The Baby Chase
Jennifer Greene
All she wanted was a baby. And if that meant falling into bed with rugged P.I.Gabriel Devereaux, then Rebecca Fortune would swallow her pride and seduce her nemesis. She knew he would soon be gone from her life, so her secret would be safe. But then the eternally single Rebecca was shocked to realize her passion for Gabriel had gone beyond pretense. Would the father of her child ever feel the same way…especially with the lie between them?
Kate Fortune’s Journal Entry
Together at last! I’ve missed my whole family so much over the past months. It’s nice to finally be able to share in their happiness. Many things have happened in their lives. Several weddings have taken place, many babies have been born and estranged couples reunited. I’m glad that some of my special gifts worked their magic and brought each child and grandchild love and joy. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world. I can’t wait to see what the next fifty years bring!
A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader,
I was tantalized by the whole concept of our FORTUNE’S CHILDREN series from the very beginning. We all had fun developing our different suspense and danger elements, but the heart of each story is linked to the Fortune family. Although the Fortunes amassed a giant financial dynasty, the true legacy they passed on to each other was wealth of a different kind. This is a family who knows what love is, and who sticks together through thick and thin.
The series ends with Rebecca’s love story. She’s not one to be impressed with champagne and a candlelit dinner. She wants babies. She wants a hearth and home. She learned the power of love from the nest of her own family, and there’s no way she’s willing to settle for less. Her hero despairs that she’s a hopeless romantic…but I tend to see her as a hard-core realist. It takes a tough, strong cookie to fight for what really matters, and she believes in families.
Me too.
I hope you enjoy The Baby Chase and am enclosing my best wishes to you and all your families—
The Baby Chase
Jennifer Greene
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my fellow PT’ers…who else would have put up with all the petunias? Thanks from my heart for all the support.
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.
Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including two RITA
Awards from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times.
Meet the Fortunes—three generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealed…and passionate new romances are ignited.
REBECCA FORTUNE: The nurturing and loving author is still single, but she wants to be a mother. She’s decided she will do anything to have a baby—even if she has to seduce the man who won’t accept her for who she is….
GABRIEL DEVEREAX: The wary private detective doesn’t believe in love or family. But after one steamy night of passion with Rebecca, he hadn’t counted on what would happen next—he was about to become a father!
KATE FORTUNE: With the Fortunes reunited, matriarch Kate is encouraged by the fulfillment and happiness in her children’s and grandchildren’s lives. Is Kate destined for a romance of her own now that the family crisis is resolved?
STERLING FOSTER: Kate’s attorney and closest confidante has stood by her through decades of family turmoil. Was it just professional loyalty or is there something more to the sparring relationship between Kate and this charming man?
LIZ JONES — CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Staff writer
In an unprecedented comeback, the Fortune family is back—and stronger than ever! Their mighty cosmetics empire has launched a new youth formula that women around the world are buying by the case, which firmly reestablishes Fortune Cosmetics as the number one international makeup company.
The Fortune family has also broken into the media business. They’ve purchased a television station as well as this very newspaper. There have been no staff changes except for one—Liz Jones has been relieved of her column. According to Kate Fortune, “There’s no room in a serious paper for a rumor-spreading gossipmonger.”
This is the last week for the column to run. For those still interested in celebrity gossip, you may want to try The Tattletale. From now on, this section will be “Kate’s Korner,” featuring helpful tips on matchmaking, planning your wedding, raising your babies and home-decorating ideas.
We hope you enjoy the new direction of the column. Happy reading!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
One
The entire view offended Rebecca Fortune. It was a dark and stormy night—how trite was that? Lightning speared the midnight sky, haloing a big, gaudy, ostentatious mansion that looked like a fake set in a grade B Hollywood movie. Worse yet, she was about to break into the mansion.
Rebecca wrote mysteries. She’d thrown her heroines into every dangerous situation her devious mind could come up with—and her imagination was considerable. But she’d throw her word processor in the trash before forcing a heroine into a stupid, clichéd plot setting like this.
Rain sluiced through her curly red hair, dribbled down her neck and splashed off her eyelashes. She was shivering all the way down to her squishy wet sneakers. March was usually chilly in Minnesota, but the whole day had been unseasonably warm, almost springlike. Before leaving home, she’d heard the storm forecast, but her raincoat was a neon yellow slicker—hardly suitable burglar attire—so she’d dressed for success in a black sweatshirt and black jeans. Both were clinging to her like soggy glue.
She must have been more miserable sometime. She just couldn’t remember when. Her extensive experience with crime—including a wide range of burglary techniques—had been acquired in her nice, safe, warm office, in front of a keyboard and all her research books. Reality was proving to be a teensy bit more difficult than theory.
She’d thought she’d planned this out so well.
The tall iron fence protecting the property was locked, but she’d just vaulted the fence. That was no sweat. Right after Monica Malone’s murder, police and investigators had swarmed around the place. Now, though, there was little chance of anyone discovering her. The house was as closed up and quiet as a tomb, totally deserted—no sign anyone had lived or been around in weeks.
She’d brought a backpack full of helpful tools. The mansion had five outside entrances. Rebecca had tried a skeleton key on all the doors—she’d bought the key from one of her writers’ catalogs—and that had been when things started going wrong. The key didn’t work on any of the locks. She’d also brought a crowbar, because every resourceful heroine she’d ever written had found some use for a crowbar. Not her. She’d circled the whole blasted house, checking every window on the first floor. None of them were boarded up, but they were all locked tight. All she’d managed to do with the crowbar so far was chip some paint.
There were a dozen other tricks and tools in her backpack—her writing research had prepared her well for a life of crime. But as yet, none of them had been worth spit, and the pack weighed a ton, biting into her shoulder blades. The sky was a black growly mass of moving clouds, and thunder rumbled close enough to make the whole earth shudder—or maybe that was just her, shivering hard. Any sane woman, she told herself, would give up.
Unfortunately, Rebecca had always been rotten at giving up on anything that mattered to her. Some said she was stubborn to the point of being relentless. Rebecca preferred to think she took after her mother, Kate, who never failed to have the guts and character to do what she had to do.
This was something Rebecca had to do. There were certainly other people trying to clear her brother of the charge that he’d murdered Monica. But they weren’t getting anywhere. No one outside the family really believed in Jake’s innocence.
Her lips firmed with resolve, she tramped through the wet, spiky grass around the circumference of the house again. There had to be a way in. And, somehow, she had to find it.
A wild, gusty wind tore at her hair. When she lifted a hand to push the hair from her face, spears of lightning caught the sparkle of gold on her wrist. The charm bracelet belonged to her mother, not her, and a dozen turbulent, traumatic memories suddenly flashed in Rebecca’s mind.
She’d almost lost her mom. The whole world had believed that Kate Fortune had died in a plane crash—no one had known she’d fought off a kidnapper and had survived the crash, only to be lost in the jungle for months—and Rebecca’s heart still clenched tight when she remembered the tears, the fear, the love that had colored her recent emotional reunion with her mom. She’d taken the charm bracelet from the sculpted arm that had displayed it in the Fortune’s office the day Kate was discovered missing…. She’d added her own charms once Kate’s will had been read and each family member had received the charm that had represented his or her own birth. Rebecca had needed the connection the bracelet represented, and her mother hadn’t let her give it back once she returned.
For Rebecca the charm bracelet was a talisman, a symbol of what family meant, and the links of love and loyalty that bound them all.
She rubbed those gold links now. Maybe her mother had founded a financial dynasty, but Kate loved children and believed in family before all else. She’d passed those unshakable values on to Rebecca. And right now was a heck of a time to be thinking about babies, but she was thirty-three, and babies pounced in her mind at any excuse these days. Her personal biological clock didn’t seem to care that she was single, with no Prince Charming on the immediate horizon. She wanted a baby. She’d always wanted children and a family. No matter what exotic directions the rest of the Fortune clan had taken, she was a hopelessly nurturing homebody type. And now it seemed she was the last of the family to settle down. Even her nieces had kids!
