by JC Grey
She was staring blindly out the windscreen, and Mac wondered how much of what he’d said had registered with her. ‘Blaze,’ he said gently. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I don’t want to get my hopes up,’ she murmured. ‘You hear all the time of people being wrongly convicted.’
‘We won’t let it happen.’
She sighed. ‘Everything that’s happened here since I arrived doesn’t exactly help my case. I’m sure some people, maybe even Detective Sergeant Ryan, think I’m some kind of attention-seeking weirdo.’ She waved a hand towards the house. ‘That maybe I wrote that myself.’
Mac wondered how to broach a topic that had been nagging at him for some time. In the end, he plunged straight in. ‘Is there someone who might have followed you from LA? Maybe someone who was jealous? Or infatuated?’
‘A stalker, you mean? No. No one. Every person in the public eye gets some odd fan letters from time to time, and I received a few from ultra-conservative moral and religious organisations, particularly after Rick Beatty’s story hit the news. But nothing threatening or that stood out for any reason, at least before Mitch’s death. After . . . there were a few and Jax turned them over to the LAPD. There might have been more since the sex-tape claims.’
Paddy pushed his nose between the seats and licked her cheek. She managed a small smile for him before continuing. ‘The only people who have real cause to hate me would be the family of Beth Laurensen, the girl who died in the movie festival shooting. I know her parents were devastated. I wrote to them after . . . they never responded.’
Mac let out a breath. ‘What about Mitch Redmond’s family?’
Her hands tightened in her lap. ‘For . . . various reasons, he wasn’t close to his family, so I didn’t know them. And the police didn’t want me to try to contact them, although I did ask them to pass on my sympathies and to let them know how much he meant to me.’
When she hesitated, Mac said, ‘What is it?’
‘Mitch had a partner. It was kind of on-off and he kept it away from the limelight.’
Mac looked at her. ‘Would she have blamed you for what happened?’ He drummed his fingers on the dash. ‘I assume the police cleared her of his death?’
Blaze shook her head vigorously. ‘They didn’t do it and they didn’t blame me for . . . what happened.’
Frowning, Mac studied her face. ‘They?’ Realisation dawned. ‘Oh, okay. I see.’
‘Carlos. He’s Catholic.’
‘But Blaze. There may be things you don’t know about him! We at least need to offer him as an alternative.’
‘No!’ She turned to him, shaking her head. ‘Absolutely no. Ryan is not to know about this. If I can do one thing for Mitch it’s to respect his confidence. In any case, it doesn’t make sense. I phoned Carlos while I was in L.A. We had a long talk and he was doing fine. If your theory is right, whoever harbours a grudge against me has followed me all the way here.’
‘Well then, who?’
‘It would have to be a hell of a grudge for someone to pursue me all the way here.’ Blaze lifted her arms in a gesture of disbelief and let them fall before turning to Mac. ‘I mean, who has the depth of feeling to do that?’
‘I followed you to LA’ Mac felt his pulse pick up. He knew in that moment he was going to step off the high wire. Fuck timing, fuck the fact he could hear a cop siren in the distance.
Blaze let out a surprised laugh. ‘I can’t see you as a stalker.’ Her smile faltered as she picked up his body language.
‘I’m not but I’d follow you to the ends of the earth if you needed me.’ He willed her to speak but she sat there transfixed, staring at him. ‘I don’t mean to let you go, Blaze.’
‘Mac,’ she started, still staring at him, those liquid gold eyes full of an emotion that he couldn’t decipher.
When they began to fill with tears, he panicked. She was going to turn him down – again.
‘Don’t. Just don’t. I can’t stand it when you cry. Forget it.’ He held up a hand when she went to speak. ‘What I’m trying to say is that people will go to sometimes crazy lengths for love – and for hate. They’re two sides of the same coin.’
‘You love me?’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Mac sighed. ‘I . . .’ He stopped and turned as a police cruiser drew up beside them. ‘I’ll take Ryan up.’
‘I’m coming, too,’ Blaze replied. They got out of the car. ‘If some crazy is coming for me, I want to know exactly what I’m facing.’
