by Torre, A. R.
“Spoken like every stalker I’ve ever treated.”
He winced. “Excellent point. Still, you have to eat. I could bring something over tonight. It’d be safer to have company, just in case this asshole shows up.”
There were so many red flags. The confident eye contact. The playful crook of his mouth. The paper-thin layer of control over his guilt. If he was going through a roster of women in an attempt to distract himself from his guilt, he could use someone else. I’d been there. Enjoyed that. While one night with Robert Kavin had been fun, a second might kick-start a risky game with my heart.
Then again, he was a handsome, intelligent man. A skilled and generous lover. Was I an idiot for not embracing this opportunity? Wasn’t he exactly what every woman in this city was looking for?
Plus, I had finished my first-draft psychological profile. All that was left were tweaks and polishes, as well as a few days to allow my final determinations to properly marinate in my mind. It would be good to talk through some of my sticky points with him and get his feedback.
“Why do I feel like you’re making a pros-and-cons list in your head?” he asked.
“Because I am.” I glanced at the open door to the kitchen, wondering how much longer the officer would be.
“I know the pros. What are the cons?”
“Ego, for one.” I gave him a knowing look, one he brushed off.
“What else?”
“I’m just not in the market for heartbreak. You may date around a lot, but I don’t.”
His attention shifted past me and to the street. I turned to see a dark sedan stop at the curb. Robert moved in front of me. “That wouldn’t be your patient, would it?”
“Not unless his Ferrari is in the shop.” I squinted at the car, my concern easing as I saw a tall Black man step out. “Oh, I know him.”
I skirted around Robert and met Detective Saxe halfway down the drive. “Everything okay?”
“You tell me, Dr. Moore. I heard your name and address over the radio. You kill off another client?” He gave me a mirthless smile.
“Funny,” I said flatly. “I just called the police as a precaution. Someone stole my wallet and keys.”
He rested his hands on his hips. “You going to change the locks?”
“Yeah. Locksmith is on his way.”
His gaze moved to Robert, who approached from behind me. “What are you doing here?”
Robert stuck his hand out. “Robert Kavin. I’m working with Dr. Moore on a case.”
The detective considered the hand, then dismissed it. “I know you, Mr. Kavin. You got Nelson Anderson off after he killed his wife.”
“If I’d gotten him off, he wouldn’t be behind bars.” Robert’s expression was pleasant, a sharp contrast to Detective Saxe’s rigid scowl.
“On a bullshit plea deal. He’ll be out within five years.” The detective’s attention returned to me. “You could do better with your friends, Dr. Moore.”
I ignored the dig. “Any updates on John Abbott?”
He squinted at me, and it wasn’t that sunny out. “Nothing to share.”
Nothing to share? What did that mean?
His gaze swept across my yard. “Well, looks like things are pretty calm here. If no one needs me, I’ll head on out.”
No one needs you, I thought, and delivered a thank-you through gritted teeth as he opened his car door, gave me a final, measuring look, then disappeared inside. I waved.
“Cheery guy,” Robert said. “I think he trusts you about as much as he trusts me.”
I turned to look at him. “He was joking.”
“Was he?” There was a moment of heightened tension, then he cracked a smile. I gave an awkward and uncomfortable laugh, then craned my head to the side, catching a glimpse of Officer Kitt in the doorway of my house.
“The house is clear,” he said, holding the door open.
“Thanks.” I moved past him and into the house, glancing around to find everything in order, my kitchen spotless.
“You have a locksmith coming?” The officer spoke from behind me.
“Yes.” I turned to him. “They should be here any minute.”
“I can wait until they arrive.”
“No, I’ll be fine, thank you.”
“I’ll stay with her.” Robert stepped in.
The officer looked between us, then nodded. We said our goodbyes, and I took his business card. Between his and Detective Saxe’s, I was starting to build a collection.
Once we were alone, Robert arched a brow at me. “So, it’s settled. Dinner tonight, say . . . seven o’clock?”
I hesitated, self-aware enough to realize that my biggest problem with Robert Kavin was my attraction to him. Even now, with my nerves still frayed from Luke Attens, and with a police officer backing out of my driveway, my body was responding to his presence. If he strode forward, if his hand cupped around my waist and pulled me against him . . . I wouldn’t be able to resist. And what then?
What if I slept with him again? Not as two strangers drunk off cheap beer, but as Dr. Gwen Moore and attorney Robert Kavin—business associates with a mess of secrets between us. What then?
CHAPTER 26
At three minutes before seven, my doorbell rang. I looked through the glass panes of the front door and let out a frustrated sigh.
Robert had brought flowers. Again. The last ones hadn’t even died yet. I swung open the door before I had a chance to rethink the action. “More flowers?” I gave the bouquet a questioning look.
He swatted at a mosquito. “I was raised to bring a gift when you visit someone’s home. I bring men scotch and women flowers. Don’t take it personally.”
“How sexist of you.” I smirked. “For the record, I like scotch, also.”
“I’ll remember that.” He pulled the door shut the minute he was inside and flipped the dead bolt. “The bugs are terrible.”