Rocking a baby came naturally to her. Cat burglary sure didn’t—and a sudden shiver of fear snaked up her spine. The storm didn’t scare her. And she wasn’t spooked by the big old deserted mansion, even if it was a murder site.
The shiver of fear was motivated solely by love. She wanted so badly to come through for her brother, and she was scared of failing. Somewhere in that house, there had to be clues, information, evidence—something that would clear Jake’s name. Dozens of people had had outstanding reasons for killing the old bat, including quite a few in her own family. Monica had been an evil, greedy, selfish woman, and she’d done her damnedest to destroy the Fortune family for more than a generation. A two-year-old could have found suspects with motives.
The problem was that Monica had almost cost Jake everything that mattered to him, so he had a prizewinning motive, too. More to the point, he’d been at the scene of the murder and a ton of physical evidence pointed to him. Neither the cops nor the family’s investigators had turned up another suspect. Neither had the staff of lawyers on her brother’s team. No one seemed to regret that the aging Hollywood film star was dead, but neither did anyone believe in Jake’s innocence.
In her heart, Rebecca knew her brother couldn’t, wouldn’t, kill anyone—no matter what the provocation. But she was afraid that unless she found proof that another suspect had done the deed, no one else would.
So far, she hadn’t run across an alarm system, or any indication that one was turned on. The doors were all locked, and the first windows were not only latched and locked, but built casement-style, with small square panes made of leaded glass. Even if she broke the glass, the panes were too small for her to gain entry. With rain dribbling down her cheeks, she discounted the rose trellis—she was a lightweight 115 pounds, but the trellis looked beyond rickety. A huge silver maple spread a hoopskirt of branches in the yard, but no branches were close enough for her to leap to the east roof—unless she suddenly developed wings.
She could try the trellis if she had to. First, though, she circled the house again, crouching low, battling the bushes in the flower beds to shine a flashlight over one basement window at a time.
The prickers of a flowering almond snagged at her clothes like a witch’s fingers, stabbing and clawing. Mud sucked at her sneakers. She broke a nail on a window frame. A splinter lodged in her finger, and the nuisance thing bled. The deluge finally quit, but she was so damp and cold that miserableness was only a matter of degree by that time, anyway.
Finally, though, her flashlight zoomed on a window frame that appeared both uneven and cracked. She battled a bosomy lilac bush for the space to crouch down, and ran her palm across the uneven frame. The window wasn’t latched. It just seemed to be painted shut.
It opened out, and didn’t look big enough for a ten-year-old to crawl through, but no matter. Rebecca figured this was as close to manna from heaven as she was likely to get.
She reached behind for her backpack, and juggled it and the flashlight to find her crowbar again. Twice she probed and pulled with the crowbar, but it was almost impossible to get leverage in the narrow space between the blasted wet lilac bushes. The muddy, mucky ground refused to help her out with some traction. On the third try, though, she finally managed to wedge the crowbar under the ledge, and the window squeaked and creaked open.
Rebecca hunkered back on her heels and scratched her chin. So. It was open. But the opportunity made her feel as if she were holding a winning lottery ticket without a way to collect the loot. The window opened out, creating an even tinier space to crawl through than she’d first guessed. She was built lean, but not that lean.
Hesitantly she aimed the flashlight through the opening. Spatial relationships weren’t exactly her strength, but it sure looked like a hundred feet down to the concrete basement floor. Nothing to break her fall. Stephen King could have set a book down in those gloomy, eerie shadows. The light didn’t illuminate anything but ghostly corners and dank concrete walls.
She was probably going to kill herself if she tried this.
On the other hand, this appeared to be her only way in—and backing down certainly wasn’t an option. Her bones would just have to squish small enough to fit, and that was that.
She zipped the flashlight into the backpack, and dropped the pack inside.
It fell with a clattering thud. A long way down.
She swallowed a lump of fear thicker than tar, then moved. Shimmying on her back, trying to ignore the mud seeping into her sweatshirt, she poked her feet in first, then her legs, then wriggled her fanny in. Then came trouble. Her hips wedged in the opening, and suddenly she couldn’t move. At all. In or out.
Cripes, there were times she’d groaned about not having enough hips to fill out a pair of jeans. Now she wished she’d had three less cherry doughnuts this week. Her fanny seemed stuck. No kidding, no joke, seriously stuck.
She briefly considered crying. Actually, she didn’t really want to cry. She just wanted to be home. In a hot, soaking, sybaritic rose-scented bath, maybe with a glass of chablis, maybe reading some of the thick files of research information she’d picked up lately on sperm banks and fantasizing about babies.
Fantasizing about babies was tempting. Just not real helpful right then. Moving in either direction hurt, but lying still was just as untenable—her spine was screaming objections at being trapped in this contortionist position. It’d be nice if a hero would wander by to help, but that didn’t seem real likely. Being crawled on by earthworms seemed far more likely…and that did it. The mental picture of the worms in that flower bed being close enough to crawl on her was mighty powerful incentive to move.
She sucked in a breath, swung her legs up, and pushed in hard.
The push worked. Sort of. She was still alive when she crash-landed on the concrete floor, but that measure of success was hardly worth applause. On the route down, she’d cracked her forehead on the window frame, and both her breasts had been squished and scraped. She landed on a hip and a wrist. The basement was darker than tar, with a dank, damp, mildewy smell. Wouldn’t matter if she were in the Taj Mahal; she hurt too much to care. Stars danced in front of her eyes in a real dizzy tango. She wasn’t positive it was possible to break a fanny—she’d certainly never seen one in a cast or in traction—but she was damned scared she’d done it.
To add insult to injury, a light suddenly flashed in her eyes.
The obnoxious glaring light came from a bald light bulb in the middle of the basement room.
And to top off the worst debacle she’d ever gotten herself into, the man standing by the light switch, shaking his head, was familiar. Painfully familiar. So was his unmistakably gravelly tenor.
“I thought at least ten kids were breaking into the place. You made enough noise to wake the dead. I should have known it was you. Dammit, Rebecca, what the hell are you doing here?”
Rebecca squeezed her eyes closed. “At the moment, I’m sitting here with forty-seven broken bones, feeling sorry for myself. Please, God, make this a nightmare, and when I wake up, try and fix it so he’s someone else. Make him a Russian spy. Make him a serial killer. Make him anyone but Gabe Devereax.”
Not that she was willing to open her eyes to check, but that dry, gravelley tenor seemed to be coming closer. “You’re damn lucky it’s me—and at least I have a logical reason for being here. Did you leave your brain at home? You could have killed yourself—or gotten yourself killed—and you look worse than an alley cat who’s been in a street fight.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I’m dying of pain and injuries, and all you can do is yell?”
“I’d yell a lot louder if I thought it’d do any good. For God’s sakes, you’re soaked and covered with mud and it looks like you’re growing branches in your hair. If that isn’t witless, I don’t know what is. Quit fighting me, dammit. I’m just trying to see if you’re hurt.”
“I already know I’m hurt.” But her pride was now smarting a dozen times more than any of her other scrapes and bruises. Gabe had stalked over and hunched down. Keeping her eyes closed and practicing denial had worked pretty well—until she felt his big strong hands feeling her up. Her eyes shot wide open then.
There were times and places when Rebecca wouldn’t mind a guy feeling her up—at a fantasy level, she might even have entertained Gabe in that role—but not when she was being handled like a sexless sack of sugar. Merciless fingers probed and poked her ankles, trailed up her calf, bent her knee, lifted her arms, rotated her wrists…. She said “ouch” several times. Either he wasn’t paying attention or he didn’t believe her.
Possibly she’d have felt less resentful if he didn’t look so good. Heaven knew how Gabe had gotten in the house, but she already knew he was resourceful. Spit. He was the best. That was why she’d convinced her family to have him look into her mother’s disappearance. And although he hadn’t come up with much in that case, he’d been more successful with some other family cases over the past few years. But now she had to look like something a dog would bury, and there wasn’t a rip or a tear or a smudge of dirt on him. His clipped dark hair looked fresh-brushed, his square jaw fresh-shaved. His galloping shoulders stretched the seams of a long-sleeved navy T, but the shirt was tucked nearly into jeans. His boots didn’t even look muddy.
