Hot Property

by Sherryl Woods

  Molly managed a faint smile as she ran her fingers through her son’s hair. “I wouldn’t budge out of this apartment right now if you paid me,” she said.

  She did, however, persuade Brian to take a bath so that she could shower, untangle her shoulder-length hair, and change. She had too much pride to compete, even just mentally, with that sultry-voiced woman while wearing a faded one-size-fits-all T-shirt with a tiger on the front.

  As soon as she’d dressed, she put on a pot of coffee and sat on the sofa to wait, Brian right beside her. They talked about everything except the call that had scared him so.

  Michael arrived in far less time than she would have anticipated. It was the first time she’d seen him in anything other than his impeccably tailored suits. He’d obviously grabbed the first thing at hand, jeans and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’d combed his hair with his fingers, a sure sign of his rush and his nervousness. Worried lines furrowed his brow. There was an ashen hue beneath his olive complexion and dark stubble lined his jaw. Under other circumstances, she might have indulged in several fantasies about the sexy masculinity of his slightly disheveled look.

  The scrutiny he subjected both of them to was thorough. He sat opposite them, legs spread, elbows on knees as he leaned forward to study them intently.

  “Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

  Molly’s response was succinct. “There were more calls during the night.”

  “How many?”

  “Five.”

  “Hang-ups?”

  “At first.”

  “At first? Why didn’t you call right away?”

  “I thought he’d give up.”

  He bit back a lecture, but not a low, heartfelt curse. “But he didn’t, right? What happened next?”

  “I said I was recording the calls for the police and the caller got nasty.”

  “You said the caller. Male? Female?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Maybe Brian could.”

  “Jesus, you let him answer the phone?” he muttered accusingly. “What were you thinking of?”

  “I was asleep,” she said defensively. “He got to it before I could pick up.”

  His gaze shifted to Brian and his tone immediately became gentler, more soothing. “Okay, so you took one of the calls?”

  Brian nodded, still clinging to Molly’s hand. “Like Mom said, she was still asleep.”

  “What did the caller say?”

  “That Mom would end up like Mr. Winecroft, if she didn’t stay away from the cops.”

  Michael held out his hand and Brian moved to him. “That must have been pretty scary. I know you’d probably rather not think about it, but could you try real hard to remember if it sounded like a man’s voice or a woman’s?”

  Brian bit his lower lip the way he always did when he was really concentrating on something. “It was real soft, like a whisper, but I think it was a man.”

  “Had you ever heard the voice before?”

  Brian shook his head with certainty. “Never. You won’t let anything happen to Mom, will you?”

  “Absolutely not, I promise. Now, how about giving your mom and me a couple of minutes alone?”

  Brian looked at her uncertainly. Molly said, “It’s okay, Brian. Go on and fix yourself some cereal and a glass of juice. It’ll be time to leave for school soon.”

  Alarmed blue eyes met hers. “I can’t go to school, Mom. Who’ll protect you?”

  “I will,” Michael reassured him. “I think going to school is a very good idea. I’ll drive you over myself.”

  Brian looked torn. “Do you have a police car with a siren and everything?”

  “Nope. Sorry. Just a Jeep. I do have a siren, but it’s only for emergencies.”

  “Maybe this is an emergency,” Brian said hopefully.

  Michael considered the suggestion seriously. “Maybe it does qualify at that,” he said. “Now get moving, so we won’t be late.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay to send him to school?” Molly asked as soon as Brian had left the room.

  “That’s the best place for him. I’ll speak with his teacher and the principal, just so they’re on the lookout in case anyone hangs around the building who shouldn’t be there. The thing to remember is that the caller threatened you, not him. Exactly how much snooping around did you do on your own yesterday? More than I know about?”

  “None after you left.” At his skeptical expression, she said, “I swear it.”

  “Then let this serve as a warning. You’ve already made somebody very nervous. No more conversations with the neighbors, no more secret trips to the scene of the crime.”

  She shot a startled gaze at him. She’d only walked by to see if the crime scene tape had been removed. It hadn’t been. “How did you know about that?”

  “They pay me for my astute observations.”

  “You weren’t anywhere near here.”

  He shrugged. “Astute observation. Lucky guess. In my business they pretty much add up to the same thing. Remember, sweetheart, I have years of experience at this. You have none. It’s no contest. I’ll outguess you every time.”

  “Dammit, we’re not playing guessing games. The killer is threatening me.”

  “Because you’re an easy target. Let me be the target. It’s what I get paid for.” He leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Please, Molly, let it alone. If not for me, then do it for your son. I know what it’s like to be a scared kid, to be terrified that you’ll never see your mother again.”

