He nodded solemnly.
“All right.” She gave a rundown of how the first patients who had trickled into Gilpin Hospital from the small town outside Denver had turned into a deluge. How she had been the infectious disease specialist on call when the intake had begun. How she had done a workup on each patient, ordered tests, prescribed treatment. All the stuff she should have done over the week of the epidemic. “The tests showed influenza. And despite all the rumors I’m sure you’ve heard, I wasn’t negligent. Period.”
She watched his face. Despite his intense concentration on what she said, there was no indication as to whether he believed a word. She wanted some response, damn it. Some sign that would reveal whether he was like the people who pretended to accept her story but still spread lies about her. “Do you believe me?” she demanded.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah,” she lied.
“Yeah?” Now she wished she hadn’t gotten a reaction from him, for the one she got now was skepticism—how could he tilt just one of his blond brows that way?
She wanted to touch it. Smooth it… Get him to believe her. Believe in her.
“Where’s the damn coffee?” she demanded, standing abruptly. “Isn’t it ready yet?”
“I’ll check.” He rose, too.
“No.” She realized she was contradicting herself. “Don’t you dare leave this room until you tell me who you are and why you’re asking so many questions.”
Now, when she didn’t want him to smile, he did. She wanted to shove his amusement right back into those perfect teeth. Down the long throat with the prominent Adam’s apple.
“Okay,” he said, “but it’s one of those situations that if I tell you, you’ve got to keep your mouth closed about it or I’ll have to close it for you. Can I trust you?”
“What do you think?” she retorted. Was he joking—or was it a real threat?
“Can I?” One stride brought him close to her. He gripped her shoulders gently in her long-sleeved blouse, but his hands burned right through, as if her arms were naked. His gaze captured hers, stared as if his hold on her was as accurate as a lie detector, and her eyes provided the reading. Maybe they did.
“Yes,” she whispered. Then, much too hoarsely, she said, “Believe me…”
Time stopped. Everything seemed to stop—except for the needy sensations deep inside her as his mouth muttered something unintelligible, then lowered to hers.
Were his lips also testing her credibility? At first they were soft, exploring tentatively, nibbling. Tasting.
And then they were devouring hers. Had she passed his test?
She didn’t care. All she wanted was more of him. She pressed closer, reveling in the sensation of his solid, hungry body against hers. Feeling the straining hardness at her belly. She moaned. Wanted more. Wanted—
He pulled back. His breathing was ragged, and he still held her arms. “Whoa,” he said with a small laugh. “That’s what I was told to say when it’s time to hold my horses.”
Bemused, she did nothing but stare for a moment. She blinked, then took a step away from him. She had to regain her composure. “What are you talking about?” she said, wishing her tone was more commanding than perplexed.
“Before we both do something we regret, I need to answer some of your questions.”
“About time.” She crossed her arms over her chest, as if to ward off the vulnerability she now felt. “Why are you so interested in me and my work? And the fire?”
“Because,” he said, “I’m an investigator for Investigations, Confidential and Undercover. ICU is a private investigation agency, Kelley.”
Her insides constricted. Oh, it was no surprise. She’d suspected something like that. But—
“I’m an arson investigator by trade,” he continued. “Working for a client I can’t disclose. Among other things, I’m at Gilpin Hospital to determine whether you set the fire in the records room, and if so, why. And now there’s something else I need to look into.”
“What?” Kelley was afraid to ask.
“If you are innocent, why did someone want to kill you tonight?”
“SO YOU HANDLED the epidemic just as you should have,” Shawn said to Kelley a short while later, crossing one leg over the other as he pretended to relax into the corner of the sofa. “And that was the end of it?”
He knew she had more questions but he’d needed a break, so he had gone into the kitchen to pour their coffee. Now, he was back in his living room. Its smallness hadn’t mattered before, when the place just contained him, but now his forced proximity to Kelley was disconcerting.
After that urge for a kiss had erupted inside him, he wasn’t sure that even the full length of the Royal Flush ranch would have been enough distance between them to give him comfort.
“That was the end of it,” she confirmed, but she took a sip from the white mug she held in her hands much too quickly.
Damn, but she was pretty, even when lying. Her auburn hair swept forward from her face as she tilted her head, its soft coppery shade an elegant contrast with the whiteness of the mug, and an appealing complement to the creamy shade of her blouse.
If he were to draw her caricature right now, though, he would lengthen her small, straight nose just a little, like Pinocchio when he first told a lie.
He had a hunch, however. Despite all he’d heard from Colleen, all he’d heard while hanging out around the hospital, he believed in this woman’s integrity. She’d said he could trust her. Call him a fool, but he did.
He had. For if she hadn’t the deep-down integrity he believed in, despite the lies he knew she told, he was busted. He’d purposely blown his cover, because he knew she suspected something and figured it was the only way to get her to be straight with him. Maybe.
Of course, he hadn’t revealed the agency he really worked for. Colorado Confidential was too new, and too…well, confidential, to trust an outsider with knowledge of its existence.
Right now, he had to goad her. Maybe if he pushed her enough, she’d spill what was really on her mind. “So you had no reason to destroy those files.”