‘Ms Gillespie.’ Detective Ryan nodded. ‘Mac.’
‘You made good time,’ Mac said.
‘I was at the Bradfield place. Their cows keep getting loose, and they’ve a taste for Leslie Burgess’s prize roses.’
Mac didn’t smile as he led the way into the house. ‘You been demoted?’
‘Couple of the constables are on leave. The rest of us are making up the numbers. So what have we got here?’ he asked Blaze as Mac went ahead, up the stairs.
‘I haven’t seen the bathroom yet, but from Mac’s description it’s pretty ugly.’
‘Guy’s got a real hard-on for her,’ Mac said, and opened the door to the bathroom.
Blaze walked into the bathroom, stopped in the doorway and blanched as she saw the blood-red lipstick scrawls on the mirror. Fear took a chill hold deep in her spine, but almost as quickly anger cut it loose. It was over-the-top; a Hollywood-style scare tactic.
How dare some bastard think he could scare her! In her home, her sanctuary! Hadn’t she been through the worst a woman could take and survived? She took a step into the bathroom, shaking off the comforting hand Mac had placed on her shoulder, wanting to see if the jerk had put his mark on anything else.
She saw immediately that someone had lit the candle she preferred when she was having a bath.
‘That wasn’t alight when I left earlier,’ she said, pointing.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ Ryan said, and hissed in a breath. ‘Christ! I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.’
‘That fills me with confidence, Detective Sergeant,’ she told him drily.
He shook his head, as though clearing it. ‘We will be investigating, Ms Gillespie. I can assure you of that. Any idea of when it happened?’
‘Some time late afternoon. I was in town earlier. Mac and I got back around five thirty. Rowdy and Trent usually head off around four. So most likely it happened after they left.’
‘I’ll be speaking with them. And tomorrow I’ll need to interview you formally at the station. In the meantime, you can’t stay here. Anywhere you can go for a few days? I note you don’t have any security here, apart from the dog.’
‘No,’ Blaze admitted. ‘I did think about it when I first moved back here, and then after what happened to Paddy. But I can’t protect the entire boundary of my land, and even if I alarm the doors and gates, who’s going to hear it out here?’
‘True, but less flimsy gates might deter opportunists.’
Blaze nodded. ‘I’ve felt so safe here, but that’s all changed now.’
‘She’ll be staying at Rosmerta for the time being,’ said Mac.
Blaze could have taken umbrage at his tone, but it would have been for show. Tonight she wanted, needed, to be with him.
‘Anyone wanting to get to Blaze will have to go through me first,’ Mac added. He gave a feral smile. ‘In fact, I’d welcome it. You might want to put that about, Ryan.’
‘Now, Mac,’ the detective cautioned. ‘I’m not looking to escalate things here. Anything happens, the law will handle it. Vigilantism went out with Charles Bronson.’
Mac put up his hands. ‘Reasonable force, Ryan. The law says reasonable force, and if that fucker comes within ten metres of Blaze, I’m going to use reasonable force to kill the bastard.’
‘Mac. I don’t like this . . .’
‘Then you be sure to catch the mongrel before I do.’
Ryan sighed the sigh of a man who knows the argu
ment has already been lost. ‘We’ll be doing everything we can,’ he said firmly. ‘Ms Gillespie, do you have any idea who might have done this?’
‘No.’ She had been thinking about the crude message on her laptop and bathroom mirror. That was significant, she thought. The laptop represented her professional life. Most likely the perpetrator had seen the screenplay for Siren on there. And the mirror reflected, quite literally, Blaze as a person.
Suddenly, she realised that Mac and Detective Sergeant Ryan were both staring at her, waiting for her to continue.
When she just frowned, Mac said, ‘What? Have you thought of something?’
‘No. I . . . no. I guess I’m just spooked.’
It wasn’t a lie, although when Mac grasped her shoulder, she was aware he knew it wasn’t the whole truth, either. She needed a distraction.
‘My laptop,’ she said to Ryan. ‘In the study. They’ve written the same thing on that and I need it for work.’
