“Damn,” he muttered beneath his breath. He wished like hell he knew more, wished even more that Laurel would trust him enough to bring him in on this. Or bring in someone in a position to help her. Because, whatever the reasons behind all this, one thing was absolutely clear. Bentley was somehow in over his head with a very dangerous group of people. And he’d dragged Laurel in with him.
Bentley was moving. Sean swung his binoculars up in time to see him turn and walk away. Leaving a still pale Laurel standing where he’d left her, staring after him, looking both murderous…and hopeless.
Sean wanted nothing more than to go to her, to demand she tell him what was going on. But he knew this wasn’t the place or time. He wished he could follow her home, make certain she was okay, that she was safe. But it was more important to tail Bentley, to see who was next on his list, to hope for another piece to the puzzle.
He quietly put his binoculars away and slipped silently from his spot. He had a long evening ahead of him, and an even longer day at work tomorrow on what was likely going to be very little sleep. But he knew sleep was pointless until he had a better grip on what was going on.
One thing he did know, he wasn’t going to play behind-the-scenes detective for very long. If what he suspected was true, someone was going to have to make Laurel understand that she needed help. More than he could give her. She was going to have to bring the authorities into this—and soon.
But for now he had more puzzle pieces to put into place. He curled his hands and shoved them into his jacket pocket as he headed for his car. And thought how much better he’d feel if they were curled around Alan Bentley’s neck.
LAUREL LET THE WARM WATER thundering from the faucet fill the bathtub almost to the brim before shutting it off with her toe. She tried to blank her mind, to let the heat seep into the knots her muscles had become, to settle the riptide of acid that continued to pitch in her stomach, to soothe the pounding headache that hadn’t let up in what felt like weeks. Since the day she’d turned to find Alan standing behind her on the water taxi dock.
She pressed her hands to her stomach and forcibly turned her mind away from that memory. Sean Gannon’s image immediately filled the void. She pictured him standing in her office last week, offering to be there for her.
What kind of man willingly put himself into the middle of trouble for a woman he’d only just met? Okay, met, had a whirlwind romance with, including some amazing time in bed together.
What made it truly odd, she was forced to admit, was that she actually understood it. The attraction anyway, the connection. But why he was so quick to court trouble…That part she didn’t know. It was one thing to follow up on something that had been so good, but at the first sign of real problems, most men would have hightailed it out of there.
“Yeah, well, Sean Gannon isn’t most men,” she murmured, then felt the real stab of heartache. Why now? she silently asked the fates. Why send him to me now, at the worst possible time in my life?
I’ll do whatever it takes to earn the right to do that, anytime I want. Wherever I want.
She sighed deeply, remembering those words…that kiss. She felt so ragged and emotionally spent. Maybe if she could just get to sleep at night, she could think more clearly, figure out a solution to all this, so she would be free to pursue the relationship Sean wanted with her. One she wanted for herself.
She sipped her wine, then closed her eyes and leaned back again. What was he doing right this minute? He’d left her office, obviously with some intent on helping her, whether she wanted his help or not. She’d spent the past week wondering when he’d pop up again, half relieved, half disappointed when another day ended with no contact.
Maybe he’d come to his senses and run screaming from the disaster—the very public disaster—her life was rapidly becoming. She groaned and sank further into the steaming water.
She thought again about contacting her father, asking for an explanation. Surely there was some reason he’d done what he’d done, made the decisions he’d made. Her father, who held the law in the highest possible esteem. And there was the real conflict…how could she knowingly thwart the very laws her father so cherished, that she’d been raised to cherish, that she worked so hard to uphold? Even if she was doing it for his sake.
She massaged the insistent throbbing in her temples. If she’d brought this dilemma to her father, claiming it was the problem of a friend, she knew exactly what his recommendation would be. Go to the police, do whatever was necessary to bring the lying, cheating bastards to justice. The hell with ruined reputations and public scandal. If they hadn’t wanted to deal with that eventuality, then they shouldn’t have muddied their own waters to begin with.
She could hear the words as plainly as if he were standing right beside her. Tried to envision herself standing in front of him, asking him if he’d muddied his own waters…and what could possibly have driven him to do it.
She sat up suddenly, sloshing water over the side of the tub, not caring. Enough was enough. Alan had given her just enough proof to have her doubting her own father, the one man she’d always known she could trust above all others. Furious all over again, at Alan and her father, she climbed out of the tub, wrapped a towel around her dripping-wet body and stalked from the bathroom. She had to do something, had to find some way to either exonerate her father, to prove he hadn’t done anything wrong…or to find something equally devastating to hold over Alan’s head.
She rubbed her skin so hard it turned pink as her mind skated once again over every possible avenue and path. Of course, the obvious answer was to threaten to go to the press with Alan’s behind-the-scenes involvement with the Rochambeau family, with his blackmail scheme, with his plans to keep his name above reproach so he could climb the political ladder. Snake. If she’d had actual proof, which she didn’t, she could go to the police, as well.