“No, of course not.”
“What about other files? What is it you’re hiding?”
Her brown eyes widened. “What makes you think I—”
“Kelley,” he said in an admonishing tone, lifting one hand from his own mug so he could wag a finger at her. “I know there’s more you’re not telling me. But like you told me I can trust you, you have to trust me.”
“Why?” A storm crossed her face, causing her brow to wrinkle ominously. “You said you’re checking up on me. To see if I set the fire, and why. Not that you’re trying to figure out who did set it.”
“Because, no matter what my orders, I do things my way.” He grinned. “If you don’t believe that, ask the Denver Fire Department. That’s a good reason they’re my former employer. We reached a mutual parting of the ways a while ago.” He leaned toward her, serious once more. “Could be I’m putting my current job on the line, but I’ve a feeling you didn’t set the fire. And I’ve learned, over the years, to trust my gut.”
He nearly wanted to throw his filled coffee mug across the room when she looked back at him with tears in her eyes. Damn! He sure as hell didn’t want to make her cry.
What had he said to get her all misty-eyed?
“Thank you,” she said. There was such fervency in her tone that he wanted to take her into his arms again.
Of course he probably would have wanted to take her into his arms again even if she’d told him to go to hell. She’d felt damn good there….
“All right,” she blurted. She stood, her back toward him. “It’s not that I know anything, but there is more to the story.” She pivoted to face him.
Her uneven breathing made her chest rise and fall in a syncopation that drew his attention to the enticing shape of her breasts beneath her businesslike blouse—and caused his body to stiffen in acknowledgment of how she aroused him.
&
nbsp; “But you’ve got to keep your mouth closed about it,” she continued, “or I’ll have to close it for you.” Her serious expression suddenly swelled into a ray of sunshine as she grinned at him, despite the remaining moistness in her eyes.
“Promise?” he asked, unleashing his own lascivious grin. Damn, but this woman turned him on, even when she was teasing. Because she was teasing.
She laughed aloud. “Down, boy.” Her face sobered once again. She resumed her seat as far from him on the sofa as she could get. He resisted the impulse to scoot over. Close.
Real close.
He read in her eyes that she was about to reveal something, and it bothered her.
“The epidemic kept us busy,” she said softly. “It was terrible. So many people, and some of them very, very sick. There were two elderly people… One of them, Peg Ahlers, I got to know a little bit. She was so sweet and cheerful…and ill. She got worse. And then she died.”
With no further thought of lust, of anything but soothing Kelley, Shawn reached toward her. She slid into his arms. Her voice was very low as she continued. “Afterward, I felt terrible, but tried to put it behind me—doctors have to do that to survive. But several weeks later, I got a phone call.”
He knew that. Colorado Confidential had checked her phone records for the last few months and had noted the recent call from a phone booth in Silver Rapids. But he didn’t know who had called.
She told him. “It was a friend from med school, Dr. Wilson Carpenter. He sounded—well, different. Upset. Said that some people who’d been ill were his patients, and he’d been talking to them. He wouldn’t tell me more, though.”
She was lying. Shawn could tell. Why?
“Since then, I haven’t been able to reach him. It’s as if he disappeared. The woman who’s watching his office says he’s out of town.” She looked at Shawn. “Since you’re an investigator, can you find out where he is?”
Wilson Carpenter. Shawn had no doubt that Colleen and the Confidential bunch could track down the mysterious, missing doctor. But what he told Kelley was, “I can try. What do you think he had in mind?”
She pivoted in his arms to face him. One slim, elegant hand was raised. “I don’t know.”
But you do know more than you’re saying, he contradicted her in his thoughts. “Tell me the conversation,” he said. “Exactly as you remember it.”
“It’s been a few weeks,” she dissembled, “so I really don’t recall it verbatim. But Wilson thanked me again for treating the patients. Said he was really sorry about the two who died, and asked about the test results for influenza. Said he’d just examined some of the recovered patients—routine stuff—which was what prompted him to call. But we’d discussed this before, so I wasn’t sure what he was driving at.”
“And that was all?”
She nodded. “He sounded nervous, hung up so abruptly that I wondered if we’d been cut off. Then when I called back to ask more questions, he wasn’t around.”
Did this Wilson Carpenter know something about what had caused the epidemic? Had he mentioned it to Kelley, and was that what she was hiding?
Did she know more—because she was part of it? He didn’t want to think that. But, damn it, what was she holding back?
Still, a dialogue had been opened between them. He wanted to rule her out as a suspect. Maybe he would be able to, once he actually got the entire story from her.
In the meantime, she had nearly been run over that evening. Someone must know what she knew, at least enough to consider her a threat. And that was something Shawn would pass along.
“COLLEEN?”
It was late that same night, but Shawn had had to wait until he had convinced Kelley to sleep in what passed for the bedroom in this joke of an apartment.
His joke of an apartment, where he’d gotten used to being alone again. As always. Despite the busy stretch with people forever around on the ranch. Would it feel like his place again after Kelley was gone?
Now he sat hunched over his shrimpy kitchen table, whispering into his cell phone.
“That you, Shawn?” his boss replied.
