If A Man Answers

by Merline Lovelace

  She snapped her mouth shut. She had no idea what the heck Sam’s problem was, but she darned well wasn’t going to spend the little that was left of the night trying to figure it out. With luck, she could grab two or three more hours of sleep before she had to get ready for work. Spinning around, Molly marched inside the house. The patio door banged shut behind her.

  In a distant corner of his brain, Sam recorded the snapping sound, just as he’d recorded the surprise on Molly’s face when he’d left her so abruptly. He couldn’t think about either at this moment, though. He needed all his concentration just to put one foot in front of the other and make it to his own back door.

  He couldn’t believe he’d been such a fool! He’d known better than to just sit there, breathing in his neighbor’s unique, intriguing combination of scents, while the demons in his head took possession of his body. He should have put her out of his arms hours ago. Gone back to his own house. Pounded the damned pain into submission with a grinding workout.

  He knew his abrupt departure had bewildered her. Better bewilderment than pity, Sam thought savagely. He didn’t need her pity. Any more than he needed commiserating slaps on the back from his former squadron mates or worried calls from his brothers. He’d beat this thing. He’d prove the doctors wrong and beat it, and he’d do it without doping himself up with painkillers every night.

  Until he did, though, he sure as hell wasn’t much use to anyone...particularly a green-eyed, long-legged blonde who seemed to attract trouble like a magnet. Slamming his own patio door shut with a force that added another bright color to the kaleidoscope whirling through his head, Sam stripped off his shirt. His mouth grim, he headed for the well-worn leather bench.

  Molly puzzled over her neighbor’s strange behavior off and on for most of the next morning... until the call from the Las Vegas Police Department drove all other thoughts right out of her head.

  It came just after lunch, as she was walking out of her office for a meeting with the director of the new fifty-four-million-dollar Star Trek museum and entertainment center at the Las Vegas Hilton. The spectacular fifty-four-million-dollar center had just opened, and the director had promised Molly and a number of the media a sneak preview. A long time trekkie, she was looking forward to the tour. Impatiently, she leaned back over her desk to catch the phone.

  “Molly Duncan.”

  “Hello, Ms. Duncan. This is Detective Kaplan, from the LVPD Homicide Unit. I wanted to let you know that we traced the call you made at one-twelve yesterday morning.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “Yes?”

  “The number you dialed belongs to a man named Joe Bennett. His rap sheet lists a number of aliases, but we know him as Joey the Horse.”

  “Rap sheet? You mean he’s a criminal?”

  “A small-time drug dealer with a weakness for the ponies. He also supplements his income by pimping for the high rollers. Or he did. He won’t be supplementing anything anymore.”

  “Is he...?” Molly gripped the phone. “Is he dead?”

  “As the proverbial doornail,” Kaplan confirmed with a notable lack of sympathy for the deceased. “The landlord let our guys into his apartment this afternoon. They found Joey with a nice, neat hole in the middle of his forehead and a not so neat one in his chest.”

  Molly sagged against the edge of her desk. Over and over, a desperate plea echoed in her mind.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’m in court this afternoon on another case,” the detective continued, “but I’d like to talk to you about your phone call. Can you swing by the station in the morning? Hello? Ms. Duncan?”

  “What?” She shook herself out of the shocked trance. “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  “Ten o’clock okay?”

  “Ten o’clock,” she repeated numbly, then Kaplan shifted gears with a disconcerting suddenness.

  “I understand you also reported hearing some noises in your house last night?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “There’s probably no connection between the two incidents, but until we clear up this business with Joey, I’ve asked the city desk to increase the patrols through your neighborhood. Call 911 if you see or hear anything that makes you nervous.”

  Anything that made her more nervous, Molly corrected silently as she dropped the receiver onto the cradle. She stared at the phone as if it were an instrument of evil.

  She’d heard someone shoot another human being. Really and truly shoot him. The reality stunned her. And curled her stomach into a tight, frightened knot. She was still standing motionless beside her desk when her boss whirled in on a cloud of Arpege and brisk efficiency.

