But maybe, Emily thought, just maybe, it was also true that spending the next two weeks with Jim Keegan would be a good thing. Aside from the fact that helping with the investigation could save lives, maybe two weeks of close, day-to-day contact with this man would be helpful to her. Maybe it would help her see the real Jim Keegan—the same Jim Keegan who had lashed out at her so cruelly all those years ago….
Emily closed her eyes, remembering with stark accuracy the night she and Jim had broken up. It had been April, early spring, only about three weeks after he was released from the hospital. It had been only three days after she went to his apartment, looking for him—and ended up staying overnight. They’d made love for the first time that weekend….
Emily shook her head, unwilling to let herself remember the way he’d touched her, kissed her, loved her—and left her. That was what she had to remember. Not quite three days after they made love, he had left her for good.
It had been a Wednesday night, and Emily had been standing outside her dorm. She’d been ready for their date a little early, so she’d gone down to the front of the building so that Jim wouldn’t have to come inside to get her.
But he was late. Fifteen minutes. Then thirty. She went inside to use the pay phone, but there was no answer at his apartment. He hadn’t even left his answering machine on. She called her own machine, checking to see if he’d called to tell her that he’d be late. But there was nothing. No message.
After another fifteen minutes, Emily was well past worried. It wasn’t unusual for him to be late, but he’d always left messages before—either on her machine or wherever they were planning to meet. Refusing to think about hospitals or gunshot wounds or the growing number of city police officers who had been shot dead on the streets over the past few years, she walked briskly to the sports bar on the corner, where they had been planning to go that evening. Maybe he’d left a message for her there. Maybe he wasn’t lying in some pool of blood somewhere. Maybe—
Jim was there.
He was there, sitting at the bar.
With his arm around a pretty dark-haired woman who had to be wearing the shortest skirt Emily had ever seen in her life. Disbelief flooded through her.
She must have made some sort of sound, because Jim turned toward her. He looked surprised to see her at first. But then he laughed.
He actually laughed.
She knew she should turn and walk away. But she was a fool. She just stood there and stared at him, thinking that there must be some mistake….
“What are you doing here?” he asked. The woman he had his arm around peered curiously over his shoulder at her.
Emily couldn’t speak. She just looked at him, unable to move.
He sighed heavily and turned back to the dark-haired woman. “Don’t go anywhere, babe,” he said, and kissed her. On the lips. Then he slid off the bar stool and walked toward Emily.
Jim staggered once before he reached her. He laughed again, as if his inability to walk a straight line was something he found funny. He stank of whiskey as he walked past Emily, motioning for her to follow him.
She walked woodenly behind him, out the main entrance and onto the sidewalk in front of the bar.
“What’d I do? Mess up the dates again?” Jim asked, turning to face her. “I thought we were on for tomorrow night.”
Emily shook her head no. And suddenly, through all the disbelief, through the hurt and pain of having seen him with that other woman, came waves of relief. At least he wasn’t dead. At least he wasn’t lying in some ambulance, racing to the hospital while the paramedics tried to keep his heart from pumping his blood out of a bullet hole in his chest….
Thank God.
“What did you say?” Jim asked, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Emily realized she must have spoken out loud.
Her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at him. “I thought you’d been shot again,” she said, her voice shaking. “I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, God,” he said, recoiling as if she had hit him, turning away, covering his face with his hands. But he turned back almost instantly, his eyes flashing with anger, his face nearly contorted with rage.
“I’m worse than dead, damn it!” he shouted. “So stay the hell away from me!”
He moved toward her. His anger and his sheer size were menacing, frightening, but Emily stood her ground. If there was one thing, and only one thing, that she could hold on to as a truth in all this insanity, it was that, drunk or sober, Jim Keegan would never hit her.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What are you doing? I love you. And I thought—”
“You were wrong,” he said, backing away when he realized that she wasn’t going to be the one to move. “Whatever you thought, you were wrong, damn it!” He lowered his voice. “Yeah, it’s been fun, and last weekend was a blast, but—You don’t really think that I’ve slept alone every night since we started dating in November, do you? Get real, kid….”
