For the First Time

by Stephanie Doyle

  Mark stood and put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. It almost wasn’t fair. He could feel her shaking and he knew in many ways he was torturing her. He was constantly proving her attraction to him. Doing it in public where he thought it was safe. This time he hadn’t considered his daughter in the next room, much to his embarrassment. But the outcome was still the same.

  JoJo wanted him. She wanted the feelings he was forcing on her. Which meant the conflict between her fear and her desire would only grow stronger. Agitate her more.

  “That was my fault.”

  She shook her head tightly. “Not just yours. Mine, too. I own it. You’re not some evil seducer, you know. I know what I’m letting you do. Why I’m letting you do it. It’s just that I don’t know if I can finish it. I don’t even know if I want to.”

  “Then I’ll back off.”

  “You will?”

  He had to. Otherwise he would be what she said he wasn’t: a seducer. A man who used the knowledge of what sex did to a person, how it enticing it could be, how debilitating to rational thought. He could use it to push her into something she wasn’t ready for and didn’t even know if she wanted to experience.

  He was a jerk sometimes. But he wasn’t a scumbag.

  “I have to. This can’t be about me or what I want. As much as that sucks. This is me not lying again. I want you and I think if you let me I could get past your defenses. That’s the sex god in me talking.”

  “He’s a confident fellow.”

  “He’s been around the block. My point is, with you none of that is going to work. I don’t want to wake up next to you one morning and have you look at me like I stole something you wanted to hold on to. So the choice is going to be yours. Completely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And if your choice isn’t me…”

  “You think I’m going to have sex with someone else?”

  Crazy how the idea irritated him. He wasn’t possessive with women. Ever. Mostly because there was no reason to be possessive about someone who he knew he wasn’t going to hang on to for the long-term. Women were always temporary. Who they slept with before him and who they slept with after him never concerned him.

  Only for JoJo there was no one before him. For the first time, he didn’t like to think of anyone after him, either. Certainly he didn’t like the idea of someone else instead of him. Again, that wasn’t his call.

  “I don’t know. I can’t believe how corny this is going to sound, but all I know is you have too much passion. Passion inside of you that shouldn’t be locked down behind your barbed-wire fence. You deserve someone who sees that. Who can bring it out of you. If it’s not me—yes, that would royally piss me off but I would get over it—then it should be someone else. Someone you care about. Maybe you can get there talking to Greg, maybe you can’t. But it was important enough to me to try. I care about you, JoJo.”

  She looked away from him. “You probably shouldn’t.”

  “I know I shouldn’t. I wish I saw you like I saw Nancy. I wish I could work beside you and not think about you in all the ways I do, but I can’t. What I’m trying to say is, this feeling that I have isn’t just about getting in your pants. It’s bigger than that. So I’m going to back off. No more touching, no more kissing.”

  He took some hope from the fact that her face scrunched up like a kid who had just been told there was no more dessert.

  “If you want me, you know where I am.”

  “’Kay.”

  He nodded. “Good. Now in a few minutes I’m going to attempt to win back the love and support of my cherished daughter.”

  “Why wait?”

  “I don’t want to be thinking about my penis when I do it. I sort of do that a lot around you.”

  JoJo gave him a solid clap on the back. Nothing sexual in that touch, just a solid offer of camaraderie.

  “Good plan. Now go get her…Dad.”

  *

  SOPHIE HEARD THE knock and knew she could ignore it. He wouldn’t open the door without her agreement. Would he? He wasn’t completely barbaric.

  The door opened and her eyes narrowed. Right. He was just that barbaric.

  “I didn’t say you could come in.”

  “I was doubting you would and I want to talk. Harder to deny me in person.”

  Sophie sighed and looked to the ceiling. He was wearing the puppy-dog face she’d come to know. That look that said, I can’t be all bad. Which reminded her that sometimes he wasn’t.

  “It’s not fair. It’s not like I can lock the door because JoJo’s stuff is here, too.”

  “Then I guess you have to accept that sometimes I’m not going to wait for you to invite me in.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Pretty much.” He made to sit down on the bed across from her, but then as if he was wigged out by sitting on JoJo’s bed he sat on the edge of hers. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve always had a thing about trying to get into rooms that were barred to me.”

  “Right. Spymaster Mark.”

  “Something like that. Look, I know I upset you but by confronting Bay…”

  “Confronting him? How about ambushing him?”

  “Let’s not get overly dramatic. I asked a question.”

  “With a human lie detector at the table.”

  “It was efficient. If you can look at it from my perspective, I was trying to eliminate him as a suspect.”

  Sophie wanted to shout, but her head was pounding from being angry for hours on end. Instead she tried for calm outrage. “He’s not a suspect. He’s my friend. You could have asked me that and I would have told you.”

  “I wanted an impartial opinion,” Mark muttered.

  “You embarrassed him, humiliated me. You’re so sure these notes are threatening. They don’t even say anything like that. You’re a spy, you spent your life paranoid. They could be anything. They could have come from the maestro…”

  “Is he giving you a hard time again?” Mark asked, pouncing.

