If I Loved You

by Kress, Alyssa

  But the thing wouldn't leave him alone. Now Zane peered around the corner of Pattie's open doorway. She was staring at a twenty-four inch computer monitor. Meanwhile, her fingers flew over a keyboard. Zane recalled from the agency file that she was a website designer. It was a profession rife with competition, but Pattie must have been doing all right considering her digs here in West L.A. As Zane watched, a vibrant energy seemed to zoom from her fingers into the computer.

  She was completely different from the type of woman who'd always attracted Zane in the past, the sweet, delicate femininity he could gather in one arm. She was sharp and barbed and far more than a handful. Yet her energy and strength hooked him as no sweet rose had ever done.

  Thinking that, Zane suddenly straightened. Oh, no. He might feel hooked, but he wasn't actually caught, and didn't intend to be. Not going there. In fact, it was probably best if he didn't go anywhere but out the door and down the street to Starbucks for coffee, like he'd done the day before during Tristan's nap.

  He didn't need to know any more than he'd learned already about that rag of a newspaper and Savannah's funny business. Besides, Pattie was perfectly capable of taking care of her own problems. In fact, she would undoubtedly prefer to do so.

  Out in the hall, Zane chewed his lower lip. Unfortunately, Pattie's determined independence was part of what worried him. He suspected she was biting off more than she could chew. He needed to get to the bottom of it, otherwise he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. He'd worry the whole thing over like a dog with a bone.

  Zane released his lip from his teeth. Okay, then. That was his rationale. He was going to pursue answers to his questions in the interest of preventing insomnia. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the room.

  Pattie started. Zane could tell she'd been utterly submerged in her work by the violence with which she snapped out of it.

  He felt the slightest hiccup of envy. He could remember days like that, working on some airplane design, directing his staff. Yes, before everything had fallen apart...

  Meanwhile, Pattie's gaze shot toward him.

  Zane's control over the situation slipped again. Her eyes. They seemed to challenge and promise at the same time. Are you man enough to handle me?

  His viscera tensed, eager to take up both the challenge and the promise. But his brain grasped back control. He was staying focused here. For sure, he was staying out of the kind of trouble he saw in Pattie's eyes. Stepping further into the room, he declared, "We need to talk."

  No longer promising—if she'd ever intended a promise to begin with—Pattie looked briefly chagrined. Then she raised her eyebrows and played dumb. "Do we? Is there a problem with Tristan?"

  Zane resisted the urge to smile. "There's no problem with Tristan." As if he'd come to her for advice about the child. Mentally shielding himself from her physical aura, he strolled toward her desk. "We need to talk about the Hollywood Rattler."

  Her face didn't change. At all. To Zane it looked like she had long practice hiding emotional reactions.

  "The newspaper," she said. "What would you like to know?"

  Zane narrowed his eyes. "What can you tell me?"

  Pattie leaned back in her chair with a faint smile. "Okay, hm. What can I tell you? The Hollywood Rattler is a weekly tabloid, a word which refers to its size, not content. Print run is about five thousand, most of which are distributed free to grocery stores and newsstands. It costs twenty bucks a month if you want it delivered."

  "Twenty bucks a month." Zane crossed his arms. Leaning against her desk, he bent an ironic smile down at her.

  Pattie was unfazed. "Can you believe, some people pay it?"

  Zane kept on smiling. Did she imagine her evasion was going to fly? He tapped his fingers on his arms. "You weren't surprised when Dale Gooden said he'd been blackmailed."

  Even this didn't throw her. She simply stared at him, her smile fading and her expression turning haughty. Slowly, one eyebrow rose.

  Zane'd thought he had it under control, but he was wrong. Anger stirred within him. She was acting so damn above it all.

  But he held onto at least an appearance of calm. "You already knew what Dale's problem was, before we ever got to Canter's."

  Pattie's eyes widened. "I did not!"

  Good. He'd hit a nerve. "Okay, you didn't know for sure, but you knew it was a possibility. You knew this was...a habit of your sister's."

  Pattie had obviously said more than she'd intended. She slitted her eyes at Zane. "Don't you have something to do? Where's Tristan?"

