by Nancy Gideon
"Mmm. I'm sure you were." No sign of an angry Jack Chaney. His voice held a touch of amused tolerance as he carried her inside. And since he didn't shut the door behind them, Tessa followed, as eager to see the interior as she was to learn the severity of Rose's injury.
She stood in the soaring foyer and simply gawked.
To create the illusion of a floating timber frame and unfettered height, the living room Jack carried Rose into consisted of a wraparound wall of windows on three sides with sturdy beams high above to anchor the floor-to-ceiling multipaned glass together. The focal point was a stone fireplace on the far end, built into the window wall so the massive chimney was visible outside.
Arranged comfortably in front of the yawning hearth on a black-and-white, cow-print wool rug were plump suede chairs facing an ultramodern couch of dark ebony wood with a unique trim of rope across its arms and back. In the center of the rug was a low table of the same dark wood, its top made of woven leather strips. An eclectic selection of art books were stacked to one side next to a hand-beaten brass bowl.
And standing in the corner surrounded by glass was a high-powered camera on a tripod with a lens big enough to see the rings around Saturn. Only Tessa had a sneaking suspicion that Jack wasn't studying the stars. It was pointed toward the stream … and her living quarters.
With consummate care, Jack sat Rose on one of the overstuffed chairs and knelt in front of her on the rug. With the gentleness Tessa well remembered, he unlaced the girl's hiking boot and rolled down her sock. He probed the already swelling ankle, stopping when the child sucked in a pained breath.
"Well, I don't think it's broken," he pronounced. "Some ice and some pillows underneath it ought to do the trick. And no sneaking out after dark to spy on our company."
"Miss Tessa isn't company. And she has a kitty."
Even Jack couldn't think of a logical way to argue around that.
Just then Constanza rushed into the room in a flurry of hurried Spanish and anxious clucking. She was older up close than Tessa had supposed, her features a sepia network of hard work and premature worries beneath her severely styled hair. Her simple blue skirt and beige cotton blouse were spotless and crisply pressed. And she wore the scent of beeswax and lemon Lysol like a fine cologne. But as proudly as she wore the badges of her profession, it clearly wasn't her priority. There was no mistaking the love she had for the child who was not her own.
"It's all right, Connie. It's nothing serious. Just a twisted ankle," Jack explained with a calm he hoped to pass to the agitated woman.
"Tweested?" Her eyebrows puckered as she wrung her detergent-chafed hands in pantomime. "Ah. Tweested. Yes?"
"Yes. She'll be fine as soon as you tuck her into bed."
"No," Rose wailed. "Mr. Jack, you take me." She emphasized her demand by flinging her arms around his neck in a tight squeeze.
And then Tessa saw it and her heart broke for the child. Although his embrace was gentle and he didn't push away, Tessa watched Jack freeze by slow degrees. It started in his eyes, their soulful darkness taking on a flat opaque sheen. Though he was still smiling, his lips were thin and the gesture without warmth. Though he hadn't physically moved, he was suddenly a world away. And Tessa wasn't the only one who felt that abrupt and intentional distancing.
"Let Connie take you. I need to talk to Ms. Tessa."
Without looking up into that austere face, Rose leaned back, releasing her hold on him as if she'd done something unforgivable but wasn't quite certain what it was. As the girl allowed Constanza to lift her up, Tessa got a brief yet unforgettable glimpse of a pain that mirrored her own childhood, an unrequited longing for the loving tenderness her own father lavished on his sons and wife but never displayed toward her. And she'd never known what she'd done to provoke that chilly almost imperceptible barrier.
Why hadn't her father loved her?
Why couldn't Jack love this needy little girl he'd brought to live in his home?
As Constanza carried the girl away and Jack straightened, his features a mask over whatever emotions he felt, Tessa risked pushing into the off-limits of his personal life.
"She's a beautiful child."
His mouth quirked into a faint enigmatic smile. "A bit too precocious for her own good sometimes." Then he turned to Tessa and an unexpected heat lit his dark gaze. The difference between it and the chill of moments before was like a sudden geothermal thaw. "A bit like you, Ms. D'Angelo."