  “No,” Sophie huffed. “He barely even looks at me anymore. I could be sucking it up big-time and he wouldn’t even comment.”

  “I highly doubt you’re sucking it up big-time.”

  “I’m just saying it could be anyone I work with. I checked with Mr. Radley and he told me there is a directory with all of the musicians’ names and addresses. If I needed it he could email it to me.”

  Mark smiled at her. “Look at you, following up like that. Your own little investigation.”

  “Don’t get crazy. It’s not like I broke into the producer’s office.”

  Mark held his hands up. “I would have been so proud.”

  “My point is, you don’t get it. There are so many people who might do something like this as a sick joke just to get under my skin and rattle me.”

  “To clarify the point, the notes appeared to be addressed to me. To get under my skin. But why do you think it could be so many people?”

  Sophie shrugged. She didn’t want to think about how many people sitting behind her day in and day out resented the hell out of her, but she knew he didn’t understand that part of the business.

  “Because a lot of musicians hate the whole prodigy thing. They think it’s a gimmick. They think the only thing drawing in the crowds is my age. Ask Bay. He was the focus of any show he performed in until he hit seventeen and he didn’t look like a kid anymore. His talent didn’t change. His lead billing did. I get why they resent me.”

  Sophie lifted her fingers to her mouth and bit down. When she tasted the sour nail polish on her tongue she cursed softly.

  “Is it working?” Mark indicated to the nightstand, where the glass of clear polish sat.

  “I guess. It doesn’t take more than one bite, that’s for sure. But the stuff is so foul.” She wondered if it was the cause of her stomachaches. Food was no longer appealing and out of nowhere she was getting waves of nausea.

  More likely it was just a cold or flu that was coming on. Which
sucked, timing-wise. They were only here for a limited time. She wanted to be able to give her audiences here her best. Sophie quickly put it out of her mind. She couldn’t control how she felt. All she needed to do was to get through the next three performances. Then they would head back to Philadelphia for a two-week break before flying to Los Angeles. She’d been sick before and had performed. Hanging on for another few days was nothing.

  “I’m sorry your colleagues resent you. It must be hard to make friends. Harder still because most of them are older. I didn’t really think of that.”

  “Mom was always trying to protect me from it. She’d bring me to the theater, let me perform, then get me out of there before anyone had a chance to make their feelings known. Before I started to question why all the musicians would do things after shows, but nobody ever invited me.”

  “Last week? Was that the first time you were asked to an after-show hangout?”

  Sophie nodded. She couldn’t help smiling when she thought about it. It had been the…Best. Night. Ever.

  “I didn’t know I should be protecting you from them. Just one more thing that sucks about living with me, I’m sure.”

  Sophie could have let him live a little with that guilt but it didn’t exactly seem fair. While she understood why her mother wanted to protect her, the older she got the more her mother’s hovering had chafed. Sophie had to accept that there were going to be haters and move on. Because beyond the haters there were also going to be people she missed out on having friendships with if she isolated herself entirely.

  The truth was, if her mother was still alive she doubted she would have had a chance to really get to know Bay. She certainly would not have been allowed to go out with him and the other musicians.

  Sophie didn’t want to think about what that meant. She wasn’t happy her mother was gone. She would give anything to have her back. She just wondered how her mom would have adjusted to her getting older. It would have been a struggle with her in some ways, just like it was a struggle with Mark in others.

  “No, I’m sort of cool with how you handle things. I’m almost fifteen. I need to be able to interact with other people in the show. That’s why I liked Bay so much when I first met him. He’s been where I am, but now he’s part of the team. They accept him and he sort of brings me along…so they have no choice but to accept me. This has been the best show by far to work on.”

  “But you still think someone might have sent those notes.”

  “I know Bay didn’t, but that’s all.”

  “Well, now I know Bay didn’t, either. How about this, I’m done with surprises. If I’m going to do something related to the notes that might impact you or your relationships with anyone I promise to give you a heads-up.”

  “How about a say in what you’re going to do?”

  Mark winced. “Not going to happen. But I’ll listen to you. I’ll consider what you have to say. I just can’t guarantee it will impact any action I plan to take.”

  Sophie closed her eyes and fell back on the bed. “Ugh. I want this over.”

  “Me, too, honey.”

  Mark stood up and Sophie figured their fight was over. She wouldn’t admit it, but she didn’t like fighting with him. She didn’t enjoy not talking to him out of spite. It made her feel too isolated. Too cut off from everything. As long as they were talking, she knew that she still had family. Family that cared. It was hard to imagine that she had actually considered emancipation. She could handle a few more years with Mark.

  Unless he screwed something else up, which was not entirely unfeasible. Could she keep forgiving him if he did?

  “That was the first time you called me honey.”

  Mark turned back to her. “I know, right? It sort of fell out of my mouth. Like no effort at all.”

  “Well, honey is fine. But don’t start getting crazy. Like kiddo or baby doll.”

  “Got it. No kiddo or baby doll. What about sweetie pie?”

  She rolled her eyes and stifled the laugh he’d almost elicited. They had made up, which was cool with her, but she wasn’t going to encourage him beyond that. He might start to think she liked him.

