed through out the office. It wasn’t a happy voice. One might even say it sounded a bit threatening.

  Immediately David looked to his right to where Gretchen was scratching away on paper. Her hand still, she looked up and rose to her feet, just as if some candy-voiced grand mother was sweetly requesting her presence.

  “Royston, got an unexpected emergency here. I’ll call you back ASAP,” David said quietly into the phone, not waiting for his contact’s reply as he placed the receiver back in its cradle.

  Carefully and deliberately, he rose from his desk and proceeded into the other room.

  “You Detective Neal?” a tall, brown-eyed man was demanding. His long, black hair was graying slightly at the temples, slicked back in magazine-model style, his Native American ancestry evident in the chiseled cheekbones. His navy pin-striped suit was expensive and it fit his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped frame well. He was obviously at home in a three-piece, and David didn’t have to ask who the man was. He was the very image of what Raven Hunter would have looked like had he lived, and the word “attorney” was practically stamped on the guy’s forehead.

  David leaned back against the nearest bank of file cabinets, his arms crossed at his chest. Storm Hunter might have come in full courtroom battle dress, but he hadn’t matched wits with Gretchen Neal before. A small smile lifted David’s lips as Gretchen stepped forward.

  “I’m Detective Neal,” she said, holding out her hand.

  The man simply thinned his lips and took a step forward into her space. He didn’t take the hand she offered.

  “I want to know what’s going on regarding the murder of my brother, Raven Hunter,” he said.

  “The case is being investigated,” Gretchen said calmly. “Why don’t you step into my office?”

  “Why don’t you explain why you haven’t already reached some conclusion considering the circumstances?”

  She raised one brow. “The circumstances being?”

  “It’s been quite a while since the remains were found. It’s no secret to anyone in this town that Jeremiah Kincaid hated the fact that my brother, a member of a race he despised, was fooling around with Kincaid’s sister. Nor is it a secret that he had words with Raven just before my brother disappeared. And yet I understand you’re no closer to the truth than you were when you started.”

  “It’s an old case with all the complications of an old case,” Gretchen said, stepping forward herself. “Convictions can’t be made on hearsay, Mr. Hunter, as you well know. We need hard evidence. More evidence than we have. I understand your concern, but—”

  “You understand nothing. It’s clear to me that you’re doing nothing. In fact, it’s come to my attention today that you may be in collusion with the nephew of the man suspected of killing my brother.”

  David’s arms came uncrossed. He straightened. Only Gretchen’s brief shake of her head in his direction kept him from stepping in to open his mouth.

  “The case is proceeding,” Gretchen said, swigging in a deep breath of air and pulling herself up to her full five feet, nine inches. “And it’s being given my full attention. We’re looking for new evidence all the time. The department is doing everything it can to discover the truth here, Mr. Hunter, as expediently as possible.”

  The man was shaking his head, slowly, deliberately. “Not good enough, Neal. If Raven had been white, you would have moved faster. You would have been working on this thing ‘round the clock. Your prejudices are showing. Alarmingly so, Ms. Neal.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, but you’re wrong, Mr. Hunter.”

  “You’re a disgrace.”

  The man’s words hung in the silent air that had suddenly dropped over the station. All eyes were turned toward Gretchen and Storm.

  “I want answers, Neal,” the man continued. “And I want them now. If I don’t get them in a timely fashion, then I want your badge. And I’ll have it.”

  Gretchen raised her chin, her breath coming more quickly though her expression was one of calm determination. She opened her mouth, but David had had enough.

  “You’ve taken this a notch too far, Hunter. You don’t know what you’re talking about here,” he said, his voice a low, quiet command in the silent room. David ignored the halting look in Gretchen’s eyes. He moved into the arena.

  “Ah, the good detective’s boy friend speaks.” Storm sneered the words. Ice hung in the air around him. “You like Kincaids, Detective Neal?” he continued. “That’s what Agent Hannon is, after all, isn’t he? I’ve only been in town a few minutes, just stopped by the café for coffee, but already I’ve heard that the two of you are pretty tight and hot. Well, no surprise. The Kincaids have always had favored status in this town. Not like the Hunters. Oh, no. It was your uncle that threatened my brother, Hannon, and now I’m going to threaten your woman. I don’t particularly care what she does in your bed at night, but she does her job or she loses it.”

  A flash fire of darkness spiraled through David. He’d been good too long. He’d held back to keep from causing Gretchen any distress. He knew from experience that she could kick the life out of this man—and that
she wouldn’t. Of course she wouldn’t. Because she had no right to touch him in that way just to defend her honor. And because that was just the kind of woman she was. Right now she was probably imagining all the horrible things Storm had probably gone through that had turned him into this bitter, insulting human. She was probably right. David was damn sure she was right.

  “My uncle was a sorry excuse for a human being, Hunter, and yes, there’ve been times when I hated to admit that I was related to him, but you’re out of line insulting Detective Neal. She’s a fine detective and a wonderful human being. Now why don’t you get smart and take back all the insulting things you just said about her, because her hands may be tied by her office, but mine are free. And I happen to be off duty.”

  “That’s good, Kincaid. Very good,” Storm said, yanking on his tie. “Because I’m in just the right mood to match my fists against that pretty face of yours.”

  And in the next split second, he doubled up his fist and aimed.

  David dodged, the air buckling next to his jaw as the man’s blow barely missed. He tried to quell the roar of anger and to remember all the things that Gretchen would have said about Storm Hunter; that he had a right to be angry, that they had a duty to let him say his piece. But David had lived on the edge for a long time. He’d been in more fights for his life than he cared to count, and his fingers curled easily and eagerly into fists as Storm recovered and prepared to strike again.

  “Hunter, stop right there or you’ll find yourself in lockup over night.” Rafe Rawlings’s voice carried through the panting stillness.

  The world froze for five whole seconds. The fire still burned, but the flames died down slightly. Counting to ten, to twenty, to thirty, David finally, slowly, unfurled his fists.

  Storm pulled back. He gave David a disgusted look. “Later,” he mouthed.

  David raised one brow. “Your call, buddy,” he said.

  “Hannon, you’re here on my recognizance. I’d appreciate it if you’d remember that,” Rafe said quietly.

  David remembered, and he remembered the debt of gratitude he owed Rafe and also Phil for looking the other way to let him be here. Nor did he forget that Gretchen would be humiliated if he got into a fight over her in her very own station.