If A Man Answers

by Merline Lovelace

  The sunlight painting Molly’s hair to a nimbus of gold waves didn’t help matters, either. Nor did the long, silky legs displayed to perfection under the thigh-skimming, hip-hugging tube of bronze knit that passed for a dress. How the hell did she bend over in that thing without getting arrested?

  The puzzle presented all kinds of interesting solutions. With a wrench, Sam pulled his thoughts from acrobatics to actualities.

  “It seems we’re going to the Hard Rock Cafe.”

  “So I gathered.” She accompanied him to the Blazer. “What are you doing at the Convention Center, Sam?”

  “I was out at the base and came by to...”

  To what? To report on his conversation with Lieutenant Donovitch? To counter the uneasiness that was knifing into him a little deeper with each passing hour? To satisfy a pressing need to keep this woman safe?

  “To talk to you,” he finished with a shrug. “And to Davinia, apparently.”

  He’d forgotten Molly’s keen ear. Picking up on the underlying criticism in his offhand comment, she shot him a quick look.

  “Do you have a problem with talking to Davinia?”

  He had a big problem with it if the conversation resulted in the same kind of brushfire that Pat Donovitch’s casual comment had sparked on base. Or the same threat to Molly.

  “Kaplan’s kept the station manager at Channel Five on a tight leash,” Sam pointed out. “He doesn’t want to spook the congressman or send the media into a feeding frenzy unless or until he’s got something concrete to work with. I just hope Davinia can keep this between herself and sweetcakes.”

  “She can,” Molly retorted, flicking the man beside her an irritated glance.

  She wasn’t about to admit that she hadn’t intended to spill every detail to Davinia. She’d tried, she’d really tried, to follow Kaplan’s advice and keep the identity of the killer to herself for the time being. Dodging Lawyer Jacobbson’s barrage of questions required far more stamina and skill than Molly possessed, however.

  Of course, telling Davinia all also meant telling Antonio when he stopped by the office a while ago, but both parties had promised to keep the stunning revelation to themselves. Molly was sure she could trust them to hold to that promise. Sam, evidently, had his doubts.

  She slanted him another quick glance. What was with him this afternoon, anyway? He didn’t have that tight, white-lipped look that signaled one of his headaches, but his voice had a rough edge she hadn’t heard since the night she sent the police to his house. He gripped the wheel with a curled fist, and his long, contoured body radiated a coiled tension. Molly had the sense of a sleek predator held rigidly in check. Quiet. Powerful. Deadly.

  “What did you find out at Nellis?” she asked in an attempt to bridge the prickly silence.

  His jaw notched. In an even voice that didn’t quite match the sudden gridwork of lines at the corner of his mouth, he related his short conversation with Lieutenant Lip-Lock, as Molly had privately tagged her.

  She was still trying to grasp the ramifications of the lieutenant’s sobering story when Sam ushered her into the Hard Rock Cafe.

  A symphony of sounds greeted them. Bruce Springsteen poured from speakers mounted on every wall. Early happy hour patrons shouted to be heard over the pounding beat. Glasses clinked, waiters called in orders, and Davinia hailed them from a back booth.

  Weaving her way through the noise and an assortment of rock-and-roll memorabilia that included platinum records, leather jackets and Bill Haley’s motorcycle, Molly felt a momentary preference for Buck Randall’s softer, if somewhat more nasal ballads. It faded, thank goodness, almost instantly. Over frosted margaritas and a gargantuan platter of green chili and chicken nachos, Sam related the gist of his conversation with the lieutenant. Davinia’s eyes gleamed.

  “So despite his squeaky-clean record and wellpublicized family life, our boy has a history of hitting on nubile young women. This opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.”

  Molly swirled the straw through her slushy margarita. She’d had time to think of a few possibilities, too, and she wouldn’t describe them as interesting. Scary came a whole lot closer.

  “Maybe Walters employed Joey’s services as a procurer,” Davinia mused. “Maybe Joey tried a little blackmail to supplement his income. Maybe the congressman decided he wasn’t going to play that game.”