  "Napping. How long have you known? Since before Savannah died?"

  Pattie was indignant. "Of course I didn't know before she died—" She broke off abruptly and resumed her glare, apparently dismayed that he'd caught her yet again. Beneath the glare, however, Zane could see a trace of vulnerability, something she was doing her damnedest to hide. If she only knew the more she tried to cover it up, the more it hooked Zane in.

  Suddenly, she rose from her chair. She swept past Zane toward the door. With a flourish, she held it open. "This conversation is over. You are my ward's nanny. Whatever was discussed this morning at Canter's is absolutely none of your concern."

  Oh, right, like Zane was going to give up now?

  "None of my concern?" He smiled dryly. "Let's see. In order to get to work this morning I had to wade past a rather large and very angry man. How many more of those are waiting out there, do you know? How likely am I to confront one again? Better yet, how likely is Tristan?"

  Pattie continued to glare, but Zane could see she'd taken another hit. The woman was plenty feisty, but not nasty, and she cared about her nephew's welfare.

  "Okay." Zane pretended to relent. "Maybe you don't know exactly how many are out there, so work with me here. How much do you know about this business in general?"

  Pattie narrowed her eyes and breathed hard.

  "Names?" Zane asked. "Dates?"

  "Of course not." Pattie flushed.

  "Then what do you know?"

  She glared a second more, then looked down. Slowly, her shoulders sagged. "Hell. If only Dale hadn't shown up..."

  "But he did. And he might not be the only one."

  Pattie stared at the floor for another minute, her face dark.

  "Maybe you don't actually know anything," Zane said, easing the way for her. "Maybe it's only just enough clues to add up to a certain, foggy picture."

  Her eyes glinted. He was close.

  "Your sister maybe had money, a lot of it, more than the newspaper could explain."

  Pattie looked up. "My sister had no money. None. That newspaper operates at a loss. Though Bree, the editor, claims she's going to drag it into the black one of these days."

  "Okay...but Savannah had something. Something that made you wonder..."

  "A house," Pattie said, then shut her lips tightly, as if upset she'd let this slip.

  "A house?" Zane raised his eyebrows. "In this area, that's gotta cost a nice chunk of change."

  Pattie shook her head. "You don't understand."

  "No, I don't, because you're making me guess."

  Pattie gave him a disgusted look. "And you're going to keep guessing, aren't you?"

  Zane made sure to hold back his frustration. "Yep."

  Looking even more disgusted, she let go of the door. "Okay, fine. We'll talk about it. I'll tell you my clues...but on one condition." She threw him a shrewd glance.

  Zane knew he wasn't going to like this. "What condition?"

  "You forget the whole thing." She rolled a wrist. "Oh, keep it in the back of your mind if you think you'll ever need the information when you're with Tristan out and about somewhere, but otherwise...it's as if we never had this conversation."

  Zane hesitated. What good was the information going to do him if he was supposed to pretend he'd never heard it? But on the other hand...he needed to know.

  "Okay," he said slowly. "I'll forget about it afterward." Mentally, he crossed his fingers.

&nb
sp; "Fine. Okay, I'll tell you what I know." Pattie prowled the room, moving from the door toward a bookcase. "Maybe Savannah didn't leave any money, but she certainly spent it. A lot of it. Cars, clothes, fancy vacations. And then there was the house." She paused, sucked in her lips. "Savannah's house in Pacific Palisades. In the Marquez Knolls overlooking the ocean. Given the neighborhood, it must have cost a couple million. Only it wasn't her house."

  Zane frowned. "But she lived there?"

  Pattie nodded. "I thought it was hers. I even planned to move in for a while after she died so Tristan wouldn't have any more disruption than necessary."

  "Not a bad idea."

  "Yeah, right." Pattie shook her head. "Maybe it would have been a good idea, if we hadn't got kicked out almost immediately." With a brief, unhappy laugh, Pattie wandered toward the window. "You sure you want to know about this?"

  Zane gritted his teeth. "Go on."

  Pattie sighed. "Guy from Coldwell Banker came to the door. He had the deed, all of the paperwork I hadn't been able to find. Wanted us out. Because that big, fancy house Savannah had been so proud of—turned out she didn't own it at all. She didn't even have a lease agreement."