The shock of his words overcame her relief, and Emily turned and ran.
Last weekend was a blast.
Emily had let him touch her in ways that she’d never let a man touch her before. She’d given herself to him, heart, body and soul. But to Jim, it had merely been “a blast.”
She had heard the expression “Love is blind” a hundred times in the past, but before that night she’d never experienced the phenomenon firsthand.
Love was, indeed, blind. She had seen Jim Keegan as some kind of superhero, some kind of perfect man. She’d seen someone tender, someone kind and sensitive, someone she thought loved her as much as she loved him.
Wrong.
Seven years ago, her imagination had obviously clouded her vision.
But now there was nothing to keep her from seeing James Keegan clearly. Over the next few weeks, she would have an opportunity that most women never had…she would be able to see, really see, this man that she had once loved so desperately. She’d get a chance to see, firsthand, that he wasn’t the perfect man she’d once thought he was. She’d have a chance to dissolve the superhero myth that still surrounded him in her dreams, despite the way he had treated her that awful night. She’d be face-to-face with the real man—the insensitive, selfish, impolite bastard that he truly was. And maybe then she’d stop longing for the sound of his laughter and the warmth of his touch. Maybe then, finally, she’d be free.
THE DOORBELL RANG as Emily was stepping out of the shower. She quickly dried herself and slipped into a terrycloth bathrobe. On the way to the door, she glanced at the clock. It was only quarter of. It figured that Jim Keegan would be early. It figured that he’d catch her wearing only her bathrobe—
She stopped short, halfway across the living room.
Oh, brother, if she answered the door in her bathrobe, what was he going to think? Stupid question. She knew exactly what he was going to think, and it wouldn’t be good.
“Hey, Emily, open up! I know you’re home—I saw your car in the lot!” a voice called from the other side of the door.
But the voice didn’t belong to Jim Keegan. It was Carly’s voice.
Emily opened the door to her neighbor’s familiar face and shining…blond curls?
“What d’ya think?” Carly asked, needing no invitation to come inside. She turned, posing like a model on a fashion runway, showing off her new hair color in the middle of Emily’s living room.
Carly Wilson, thrice divorced before the tender age of twenty-nine, rarely stood still. And when she was standing still, it was usually because she was laughing too hard to move.
Carly had moved into the apartment down the hall from Emily not quite a year ago—after her most recent divorce. At the time, the diminutive woman had had thick, straight, nearly jet-black hair. Since then, she’d gone through a wide variety of perms and cuts and hair colors, the most recent being a not-quite-believable shade of red.
Carly was, of all things, a librarian. With her flamboyant wardrobe and her ever-chang
ing hair color, she was far from the stereotype. But she did love books. In fact, she claimed to love books even more than she loved men. And that was saying something.
“Blond, huh? It looks good,” Emily said, closing the door. “What’s the occasion?”
Carly laughed and plopped herself down on the couch. “No occasion,” she said, in her low, scratchy voice, which was incongruous with her petite size and cheerleader-cute face. “Just time for a change. Speaking of changing, I caught you fresh out of the shower, didn’t I? Don’t let me stop you. Go on, get dressed.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Emily said.
Carly turned, raising her voice so that Emily could hear her even in the bedroom. “You know what triggered this new color?”
“Nope,” Emily called back, pulling on fresh underwear. “What?”
“I was out with Mac again on Saturday night,” Carly said from the living room. “We went to the Crazy Horse Saloon, ’cause his band was playing there, and during one of their breaks I found out that that man can really dance. And I mean really. So he’s leading me around the line of dance like some kind of cowboy Fred Astaire, and I suddenly realize that I’m daydreaming about dancing with him at our wedding reception!”