Rebecca didn’t know him well. She wasn’t sure it was possible for a woman to know a man’s man like Gabriel Devereax well—but they’d crossed paths before. Several family members had already noted that they got along about as well as a snake and mongoose. Not only didn’t Rebecca object to Gabe, she was the one who’d originally researched PI firms and urged her family to hire him. She knew, better than anyone, that Gabe had an unbeatable reputation and credentials. She respected him completely. But when her family had trouble, Rebecca was hardly going to take the back seat and let someone else drive.
Gabe appreciated advice about as much as poison ivy. What she called help, he called interference. Anyone with the most basic concept of family would understand that love and loyalty required her involvement. Trying to explain that to Gabe was like drilling a hole in granite. He had a handsome head, but there was a lot of stone between those ears.
Even if there was no love lost between them, Rebecca could hardly fail to notice certain details about that handsome head. He was thirty-eight, and he looked it. The square-boned jaw, the scar on his right temple, the brush strokes of character lines bracketing his eyes and mouth, all spoke of a man who’d lived hard. He was no boy. There was energy in that rugged face, vital, virile energy, and a never-back-down determination stamped in all those lonely lines on his brow.
Personally, Rebecca thought a woman would have to be an eensy bit bonkers to risk taking on any man as tough and closed up as Gabe Devereax…but the man did have the deepest, darkest, sexiest eyes she’d ever seen. At the moment, it was impossible to ignore those eyes, because they were aggravatingly, relentlessly focused on her face. He cupped her chin with a knuckle, and examined her face for injuries, with as much personal interest as he’d have shown a bug under a microscope.
“I think you’re going to live,” he announced. “Although it’s pretty hard to tell for sure under all that dirt.” Because he was looking straight in her eyes, she didn’t instantly realize where his right hand was. Smoother than a card cheat’s, his palm had sneaked under her sweatshirt. His hand was warm, volatilely, evocatively warm, and skimming an electric path over her ribs.
“Hey.” She moved faster than a 747 to push him away, but the ox wouldn’t be pushed.
“Oh, don’t get your liver in an uproar. If I were going to make a pass, you’d know it. Trust me, sex is only on my mind ninety percent of the time. You got a hell of a scrape here—and no, I’m not looking to see how far it goes up—but I want you to cough.”
“Cough? I don’t need to cough—”
“Well, we can just drive you to the emergency room and get those ribs x-rayed, but somehow, I didn’t think you’d cotton to that idea. If it didn’t hurt when you coughed, I might—might—be more reassured that rib isn’t cracked, but hey, if you want to go get an X ray—”
She coughed. Exuberantly.
“You sure that didn’t hurt?”
“Positive. And you can quit trying to threaten me, Gabe. It’d take you and the marines to get me anywhere near any stupid emergency room. I’m perfectly fine. I just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“Yeah?” Gabe removed his hand, but he stayed hunched over her. “You’ve got a goose egg on your forehead, bloody scrapes all over the place, and you’re so damned wet you’re probably gonna catch pneumonia. The water’s turned on upstairs, so we can at least clean up the cuts, but there’s no telling if we’ll find anything for you to dry off and warm up in. How bad’s that forehead hurting? You dizzy? Seeing anything double?”
If the blasted man had any manners, he’d give her the chance to answer, but no. Obviously, Gabe wasn’t going to take her word on anything, because he reached over and cupped her jaw so he could examine that goose-egg bump again. Fingertips feathered her hair back so that he could get a better look. Once he was finished playing doctor, his eyes met hers.
Rebecca wasn’t sure what happened then. He couldn’t have held her gaze for more than a few seconds, but the scowl disappeared from his brow. There was something in his expression. Something she’d never have expected. Something more than exasperation, something beyond Gabe Devereax’s hopeless compulsion to take charge of anything in his path. She was so wet and bedraggled that road kill would have to look more appealing. Yet there was something in those deep, dark eyes that punched the accelerator in her pulse.
If Gabe had even noticed she was a woman, he hadn’t let on before. Suddenly she was having trouble breathing. Gabe was a vital, virile, potent masculine package—easy enough to enjoy sparring with, when there’d been absolutely no threat or thought of his noticing her in any personal way. She wasn’t…easy around Gabe. Not as a woman. On the other hand, likely the fall had addled her brain. There couldn’t have been a sillier time to feel a power surge of hormones, and common sense told her she was imagining that look in his eyes.
Still, her pulse engine was revving harder than a jalopy with no muffler when Gabe’s expression abruptly changed. The scowl that popped back between his brows was even darker and more critical than the one before. He rocked back on his heels and then sprang to his feet. “Maybe you don’t need a doctor. But let’s see how you do when you try to stand up.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m perfectly fine.” She ignored his hand and promptly scrambled to a standing position. A bad mistake. The lump on her forehead instantly throbbed; her breasts and wrist smarted like fire, and now she knew for sure her fanny was broken. If threatened at knifepoint, though, she wouldn’t have admitted feeling wobbly to Gabe. “How did you get in the house, anyway?”
“The way most people do. Legally.” His tone was dry. “Eventually the estate’s going on the market, but it’s been closed up until all the probate tangles are over with. I called Monica Malone’s lawyer. Gave him my credentials, told him I believed there had to be more evidence in the house connected to the lady’s murder, and asked if he’d mind if I looked around personally. He gave me the key.”
“That’s it? That’s all you had to do to get a key?” It seemed so unfair.
“Now, Rebecca, everyone can’t be gifted with a writer’s imagination and fondness for high drama. Some of us even tend to do things the simple, normal, boring way—you know, by using basic common sense and logic?”
“Amazing. I could swear we had this exact same conversation before.”
“Yeah, we did. It didn’t get through to you then, either.” He shifted past her to close the gaping basement window. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and then you’re going home.”
“Only in your dreams, cutie. I didn’t just risk life and limb to disappear on your orders.” She was pretty sure no one had ever dared to call Gabe Devereax “cutie” before. The epithet seemed to startle, then amuse, him. For all that he was a hopelessly overbearing macho type—and probably untrainable, from a woman’s standpoint—he’d always had a redeeming sense of humor.
“Speaking of orders—as I’m sure you know—I’m here on your family’s. As outlandish and outrageous as it sounds, they actually trust me to follow through with this investigation all by myself. Can you imagine? Just because it’s my job and I’ve got over ten years of experience and professional qualifications behind me?”
Rebecca reached down for her backpack of tools. God, he was sassy. She might have been tempted to laugh—if the subject wasn’t so serious. “I trust you, too, Sherlock,” she said honestly. “You’re wonderful at what you do. But it isn’t your brother who’s been charged with murder. It’s mine. And I love him. And until his name is cleared, I can’t just sit home and knit booties. Did you find anything in the house so far?”
“I haven’t had the chance to look around. I’d just turned the key when I heard all hell breaking loose down here. Now, of course, I don’t know why I didn’t immediately guess it was you.” His face was in shadow when he scrubbed a tired hand over it. “Rebecca, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” But she admitted it warily.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I assume you know I’ve been on the job from the day your brother was charged. I was here during the cops’ investigation, and after, when the yellow tape went down, I combed this place from stem to stern. This is my third run-through. So far, every shred of evidence points to Jake being guilty.”
“I know.” The knowledge was like a needle in her chest.
“Love and objectivity don’t mix. I know you want to help your brother. But I’m not putting you down when I say you’d be better off at home, knitting those booties. You could get hurt, messing around with this.”
Her gaze scanning the shadows, Rebecca vaguely noted a behemoth of a furnace, pipes, dampness seeping into the foundation walls—and the bottom edge of some wooden stairs, leading up. She heard Gabe, but what she heard in his voice only magnified her resolve. He would do his job. She’d never doubted that. But he didn’t believe in Jake’s innocence, any more than the police did.
She paused a second before aiming for the stairs, and pushed a fistful of tangled curls off her face. “You’re right about my not being objective. I have no interest whatsoever in being objective. If you’ll remember, Gabe, I’m the one who first tracked down your PI agency for the family, when my mother was in that plane crash.”