I tried not to stare at the locked door, the hardware new and shiny. He was here to protect me, I reminded myself. A bit of added muscle power in addition to the baseball bat I kept in the coat closet.
He paused in the foyer and sniffed. “It smells delicious in here. I’m sorry you had to cook, but I’m dying for more of your cooking.”
I didn’t respond, still emotionally opposed to this dinner. I had protested, he had countered, and it wasn’t easy to debate an attorney. In part because I couldn’t share the true reasons for my trepidation, which had less to do with my legal reputation and more to do with the vulnerable swell of hope and attraction that appeared whenever our eye contact held.
There had been a lot of eye contact, which was another something I needed to pull the reins on.
“I’m going to put these in water.” He headed for the sink, and I eyed the dining room table, grateful that I had skipped the candles and real china and stuck out some paper plates and disposable silverware. If that didn’t send out enough of an unromantic vibe, the sweatpants and baggy T-shirt I was wearing would complete the facade.
The water started to run, and I cracked my knuckles, a nervous habit I’d never been able to break.
“I’m assuming you haven’t heard anything from the client? The one who has your wallet?” He turned his head so I could hear him more clearly. He was still in his suit, and I pulled at the bottom of my T-shirt. Maybe I had overdone it with the casualness. There was the whole “Doth protest too much” angle to consider.
What had he asked me? About Luke? I cleared my throat. “No.” The police had gone to his house and questioned his housekeeper, but they hadn’t found the pizza heir.
“What’s your opinion on his state of mind?”
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “I need to talk to him and explain what he saw in my office. That’s the easiest solution to the problem. I’ve tried his cell, but he isn’t answering my calls.”
Luke’s final words, his fury over Randall, hung on my lips. I was dying to share them with Robert, but doing so would violate Luke’s client c
onfidentiality.
He turned off the water, and I moved closer, watching as he combined the new lilies with the tulips he had brought earlier. “So you’ll tell him that you’re working for me?”
“I’ll tell him I’m looking at the deaths and creating a profile.”
He set the flowers on the windowsill above the sink and turned to me. “You mentioned that your profile is done.”
“My first draft, yes. I’m missing the application or nonapplication of it as it relates to the subject.”
“Randall,” he clarified.
“Yes. I’ll be ready to talk to him this week, if you can set that up.”
“Absolutely. Just let me know what day. I’ll make it happen.”
This week, I would sit across from the alleged Bloody Heart Killer. I had tossed out the interview mention as if I didn’t care, but the idea of it was constant. Would he fit my profile? How high was his emotional intelligence? How would he respond to me—and which questions should I ask?
“I’d like to see the profile so far.”
I opened the oven and peeked at the pot roast, which had another four minutes, according to my timer. “I just need to think through a few pieces of it. I can email it over tomorrow.”
He leaned against the counter and loosened the knot of his tie. “Do you still feel like something is off?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But there’s another thing I want to make sure you’re clear on.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“I’m going to be honest with my assessment. If you put me on the stand, I’ll deliver the truth, including how Randall Thompson might fit the profile.”
He held up his hand, palm facing out. “Whoa. If I expected a jury puppet, I wouldn’t have wasted your time in giving you the files. I would have just told you what I wanted you to say.”
“Okay.” That was valid. “I just wanted to make sure that was clear.”
He dropped his hand. “Why are you certain that Randall fits your profile? Have you been researching him? Because you were the one who told me—”
“I haven’t done any research on Randall,” I snapped. The timer shrieked, and I silenced it, then worked my hands into two thick Garfield oven mitts. “But I know the basics of his arrest. You’ve got a victim’s testimony and evidence.”
“You’re referring to the box of souvenirs.” He rubbed along the side of his jaw, scraping his fingers through the short hair, and I cataloged the movement in case it was a tell.
“Yes. You’re stuck on the innocence of a man who had pieces of the victims in his home and Scott Harden pegging him by name.” I pulled off the oven mitts. “You’re wasting money in hiring me. It doesn’t matter what psychological theories I give on the stand. They’re going to convict him.” Because he’s guilty.
As my first logic and reasoning professor liked to say, if something smelled like shit and tasted like shit, you didn’t have to see it come out of a horse’s butt. I had raised my hand and asked him how we would accurately recognize what shit was supposed to taste like.
Looking at this logically, Randall was guilty. So, why was Robert defending him? To get close to the man who killed his son? To punish him in some other way?
He picked up a hand towel and slowly wiped off his hands. “I can’t tell if you’re intentionally frustrating me or just being obtuse.”
“What?” I sputtered.
He looked at me in silence, like he was waiting for something, like I had hidden a puzzle piece behind my back, and this time, the eye contact didn’t cause my knees to quiver or my heart to race. This time, I felt guilty—and maybe that’s why his win record was so impressive. The sheer force of guilt admission via glare.
The timer went off again, this time for the rice, and I jabbed at the touch screen and pulled the pot off the burner. When I turned back to Robert, his expression had darkened into distrust. I had failed a test.
But what test?
We ate in stony silence, our plastic silverware scraping quietly against the paper plates, and I was reminded why I was single. Men were idiots. Frustrating, unreadable idiots. To think that I was worried about seduction.