  “Hey, girl! I thought you had a two o’clock at the Hilton.”

  “I did. Uh, I do.”

  The mumbled reply brought Davinia’s perfectly arched brows snapping together. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I think the operative word is heard, not seen,” Molly said weakly.

  “Huh?”

  “The police just called.”

  “Really?” Davinia hitched a hip on the corner of Molly’s desk and swung a long, nyloned leg. “Did they trace the call you made?”

  Molly nodded. “Evidently I called a Mr. Joey the Horse Bennett, a drug dealer and occasional pimp.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish!”

  Gathering her scattered thoughts, she relayed her brief conversation with Detective Kaplan. When she finished, her boss swung her leg in a slow, thoughtful arc. Her three-inch clear acrylic heel caught the light and threw back a rainbow of color.

  “A drug-dealing pimp with a New Jersey accent, a weakness for the horses and a hole in his forehead. This doesn’t sound good, girl. Not good at all.”

  “As a matter of fact, it sounded awful,” Molly replied with a little shudder. “You should have heard him, pleading with the killer for his life.”

  “Well, yes, but that wasn’t what I meant.” Waving a hand tipped with long, silvered nails, Davinia dismissed the now-deceased drug dealer with the same casual callousness Detective Kaplan had.

  “Las Vegas has pretty well cleaned up its act in the past decade or so,” she said, “but there are still a few of the old school around. Men with connections.”

  “Connections?”

  “You know, the old families.”

  Molly stared at her boss in dismay. “Are you suggesting that I overheard a mob execution?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  Groaning, she reached for her purse. “Thanks a lot! Now I won’t get any sleep tonight, either.”

  Davinia took her lower lip between blindingly white teeth. “Why don’t you come stay with me for a few days? Just until the police work this case?”

  Molly almost took her up on the offer. Somehow, the thought of going back to her empty house didn’t hold quite the same appeal it had before. Davinia had just moved the latest candidate for husband number four into her condo, however, and Molly didn’t want to impede the matrimonial tryouts.

  “You don’t need any more company,” she replied. “You’ve got Antonio.”

  “Nonsense. He’ll love having two women to practice his techniques on. Not that he needs much practice,” she added with a wicked grin.

  Since the hunky Latino had recently graduated with top honors from massage school, Molly didn’t doubt it. She did, however, doubt that he’d appreciate another woman’s presence in the house. Particularly when her boss had hinted that she’d instituted a program of total seduction and surrender... her seduction and Antonio’s surrender.

  Gracefully. Molly refused Davinia’s offer and headed home. It was only as she pulled into her driveway and spotted the lights in Sam’s house that she realized a good part of her reason for refusing Davinia’s offer was the knowledge that her confusing, intriguing neighbor was only a hedge away.

  Chapter 4

  Molly leaned down to snag the yellow T-shirt from the dryer. When she pulled it out, a frag
rant cloud of fabric softener came with it Holding the garment up to the light, she examined its front. After two washings, the brown coffee splotch had pretty well disappeared. The little that remained was so faint that it blended right in with the faded, streaky yellow.

  Laying the shirt on top of the dryer, she smoothed the wrinkles with her palms. The faded blue patch on the front caught her gaze. The lettering below it read 442d TES, whatever that meant.

  Vaguely Molly recalled Sam telling her about the unit he’d been assigned to at Nellis. She’d hovered somewhere between sleepy exhaustion and total unconsciousness at the time, so she had only hazy memories of his voice rumbling under her ear. The sensation of Sam’s thighs shifting under hers hadn’t exactly added to her powers of concentration, either. Nor had the steely strength of his arms folded around her.

  Thinking back to those hours on the deck, Molly had to admit that Sam’s solid strength had given her the oddest sense of comfort. Not that she really needed it, of course. She didn’t want any man flexing his muscles in her life, even figuratively. She’d had enough of that with Brady. Still, for a few hours, she felt warm and comfortable and safe in Sam’s arms.

