Sizzle and Burn

Her hand collided with a solid masculine shoulder.

  She did open her eyes then. Fast. She also sat bolt upright in bed, startled panic snapping through her.

  “What?” she managed. The single word came out as a squeak.

  “Take it easy.” Zack levered himself up on one elbow and regarded her with sleepy-eyed amusement. “It’s me. You do remember me, don’t you? The guy who was rolling around on the floor with you last night?”

  Reality and memories crashed through her. Mortified, she knew she was flushing a deep red.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, snatching up her glasses. “I was a little disoriented.”

  Damned if she would tell him that she wasn’t accustomed to waking up to a man in her bed. It was bad enough that she had let him know she’d never had an orgasm with one until last night.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, yawning. “You’ll get used to it. You want to answer that phone?”

  She had her glasses on now. It dawned on her that the phone was still warbling.

  “Right,” she said briskly. “The phone.”

  The instrument was on the table on his side of the bed. To get to it she would have to reach across him. She went blank again at the prospect.

  Amused, he picked up the receiver and handed it to her.

  “Yes?” She held the phone as though she had never before had one in her hand.

  “Miss Tallentyre? This is Burton at the front desk. Sorry if I woke you but I wanted to let you know there’s a police detective on his way up to see you. I tried to make him wait until I called you but the sonofa—I mean the guy flashed a badge at me and headed for the stairs. Cops always act like they own the world, y’know?”

  Burton sounded even more nervous than usual.

  She forced herself to concentrate. “Is it Chief Langdon?”

  “No. Guy said his name is Mitchell. Detective from Oriana. Says he knows you.”

  “Bradley?” She stared at the wall on the far side of the room, trying to wrap her mind around the name. “Here?”

  “I just told you, his name is Mitchell, not Bradley.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  She handed the phone back to Zack. He took it, one brow raised, and gently replaced the receiver.

  “Company?” he asked neutrally.

  “Yes. Bradley Mitchell.”

  “The Oriana detective you’ve been working with?”

  “Uh-huh.” She pushed the bedding aside and swung her feet to the floor. “For some reason, I seem to be very popular all of a sudden.”

  “You’ll be even more popular if you answer the door dressed like that,” Zack observed drily.

  She glanced down and discovered that she was stark naked. “Oh, damn.”

  She grabbed her robe and hastily pulled it on. Zack uncoiled from the bed with an easy, masculine grace. He was wearing his briefs. Crossing the room, he picked up his black T-shirt and trousers.

  She scurried into the bathroom and checked herself in the mirror. The disheveled creature gazing back at her looked as if she had just climbed out of bed after a night of extremely hot sex. She ran a brush through her hair but that didn’t do much to alter the impression.

  A knock sounded on the door.

  “I’ll get it,” Zack said a little too casually. “Take your time.”

  She rushed to the bathroom doorway but he was already on his way to the door, anticipation flowing off him in palpable waves. She noticed he had put on his leather jacket. When she glanced at the bedside table she saw that the gun and holster were gone. The testosterone level in the room was suddenly off the charts.

  She went into full deer-in-the-headlights mode. Was letting Zack answer the door a good idea or a really bad one?

  Then her head miraculously cleared and she suddenly felt extremely cheerful.

  Letting Zack answer the door was an excellent notion.

  She turned and went back into the bathroom.

  “Thank you,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  She closed the door, whirled around and pressed her ear to the panel.

  The door opened in the outer room.

  “Sorry,” Bradley said, startled. “Wrong room. Could have sworn the guy at the front desk said number six.”

  “Looking for someone?” Zack asked a little too helpfully.

  “A woman. Must be the door across the hall.”

  “There’s a woman in this room,” Zack assured him. “Raine’s in the bathroom at the moment, about to take a shower. We just got up.”

  “Raine Tallentyre?” Bradley was uncharacteristically flustered. “She’s here?”

  “Right,” Zack said. “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go back downstairs? I’ll let Raine know you’re here. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll meet you in the lobby after she gets out of the shower.”

  “Listen, I don’t know who the hell you are, but I can tell something’s wrong here. I’m Bradley Mitchell with the—”

  “Oriana PD. I know. Nice badge, by the way.”

  “I want to speak to Raine,” Bradley said. “Now.”

  Raine winced. Bradley was using his hard cop voice. That was not good.

  “Is this police business or personal?” Zack asked, politely curious.

  “This is official business.”

  “In that case, maybe she should talk to her lawyer first.”

  “That’s enough, I’m coming in.”

  “I don’t think so.” Zack’s voice was suddenly ice cold.

  “I don’t know who the hell you are,” Bradley growled, “but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got probable cause to think you may have harmed Raine Tallentyre. Get out of my way.”

  So much for her little moment of feminine revenge. The adrenaline and testosterone in the other room had reached toxic levels. It was time to intervene.

  With a tiny sigh of regret because she had just begun to enjoy herself, she opened the bathroom door and put her head around it.