Mac gave her one last searching look, and then led the way downstairs after Ryan had extinguished the candle. Blaze didn’t go into the study. She didn’t need to see the poison on her laptop again. But from the doorway she heard Detective Sergeant Ryan’s muttered expletive and folded her arms across her midriff.
‘I know you’ll need to take the laptop,’ she said. ‘But I will need a signed agreement from your boss that nothing from my laptop will be released to the media unless it pertains directly to the case.’
‘It’s standard practice to give you a receipt.’
‘I need more than that, Detective Sergeant, or I’ll have a lawyer contact you tomorrow.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘I also need a script that’s on the desk in a folder labelled Siren. It’s confidential, plus I need to work on it.’
She heard him shuffling papers and a moment later, he appeared with the script in hand. Blaze gave him a big smile and watched the flush rise up the man’s neck. ‘Thank you.’
‘Well.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I gather Mac told you what the LAPD have told us.’
She nodded. ‘When will they confirm . . . their findings?’
‘I don’t know, but in confidence I’ll say that Detective Fabrese is doing all he can to ensure the investigation is thorough.’
He shifted and looked at them both. ‘Anyway, I’ll need you to come in tomorrow morning and make statements. And, Ms Gillespie, perhaps you would warn Rowdy the place is out of bounds tomorrow while the forensic guys are here.’
Blaze nodded and Ryan left with the laptop in a plastic bag under his arm and a spare key for the investigative team. Blaze was only allowed to take some clothes and personal items from her bedroom once she’d told the detective that she didn’t believe anything in her bedroom had been touched. The bathroom was already sealed off with a blue and white striped tape across the doorway, which meant she’d need to buy toiletries for the duration of her stay with Mac.
They left the detective to lock up, while she left a brief phone message for Rowdy and opened the passenger door of her wagon for Paddy.
‘You won’t need your car,’ Mac told her, hands on his hips. ‘You won’t be going anywhere. At least not without me.’
Blaze echoed his stance. ‘Don’t push it,’ she said in a low voice so that Ryan couldn’t hear. She might be rattled by the break-in and grateful for the offer of temporary sanctuary, but if Mac thought she was about to meekly give up her independence, he was mistaken. ‘If I want a bodyguard, I’ll hire one, and in any case, leaving my car here might be seen as an invitation to tamper with it by whoever was here today.’
Mac’s frown darkened to a glower, but she met his look with an equally fierce frown of her own and he finally relented with a nod.
It struck her as she steered the car down the rutted track to the main road, with Mac following, that this was the first time she would stay at Rosmerta since the night she’d first met Mac. It was hard to believe that more than two months had passed since then.
That night, love had been the furthest thing from her mind. She’d had one goal only – to survive. To reach Sweet Springs before she fell apart. She’d spent the flights to Sydney, Brisbane and then Meriwether in shock, too focused on her internal misery to note much of anything or anyone. Indeed, except for a general impression of his height, breadth and impatient hostility, her first impressions of Mac had been hazy.
And now, here she was, in love with the most high-handed, persistent, impossible man. And he loved her, or was working his way around to it. Certainly he wanted her. Enough that even the endless drama that her life had become hadn’t seen him off.
When she pulled up outside Rosmerta, she realised she wasn’t sure what Mac was expecting of this. Paddy, in the passenger seat, gave a woof and she looked at him.
‘For a few days, boy. Just don’t chase the cattle or Mac’ll blame me.’
She let Paddy out. He bounded up the steps to the front porch and sat there, tongue lolling, watching as Mac pulled up his truck beside Blaze. He took her bag from her suddenly nerveless fingers. It was just for a few days, she told herself – a test run, a chance for them both to work out what they really wanted . . .
Warm fingers lifted her chin and warmer lips brushed hers. ‘Don’t worry it to death, Hollywood.’
Blaze arched her brows and pulled away from him, all trace of uncertainty banished. ‘Worry? Me?’ She gave him a saucy look over her shoulder as she sauntered towards the house.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Lordy.’ Amos took off his hat and fanned his face. ‘She sure is summat.’ He gestured across to the paddock where Blaze was sitting on a fence, surrounded by an enthralled Lewis, Smithy and Fred, plus a couple of casual hands brought in to help with the early muster. Last summer and the months since had been so dry that they were being forced to move some of the herd earlier than usual.