“I remember.”
She nodded. “No one believed that Kate was alive. No one believed she could be. And I wanted you hired, because you’re the best, and I always respected that you could do certain things that I can’t. But when you took on that job, you didn’t believe me about my mother being alive. You were no different than everyone else. Who was right that time, Devereax?”
“You were. But that was completely different—”
She shook her head, swiftly and violently, making the lump on her forehead ache like a bear—but she didn’t care. “It’s exactly the same thing. You trust your head, the same way I trust my heart. It’s because I love my brother that I know positively he never murdered anyone…and I don’t care how rotten Monica Malone was, or what she did to him.”
Gabe sighed. One of those exasperating masculine sighs that expressed centuries of archaic attitudes about women—and particularly her. “There are a few minor flaws in that logic, but we’ll forget those and move along. If you believe your brother’s innocent—and that all the physical evidence against him is just an inconvenient fantasy—that would mean that the real murderer is running around loose. A damn good reason to stay out of this. You could be in danger if you start poking your nose in fires you’re not qualified or prepared to put out.”
“For cripes’ sake, Gabe. That’s why I’m here. To find those fires.”
“God, it’s like talking to a marshmallow. Nothing gets through.” For the second time, he washed his face with an exhausted hand. “Somehow I have the feeling I’m not going to be able to talk you into going home.”
“Now, now.” She patted his shoulder consolingly—as she hiked past him toward the basement stairs. “I’m going to help you. Trust me.”
Two
Rebecca was as much help as a tornado. Given an option between the two evils, Gabe would have chosen the less chaotic.
That wasn’t the redhead.
For the second time, he dipped the washcloth under the faucet, wrung it out and aimed the cool cloth at the lump on her forehead. Rain was still battering the windows like bullets. March was early for a thunderstorm in Minnesota. No point in complaining; at least it was rain, instead of snow. Still, thunder shuddered through the house, and the lights winked and blinked at every flash of lightning. They’d be lucky if they didn’t lose the electricity altogether.
Losing the electricity wouldn’t bother him. Gabe was a resourceful man. He’d spent years in the Special Forces proving his ability to cope in even the most impossible of situations. Danger had never stopped him. Neither had adversity. He’d never counted on luck or God to solve a problem—in the past.
Conceivably, though, a few concentrated hours with Rebecca Fortune could turn even a hard-core heathen into a praying man.
“Yee-ouch. What, did you take lessons under Torquemada? Leave me alone, you bully.”
He didn’t stop working, didn’t look up. Right now, Rebecca was propped up on the kitchen counter, her face tilted toward the sink light.
He had a clear view of the gash on her forehead, but the chances of keeping her pinned and still for long wouldn’t make bookie odds. “It’s your own damn fault it hurts. There’s little specks of something in the cut. Maybe paint from that window frame. They have to come out. If you’d quit squirming, I’d get done a lot faster. I think you need a couple of stitches—”
Her response was swift. “No.”
“And since God knows what you connected with to get all those scrapes, you probably need a tetanus shot—”
Her response was even swifter. “I had one a couple of weeks ago.”
“Sure you did. And cats swim. You’ve got a real talent for fiction—which is a good thing, since I don’t think you’re gonna make it as a career criminal. Breaking and entering doesn’t seem to be your thing at all.”
“Don’t you start again with me, Devereax. I did this for my brother, and it wouldn’t matter to me if I’d ended up with all four limbs in casts and traction—I’d do it again.”
Gabe believed her. That was what scared him.
Most people could be appealed to through reason. Most women had a concept of safety, personal limitations, how to protect themselves. Bring that stuff up with Rebecca and she went blank. Nobody home in those pretty green eyes. No synapse connections indicating any brain function at all.
He dropped the washcloth and angled her face toward the sink light to study the welt again. Finally, it looked clean, but the ugly gash marring that soft, cream white skin made him furious. At her.
The punch-in-the-gut response to touching that soft, cream white skin made him even more furious. At himself.
When a man was standing between a woman’s thighs, an arousal was a natural, unavoidable biological reaction. Gabe understood perfectly well why he was harder than a hammer. And one day out of 365, a guy was entitled to feel unreasonable for a couple of minutes.
But he was mad at her for that, too.
When he stepped back, Rebecca mistakenly seemed to assume she was free and promptly leaned forward. “If you get off that counter, you die,” he informed her. “You need a bandage on that.”
“Sheesh. It’s just a little lump. It can’t be worth all this trouble.”
“If it isn’t taped right, you’ll get a scar.”
“My brother’s in jail on a murder one charge. Who the patooties could care about a stupid little scar? We’ve wasted enough time on this thing.”
“One more minute and this’ll be done.” He stepped between her thighs again. He had to. He didn’t trust Rebecca not to fly off the counter and start playing sleuth. He’d found the makings of a butterfly bandage in the antiquated first aid box. Leaning this close to her, Geronimo naturally stood at attention again, as stiff as a warrior’s lance.
Like his namesake, Geronimo should have figured out by now that a guy couldn’t win every time. Gabe ignored that problem. He wished he could ignore her.
She was relatively cleaned up now. Technically, no one was supposed to remove anything from the estate until all the legal tangles surrounding Monica Malone’s death were settled. Those legal complications meant that the cupboards and drawers and closets in the house were still jammed with stuff. Gabe had had no trouble finding a towel, washcloth, the first aid supplies and some clothes. He’d also caught sight of some thirty-year-old Scotch in the top kitchen cupboard.
He was considering leveling it.
“You done?” she said hopefully.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
“Gabe…thanks. I really couldn’t see the cut myself, not at the angle it was. I didn’t mean to be a pistol. I appreciate the help.”
“No sweat.” A total lie, Gabe thought. Everything about her was a sweat.
Rebecca wasn’t vain or spoiled, he gave her that—and she sure as hell could have been both, given the enormous wealth and affluence of the Fortune family. It wasn’t her fault that she’d never been outside a protected environment. Her background just made her inescapable trouble. She was a hopeless idealist, plenty bright, but no street smarts, no practical life experience. She’d never run across the seamier, more realistic side of life. She’d never been near it. She was a believer in love, in white knights and honor, and as far as Gabe could tell, she didn’t have a clue that there were predators out there who could hurt her.
Worse yet, she fancied herself a Nancy Drew, just because she’d written a few mystery novels. The complications she could cause, “helping” with this investigation regarding her brother, were enough to give Gabe an ulcer.
So was she.
As she slid off the counter, his eyes homed on the view of a lace-trimmed bra and the shadow of cleavage. More shadow than cleavage. There’d been no way he could talk her into peeling off the muddy, soaking-wet sweatshirt until he found something else for her to put on—he’d yanked the V-necked black sweater from a drawer upstairs, and he assumed it had belonged to Monica Malone. The late Monica, like so many of the Hollywood glamour stars of her era, had been built like a battleship on the upstairs deck.
The V neck gaped on Rebecca as if she were an orphan waif playing dress-up. Her black jeans were finally dry, and snug enough to outline long, lean legs and a nonexistent tush. Since she couldn’t sit without squirming, he strongly suspected she’d bruised that bitsy tush, but for damn sure she’d never admit it to him. There was far more pride than sense in those soft green eyes, and that about summed up the rest of her appearance, too.
The face was valentine-shaped, the skin too white, the eyes too dark, a mouth that looked dangerously butter-soft, and a nose with an impertinent tip. He guessed her height at around five-five. A respectable height—except next to him—but it was hard to resist calling her “shorty” when the least teasing got such a rise out of her.
Her hair was dark cinnamon, and at the moment layered to her shoulders in a snarled tangle of curls. She’d obviously had no chance or time to brush it, but he’d spent time with her before this, and he knew her hair always looked like she’d just climbed out of a man’s bed after a long, acrobatic night. Since she was a Fortune, there was no question that she had the money for a decent haircut, so apparently she just didn’t think about it. Maybe a haircut wouldn’t help. Give her a butch cut and drape her in iron—she was still going to look skinny, sexy, half put together and, dammit, vulnerable.
