"So you maintain there's no validity to Mrs. Cunningham's assertion?" Johanna asked.
"None whatsoever." He was safe in making the claim. There weren't that many people in Hobart who had known what was going on, he'd made sure of that. And many of those people who'd known weren't alive today. He'd made sure of that, too.
Yes, some of the congregation had tried to stick their noses in to find out what was happening with the Prescotts and their children, but they'd been of no consequence. Poor parishioners, most of them, easily controlled with a threat or a bribe. One way or another, he'd shut them down, and, by the time he was done, he'd held Hobart and its population in his hand. "Why are you investigating an adoption from so many years ago? Do you always pay this much attention to the ravings of an obviously very sick woman?"
"We pay attention to whatever the federal government instructs us to pay attention to. So, yes." Rhonda recorded a note into her Palm Pilot. "Senator Oberlin, Mrs. Cunningham told us she suspected, foul play in the burning of the county courthouse, and since important city, state, and federal documents were destroyed and the fire was listed as suspicious, we listened to her accusations with interest."
"The fire was listed as suspicious?" It most certainly hadn't been. He'd made sure of that. "I understood it was faulty wiring in the attic."
Both Rhonda and Johanna lifted their interested gazes to his at the same time.
At once he saw his mistake. He should have pretended ignorance of the fire and its cause.
"Is there anything else?" he asked crisply. "Anything that Mrs. Cunningham said that actually incriminated me for anything, or is this all speculation?"
In unison, both women shut their Palm Pilots.
They came to their feet.
"We're sorry to have disturbed you, Senator," Rhonda said.
He stood also, feeling relaxed and a little expansive. "Not a problem. I know you have to do your duty." He herded them toward the door.
"Actually, Mrs. Cunningham's story is so fantastic, we probably wouldn't have come to you." Johanna stopped at the door.
"Except for the strange coincidence." Rhonda smiled sweetly at him.
"The strange coincidence?" he asked.
"Come on, Rhonda, we don't want to disturb Senator Oberlin with this." Johanna tugged at Rhonda's arm.
"We got an anonymous report of a dreadful similarity to the manner in which Mrs. Oberlin died." Rhonda's brow knit in perplexity. "A tragic similarity, really."
At the words anonymous report, a chill ran up George's spine. "I don't understand."
"It's the kind of thing that makes law enforcement officials sit up and take notice," Rhonda explained. "You see, Senator, it's unusual for anyone ever to fall down the stairs and break her neck, and it's happened twice in your home while you were in the vicinity. Once in Hobart. Once in Austin. A strange coincidence. A dreadful similarity. Don't you agree, Senator?"
Freddy showed the FBI agents out.
From the study, he heard the crash of porcelain. It appeared Senator Oberlin had lost his vaunted control on his temper. How dreadful. It appeared that the pressure was beginning to take its toll.
Freddy Griswald smiled.
Kate walked up the steps onto the porch of Teague's little hut on the Mexican beach. What was taking him so long? The sea-borne wind ruffled her hair and breathed romance across the sands, and she wanted Teague with her.
The sound of his voice made her stop. Who was he talking to? They were alone here, as isolated as it was possible for two people to be . . .
"Querida, you are too smart for me. But I won't tell you anything about that. Some things are not to be discussed." He laughed, and he sounded so . . . at ease. Affectionate. "I won't tell you that, either. Now I have to go, but I'll talk to you tomorrow night when I get back. We'll have dinner this week, yes?"
He was on the phone! Why? With a woman, obviously, but who?
"You're busy all week? I can't believe you're blowing me off!" He laughed again. "All right, I'll see you Monday. Adios."
Kate stepped into the doorway, watched him shut his phone, and wondered why, in a day of sunshine and laughter and sex, he had felt the need to call . . . someone. "I can't believe you have cell service here."
"Satellite service," he said briefly, and stowed the phone in his duffel bag. "I was just checking in."
