Engaging Sam

by Ingrid Weaver

  Sam scowled as he thought about the hours of paperwork ahead of him—that was one part of this job that didn’t suit him. As much as he hated to admit it, from the way things were shaping up there wasn’t much left to do except try to make the best of the evidence they already had and hope they’d get luckier next time.

  And when it came to this case, they were long overdue for some good luck.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he settled more comfortably against the door. His gaze moved to the surveillance snapshot of Fitzpatrick that had been tacked to one corner of Xavier’s orderly bulletin board. The round-faced, middle-aged businessman who smiled back at him looked like a benign, red-haired Santa Claus. “There has to be a better way than chipping away at Fitzpatrick one subsidiary operation at a time. We still don’t have anything on the man himself that’ll stand up in court.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “He’s doing too good a job of insulating himself from the dirty end of his business. We need to get closer, gather more data.”

  “We already have data,” Xavier said, tipping his head toward the computer.

  “I would have got more if that jerk on the forklift hadn’t seen me pocket the disk.”

  “You would have needed to pull out soon anyway. Your cover wasn’t solid enough to last much longer.”

  “Next time I’ll make sure it’s airtight.”

  The chair squeaked as Xavier swiveled to face Sam. “What do you have in mind?”

  Good question, Sam thought. The reason they’d had to go after a branch operation in the first place was that Fitzpatrick was unbelievably careful about the people he surrounded himself with. The man verged on paranoia when it came to his personal security. “There’s got to be an angle.”

  “We’ll be stepping up our surveillance of his estate at the end of the month.”

  “That’ll be, what, two weeks before his daughter’s wedding?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re hoping he’ll get careless?”

  “Judging by his track record, I doubt if that will happen. But we’ll be watching him anyway, and if an opportunity comes up, we’ll be sure to use it.”

  Sam muttered a curse under his breath. When they’d first heard about the impending marriage of Fitzpatrick’s only daughter, Marion, they’d hoped it would provide them with a chance to penetrate his security, but so far they’d had no luck. When it came to organizing protection, Fitzpatrick could give the Secret Service some pointers. “What I wouldn’t do for a look at the guest list.”

  Xavier pressed his lips into a tight line of frustration before he turned back to his computer. “We have to work within the law, Tucker. We’ll know who’s attending when they get there.”

  “I know, I know. But I doubt if the majority of the guests will be there because of his daughter. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of business done. Nothing like weddings and funerals to gather the clan.”

  “There’s no denying that having a man inside would be an advantage, but at this point there’s no possibility of that.”

  “Still no luck placing anyone?”

  “Not yet. I doubt if a bee could hitch a ride on the florist’s van without some level of security clearance.”

  “But with all the extra traffic that’s going to go on at his estate and the outside help he’s going to need—”

  “We’re still in the process of checking out everyone he’s hired, but so far we don’t have any good possibilities. He’s being his usual sly self, not firming up the contracts until the last minute. We didn’t learn which caterer he’d chosen until the day before yesterday...” He paused. “Hang on. Your neighbor.”

  “What about her?”

  “You said her name was McPherson, right?”

  Sam nodded. It wasn’t really necessary to answer Xavier’s question—the man was as good at remembering details as his computer. “What about her?” he repeated.

  Xavier was leaning forward, clicking purposefully at his keyboard until a new list appeared on the screen. “There it is,” he murmured. “I knew I’d seen that name recently. McPherson Catering is the firm that’s doing the Fitzpatrick wedding. It’s owned by an individual named John McPherson.”

  “There must be hundreds of McPhersons in the city. The chances of Audra being related to him are pretty slim.”

  “Like I said, they only got the job two days ago, so we haven’t had much chance to check them out. I’ll let you know if there’s any connection with your neighbor.”

  Sam rubbed his chin while he forced his weary brain to think it through. Audra? Being involved with someone of Fitzpatrick’s ilk? He’d guess that she was too sweetly innocent for that.

  On the other hand, one of the reasons Fitzpatrick had managed to escape prosecution so far was by making sure that the companies he dealt with directly were so clean they squeaked. He kept himself well removed from the sleazy side of his business. And when it came to something like his daughter’s wedding, he’d probably be more careful than ever to choose a catering company that was above reproach.

  Straightening up, he turned around to open the door. There wasn’t much point wondering about it at this stage. Sure, it would be great to have already established contact with someone connected with the Fitzpatrick wedding, but the odds were that Audra’s having the same last name as the head of the catering firm was nothing but coincidence.

  Considering the way their luck had been going on this case so far, it would be foolish to hope otherwise, right?

  “Okay,” he muttered. “Maybe I should check on Bergstrom’s progress—”

  “Leave him alone,” Xavier ordered. “We both know he’s fully capable of tying up the loose ends. You have a report to write.”

  Sam restrained himself from groaning. “Yeah, I know.”

  “And one last thing, Tucker.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, pausing in the doorway.

  Xavier brushed an imaginary wrinkle from his tie as he bent toward his computer once more. “I know the city’s in the middle of a heat wave, but try to put on a few more clothes before you come down here again. This is a police station, not a beach.”

