by Jean Thomas
“I need to blow-dry this hair before I think about breakfast,” she said.
And he needed to get dressed. Gathering up his clothes, he left her in the bathroom and strode toward the guest room. Guilt set in even before he put on fresh underwear. By the time he was in jeans and a shirt, the guilt had intensified into a conviction that he’d been irresponsible. He shouldn’t have joined her in that shower stall. After what had happened earlier, he should have stayed out here and remained vigilant, even though it was daylight now.
What the hell was the matter with him?
That should be an easy question for you to answer, Griggs.
Yeah, he knew all right. The truth was, he just couldn’t get enough of Clare Fuller. She was in his blood.
His carnal desire for her was a certainty. How he felt about her emotionally was not. Or maybe he was just afraid to acknowledge those feelings. Afraid of the complications involved in something beyond the pure sex she seemed to enjoy as much as he did.
Mark was in too much of a hurry to bother with socks or shoes. He was barefoot when he went from room to room checking all the windows and outside doors. They were still tightly locked, of course. There was no one in the house but Clare and him, and no sign of anyone lurking outside watching the place.
Was he being unreasonable, even extreme with this need to safeguard her at every turn?
* * *
The mirror over the sink was misted from all the steam they had raised in the shower stall. Clare lifted the hand towel off its rack and began to wipe the mirror dry. When it was clear again, with her reflection there in the glass staring back at her, she went very still.
What are you seeing, Clare? What is it you suddenly don’t like?
But she knew the answer to that question, didn’t she? It was the expression in her eyes. Something close to panic. Panic about what?
Come on, you know the answer to that one, too. It’s because of Alan, isn’t it?
Yes, it was because of Alan. Hadn’t she promised herself long ago not to get involved with another soldier either emotionally or physically? So why did she have to keep reminding herself never again to risk the possible consequences of such a relationship? The kind that could end with death in a war zone, leaving her struggling with an unbearable anguish.
Now look what she had gone and done to herself. Not just last night, but again this morning. She’d invited Mark Griggs into her bed, which afterward should have ended it then and there. But, no, instead she had repeated her mistake, welcomed him recklessly into her shower.
She hadn’t learned her lesson. Why? The explanation was a simple one. Because the man who was sharing her home was, on the most primal of levels, irresistible.
It wasn’t enough, of course, to justify her weakness. There should be more than just the sex. Maybe there was, at least for her. But she couldn’t be sure of that. And until she was, with Mark feeling it, too, and letting her know as much...well, she would have to deal with it somehow.
Impatient now with herself, she picked up the blow-dryer in one hand and a hairbrush in the other and resolutely began to work on her damp hair.
* * *
When Clare arrived in the kitchen, dressed in cotton pants and a shirt, her honey-blond hair clasped back in a ponytail, she found Mark restlessly pacing the room like a sentry on patrol. That can’t be good for his leg, she thought, and probably hadn’t been last night when he’d struggled with his assailant, but he seemed oblivious to it.
“Something the matter?” she asked.
“No.”
His answer was too brief, too curt, and he was frowning. He was in a bad mood. Why? Was he regretting their interlude in the shower? She hoped not, but she didn’t ask him. She feared the answer.
And what right do you have to be hurt if he is regretting what happened in the shower, when less than twenty minutes ago you were punishing yourself in the bathroom with the same self-reproach?
She didn’t.
The kitchen was bright with sunlight, giving her an excuse to change the subject. “What would you like for breakfast on this sunny morning?”
“You choose.”
“I can manage an omelet.”
“Fine.”
For a man with an appetite as healthy as his, his reply lacked any enthusiasm. She didn’t pursue it. Moving from refrigerator to stove, she busied herself making the omelet and a fresh pot of coffee. He didn’t offer to help. Fine. Let him sulk.
She had a small television set on the counter. Grabbing up the remote from where it lay on the breakfast bar, she turned on the TV. “The news should be on soon,” she remarked. “Maybe there’ll be something about Malcolm Boerner’s death.”
“Could be, unless his body is still waiting to be discovered.”
They didn’t talk after that. Mark finally roused himself long enough to place plates and mugs on the bar, adding cutlery and paper napkins to the settings. Clare poured coffee and dished up the divided omelet and slices of buttered toast.
Perched on their stools, they ate in silence as they listened to the news. To Clare’s disappointment, there was no mention of Boerner. When the news went to a commercial break, which was to be followed by sports and the weather forecast, she decided she’d had enough of Mark’s dark mood, whatever his revelation cost her.
She muted the TV and bent toward him across the bar. “Okay, that’s enough. I want to know what’s eating you, and don’t tell me I’m imagining things because I know I’m not.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I’m being a crappy guest, aren’t I? Sorry about that.”
“So?”
“You want an explanation.”
“I think you owe me one, yes.”