Coming in from the bright sun, she couldn't see him well, but she recognized brooding when she saw it, and he was brooding. "Checking in with your people?"
"Yeah. My people."
"Is everything all right in Austin?"
"Everything's under control." He tilted his chair back against the wall. He surveyed her. His lips lifted. "Do you know, with the sun behind you, I can see right through that pareu? It looks like you have a rainbow between your legs."
She looked down at herself, at the wispy, bright wrap tied around her waist and the matching one-piece bathing suit that covered all the essential parts of her body . . . and yet displayed them with admirable subtlety.
Then she looked back up at him. He was barefoot, bare-chested, a pair of worn jeans slung low across his narrow hips. In the day and a half since they'd arrived at his beach hut in a broken-down Jeep, he'd tanned a beautiful toasty brown. With his dark hair loose around his neck and his incipient beard shadowing his chin, he looked like a pirate—a pirate who gazed lasciviously at her.
There was nothing subtle about Teague.
Subtlety, she decided, was overrated. Instant desire sprang to life, which was absurd, because they'd spent the entire time here making love—on the bed, in the sand . . . they'd even tried it in the water and decided that that was impossible. So they'd done it on the beach again.
They both had tans in unusual places.
But she'd heard his conversation, and it hadn't been with one of his employees. It was personal, like the conversation in Starbucks, and important, or he wouldn't have dared the satellite rates. But she didn't care if he had a personal life. It was the fact he lied about it that bothered her.
He rose, an unhurried, leisurely stretch of bone and muscle. "Don't worry, Kate. Trust me to take care of you."
"I do. But—"
"The call had nothing to do with you." He took a measured step toward her, his eyes warm with humor and . . . desire.
How well she recognized that desire. Her heart took a large thump, then settled into a racing beat. She took a slow step back. "Are you stalking me?"
"What do you think?" He moved forward again, his footfall soft on the creaking floorboards.
"I think you're trying to distract me." She backed across the porch until the post met her back.
Still he moved forward, his pace casual. "Is it working?"
The man knew he could catch her. She knew it, too, but the instinct to escape was too strong to resist. She inched along the railing. "Seems to be." As soon as she reached the steps, she turned and dove onto the beach.
She heard his foot thump on the porch.
She ran toward the bay, her heels sinking into the sand with each step. This was silly. She had nowhere to go. The beach was a small crescent of brilliant white along a sparkling azure bay bounded by rocks on either side and jungle behind. The town with its tiny airstrip was five miles away on a rutted dirt road, and the rusty old Jeep that provided their transportation was not only slow but required hotwiring to get it started.
Yet she raced along, laughing, the wind cooling her hot face. The pareu tied around her waist loosened and fluttered away.
"I'm gaining on you," he shouted.
She increased her speed. She heard his footsteps behind her.
Then, just as it seemed her heart would burst with anticipation, his arm circled around her waist.
He took her down on the sand, rolling her beneath him. He caught her wrists. She fought, but he anchored her hands above her head. This was play, the kind of marvelous, free, glorious play she'd not indulged in since her childhood. Yet with him on top of her, she felt
anything but childish.
He looked down at her laughing face. "Now you have to pay the fine."
"No, I don't." She tried to wiggle out from beneath him.
He thrust his knee between hers, anchoring her in place. "Don't you want to know what the fine is?"
"No. Because you need to pay my fine." Breathlessly she laughed at his expression. "You knocked me down."
"Aren't you the spirited one?" He leered like a villain in an old play and flexed the muscles in his chest. "But you have no chance against my superior strength."
"Oh, yeah? Watch this." Lifting her head, she caught his lower lip lightly between her teeth. Resting her head in the sand, she used her tongue to insinuate herself into his mouth.
He tasted like happiness, like juicy mangoes, and like lust.
She deepened the kiss, loving his slight hesitancy, then his yielding as he let her suck at his tongue and give him hers.
