Twisted Shadows

by Patricia Potter

  “The insurance you mentioned?”

  “Yes.”

  “There is one where they kept their wills and deeds. I went through it with mother.”

  “Could there be another?” He couldn’t keep the urgency from his voice.

  “Not that I know about.” Another flicker in her eyes. She was lying, or perhaps just remembering something.

  “Think about it.”

  “I will.”

  “It’s important, Samantha.”

  “To me? Or to you?”

  Every time he thought she was on the edge of trusting him, she stepped back. “It’s important to both of you,” he said flatly. “It might save your life, and your mother’s life.”

  “And you?”

  “Hell, I’m not even supposed to be here,” he admitted. “The Bureau didn’t send me. I’ve taken vacation time.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re in over your head,” he said bluntly.

  She tilted her head, studying his expression. “Anything else you want to confess?” she asked wryly.

  Should he tell her the rest of it? Or would that scare her off? He decided to compromise.

  “I won’t lie to you about wanting to take down the Merrittas,” he said. “I know what they do to people. How they use—then discard—them. I don’t want to see you hurt. So I do have a personal interest.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I know you’ve been thrown into something that’s not of your making.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Her eyes were bleak.

  “Yes.” And he was now. He hadn’t been in the beginning, but the more he’d learned about her background, her life, the more he had seen her struggle between loyalty to a brother she didn’t know and a mother she did, he knew. He knew something else now: she was terrified something had happened to her mother.

  And so was he.

  twenty

  She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that he was everything he seemed to be. A nagging doubt kept her from accepting it. She decided to challenge him directly. “Nick said that destroying the Merritta family is your life’s work.”

  He hesitated, seeming to weigh his words. “Paul Merritta slipped through our fingers time and time again. Witnesses recant or end up dead. Undercover agents disappear. And now there will be a battle for succession. There’s a lot at stake.”

  “My brother thinks it’s personal. You make it sound personal. Why?”

  “It happens,” he said. “When we’re on a case for a long time…”

  “But now you said you’re here on your own.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you were worried about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t intend to see my mother?”

  “You were my first concern. But I won’t lie to you. I also want to know what your mother knows.”

  “Is this where you insert a nugget of truth to conceal the vein of subterfuge?”

  He gave her a quick grin. “I like that. I’ll have to remember it.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I’ll give you the best answer I can,” he said. “I want the Merrittas. They’ve caused untold misery. They’ve killed with impunity. They corrupt officials.”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you would want me to.”

  “No,” she agreed. She trusted him more because of those words. “But it’s more personal between you and Nick. Why?”

  “Because I believe he’s gotten away with money laundering all these years.”

  “Why?” she asked again. “What proof do you have?”

  “He says he’s distanced himself from his father, but he’s met with him on a regular basis, often in out-of-the-way places where they didn’t think they could be traced.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be tarred with the same brush.”

  “His company was financed by a loan institution connected to Merritta.”

  “Is that Nicholas’s fault?”

  “It has a branch in Switzerland.”

  “They do a lot of foreign business, partly because they are hounded by the government here.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “He says you’ve driven off business, harassed customers —”

  He shrugged. “If he’s an honest businessman…”

  It wasn’t an honest answer, and her heart dipped. They had been dueling. With words, with their eyes, even with their bodies. Feint and parry. She moved away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you wanted me to be honest.”

  “Somehow I don’t quite think you’re doing that,” she said.

  “I’m trying,” he said simply.

  She did believe that. She believed he was being as honest as he felt he could be. She was doing the same. There were things she couldn’t say, either.

  She decided to change the subject. “Did you grow up in Boston?”

  He nodded.

  “You have family there?”

  His face closed. “No.”

  “Never been married?”

  “Yes,” he said shortly.

  Her heart slowed. For some reason, she’d thought… No, not for some reason. It had been the kiss.

  “Oh,” she said, feeling not too bright and even a little betrayed. She wasn’t fond of married men who kissed other women passionately. “Do you have kids?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “There was a miscarriage, then the doctor said she couldn’t have children. She died a few years ago.”

  She wanted to ask more, but his lips had narrowed into a thin line, and shadows had fallen across his eyes.

  She tried again. “Mother? Father?”

  “My mother died when I was a kid. I never knew my father.”

  “Then…”

  “Foster families,” he said. “I played football and won a scholarship to a small college. I wasn’t Big Ten material.”

  Sam was impressed. She knew about foster families, how difficult it was for most kids to fight their way out of the trap.

  Their gazes met again. Intimacy had spun a web around them again. Those few exchanges had only added to his appeal. The air grew dense, electric.

  His hand reached out toward her, then stilled. She leaned forward as if a piece of metal drawn to a magnet.

  Stop it, she told herself. Your mother is missing. Someone is trying to kill you. And you’re acting like a dog in heat…

  He suddenly stood, consciously breaking the invisible ties. “Back to your mother… Does she have a cell phone?”