  “...and it looks like another hot Sunday, people, so crank up the old air conditioner and put an extra beer on ice for me,” the voice of the morning show announcer chirped through the radio.

  Audra yawned as she poured herself another cup of coffee, then reached out to adjust the fan that whirred softly back and forth on her counter. In one way the night had seemed endless. In another, it seemed as if no time at all had passed before the first rays of another hot, sticky sunrise had crept through her well-used window.

  “...with the predicted high around ninety-seven and humidity close to eighty percent, that brings the humidex to around three million, I’d say. Makes moving to Canada almost look good, don’t you think?”

  Rolling her eyes, Audra switched off the radio. Normally she didn’t subject herself to this kind of annoyingly cheerful patter so early in the morning, but she’d wanted to hear the news. Not surprisingly, there hadn’t been any mention of the arrests of those two men who had been in Sam’s apartment. Apart from the broken door, it had all gone too smoothly to attract the notice of the media. That’s what Sam had predicted before he’d left—she turned her head groggily to peer at the clock—five hours ago.

  Choosing a chair that would put her in front of the fan, she placed her cup on the kitchen table and carefully eased herself down. If it weren’t for the residual tenderness in her backside—a result of hitting the floor with Sam on top of her—she would have a hard time believing that the events of the previous night had really happened.

  Getting mixed up with an undercover operation, a pair of thugs, a swiftly organized arrest...well, things like that might be commonplace in the books she liked to read, but they simply didn’t happen to Audra McPherson. No, as a rule there wasn’t a whole lot of excitement in her day-to-day life, unless she counted that time last year when the
cherries jubilee had set fire to the drapes at the Steadman’s house.

  That job had been trouble from the start. With her mother and three of the nephews down with the flu, and Jake and Geraldine off on their honeymoon, she’d warned her father that they needed more help, but he’d stubbornly insisted that he wasn’t going to start hiring outside the family. So McPherson Catering had gone short-staffed to the Steadman anniversary party, and disaster had struck in the form of open patio doors, a sudden breeze and too much brandy on the cherries. Luckily, Audra had managed to tear down the drapes and toss them through the doors into the swimming pool before any major damage was done. Her quick thinking had saved the party—and the much-needed bonus the client had promised them.

  But what had happened to her usual quick thinking last night? If the circumstances had been different, if it hadn’t been Sam who had taken her by surprise like that in her bedroom... Oh, God, the prospect was too horrible to contemplate. Alone and completely overpowered by a naked stranger—

  She gulped a mouthful of coffee, fighting off an echo of last night’s initial panic. It was okay now; it was all over. At least, it had better be over. She had work to do today, a job to plan, a new dessert sauce to test, suppliers to contact. The usual everyday details that filled her time. She shouldn’t be worrying about what could have occurred if the man who had crawled through her window had been anyone except Sam.

  If her family ever found out what had happened here last night, they would insist that she move back home. It wouldn’t matter to them that no reasonable person would have considered it a risk to leave that third-floor window open. No, the McPherson males would say that she should have realized that someone could inch their way along that narrow ledge from the neighboring apartment and accost her in her bedroom. They would say it wasn’t natural for a woman to want to live alone without the protection of at least one big strong man. They would ignore the fact that she had been managing just fine by herself for more than five years.

  They were good at ignoring what they didn’t want to hear.

  Sighing, she lifted her face into the breeze from the fan. It was too early and too hot to get into all that again. The main thing to keep in mind was that no matter what they said, she was well on her way to doing what she wanted, anyway. Her savings account was continuing to grow, and once she received her share of the bonus from the next catering job, she’d be that much closer to her dream of opening her own restaurant.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t love her family. Underneath their overprotective attitudes they really were wonderful, warm, supportive people. The problem was, they couldn’t understand her desire for independence, for something more than the life they’d planned for her. Her father wanted her to stay within the shelter of the family business instead of striking out on her own. Her mother wanted her to do what she had done herself: find a good man to take care of her, settle down and get married and spend the next twenty years barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

  While Audra enjoyed the creativity involved during her work in the kitchen, she had no desire for the rest. Once, back when she was first engaged to Ryan, she might have thought so. But that was before she’d learned the flip side of love, that terrible, unfathomable vulnerability that went along with committing your heart.

  Her family insisted it was high time to try again. They all were so satisfied with their stable, loving marriages, they couldn’t understand her desire for independence. But if Audra had learned anything during those years with Ryan, it was that she didn’t need a man to take care of her or to make her life complete. She was doing just fine on her own. Besides, in spite of well-meaning but misguided attempts at matchmaking by her mother and her sisters-in-law, she hadn’t yet met another man who had sparked her interest....

  Unbidden, the image of Sam Tucker appeared in her mind, in particular the image of Sam as he had looked standing beside her window with the moonlight gleaming on his naked skin.

