by Joyce Lamb
He smiled, cocked his head. “Hello to you. Feeling better?”
She swallowed again, told herself she was drooling because of the lasagna, not because he looked so absolutely freaking hot in the moonlight. Glittery green eyes, shaggy hair and cut chest. Gulp. “Yes, thank you. Uh, you cooked?”
He padded across the tile, and she glanced down, surprised that he was barefoot. Something in her stomach clutched hard. A beautiful man barefoot in her kitchen . . . how odd.
She stepped back, out of his way, as he slid the casserole dish out of the fridge and set it on the counter. “It’s not cooked yet,” he said. “I didn’t want the smell to disturb you. Migraines and food smells don’t mix.” He reached over and cranked the dial on the oven. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
She didn’t mention that it was the middle of the night. She was busy looking at the lasagna’s evenly sprinkled mozzarella and parmesan and thinking, The man cooks. Can I keep him?
A moment later, he flicked on the overhead light. Charlie blinked at him, belatedly realizing she wore no makeup and looked like hell.
He gazed at her with a weird, half smile as he went to work on the cork of a bottle of red wine that she knew for a fact he hadn’t found in her house. In fact, she’d had no lasagna ingredients, either.
“You went shopping?” she asked. Nice throaty growl there, Chuck, she thought, as her cheeks flooded with heat.
His half grin turned full. “Did you miss me?”
She shrugged. “Hardly knew you were gone.”
He opened a cupboard door and retrieved wineglasses. He already knew his way around her kitchen. The clutch in her gut did its thing again, and she cleared her throat. “So, you didn’t have to stay.”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to be.” He splashed wine into the glasses, set aside the bottle and handed her one of the glasses. Then he clinked his own against hers. “Here’s to lasagna at two A.M.”
The wine tasted tart and earthy, and she savored that first tingle. As warmth spread through her stomach, she remembered how empty it was. She should probably have an appetizer, she thought.
As if reading her mind, Noah reached for the hunk of cheese at the same time, and their hands connected.
Shock zings through me like a head rush as I stare down at the photo. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Someone hit Charlie. More than once. With fists. That son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. I flip through the other Polaroids, nausea growing with each new angle of Charlie’s bruised and swollen face. Who did this to her? I’ll tear the fucker apart.
“Charlie? You okay?”
She blinked back into her own kitchen to find Noah watching her with concern in his eyes. She pulled her hand away from his, the wine souring in her stomach. “You were snooping?”
His brows arched sharply. “What?”
“While I was sleeping, you snooped. You had no right to do that.”
He shook his head, clearly baffled. “How—”
She backed away from him, shame and embarrassment dogging the heels of anger. “You need to go.”
“Charlie—”
“I want you to go!”
He raised his hands, placating. “Just calm down. Let’s talk about this.”
Oh, God, tears were welling. She was such a wuss. But it was anger, she thought. She cried when she was pissed. “There’s nothing to talk about. Now, please, get the hell out.”
She pivoted and walked out of the kitchen into the backyard, not knowing where she was going. Just away. From him. From everything. From her screwed-up life.
Noah didn’t follow her outside, and she stood on the cement slab patio and rubbed her arms against the cool night air. Jesus, how did he find those damn pictures? She hadn’t even known Nana still had them. But, of course, it made sense. Nana was all about insurance. Protecting those she loved.
She heard the door open behind her and tensed, swiping at her eyes before the tears could spill. Get a grip already.
“I put the lasagna in. It’ll be ready in about forty-five minutes.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed. “I asked you to go.”
“I heard you.”
And yet he didn’t move. He’d brought her home when she’d been sick and put her to bed, then stuck around and cooked for her while she’d slept.
Don’t forget the snooping. A cop doing cop things. Without his shirt.
She shook her head and wondered what else he’d found. Maybe stuff she didn’t even know about. She really should have cleaned out Nana’s room by now, but she hadn’t had the strength. It still smelled like her in there. Like lilacs.
She angrily knocked away a tear that fought free of her lashes and spilled down her cheek. Cut it out. Don’t be so f-ing weak.
Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned her head to see Noah’s hand outstretched, her glass of wine dangling from his fingers. She debated ignoring him until he went away. She didn’t need this on top of everything else. But then he gently tapped the side of her arm with the glass, and she caved, knowing as she did so that she’d given in too easily.
While the wrought-iron deck chair behind her creaked with Noah’s weight, she drank down a healthy swallow of wine. Self-medication had its merits, and she anticipated the moment when warmth would suffuse her limbs. Should be any minute.
Noah said nothing, and that disconcerted her. He was a cop. Shouldn’t he be asking cop questions?
Would your mother kill to protect her secret?
Well, she thought, draining the last of her wine, maybe.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Noah sat quietly, watching Charlie’s back and listening to the whir of Florida bugs and distant chirps of birds. It took several minutes before her rigid shoulders began to relax incrementally. Probably the wine. And silence. Other than the nighttime activity of bugs and birds, the night was still. So different from Chicago, where sirens and honking horns and the shouts of angry, often-drunken strangers never stopped. Except when it snowed, but that was probably because of the sound-deadening effects of snow rather than any kind of peace. Not like here. He’d never known such peace. Such stillness.
