His conscience eased slightly when he noticed color had seeped back into Jo’s face. She’d tidied her hair, though it would never look the same to him. Who could forget their first encounter with perfumed silk?
Not him.
“I don’t know about you, but I could go for a cup of coffee.” Then he remembered tossing their packs. His mouth pulled to one side on a rueful, “Aw, hell. I hope I didn’t break the vacuum flask!”
“You’re in luck. It’s a stainless-steel one. Unbreakable,” she said, her smile playing hide-and-seek with him as she took her pack from his hands.
Thankfully, the coffee was safe. He wished he could say the same about Jo; he’d never seen her look so fragile. “Let’s head for the sea. I’ve a sudden yen for fresh air, sunshine and the feel of wind on my face.”
“Me, too,” she said, looking up at him. Her eyes were huge and darkly luminous in the dim light, as if washed with tears.
He felt he’d been ripped open and a giant fist was squeezing his heart. Aw damn. What had happened to his defenses? Sucking damp green air into his lungs as deep as it would go, Rowan slung his day pack over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.” As far as he was concerned it couldn’t be a minute too soon.
Chapter 8
W ow! The situation back there had gotten pretty scary. When was the last time she’d tried to rip a man’s shirt off his back?
Never.
Jo colored up at the thought, glad she followed in Rowan’s footsteps. She’d much prefer to be alone when she downloaded the memory of her incredulous response to Rowan’s kisses. The most erotic five minutes of her life. Five minutes she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. Five minutes better viewed from a distance.
Lord, just thinking about it made her heart race.
“Watch where you put your feet. There are a lot of roots breaking through the surface. Mind how you go.”
Too late. She’d already turned off at a side road filled with twists and turns. Heaven only knew where it would end.
The situation had been explosive. One touch from him and she’d gone off like a stick of dynamite with a short fuse. Who’d have thought after all that time, working side by side? She’d never imagined his kiss could pack such a wallop. Never thought of him in that light. Never once, until he’d arrived in her office.
Since then, the attraction had been skirting round the edges of her mind, but she’d refused to give it its head.
He was only here for a week, after all. Not even that, now that they’d discovered the ring of trees wasn’t a figment of Ginny’s imagination. But what if there was a way…a way he could stay a bit longer….
The sooner she forgot how it felt to be plastered against the front of his body, the sooner she could set her mind to work out ways and means to keep him here.
However convenient an excuse—and why should they need one?—she couldn’t go along with Rowan’s bewitched theory. No sense in making excuses. The desire they felt for each other had existed pre-Te Kohanga Park. The heat and the lush tropical setting had simply magnified it.
Rowan would soon come around to her way of thinking. He’d been a skeptic from way back. Good grief, she’d even known him to raise an eyebrow at some of Max’s comments about Maggie’s psychic powers. “Hell, Max,” he’d said, “sure she’s beautiful, but we all know her history.”
Now Maggie she could believe in. She’d known her forever. The two of them had roomed together at St. Margaret’s boarding school. And Rowan couldn’t argue about Maggie’s dreams being instrumental in catching a serial killer. The last case they’d worked together on in Auckland.
It was laughable that now he’d have her believe some nasty spirit had had them in its power. She’d give him maybe half an hour, an hour max, to change his mind.
She trailed after Rowan, both of them lost in their own thoughts, until his “Will you look at that” made her stop.
Rowan stepped aside. Light, so bright after the dim green bush, made her eyes squint as the reflection of sun on the water dazzled them.
“What a view.” She walked forward carefully to the top of the cliff, letting the breeze turn her hair into a mass of tangles as she stood watching the waves. Amazed at her own intrepidity.
Next stop Antarctica.
With her history, the simple act of looking out to sea, on this East Coast cliff top, knowing there was nothing else out there was like taking away a child’s security blanket. She had this standing-on-the-edge-of-the-earth-ready-to-fall-off feeling.
Away from the city lights she got the same sensation, looking up at the dark velvet of a clear night sky, studded with stars close enough to reach out and pluck down. But, the moment she remembered some of those twinkling lights were bigger than the sun, she started to shrink.
She’d hate anyone to know she could be so vulnerable. At six feet tall, she’d always had to be one of the big-enough-to-do-it-for-herself types. At least, that’s how the three youngest of her brothers and her male colleagues in the force had treated her. Like a no-nonsense woman, both feet planted firmly on the ground with nary a thought of shooting stars in her head.
Boy, she was getting maudlin.
“Let’s move on and find a spot sheltered from the wind.”
Glad of the distraction, she merely nodded her agreement. They walked south along the cliff top in the direction of Nicks Landing until she moaned. “Aren’t you hungry? I am. So hungry I could eat my boots if forced to…maybe even yours.”
Rowan had always been famous for his big feet, so he just grinned, asking, “Will this spot do?” He swung the packs toward a clump of shrubby pittosporums, heaving them onto the grass.
“Looks good to me. Plenty of sunshine and sheltered from the wind.” Jo opened her backpack, the one with the coffee and sandwiches, and tossed the largest packet to Rowan who had thrown himself down on the grass. Taking an orange nylon parka out of a zipped compartment, she spread it out to sit on, thus avoiding any creepy crawlies, facing Rowan, elbows balanced on her knees.