“It’s just that after I left the bathroom, I got to thinking...”
He can’t bring himself to say it, she thought, a lump in her throat because she knew what it was. But she had to hear now what she couldn’t find the courage to hear before.
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“I decided what happened in the shower was a mistake.”
She sat back on the stool, stung by his disclosure, even though she’d anticipated it and after her own doubts earlier deserved it.
Her face must have registered her disappointment because he went on with a swift, understanding “No, not that. The sex was great, and I wanted it as much as I think you did.”
She felt a sense of relief, although she was still puzzled. “Then what is it?”
“After what happened last night, I should have been on watch. I shouldn’t have let my guard down. It’s something a ranger never does when there’s been an attack, and the danger could still be near.”
“Mark, this is my home, not a battlefield.”
He shook his head, unwilling to be convinced he wasn’t at fault for what he must perceive as a lapse of vigilance. “It might have been better if I’d let him have the damn amulet. That way you wouldn’t be at risk any longer.”
“Look, I appreciate this need you have to protect me. But you’re forgetting something. Without the amulet, I lose the only chance I have at this point to help Terry.”
“You’re right, and I realize that now, which is why whatever comes I intend to stay the course.”
It was a promise for which she was grateful, but she didn’t like how grim he still looked. We need something cheerful here, she decided. And she knew what that something was.
Without preamble, she launched into a sudden “Did you know that you talk in your sleep?”
“Huh?”
“It’s true. I heard you last night. And I have to tell you I learned some very interesting things.”
“Oh, my God! Don’t tell me it was about Amber and Valerie.”
“I’m afraid it was.”
“L
ook, they never meant anything to me.”
“Maybe not, but it was pretty lurid stuff. Frankly, I was shocked by it.”
“You’re saying you heard it all?”
“Every word.”
He considered her for a few seconds before that wide grin she loved spread across his face. It was a relief for her to see it, even though he followed it with a cocky “Liar.”
“You can’t accuse me of that. You were asleep. How would you know what I heard?”
“Oh, I know all right. I’ve been told by guys I’ve shared barracks and bunkers with that I have an annoying habit of muttering in my sleep. Thing is, not one of them could make sense of it. It was all gibberish, and I never had a memory afterward of what I could have been chewing over.”
“Are you saying there never was an Amber or a Valerie?”
“Oh, I’m not admitting to that,” he said, a teasing glint in his dark eyes. “All I’m admitting is that I sometimes talk in my sleep. Your turn now.”
“For what?”
“Confessing what annoying little habit you have. It’s only fair. And don’t tell me you haven’t got one. Everybody does, usually more than one.”
“Well, since you insist, there are these occasions when I get a song into my head and can’t seem to shake it. Then I go around humming or singing it and driving myself and everyone near me crazy. So, now that you’ve heard the worst about me—”
She broke off there. Mark was no longer paying attention to her. He was pointing a finger in the direction of the TV on the counter.
Chapter 12
Clare swung around on her stool to find the television screen filled with an image that was familiar to her. Mark had to have recognized it, too, which was why he’d directed her attention to it. A message traveled across the bottom of the screen announcing a special news report.
Snatching up the remote, she activated the sound as the camera moved in close on an attractive young brunette with a microphone in her hand.
“Deborah McCord here reporting to you live from the French Quarter. I’m standing on Royal Street in front of the shop of antique firearms dealer, Malcolm Boerner, whose murdered body was discovered in his apartment a little over an hour ago by a concerned neighbor who called the police. It looks like they’re about to bring out the body now.”
The camera moved back, revealing the mouth of the passageway to the courtyard, where a uniformed officer was lifting aside one of the barricades the police had erected to prevent the public from entering the courtyard.
Leaning forward, Clare watched as a gurney bearing a sealed body bag was wheeled out of the tunnel. Malcolm Boerner is in that bag, she thought, remembering the horror of how she and Mark had discovered his body long before reporters had arrived on the scene.
The TV camera, which had followed the journey of the gurney into the ambulance, resumed its coverage of Deborah McCord, who had stationed herself at the mouth of the tunnel. She knew her business, because a hefty-looking plainclothesman was emerging from the courtyard, chewing on a toothpick. The reporter seized the opportunity to intercept him.
“Would I be correct in telling our viewing audience you’re one of the homicide detectives investigating the murder?”
He clearly didn’t like having the microphone thrust into his face, answering her with an unfriendly “You would.”
“Detective, could you comment on the murder? Was it connected in any way with the firearms the victim sold in his shop?”
“It’s too early for that. When we have something, we’ll issue a statement.”
Without any further remarks, he brushed by her. The reporter was left with nothing more to say except a final “Tune in to our six o’clock newscast when we hope to have more details for you on this tragic murder.”