  “She has one. It’s out of service.”

  “Wouldn’t she call you? Make sure you wouldn’t worry?”

  “She might have thought the note was enough,” she replied, but without any real conviction.

  “Tell me about her.”

  She looked at him suspiciously, wondering for a moment if he would use whatever she said against her and her mother. Or Nicholas. But then she shrugged. She would tell him nothing he couldn’t discover on his own. “She’s a private person. I always thought it was a natural reticence.”

  “And now you’re not so sure?”

  “No,” she said. “I think she was probably afraid that a slip might reveal her past.”

  “No grandparents?”

  “No. She always said she was an orphan.”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t you ever think it strange they were both orphans?”

  “No, I always thought that was what drew them together, why they were so close, so… dependent on each other.” She knew she sounded defensive now.

  “It must be hard,” he said softly, “to be told that everything you believed may not be entirely true.”

  “That was diplomatically said,” she said. “I feel like I’m lost in the woods. There are no paths, only dense forest. I thought I knew everything there was to know about my father and mother, and now I find out I know nothing. Not even who their friends were.” Sh
e shivered.

  Sympathy replaced the shadows in his eyes. She thought of him—of a boy who’d lost his mother and was then given to strangers. His world must have been full of uncertainty, just as hers was now.

  “Do you want me to ask the local police to try to find her?” he said. “I could just say she is missing. Nothing more.”

  “You said you were here on your own,” she said.

  “I am. I could make it a favor. A professional courtesy.”

  “Wouldn’t they check with your superior?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. You might think about telling the local authorities about your other family,” he said.

  “You won’t?”

  “No,” he said. “But if you don’t hear from her by tomorrow,” he said, “I think you should tell them.”

  “It could destroy her,” Samantha said bleakly.

  He didn’t say anything, but he held out his hand to her, and this time he didn’t take it away.

  His hand was strong and warm, and her fingers wove with his. He raised his other hand to her face, and skimmed the back of his knuckles along her cheekbone. Her skin tingled from his touch. And burned.

  His hand lingered for a moment at the corner of her lips, and then he bent down and touched his lips to hers with a lightness, a tenderness, that sapped all her caution. She responded with reckless abandon, with a longing so strong, she couldn’t harness it. She was drawing strength from a man who had so much of it, and knew a lessening of the panic that had been bubbling up inside her.

  His kiss deepened, and the heat between them was like the fiercest part of a flame. Shudders ran through her body, and she felt the slightest tremor in his.

  His lips moved to her ear, and the shudders turned into hot spasms. She struggled against them, finally moving slightly until his lips left the ear he had been nuzzling.

  They were like match and kindling together, she thought. No. Like fire and dynamite.

  She felt the tiny explosions throughout her body as his lips played along her cheekbone and then the nape of her neck before returning once more to her lips and plundering them with violent delicacy—two incongruent words, but oddly enough they fit.

  There was need between them, and gentleness, rough passion and tenderness. There was reluctance and eagerness.

  She was so attracted to him, and yet so reluctant to give him any part of her. She still didn’t entirely trust his motives, but she was irresistibly drawn to him. She was aware of the dichotomy of her emotions, and yet, the mixture fueled the fire.

  Nate mentally surrendered. He didn’t know what had happened thirty-four years ago, what kind of arrangement Samantha’s mother had made with her husband. At the moment, he didn’t care. He only cared about Samantha Carroll and the desire in her eyes. Desire for him. Need for him. He’d forgotten what it was like to be needed.

  But then he saw a flash of fear in her eyes and realized part of her fear was of him. Of what she thought he could—or might—do. Of kisses she was afraid to believe meant anything other than a way of gaining her cooperation.

  He saw it in every expression, in every movement, in everything she didn’t say. She was trying to stay calm. She was trying to lose herself in the moment, trying to believe there was more than fear in her world.

  She was as gallant a woman as he’d ever met. An innocent thrown in a pit of wolves and doing her best—which was pretty damn good—to survive. He reached over and touched her shoulder, half expecting her to shy away. She hadn’t done that the evening he’d kissed her, but tension—even anger—had vibrated between them. She knew he wanted something from her.

  He did. But now it was more than a deposition or eyewitness testimony. Or even evidence to put away a Merritta.

  Her gaze held his for a long moment. Emotions ran amok in him.

  He liked her strength. He liked her. He more than liked her.

  And that was dangerous.

  Yet he didn’t move his hand from her shoulder, and his fingers—almost of their own accord—moved against her skin at the back of her neck. Her dark hair curled around them and she leaned toward him…

  Need. She needed something to hold on to. Nothing more. He would be kidding himself to think otherwise.

  He was astonished at the intensity of his feelings, feelings he had thought dead. He wanted her, and he wanted her more than he had thought it was possible to want a woman.

