D’Amato’s eyes narrowed and his voice hardened. “I know Pendleton has been in touch with his wife. Maybe he told her where he’s planning to hide. Maybe he left something in the house that will tell you where he’s headed or where he hid my package. You’re guarding the woman’s children. Make friends with her. Find out what you can.”
Within days of his meeting with D’Amato, Kate had been shot and spent the next four months in a coma. But because of his earlier conversations with Kate, Jack had been able to tell D’Amato that J.D. had gone to South America. D’Amato’s men had finally found him in Brazil ten days ago, shot at him, apparently wounding him, and then chased him back to California.
As far as Jack knew, Kate hadn’t heard from her wayward husband since she’d recovered from her coma.
It was bad luck that Wyatt Shaw had seen Jack with D’Amato at the lawyer’s office, where they usually met, and then run into him at Kate’s. It was one thing for her to deduce he was working undercover for D’Amato. He just hoped Shaw didn’t tell Kate he was helping D’Amato locate her husband so the mob boss could kill him.
She would be upset. And he couldn’t explain.
To be honest, Jack had never thought D’Amato’s men would find J.D., based on the information he’d given them. South America was a huge continent. Jack could only assume J.D. hadn’t concealed himself very well.
Jack figured there was only one person J.D. could be certain would hide him, now that he was back in the States: his mother. Since Ann Wade was currently traveling around the country campaigning, J.D. could link up with her anywhere. That is, assuming he could get anywhere near the Texas governor and presidential hopeful, who was protected by both Texas Department of Public Safety officers and Secret Service agents.
It was far more likely J.D. would head to the ranch his mother owned in Midland, Texas. With Ann Wade traveling, the ranch house was probably empty. Midland was flat country, and the ranch house was in the middle of vast acres of land, so it wouldn’t be easy to sneak up on him unawares.
Jack felt sure he’d have better luck finding J.D. in Midland if he looked for him himself, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to be the one to find Kate’s husband. He didn’t imagine J.D. was going to come in without a fight. And he absolutely didn’t want to be the one who killed him.
Kate no longer loved her husband, but since Jack planned to become the twins’ stepfather, he didn’t want to have to tell them someday that he’d killed their father.
He decided to suggest to D’Amato that he have his men look for J.D. at Ann Wade’s ranch, because he was sure the mob boss would already have thought of it for himself. And because Jack hoped eventually to bring J.D. in alive, he would make a call to Ann Wade’s ranch himself to ensure that J.D. knew the hitmen were coming.
There was something much more important he wanted to discuss the next time he saw Dante D’Amato: Wyatt Shaw’s visit to Kate. Maybe D’Amato had some idea why his son had come visiting J.D. Pendleton’s wife.
11
“You should be sleeping.”
Kate turned over in bed so she was facing Shaw. She could see his eyes shining in the soft moonlight that streamed through the wall of sliding doors in his bedroom. One glass door was open, the space covered by a sliding screen, so she could hear crickets chirping and the burble of the waterfall in the courtyard. But those sounds weren’t what was keeping her awake.
“Would you sleep if you were me?” she asked. “I mean, considering the fact that the last woman who closed her eyes in your bed never opened them again?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“If I’d killed her, I wouldn’t have left a body for the police to find.”
That made sense. “I guess the son of a mob boss would know how to hide a body.”
He lifted a sardonic brow. “But you aren’t totally convinced.”
“Your security seems pretty airtight. Maybe you just hadn’t hid the body yet when your maid walked in and found you.”
“I came home and found an unconscious woman in my bed. I checked for a pulse and didn’t find one. That’s the closest I got to her throat.”
“Why did the police arrest you?”
“The question you should be asking is why they let me go.”
Kate was dumbfounded, because it had never occurred to her to ask why the police hadn’t kept Shaw in jail. She’d simply assumed he’d paid some stupendous bail. “Why did they let you go?”
“Because another man’s DNA was found inside that woman—and on the sheets of my bed.”
“Why haven’t the papers published the fact that there’s another suspect?” Kate asked.
“The police don’t know who the real killer is yet. They don’t want to scare him off before they can catch him.”
“His DNA doesn’t match a criminal who’s already in the system?”
“Apparently not.”
“Who could have gotten into your apartment?”
He started to speak. And then didn’t.
“Who?” she persisted.
“Your husband.”
Kate pushed herself upright and grabbed a silk-covered pillow, hugging it to her naked chest. “That’s absurd. That would mean J.D. is back in the States. And that he’s a murderer.”
“Yeah. So?”
That was terrifying news if it was true. “How could J.D. get into your suite? Why would he want to? And why kill that woman?”
Shaw slid a hand under his head to prop himself up and said, “The woman got in by telling the concierge I’d asked her to come.”
“Did you?”
He made a face. “No.”
“But you must have in the past, otherwise the concierge would have known better,” she concluded.
He didn’t confirm or deny. He simply said, “I think J.D. figured out I knew her and paid her to help him get in.”
“You’re guessing about everything,” Kate accused.