  She heard the surprisingly ragged emotion in his voice and knew that he was telling her the truth. Maybe she just needed to keep him talking. Maybe she needed to understand him, needed to understand this pull that had been there between them despite all the superficial differences and whatever his current involvement was with the woman on the phone. Mostly she needed to trust him.

  “How do you know something like that?” she asked. “Did something happen to your mother?”

  “Not exactly.”

  For a minute she thought he wasn’t going to say anything more. Something about the memories hurt him deeply. She could see the pain in the depths of his eyes, the hint of vulnerability that after all these years hadn’t gone away.

  “Thirty years ago I was just a kid in Cuba,” he began slowly, his voice quiet. “I lived with my mother and her family. We had no idea where my father was. He was an American GI stationed at Guantánamo. My mother wasn’t even sure of his name. She just remembered it was something Irish, so I wound up being Michael O’Hara, instead of Miguel Javier.”

  Suddenly Molly understood why there were so many incongruities in his personality. The flawless Spanish and unaccented English. The swaggering Latin persona, modified by an intriguing sensitivity. Though he’d never known his father, still he was caught between the cultures.

  “I don’t remember much about that time,” he said, a haunted, faraway expression in his eyes, “except that I was part of a big family and that I was loved. Then one day in 1962 my mother took me to the airport and put me on a plane for Miami. You’ve probably read about those flights, Operation Pedro Pan, organized by the Catholic Church in Miami and two people inside Cuba. Families packed up their kids and sent them away to save them from Castro, to give them a better life. Some of us were sent to relatives we’d never even met. Some went to live with strangers. Fourteen thousand in all, mostly young boys. I was barely five.”

  Molly tried to imagine what it would have been like for a small boy to be separated from everyone he knew and loved. It was impossible. She had grown up with a warm and loving family of her own. Though she sometimes felt her parents’ emphasis on high society had been misguided, she’d never known the kind of loneliness or fear that Michael was describing.

  “It was three years before I saw my mother again, before she was able to leave Cuba on one of the freedom flights,” Michael said. “For most of those three endless years I hated her for what she’d done. I was scared and lonely, even thoug
h Tía Pilar was good to me. It wasn’t until the day my mother arrived in Miami, until I saw how she had been aged by the pain of letting me go, that I realized she had done it because she loved me. You see, for the longest time I thought she’d sent me away just to be rid of me, because she didn’t want me anymore.”

  There was a telltale sheen in the brown eyes that clashed with hers. “Don’t ever intentionally do anything that could separate you from Brian. Okay?”

  Molly couldn’t seem to swallow past the lump in her throat. She simply nodded. “I’ll do whatever you say,” she said finally.

  “Go to work. Follow your normal routine. Avoid discussing the murder with anyone. Most of all, don’t speculate about what might have happened. Do you have a friend you two could stay with for a few days?”

  “Yes, but I’d rather not. It hasn’t been that long since the divorce. The move out of our house shook Brian’s life up enough. I don’t want to disrupt things for him again unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “Where’s his father? Could he stay with him for a few days?”

  “Not a good idea,” she said tersely.

  “But feasible?”

  “Things would have to be a lot worse than they are right now for me to turn Brian over to my ex-husband.”

  “Is there a problem there?”

  “Not really. He’s just looking for an excuse to say I’m an unfit mother. He has this idea that a boy should be raised by his father so he won’t turn out to be a sissy. Real macho stuff. I mean, maybe he does have a point about a boy needing a male influence. I’m not denying him visitation rights. I’m going to make sure Brian gets involved in Scouts and Little League and all that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe Brian would like to play soccer,” Michael suggested. “I coach a team. Should I ask him?”

  As soon as the impulsive words were out of his mouth, he looked as though he wanted to take them back. For her own part, Molly considered the wisdom of allowing her life to become any more entangled with Michael’s. Then she thought of Brian and how thrilled he would be to be asked to play on a team. Whatever second thoughts either of them had, her son’s happiness had to come first.

  “I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said.

  He nodded briskly. “I’ll take care of it, then. The boys seem to have a good time. A lot of them don’t have fathers around. I know what that’s like. This gives me a way to pay back a little of what I’ve been given.”

  “Given?” she said. “It sounds to me as though you’ve earned whatever you have.”

  “I’m living in this country. That was my mother’s gift. Knowing what I do now about life in Cuba, how could I not be grateful? I’ll talk to Brian and see how he feels about it.”

  Now that Molly had approved, it was between him and Brian. That was what he was telling her. It had nothing to do with her. Okay, she got the message. She could be as generous and understanding as any mother when it came to her son. If Michael asked her to bake cookies for the team, though, she was going to cram them down his throat.