  He also wanted to erase the fear and the bewilderment and the abandonment he saw in her eyes.

  Their lips met. Explored. The electricity between them intensified. It sparked, then caught, and roared into flames. Even their clothes didn’t protect them from the heat that flared between them.

  His mouth played with hers, feeling her lips open to his, and his tongue reached greedily for hers. To his surprise, she responded with an equal quest, her tongue meeting his and engaging in a dance that sent all his senses reeling.

  Her passion met his, and that was an aphrodisiac that put any lingering reservations to rest.

  His lips caressed with a possessiveness that jolted him at the same time her body pressed against his. God, how he wanted her. How he wanted something warm and alive in his life rather than the constant frost of hatred.

  Once again his mind warned him. He knew this meant disaster. How would she feel when she knew why he had been pursuing the Merrittas? But at this particular moment, he didn’t care. His heart seemed to beat outside his chest, and tenderness was an aching thing growing inside him. He realized he’d been waiting for this for a long time. This caring. This gentle, yearning link to another person.

  He’d believed these feelings beyond him, that they came only to someone with a heart, but now he knew that his heart was not as dead as he’d thought it was. Something had become more important than the Merrittas. Than his job. Than his childish vow that had become a man’s obsession.

  He looked in Samantha’s eyes and saw the question there. Then it was replaced by a kind of desperation. He couldn’t even begin to comprehend what she had gone through these past few days. He could, though, comprehend the loss of a mother.

  The thought should have made him back away. Instead he tightened his arms around her with a compelling need of his own. Merritta wasn’t going to take someone else from him. Even dead, Merritta seemed to have power. No longer, dammit. No longer.

  Somehow Nate was going to free them both from him.

  He felt her hand on his face, exploring the angles. Then it moved to the back of his neck, stroking the sensitive skin, plunging him into waves of sensation.

  He was no longer aware of anything but her. His hands instinctively went to her T-shirt and reluctantly he forced his lips away long enough to slip the shirt over her head, then her bra.

  Damn, but she was beautiful. The spirit was back. Her eyes glistened, and her body responded to his as if they’d both been made for each other. He leaned down, and his tongue ran lightly over one of her breasts, then the other.

  She gasped. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, then madness overtook both of them and they were pulling off the other’s clothes even as they stood and moved toward the hall and, he suspected, her bedroom.

  He knew it would change the dynamics between them forever. The complications could ruin everything he’d worked for. But he couldn’t stop. The expression in her face had been too raw, too anguished.

  He cared only about easing the fear he saw in her eyes. Not fear for herself but for someone she loved. He longed to erase that fear. He longed to touch her and be touched by her. She lit the darkness that had invaded his life until nearly everything decent in him had begun to shrivel.

  Samantha closed her eyes. He felt as if he belonged with her. She’d known attraction. She’d even thought herself in love. But it had never felt so natural before. As if it was meant to be.

  Sam knew what she was doing would cause even more complications in her life, yet she couldn’t stop. She wanted him so badly, she ached.

  H
er arm had hurt all day, but now she barely felt it as they reached the bedroom and she undid his belt while he pulled down the zipper of her jeans. Their lips met again as they wrested the last of their clothes off each other, and flesh met flesh.

  His hands moved up and down her body, igniting fires. Her world had always been full of colors, but never had she felt this kind of physical intensity when a touch made her ache and a breath against her skin made her quiver with delicious sensations.

  All the weariness of the past few days faded in the magic of his kiss. His mouth held her, his arms squeezing her so tightly to him that she felt they were already one. Her body was consumed with him, with the need of him.

  He slid his mouth down her body, teasing, making it glow. She heard herself murmur little sighs of pleasure.

  He touched the small of her back, turning her and guiding her down on the bed. He sank down with her, their lips meeting in a maelstrom of need, of expectation that had been building since he’d first walked into the house. Even when she’d thought she’d been in love before, she’d never felt this physical yearning, this exquisite need.

  He rose above her, his body teasing hers until she arched upward to meet him. He entered her with tantalizing slowness. She responded, moving her body in concert with his in a primitive, sensuous dance that sent ripples of sensation through her until she thought she would go mad with wanting.

  The tempo of his movement quickened, and she felt as if she were disintegrating into white-hot heat and bellowing waves of pleasure. Their bodies arched together and seemed to burst in a fireball of sensations. Convulsive spasms rocked both of them.

  Then he cradled her as they both fell back to earth, their bodies still rippling from the aftershocks of love-making.

  Neither of them spoke as their bodies remained connected in the most intimate of ways as an occasional spasm continued to echo the wonder she’d just experienced.

  twenty-one

  Nate woke first, content to lie quietly and watch her sleep. Dark lashes shielded her eyes, her hair was a mop of short curls and a slight smile made her face look relaxed. She’d been both emotionally and physically exhausted. God only knew when she’d last slept.