  Zane frowned. "Who did own it?"

  Pattie waved a hand. "Some corporation I never heard of. At first I thought it was a front for a lover, then I remembered..."

  "You remembered...?"

  Pattie lifted a shoulder. "Savannah had been living in that house at least a couple years, and she never kept a boyfriend that long."

  Zane kept his breathing even. "So if someone was letting her live in a fancy house, rent-free— That's when you started to think about blackmail."

  Pattie shrugged again. "Put that together with the big spending..." Her voice faded.

  Narrowing his eyes, Zane guessed, "But there's even more."

  With a very deep sigh, Pattie turned to look out the window. Zane thought she was going to clam up on him, but she muttered, "Okay, okay, maybe he does need to know." She reached for the rod that controlled the blinds over the window. "The nail in the coffin came from Bree, the newspaper editor. She wanted to know if I was going to suddenly kill a good story the way Savannah used to. She was obviously relieved when I didn't know what she was talking about."

  Zane's teeth ground. "When someone paid the blackmail, Savannah would kill the story."

  "And if they didn't pay up, they'd get their dirty laundry in just enough print for their friends and colleagues to see." Glancing toward Zane, Pattie gave a short laugh. "Exhibit Dale Gooden."

  Zane hissed silently through his teeth. "Savannah was using the newspaper as a whip for her blackmail." He shook his head. "So why don't you shut it down? Stop the Dale Goodens of the world from blaming you for your sister's sins?"

  "I can't shut it down. Then I couldn't find out—" Pattie stopped abruptly. Hot color flooded her face.

  Frowning, Zane asked, "You couldn't find out what? Who she was blackmailing? But why would you want to know that?" Slowly his eyes widened. A reason occurred to him for Pattie to want to know the names of Savannah's victims. "You think Savannah was murdered."

  Pattie quickly averted her eyes.

  "You want to find out who she was blackmailing because those would be your prime suspects." A chill went through Zane. Murder made sense. It made a lot more sense to explain Savannah's death than an accidental drug overdose.

  Setting her forearm on the window frame, Pattie stared outside. "This is so not your problem."

  As if Zane could let go of it now. Pattie was searching for a murderer. The woman was certifiable. He waved a hand in the air. "Shouldn't the police be handling this?"

  "You'd think so." Pattie leaned her forehead against her arm. "But considering Savannah's history with recreational drugs, they say there's no evidence of foul play. It was a morphine overdose, and she'd been known to use."

  "Maybe they're right." Whether Zane was trying to convince her or himself was unclear. Perhaps Savannah had been a drug user, but she'd also been indulging in an extremely dangerous profession. The probability she'd just happened to overdose was nothing compared to the probability some desperate victim had solved a blackmail problem in a very permanent way.

  He didn't want to accept his own logic. It would create a completely untenable situation. But A led to B led to C. "Okay, okay," he muttered. "Things look fishy, but...why should you try to figure it out?"

  Pattie swiveled from the window to look at him. "My sister was murdered."

  Something turned inside of Zane, like a giant screw. He did his best to ignore the sensation, concentrating on his argument. "All right, maybe she was murdered. But she was also—" He stopped himself from saying that Savannah had also betrayed Pattie with Pattie's own boyfriend. He wasn't, officially, supposed to know that. "She was also," he continued carefully, "...not a very nice person."

  Pattie snorted. "No argument there, but—"

  "But?"

  Turning toward the window again, Pattie shook her head. "It's hard to explain. But, see, Savannah...she got the raw end of the deal when we were growing up. There, but for the grace of God, and all that." Laughing nervously, Pattie shook her head. "I'm not explaining this very well. The truth is sometimes I can't even understand myself on this one."

  Zane continued to stare. The turning screw sensation intensified. She was wrong. Oh, so wrong. He understood. He understood only too well.

  She felt like she had to do the right thing.

  With a deep exhalation, Pattie turned to face him with a bright smile. "So, I told you. The whole thing, all my shaky evidence. And now you can forget it. As we agreed. It's like we never had this conversation."