  “Bradley,” she said brightly. “I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing here in Shelbyville?”

  Bradley looked past Zack, staring at her. Confusion and anger tightened his photogenic features. He looked like a homicide cop off a television series: hard-eyed and square-jawed. His dark hair was just long enough to touch the back of his collar. This morning he was dressed in jeans, an open-throated shirt and a slouchy sports jacket.

  “What the hell is going on, Raine?” he asked. He seemed mesmerized by the sight of her in her robe. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. She folded her arms and lounged in the doorway, going for total nonchalance. “What are you doing here?”

  “I got a call from the local chief.” Bradley frowned. “Guy named Langdon. He told me that you and some real estate agent found one of the Bonfire Killer’s victims in your aunt’s basement. That right?”

  “Yes. I gave the chief your number as a reference. I thought that would be the easiest way of staying off the list of suspects. Do you mind if we talk about this later? I’m headed into the shower.”

  Bradley flicked a suspicious glance at Zack. “Who’s he?”

  “A friend,” she said. She couldn’t resist giving him her special smile.

  “Good friend,” Zack corrected helpfully. “The name’s Jones. Zack Jones. By the way, does it piss you off when she smiles at you like that? It sure pisses me off when she does it to me.”

  Bradley rounded on him, looking ready to explode.

  “Please go downstairs, Bradley,” Raine said quickly. “I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”

  Bradley’s face tightened further but it was obvious he was out of practical options.

  “Twenty minutes,” he said.

  “Or thereabouts,” she said sweetly.

  Without another word, he turned and stalked off toward the staircase. Zack closed the door very gently behind him and looked at her.

  “I’m guessing the two of you did more than just find a fe
w bodies and track down some killers together,” he said without inflection.

  “Not a great deal more,” she said, choosing her words with exacting care. “My fault.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “I’m what went wrong. Bradley and I had a nice little friendship thing going on. I made the mistake of thinking it had the potential to blossom into something else.” She paused. “He knew about the voices, you see.”

  Zack nodded, comprehending immediately. “So you figured he was okay with your psychic side?”

  “One night after a case I invited him to my place. I had a bottle of wine waiting. A little chocolate fondue. A fire. Not to put too fine a point on it, I tried to seduce him.”

  “I sense a bad outcome here.”

  She flushed. “It was extremely awkward for both of us. In the end he finally had to tell me the truth.”

  “Which was?”

  “That the thought of making love to a woman who hears voices really creeped him out.”

  “What do you know?” Zack shrugged. “Gets me hot.”

  Nonplussed, she just stared at him.

  “Go figure,” she finally managed.

  He gave her a quick, wicked grin. “Yeah. Go figure. So where do things stand with you two now?”

  “Nowhere. The debacle in my condo happened last month, shortly before Aunt Vella died. I’m surprised to see Bradley here today. I thought, given our mutual embarrassment, that he would want to avoid me just as much as I want to avoid him.”

  “What about your working relationship?”

  “It would be extremely difficult to go back to being just friends or colleagues after what happened. At least it would be for me. I was humiliated beyond belief.”

  “Not to mention hurt?”

  She winced. “Okay, I’ll admit that being told I gave him the creeps was a little hard on the ego.”

  “Wonder why he drove up here today?”

  “I have no idea. Last I knew he was fixing to become famous.”

  Zack raised his brows. “How’s that?”

  “Ever hear of Cassidy Cutler?”

  He narrowed his eyes very faintly. “Why does that name sound vaguely familiar?”

  “Probably because you’ve seen it on the best-seller lists. She’s a true-crime writer.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “She’s the one who did the book about the freak who was stalking and killing members of a family in Florida. The cops couldn’t figure out why he had targeted them. They finally arrested a cousin, I think.”

  “Did you read it?” she asked.

  “Hell, no. I don’t read stuff like that. Got enough nightmares of my own. I just know what I saw in the papers.”

  She smiled wryly. “Sounds like we have something in common when it comes to our bedside reading. Be that as it may, evidently Cassidy Cutler has decided that her next best seller will feature a certain small-town homicide detective who has recently closed a string of cold cases.”

  Zack laughed. “She’s writing a book about Mitchell?”

  “Bradley called me a few days ago. He was very excited. He told me that Cassidy Cutler had arrived in town with an assistant and had started background research.”

  “Interesting. I wonder if Mitchell plans to tell her that the reason he was able to close those cold cases was because he worked with a psychic?”

  She shuddered. “I sincerely hope he never says a word about me. As far as I’m concerned, he can have all the credit.”

  “Because the last thing you want is to have your name appear in one of Cassidy Cutler’s books?”

  “The very last thing.”

  Fourteen

  Bradley downed a long swallow of coffee, lowered the dainty china cup to the saucer and glowered across the table.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Are you sick?”

  “Good grief, no. Never felt better, in fact.” Raine poured tea for herself from the pretty yellow-and-green pot. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know.” He searched her face, frowning. “You look like you’re running a fever or something.”