Shaw nodded. “Making educated guesses. Yes. I don’t think J.D. intended to strangle the girl, because otherwise he wouldn’t have left his DNA inside her. Maybe she changed her mind about helping him when she realized he was bent on murder, so he had to shut her up. And even if he didn’t manage to kill me, he’d still be making a lot of trouble for me by leaving a murdered woman in my bed.”
“So why aren’t you dead?”
“I had other plans that night that kept me away from home.”
“You slept in some other woman’s bed?”
Again, he didn’t confirm or deny.
“Have you told the police what you suspect?”
His lips twisted ruefully. “I tried. As far as the Houston cops are concerned, Texas Governor Ann Wade Pendleton’s son is a war hero buried in Arlington Cemetery. The governor made sure the investigation of J.D. got shut down before it went anywhere.”
“Why would J.D. want to kill you?” she asked.
“Because I gave the FBI the evidence they needed to start asking questions about his activities in Afghanistan.”
Kate stared at Shaw wide-eyed. “You’re an FBI informant?”
Shaw’s mouth twisted. “The person I wanted to help the FBI take down was my father. J.D. got caught in the same net.”
“How did J.D. find out it was you who sent the FBI after him?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if his mother told him. After my father told her.”
“How did D’Amato find out what you did?”
“He has his own sources of information in the FBI.”
“Why would you want to turn in your own father?” Kate wondered aloud.
“It’s a long story. Suffice it to say, there’s no love lost between me and Dante D’Amato.”
“Ann Wade seemed as surprised by J.D.’s return from the dead as I was,” she mused.
Shaw sighed. “There’s a lot you haven’t been told.”
Kate gripped the pillow tighter, as though it could protect her from anothe
r unexpected blow. “Such as?”
“My father has your mother-in-law in his pocket. He’s been acting the puppeteer for years.”
Kate shook her head in denial. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it? Political campaigns cost money. You aren’t the only one whose pockets J.D. drained. My father was standing there waiting when Ann Wade put out a call for cash.”
Kate felt her body trembling. She turned her naked back to Shaw, then shoved her way off the bed, dropping the pillow behind her. She searched for a white cotton nightgown in her suitcase and slid it down over her body. The simple garment had narrow straps, a ruffle of lace across the bosom and covered her to mid-thigh.
She could feel Shaw’s eyes on her, almost feel the magnetic pull of her attraction to him, urging her to return to bed. Instead, she crossed to the screen door, eased it open and walked out into the night air. She crossed a redbrick patio that led down to the reflecting pool.
Kate wanted to run away from the sordid facts she’d just been told. And from the knowledge of her sexual betrayal—twice in one night—of the man she loved.
It was bad enough that she’d made love to Shaw in the living room. She could almost forgive herself for allowing him to kiss her—and for kissing him back. She’d been curious whether her memories of what two perfect strangers had done together that long-ago night, in bed and out, could possibly be real.
She hadn’t realized how powerful their attraction to each other still was. Hadn’t realized how much she would want to touch him, and to be touched by him. There had been no rational thought involved by the time he joined their bodies.
Mindless. Thoughtless. Helpless.
Stupid. Idiotic. Self-indulgent.
Those words described her behavior the first time they’d made love. But how could she explain letting Shaw make love to her a second time?
Cruel. Disgraceful. Treacherous.
Kate felt ashamed of what she’d done. She wondered if Jack would ever be able to forgive her. Assuming she told him what she’d done. The bigger question was whether she would ever be able to forgive herself. She was still confused by her behavior.
After they’d made love—had sex, she corrected with ruthless honesty—in the living room, Shaw had carried her back to his bedroom. The moment he laid her down in his bed, she’d turned her back on him and curled her body into a fetal ball, still shaken by their lovemaking in the living room.
Lovemaking. She was using euphemisms again.
She couldn’t help it. Because even if she wanted to call what had happened between them sex, there had also been an element of something—a tenderness, a gentleness—in the way Shaw touched her. Except, the passion between them had been so savage, so devastating, that she wondered at her selection of those particular words.
Tender? Gentle? Shaw?
She realized it was the knowledge that he desired her, above all other women, that gave his savage lovemaking its human tenderness. The knowledge that he revered her, above all other women, that made his possession gentle, despite the bruises he’d left on her flesh. And on her soul.
Kate had been drowsing in his bed, struggling against sleep, which hadn’t seemed safe considering the fact that Wyatt Shaw was a suspected murderer, when he’d kissed her naked shoulder.
Naked shoulder.
That was another thing she didn’t understand. Why hadn’t she immediately gotten out of bed when he’d brought her to his bedroom from the living room and put on a nightgown? Then she would have had some protection from the exquisite sensation when, as she was drifting in a state somewhere between waking and sleeping, he’d cupped her naked breast in his palm.
Why hadn’t she slapped his hand away? Why hadn’t she done something—anything—to stop him? She’d allowed him to caress her. To send shivers down her spine. To awaken her body to pleasures she’d never imagined possible. Again.
She’d been unable to stop herself from wanting him. Again.
And succumbing to temptation.
What did it mean?
Kate had believed, when she was nineteen and met thirty-two-year-old Jack McKinley, that they were soul mates. Which was why she’d been so devastated when he’d walked away from her without looking back. The most he’d been willing to concede was that there had been an attraction between them.