Gabe had never been attracted to vulnerable-looking females, so he had no idea why she so revved his engines—and he didn’t want to know. If and when a man was inclined to make a mistake, Gabe generally theorized, he might as well get his money’s worth and do it right. But, hell, not with her. He’d tangled with his share of women, and at thirty-eight he certainly knew when a risk was worth taking. He liked risk and he wasn’t short on guts—but no way was he a suicidal kamikaze pilot.
“Rebecca…” He swiped a hand over his face again. As fast as she’d sprung down from the counter—as he should have known—she was galloping toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I thought I’d check out the scene of the murder first—it was in the living room, wasn’t it? Then see what I could pry and poke up in Ms. Malone’s bedroom.”
“If you’re headed for the living room, better aim right instead of left. Unless you have some interest in the pantry and butler’s quarters. And listen, Nancy D. You leave stuff as you find it. You don’t take anything. I’d rather you didn’t even touch anything without telling me—”
“Sheesh, Gabe. I’ve read a dozen books on police procedure. If I find anything remotely related to evidence, I sure as Pete know enough not to mess it up.”
“Somehow your reading those books doesn’t reassure me too much.”
For a vulnerable woman, she had the unholiest grin. “I know, cutie. You really can’t seem to help being a take-charge, overbearing, overprotective pain. Especially with women. God, thinking about you being a father just boggles the mind. You’d drive a daughter nuts, sweetie pie.”
“Since I don’t plan to be a father, the problem is moot. Babies are the last thing on my mind.”
“Yet another core difference between us—no surprise. If it weren’t for this immediate problem with my brother, babies’d be front-line priority for me. You should see all the research material I’ve been collecting on sperm banks.”
“Sperm banks? You can’t be serious.”
“On the subject of babies, I couldn’t be more serious.” But she grinned again. “However, the only reason I mentioned sperm banks was because I couldn’t resist—I just knew you’d get that look on your face, darlin’. But right now, time’s wasting…and babies just have no place on this night’s agenda.”
No, Gabe thought darkly, murder was apparently front-line on the lady’s agenda now. And only Rebecca could bounce from sperm banks to murder in a single breath.
Well, he wasn’t going to follow her around. He had an investigative job he was being paid to do, and his salary didn’t extend to baby-sitting imaginative, recalcitrant redheads—even if she was kin to his boss.
He headed for the office—and yeah, he knew the mansion had one, because he’d been here before. The wallpaper was textured silk, the windows were hung with poofy, powder-puff-looking curtains, and the desk had a brocade chair. It was about the sissiest office he’d ever been in, and he doubted Monica Malone had ever paid a bill on her own, least of all in here. Either the cops or the lawyers had absconded with every record or financial statement in the file cabinets, as Gabe already knew. Still, he flicked on the fancy offset lighting and started yanking out drawers.
Someone could have missed something. Someone always did. As much evidence as had emerged in the case, there were still huge holes and gaps in information. He carefully, meticulously tore the place apart…for about twenty minutes.
About then he realized how silent it was in the rest of the house. Dead silent. Ideal for concentrating, except that it nagged at him like a bee sting that he couldn’t hear Rebecca. Her labeling him overbearing still rankled. He wasn’t remotely overbearing. He simply had ample previous experience with Rebecca—enough to know she was impulsively, unwittingly capable of causing no end of trouble. When a man was in the same house with a nuclear reactor, he was perfectly justified in worrying.
He found her in the long, sweeping living room, huddled in a chair, staring at the marble fireplace. Damn woman. She looked up at him with huge dark eyes. “I’m just trying to picture it. I know she was killed here….”
“Yes.”
“We know Jake was here. And that he was drunk. We know they argued, physically argued. Jake said Monica scratched him and came at him with a letter opener, and he had a stab wound in the shoulder to prove it. He admitted that he pushed her, that she fell against that marble fireplace and hit her head.”
“Monica and your brother’s fingerprints were all over the scene.” Gabe didn’t add that no one else’s identifiable fingerprints had surfaced. Rebecca already seemed to have a pretty good picture of the compelling evidence against her brother. She couldn’t seem to stop wringing those slim white hands.
“But he said Monica was alive when he left her. Natalie, his daughter, saw him later. We talked to him. It wasn’t like a fight, not on his part. He only pushed her because she was attacking him with that letter opener, and he had no reason to lie about her still being alive. He could have claimed self-defense if she’d died accidentally in a struggle like that. I’m telling you, someone else was either already in the house or came in after Jake left. My brother did not kill her, Gabe.”
Gabe crossed the room to the art deco bar. Nothing back there was quite as good as the thirty-year-old Scotch he’d found in the kitchen, but at the moment he’d have settled for Kentucky moonshine. Not for him. Being around Rebecca predictably inspired him to drink, but the immediate problem was the damn heartsick look in her eyes.
He splashed some whiskey in a cut-crystal shot glass and carried it over to her.
She took the glass and sniffed it. “Yuck,” she said.
“Shut up and level it, shorty.”
“If you call me ‘shorty’ one more time…” she began, but then her voice trailed off. It was truly a landmark occasion—she actually didn’t bristle up and argue with him. Instead, she lifted the shot glass and chugged the brew in an impressive three gulps. Once she finished coughing, she wiped her eyes with a shudder. “Personally, I’m with Mary Poppins. If you have to take medicine, you should be able to add a spoonful of sugar to it.”
Imagining the taste of whiskey and sugar was enough to make him shudder, but he could see that the liquid courage did its job. Color shot back into her cheeks. She quit trying to knit those hands into a sweater. Gabe figured if there was ever going to be a two-second window when she could handle a dose of realism, it had to be now. “No other suspects have surfaced, Rebecca—not a single name, much less a clear fingerprint. All the physical evidence points to Jake…and he had motive.”
“Monica was blackmailing him. I know. Milking him for shares of the Fortune company, from the time she found out Jake was born on the wrong side of the blanket. If she exposed him, he was afraid he’d lose everything. I know all the family dirty linen, Gabe, and I know the mistakes my brother made. I know he’d been drinking a lot and had been screwing up at work. That the pressure split up his marriage, and set him against Nate. It still doesn’t mean he killed her.”
It was pretty rare that two and two didn’t add up to four, Gabe thought, but it was hard to argue with such blind loyalty. “I just thought you might need to recognize how bad it looks,” he said gently.
She surged out of the chair, suddenly as restless as a wet cat. “You know what I recognize? That Monica Malone has somehow managed to hurt my family for two generations—she’s dead now, and it still isn’t over. The old witch was guilty of kidnapping, sabotage, infidelity, stalking, theft, blackmail—you name it, she did it against the Fortune family, starting way back when she had an affair with my father. I swear she’s hurt us for the last time. It’s got to stop.”
“Rebecca,” he said patiently, “go home.”
“No.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe someone did come in this house after your brother left, and murdered her. But if there’s a shred of proof in this house pointing in that direction, I promise I’ll find it.”
“I know you would try. And I know you’re good. But you don’t have a woman’s eye, Gabe. There’s every chance I could see things that you couldn’t.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. No point in continuing in that direction, so he tried another. “There’s a tiny element you may not have considered, Red. Finding evidence that someone else murdered Monica doesn’t mean you’re going to be any happier. I know the whole story of how she preyed on your family. But that’s the point. If there is another suspect, it could well be another member of your clan. There’s no shortage of motives all through the Fortune family.”
“It wasn’t any of us,” Rebecca said firmly.
“I hate to tell you this, but it’d be tough to prove that viewpoint in court. Some misguided folk might think you were coming from blind loyalty instead of from rational, objective thinking.”
“Well, they’d be wrong. That woman was a greedy, selfish, conniving shrew her whole life, Gabe. She could have had a thousand enemies besides us. And…oh God, I can’t just sit here…. I’m going to start looking.”
She shot toward the door and out before he could stop her. Not that Gabe would have tried. Reasoning with the woman was like trying to get through to a mule. He cast a longing glance at the bottle of whiskey.
