She finally looked at him and Chase waited for her to speak. Her gaze appeared panicked. “I didn’t say you had to leave.”
The words, What did I do? lay on the tip of his tongue, but he bit them back and decided to take a wild guess on what this was about. And it was about something. Something more than his touching her. Being wrong about the problem usually brought about less fury than admitting to being clueless.
“Look,” he said. “If you want, I’ll call the guy back and explain. If he did half of what I think he did, you’re a nutcase to still care, but who the hell am I to judge?”
“Call whom back?” she asked.
“Your ex. I can call him, tell him I was just messing with his head, and then I’ll leave. You can put on the red nighty and wait for him.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean to mess things up for you. I . . . I thought that was what you wanted.”
“You think I’m upset because Peter isn’t coming?” She sounded baffled.
“Hell, I don’t know what to think.” He flinched. That wasn’t exactly I don’t know what we’re arguing about, but it came close, and he waited to see her explode. When she didn’t, he continued cautiously. “One minute you seemed to be . . . enjoying things, then you looked as if you thought I was about to rape you. Next you started on a rampage about the perils of telephones. Then you ran off, telling me you wished I was ice cream. I haven’t figured that one out at all.”
She darted around him to the cabinet and took down two plates. Moving to the table, she set down the dishes. When she raised her face, she had her bottom lip sucked into her mouth again. It popped out all moist. “I did not want Peter to come over, and I appreciate you . . . convincing him that I wasn’t alone.”
Chase set the phone down. “And?”
“And what?” she asked, glancing back at the table, apparently still reluctant to look at him.
“You seemed afraid of me. You care to explain that one? Because I thought . . . I thought we’d gotten past that.”
She moved the plates around on the table. “I didn’t think you were going to rape me. I’m not afraid of you. I said I believe you and I do. I just . . . Can we eat? I’m starved.” She glanced up and shot him a smile.
Although it was obviously forced, that smile did it to him again: made all the wrongs in his life seem a little less wrong. Made him forget that his partner had tried to kill him, that IA had him down as a drug dealer. It even made him want to forget that the one true love in his life had been unjustly taken from him.
“You at least had Fancy Feast,” she added. Her smiled teased, and the expression seemed genuine this time.
He studied her and realized Lacy didn’t argue like a woman. The smile, the attempt at humor—all were male tactics. He knew, because he’d used them a hundred times on Sarah. “Okay, let’s eat, but first I’m dying to know about the ice cream comment.”
“And I’m dying of hunger.” She whirled around, showing him her back.
“For ice cream?” he asked, deciding that if she planned to argue like a man, he could argue like a woman. Meaning, he could beat a subject to death until she gave in and told him what he wanted to know. Or at least what he wanted to hear. Wasn’t that what women did?
“I’m hungry for steak.” She hotfooted it to the fridge and stuck her nose inside. “What kind of dressing do you like?”
“What kind of ice cream do you like?” he countered.
He got Italian dressing and absolutely no answer about the ice cream comment. But he could live with it, because they were back to where they had been before the phone rang.
They chatted their way through dinner. He found one subject Lacy could and would talk about with gusto: her animals. Two of her cats had been shelter kittens, and one, the skittish gray one, had climbed up in her car motor to stay warm. After nearly killing it when she drove off, Lacy had her vet save the little feline and she took it in. Fabio, as she told it, had been a three-time shelter returnee.
She looked at the animal in question, who was sitting patiently at her feet “They said he was too hyper, too noisy, and—”
“Too ugly,” Chase finished. He cut a piece of steak, popped it in his mouth and chewed.
“He’s not ugly. He’s unique and has personality.”
Chase swallowed. “That sounds like a description of the two blind dates I let Jason’s girlfriends set me up with.” He pointed his fork at her. “And believe me, they were ugly.”
Lacy laughed and went on to tell another animal story. He supposed that for most guys, it would have been torturous, but his mother had been a bleeding-heart animal lover who had belonged to every animal protection society in Houston. He had grown up with a houseful of pets of all species. Some they’d fostered until they found appropriate homes. The really desperate ones they’d kept, from the cat and dog varieties with obvious deformities—a missing ear, a missing limb—to raccoons. Then there had been Mel.
He told her about Mel, the de-fumed skunk who’d been handed over to a shelter. “What could Mom do? It was adopt the poor creature or let him go to the gas chamber. You should have seen my dad’s face when she walked in, plunked the skunk in his lap and said, ‘At least now you’ll have someone to blame when you eat my turnip greens.’”
Lacy laughed so hard she dropped her fork. Chase continued, “And when door-to-door salesmen showed up, Mom would open the door with Mel in her arms, tail-side pointing out. They always left really quick.”