A criticism or compliment? Hard to tell.
Tessa stood at the edge of the communal area. She hadn't been invited inside Jack's home and to make herself comfortable was a bit presumptuous. But still, she wasn't ready to leave. She'd agreed to stay out of his personal business but now that she was here, she meant to take advantage of the intrusion. She smiled back.
"And you like that about us, don't you?"
He didn't answer but he didn't deny it, either. "Want to tell me how the two of you chanced to meet?"
"You might say we were both testing our boundaries."
"Aren't boundaries placed for a reason?"
She pursed her lips. "Perhaps. But if they're not tested every once in a while, how do we know they're needed?"
That dark smoldery stare passed leisurely over her body leaving a blistery trail of warmth in its wake.
"I thought a nice girl like you respected boundaries and played by the rules?"
"What makes you think I'm such a nice girl?"
He laughed, a big, booming sound filled with an insulting amount of mirth. "Oh, I think you're the poster child for nice girl. You work hard, you play fair, you don't cheat on your taxes. You probably don't even take the little shampoo bottles from the hotel."
She didn't. Her eyes narrowed. He made it sound so … unappealing. "That's me in a nutshell. How perceptive of you, Mr. Chaney. A nice boring girl leading her straight-arrow dull life." It was her life. That's why she suddenly felt so angry with him for pushing it into her face.
Another laugh, this one low and provocative, perhaps. "I said nice, not boring. You, Tessa, are not boring. Not by a long shot." That last was said in a slightly deeper register, creating a curious response in her belly.
What was she thinking? She was a nice girl and Jack Chaney was definitely not the kind of guy with whom she should be parrying innuendoes. Was that what they were doing? The notion shocked her from her indignation. Jack was flirting with her and she was enjoying it. Immensely.
How long had it been since she'd had a playful exchange with a man? Her brutal, all-inclusive hours had precluded a social life unless it was business-oriented. And when she was on the job, whether behind the desk or a glass of champagne, she was working. No time for fun for this nice dull girl. The men in her field were too caught up in their own ambitions and those who weren't were intimidated by hers. The rest were on the other side of the aisle in the courtroom. She didn't date. She didn't flirt. She didn't even think about those things. And she didn't know what she was missing until this gorgeous man with his mercenary heart challenged her placid existence and revved up her libido into a growling overdrive.
It was fun, this verbal sparring. And she bet if Jack Chaney ever decided to shed his cloak of uninvolvement where she was concerned, they could have a whole lot of fun, indeed. She thought of his big, warm hands and the things he might be persuaded to do with them. Her thighs clenched. Her breasts tingled. Good Lord, she was ripe for a little naughty fun. And with Chaney, there was no question that it would be no strings attached. Maybe that's what she needed right now. To connect physically, if not permanently, with another human being. She was so tired of being alone, of being excluded. The idea of closeness, even on this most basic of levels, was an unbearable enticement. If only the man could be convinced to mix business with pleasure.
She was lousy at seduction. Her idea of sexy was shoes that didn't pinch and a writ of habeas corpus. Her experience in the field of intimacy consisted of two one-night stands and too much alcohol to think better of it.
And neither of those forays had impressed her enough to coax her back for a second round. But Jack, she knew instinctively, would be impressive. And then she would walk away. They were both adults and if it was what they both wanted for the moment, why not?
Why not, indeed?
Thinking of Jack beneath the starchy sheets in her narrow bunkhouse bed lacked romance but… She glanced covertly down the hall, wondering what his room might look like. Wondering what Jack might look like without the black T-shirt and chinos he wore. Sleek, controlled, she imagined. Hard. She shivered.
The sound of Jack's cell phone ringing made her jump right out of those mentally tangled sheets. He took one beat, then two, to look away from her, his gaze not quite impassive. Speculative, maybe, but still cautious. Then he whipped out the cell and flipped it open.
"Chaney."
