The Forbidden Bride

by Debra Cowan

  For a second, she glimpsed a grimness in his eyes that she had seen mirrored in her own. Memories of the past. “Thanks for telling me. I admire you for trying to work it out. A lot of people wouldn’t have.”

  Without thinking, she reached out to lay a hand on his thigh. His gaze dropped. The air between them turned hot, pulsing. His hand covered hers and he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.

  Robin stared down at the bronze of his skin next to the creamy rose of hers. An ache bloomed deep inside her.

  She told herself to pull back. The command sounded loud and clear from her brain, yet her body didn’t move.

  His eyes darkened. A current of electricity snapped tight between them. He shifted closer and she knew by the hunger in his face he was going to kiss her. There were all kinds of reasons why she shouldn’t let him do it. Right now, she couldn’t think of a single one.

  This was crazy. Borderline stupid. Since her bout with vertigo, Nate had watched her with a quiet intensity that stirred something inside her. Something she felt unable to control.

  So when he tugged her toward him, she went. She wanted to know what his kiss would be like, how he tasted.

  She felt helpless to resist. The barely there brush of his lips hollowed out her belly. When she didn’t pull away, his mouth fully covered hers.

  She sank into the kiss, silky and deep and hot. The only places they had contact were their hands and lips, yet she felt his touch on every burning inch of her body. His kiss wasn’t tentative, but it was slow. Exploring. Demanding.

  When she opened her mouth under his, he stroked her tongue and took the kiss deeper. She was dimly aware of her hand tightening on his rock-hard thigh, of his hand on her nape, holding her to him. His clean, sharp, male scent filled her head. The inside of his mouth was cool from the iced tea he had brought with him from the deli. She began to shake.

  Wanting to completely surrender, it took a few seconds for her brain to engage. It finally did.

  How could she feel this overwhelming desire for the man who had caused the most humiliating experience of her life? What was wrong with her?

  The effort required to pull away surprised her. She was breathing hard, as was he. When she managed to open her eyes, she saw the flush of arousal across his cheekbones and smoldering in his blue eyes.

  She felt it, too. Hammering through her with every beat of her heart.

  She flattened her hand against his chest, hard and hot beneath her touch. Her head was spinning, and not because of her vertigo.

  “Whoa,” she said huskily, to herself as much as to him. “Just…whoa.”

  He grazed his thumb lightly against the corner of her mouth, setting off another flurry of sensation in her belly. And a burst of panic.

  She eased away. “That wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Felt pretty good to me.”

  The low, raspy words stroked over her. She gave him a dark look. “I’m not kidding, Houston.”

  “Neither am I.”

  The way he looked at her, into her, with those piercing eyes made her want to dive right back in for another kiss.

  Searching for a way out, Robin nearly wilted with relief when she saw Tiffany Jarvis approaching the building’s elevators. “There she is.”

  After a long, steady look, Nate followed her gaze. A muscle flexed in his jaw.

  “Let’s go.” Still struggling to regain her mental balance, Robin got out and met him at the hood of the vehicle.

  They walked toward the secretary, who was accompanied by two other women. Robin recognized them from the earlier interview at Eastman’s office.

  Now that she had put some space between her and Nate, she could breathe. Think.

  She had just kissed the man who had shattered her world. And she wanted to do it again! What was wrong with her?

  Whenever she was around him, her unshakeable control seemed to disintegrate. This wild, unrestrained feeling scared the hell out of her.

  Nate Houston scared the hell out of her.

  She had let her guard down. She couldn’t do it again.

  Chapter 6

  Thirty minutes later, Robin and Nate stood in an interview room at the police department, questioning Tiffany Jarvis. She had agreed to talk to them while waiting for her attorney, and now sat in a metal chair, at a scratched, rectangular table in the center of the room. Another metal chair stood in the far corner.

  Robin’s nerves were still fluttering from that kiss. There was no denying it had turned her to liquid, but she had a job to do. It helped that Nate had finally stopped eyeing her with a mix of heated curiosity and frustration.

  Well, she was frustrated, too. Yet, she forced herself to focus on the woman they were interviewing, not on Nate or kissing Nate or what he had told her about his ex-wife and parents.

  She hadn’t gone through anything nearly as brutal as what had happened to break up his marriage, but Robin felt a connection to him anyway.

  The thought had tension coiling inside her. It was hard enough to wrap her mind around the fact that she liked him, let alone admit she felt connected to him. And wanted him. Even knowing she should keep up her guard, she had let him get to her. In a big way.

  She had thought she was in control. Yeah, she’d controlled herself, all right. Practically into his lap. She bit back a groan and repeated the question she had just asked. “Again, Ms. Jarvis, were you ever in Dennis Bane’s house?”

  The woman gave her a mulish look, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms. Robin exchanged a look with Nate.

  He stood a few feet away, one shoulder braced against the wall in a deceptively relaxed pose. “If we find your prints, things will only look worse for you. You might as well tell us. The truth, this time.”