The station returned to its regularly scheduled program. The remote was still in Clare’s hand. Using it to turn off the TV, she faced Mark again, expelling a long breath.
They had watched the broadcast in silence, but she was eager now to express herself. “This is it! We can go now to the police!”
“No, we can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t? You said that when Boerner’s body was discovered—”
“I know what I said. That we couldn’t have any knowledge of his murder until it was made public.”
“Which it has been. That means we can no longer be considered as suspects. Not when they have no reason to believe we were anywhere on the scene.”
“So what are you going to tell them?”
“Everything. All that’s been happening, including the business of the amulets and how this mystery man has gone to such lengths to get his hands on your own amulet. We don’t have to let them know we were anywhere near Boerner’s apartment. We can say that when I tried to deliver your amulet to him yesterday and found his shop closed—”
“What? That we just left it at that and walked away?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Clare, they’re not dummies. They may not connect us directly with Boerner’s murder, but they could consider us as persons of interest. You, especially, because of your need to help your sister.”
She had heard a version of this same argument before from Mark, and in her present mood she didn’t need to hear it again. Angry with his resistance, she threw the TV remote down on the breakfast bar. “I can’t believe how you’ve gone and done a one-eighty on me!”
“I’ve just told you why.”
“All right, then I won’t say anything about the amulets. All I want is that tape to prove Terry was in Boerner’s shop when she said she was.”
“It’s too early for that. Yeah, they’ll go through both the apartment and the shop looking for evidence. They’ll probably find Boerner’s security tapes, but it will take time to run them, maybe even days. And in the end the one you want might not be among them, not if he’s tucked it away somewhere else.”
“And what are we supposed to do until then? Just sit here and wait?”
“No, there’s still my amulet. It’s all we have now.”
“I don’t care about that damn amulet! The only important thing is—” She caught herself there, suddenly realizing what she’d been saying and ashamed of herself for saying it. “Mark, I’m sorry. All you’ve been doing is trying to help me, and I go and explode on you like a temperamental kid.”
“You’re forgiven, as long as you agree that this little trinket of mine—” his forefinger poked at his chest where the amulet rested under his shirt “—matters.”
“I do.”
“Good, because I happen to think it’s the key to everything, along with the other two amulets we think Boerner and your brother-in-law had before their killer got his hands on them. I’m more convinced of that now than ever.”
“Okay, the amulet matters. Because?”
“Because if that tape never turns up, our only alternative is to win the cops over to our side. Get them to start believing like we do that whoever murdered Boerner also murdered your brother-in-law, and that your sister had nothing to do with her husband’s death.”
“Just by showing them your amulet? That isn’t going to work.”
He shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t. That’s why when we do go to the cops, we need to go armed with knowledge.”
“Like what?”
“Like why those amulets matter so much that someone was willing to murder to get them.”
“How? Just how do we get that kind of knowledge?”
“I don’t know, but there has to be a way. Like we say in the rangers—”
“There’s always a way,” she finished for him. “Yes, I remember.”
“Right.”
He let it rest there. They were stalled with nowhere to go. Clare was frustrated by that. She w
anted results. Mark seemed to realize that.
“Don’t worry, teach. We’ll come up with something.”
He rose, cleared off the breakfast bar and began to methodically wash their dishes at the sink. She sat there for a moment watching him. There was something downright sexy about the sight of this big man with a towel draped over one shoulder and his hands plunged up above his wrists in sudsy water. Not the kind of domestic thing you expected from a tough army ranger, who had to be more familiar with his rifle than a scrub brush. But pleasing nonetheless.
Clare joined him at the sink. Plucking the towel from his shoulder, she started to dry the dishes he’d stacked in the rack in the other half of the double sink.
It was when she picked up the first of the two coffee mugs she and Mark had used at breakfast that inspiration struck. The mugs were part of a set she had purchased from a potter last year at an outdoor art fair at Riverbend. Ceramic mugs. That memory, coupled with another memory from the past, gave her what she and Mark were looking for. Possibly.
“Mark, listen to me,” she said. “I think I know where we can get the information we want about the amulets.”
The excitement in her voice won his immediate attention. “Let’s hear.”
“To understand this, you need first of all to know that I earned my degree here in New Orleans at Tulane University.”
He had withdrawn his hands from the sink in order to face her, ignoring the water he was dripping on the floor. “So what are you telling me?” he said, one of his eyebrows arched skeptically. “That we can research Afghan amulets in the library there?”
“Now don’t get ahead of me. This is nothing to do with the university library. It has to do with a man who taught at Tulane before retiring. I believe he lived in the Garden District, and with any luck still does.”
“Who?”
“Professor Duval. He was the head of the art department there. I had only one course from him in art history and wished I could have taken more, he was that impressive an instructor. But art history wasn’t the field he specialized in. Ceramics, Mark. He’s an authority on ceramics.”
