Love by Association

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He sat completely still. Afraid to even move his glance from where it had been passing over the empty place mat across from Chantel, who was in between him and Julie at the round table in their breakfast room. The mat was handwoven off-white silk—he remembered Julie’s excitement when she’d won the bid for the set at an auction the previous year.

  “What’s their current purpose?” Chantel sounded genuinely curious, but she wasn’t prying. And again Jules had opened the door.

  Twice now with this woman.

  Was Julie noticing that there was something different about Chantel, too? Like she was an angel handpicked by their folks to save them from themselves?

  He glanced at his sister as the thought occurred to him, then started to sweat anew. He hadn’t told Julie yet that he’d told Chantel she’d been raped.

  “I was raped ten years ago.” The words dropped baldly into the room. Definitely not breakfast conversation, not that he gave one hoot about that. There wasn’t so much as a tremor in Julie’s voice.

  It was the first time, since the night it had happened, that he’d heard Julie say the words.

  Sitting forward, Chantel reached for Julie’s hand, taking hold of her fingers lightly. Julie didn’t pull back.

  She always pulled back when she was touched. Most particularly by a stranger.

  “After Saturday in the car...Colin told me that you’d been attacked at a party.” Chantel’s words were going to get him in serious trouble with his sister, not that she’d know that. He respected her for telling the truth, rather than pretending that she hadn’t known.

  Something his discerning and ultrasensitive sister might have seen through.

  Julie nodded. Swallowed. Turned her hand over and clasped Chantel’s fingers.

  “The books... They’re how I fight my way out of the darkness. I have to find the child within me to create them. To see the simple yet seemingly endless beauty in the world...”

  “To view the world from a child’s innocent and trusting eyes.” Chantel’s soft voice took up where Julie’s dropped off.

  “Yes,” Julie said. She was smiling. And there were tears on her cheeks, too.

  His sister’s tears were nails in his heart.

  But a miracle was happening.

  He wouldn’t have stopped it if he could.

  * * *

  CHANTEL WAS OFF work until Saturday, when she and Daniel had to work a special detail—a visiting dignitary who was traveling down the coast and would be stopping for a meal in Santa Raquel. The dignitary and the reason for his visit were unknown to lowly folk like her. The hours and the pay were good. A full shift’s pay for six hours of her time.

  Didn’t much matter to her who it was. She’d make certain that her stretch of street stayed safe and bankroll the bucks. Babysitting was her least favorite part of the job.

  Before she’d left his home after breakfast Wednesday morning, Colin had invited her to the theater Thursday night. She had to accept. But she suggested they meet in LA, rather than drive down together, as she had a friend of her mother’s to meet for lunch. Total bullshit, of course, but she couldn’t take a chance on the long drive home late at night becoming too intimate. He’d be dropping her at her hotel and...

  Nope. She had to make that drive alone.

  He tried to work out another solution, even to the extent of hiring someone to drive her car back for her, but in the bright morning sun, immediately following the emotional moments with Julie, she remained resolute.

  She had a job to do—two of them now, Julie and Leslie together, two women who deserved justice—and she was not going to screw it up. Or screw him.

  Whether she was free to fall for Colin Fairbanks or not, he was...everything she’d ever dreamed of finding in a man, minus the wealth that definitely wasn’t her style. She’d be damned if she was going to hurt him.

  Which was why she’d made certain that it was clear, right up front, that their...friendship...was only temporary.

  Right. He knew that. They were fine. She was fine.

  But she made that call she’d been promising herself. To Max. Her best friend’s husband. First Jill’s, her lifetime best friend. And now Meri’s, her only close female friend in the world. When he invited her for dinner, she accepted immediately. She spent the evening playing with four-year-old Caleb, in between holding and feeding fifteen-month-old Haley. She was honored when, as always, they offered to let her rock the baby to sleep; in the chair next to her in the nursery, Meri rocked Caleb. And the silence was truly golden.

  She’d planned to leave as soon as the babies were in bed, but Max grabbed her shoulder, pulling her backward from the hall toward the living room. “Not so fast,” he said.

  Meri, standing beside him, grabbed her hand and led her to the couch. “Out with it,” she said.

  “I don’t have to say anything.” The retort felt even more childish than it sounded.

  “No, you don’t. But we’ll all get more sleep if you do.”

  They worried about her. And she wasn’t looking forward to facing the darkness that was waiting for her at home. She was too wound up to sleep. And had no valid reason to stop by the precinct.

  “I’m going to stop at the gym.” She came up with the idea on the spot. It was in the basement of the precinct house. If there was anything going on, she’d hear about it. “I’ll be plenty tired enough to sleep when I get home.”

  “Good plan,” Max said. “Now tell us what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going...” He saw them both look pointedly at her hands.

  She’d taken some razing at work. Not from Daniel, who wouldn’t have noticed anything as personal as her fingernails or have said anything if he had. But a couple of other guys had noticed the acrylic. Not the polish. She didn’t wear that to work. And was actually getting the hang of putting it on and taking it off by herself.