He leaned his head back, took in the brilliance of the stars. It struck him just like before. Total, mind-blowing awe. He thought about Laurette, smiled sadly. Check it out, sweetie. I’m taking it all in, just like you wanted.
“It’s not what you think.”
He raised his head to see that Charlie still faced the yard. The moonlight glinted on her hair, limned her pale hand as she tucked dark strands behind her ear. How she even knew that he’d found the pictures perplexed him. But, then, maybe she’d only suspected, and his reaction to her “you were snooping?” gave him away.
“And what do I think?” he asked.
She sighed almost silently. “It’s just not.”
Okay, so it wasn’t a boyfriend. Father? Rage curled in his gut all over again. Some men were such brutal bastards. “How long ago?”
She didn’t respond for a long moment, and he thought he’d pushed too soon. But, damn it, he didn’t know how to talk to someone he wasn’t interrogating. He didn’t know how to talk to her, this woman he somehow already cared about.
“I was sixteen,” she said. “I was looking for a . . . slip. It was my sister Sam’s graduation day, and I don’t normally wear dresses.” She paused, looked down into her empty glass.
He got up and reached around her to refill it. She kept her eyes averted, but he noticed the hand holding the glass trembled.
He returned to the chair, knowing she needed distance or she wouldn’t talk.
“I found a photo album I’d never seen before. She walked in while I was looking at it.”
She?
“I was excited,” she said, and laughed softly, ruefully. “I’d never seen pictures of my mother as a child. There were people in the pictures I’d never met, and I wanted to know who they were, where they were, why we never saw them.” She paused, wet her lips. “Some
thing inside her snapped. Sometimes I think I actually heard it break.”
Jesus Christ, her mother did that to her. Noah didn’t know what to say, probably couldn’t have spoken if he’d tried.
“I moved in with my grandmother afterward. Kept an eagle eye on my younger sister for signs of . . .” She trailed off, cleared her throat. “Sam took off right after graduation. Alex always seemed okay. Too immersed in taking care of the neighborhood strays to be distracted by family tension. Mom was colder, more distant, even more tightly controlled. She feared losing it again.” She swallowed some wine. “I made it my personal crusade to goad her. I wanted her to hit me again. Figured one more good punch was all it would take to get Dad to leave her. I wanted him to leave her so badly. Wanted her to hurt.”
She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. “I got good at it. I could trip her trigger with a look. Not like that first time. But I could make her slip, make her lash out. She’d get this cornered look in her eyes that scared the crap out of me. At the same time, I’d be thrilled that I could do that to her. It felt powerful. Sick, huh?”
“I’ve heard worse,” he said softly, no longer shocked at the damage that people who supposedly loved each other could do.
“I suppose you have,” she replied, turning her back to him again and drinking some more.
He wondered how many blows Charlie had taken before it sank in that Mom was more important to Dad than violence and bruises. Or if it had.
“It’s your turn,” she said.
He blinked to see that she’d turned to face him, one arm wrapped around her middle. “Pardon?” he asked.
“You snooped through my past, now I get to snoop through yours.”
He would have preferred to talk about the people in the photos she’d seen, the people she’d never met. But he also got that he needed to take his time with her. Time and patience. He never felt like he had enough of either, but he would dig deep for her.
He rearranged himself in the deck chair. “Dad died when I was a kid. Mom had been a housewife all her life, but she had a pretty good singing voice. So she loaded us all into an old school bus, and we hit the road as a band.”
Charlie snorted. “You’re so full of shit.”
“I was pretty jealous of my older brother. He got all the chicks.”
“So you were the annoying but precocious redhead?”
“Nope. Shy one on drums.”
“Ah.” She lowered herself into the chair next to his and leaned her head back. “Not fair.”
He swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat as he took in the slim column of her neck, the pale skin bisected by the thin bruise left by the extension cord just visible above the edge of the turtleneck. Rage hammered him in the gut with the force of a prizefighter’s fist. In his line of work, he’d seen plenty of bruises on women, had felt sick and angry every time. But something about this one . . .
“The real story would bore you, trust me,” he said.
“Maybe I’m in the mood for a little boredom. I’ve had an exciting couple of days.”
He refilled her glass with the rest of the wine. “Drink up.”
“You’re trying to get me drunk.”
“Didn’t have far to go, really. You’re a lightweight.”
She sipped, swallowed. “You got what you wanted. Now give me what I want.”
He wouldn’t say he’d gotten what he wanted. Not even close. He wanted her. And she was just pliable enough now that he was sure he could have her if he tried. He could tell her the tragic story of his first partner and the violence that followed. Make her feel real sorry for him, maybe even make her cry, then make his move. He’d be sinking into her within the hour, take a break for some spinach lasagna, then sink into her some more. A lot of pleasure to take the edge off, for both of them. The thought of all that heat tightened his groin.
Time to think about something else.
“So the people in your mother’s photos . . .” He trailed off, hoping she’d pick it up. Her defenses were down, after all.
“You first.”
He sighed. Maybe she wasn’t as drunk as he thought. “Mom was a teacher. Sixth grade. Dad was a cop. The clean kind. The good kind.”