  Audra set her coffee cup down on the table with a thud. All right, once she had realized that Sam wasn’t going to hurt her, there was no denying that he had sparked more than her interest. That was no surprise, considering his...appearance. With his broad shoulders, sculpted biceps and those subtle ripples over his washboard stomach, he would kindle a spark or two in any healthy woman.

  Not that he had anything she hadn’t seen before. After growing up in a house with six brothers, and then doing her share of baby-sitting as her sisters-in-law produced at least one nephew a year... Well, suffice it to say that the masculine form had lost its mystery for her well before the time she’d first changed a diaper.

  Of course, there was a considerable difference between the baby McPherson boys and a full-grown—a very full-grown—man.

  She chewed her lower lip, her memory supplying yet another vivid image. Lord, who would have suspected what was really underneath that self-effacing bookkeeper she’d known—or thought she’d known—for two months? When it came to acting out a part for his undercover work, Sam must be one of the best.

  And if he ever got tired of working for the police department, he would make a fortune as a male centerfold. From what she’d glimpsed last night before he’d squeezed himself into Jimmy’s shorts...

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, disgusted with herself. How could she be dwelling on Sam’s nudity like some kind of, well, virgin?

  From what he’d explained afterward, apparently his nudity had been unavoidable. And apart from when he’d asked her for something to cover himself with, it hadn’t seemed to bother him. Until she’d mentioned it, he hadn’t seemed to be aware he was naked. Even then, he’d treated his lack of clothing as nothing more than a minor inconvenience, certainly not something to be ashamed or embarrassed about. For all she knew, strutting around a woman’s bedroom without any clothes on might be a common occurrence for Sam.

  And that was all the more reason why she shouldn’t be dwelling on it. As far as experience went, they were worlds apart. A man like Sam, a macho, take-charge cop who dealt with life-and-death situations on a regular basis, would probably pursue the same kind of excitement in his personal relationships. If he could inspire sparks when he was only trying to make a phone call, what kind of heat would he generate when he turned his attention to lovemaking?

  “Enough,” she said, rising to her feet. Speculating about Sam’s sex life was as pointless as speculating about spending the winnings from a lottery ticket that she had no intention of buying.

  Over the whirr of the fan, she heard a quiet knock on her apartment door. She glanced at the clock. Her mother was supposed to drop by sometime this morning so they could start the planning for the next job, but seven o’clock was early even for someone with Constance McPherson’s energy level. Sighing, Audra tugged the edges of her robe together and walked toward the door.

  It was just as well her mother was early—Audra could use a distraction to alter the course of her thoughts. It wasn’t like her to be so preoccupied with a man, no matter what he looked like.

  “Good morning,” she said, sliding off the chain and pulling open the door. “You’re...” Her greeting trailed off as her gaze encountered a familiar—and very masculine—chest. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Good morning, Audra,” said a voice that was several octaves lower than her mother’s. “Expecting someone else?”

  She tightened her grip on the door and on her robe. Obviously Sam hadn’t slept any more than she had. He was still wearing her nephew’s shorts and the beat-up jogging shoes and wildly colored Hawaiian print shirt he’d retrieved from his apartment before he’d followed the other policemen down to the station last night. The shadow of his beard was darker, and his eyes were tinged with fatigue, but he was still a disconcertingly handsome man.

  Even with some clothes on.

  “Yes, I was expecting my mother,” she answered finally.

  He looked at her robe, then glanced at the corridor behind him. “Audra, you should check to see
who it is before you open your door.”

  The twinge of irritation she felt at his comment was automatic, in spite of the fact that he was right. “I was expecting my mother, but now I get one of my brothers.”

  “What?”

  “The protectiveness spiel.”

  “In my line of work, caution is a good habit to get into.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a wry smile. “On the other hand, I hate to think what would have happened if you’d been cautious enough to sleep with your window closed last night.”

  “Is everything all settled with those men who were after you?”

  “Uh-huh. No problems. I just thought I’d thank you again for your help.”

  “You’re welcome.” Her irritation faded as she focused on his smile. It was unexpectedly boyish, deepening the lines beside his mouth and crinkling the corners of his eyes. It hinted that there was more to this man than the cop she had seen last night.

  Of course, last night she had already seen everything there was to see....

  Just stop it, she told herself firmly. “So what happens now? Do I need to do anything, like make a statement or testify?”

  “No, we’ve got it covered.” His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared as he suppressed a yawn. “I apologize again for frightening you last night.”

  “It’s okay. Really.”

  “Audra, even though we won’t need your testimony, there are a few things about the case that I’d like to straighten out with you. Do you have a few minutes to talk about it now?”

  “Well, I suppose so.”

  “Do you mind if we talk about this inside?”

  After a brief hesitation, she let go of the door and stepped back. She moved aside as he entered, trying to give him more space, acutely aware of his size and the aura of masculine strength that surrounded him. And along with the awareness came a belated self-consciousness.

  She tightened the belt on her robe before smoothing her hair impatiently. There was no reason for her to feel self-conscious about her appearance—he’d seen her in a lot less. And as far as the propriety of entertaining a man in her apartment at this hour of the morning, after last night they were really beyond that, weren’t they?