  “Do you still live with your family?” she asked, thinking again of that sweet, musical voice on the phone.

  “No,” he said tersely, his face closed again. Despite the morning’s revelations, he was shutting her out, distancing himself from any hint that what was growing between the two of them might be personal. Though she could tell he knew exactly what she was asking, there would be no elaboration, no explanation. She supposed he didn’t owe her one, but a little clarification would have set the record straight once and for all.

  Then again, maybe she didn’t want to know. Things between them were complicated enough. Michael O’Hara’s secrets were none of her business.

  Naturally, however, the fact that he had secrets at all made her more curious about him than ever. Perversity, thy name is woman! Whoever’d said that had summed up her life fairly accurately.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Molly did her best to forget all about Michael and the murder. She didn’t succeed worth a damn in either case. As a result her temper was frayed. When a producer called at midmorning with some petty annoyance about a location for his TV movie, she uncharacteristically bit his head off.

  “I have a murder of my own to worry about. I don’t have time to deal with yours. Leave the body in the Everglades for all I care.”

  Vince overheard her and grabbed his own extension. “Sorry, Greg. Molly’s under a lot of stress just now. Let me help. What do you need?”

  She knew she ought to be grateful. Instead, she was merely irritated that Vince, of all people, was suddenly the voice of reason in the office. When he’d soothed Greg’s ruffled feathers, he hung up and stepped into her office. He lingered near the door, probably so he could flee if things got too tense.

  “You okay?” he inquired cautiously.

  “No. I feel so darned helpless. I ought to be doing something, but Michael …”

  His brows rose suggestively. “Michael, is it?”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Vince.”

  “Hey, I saw the way the man looked at you the other day. What’s the story? Is he single? Go for it, Molly. You’re not getting any younger.”

  She groaned. “Twenty-nine is hardly ancient and I don’t need you as my social life guru.”

  “Who better to give you advice than a man-about-town such as myself?”

  “Vince, the kind of relationships you have I’m better off without. Has the word commitment ever crossed your lips?”

  “Heaven forbid,” he said, looking horrified. “That doesn’t mean it’s not okay for some people. Boring people. Dead people.”

  Despite herself, Molly smiled, albeit weakly. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “But cute, right? Now about your cop, you have to send him the right signals.” He began to warm to his subject. “I mean, it does get a little complicated since he’s investigating this murder and all, but once that’s wrapped up, it should be clear sailing.”

  “He has a live-in girl friend.”

  “That could be tricky,” he said as if it were no more than a minor inconvenience. “Are you sure? Did he tell you that?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t. I called at dawn. Never mind why,” she said, when Vince started to interrupt. “She answered.”

  “Could have been a housekeeper. Could have been a one-night stand. Did you ask?”

  “More or less.”

  “And?”

  “In essence, he said to mind my own business.”

  “In essence,” he mimicked. “What does that mean? You women are all alike. You get bent out of shape over something instead of just asking straight out. You gotta clarify things. The look I saw in that man’s eyes the other day was not the look of a man who is committed elsewhere.”

  “So his attention wanders. Do I need that in my life? No.” She said it adamantly, but she wondered. Did she really want anything more than a casual flirtation? Not really. However, there was no need for Vince to know that. It might give him ideas.

  “But …” he said.

  “No but’s. Attraction isn’t love. Chemistry isn’t commitment. And I’d like to drop this matter now. Go play golf or something.”

  Vince sighed heavily, his expression one of disappointment. “Think it over, Molly. You want the advice of an expert, all you have to do is ask.”

  That afternoon after going home early again Molly couldn’t shake Vince’s observation about Michael’s interest in her. She kept telling herself he’d been mistaken, that Michael had made it clear he would open his heart to her son, but not to her. Even so, with Brian in his room doing homework she had plenty of time to stew over the ambiguities. Wasted effort, she knew. She’d be better off trying to figure out the killer. She found her list and added a few notes. There wasn’t much.

  She was still at the dining room table an hour later, lingering over a second cup of coffee, her tuna salad untouched. She was going over the list of suspects
for the fourth time, when the front door burst open. Before Molly could panic, Liza Hastings breezed in, key in hand, an indignant expression on her face and her red hair standing up in a trendy flattop that had been moussed into place. Fortunately she had the perfect gamine face to carry off the style and the friendly, fearless personality to carry off barging in unannounced.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded, flopping into the chair across from Molly and putting her bare feet onto the seat of another chair. Her toenails today had been painted a deep bloodred, perhaps in honor of the murder. Liza tended toward dramatic statements.