  Robin flattened her hands on the table’s surface, leaning toward Tiffany. “A Presley patrol cop identified your car in Bane’s neighborhood on two separate occasions.”

  The other woman’s gaze flickered to Robin then away.

  She opened the file folder filled with the printouts from Bane’s computer. “We also found several e-mails from you to Dennis. Sexually explicit e-mails.”

  “And one from him to you.” Nate pushed away from the wall and walked over, thumping the piece of paper on top of the stack. “Telling you to stop calling his house and coming by there. Which means you called his house and went there at least once. You told us you’d never been. Why did you lie?”

  “Because I didn’t think you’d believe me!” she burst out.

  “Knowing you’ve already lied doesn’t make us inclined to do that,” Robin pointed out.

  “Help yourself,” Nate urged. “No more lies.”

  “I was in his house for a work party. And only once.”

  “So you would’ve known how to get back in, where to plant the accelerant.”

  Robin flicked a glance at Nate, liking that he kept pushing.

  “Plant accelerant?” The secretary looked startled. “Wasn’t this fire an accident? I mean, I know the paper said it might have been arson, but—”

  “It was arson,” Nate said flatly.

  “Murder,” Robin added, watching Tiffany’s face carefully.

  The other woman drew in a sharp breath. “I would never kill anyone, and I don’t know anything about accelerants.”

  Nate arched a brow and Robin figured he was thinking the same thing she was. They couldn’t prove Tiffany had planted anything, but if they obtained a search warrant for her house, they might find number-ten envelopes, chlorine powder and petroleum jelly, like what had been used.

  “These e-mails, the cop’s ID and your admission of being in Bane’s house are enough to get us a warrant to search your house.”

  At Robin’s words, the other woman’s jaw set.

  Nate leveled a look on Tiffany. “The cop who identified you said he saw you on Bane’s street the night before the fire and the night of the fire.”

  “I told you I was at a bar at the time that fire started!”


  “That’s the beauty of this accelerant,” Nate said. “You could’ve been far away by the time it ignited.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Robin shrugged. “The bartender didn’t remember you.”

  “Well, I was there.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Captain Hager stepped inside with a sharp-faced, perfectly groomed man. Robin was already groaning inwardly when her boss said, “Ms. Jarvis’s attorney, Mr. Meacham, is here.”

  Yippee. With his meticulously arranged hair and bottle tan, Robin thought the blond lawyer looked like a Ken doll.

  Shrewd, dark eyes met hers. “Detective, this interview is over.”

  “We’ll have more questions later,” she said coolly, frustrated they hadn’t gotten further.

  The attorney took Tiffany’s arm and steered her outside the room, passing Robin a business card. “Any more questions should go through me.”

  She slid the card into her slacks pocket, making a sound low in her throat as Meacham disappeared with his client.

  Nate went to the door, watching the departing pair. He dragged a hand across his nape. “Do you believe her about being in Bane’s house only once?”

  “No, but we can’t prove it. We’ll get a warrant and see if we can find anything at her place.”

  “We need to try and connect her to the other fire-murders, too.”

  “Go back over the files, interviews, all of it.”

  He nodded.

  While questioning Tiffany, Robin’s mind had been occupied with something besides memories of that kiss, but now she found herself staring at Nate’s mouth. Remembering…There was still a faint tingle in her blood. She didn’t understand it; she had never been this affected by a man, not even Kyle.

  She jerked her gaze away. “It’s hard to believe someone like Jarvis would know that much about accelerants, especially this one. I mean, it’s not elementary, like pouring gas and throwing a match on it. Could she learn on the Internet about something like that?”

  “I’d like to say no, but all kinds of information is on there, and the items used by the Mailman aren’t difficult to get.”

  “Does anything about what we’ve learned concerning Tiffany remind you of the serial fire setter you put away in Chicago? Like being fixated on someone at work? Being in the victims’ homes for at least one social occasion? Anything?”

  “No.”

  “So maybe you didn’t make a mistake.”

  His eyes widened.

  A little surprised at herself for saying it, Robin gave him a small smile. For the first time, she admitted it was possible he hadn’t made a mistake about her wedding, either. Their gazes met and Robin felt that connection again, the one she had felt earlier in the parking garage.

  The silence grew taut and after a moment he cleared his throat. “If Tiffany is our torch, we may have to rethink our theory about the twenty-seven-day cooling-off period being due to the Mailman’s job. Jobs such as hers don’t operate in shifts like the ones we’ve checked into so far. There would be another reason for the number of days in between fire-murders.”

  “True.” Robin closed the file folder, glancing up to find his attention on her lips.

  Her pulse hitched, then went crazy when his gaze did a slow hike down her body. Awareness vibrated in every cell in her body, and in a flash she again felt the searing slide of his mouth on hers.

  The steady look on his face had Robin wondering if he knew what she was thinking. Just as she started to tell him to knock it off, he asked, “Are we going to talk about the kiss?”

  “Shh!” Even though she knew they were alone, she glanced around the room. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not interested in talking about it.”