He had a tendency to overwhelm her. He always wanted to be in command. He dominated in a way that sent her spiraling out of control, yet sometimes she liked the freedom of being on top, of controlling the rhythm and the speed. He didn't seem to know how to let her, and that surprised her.
With a reputation like his, she would have expected he would be familiar with every delicate nuance of sex.
She comforted herself with the thought that he would learn, and enjoyed the heaviness of his body on hers. He made her lose her mind with joy, and that, she knew, was a rare and wonderful gift.
So now she kissed him with the scent of warm man skin and soft salty breeze in her nostrils. When at last she let him go, he lifted his head. "See? My fine for tackling me is the same as your fine for catching me."
"Not quite the same." He stared down at her with narrowed eyes.
She thought she detected a trace of that brooding again, as if he were a man on the brink of some great revelation.
Yet the button on his jeans poked into her belly, and beneath his fly, she felt the heat and hardness of him— a promise for the future.
"What did you have in mind?" She rolled her hips invitingly.
"Snorkeling."
"Oh." At once the bubble of her joy deflated.
"Come on. You'll like it, I promise." Standing, he extended his hand and pulled her onto her feet.
"But what about . . . ?" She reached for the bulge in his jeans.
He deftly caught her wrist and led her toward the pile of snorkeling equipment in the shade of a palm tree. "You promised you would try this."
"I didn't mean it." She'd been all over the world and managed to keep her head above water. Now, she had agreed to try swimming over a coral reef populated with sharks. She had lost her mind, if not her claustrophobic distaste for being unable to breathe.
No, worse, he'd screwed her brains out.
"We'll snorkel only in the bay. It's dead calm today. The waves aren't high. See?" He slipped his arm around her and pointed out at the water, which lapped almost at their feet. "Kate, look out there. Isn't it beautiful?"
She viewed her lover with suspicion. "You said it was dead calm, which means there should be a total lack of waves. Yet I can still see the Gulf churning away. And why do they call it dead calm? The mere term sounds ominous to me."
He ignored her nonsense as he ignored her protests. "The waves won't splash in your snorkel, and you know how clear the water is. I'll be right there with you. You'll see corals and bright fish." He smiled, his teeth flashing white in his tanned face. "I know a place where the manta rays swim. Wouldn't you like to see manta rays?"
She buried her feet in the warm sand, looked down at them, and said sulkily, "That's why I watch National Geographic specials."
He chuckled as if she were joking. "Have I told you how much I like your bathing suit?"
"No." The purple, blue, red, yellow, orange, and green striped her body in paint-splashed slopes. "Mostly you haven't wanted me to wear it."
"I do like what's under it better." If he was trying to distract her from her fear, he was doing quite a lovely job. His hands smoothed up her thighs and over her bottom. "I will take absolutely perfect care of you. So come on. Let me help you on with your swim fins."
As he knelt before her, she wondered how he had managed to talk her into this madness.
Standing, he discarded his jeans, leaving him clad only in his suit.
Ah. That's right. He'd lured her from good sense by wearing the smallest pair of black spandex swimming trunks she'd ever had the good fortune to see. For the chance to lean her body against his, she would do anything, no matter how stupid.
"I wouldn't let you do this if I didn't have absolute confidence in your abilities to swim," he soothed. "I've never before met anyone who only does the sidestroke, but you're very strong."
"You're chatting me up." And seducing me, too.
"I am?" He tried to look innocent, which was ridiculous because he could never look anything but dangerous.
"Trying to make me forget my fear. I learned that trick in broadcasting: When the person you're interviewing is nervous, talk to him and don't tell him when you start filming."
"I don't have a camera on me." Standing, he spread his hands and let her scrutinize his body. "See?"
"I see." What she saw distracted her more than words ever could. Which accounted for how Teague got her into the water.
They flew back that night and spent the night at Teague's place because they couldn't stand to be apart.
Monday morning, Teague held Kate in his arms and said, "Tonight we'll go get your clothes. You can stay here with me until we get this situation with Oberlin settled."