She was fascinated by the movement of his throat as he swallowed, but tickled by the way his fingers wiped his moustache, taking care of any crumbs. She touched her top lip remembering how it had brushed against it.
“Mmm, these are good,” he said, as she handed him a cup of coffee and he settled back, leaning against a clump of spiky, yellow grass, content to eat in silence and soak up the sun.
Rowan had demolished eight sandwiches to her three and downed two cups of coffee while she was still on her first.
“Are you ever going to shave off that moustache?”
“Why, don’t you like it?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tasted you without it,” she said, feeling safe to be slightly bolder, sitting out here in the open. She lowered her lids as she realized it was happening again. With Rowan she felt like a butterfly newly escaped from its cocoon, testing its wings. In other words, she had that fluttery sensation round her heart again.
She saw none of her own insecurities reflected in Rowan’s eyes. Instead he said, “Maybe once the scar fades, you can come up to Auckland and find out for yourself.”
The rough, dry, crenellated edge to his tone proved beyond a doubt he didn’t believe it would ever happen.
She balanced her chin on her arms and looked at her toes. He meant to leave soon. Now that, too, was out in the open.
Had it only been three days since he arrived? How would she stand it when he was gone? The thought of going back to lonely days and even lonelier nights overwhelmed her. Soon she’d need to decide between staying in a much-loved career that was killing her, and giving it up to return to Auckland and a new life.
Maybe she’d surprise Rowan yet. She flicked a glance at him through her lashes and found him staring at her.
“Know what’s been bugging me?” His question was as lazy as his body language. Rowan’s feet crossed at the ankles, and with his legs at full stretch the distance between them shrank. Soft, worn, bleached-at-the-seams
denim clung to his thighs and cupped the maleness he had pressed against her.
She knew she was staring but couldn’t drag her eyes away as she responded to his question. An answer as brief as it was hard to drag out. “Not a clue.”
“How’d you know about Skelton’s vasectomy?”
The question popped into the conversation with all the aplomb of a ballerina picking her way on points across a barnyard. Jo felt about as steady, lifting her gaze to his face.
The other night, she’d known as soon as she’d made the remark it was a mistake. And now she was going to have to pay for it. “It wasn’t through any personal association, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Nothing was further from my mind. It’s obvious you can’t stand the man. Hell, you’ve been doing your damnedest to nail him for fraud and arson since I got here, and probably before. Guess I’m pretty safe in thinking there’s no love lost between you two.”
“That’s not even the half of it. Did you know my father was a cop and Rocky was his partner?”
“Skelton mentioned it.”
Huh, it was worse than she thought. Rocky had got in first with his poison. “I’ll just bet he did. And I’ll stake my life on him giving you the old wink-wink-nudge-nudge-know-what-I-mean routine.”
Rowan sat up, alert, the laziness dropped from his manner and his voice. “He tried, but I wouldn’t listen. If you can’t bring yourself to tell me, then I don’t want hear it from anyone else.”
“Well, it’s a matter of record. Not mine, but it might well have been. I had a lot to live down when I first joined the force, but I made it. Sometimes it’s harder battling what people think they know about you than the actual truth.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, slapping his thigh.
Jo caught his drift immediately. She’d heard the rumors they were going to amputate his leg and they’d scared her spitless. She’d felt like a rookie pitcher with all the bases loaded and the other team’s best man up at bat.
All the air in her lungs came out in one big huff. Revealing her past wasn’t something she did every day. Not even every year.
“Getting back to Rocky. I discovered his secret by eavesdropping. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have been around eleven at the time, griping to my grandmother about too many chores. She brought me up, and had this saying about idle hands—”
“What happened to your mom?”
“I never knew her. As I came into the world she went out. We were a close-knit family then, even though my father had to work all hours. The budget was pretty tight back then and with five kids, the overtime didn’t go amiss.” She didn’t want him thinking she was looking for sympathy, so she looked away, avoiding his eyes.
Blades of yellowed grass drifted across the toes of her boots. As she watched, a seed head tangled in her bootlaces. It was then she realized her hands were plucking nervously at the dry stalks.
Jo dropped the grass and wrapped her arms round her knees. “Anyway, I was sitting on the window seat that day, hiding behind the curtain and reading a book. It was dinnertime and Dad had just come in.” She didn’t mention she’d been ready to leap down with a demand to hear the latest on the big case he was working on. Or that she’d held back when her father had begun telling Grandma about Rocky. Her long-held romance with becoming a cop sounded kind of childish from this distance. Like a fairy tale without the happy ending.
“I remember him saying he’d been working on his own that day as Rocky had gone for a vasectomy. Not that I knew what it meant at that age, but when Grandma went off the deep end, saying it was a sin against God and Rocky should be ashamed… Well, as you can imagine, I had to look it up. That’s why it stuck with me.”
She laughed at the memory. “When Grandma started ranting about sins against God, you just knew it had to be something really bad. How the world has changed.”
“Stop talking as though you were ancient. I know you’re four years younger than me. So that would make you thirty.”
“Next January, Aquarius. What are you?”