  “What if I am?”

  His husky words had her swallowing hard. Her gaze shot to his, then past him, making sure no one was within earshot. “There’s more to talk about than the fact that we did it or why.”

  “What do you mean, ‘why’ we did it?” he asked in a low, rough voice, stepping closer. “I did it because I wanted to, and so did you.”

  She gave him a flat stare, trying to dismiss the sensation prickling her skin. “Fine,” she said tightly. “Let’s talk. There’s more between us than chemistry or attraction or—”

  “Lust,” he suggested.

  Her stomach dipped. “Whatever you want to call it, there’s something else.”

  “Like what?” Wariness tightened his features.

  She was going for it. She wanted answers and he had them. “Like the fact that you screwed up my life and I want to know why.”

  “Hell! Why do you have to bring the past into it?”

  “Because until I get answers, the past is where we are.”

  He looked as though he wanted to argue, but he didn’t. A muscle flexed in his jaw. Shoving a hand through his hair, he turned away.

  “At the time of my wedding, you had just found out your wife was cheating on you. You had to be angry, bitter. Completely down on marriage.”

  Hands braced on his hips, his body went rigid. He looked over his shoulder, blue eyes piercing. “So?”

  “Is that why you convinced Kyle to K.O. the wedding? Because what happened to you soured you on the whole idea of marriage? It would be understandable.”

  “No.” He faced her, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It had nothing to do with me or my marriage.”

  “Then what?”

  Looking grim, he met her gaze. There was no mistaking the reluctance on his strong features.

  “Why did you stop my wedding, Houston? Why did you convince Kyle to leave me at the altar?”

  “You deserve to know—”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the person who should do that.”

  “Well, who else? It’s been five years and I’ve certainly gotten nothing from Kyle.” She waited, fighting the urge to demand answers, to shake him until he gave them to her.

  Couldn’t he see how important this was? How desperately she needed to know?

  Looking resigned, he gestured to the small room where they stood. “Sure you want to do this here?”

  Her heart sped up. “You’re really going to tell me?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Now?”

  “No time like the present,” he muttered, looking as though he would rather face a disciplinary hearing.

  After five years, she was finally going to learn the reason Nate had destroyed her wedding. Along with a sense of satisfaction, she was surprised to realize there was also a small bite of apprehension. “Let’s go to the stairwell.”

  She picked up the folder holding Bane’s e-mails and walked out with Nate into the hall. Unease vibrated from him with each step toward the putty-colored door leading to the stairs. They both reached for the pressure bar at the same time. His hand inadvertently covered hers.

  Robin studied his face for a long moment before letting go and stepping inside.

  Nate closed the door quietly behind them. Her hand had felt so small beneath his, so delicate. He did not want to be the person who told her this, but she deserved to know. He couldn’t keep her in the dark the way Kyle and her sister had.

  Not only because it was wrong, but also because he worked with her. He respected her. He liked her.

  And there was that kiss, which took things to a whole different place. She had been clear about not wanting to discuss it, but at least she hadn’t tried to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about when he brought it up.

  Her dark honey taste, the deep velvet heat of her mouth, those too-brief seconds of surrender had knocked him for a loop. He had wanted more, still did. And despite her inscrutable cop face, she had wanted it, too. He could still feel her hand tighten on his thigh, the way she’d melted against him.

  Nate wouldn’t mind seeing where that kiss led, but he was pretty sure Robin wouldn’t take it anywhere. Especially after this
conversation.

  “Houston,” she said impatiently.

  “Give me a second,” he snapped. “It’s not something I can just spit out.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but he could tell it was killing her to stay quiet. How to start? There really was no tactful way to say it, no way to soften it so it wouldn’t sound as devastating as it was.

  She stood in the corner, her wary gaze locked on his. He eased back against the stair railing where two flights met.

  “Right before your wedding was supposed to start, none of the groomsmen or the reverend could find Emrick. We split up to search the church, and I found him in the pastor’s office.” Nate saw her eyes darken with apprehension and his chest went tight. Dammit, just tell her. “I walked in on him having sex with another woman.”

  She stilled, the color draining from her face. The raw hurt and disbelief in her face had him stepping forward, reaching out to steady her with a hand under her elbow.

  Nate hated this. Hell! “I’m sorry.”

  Tears glittered in her eyes. After a long minute, she exhaled shakily. “Wow, I’d say that’s a good reason to interfere in someone’s wedding.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Where were they?”

  He frowned. “I told you.”

  “No, I mean on the floor, on the desk, standing up.”

  “Robin—”

  She straightened, her voice crisp. “Tell me everything you saw. Everything.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Nate asked softly. He sure as hell didn’t. Wasn’t this information hurtful enough already?

  He could actually see her mask the stormy emotion in her eyes, blank her face as she went into cop mode. She was in total control. “Tell me.”

  Nate didn’t want to, but after five years of wondering, it was way past time for her to know everything. At the steely look in her blue eyes, he said, “They were on the desk.”