Tessa expelled the breath she hadn't known she was holding. Her heart hammered, sending tidal surges of need and desire through her system. Even her toes were curling. As soon as he finished his call, she would test her inexperienced powers of seduction. And if Jack was willing…
"Stan? I can hardly hear you. Bad connection. Where are you calling from?"
Stan. Tessa's mind snapped immediately back to business. "What's going on?"
Jack angled away from her, cupping his free hand over the phone as if to amplify the reception. "Stan? What was that? I can't—"
A long, tense pause, then Jack closed the phone. When he turned to her, Tessa's skin broke out in a cold gooseflesh. The intensity in his expression warned of bad things, of things she wasn't prepared to hear.
"What?" she whispered.
"I'm not sure." His tone was terse, professional and frightening. "Stan was calling from Jackson."
"The prison?" Where the man who condemned her father was cooling his heels for the next ten to fifteen. "Is this about Johnnie O'?"
"I didn't get much. Other than Stan said there was some trouble. I don't know what kind, but we'd better prepare for it anyway."
Before she could ask what he had planned, he strode briskly down the hall only to return moments later with a sleepy Rose in his arms and an anxious Constanza trailing behind him.
"Follow me," he ordered Tessa. She fell in without question.
He marched them through the house to a room with fieldstone walls and a high, wood-beamed turret ceiling from which hung an impressive bronze wagon-wheel chandelier. Sectional leather seating made a cozy horseshoe and the opposite wall was solid books. Everything from leather-bound classics to Sam Spade and Louis L'Amour. Though there was plenty of light, Tessa noted that there was no window.
Jack carefully deposited Rose on one of the sofa sections and pulled a colorful woven blanket around her. She snuggled down against the rolled arm of the couch and was instantly asleep. The bliss of youth.
But Tessa was wide awake and wired.
"What's going on?"
"Stay here while I find out."
He stepped outside the doorway and pulled a no-nonsense steel pocket door across the opening, shutting the three of them behind it. There was no dramatic click but Tessa was certain they were sealed in just the same. Was this his version of a panic room? But then, Jack didn't panic, he prepared. When Jack Chaney prepared for trouble, he went all the way.
Constanza settled on the seat next to the sleeping child, placing a reassuring hand upon the girl's shoulder. She didn't look alarmed. She began to hum a low melodic tune. That calm didn't reassure Tessa. Too restless to sit, the space too small for her to pace, she positioned herself in front of the floor-to-ceiling library and made herself read each and every title. Steinbeck, Hemingway, Erica Jong. Okay, it was an interesting collection. Just read and don't think and let Chaney do his job. Which at the moment, she realized, was to protect them.
Had O'Casey escaped? Had threats been made against her?
Don't second-guess. Wait for facts. Her father's famous saying. Wait for the facts.
Even when the facts remained maddeningly out of reach?
She wished for a little of Robert D'Angelo's patience as she hugged her arms around herself. That was one of the skills she'd never quite mastered to his satisfaction. If you hurry, you miss something, he was always chastising. She glanced at the solid steel door. Well, she was missing something now and she needed to know what it was and how it concerned her.
Minutes ticked by. She was on the fifth row of titles. He had them separated by both subject and author name. Another time she might have delighted in selecting from the wealth of fiction and biographies. But for now, her concentration was strained just focusing on the few words on each well-tended spine. Margaret Mitchell? Her brows soared.
The pocket door opened, sliding almost soundlessly back into the wall. Jack met her questioning gaze briefly before turning his attention to Rose's aunt.
"Take her back to her room, Connie."
The woman was satisfied, but Tessa, chafing with curiosity, could barely contain it until the two of them were alone. Jack wasn't much for explanations when there were orders to be given.
"Get your things together."
"Why?"
"You're moving up here to the main house."
"Why?"
The delay her insistent questions caused made him frown. He wasn't used to being asked for reasons and pausing to give them obviously irritated him.
"Stan was meeting with Johnnie O'Casey tonight. He'd been trying to wrangle a face-to-face all week."
"What did Johnnie O' tell him? Did he say who paid him to frame my father?"