“Sad that you feel like you have to say that, isn’t it?”
He’d never thought about it, but yeah. It was damn sad. His own kid, if he ever had one, wouldn’t be able to say the same. “They were good parents. Good to each other. Good to me. When they retired, they bought a motor home and traveled the USA. Died a couple of years ago from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
“Oh, God. Suicide?”
“Faulty space heater.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”
He finished his wine and stared into the bottom of the glass, wishing he’d picked up more than one bottle. Glancing over at Charlie, he saw that she sat with her head back, her eyes closed, the wineglass clasped by limp fingers in her lap. She looked relaxed, zoned.
He wanted to ask her again about the mystery people in her mother’s photos. Could one have been a sister? Perhaps a sister her mother wanted so badly to keep hidden that she’d kill? But he hesitated, unable to bring himself to disturb how peaceful she looked. A few more minutes, he decided, then he’d ask.
The timer in the kitchen started to beep.
“Lasagna’s done,” Charlie murmured.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Noah lounged in the chair that he’d come to think of as his in the lobby of the Royal Palm Inn, a shaft of morning sunlight creating prisms at his feet. From here, he could see the hotel entrance, the registration desk, the elevators and the door to the stairwell. Every guest he spotted he’d already questioned about Laurette the day before or earlier this morning, before he’d met John Logan at the morgue. Logan had handed over an envelope of Laurette’s belongings and told him he could pick up the rest of her things at the hotel before taking him to ID Laurette’s body.
She’d been so still and pale on the cold steel table. It had shocked him seeing her like that, and that unnerved him. He’d seen so much in his career as a cop. But this was Laurette, dead at the hand of an unknown assailant.
His options were dwindling, and he’d gathered no significant information on what she was doing before she died. Most of the Royal Palm’s guests were regulars, and they noticed the people who weren’t, such as Laurette. So far, he’d heard about her rolling her suitcase down the hall, getting hot tea and a bagel at breakfast, retrieving ice from the machine at the end of the hall. Nothing unusual, nothing indicating that she would be the victim of a hit-and-run within a matter of minutes.
He had nothing to go on except Laurette’s whole purpose for coming to Lake Avalon. To reunite her mother with Charlie Trudeau’s mother, a woman who was so desperate to hide her secrets that she’d hurt her own child. Jesus, would she try to kill her own child? He knew from too much experience that sick people inhabited this world.
He could kick himself for not forcing himself to quiz Charlie more about her family secrets the night before. But it would have felt too much like taking advantage when she was vulnerable—a mind-set that was unlike him, really. He was all about finding what made someone vulnerable and using it against them to get what he wanted. But she wasn’t a perp who needed to pay for a crime. She wasn’t even just a woman, not the kind he could pleasure and take pleasure in, simply and with no strings attached. But she’d become too important for only that. He had no idea how, but she had.
So, after dinner and small, safe talk, he’d taken a cab to Dick’s Auto Sales to get his car and go back to the hotel for some sleep. But he hadn’t been able to sleep. His heart had beaten too fast, as though being near Charlie had given him an adrenaline surge.
“Excuse me, young man?”
He looked up to see a tall, elderly woman with short, pure white hair and silver wire-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Yes, ma’am?”
“
You’re the one who knew the young woman who was hit by the car?”
He nodded, his heart skipping a beat. “Yes. Her name was Laurette.”
“I sure wish I’d known about the accident sooner. My Harry and I spent the day yesterday on Marco Island, so we didn’t hear about the tragedy until we returned last night.”
Realizing he should ask her to sit, he sprang to his feet and gestured toward his chair. “Please.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “No, no, if I sit down I won’t want to get back up.”
“So you remember Laurette?”
“Yes, yes. We didn’t speak, I’m afraid. And I’m not sure I can offer you anything that you don’t already know.”
“Anything you have would be helpful, Mrs. . . .”
“Dillard. Mary Dillard.”
He extended his hand. “Noah Lassiter.”
Her hand as she clasped his was cool and dry. “Down from Chicago, hm?”
He chuckled. “Must be the accent.”
She beamed. “It’s a game I like to play, trying to figure out where people hail from.”
“I’m sure you get to play that game a lot around here.”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes.”
“So where exactly did you see Laurette?”
“I was sitting right here, in fact, drinking my morning coffee and eating a banana nut muffin. That’s my morning ritual here. Coffee and a muffin, mostly banana nut, sometimes blueberry, and I people-watch while I wait for Harry to get his cranky old butt in gear. I do love to watch people, especially the characters around here. Don’t even get me started.”
He didn’t plan to, unless it had to do with Laurette. “You saw Laurette at breakfast?”
“No, I saw her come out of the stairwell. Right over there.”
He turned his head to look at the door marked STAIRS.
“I noticed because she was so young and pretty. Most of the guests here are old geezers, as you’ve probably noticed.”
“Did she look upset or anything?” he asked, trying to keep her on track.
“Distracted, really. She walked through that door and paused to search through her bag for a minute. Then she looked around, as though trying to decide whether to turn around and go back. Clearly indecisive.”