Lacy’s new mood, her laughter, filled the airy kitchen with warmth. Sitting across from her, Chase knew he’d never seen or heard anything quite so lovely.
“Are your parents still alive?” she asked, when they were finishing up dinner.
“No. They died when I was seventeen.” He stacked the plates. “Plane crash,” he said, realizing he hadn’t talked or even thought about his parents in a long time.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That must have been hard.”
“It was, but I had my sister, Leigh. She was nine years older, and she did okay by me. I moved in with her until I finished high school, and then I joined the Army for four years and then signed on with the HPD. Life goes on.”
Life goes on. Understanding slammed into his sore ribs. That was what he’d been doing these last two years. He’d been fighting it—fighting the fact that life would go on. Hating the fact that he would reach a place and a time when he would accept Sarah’s death, accept it as he had ultimately accepted the death of his parents.
His soul shook a little, but when he looked up into Lacy’s soft blue eyes, there came a calm. Maybe it was the calm that appeared before the storm. He didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to question it. “What about your parents?” he asked.
Lacy picked up her fork and twirled the utensil in her fingers. Her sudden change in posture and expression seemed to say, “Pets are one thing, parents another.” But he let the silence and the question hang between them until she finally spoke.
“My dad was in the Navy. He died when I was a baby. I don’t even remember him. My mom, she . . . well, you heard her on the phone. It’s the thingamabob thing.” Guilt entered her eyes and she seemed to need to explain. “She was a good mother. She’s just . . . A little of her goes a long way.”
Chase took the plates to the sink and chewed on the information she’d given him. “It’s just a mother/daughter thing,” he said, thinking he offered her comfort.
She rolled her eyes. “Just a mother/daughter thing? When I ask her, ‘How’s my hair look?’ and she answers, ‘Like you ran it down the disposal . . . twice,’ that’s more than a mother/daughter thing.”
He laughed. “Leigh felt the same way about our mom. Leigh used to say our house was like a cross between a Dr. Seuss book and the song ‘Old Mac-Donald.’” He walked back to the table. “Growing up she used to swear she would never have indoor animals. She was even embarrassed at Mom’s . . . way of life. However, the last I heard she has two cats, one dog, four hamsters and a pot-bellied pig
. What is it they say? The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Like mother, like daughter.”
Lacy’s expression flickered from friendly to something far darker. She dropped the fork onto the table. “I don’t believe that. People make their own destinies. They just have to choose to be different. Make different decisions. Who we are is our own making. Not our parents’.” Her tone came out defiant, almost angry.
Instantly Chase knew they weren’t talking about Leigh and his mother. “So what is it about your mom that you can’t be? Besides tactless.”
His question caused her frown to deepen. “Nothing.” She took her glass to the sink, putting an end to the subject and the easy camaraderie.
He almost pressed, but then he remembered that he had his own secrets. ‘‘Dinner was great. Thanks,’’ he said, wanting to turn things around.
‘‘Thanks for helping,” she answered, the anger gone but the edge still there.
Chase carried his glass to the sink. Lacy took one small step to the side to avoid his hip brushing up against hers. And that was a mistake. Until then, he hadn’t been thinking about touching her. Okay, he had thought about it, but it wasn’t the foremost thought in his mind. He glanced over at her, appreciating the package. Her hair, her lips, chin, neck and . . . lower.
Yep, now he wanted to touch her. To wrap his arms around her waist, let his hands move under that shirt, all the way up. Up, until he felt her nipples harden against his palm.
And down. He wanted to move his hands down, under, and into. He thought about unzipping her jeans just an inch and dipping his hand in the tight space between denim and firm belly, between silky panties and moist woman. Moving deeper into the petal softness of the folds of her sex. Exploring her slick tightness with one, maybe two fingers.
She spoke to him, but he didn’t hear her words; all he could do was watch her move around the kitchen as she filled animal bowls with food and water. The woman even fed animals with grace and looked sexy doing it.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting to touch a woman so bad. He couldn’t ever remember thinking a woman needed touching this bad. Lacy needed to be touched. She needed to be driven to the brink of passion and back again. She needed to be tasted, licked, and suckled until she screamed. She needed to have her ex-husband thoroughly and permanently screwed out of her brain and heart.
And if she was taking applications for the man to do it he’d be the first in line. Hell, he’d go ahead and shoot the competition, just to make sure he got the job. But therein lay the problem.
Not in shooting anyone. That would be justifiable homicide. But in the fact that she wasn’t taking applications. Her one little sidestep couldn’t have screamed it any louder. Lacy Maguire was off-limits.
The silence seemed to draw out, and he desperately searched for something to say.