“Uh-oh,” Emily said. She brushed out her still-damp hair as she came back into the living room, wearing a clean pair of shorts and T-shirt.
“Uh-oh’s right,” Carly said, her brown eyes merry with suppressed laughter. “Now, Mac is undeniably good-looking, and I confess he’s got the ability to make my poor heart beat twice as hard as it should, but marriage? Good Lord, it wouldn’t last a month. Three months, tops. And, quite frankly, I can’t afford another divorce. So I figured if I wanted a change in my life that badly, I’d skip the wedding and just color my hair and rearrange my living room furniture instead. Besides, in a few more weeks, after old Alex pops the question, I can help you plan your wedding, right? I’ll get plenty of vicarious thrills that way—no need to suffer through the experience again myself.”
Emily stared out the sliding glass door, her good humor suddenly gone. But Carly didn’t notice. She chattered on about the new curtains she was thinking about buying for her kitchen windows until the doorbell rang.
Emily turned then, her hairbrush still in her hand. Oh, shoot. This time it had to be James Keegan.
“Are you expecting someone?” Carly asked curiously.
The smaller woman beat Emily to the door and threw it open wide. Even though she couldn’t see who was at the door, Emily knew it was Jim simply by the sudden change in the way Carly was standing.
“Well, hel-lo,” Carly said. “Who are you?”
“I’m looking for Emily Marshall,” Jim’s husky voice replied. “I thought she was in 6B. Am I wrong?”
Emily stepped behind Carly, and Jim’s face relaxed into a smile. “Well, hey, Em, how ya doing?” he said. “The directions you gave me from the airport were great.”
It was odd—his words and expression were relaxed and friendly, but the message Emily was getting from Jim’s eyes was anything but. Who the hell is this, he was silently asking about Carly, and what the hell is she doing here?
“You gonna invite me in?” he asked.
“Please…come in,” Emily said, pulling Carly back with her, out of Jim’s way.
Jim lugged a duffel bag over the threshold and closed the door behind him. His long hair was pulled back with a rubber band at the nape of his neck, and he was dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a white polo shirt.
Emily realized that she’d rarely seen Jim wear anything besides jeans and a T-shirt, or the sloppy, army-issue shorts he sometimes wore when it got too hot for long pants. Every now and then he’d worn a suit because he had to. Of course, it occurred to her that Jim was undercover right now. He was wearing what he figured her visiting brother might wear—and he was pretty darn accurate. Except Danny never looked so good in his Dockers.
Jim slid a gym bag off his shoulder and onto the floor next to the duffel bag and turned toward Emily. Before she realized what he was doing, he’d put his arms around her.
“It’s been a long time,” he said, pulling her in close to him.
Damn, she smelled great. She still used the same sweet-smelling soap when she washed her face. She still used the same brand of shampoo. She still didn’t bother to wear perfume. She still smelled young and fresh and achingly lovely. Jim let go of her, fast.
Trying to hide how off balance he felt, he turned to the blond woman and made himself smile. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Dan Marshall. I’m Emily’s brother.”
The blonde held out her hand. “I’m Carly Wilson, Emily’s neighbor.”
“I’ll get some iced tea,” Emily said as Carly dragged Jim into the living room.
Jim sat down on a couch with pale floral-patterned upholstery. Emily’s apartment was small, smaller than he’d expected—proof that Alexander Delmore wasn’t subsidizing her living expenses. He was relieved about that, more relieved than he should have been. What was wrong with him? He didn’t have any reason to feel jealous of Delmore, and certainly didn’t have any reason to feel possessive toward Emily. Seven years was a long time.
As Carly gave him a detailed narrative of exactly when and where she’d met Emily, Jim looked around the place that he was going to be calling home for the next few weeks.
Several framed pictures hung on the white walls. They were photographs—two of the ocean, one of an older man and woman on the front porch of a house, and one of the earth taken from the moon.