Of course she’d threatened him with that very thing this afternoon…. She shuddered as she remembered his very calm reply. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t going to be the only one disappointed in her if she did that. He’d also made it clear that the other party didn’t play as nice as Alan Bentley. Bentley only planned on keeping Seamus Patrick from running for his spot on the senatorial ballot. The Rochambeaus, on the other hand, might simply prefer to keep Seamus Patrick from doing anything. Permanently.
Shaking, feeling nauseous all over again, she pulled a robe tightly around her and walked over to the desk where she’d left the mini-cassette tape. She picked it up, turned it over in her hands. Her conversation with Alan from a week ago had recorded fairly clearly. She only wished Alan had done more than make veiled threats. It was a little, but it wasn’t enough. And even if she had enough, she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it. It wasn’t just her father’s reputation or his future career at stake. It was possibly his very life.
She walked over to her dresser and opened the top drawer, took out the small locked jewelry box that held the pieces she’d inherited from her mother and her grandmother. She slipped the tape inside, then shoved the whole thing back in the drawer. Shame. That was what she was feeling, she realized. For her cowardice and her inability to figure out a solution to this mess, a solution that only punished the villains, without taking down any of the good guys in the process.
She sank down onto her bed, staring at herself in her dresser mirror. “You learned a long time ago that the world isn’t separated into the black hats and the white hats.” There were a lot of gray hats out there, just to confuse things.
Her phone rang, making her jump. She glanced at the clock. It was after ten. Who could be calling her at this hour? She didn’t have any cases pending that warranted late-night calls.
Except one.
Her skin crawled with dread as the phone rang again. She debated letting her machine pick up, but knew it was better to just get it over with. She snatched the receiver up on the third ring. “Yes?” she said, her tone edgy with wariness and fatigue. And maybe a little r
esentment. When this was all over, she thought, she was going back to St. Thomas for an extended vacation, and to do some serious thinking about her future.
Visions of lying on white sandy beaches switched her mind back to Sean. So it took her a moment when he spoke into her ear for her to determine that she wasn’t merely fantasizing.
“I’m sorry to call you so late.”
“Sean?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Her heart was drumming loudly, her entire body tightening against the need to reach out to him, to pour her heart out, to beg him to come help her out of this mess…or just to hold her while she worked her own way through it. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said, biting her lip against the sudden pressure behind her eyes. “It’s late.”
“You need to talk to me, Laurel,” he said. His tone was flat, no indication if this was a personal call or—
“Why?” she asked warily. “What have you been up to?” She assumed he’d given up on whatever little plan he’d hatched that day in her office. She knew he had a full-time job out at Beauregard, a new job that would surely be demanding of his time and energy. Why in the hell would he spend whatever time he had left on a woman who’d made it clear she was more trouble than she was worth?
As with all the other times she’d asked herself that question, no answer came to mind.
“It doesn’t have to be tonight. Maybe we could set something up for tomorrow.”
She frowned now. “What is this about, Sean?”
“I’d really rather not talk about it over the phone.”
“If it’s about us seeing each other, I appreciate your persistence,” she said. More than he could know, she thought. He was the only good thing she had going at the moment, even if she couldn’t do anything about it. “But until this trial is over, I really can’t—”
“It’s not about that—or not directly anyway.”
His tone was all business, with a clear thread of agitation running through it. Not the charming man who wanted to seduce her, or the intense man who wanted to make her understand how important their chance meeting in St. Thomas had become to him. This was…this was a whole new side to Sean Gannon. She suspected this was the Marshal side. And it made her sit up straighter, made her clutch the phone a bit more tightly. “I need you to tell me what this is about.”
“Meet me tomorrow. You pick the place. Preferably not somewhere you’d normally be seen.”
Now he was beginning to scare her. “Sean—”
“Laurel, please.”
It was that slight bending, the personal concern that filtered in, that pushed her past the boundaries of common sense. But what the hell, she was already so far out on the edge in every other way, why not, right? “I’m never going to be able to sleep now. Why don’t you come here? Now. Tonight.” She tried to keep her body from clamoring at the very idea of having Sean, alone, with a bedroom in close proximity, and nowhere to be for several hours.
There was a long pause.
“I don’t want to be out this late. If it’s that important, you can come to me,” she said, her body clamoring anyway. Not that she was going to do anything about it. But damn if she didn’t want to. Just a few hours of blissful escape from reality. Except when it was over, everything would just be that much more complicated. And things were complicated enough at the moment. “Do you need directions?”
“No. Go downstairs and unlock your back door.”
“How do you know I’m upst—” But he’d hung up.
She gripped her bathrobe closer and crept down the stairs and down the short hallway to her kitchen, which was in the rear of her small two-bedroom home. Through the dark shadows of her kitchen she could make out the upper half of a man standing just beyond the sheer curtains on the other side of her back door.
Sean.