“Look at the time,” she said. “It’s almost ten. I’ll get you some bedding for the couch.”
She turned around and walked away. A few coy remarks tickled his tongue like, Don’t worry, I’ll just share yours, or Wouldn’t we be more comfortable in the bed? But by the way she held her shoulders as she moved down the hall, square and straight, he knew she’d turn him down. He could live with it. He’d give her tonight. Tomorrow brought new possibilities. Some sleep and he would be up to the challenge of changing her mind and driving her wild. His gaze moved down to the front of his sweats and he realized that he stood up for the challenge right now. No doubt about it, it was going to be a long, hard night.
• • •
“You’re going to follow him.” Zeke slapped a piece of paper with all of Dodd’s information into Bruno’s meaty palm. The dark alley reeked of piss; no doubt some bums hung out close by. Lowering his voice, he spoke again: “Everything is on the paper. Home address, license plate, car and make. He was still at the hospital when I left. Don’t let him out of your sight.”
“But what does he have to do with Kelly?”
“Lower your freaking voice,” Zeke hissed. Raking a hand over his face, he took in a desperate breath. “He was Kelly’s old partner. They had some falling out, but now he seems . . . I think he knows something. Either Kelly got to him earlier and told him about Martinez’s suspicions or . . . or Kelly’s in contact with him now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now,” Zeke repeated, and balled his hands into fists. Even standing out under the dark sky, Zeke could feel the walls closing in on him. His time had almost run out. Before he’d left the hospital, he’d managed to grab one of the ICU nurses. She’d told him that Stokes probably wouldn’t come to for several hours, and possibly for days because he’d lost a lot of blood. If only Zeke had waited a little longer before leading the police to the warehouse, maybe Stokes would have died.
If only . . . if only . . . He didn’t have time for those games. If he didn’t get to Stokes before the man told the truth about who had shot him, if he didn’t find Kelly, all Zeke’s doings for the last five years would come bubbling to the surface.
“Find Dodd and keep him in your sight. I don’t want that guy taking a piss that you don’t know about.”
Bruno shook his head. “And what are you gonna do?”
“I am going back to the hospital and will wait for my chance to make sure Stokes doesn’t come to and say something that would take us down.”
“Us?” Bruno’s brown eyes grew round. “All I did was pick up Martinez, and I may have punched that Kelly guy once or twice, but—”
“You shot a cop, idiot,” Zeke said.
Bruno flinched. “I’m not sure if my bullet even hit him. And he wasn’t dead or we’d have found his body. I didn’t kill him.”
Zeke shook his head. “If you’d have killed him we wouldn’t be in this mess. And listen to me and listen good. If I go down for any of this, you’re going to go down harder, I’ll make sure of it.”
• • •
Chase indulged in a cold shower in the bathroom that connected Lacy’s study and her studio. She’d given him clean towels and linens for the couch; then, after a curt goodnight, she’d disappeared into her bedroom.
Grabbing a beer from the chair cooler, Chase went into the kitchen and snatched up the phone to call Jason. He wanted news on Stokes. Sometime between his shampoo and cutting his chin with the dull razor he’d found in one of Lacy’s bathroom drawers, he’d decided he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing; his patience had worn thin. Being here felt too much like hiding, and hiding just wasn’t his style.
He tried figuring out what book Zeke could have been talking about, but Chase didn’t have a clue. He needed to go back to his place and search the apartment inch by inch. But with his face plastered on the news, he needed to make a few changes to his appearance before he could go out in public.
“It’s me,” he said when Jason answered. “Can you talk?”
“Yeah, I’m on my way home from the hospital,” Jason said, and Chase heard him turn down his Led Zeppelin tape.
“How’s Stokes?” Chase asked, feeling fidgety.
“He’s going to make it. I’ve talked a few guys into taking shifts sitting at the hospital. Zeke’s not going to get him.”
“How did you manage to pull that off?” Chase asked, sipping his beer.
“I told them I suspected you were set up, and the only one who could have pulled this off was Zeke.”
“And they believed you?” Chase propped his feet up on Lacy’s coffee table. Zeke had been on the force so long, Chase would have suspected his fellow officers of being loyal to him.
“It seems that Zeke has made a few enemies along the way. Lots of guys have harbored suspicions about him.”
“Really?” Restless, Chase rose and started pacing. “I’ve partnered with the guy for two months. How could I have missed that?”
Silence met Chase’s question, then Jason finally answered, “Face it. You haven’t been your usual observant self lately.”
“That’s an understatement. Why don’t you just
tell me that I’ve been a real bastard?”
“I think I did, right about the time I put in for a request to change partners.”
“You should have just kicked my ass.”