He didn’t believe she would find any evidence clearing her brother, but there was a slim chance it existed. And if the thousand-to-one odds that Rebecca was right paid off, there was still a real murderer out there. A cold-blooded killer wouldn’t likely appreciate anyone poking and probing for the truth. Gabe had never mentioned that threat of danger to Rebecca, but the nasty, rotten thought crossed his mind that someone had better watch over her.
It wasn’t his problem. If worse came to worst, he could sic her mama on her. Kate Fortune could make a battalion of marines behave with a look.
It was just for this night that he was stuck with her. When he got home, there’d be ample time to dip into a consoling shot of whiskey. While he had to be around Rebecca, he definitely needed all the wits he could beg, borrow or steal.
Rebecca propped her fists on her hips. Monica Malone’s bedroom was about what she’d expected—a study in a vain, greedy, self-indulgent woman.
Monica’s world had definitely revolved around Monica. She had two oil portraits of herself on the wall, for Pete’s sake. Walk-in closets stuffed with plunging necklines and more shoes than Madame Marcos. The bed was heart-shaped—how corny could you get?—with satin sheets and a plump satin headboard. Probably had to kill a whole whale to get all the bones and wiring in her corsets; the aging Monica had definitely been into pushing up, shoving out and, above all else, displaying her boobs. The vanity was sardine-packed with more bottles and vials than a cosmetic company could produce—and since the Fortune family had founded a dynasty in cosmetics, Rebecca ought to know.
She’d already rifled the drawers and closets. While she was in the sybaritic malachite bathroom, she’d also yanked down her jeans—away from Gabe’s eagle eyes—to figure out why her fanny was hurting so much. There were certainly enough mirrors to display a nasty bruise already turning rainbow colors. Her forehead throbbed, her behind was killing her, and the long scrape on her chest and ribs refused to stop smarting.
Well, she could soak once she got home. Now wasn’t the time. She refused to admit to being exhausted, even though it had to be three in the morning. Thunder boomed outside. The frustrated scowl on her forehead was just as dark and gloomy as the pitchy, witchy night outside.
Gabe didn’t believe there was any evidence to find, she knew. He didn’t want her around. She knew that, too. The rancid slug of whiskey had finally warmed her from the inside, though, renewing her determination. For some idiotic reason, she’d actually hoped Gabe might believe in her brother’s innocence. It was obvious he didn’t—no different from everyone else.
It wasn’t the first time Rebecca had felt alone. As her gaze scanned the width of the room, she automatically rubbed the gold charm bracelet on her wrist. The symbol of family always sustained her. As diverse as the Fortune clan was, Rebecca had always felt different, not one to fit in or follow anyone else’s pattern or values. It didn’t matter. It had never mattered. Family meant loyalty. Love. The precious and unbreakable bonds of blood. She’d find a way to clear her brother’s name or die trying. There’d never been any question about it.
Looking around, she rubbed and rerubbed the gold chain, idly wondering if Gabe even had a family. He never spoke of siblings or family members. Neither a wife nor babies seemed anywhere on his priority list. He came across as a self-sufficient loner, but in some quiet corner of her mind, Rebecca sensed that he was a deeply lonely man.
He’d undoubtedly crack up if she dared suggest such a thing, she thought, and then, abruptly, she forgot Gabe. Her eyes shot to her bracelet, then swiftly around the room. Jewelry. That woman had to have a ton of it. Undoubtedly the expensive stuff was stored in safe-deposit boxes—or the lawyers had absconded with it through the whole estate probate thing. But Monica had never been photographed when she wasn’t decked out in trinkets and baubles of all kinds. Surely there had to be some jewelry boxes around here.
There were.
She found two freestanding jewelry chests in the back of one closet—both packed to the gills. Crouching down, she pulled out all the little drawers and started pawing through yards of glittery bangles and cheap baubles.
Her mood picked up anticipation. No, she didn’t know what she was looking for, didn’t know where to look, didn’t even know if there was anything to find. But if there were secrets to find about Monica, Rebecca strongly intuited they were in this bedroom. Maybe a guy hid secrets in his truck or his desk, but a woman always stored her secrets in her bedroom. It was her cache, her stash, her private hideaway, in a way a man would never understand.
In the fourth drawer down, her fingertips hit a bump. She ran over it again. Definitely a bump. Hustling, she upturned the drawer of baubles on the white closet carpet, shook the drawer good and then peered into the bottom. The bump showed up as a ripple in the satin lining.
The satin lining ripped out as easily as a candy wrapper.
Several snips of paper drifted out with it. One was a telegram so old that the yellow paper looked like a wrinkled napkin—some poor misguided dude announcing he loved Monica. Rebecca tossed that, then reached for the next—a love letter from another guy, who’d signed himself “Your faithful hound.” She wondered dryly if the guy had been a dog as a lover, but then studied it more seriously. The love note was dated ten years before, too old to be of any relevance that she could imagine, but she tucked it near her knee anyway. If Monica valued the thing enough to hide it, it might mean something.
Most of the paper scraps were simply personal memorabilia, nothing that Rebecca could imagine having even a remote relationship to the woman’s murder. Rebecca grimaced as she found more evidence of Monica’s perfidy. She found proof that Monica had been behind the attempted theft of the secret youth formula, had encouraged Allie’s stalker, had people break in the lab and had even been behind the threats to deport Fortune scientist Nick Valkov—a threat that had prompted their marriage, the first of the rash of weddings in the Fortune family. At least Monica had done something right. But none of this was any use in clearing Jake’s name.
Until she came to the letter. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she read, then reread, the last missive.
It was a carbon copy of a letter, written not to Monica, but by Monica. Although the message contained only a few short lines, it was dated ten days before her death, threatening a woman named Tammy Diller about “showing up for their meeting” or risking “more trouble than you ever dreamed of.”
Pay dirt.
Elation thrummed through Rebecca’s pulse. Something about the woman’s name struck a vague chord in her memory, but she couldn’t place it…and that didn’t immediately matter, anyway. The letter itself was enough. Maybe the missive was no proof that her brother was innocent. Maybe it wasn’t proof this Tammy woman had done anything, either. But it was sure proof that another person had been in the picture around the time of Monica’s death…and their relationship hardly sounded amicable.
Ignoring every ache and pain, Rebecca scrambled to her feet. Handling the letter as if it were precious china, she jogged out of the bedroom and into the hall, yelling loudly for Gabe.
Later it occurred to her that her screaming might have aroused his alarm and made him think she’d done something to half kill herself, because she saw him fly up the winding front stairs three at a time. Just then, the only things on her mind were elation and relief and excitement that she’d found something real and concrete that could link someone else to Monica’s murder besides her brother.
When Gabe flew toward her, she flew straight at him.
It was perfectly logical to throw her arms around him. Any woman would have understood the perfectly natural, emotional impulse.
Gabe, though, didn’t quite seem to see it that way.
Three
The way Rebecca was charging down that hall, Gabe naturally assumed demons or monsters were after her—or a killer. Maybe he’d been retired from the Special Forces for the past seven years, but certain responses were as well-honed as instincts for him. He was braced to yank her behind him, out of harm’s way, and protect her. He was braced to confront serious danger.
He was braced for just about anything but the damn fool woman throwing her arms around him. The exuberant hug was so sudden. And maybe she aimed that sassy smack for his cheek, but it collided an inch short. On his mouth. With the impact of a bullet.
Gabe had been shot. Twice. The experience was something a man never forgot, although it hadn’t hurt either time—not at the instant of impact. It had felt more like a sudden burn, a burst of stunning heat.
Bullets had nothing on Rebecca.
He’d known she was trouble. Known at some gut-instinct level that keeping his hands off her could avert the core source of that trouble. But initially he grabbed her because his brain was responding to the threat of danger. Initially adrenaline was pumping through his veins at the speed of light. A millisecond later, that adrenaline rush was sabotaged by the flooding pump of straight testosterone.