She hesitated. Stay with Teague? Live with him? But she loved her home. And—a pang of guilt shot through her—what was she going to tell her mother? Mom wanted Kate involved. She wanted her bound in holy matrimony. She sure as hell didn't want her living in sin with no chance of marriage and no prospect for grandchildren.
Seeing Kate's indecision, Teague moved to sweep away her objections. "I could move back in with you, but he knows where you live—and I've got better security."
"I know." Kate surrendered. "All right. I'll stay here . . . for a while."
Teague took that victory and built on it. "Avoid Oberlin today. Do everything you can to stay away from the bastard."
She rather enjoyed the idea of turning over the problem of Senator Oberlin to Teague. Idly, she decided her inaction was a combination of two things: the incredible revulsion she felt knowing a man like Oberlin was interested in her, and Teague's lovemaking, which had rendered her soft and mushy—and deeply, dreadfully, terribly in love.
Stupidly in love.
SIXTEEN
All day Monday, Teague sat in the main security room in the capitol as his on-duty staff—Chun, Big Bob, and Gemma—came and went. He researched Oberlin on the Internet, watched as Kate cooperated with his order, and reflected with grim satisfaction that he had her under control.
If only he held the same influence over George Oberlin.
Oberlin wandered the corridors searching for Kate. He questioned her coworkers. He made calls to her television station. He saw one female who, from the back, looked like Kate, and he primped. He caught her arm. And when she furiously turned on him and cursed, his face turned dark red and his fist rose.
Truth to tell, Teague wanted him to hit her. Teague would have made sure the female got rescued right away, and a public mistake like that, backed up by videotape Teague would provide, would be hard to hide.
In the service, Teague had known how to deal with enemy soldiers. In the security business, he knew how to prosecute criminals. But a senator? A senator who had committed murder? Multiple murders? Who had gotten away with it?
And Teague was bitterly aware of his own vulnerability. He was half Hispanic, half Anglo, with no family, no influence, a house with a mortgage, and an outstanding loan taken to expand his business.
But he'd damn well better figure out some way to protect Kate pretty soo
n, because as Oberlin failed to find her, he grew more and more agitated.
By late afternoon, Big Bob leaned over Teague's shoulder, gazed at the monitor, and asked, "What's up with Senator Oberlin? He looks like he rubbed honey on his ass, then sat on a mound of fire ants."
It was time to bring his people in on the situation, so Teague faced them. "He's making Kate Montgomery uncomfortable, and she asked me for help in ducking him."
"I thought you didn't care what happened to Kate Montgomery." Big Bob hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, rocked on his heels, and grinned. "You said once we caught her stalker, she was no big deal."
"I'm no longer sure," Teague said softly, "that we caught the right stalker."
His pronouncement smashed through the room like a gunshot.
His people stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Are you accusing Oberlin?" Chun asked incredulously.
"You are shittin' us, Teague." Big Bob pointed at the monitor where Oberlin stood, arms crossed, a thunderous expression on his face. "That man is a white, God-fearing, influential son of a bitch, and if he's chasing Miss Kate Montgomery you're better off letting her handle it, or he'll cancel our security contract so fast it'll make your head spin."
Big Bob had captured almost every ounce of Teague's attention. A few ounces remained to watch the monitors as Oberlin started walking again. "Now why do you say it like that? I had heard Oberlin had a reputation for being a power dealer, but fair and honorable."
"He does. Here," Big Bob said. "But my aunt lives in his county two little towns and a hopscotch over from Hobart, where he's from, and there he's not known for being such a good guy. She says a long time ago there were some pretty nasty rumors making their rounds about Oberlin, and they've never quite gone away."
Teague had never seen Big Bob so emphatic. "What kind of rumors?"
"The kind of rumors that suggest it doesn't do to stand in his way, or he'll run over you with a filled cement truck, then back over you just to make sure he's done the job." Big Bob looked as solemn as a funeral.
CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) Page 17