There was an entertainment center directly across from the couch, with a small, inexpensive TV and stereo inside a cabinet. A wicker-and-glass coffee table sat in front of the couch. Rows of bookshelves lined one of the other walls. A single rocking chair was the only comfortable place to sit besides the sofa. A small, round dining table and two hardbacked chairs were at the end of the room, in front of a sliding glass door and adjacent to what Jim figured must be the kitchen. He could hear Emily moving around back there, could hear the clink of ice cubes in glasses, the sound of the refrigerator door opening and shutting.
Jim looked up at Carly, suddenly aware that she’d asked him a question. “I’m sorry—?” he said.
“Jet lag, huh?” she said sympathetically. “Where’d you fly in from?”
“Colorado,” he lied. “Denver.”
“You know, I can really see the family resemblance,” Carly said. “It’s in your eyes. You’re definitely Emily’s brother.”
Jim looked up as Emily came into the room, carrying three tall glasses. She set them down on the coffee table, then handed one to him. His fingers brushed hers accidentally, but she didn’t seem to notice. Hell, he nearly stopped breathing at the slight contact, but she didn’t even blink.
Emily offered Carly one of the glasses, but the blond woman shook her head and stood up.
“I’m outa here,” Carly said. “You guys have some catching up to do.”
“Oh,” Emily protested. “You don’t have to go….”
“No, no,” Carly said. “You don’t need me butting in.” She smiled at Jim. “Besides, your brother’s tired. I’ll come back tomorrow, after he’s had his rest.”
Jim fought the urge to join in with Emily’s protests. Having the neighbor there was something of a relief. Having her around meant that he and Emily weren’t alone, together, in this tiny apartment. It meant that they wouldn’t have to look at each other or talk.
But he knew that Carly’s presence would simply put off the inevitable. He and Emily had to talk. He had to find out more about her childhood and her parents. He had to find out if Emily remembered what she’d told Alex about her brother.
And, sooner or later, they had to talk about their history. There was no way he could stay here for any length of time without at least mentioning their past relationship. It would be too weird.
So he stayed on the couch while Emily walked her friend to the door. He heard them say goodbye. He heard the door c
lose. And then he heard…silence.
Keegan looked up to see Emily pick up her glass of iced tea and sit down across from him in the rocking chair. She met his gaze calmly, and again he felt a stab of frustration. How could she act so cool when just the idea of them alone together was making him sweat bullets?
He covered his discomfort with a smile. “So,” he said, “here we are.”
She didn’t comment. She didn’t say anything equally stupid simply to break up this damned silence. She didn’t do anything except sip her iced tea. And watch him.
God, she was beautiful. And so damned unaffected by his presence. Jim clenched his teeth.
Emily was holding her glass of iced tea so tightly that her fingers were starting to cramp. She forced herself to loosen her hold and take a sip. She could see the tension in the way Jim was sitting. He was nervous. Well, rightly so. He should be nervous. Seven years ago he’d taken advantage of a young girl’s trust and love. Quite frankly, he’d used her in the most blatant and obvious way. He’d treated her abysmally.
It was clear that he had never imagined he’d see her again, let alone be forced to occupy the same space for anything longer than a few brief, embarrassment-tinged moments.
She gazed at him, not having to bother to ask herself the timeworn question What had she seen in him? She knew exactly what she’d seen in him—she was looking straight at it. Thick honey-brown hair that waved around a lean, handsome face that could have made a fortune on a movie screen. Dark blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes, a slightly bent, very masculine nose, and a million-dollar smile—although he wasn’t smiling now, was he? Still, smiling or frowning, James Keegan was outrageously attractive.
And that was just his face. His body was more of the same story. He looked like he might have put on a few pounds over the past seven years, but they were all pounds put on in the right places. His stomach was still flat, and his hips were still slim and his legs…Yeah. He was in even better shape than he’d been in at age twenty-five.
Nowhere to Run Page 5