The long hall was dim and dark, so empty that his heartbeat echoed loudly, bouncing off the silence. Whyever in hell she’d hugged him, her head suddenly reared back. Velvet green eyes connected with his. The huge smile curving her lips suddenly faded, softened. She didn’t drop her arms. She didn’t do anything any sane, normal, rational woman would do. She lifted up on tiptoe, not unlike a kitten hell-bent on being curious, and kissed him.
She tasted like spring winds and innocence. She tasted like nothing that had been in Gabe’s life for a long, long time…nothing he’d missed or even wanted, dammit. Until that moment. Her mouth was softer than a baby’s behind, the scent of her skin as wholesome as Ivory soap, and something was in one of the hands that scratched his neck. Paper? But her other hand suddenly clutched the dark hair at his nape, and her small breasts flattened against his chest, and suddenly Gabe couldn’t breathe.
All right, he tried telling himself. It’s all right. There was nothing happening here but a little overflow of testosterone. Just hormones. He’d been celibate for a while, and he damn well hated being celibate, and even if Rebecca drove him nuts, she was two-hundred-percent female. The sizzle of desire bolting through his system was natural. Simple biology.
Nothing seemed real simple at that moment, though. His fingers found their way into that messy tangle of red hair, so silky, so soft, and her mouth opened under the pressure of his. Her tongue was wet, as small as a secret, and if that woman had a repressive instinct in her, it didn’t show. She kissed with abandon. She kissed like pure, untouched emotion. She kissed like she’d never been on a roller-coaster ride before and was utterly captivated by the whole experience.
Rebecca could totally immerse a man in quicksand in three seconds flat—if he let her.
Gabe twisted his mouth free, and sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Then tried sucking in another lungful. Then tried a more intelligent move—like removing his hands from her body and swearing.
Swearing worked. She opened her eyes, staring at him as if her vision were submerged in a fog, but her hands slowly dropped from his shoulders. It seemed a year or two later before she got around to rocking back on her heels. “Well,” she murmured.
He didn’t like the way she said that “Well.” He didn’t trust the way her right eyebrow suddenly arched, either.
“If I’d known you kissed like that, cutie pie, I’d have pressed for a sample long before this,” she announced.
God give him strength. “It was an accident.”
“I know.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“The wonder was that it happened at all. Every time I’ve been around you before, I was pretty sure you were more tempted to kill me than kiss me.”
“I was. I am. And if you hadn’t been living a sheltered life hunched over a keyboard, you’d have known the chemistry was there. Where I come from, you don’t wake up a sleeping lion. Now I assume, five miles back, you must have had some reason for throwing your arms around me?”
“Reason?” She said the word like it was alien. With Rebecca, that was certainly possible. For one long, horrifying minute, her soft green eyes stayed glued to his face, studying him, making him feel aggravatingly…naked. But then she blinked, and abruptly lifted her hand, as if just then remembering she was holding a piece of paper. “Of course I had a reason. A superb reason. Gabe! You won’t believe what I found!”
Well, she was diverted from talking about all that touchy, tricky chemistry business, but calming Rebecca down when she was excited had a lot in common with containing a rumor in Washington.
Gabe saw the letter, read the letter, was dragged into Monica’s bedroom closet, where she’d found the letter, but even after they headed back downstairs, she was prancing with energy—and trying hard to make him eat crow.
“Did I tell you I’d find something? Did I?”
“Now listen, shorty, you’re getting your hopes sky-high. This really isn’t proof of anything—”
“It’s proof that there could have been another factor involved in Monica’s murder. It’s proof that someone besides my brother was butting heads with Monica in the same general time period around her death.”
Yeah, he saw it that way, too. And it burned his butt that an idealistic, altruistic hopeless dreamer of a mystery writer had managed to find the clue instead of him—especially since he’d turned the damn mansion upside down himself three times now, and come up with nada.
Because Gabe wasn’t born yesterday, he carefully sneaked the letter away from her and folded it neatly in his pocket. A Los Angeles address for this Tammy Diller had been on it, an address Rebecca had certainly seen—but hopefully wouldn’t remember. The back of his mind was already clicking with plans. As soon as he got home, he could probe the data bases on the computer for info on that name and address. If anything panned out, he’d need to make travel arrangements for a trip to L.A.
First, though, he had to get rid of Rebecca. How a woman could still be so fired up in the middle of the night was beyond him—especially a woman who looked like she’d tangled with a whole gang in a back alley. Her face was as white as a virgin’s wedding dress, and the gash on her forehead was clearly swelling under the bandage.
“You never believed I’d find anything, now did you? Just like you didn’t believe me about my mother months ago. Logic isn’t always more valuable than intuition, love bug. A woman and a man simply think differently. Even if I hadn’t read a ton of reference books on crime-solving, sometimes a woman can just sense things—”
When she had to stop to take a breath, he broke in.” I admit it. You did good. But it’s going on 4:00 a.m. I think it’s time we called this a night.”
“You mean go home?” From the look on her face, the idea was as appealing as a case of chicken pox.
“I’m beat. I’m ready to pack this in, and I’m sure not leaving you alone here. You got a good lead—” he hastened to get that in, before she could praise herself for another hour and a half on the subject “—and as soon as I catch a few hours’ rest, I’ll run with it.”
“Well, I agree, if you’re beat, you should go home. But I could stay and keep looking a little longer. Maybe Monica had some other hiding places—”
“Maybe she did. But that’s a needle-in-a-haystack possibility, considering all the people who’ve been over this place. And the letter is something concrete that can be pursued immediately. Besides which, we’ve been at this for hours—”
“I’m not tired,” she immediately assured him. He saw the mutinous thrust of her chin.
His chin was bigger, and his scowl had a long history of intimidating potential mutineers before. “The hell you aren’t. You look like the battered loser in a cat fight, and you’re not going to tell me that you aren’t starting to feel those bruises. That bump on your forehead alone has to hurt like a bitch. Now where’s your car?”
She didn’t look even nominally intimidated, but the question effectively distracted her. “About a mile past the main gate. There was a bunch of big old walnut trees that made for a perfect dark place to park. And if I parked that far away, I figured no one would see me when I climbed the fence—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about your breaking-and-entering debacle.” God, she was going to give him gray hair. Until meeting her, he’d considered himself a relatively young thirty-eight. There’d been nothing to turn his hair white but death, destruction, and a few terrorists from his Special Forces days. “Wherever your car is, it sounds too far to walk. Mine’s parked out front, so I’ll just drive you there. Now where’d you leave your wet sweatshirt?”
“In the kitchen.” She glanced down at the black V-neck sweater, and abruptly clutched the neck closed. Heaven knew why. He’d seen her bra, seen her cleavage, seen every inch of her long white throat more than once tonight. Geronimo persisted in responding to her, no matter what repression techniques Gabe tried.
“I’d better put my sweatshirt back on, but where should I put the sweater back?”
“Just keep the sweater. I can’t imagine anyone would know or care if you borrowed it. I’ll get it from you and return it sometime, but putting on a wet sweatshirt on a cold night doesn’t make any sense. Just grab it—and that packsack you carried in with you—so we can go.”
“I think I may have left a light on upstairs. And I have some stuff to clean up in the closet. And I’d better wash out that shot glass—”
There was a reason Gabe always worked alone. His employees were good at teamwork, and often enough his staff paired up for different projects. Not him. He just didn’t like depending on other people. He liked being able to move fast and streamlined.
By the time Rebecca was “done” with all her messing around, he could have finished a slowpoke sucker.
He ushered her outside, turned to lock up the front door, and motioned her toward the long, low antique Morgan.
She wolf-whistled. Almost as good as a man. “What a darling,” she murmured.
“Yeah, she is. ’55. But she was cosseted as a showpiece for most of those years, so she doesn’t have that many miles on her.”
“You can still get parts?”
“Not easily. Parts are not only hard to find, they cost an arm and a leg. Damn few antique dealers even know this breed of car anymore.”
“But you don’t care, do you? She’s worth all the trouble.”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t expected Rebecca to understand. He opened the passenger door and watched her long, slim legs disappear under the long, slim console. The aggravating thought crossed his mind that she was made for the car.