“I thought about it,” Jason said, then chuckled. “Actually, I was giving you about two more weeks and then I planned on meeting you in a dark alley and doing just that.”
“You never could have taken me,” Chase teased back.
Another silence filled the line before Jason said, “I’ve been worried about you.” Jason wasn’t one to show his emotions, but his tone gave him away
“I’m sorry.” Chase took a long sip of cold beer. “I’m working on getting things right in my life now.”
“Damn red lights!” Jason said, an obvious attempt to change the tone of the conversation. “Listen, before I went to the hospital, I stopped by the precinct. I managed to grab some of your and Zeke’s old files. I’m going to comb through everything, especially the drug bust you and Zeke took down when you two first hooked up. The drugs they found at your place had to be from that bust. I’m thinking maybe I’ll find something to explain why he’s doing this. Have you figured out what book he wanted?”
“No. The only books I have at the apartment are Sarah’s old romances.” He paused, realizing that while saying his wife’s name still brought a pain to his gut, the pain had lessened. The silent phone line made him speak. “Are they still dragging the lake?” Chase sat down in the blue recliner, one leg folded over the other. He pushed a button, wanting to experience the massage. Instead, the damn chair raised up and tossed him out. He dropped the phone in an effort to catch himself. “Sorry,” he said, picking it up and glaring at the recliner.
“Zeke seems to be losing hope that you’ll show up dead. At the hospital tonight the captain mentioned setting up a search party outside the general lake area.”
“How far outside?” Chase frowned. If they extended their search, someone could knock on Lacy’s door. He’d already pulled her into this too deep.
“Captain said he was giving it another day, that maybe your body would just float up somewhere.”
“The captain always did like me.” Chase walked to the couch.
“Not even the captain wanted to think you were dead . . . or guilty. But with the coke at your place, it didn’t look good.”
“What did you think?” Chase smeared dewy prints over the cool beer bottle.
“What do you mean, what did I think? I never believed it. But it was hell trying not to believe you were dead while I stood by the lake this morning.”
“Really.” Chase remembered Sue’s dialogue from this morning and smiled. “You weren’t so upset you weren’t trolling for chicks.”
“Chicks?” Jason said.
“The woman you gave your card to and told her to call you.”
Jason grew quiet. “The petite blonde? I wasn’t—”
“She knew your ‘Call me’ meant something.”
“Is that where you are? Is the blond chick Lacy?”
“No,” Chase said. “I’m a few miles up from there. The last house off Langly Road.”
“Then how do you know about the blonde?”
“A good cop always knows.” Chase chuckled. “She thinks you have a cute ass.”
“Really?” Jason said. “Maybe I’ll have to stop by again.”
“She’s committed.” Chase grinned. “To her vibrator.”
It took Jason a second, then he laughed.
“And she might possibly have a little bit of the lesbian thing going,” Chase added.
“Jeez! Now I know I’m going to run by.”
They laughed a few minutes, then Chase said, “Look, there’s something I need. Can you go by my place and pick up . . .”
• • •
Lacy had tossed and turned for three hours, trying to sleep. Then she heard the front door open and close. She threw her covers off and ran to the window, getting there just in time to see Chase Kelly walking down the alcove of pine trees to her side yard.
“Ungrateful nitwit,” she mumbled.
She’d agreed to help him, and he’d left without even a crummy good-bye. Probably left the door unlocked so any other man could step in, take her hostage, and handcuff her to her bed. Well, she’d had enough excitement for at least a week. Besides, the next guy might not be so darn good-looking.
Going to her closet, she slipped on her Donald Duck slippers and went to lock the front door. But once she got there she wondered if maybe he’d just gone out for fresh air. She opened the door, intending only to stick her head out. When she didn’t see anything, she stepped out into the cold night and cut across the yard to the tree-lined trail.
Inky darkness surrounded her as she made her way down the meandering path. She kept going, knowing it would end at the two picnic tables her grandmother had placed there years earlier.
Unable to see the tips of her shoes, she stumbled when Donald’s beak caught on a rock. Righting herself, she continued on. If she didn’t find him stargazing at the picnic tables, she was going back in and locking the door. A cool breeze raised the hem of her black silk nightshirt. She shivered and added some speed to her steps.
Another moment and she could swear she heard someone talking. She stopped, listened, hearing only night sounds: an owl, a small animal scurrying in the brush. Then even those noises stopped and silence hung heavy. The darkness suddenly felt thicker, shadows grew suspicious, the wind became colder, and Lacy tasted fear on her tongue. Should have brought my fish, she thought.
Turn around. Go back. The thought jumped into her brain at the same time someone jumped out from the shadows and knocked her to the ground.
Chapter Twelve