  She frowned, disturbed by the idea that she required anything or anyone to feel safe in her own home. This was her castle. Her sanctuary.

  She glanced through the laundry room door at the brightly lit kitchen. On any other night, the sandcolored plaster walls with their border of blue and gold Aztec sun signs would give her a small thrill of pride, just as the long, clean sweep of cobalt blue counter fed her need for color and brightness.

  Tonight she saw only the kitchen’s empty corners. Slowly, she shifted her gaze to the windows. A silvery path of light spilled from her neighbor’s high living room windows and traced across her yard. Molly contemplated the shimmering trail for several moments. Although she couldn’t hear Sam’s music, thank goodness, that trail of light lured her like a beacon.

  Folding the T-shirt, she decided to follow that beacon. After a quick detour to the powder room just off the kitchen to twist her hair up in a clear plastic clip decorated with pink rhinestone flamingos, courtesy of the famous hotel’s gift shop, she slipped into a pair of similarly decorated plastic mules. She smiled, thinking how the gaudy accessories that were so much a part of the Vegas scene would have brought a pained look to her former fiancé’s face. Molly, on the other hand, loved them. Thank goodness she’d walked away from Brady before the man had smothered her or she’d strangled him.

  On that cheerful thought, she marched out the kitchen door and followed the silvery path through her backyard to Sam’s. She wouldn’t linger at his place. Not after his abrupt good-bye and hasty retreat this morning. She’d just return his T-shirt and give him an update on Detective Kaplan’s call, keeping a nice, neighborly distance in the process.

  Molly had pushed through the hedge before she realized that she should have approached his house from the front and rung the doorbell. It was a little tacky to stroll into his backyard and walk right up to his patio. It was even more tacky to gape at the sight that greeted her through the open windows.

  Sam lay astride a narrow leather bench, wearing only a pair of blue nylon athletic shorts and a grimace. Above him towered the jungle of gleaming steel bars Molly had rushed past to get to a phone last night. She didn’t rush anywhere tonight. Tonight, she stood rooted to the patio, her feet planted as firmly as her oleanders, and watched her neighbor in motion.

  He moved to a rhythm that appeared as strenuous as it was beautiful. On a beat that only he could hear, his tendons corded. His glistening muscles gathered. A black column of weights lifted almost to the top of the steel structure. A moment later, he sucked in a breath and relaxed. The weights plunged.

  Slowly, he gathered himself and flexed once more.

  Molly stood in the shadows, transfixed. She wasn’t into sweat herself. In fact, she generally tried to avoid any activity that raised even the faintest hint of moisture on her skin...with one or two notable exceptions, of course. She had to admit, though, that the sheer perfection of Sam’s movements gave a new perspective to the whole question of exercise.

  Molly hated to interrupt him, but she wasn’t into voyeurism any more than sweat. Not usually, anyway. After watching Sam in motion, she could almost understand how masses of people got off on purely spectator sports. Clutching the folded T-shirt to her chest, she rapped on the glass patio door. He didn’t hear her. She tried again, knuckling the glass with a little more force. Still no response. Finally, she gave the tempered sliding door a solid whack.

  The weights froze, and Sam twisted on the bench. He pinned her with a narrow, piercing glance, his face wearing the same expression it had this morning. Hard. Tight. Unwelcoming.

  Wishing now that she’d stuffed the T-shirt and a note in his mailbox, Molly pasted on a smile that strove for a balance between neighborly and distant. She didn’t want the man to think that she’d come running to him in a fright again or that she was hounding him. Considering their brief and somewhat brittle acquaintance, though, she supposed he couldn’t think anything else.

  Thankfully, his grim expression eased when he took in her unfrantic face. Peeling himself off the bench, he reached for the gray sweatshirt draped over one of the crossbars. By the time he unlocked the patio doors and slid them open, he looked almost friendly. Only a woman who’d spent the night in his arms might notice that the creases at either side of his mouth went far too deep to constitute a smile.