  She just hadn’t taken the time to remove what she’d put on that morning before breakfast. She hadn’t been going into work.

  And couldn’t go to the gym with her hands looking that way, either.

  “Do you have any acetone-free polish remover?” she asked Meri.

  “I do.” Meri, who’d held on to a little of the weight she’d gained having Haley—enough so that she no longer looked emaciated—didn’t move from her seat on the couch beside Max. “And I’ll get it for you as soon as you tell us what’s going on.”

  All over a little polish on some fake nails. Good thing she’d scrubbed off the makeup—when she’d gone home to change back into jeans and a T-shirt—and brushed out the curls in her hair and put it up.

  What if she’d come in wearing her stilettos? They’d probably be calling in the armed guard. After they picked themselves up off the floor seeing her sway so perfectly in them...

  She’d left on the damned polish. Chantel was too good a cop, too good with details, too aware, to have done that by mistake.

  “I’m working undercover.”

  The announcement wasn’t anything earth-shattering. She was a cop. Cops went under sometimes.

  Jill had. Once. For an evening. She’d posed as a waitress in a strip club. Max had shown up, plopped himself down as a client at a front table and got so drunk he’d had to be taken home in a cab.

  He’d been furious with her for taking the assignment. She’d been furious with him for checking up on her, for thinking he had to guard her all night.

  And Chantel had prayed that they’d start talking to each other again before any real damage had been done. They’d held out for two days, until Jill’s next days off. Chantel only heard bits and pieces of the fight that had ensued. But they’d worked it all out...

  When Max took another look at her nails and left the couch to go stand by the mantel—the one that held his favorite picture of Jill,
along with a million photos of the babies and him and Meri—she realized that his mind had traveled the same road as hers.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, Max.”

  “What’s he thinking?” Meri asked, looking between them. Beautiful, strong, peaceful Meri. She worried like hell, but only about external dangers. She didn’t doubt Max’s love for her, nor did she hold back any of her adoration for him. Chantel, who’d been largely instrumental in saving Meri’s life and getting her and the baby she was carrying—Haley—back to him, was family to them, not a threat.

  They’d made that very clear. Which was why she was there.

  “Jill went under once,” Chantel said, “at a strip club. Waitressing only, but it was still a strip club.”

  “She had men sticking bills in places that...”

  “This isn’t anything like that,” Chantel inserted quickly. Max was as protective of her as he had been of Jill, though in a different way. And where Max relaxed, Meri took up worrying.

  She told them what she could—that she’d infiltrated the world of the rich and famous—and nothing else. She couldn’t talk about an ongoing case. And couldn’t mention her specific cover. So there’d been no point in coming to them with polish on her nails.

  “How are you doing with being two people at once?” Meri’s soft blue-gray gaze rested on her.

  Then Chantel knew why she was there. “Sometimes, I’ve got it down pat,” she said. And added, “How did you do it, Meri? How did you keep up the facade of being one person when your real heart was so ripped up?” Through the years of running from her abusive ex-husband, Meri had taken on a number of different identities, but those had just been name changes. This last time, the time Chantel had been involved, she’d actually pretended to be someone she was not, leaving Max and Caleb and starting a different life in order to protect them from the danger following her.

  Chantel’s situation was not nearly as desperate. But at least one life—Leslie Morrison’s—might depend on it. How did she keep her heart at the precinct when she went to work with Colin?

  “I don’t have an answer for you,” Meri said. “I was desperate. And protecting Caleb and Max. I honestly didn’t care if I lost my life as long as it saved theirs.”

  “You were shut down,” Chantel guessed. “Like when I’m at work and it gets dangerous. You just do what you have to do.”

  Her statement was directed completely at Meri. Max didn’t like hearing about her job. He’d hated being married to a cop. And didn’t like that their closest friend was one.

  “Exactly,” Meri said.

  When Max sat back down beside her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, Chantel knew more was coming.

  “I’m taking it that you’re not confident about your ability to keep your cover separate from who you really are.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then get out, Chantel. Now. Before someone is hurt.”

  “Before I’m hurt, you mean.”

  “Okay, yes. Before you’re hurt. Don’t be like Jill...thinking you’re invincible. You don’t have to take on every single challenge that comes your way. You don’t have anything to prove.”

  Like Jill did. She heard his words and partially agreed with his assessment of her best friend. But only partially.

  Jill and her...they’d been born to the job. Neither of them had realized it at first, but for some reason being cops had been something they’d both wanted to do.

  “I can’t get out,” she said now, emphatic. “You’re right that I’m not as solid as I’d like on my ability to keep myself out of the cover, but I’m here to figure out how to do that, if I can. I won’t even consider getting out. It’s not on the table.” She’d been tough with Max before.

  “What about the case?” he asked, looking fierce and unbending. And incredibly sweet in his need to protect. “If you get personally involved, you risk the case.”