Mac grunted, focused on prising a small stone from True’s shoe. ‘Where the hell is Beau? Don’t I pay him enough to ride herd?’
‘Don’t think he’s got work top of mind right this minute.’ Amos chuckled. ‘Never seen a face so red.’
Mac glanced over to see Beau, his fair face even more florid than usual, among Blaze’s rapt audience.
To be fair, she wasn’t deliberately trying to distract the hands, but then she didn’t need to. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved, striped T-shirt. One of his battered old hats was on her head, until a gust of wind sent it spinning away. She laughed, tipping her head up to watch it fly, and the morning sun caught her hair, turning it to fire.
Mac had some sympathy for his hands. By now he should have developed some immunity to her, but like the others he was hopelessly drawn to her, and his pulse began to pound. Maybe she sensed his gaze and his arousal because she turned her head towards him, even as Lewis returned her hat.
She smiled.
Mac started to sweat, wondering how long it would be until he could be inside her again. It had been more than three weeks now since Blaze had miscarried their baby, and he knew there hadn’t been any complications because he’d asked. He was loath to push the issue, but having her sleep beside him, night after night, was going to be an agonising test of his powers of control if last night was any example.
Meanwhile, Blaze didn’t seem to have a care in the world – about either the break-in or their uncertain status. Last night she’d behaved as though they were an old married couple, giving him a peck on the cheek and snuggling into the pillow with a contented sigh, with not a word about sex or love. She’d been asleep within minutes while he’d tossed and turned. And in the morning, she had hopped out of bed when he rose, walking around half-naked as if he was a damn eunuch!
She’d been at Rosmerta less than twelve hours and she was already driving him crazy.
‘Gonna enjoy watching her leading you around by the nose,’ Amos said.
Mac had some pride. ‘Never happen, mate.’
‘Outta ya hands, boss. It’s fate. Ain
’tcha heard the story of the firebird?’
Mac frowned, distracted by Beau helping Blaze down from the fence. ‘Not that I can remember. It’s not one of Bluey Jenkins’ X-rated tall tales is it? I might have heard it at the pub.’
Amos gave another wheezing chuckle. ‘No, that was about another kind of bird . . . well, never mind, it was always a bit dodgy, Bluey’s story. Nup, the one about the firebird comes from Russia or one of them foreign places – one of them old tales, ya know what I mean.’
Curiosity tweaked, Mac looked at his property manager. ‘A myth or legend?’
‘One of those. Well, the firebird was like a peacock with brilliant red, yellow and orange feathers that glow like a fire . . . a blaze. Ha! Everyone who sees it becomes kinda obsessed by it and has to have it. But it’s the bugger of all creatures to catch. And when ya do nab it, it gives ya no end of trouble.’
‘Hmmm.’ Mac turned back to Blaze as her gilded form walked back towards the house. She raised a hand as she passed, then disappeared inside. He straightened, put his hand on the reins and swung up onto True.
‘I’ve got work to do.’ He rode off.
Putting up a hand to shield his face from the fiery rays of sun, Amos grinned after him. ‘Ya sure do, boss. Ya sure do.’
Blaze looked over at Mac. Like her, he’d changed for their meeting with Ryan, and she felt it was debatable whether he was sexier in dress shirt and khakis or working shirt and jeans. And that was before you brought his Armani tux into the whole equation.
This morning she’d picked it up from his bedroom floor, where presumably it had been lying since their return from the States, and hung it in his closet with a brief reprimand. Quality clothes deserved respect.
Yes, it was superficial to be thinking of clothes at a time like this, but it helped with the nerves. She smoothed a hand down her conservative, boat-necked khaki linen dress that she had paired with high-heeled black wedges, feeling her hand shake just a little.
‘What were you and Amos up to earlier?’ she asked, to distract herself.
Mac shifted, eyes fixed on the road. ‘He was stating the bloody obvious,’ he grunted.