  “Hello, neighbor. Everything all right on the far side of the oleanders?”

  “More or less.”

  He cocked his head. His dark brown hair glistened, shining almost black in the overhead light.

  “Is my music bothering you again? Sorry. I thought I had the volume turned down low enough to keep it from carrying.”

  Molly hadn’t even noticed the lament for a lost dog...or was it for an ex-wife?...threading through the air until Sam mentioned it.

  “No, the volume’s fine.”

  He invited her inside, and she declined with a little shake of her head.

  “I just wanted to return your T-shirt. I got most of the coffee stain out.”

  “You shouldn’t have bothered. The thing’s seen better days. Much better days,” he added, taking it from her outstretched hands. His eyes went to the patch on the front. He thumbed the lettering for a moment, then shook his head, as if to clear it of unwanted memories, and tossed the shirt aside.

  “Sure you won’t come in? I don’t have any hazelnut decaf, but I think I can scare up some instant. Or some cold beer, if you prefer.”

  Molly decided it was time to correct that particular misconception. “I don’t drink the stuff,” she informed him loftily. “I just wear it.”

  His mouth kicked up to a half smile. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Liar. I probably flaked all over your shirt last night.”

  “What are a few flakes between neighbors? Look, why don’t you come in? I’ll turn off the CD player, I promise. You won’t have to suffer through Buck and company, if that’s what’s holding you back.”

  Molly knew darn well what was holding her back... Sam Henderson’s on-again, off-again charm. In the early hours just before dawn, his icy stare had frozen her to her deck. Now, that half grin of his was causing a minor meltdown in her circulatory system. Much against her better judgment, she caved.

  “Well, if you promise....”

  He slid the patio door shut behind her and crossed to the washed-oak cabinets built into the wall beside the fireplace. The high-tech electronic equipment that filled the cabinets looked powerful and sophisticated enough to launch the space shuttle Atlantis. They’d certainly sent Bucky Boy soaring through the night on a number of previous occasions.

  Sam punched a few buttons, and the low, lonesome wail segued into the haunting strains of a violin concerto. Molly blinked in surprise. Buck Randall and Mozart? On the same CD player? Her conflicting impressions of her neighbor
took a turn into serious confusion.

  “Come on into the kitchen while I zap some water,” he invited.

  She trailed him through the house, seeing it with an eye for the details she hadn’t noticed last night. Aside from the soaring, two-storied great room which Sam had turned into his own personal gym, the rest of the place held a mix of comfortable, masculine furnishings and artwork from every corner of the world. Asian batiks and carved African masks hung in a dazzling display on one wall. A collection of delicate watercolors depicting European street scenes decorated the long central hall.

  But it was the well-furnished and fully equipped kitchen that gave Molly a real pang. She sighed, lusting instantly for the rectangular, washed-oak table and six high-backed chairs. Behind the table, a glassand-brass étagère drew her envious eye. The piece took up most of the far wall, and displayed to perfection a truly remarkable collection of beer steins.

  While Sam rummaged in the cupboard for cups, Molly examined the collection. Colorful coats of arms decorated the front of each stein, and military figures exquisitely detailed in pewter and silver perched atop the lids. Some of the figures sat astride prancing steeds. Others stood at attention or lunged with weapons drawn. All wore tall shakos and what looked like fur cloaks thrown over one shoulder. Enchanted, Molly traced a finger along a raised silver sword.

  “These are beautiful.”

  “They’re Prussian regimentals. I picked them up when I was stationed in Germany a few years ago. They have pictures glazed into the bottom that become visible when the owner drains his beer.”

  “Really?” Molly thumbed back a lid.

  “Most of the scenes depict the unit’s arms or insignia. A few are more, uh, artistic.”

  “So I see,” she drawled.

  Letting the pewter lid drop on the over-endowed and underdressed fraulein who smirked up at her, she settled into one of the chairs. Another twinge of envy attacked her as she glanced around the comfortable kitchen.