"O'Casey won't be telling anyone anything. He was found hanging in his cell ten minutes before he was supposed to meet Stan."
Tessa processed that information, her features shifting from anger to frustration and finally to a fearful understanding. Someone hadn't wanted O'Casey to talk. That meant he'd had something to say. Tessa realized that to Jack, that meant one thing.
The danger she was in was very real.
* * *
Chapter 6
« ^ »
She woke from a deep, sound sleep to a flood of daylight. Where was she?
Clutching the bright Navaho blanket to her chest, Tessa sat up and peered around, memory clearing like the fog from the stand of pines outside her window. She was in the cowboy room at Chaney's main house. Her last thought, as she'd fallen wearily into the embracing feather sea floating on a carved-wood bed frame, was that Roy Rogers would have felt right at home. The rustic Western influence she'd noticed in the other rooms was distilled in the small corner guest room, right down to its hand-hewn square log walls, red, beige and black quilt-patterned woven rug and rack of antlers. Her belongings were stacked on a barrel-style chair in the corner. She'd been too exhausted in mind and body to put them away last night.
Johnnie O'Casey, the man who might have shed light on her father's murder, was dead.
She remembered him from his trial for possession with intent to distribute. It had been his third strike and he'd known he was going down. He'd sat at the defense table, his scrawny body swimming in an orange jumpsuit. But even knowing he was headed for hard time, he'd smiled. He'd stared defiantly at her father as he'd made his opening arguments and he'd smiled like a Cheshire cat. An I-know-something-you-don't-know smile. There had been solid evidence against him and that smirk had bothered Tessa throughout the first few days of testimony.
Then she'd understood when O'Casey took the stand. He hadn't been smiling. He'd looked nervous and contrite and wired from the lack of narcotics. As his slick defense attorney led him through the unfortunate choices he'd made to end up where he was, he'd dropped the other shoe. He'd been speaking quietly about the network that had provided him with a cut version of the high-end cocaine he could only dream of moving on the shadowed streets where his customers hid in hallways. He'd told slowly, succinctly, how he'd been waiting for a delivery when he happened to witness a drop-off and pay-off. The pay-off was made by parties he hadn't recognized. No amount of barga
ining could make him name that name. But as a smile crept out to tease and dance around his thin lips, his red-rimmed gaze had flickered to the prosecutor's table and he'd admitted to getting a good look at the man who'd delivered the China White. He'd know that man anywhere. In fact, he'd been looking right at him.
To prevent a mistrial, Tessa's father had withdrawn from the case. Immediately their lives had become a media circus with Johnnie O' as gleeful ringmaster. They hadn't been able to break his insistent story, especially when his pregnant junkie girlfriend had backed up peripheral details. She hadn't seen the exchange but she'd provided collaborative testimony. Having had his say, O'Casey had gone docilely to prison and the girlfriend had disappeared to places unknown.
But it had been enough to bring down Robert D'Angelo's pristine career.
Despair swamped over Tessa. What now? How was she going to make a case when the witness who gave perjured testimony could never recant his damning tale? No coincidence that his "suicide" should happen just before he was to meet with Stan. Suicide. Like her father. Assisted suicide, no doubt.
A scratching on the slightly open bedroom door had her patting the mattress. She expected Tinker to come bounding in, eager for breakfast. She didn't expect him to arrive wrapped in a child's cradling embrace. He looked fat and sassy, well fed and well content with the attention.
"Hola, Miss Tessa. I find your kitty. I give him his breakfast already."
Tension flowed out of Tessa at the sight of the girl's beautiful smile. "Good morning. I'm sure Tinker was glad for the company."
As Rose nestled her cheek into the cat's soft fur, Tessa could see that Tinker wasn't the only one hungry for companionship. She thought about the child out here in the middle of nowhere and wondered.
"How's your ankle this morning?"
"It feels better." And to prove it, she moved across the room, slowly, haltingly, but without any obvious signs of pain. She perched on the edge of the bed, reluctant to set Tinker down even for an instant. Content with the situation himself, the big cat purred like a jackhammer.