“Yeah.” He’d reheated a cup of coffee in the microwave, and he took a sip of the dark, bitter brew.
“How did things go today?”
“Fine,” he said, “as long as you don’t count the fact that our chief suspect nearly got squashed like a bug by someone aiming for her with an ambulance.”
“What!”
He loved to picture Colleen’s face as he made his almost daily reports to her. And now that he’d begun sketching caricatures again, he concentrated on imagining her most prominent features—those arresting blue-green eyes of hers. The way she puckered her forehead in concentration. The way she was most likely grimacing at the phone right about now.
“I need a little help here.” He laid out the facts as he knew them. “See if you can track down the ambulance, though I’ll lay odds it was stolen. And then we need to track down a friend of Kelley’s from Silver Rapids, a Dr. Wilson Carpenter.”
“Kelley, as in ‘Dr. Stanton’?”
“That’s the one.”
“Where is she now?” Colleen’s tone was suspicious, and rightly so.
“I couldn’t let my chief suspect get murdered right out from under me, so right now she’s asleep in my bed.”
“What!” Colleen exclaimed again. “Jameson, you’d better—”
“Relax,” he told her with a laugh. “I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.” More’s the pity. But he wasn’t about to tell his boss he was lusting after their primary suspect.
Who just might not continue to be their primary suspect…
But he was acting prematurely, without all the facts.
“Watch your step, Shawn,” Colleen warned. “If you can’t be objective, we’ve other operatives who can step in.”
“Oh, but no one can do as good a job at being a nanny as me. You as good as said so.”
“Shawn…” She drew out his name.
“Good night, boss,” he said, then hung up.
Chapter Eight
Kelley was awakened the next morning when the bedroom light clicked on. Her exhausted mind registered the odd sound. Her light switches were silent, weren’t they?
“Good morning, sweetie,” she managed to groan without opening her eyes. Her early-bird daughter was often her alarm clock, but she’d slept so little the night before that she really needed more rest.
“Good morning, darlin’,” replied a deep, amused voice.
Her eyes popped open and she wrapped the sheet around her as Shawn Jameson strode into the chamber that was smaller and shabbier than her bedroom. He proffered a mug of coffee. He was dressed in a gray, partly-unbuttoned Henley-style shirt and charcoal jeans. And he looked well rested, damn him.
“Thanks,” she muttered ungraciously.
He smiled as his gaze slid down her. She felt her face flush. Why should she feel embarrassed? Though she’d taken off her suit and slept in her underwear, her strategic places were covered in the swirl of sheet around her. And if her hair was a tangled mess, her face pale and devoid of makeup, so what? That didn’t seem to keep Shawn from devouring her with his eyes.
The heat from her face suffused lower. Much lower. It was only then that she recalled in a rush exactly why she hadn’t slept the previous night. And it hadn’t completely been because she was in a strange room.
Yesterday, she’d nearly been run over by a speeding ambulance. She’d been saved by her daughter’s day-care attendant, who turned out, not to her surprise, to be an undercover investigator trying to find evidence that she had committed the heinous crimes she’d been accused of.
She’d told him of the call from Wilson Carpenter to get his help, but not what Wilson had said—the part that really troubled her, that she didn’t dare mention without backup. With no proof, it would only sound as if she’d made up one hell of an excuse for her inability to save two lives.
Of course the worst sour
ce of her insomnia was her contemplation of the fact that Shawn was in the next room, sleeping on his battered and undoubtedly uncomfortable couch, acting the role of gentleman. It was a role that did not suit him, notwithstanding that he seemed to don different personalities with ease, from uncomfortable childcare provider to inquisitive spy.
And, perversely, she hadn’t wanted him to act like a gentleman.
She just wanted him. Emotionally. Sexually. All ways. Because her life had turned into one hell of a tangle, and she needed to take comfort where she could.
Fortunately, she wasn’t a sex-crazed ninny, nor a woman who couldn’t control her impulses. And so she had controlled her body. She hadn’t left the room.
Her mind—well, it had raced out of control, but so what?
As the edge of the bed sagged with Shawn’s weight, Kelley realized she had taken refuge by staring into her coffee cup. She took a hasty sip and looked at him.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ve another fact to stick into your file. You’re not a morning person.”
“Yes, I am,” she contradicted. “I just… Never mind.” She couldn’t explain why she hadn’t risen as quickly as usual. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get dressed.”
“Sure,” he said. “If you need any help, holler.”
“Of course,” she muttered, though her insides grew molten at the idea of his helping her dress. Or undress.
At the doorway, he paused. “By the way, I was right.”
“Are you ever wrong?” She sighed as he raised an eyebrow. “Okay, I’ll bite. About what?”
“You can bite anytime you want. But what I’m right about this time is that the ambulance was stolen. I got a call this morning from my employer confirming it.”
“Did they confirm who stole it?”
“Still checking, but I doubt they’ll find evidence worth saving.”
“Of course,” Kelley repeated as the door closed behind him.
KELLEY INSISTED THAT Shawn drive her home so that she could change clothes. He didn’t argue, but his insistence on checking her house before she entered made her feel both relieved and uneasy. Fortunately, everything seemed fine.
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