“An idealist, eh? Mine’s Taurus.”
Was that how he saw her? To her mind idealists were the dreamers of the world, whereas she believed in action.
Her lips quirked slightly. “That would explain it.” She tossed the statement back in his court.
“What?”
“Rowan, you must admit you can be pretty stubborn.”
“Only when the cause demands it.” He stood up and closed the gap separating them. “Time to go. Here, give me your hand.” Jo slipped her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. Mistakenly, she’d thought herself strong enough to touch Rowan again without reacting, but the sensitive, tactile memories in her fingers had other ideas. She dropped his hand as if it burned. The emotion he’d wrung out of her didn’t look to be fading anytime soon.
Turning her back on him, she speculated, why now? Why did Rowan’s touch make her backbone turn to jelly and her brain to mush? Right now, every mental facility should be concentrated on clearing her father’s good name. Not wondering how good Rowan would be in bed. Besides, without handcuffing him like a felon and locking him up, he’d be out of Nicks Landing before the dust from the bush had been stomped off his boots.
She took a last look over the cliff. Just beyond where they’d been sitting an old landslip covered by scrub and spindly manuka flowed down to the water, making a tough but manageable climb to the beach.
The bay below was beautiful, more traditional than the black iron sands to the west of the North Island. It was hard to imagine a car lying at the foot of these cliffs as it had at Torbay. The words tumbled out of her mouth without thought. “My father’s car went over a cliff. They said it was suicide but I never believed them.”
That was the difference between him and Jo. Different yet the same. They’d both had to get over the tragic death of their parents, but he’d always believed his father had committed suicide and taken his mother with him.
He looked at Jo, not saying anything, knowing he didn’t need to, waiting for her to fill in the gaps about her father.
“They said…Rocky said, he’d been dealing drugs and when he got caught he couldn’t stand the shame so he drove off the cliffs. Rocky lied.” Jo’s eyes blazed with conviction. “My father never killed himself. He loved us, loved his family. He would never leave us that way.”
Substitute me for us and those were the same damn thoughts he’d had when his mother had taken off, gone back to Scotland and left his father. Left him.
He wanted to take her in his arms, give comfort, take comfort, but he couldn’t. The shadow of what happened between them earlier hung over him like a dark cloud. He’d lost control once and it could happen again. And without control, what else did he have?
“And if you’d nailed Skelton, what would it have proved?”
“The kind of man he was…is. A man who will lie for his own advantage. Did you know Rocky came down here shortly after Dad died? Hell, they had to drag me away from Auckland. Why would a cop come voluntarily to Nicks Landing unless things had gotten too hot for him?”
“Is that what happened to you?”
She let out a sharp puff of air from her mouth that lifted the hair hanging over her eyes, only to glide back into place again until she caught the errant strand and secured it behind her ear. “No, Rowan. I didn’t jump. I was pushed.”
“Believe me, I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to happen.”
“Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault. You saved my life.”
And he’d do it again in an instant, less than that, a microsecond. “Then you saved mine. That’s what teams do. You rescue me, I rescue you. Partners now. Wasn’t that the decision?”
She shook her head. “You’re too generous, Rowan.”
“No, I’m not, but you could set my mind straight on one thing. What in hell got into you that day? That wasn’t like you…to deliberately step into danger had to have been an aberration. You were too good a co
p. Still are, to my mind.”
“Didn’t you hear the rumors?”
He shrugged. Jo was holding out, but if anyone deserved to know the truth it was him. “We already covered rumors. I don’t listen to them.”
“It was Max.”
Did he really want to hear this?
Damn, he’d known she’d loved Max, had embraced the fact with open arms, while it helped him see that wanting her would have been a lost cause even if she’d known. That didn’t mean he had to like it.
“I caught sight of him heading toward the back of the house. And then I saw the gun. It was pointing straight at him. All I could think to do was distract the gunman.”
She looked him straight in the eye. Hers were clear, unafraid. “Everyone thought I was in love with Max and that’s why I acted so dumb. But I’d realized, just that afternoon when I talked to Maggie, that all I’d had was wishful thinking, and it didn’t compare to what she and Max felt for each other. I was looking for an honest man. Max was handy, so he got nominated.”
What if she’d nominated him? Where would his famous control have been then? Rowan pushed his fingers through his hair. “Why in heaven’s name didn’t you explain, about Max, that he could have been shot?”
“Partners. Max was mine, then. He shouldn’t have done what he did, but I couldn’t drop him in it. Besides, by the time I got home from the hospital, it was too late. The word had already done the rounds. It would have sounded like an excuse. When your father’s been labeled a dirty cop, excuses won’t cut it.”
He heard the last couple of sentences, but didn’t take them in. All that counted was the reason she’d given for getting back late to Central. “You were at the hospital? No one told me you got hurt.”
Jo stepped right up to him. She shook her head as if exasperated and gave him a lighthearted punch on his arm. “Stupid. Of course I was at the hospital. That’s where you were. I visited a lot, but you were always out of it.”
Why had no one told him? His brothers should have told him. It mightn’t have made any difference, but at least he would have had that. He would have known.
Love Under Fire Page 12