  No, she solidified her cover. “The only thing that risks this case is blowing my cover. Or getting out. I’m not the one in danger, here, Max. And if I get out, chances are nothing else will be done until someone is in danger. Or a life is lost.”

  She was on the verge of saying too much. She stood to go. She wasn’t going to be waylaid a second time.

  “Look, I’ll figure this out,” she told them as they rose to follow her to the door. “But...I just want you both to know—this might be a long assignment. Weeks or more. And no one on the job, other than Wayne and the captain, know about it.”

  “When you’re dealing with money, or threatening to bring down someone who has a lot of it, you’re in danger.” Max wasn’t letting this go.

  “I’ll be careful, Max.”

  “Just stay alive.”

  Chantel didn’t know what to say to that, so she turned to Meri, gave her a hug and let herself out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FAIRBANKS AND FAIRBANKS had class-A season tickets to Pantages Theater in Hollywood, where nationally touring casts performed the best of the best Broadway shows. He’d seen a lot of theater productions but had yet to see Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway, which was what was showing.

  While he thoroughly enjoyed the comedy, he did so with only half of his attention. The woman next to him, lightly perfumed in a room full of overly scented beauties, outshone the bright lights.

  Recognizing how corny his thoughts were getting, Colin grinned to himself. He’d waited a long time for Chantel Johnson to come into his life. He hadn’t been looking, or expecting or even hoping. Yet, here she was.

  The way Julie had taken to her was nothing short of amazing.

  And Colin was ready to move to the next level.

  From the moment he met up with Chantel in the parking lot of a well-known luxury hotel just outside the city, the place where she’d been meeting her mother’s friend for lunch, he’d been touching her. A hand in the middle of her back. Shoulder to shoulder. Holding her hand. Thigh to thigh.

  He’d barely kissed her, and he was ready for bed.

  By the beginning of the first act, he was considering leaving his car at the resort, or better yet, talking her into staying there with him before driving back to Santa Raquel in the morning. He was mentally ordering champagne and chocolate for the room during the middle of the first act. And imagining sliding a silk robe around Chantel’s shoulders for a midnight supper by the beginning of the second.

  At the end of the play, she declined a nightcap, and when they reached the hotel, she already had her keys out of her purse and asked if he minded dropping her right at her car. She was eager to get the long drive over with.

  But she also asked if he’d be following her back. She was clearly pleased when he told her that of course he wouldn’t have her making the trip alone so late at night. It was, after all, almost ten.

  She also agreed to attend Friday night’s wine tasting with him. And they had another meeting of the library committee on Saturday.

  He whistled a good bit of the way home.

  * * *

  WAYNE STOPPED BY Chantel’s little one-bedroom apartment Friday morning before she’d made it to the shower, to drop off a copy of the rewritten script for her to take to the library meeting the next day. He told her the cop who’d been responsible for taking the original report on the night of Julie’s rape was no longer in law enforcement—or even in California. He owned a small fishing boat in Florida. He suggested they not reach out to him just yet. They most definitely were not contacting the higher-up who’d taken the phone call from the hospital. Not until they put a trail together, connecting the players, so they’d know who not to tip off.

  As soon as he left, she went straight out to the beach with the script and a cup of coffee.

  Work was the panacea for anything that ailed her.

&n
bsp; And if that didn’t work, there was always chocolate ice cream.

  * * *

  CHANTEL LIKED WINE. A lot. And she knew a lot about it—where to get it the cheapest and which of the grocery store sale brands didn’t give her a headache if she had more than one glass. She knew she liked dry better than sweet, white better than red and usually zinfandel was a nice compromise between the two.

  She’d have bet her entire life savings, and that of her parents and heirs, that there was nothing akin to asparagus or bell pepper in sauvignon blanc. Even after smelling it with utmost concentration. It was still just fermented grapes.

  But dressed in a simple, figure-hugging black dress with a panel of purple flowers running up the middle, Chantel Johnson smelled asparagus. Pepper. Cabbage. She’d even smell poppy if someone else did.

  Making her way slowly around the room with Colin at her side, she sipped, rolled wine on her tongue and oh-so-delicately spit into a brass pot she’d been given to carry along with her. The best thing about the night, other than being with drop-dead-gorgeous Colin—which was also the worst part—was that she wasn’t getting drunk.

  Who knew that wine tasting didn’t mean wine swallowing? At least, not for this group.

  What she did know was that Colin Fairbanks expected to take their relationship to the next level. His looks, the offhand, seemingly causal touches—her side still tingled from the caress of his fingers—he was telling her quite clearly what he wanted. She wasn’t going to be able to hold him off much longer.

  Not without losing him.

  One thing was for sure, men like Colin didn’t hang around for brush-offs. They didn’t need to.

  The wine they were tasting wasn’t helping matters. There were descriptive notes at every station. Pardon My Body? Okay, the cabernet sauvignon was substantial on the palate—apparently its jammy red and black fruit gave it body—but really? What was fate doing to her here? She was supposed to pardon her body for going nuts on her? Because there was no way in hell she could pardon his.