  Zane gazed at her. Blackmail, murder, and that look on her face a minute ago. "Right," he said. Forget it? In what lifetime?

  Rubbing her hands, Pattie strode toward her desk. "I have a client coming at three. Do you think you can get Tristan out of here around then?"

  "Tristan," Zane repeated.

  Pattie shot him a questioning glance. "Yes, Tristan. I'll need about an hour." It was as if she'd switched to a new track: her sister and the shadows of murder shoved onto a siding somewhere. And she expected him to leave it there, too, as if he'd never heard a thing.

  Which was exactly what he'd promised to do.

  Zane drew in a very deep breath. "Sure," he told Pattie. "Three o'clock. One hour. I'll take care of Tristan." That was his job, after all. Tristan.

  He straightened from his position leaning against her desk. Somehow he managed to walk out of the room. But in the hall he put a hand to his suddenly aching forehead. She was trying to do the right thing. And he was supposed to leave it? Forget it?

  When he knew firsthand how much trouble you could get into by doing the right thing.

  ~~~

  "'Tracy Triceratops didn't feel like running a race, but Tommy T-Rex smiled down at her with his big teeth and wouldn't budge an inch. "Race me," he demanded.'"

  Sitting on Tristan's bed, Pattie found herself transfixed by the story she was reading to her nephew about a school-age dinosaur beset by a bossy classmate. Who knew kids' books held so much wisdom? After the interrogation Zane had drilled her with earlier that day, Pattie could totally relate.

  "'But Tracy Triceratops held her ground,'" Pattie read. "'She remembered what her teacher, Mrs. Goodtree, had told her.'" Mrs. Goodtree, Pattie recalled, had counseled little Tracy Triceratops to tell Tommy T-Rex to go to hell—albeit in kid-friendly language.

  Pattie finished reading the story to Tristan, while relishing Tracy Triceratops' ultimate triumph over the blustering bully tyrannosaurus. For her own part, she'd let the tyrannosaurus completely bully her, pulling from her all sorts of information that had been none of his damn business. It was a mystery why Zane had even wanted to know about Savannah and her newspaper. But perhaps an even greater mystery was why Pattie had told him. She was no trembling Tracy Triceratops.

  Feeling jittery inside, feeling the same unsettling mixture o
f annoyance and apprehension she'd felt right after Zane had finally left her office this afternoon, Pattie closed Tristan's book.

  So, she'd told Zane some stuff...to get him off her back. That's all. Not because she was weak, not because she couldn't handle her own problems. Besides, he'd promised to forget the whole thing.

  Now she put a firm expression on her face as she looked down at her nephew. "We're done for tonight, kiddo. Time for lights out."

  Tristan opened his mouth in a gigantic yawn. "'kay."

  Prepared for a battle, Pattie had to regroup. He'd put up a fight after each of the last three books she'd just read to him. That's right. Last night Tristan had only allowed one book. Tonight he'd demanded four of them. Even though she wanted the kid to go to sleep already, Tristan's requests had given Pattie an odd sense of satisfaction.

  But getting him to agree it was bedtime wasn't so bad, either.

  "All right, let's tuck you in, then." Wasn't that what a parent was supposed to do? Pattie made some token adjustments to the sheets while admitting to herself that a real parent would probably kiss the kid goodnight.

  She looked down at Tristan. He yawned again and squirmed to get more comfortable under the covers. She remembered the feel of his little body with the glass doll bones inside. A peculiar sensation revolved in her stomach.

  Nah, she decided. Tristan didn't want a kiss. She gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder instead. "Sweet dreams, munchkin. I'll see you in the morning."

  Tristan giggled. "Munch'in," he repeated, and giggled again.

  Pattie smiled. That giggle— It was irresistible.

  She was still smiling as she left Tristan's bedroom. The smile didn't last long, however. She'd only got a few steps down the hall when the conversation she'd had with Zane that afternoon rounded back into her mind, as it had all evening. The edgy mix of unease and irritation returned.

  If only she hadn't told him everything. If only he hadn't...listened.

  Dirty dishes awaited her in the kitchen. Quite a few less dirty dishes, she had to admit, than before Zane had come on board. He certainly did do his job.