  He might start to think maybe there was even more than that between them.

  *

  “THANK YOU, DETECTIVE.”

  JoJo looked up as Mark shut Sophie’s door behind him.

  “All good?”

  “We’re speaking. I consider it a monumental victory.”

  “Well, then we can celebrate with some good news. The cops found the car.”

  Mark’s body went on instant alert. “Do they know who it’s registered to?”

  JoJo was already opening up her laptop. “Don’t get too excited. It was reported stolen that same day.”

  “Where did they find it?”

  “Junkyard. Burned up inside so no prints, no DNA.”

  “It’s what I would have done. Stolen the car, trashed it, set it on fire. That doesn’t sound like some random drunk. There is a deliberateness to it.”

  JoJo agreed. It was possible a person might have sobered up and realized what had happened. Then wanted to get rid of the evidence. But the fact that the car was stolen first was too much of a stretch. No, the person who hit her stole that car with the intent to do damage.

  “What are you doing?”

  JoJo wiggled her eyebrows. “You hired me because I have skills. Allow me to impress you.”

  She typed in the name of the person who had reported the car stolen. She tracked that to a home address, a business address and two email accounts. She plugged the information into the program she’d built to cross-reference data related to cases Mark had previously investigated. Then, she waited.

  After dismissing a few random bits of information that scrolled on the computer screen, she stopped. “That’s interesting.”

  Mark sat down next to her on the couch. She looked at him, or more specifically, at his hands. He held them up for display. “No tricks. I promise. We’re working now.”

  She turned the laptop toward him.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Regina Anderson’s address.”

  “What about it?”

  “When I started looking into potential suspects I included information related to any of the cases that you had taken since you got to Philadelphia. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Any data you had from the case file. Then if we found something we could cross-reference the new information with your casework and see if anything popped.”

  “Something popped?”

  “The car was stolen from somebody who lives on the same street as Regina Anderson.”

  Mark stared at her and she could see his mind spinning, wondering what the odds were that it could be a coincidence.

  “You said you checked and she was still in the mental health facility.”

  “Yep,” JoJo confirmed. “On lockdown, too. They wouldn’t let me speak to her. Only immediate family.”

  Mark nodded. “That leaves the son. Call the hospital. See if anyone’s called for Regina. If it is Sean and he’s doing this for his mother he might want to let her know what he’s accomplished.”

  “Okay, but based on my last conversation with Sean, he should be in the middle of the Bering Sea. Assuming he was telling the truth, of course. I’ll call the hospital and I’ll also get confirmation from the motel where I tracked him to see when he left.”

  Mark got off the couch. “And I’ll call Ben. Have him check the Anderson house out for us. See if there are any signs of life in case Sean chose to come home instead.”

  JoJo picked up her cell but heard a knock on the door. Mark turned at the sound and frowned. The interruption was unexpected. JoJo didn’t have to be a mind reader to know Mark wouldn’t like anything unexpected right now.

  “It might be Bay. You know he’s staying in the same hotel with his parents. Sophie would have given him our room number.”

  “Oh, great,” Mark groaned. “I get to once again let him hang out w
ith my daughter in a room with a bed in it. Parenting…what a hoot.”

  He walked over and opened the door, but JoJo could see it wasn’t Bay. Instead, it was a hotel worker in uniform. Who passed something to Mark.

  “This was left downstairs at the front desk with specific instructions that it be hand-delivered to you.”

  When Mark shut the door, the look on his face suggested he wasn’t pleased.

  “What is it?”

  “A plain envelope.”

  JoJo moved the laptop and got up to stand next to him as he studied the envelope. He held it up to the light and they could both see a note inside.

  Mark opened it and pulled out the paper. JoJo could see the words neatly typed in the center, similar to the other notes.

  I’m sorry.

  “For what?”

  Mark folded the note and JoJo could sense the anger vibrating throughout his body. It was odd that she felt the same way. Sophie wasn’t hers, but it felt like whoever was threatening her, whoever was putting this anger and fear into Mark, was coming after her, as well. She wanted to hit something. Or someone.

  “Whoever it is, is in Chicago.” Mark’s voice was a low hum.

  JoJo’s mind raced as she tried to the think of all the possibilities. “You don’t know that. It could have been mailed to the hotel.”

  “Then it’s someone who knows her damn schedule! Where the hell she stays when she’s here.”

  JoJo didn’t flinch at his bark because she knew it wasn’t directed at her. She needed to focus for him. He wasn’t capable of it in this state.

  Although he was right. Whoever sent the note knew at least where the musicians were staying, if not Sophie specifically. It would be an easy assumption to make that she would stay in the same hotel. Whoever sent the note didn’t have to know their room number, only that it needed to be delivered to Mark Sharpe.

  They needed to make new reservations. Finding another hotel would at least limit Sophie’s vulnerability. JoJo would do a simple internet search to find out how easy or hard it would be to follow the orchestra’s schedule. The producer could tell her if they frequently used this hotel.

  But first things were first. “You stay with Sophie. I’m going to go question the hotel staff.”