He’d told her that he’d been roped into watching out for her by her uncle North, and that the time he’d spent with her had merely been a job.
Which made her attempt at seducing him by baring her breasts to him a humiliating memory.
He’d told her he was done with the job. And with her.
She’d promised to make him eat those words.
Kate hadn’t seen Jack again until her parents’ wedding day later that summer. As her mother’s bridesmaid, Kate had been dressed in a full-length, peach-colored chiffon dress that looked like something she might have worn to the prom. Jack had called her “cute as a button.”
She could remember their conversation as though it had happened yesterday.
“I’m not a child, Jack. Don’t talk to me like I am one.”
“I was hoping to avoid you,” he’d admitted.
When he made no move to touch her, to take her in her arms, she’d found herself fighting tears. It was a battle she lost. She’d turned to run, but Jack caught her. She’d clung to him, trembling, waiting to hear words of love.
Instead, he’d said, “I’m no good for you, Kate.”
She’d answered naively, honestly, “I love you, Jack.”
“I know.”
With those two words, instead of the three she’d wanted to hear, Kate had felt the death knell to all her dreams of a life with Jack.
He’d tipped her chin up and tried to explain. “It wouldn’t work, Kate.”
She’d known little and cared less about Jack’s troubled life before she’d met him. She’d preferred to ignore the fact that his fabulous career as a pro football quarterback had gone down in flames when he was accused of shaving points in the Super Bowl. Or that his restaurant in Austin, the Longhorn Grille, had gone belly-up for unpaid taxes.
All she knew was that he was giving up on any hope of a relationship between them before they’d even tried. “I don’t care about anything you’ve done. I only care about being with you.”
“You’re being naive, Kate. You have no idea—”
“I love you, Jack! Please. Please—”
He’d stopped her pleas with a kiss. A closemouthed kiss. The kind you gave someone you were placating.
She’d moaned against his mouth, wanting more.
He’d opened his mouth to her in a searing kiss—only to grasp her shoulders and force them apart. “I’m not the white knight you think I am,” he’d said in a harsh voice.
She’d protested again that she didn’t care what he’d done in the past, didn’t care about his unsavory reputation.
“You’re too young to know what you want,” he’d replied. “And I’m old enough to know better. This isn’t going to happen, Kate.”
“Why not?” she’d demanded. “You know you want me.”
“That’s lust. Not love.”
She’d been appalled to hear him say such a thing. “I don’t believe you. You do love me. I know you do.”
“If I did, that would be all the more reason to keep my distance.”
If I did…?
That hadn’t made sense to her, and she’d told him so.
He’d tried another argument. “You deserve better.”
“I want you!” she’d protested.
“We don’t always get what we want,” he’d said flatly. “Or what we deserve.”
Then she’d made her threat. “I’m not going to wait around for you to come to your senses, Jack. I’ve got a life to live, and I’m going to live it. You’ll be sorry—”
“I’m already sorry I showed up here,” he’d said. “I’m outta here.”
“Go!” she’d cried to his retreating back.
She was panting with fury and frustration and tears were streaming down her cheeks. “See if I care!” she’d shouted after him. “Don’t expect me to come running after you. Grayhawks don’t beg. Or plead. Or go down on bended knee for anyone.”
He’d never hesitated. He’d never looked back.
She wondered now why she hadn’t taken him at his word. Wondered now why she’d been so surprised when he’d married his high school sweetheart within the next year.
Then, last fall, Jack McKinley had once again entered her life as a bodyguard, this time for the Texas governor’s grandchildren—her children. He’d been a man at his lowest ebb, having just lost his wife and son, who’d moved to Kansas while he waited for his divorce to become final.
And she’d been a desperately unhappy woman.
She’d been the widow of a man she’d no longer loved by the time he was killed—or supposedly killed—in an ammo dump explosion in Afghanistan. A woman with two fatherless, rambunctious sons. A woman exhausted by the emotional demands of a job she loved. A woman who’d spent the crippling months since her husband’s death leaning on a man three years her junior, her best friend and uncle Breed Grayhawk.
She’d been desperate and unhappy enough to suggest that she and Jack comfort each other by “having sex.” “Making love” wasn’t a possibility, she’d said, because she no longer loved him.
Jack had brutally rejected her offer.
“If you’re looking for a fuck buddy, I’m not your man.”
Whereupon Kate had confessed that she’d never stopped loving him. And pleaded for forgiveness.
He’d taken her in his arms and kissed her the way she’d imagined him kissing her for so many years. They’d been on their way to the bedroom to consummate their relationship when Jack had been called away.
They had never made love. J.D. had turned up that same night, making it clear she was not a widow, as she’d believed. And she’d used her husband’s reappearance as an excuse not to pursue her relationship with Jack.
None of that had mattered with Shaw. It had never even come up. He’d touched her. And she’d melted in his arms.
“It’s a lovely night,” Shaw said into the quiet.
Speak of the devil…“Don’t touch me,” she said sharply. She’d warned him away because she feared that, despite her feelings of shame, she wouldn’t be able to resist him.
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