He broke the silence as he was sopping up the final bite of beef sauce with his bread. “This is delicious.” He took a sip of wine, which I had opened when it became obvious that neither of us was going to make conversation. “Where’d you learn to cook? Your mom?”
I folded my napkin longways in my lap and chuckled at the sexist assumption. “No, neither of my parents knew how to cook.” Every meal, regardless of the day, date, holiday, or occasion, was spent the same way—staring at a crisp menu as the waiter hovered, pen raised in expectation.
“Private chef or TV dinners?” he asked with a cautious smile.
I made a face. “When I was young, we just ate out.” Back then, the restaurants were always trademarked by white tablecloths and snooty staff. I cleared my throat. “As I grew older and money grew tighter, the restaurant meals were soon out of our budget.” The bone-in filets and wine flights were slowly replaced with grilled chicken breasts and salads, the downward spiral coming to a dramatic low point when my father announced that we were going to have to start eating at home.
It didn’t go over well and was almost immediately followed up by another announcement: my father was going to have to get a job.
My mother had flung herself onto the couch, Scarlett O’Hara–style, and started to sob. After all, she had married a phone-booth king, one with 172 booths in two airports, fourteen bus stations, five malls, and countless gas stations, each earning almost fifty dollars per week. She wasn’t prepared for her new reality, one with mounting credit card debt and 172 booths that didn’t cover their own real estate rent.
Cell phones were the death of our livelihood and, eventually, their marriage.
Our transition to at-home meals was painful. Mom seemed to be punishing him with every meal. Everything was too bland, too spicy, too raw, or burned. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or she was just that horrifically bad of a cook. After a few weeks, I took over the kitchen and learned as I went. To my surprise and the enormous gratitude of my father, I was a natural and was soon fixing us stuffed peppers with melted cheese, seafood fettuccine, and his personal favorite, fried pork chops.
“Thank goodness I enjoyed it. It was the one positive to come from what eventually led to Mom’s alcoholism and Dad’s emotional withdrawal.” I took my own large sip of wine.
Robert, who had remained quiet during the story, rose and reached for my empty plate. “I wasn’t close with my parents, either.” He moved through the arched doorway into the kitchen and spooned a second helping onto his plate. “But I had two brothers, so I had someone else to bond with.”
“I had an older brother, but he’s seven years older than me, so I was a bit of an only child when things got really bad.” I picked a piece of bread out of the basket and tore it in half. “Being the only child left at home taught me to be more independent. To emotionally take care of myself. It was good for my character.” I glanced at him. “It was probably good for Gabe’s.”
He groaned. “No counseling, please. Gabe is the last thing I want to talk about.”
Grieving parents often spoke constantly about their children, or not at all. It seemed that Robert was the latter. Still, a resistance to conversation wasn’t an indicator that the subject should be avoided. Quite the opposite.
“You know, all the BH victims were sibling-free.”
That caught his attention. “You’re right.” He looked at me, surprised. “Why is that?”
“It could be convenience,” I remarked. “It’s easier to take a teenager who travels back and forth to school alone, for instance.”
He was silent for a moment. “My wife”—he cleared his throat—“wanted another child. I didn’t. Gabe . . .” He sighed. “Gabe was a handful. He’d have temper tantrums over anything. It started when he was two, and I didn’t have the patience for it, much
less a second baby. He got better as he got older. Maybe if Natasha had brought it up again, when he was six or seven, I might have said yes, but—” He broke off. “She didn’t. And then it was too late.”
I tucked my foot under my thigh. “Gabe was ten when she died?”
“Yes.”
“Did he push you away or cling closer to you?”
He sectioned off a piece of meat with the edge of his fork. “Both. Each day was different. Initially there was more pushing, then more clinging. I took a year off work, and that was the most he’d ever seen of me. We grew a lot closer during that year.” He smoothed down the back of his hair. “Now I wish I’d never gone back to work.”
I pulled my wineglass closer to me. “There are very few parents who could have taken a year off to spend time with him, or who would have. Focus on the positives of that. And as far as taking off another six years to spend with him . . .” I shook my head. “You both needed a return to normalcy. If I had been your doctor, I would have strongly recommended a return to work, for both of your sakes.”
He finished chewing and swallowed, taking a sip of wine before he spoke. “What does it say that I took a year off when she died but kept working when he did?”
“It says that you haven’t given yourself permission to mourn. And . . . that year off was focused on his healing and not your own.”
“You know, I don’t need a shrink, Gwen. All the questions, the prodding, the exploration of feelings—I’ve done all that before. I hired the best doctors in the country to help Gabe, and I was right there beside him as they made everything better.”
The reaction rolled off me. I was used to anger and resentment from clients. My first four years in the business had been dominated by court-ordered sessions with disgruntled rage machines who didn’t want any help.
“You seem like you have your life together,” I said mildly. “But keep in mind that any grief techniques you learned with Natasha’s death were designed for a spouse or a son. With Gabe, your grief is that of a father. It’s a different scenario and carries its own and unique mountain of pain.”
“One I’m handling,” he said, his voice rasping.