Lack of sleep was obviously the reason he wasn’t thinking clearly. He closed her in, locked her door and hiked around to the other side. The engine purred as soon as he turned the key.
“What a beautiful baby,” she murmured.
Her comment about babies inevitably reminded him of the comment she’d made earlier about sperm banks. He told himself to keep quiet, that it was none of his business…but the comment had nagged at the back of his mind all night.
For a few minutes, he stayed silent. The storm had died, but a fine silver mist was still drizzling down. Grass and trees glistened in the ghostly night as he tooled down the driveway, stopping to unlock the gate with a set of keys. No one seemed to be awake or alive for miles. There were no lights, and no sounds but the rustling trees and the whisper of that diamond-studded mist.
Locating her car was easy; there were no other vehicles on the road. He pulled up behind the cherry red Ciera and glanced at her. She’d raved pretty enthusiastically about his car, and coming from the Fortune family, she could probably have owned a fleet of Morgans if she chose. Instead, she’d picked solid, reliable wheels. A wholesome four-door, yet. A capital F family car—for a lady who made no secret of her desire and love for family—and somehow he just couldn’t let it go.
“You aren’t serious about looking into sperm banks.”
“Sure I am.” While the engine idled, she ducked her head to gather up her things.
“The last I knew, a husband was sort of the usual way to get a baby. Or at least some guy in the direct picture.”
“Usually,” she agreed wryly. “Believe me, I haven’t quit looking. But being a Fortune has a few disadvantages—a lot of guys were more interested in courting the family money than me. And sitting home writing books doesn’t make for meeting a lot of new men, either. It just isn’t that easy to find a white knight—or it hasn’t been for me—and I’ve got a biological clock ticking loud and strong.”
“I’ll bet you have been prey to a lot of fortune hunters…but you’re hardly ancient.”
“Old enough. Thirty-three is a good, healthy age to have a child. And, thankfully, this is the nineties. No one’s going to look sideways if I choose to be a single mom. This is an ideal time for me to have a baby—I’m ready, I’m healthy, I’m financially prepared to be a parent, and I’m dying for a baby. Or six.”
Six? Gabe swallowed hard. “You don’t think sperm banks are a little…drastic?”
“I think marrying the wrong man just because I’m hungry for a family would be ‘drastic.’ I’m sold on true love, cutie, and have absolutely no interest in settling for less. But I also want a family. Children to love and care for. For sure it’d be better if there was a loving dad in the picture, but if that’s not in the cards, there’s no reason I can’t deal from another deck.”
“Have you talked this out with your mama?”
“Kate?” Rebecca’s grin was amused. “You think my mom would talk me out of this?”
Damn straight he did. Sperm banks, for God’s sake!
“Well, I hate to disillusion you, darlin’, but my mom would back me up all the way. She always has. From the day I was born, Kate encouraged me to take my own roads. I know on the surface no one sees us as alike—she’s a hardheaded, practical businesswoman, a high-profile achiever. No accident that she’s the head of a financial empire. I’m not like that, Gabe, never will be. But she pushed me toward writing, pushed me toward living my life on my own terms, my own way, and taught me never to back down from what I wanted and believed in. Believe me, my mom wouldn’t give me any argument over this.”
Somehow Gabe thought otherwise. Somehow he was damn sure Kate would like her youngest married off, preferably to a guy who could keep her impulsive baby safe and under control. Sperm banks didn’t fit in that scenario, no way and nohow.
Rebecca’s gaze roamed his face. Something in the way she probingly studied him aroused an uneasy feeling. “You don’t have a male biological clock ticking of your own? No desire to have a son, a daughter, family to come home to at night? A new generation of Devereax?”
“The past generation of Devereax wasn’t anything worth repeating,” he said shortly. “I don’t have your idealistic view about families. They only read great in storybooks.”
“That’s an awfully cynical view, cutie.”
“Realistic,” he corrected her, and abruptly leaned across her chest to open her car door. The whole personal nature of this conversation was crazy. It was past time to cut it off. “You go home, soak out those aches and bruises, get some sleep. Don’t even think about that letter—I’ll follow through with it. Stay out of it from now on, Rebecca.”
“I’ll be darned. Did you suddenly get elected my boss?”
Four in the morning, and she still had the energy to dish out grief. “Look, you came up with a lead. You did really good. You did more toward helping your brother than a whole team of people have done so far. But that letter also changes things, because it potentially—potentially—puts another suspect in the picture.”
“So?”
“So, if there is another potential suspect, that person is also a potential murderer. And dammit, shorty, that’s nothing to take lightly.”
“Yes, Gabe.”
“Even if this Tammy Diller had nothing to do with Monica’s murder—something was wrong there. She doesn’t sound like anyone you need to be messing with. You stay away from her. You hear me?”
“I sure do, cutie.”
She pushed open the door and climbed out, but for a few moments she poked her head inside the darkened car and just looked at him. She’d been smiling before then. Smiling in a distracting, mischievous way that made him unsure how much she was putting him on and how much she was telling him straight.
But suddenly she wasn’t smiling. This strange, warm, intense look shone from her eyes, making his pulse chug with alarm. For one horrifying moment, he was scared she was going to throw her arms around him again—and for damn sure, it was alarm that was chugging through his pulse, not anticipation.
“I know you don’t believe this,” she murmured, “but I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself. Get some sleep yourself, Gabe. And for sure don’t waste your time worrying about me.”
Not worry about her? Gabe watched her sprint toward the red Ciera—she dropped her backpack, picked it up, stubbed her toe when she almost tripped—and then finally made it into her car, which, he noted without surprise, wasn’t locked. She didn’t lock her door. She believed in love and white knights. As far as Gabe could tell, she really believed that right would prevail and nothing could hurt her.
And he wasn’t supposed to worry about her?
Rebecca parked the rented Ford Taurus in the only spare spot she could find in three blocks, then gulped a breath as she peered out the window. It was incredibly warmer in Los Angeles than in the bitter March winds she’d left in Minnesota that morning. But she was really unfamiliar with this part of the city. Late-afternoon sun glinted on the Randolph Street sign. She was on the correct street. There was no way to park any closer to 12970, but she could walk the few blocks.
The neighborhood, though, left a tad to be desired. A cluster of tattooed skinheads were monopolizing one corner. Kids of all ages were hanging out in doorways. Graffiti spray-painted on all walled surfaces offered a free sex education. A man lay sprawled on the sidewalk, either dead or dead drunk; garbage spilled and reeked from rusty containers, and if she wasn’t mistaken, this street was sort of owned by the Tigre gang…judging from the tough young fellas sporting that tag on their bandannas and Ts.
Boy, are you a long way from home, Toto. Gulping hard again, Rebecca stepped out of the car and locked it up tight, thinking that she’d written about scenes like this a zillion times…but never directly experienced one before. Through all the nuisance travel arrangements it took to get here, from the flight to L.A. to getting maps and renting a car, she’d considered that Gabe would probably have an eensy stroke if he knew she was here.
But then, Gabe had no reason to guess that she’d memorized Tammy Diller’s address before giving him the letter…or that she’d be up at first light, putting travel plans in motion.
A hispanic boy—maybe twelve?—whistled when she walked past. He’d make a tempting father, she thought objectively. Not the child. Gabe. It was relatively more comforting to concentrate on Gabe than to have a heart attack over the blank-eyed guy flicking open his switchblade just off to her left.
Gabe was patient, principled, protective. Outstanding father qualities. No fortune hunter—or skinhead—would ever get near his daughter. As far as she could tell, Gabe didn’t give a rat’s tail about money, wasn’t swayed by anyone with it—or without it. He’d teach a son or daughter the right values. She couldn’t imagine him losing his temper. The only thing she’d ever caught annoying him was…well…her.
That kiss had lingered hard in her mind. It had been a lonely kiss. Hungry. Hot. Sexy. She’d always loved the idea of being blown away by a man’s kisses, but it had never happened to her. Of course, the vast majority of her experience had been kissing frogs—fellas with their minds more on her family’s money than on her—or nice guys who seemed to prefer their bathwater tepid. Not hot. Not risky. Not dangerous.
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