Arousing Suspicions
Page 25
It was done. It was done, and now that it was, she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life in this man’s arms, bearing this man’s babies, walking by this man’s side.
Pulling back from him a little, she said, “Do you finally believe I’m psychic and can see other people’s dreams?”
He looked down at her for a long time.
“This is one of those Does this dress make me look fat questions, isn’t it?” He rubbed his jaw for a moment, then, with a wry smile, he curled his fingers around hers.
“Perhaps one more little test is in order.”
“What test?” she said warily.
“Close your eyes and tell me what I dreamed last night. If you get it right, you’ll have made a believer out of me. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She curled her fingers around his, lowered her lashes, and almost immediately raised them again.
“Oh!” she choked, looking deeply into his eyes.
“Oh, my! Oh, God! Well, I…I had no idea you could even…oh, my!”
He grinned, then bent his head.
As his mouth claimed hers, she murmured, “I didn’t even know you owned a hammock.”
Epilogue
If a single woman sleeps with a piece of wedding cake under her pillow, she will dream of her future husband.
FOLKLORE
Victoria was in the kitchen, clearing away the dishes from her late Friday dinner of homemade lasagna and salad, when the doorbell chimed.
Immediately Winkin scurried out from under the table to tear down the hall, barking up a storm.
“Who on earth can that be at this hour?” she muttered, drying her hands on a dish towel.
She checked her hair in the mirror in the foyer, decided she was presentable, then scooted Winkin away and opened the door.
“Good evening, ma’am.”
Her breath, along with her power of speech, seemed to disappear for a moment. When she recovered, she said, “Inspector Stocker? What a pleasant surprise.”
And boy was it. He looked great in his tailored gray suit, which matched the color of his hair perfectly. The detective was a very handsome man, and he’d drifted across her mind on more than one occasion over the last couple of weeks.
“Inspector Darling and Tabitha are still at the hospital with Ethan,” he said. “They should be done soon, but I thought I’d bring you up to date on the situation. If you have a moment?”
“I do,” she rushed. “I mean, what I mean is, well, please come in. Tabby called me earlier from the hospital to say that Nate’s brother had been injured, but that she was okay. God, I’m just so happy this whole thing is finally over.”
Stocker walked through the door to stand next to her. She loved how tall he was. His broad shoulders were impressive, and even for a man his age, he seemed so wonderfully fit.
“Ethan took a bullet in the ribs,” he said as they walked side by side toward the parlor. “He’s going to hurt like hell for a while, but the prognosis is good.”
When they entered the room, she sat on the sofa, but instead of taking a chair, he sat next to her. Not too close, but not too far away, either.
Inside her chest, her heart gave a decidedly heavy flutter.
“As for the others,” he said, “it looks like Cal March is going to make it. When he woke up, the first thing he did was identify Zoey O’Hara as the one who shot him. Peter O’Hara’s been treated for a superficial gunshot wound and released.”
Victoria shook her head, then looked down at her hands in her lap. “That horrible woman did so much damage. I’m just so grateful she didn’t harm my daughter.”
Stocker smiled sympathetically. He had a wonderful smile, very open. His whiskey-colored eyes crinkled in the corners in an attractive way.
She really should stop thinking about him like this. He could be married, for all she knew, or in a serious relationship.
“The O’Hara woman confessed to everything,” he continued, casually leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “She not only committed the three homicides to emulate her brother’s dream log entries, she pushed Tabitha in front of the cable car.”
“But why on earth…”
“Anger mostly, I think,” he said. “She’s a pretty nasty specimen. Vindictive as hell. She felt Peter should have talked to her, and not gone to a dream interpreter. She wanted him out of the way, but she also wanted him to acknowledge her as the head of the family. It only came to her later, after she’d read about his dream of killing Tabitha, that she decided to hold off until the timing worked to her advantage.”
Victoria settled back into the plush cushions on the sofa and let herself relax a little. “But why did she shoot Cal?”
Stocker looked into her eyes, and she felt her cheeks warm. “After she’d discovered Peter was seeing Tabitha, she tracked Cal March down and began an affair with him. I guess she was hoping to get some insider information on your daughter. Zoey O’Hara seems to be a very controlling, manipulative type. Maybe she just wanted all the bases covered so there wouldn’t be any surprises. When she found out March was sleeping around on her, she got mad and took retaliatory action.”
An awkward silence stretched between them for a moment, then Victoria smiled and sighed. “Well, I guess that about wraps everything up? What happens now?”
“What happens now is Zoey O’Hara gets indicted on three counts of aggravated murder, plus a whole passel of other offenses, including kidnapping. There’s no way she’s ever going to harm anybody ever again.”
Licking her suddenly dry lips, Victoria said, “W-would you like some coffee, Inspector, or do you have to get back to work now?”
He straightened and returned her smile. “Well, actually, I, uh, I’m off duty as of about twenty minutes ago. I just wanted to come by and, uh, you know, tie up those loose ends. Answer any questions you might have, you know, about the case.”
“How thoughtful of you. Thank you.”
More silence. Why wasn’t he leaving now? He was off duty, but he’d come to see her? And he seemed so nervous.
“Um, so,” she ventured. “You’re off duty.”
He looked into her eyes, then looked away. “Yes. Off. So maybe you should call me Bob.”
“Bob,” she repeated. “And I’m Victoria.”
He grinned. “I know.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Uh, as a matter of fact, Victoria, I, uh, was on my way to get a bite to eat. I know it’s short notice, and nine o’clock’s kind of late for some folks, but if you don’t have any other plans—”
“I don’t,” she rushed. “I mean, I’m starving. Haven’t had a thing all day.” Her stomach was still groaning from having had a few bites too many of lasagna, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Great,” he said as he rose to his feet.
She excused herself to go upstairs for a moment to check her makeup, grab a sweater, and get her purse. When she came down, he was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
“You look very pretty,” he said, grinning into her eyes.
“Thank you,” she breathed, trying not to sound as overwhelmed as she felt. “And you look quite handsome.”
He took her arm and walked with her to the door.
“I was thinking,” he said as he turned the knob. “After dinner, maybe we could spend some time together. Relax a little and get to know each other.”
Her heart fluttered again, several times, and she thought she might actually giggle. Instead, she said, “That would be very nice.”
Placing his hand at the small of her back, he escorted her down the steps.
“Maybe we could play cards,” he said. “Do you like to play cards? I was thinking about maybe a nice game of Hearts…”
About the Author
MARIANNE STILLINGS has loved stories with happy endings since she was three years old and her mother read her The Little Golden Book of The Ugly Duckling. Originally from California, these days she lives in the Pacific Nort
hwest, where she’s the single mom of two fantastic daughters, and where she takes shelter from the rain by writing happy endings of her own.
Please visit Marianne at www.mariannestillings.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
By Marianne Stillings
AROUSING SUSPICIONS
SIGHS MATTER
MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIE
THE DAMSEL IN THIS DRESS
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
AROUSING SUSPICIONS. Copyright © 2007 by Marianne Stillings. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition February 2007 ISBN 9780061736612
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