9
LAUREL TIGHTENED THE BELT of her bathrobe and went to unlock the back door. The robe was heavy fleece and covered her from neck to ankle, and yet as Sean moved past her into her kitchen, she was acutely aware of how naked she was beneath it.
She should probably have steered him into the living room, but somehow it seemed wiser to stay here, in the more utilitarian, sterile surroundings of the kitchen. She flipped the small light on over the sink, not up to the intrusion of the overhead lighting. She motioned to the small round table in the center of the room. “Would you like some coffee? I’d be glad to make some while you explain what the hell you were doing outside my house at midnight.”
Her testy tone brought a hint of a smile to his otherwise very serious expression. “Yes, thanks. Black would be fine.” He sat at her table, and it struck her how big he was as he angled his chair so he could stretch out his legs.
She turned her back to him, getting the makings of coffee from the cupboard. It didn’t matter in the least how imposing he was, she told herself. Nor was she going to imagine what he’d look like, sprawled naked across her queen-size bed. She didn’t have to. She already knew exactly what he looked like sprawled naked in bed. God. “Go ahead,” she instructed him. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve done some poking around.”
She stopped in midscoop, then willed herself to continue. She felt his gaze on her, knew he hadn’t missed her telltale pause. But there was no need to let him see how much he affected her, or how seriously his intrusion in her life could affect her. “Have you?” she said, striving for a conversational tone.
“Laurel, the gig’s up. I know what’s going on.”
She did stop now, wishing her heart hadn’t begun to race. Her palms began to sweat. She wasn’t sure if it was fear for herself or for what she’d unwillingly dragged him into. Both, she decided. Carefully concealing that fear, or so she hoped, she turned to face him.
He really was imposing. Maybe it was the casual clothes. She realized she’d never seen him in jeans and a T-shirt before. If she wasn’t so damn preoccupied by the constant strain, she’d have laughed at the realization that, no, she’d pretty much only seen him in work clothes…and naked.
And somehow the T-shirt that hung on all the right muscles, the jeans that molded themselves to his thighs so casually she knew he’d worn them many times before, painted an image in her mind even sexier than the one of him in bed. Or at least an image just as sexy.
She shook those thoughts from her mind. This wasn’t about them, wasn’t about their relationship, former or future. If only things were that simple. Her life at the moment was anything but.
“I told you to leave this alone,” she said.
“You told me to leave you alone until this was over. Seeing as how I want to continue what we started on St. Thomas—and so do you,” he added before she could reply, “I had a vested interest in making this situation go away as soon as possible.”
“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
He sighed then and dropped the defensive posture. “No, you’re right about that.” He motioned to the other seat. “Forget the coffee. Sit down. We need to talk about this.”
“Sean—”
He looked at her. “I’m in it now. I’m not going anywhere.”
She folded her arms in front of her, hugging herself. “That’s what I’m most afraid of,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t misread you in your office that day,” he said matter-of-factly. “I know you still want—”
She shook her head. “Not that. I know…we both know—” She stopped, shook her head. “Listen, I appreciate you wanting to help me, more than you can possibly know. It means—” She stopped again, had to catch herself for a moment before she became emotional. This was a bad idea. She should have never let him in here this late at night. She was tired, emotionally and physically, and her barriers weren’t as strong as they should be.
“What will it take for you to realize that I got into this of my own free will?” he asked into the quiet of the room. “I don’t expect you to protect me, nor is my involvement your
responsibility.” He pushed his chair back, turned to face her fully. “You don’t have anyone else to turn to. You haven’t gone for help. Not from the police, not from fellow members of the bar or the bench, not from your father.”
She tightened up. “What do you know about my father?”
His expression shuttered a bit. “That’s something else we need to discuss. I think I understand why you think you can’t go to him, but you—”
She held up both hands, as if they would be enough to ward him off, to make him stop saying the things she knew he was going to say. “I don’t care how much poking around you’ve done, how it might look on the surface, but you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to me and my father. This is exactly why I didn’t want to discuss this with you,” she said, her emotions getting the better of her. “You have this strong moral code.” She laughed, but it was completely without humor. “Hell, I always thought I did, too. But things happen, things you can’t explain, unexpected things, that you just have to deal with. And suddenly the world isn’t black and white. And all the things you thought you knew to be true are suddenly in question. Right and wrong become ambiguous. You might have never questioned the difference between the two before, but then suddenly it’s a tangled spider’s web of lies, deceit…love and trust.”
She turned abruptly away as she felt the tears burn behind her eyes. She braced her hands on the counter, struggled to get her temper under control. “I respect that you think you understand the situation, and I’m grateful you cared enough to want to help me,” she began, her tone studiously polite, despite that the ragged hoarseness of her tone gave away how emotionally on edge she was at that moment. “But I’d greatly appreciate it if you’d stop. If you’d just—” Her voice caught, the tears brimmed, her throat closed over. “Just stop,” she whispered fiercely.
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