  She stifled a smile. “Must have been the shower.”

  The inn’s small dining room was packed with the same media-heavy crowd that had filled up the restaurant the night before. The din of cell phones and conversation assured privacy.

  “It’s not the damn shower,” Bradley muttered. “There’s something about you this morning.”

  “Well, I did get a good night’s sleep last night,” she said smoothly.

  Bradley’s jaw hardened. “How the hell did you meet Jones?”

  She was seated facing the entrance to the dining room. Zack was at the front counter, collecting a cup of coffee in a plastic cup and a muffin from the harried-looking woman at the cash register. He saw her watching him and raised a hand in a casual greeting. She wriggled her fingers at him and then turned to Bradley.

  “I’m sorry, what were you saying?” she asked.

  He scowled. “Where did you meet Jones?”

  “Good grief, you don’t actually expect me to discuss my personal life with you, do you?”

  “I didn’t know you had a personal life,” Bradley muttered.

  “I do now,” she said demurely.

  “Does Jones know what you do?”

  “Yes. Guess what? It doesn’t creep him out.”

  Bradley had the grace to redden. “I said some stuff that night that I didn’t mean, okay?”

  “You meant it, all right.”

  She watched Zack take his coffee and muffin out into the adjoining lobby.

  “Look,” Bradley said, very earnest now, “even if our personal relationship wasn’t meant to be, it doesn’t follow that you and I can’t still work together. We’re a team, Raine.”

  The urgency that was vibrating from him was starting to make her curious. Bradley usually did the laid-back, wise-cracking, macho-detective thing very well. For the sake of her ego, it would have been pleasant to believe that he was wildly jealous of Zack but she was almost certain that was not the case. There was no doubt but that he had been alarmed to find her with another man this morning but she was sure it wasn’t because he had suddenly discovered that he wanted her, after all.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said quietly. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately because of my aunt’s death.”

  “I know,” he said quickly. “But work can be excellent therapy.”

  “I need time to clear my thoughts and consider what I want to do next. Also, something else has come up. What with one thing and another, I’m just not ready to go back to working with you. Not for a while, at any rate.”

  He gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “Damn it, Raine, there isn’t time for you to think it over. I’ve got a new cold case.”

  She was starting to get curious now. She had never seen him this tense, not even when he was about to make an arrest.

  She picked up the teapot and refilled her cup. “What’s the rush? By definition, there’s no great urgency about a cold case.”

  “That’s not how the families of the victims look at it,” he said, righteous indignation ringing in every word. “Some people have died waiting for justice.”

  In spite of her determination, guilt twisted inside her. “I realize that.”

  Satisfied that he had scored a point, his expression softened. “I’m sorry to put pressure on you like this. I realize your aunt’s death hit you hard and that you’ve got your hands full dealing with her estate. But I’m in a bind here.”

  Now they were getting to the heart of the problem.

  “Define bind,” she said.

  He exhaled heavily. “Here’s the deal, honey—”

  She raised her teaspoon as though it were a magic wand. “Don’t ever call me honey.”

  “The thing is, this new cold case is very important. I need your help.”

  “What makes this particular case more important than any of the others?”
br />   He glanced around the room a second time to make certain they were not being overheard and then leaned forward again and lowered his voice.

  “Cassidy came up with this great idea for the book,” he said.

  She put the spoon down on the saucer. It made a nice little clatter.

  “Cassidy Cutler,” she said. “I should have seen that coming.”

  “Just hear me out, okay?” Bradley pleaded. “She wants to follow me through the process of closing a cold case from start to finish. We took a look at some of the files together and picked one that is tailor-made for you.”

  She choked on her tea. “For me?”

  “Us,” he amended swiftly. “It’s a case that is ideally suited to your kind of, uh, observations and insights.”

  Observations and insights was his politically correct term for the clues she uncovered with her psychic abilities. After working together for more than a year he still couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that what she possessed was a true paranormal talent.

  “Forget it,” she said flatly. “I don’t want to be in your book.”

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “For starters, I’d lose my anonymity. Oriana isn’t New York or LA. I wouldn’t be invisible there. The very last thing I want is for people in town to point me out on the street and whisper that I hear voices in my head.”

  “It would be great publicity for your business.”

  “Are you kidding? People will say that I’m crazy like my aunt. I don’t need that kind of publicity, trust me. I want to be able to shop or attend the monthly meetings of the Oriana Business Association without worrying about what folks are whispering behind my back.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, raising a hand, palm out.

  “Do you know what people here in Shelbyville called my aunt? They said she was a witch. And some of them really believed it.”

  “Look, I’ll talk to Cassidy. Maybe she’ll agree to give you another name for the book.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a lot going on at the moment. I do not want to get involved in the book.”

  “It’s him, isn’t it? The guy in your room this morning.”

  “No,” she said coolly.

  “Bullshit. How long have you known him?”

  She was getting seriously annoyed, she decided. She flashed her special smile. “Let’s see, about sixteen hours.”