  Sam draped an arm across the back of the booth and stretched out his legs. Wedged in beside him as she was, Molly felt his hip and thigh connect with hers.

  “We can ‘maybe’ this all night,” he said slowly, “but that doesn’t mitigate the fact that Walters has an alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “An alibi backed up by two-thousand-or-so assorted individuals,” Molly muttered, stabbing at her drink.

  “Hey, this is Vegas,” her boss tossed out. “Two thousand people see Elvis reincarnated every night on stage at the Riviera. Thousands more watch white tigers disappear in a puff of smoke. Who’s to say Walters didn’t stage a theatrical appearance, then slip out when no one was looking?”

  “Quiera...”

  “Just a minute, sweetie.” Patting Antonio absently on the thigh, Davinia focused her attention on the couple opposite her. “There’s got to be a way to shake Walters’s alibi.”

  “Assuming he’s the killer.”

  “He is,” Molly stated, sending Sam a glare.

  Davinia tapped a nail on the table. Antonio started to speak once more, but she beat him to it.

  “What we need to do is shake the man up, get him to...”

  “What we need to do is let Kaplan handle this,” Sam interrupted, making no effort to hide his scowl. “Josh Walters is too smart to let himself be shaken out of anything.”

  “Quiera...”

  Shushing the hulking Spaniard with a wave of one hand, Davinia pounced on Sam’s reply.

  “Wrong! He made a big mistake when he called that lieutenant. What if she’d gotten him on tape? If he starts hearing rumors that he’s under investigation and gets rattled, he may very well make another.”

  “I don’t see it,” Sam said stubbornly, shaking his head.

  “He threatened this lieutenant, or so she claims. He might call Molly and try to intimidate her, too.”

  Or he may decide to pay her another visit, she thought with a shudder. She had no proof the same person she’d heard on the phone had slipped into her house the next night. Only her intuition, which, unfortunately, was working overtime at the moment.

  “He doesn’t have to call me,” she said glumly. “He’s got two-thousand-plus witnesses who can swear to his whereabouts at the time of the murder.”

  The patient Spaniard finally thrust himself into the conversation. “This politico, he is well known here, no? Like the movie star?”

  “Very like the movie star,” Davinia replied absently.

  Antonio caught her chin and snared her attention by the simple expedient of tugging her face around to him.

  “Listen to me, quiera. Someone who does Elvis, why could he not also do this Joshua Walters?”

  “Huh?”

  Grinning at her less than incisive reply, he dropped a kiss on her nose. “I have been to these shows on the Strip. I have seen the Elvis and the Julio Iglesias and the Marilyn Monroe. Why could someone who does the so-talented, so-handsome Julio not also impre... impro...”

  “Impersonate Joshua Walters,” Davinia finished for him in awe. “Ho-ly crappoli, you just might have something there!”

  Her jaw sagging, Molly stared at her boss and the brawny masseur. She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, or that Antonio’s bizarre idea actually made sense. What had happened to the nice, serene world she’d created for herself here in Vegas? It was now populated by murdered pimps. Cold-blooded killers. Maybe even a professional impersonator who stood up for a U.S. congressman at a campaign fundraising gala attended by half of Nevada!

  That was insane.

  But then...

  S
anity had slipped away from her the night she made that blasted phone call. No, she corrected with an accusing glare at the man beside her, it had started slipping away the day Sam moved in next door.

  If he caught her look, he ignored it. Like Davinia, he was staring at Antonio. Doubt, incredulity, and, finally, outright amusement chased across his face.

  “I’d say that’s as good a theory as any,” he told the other man.

  Antonio smugly crunched down on a nacho. Davinia grinned and flashed Molly a look of pure, feminine delight.

  “Brains and brawn, girl, brains and brawn. How in the world did we get so lucky?”

  By the time Molly and Sam parted from the others, her head whirled with the effects of two potent margaritas, the theories Davinia had tossed out with ruthless enthusiasm, and the press of Sam’s hard, muscled thigh against hers in the narrow booth.

  She walked into the night beside Sam, trying to decide which bothered her more...her body’s clamoring insistence that she forget about slowing things down between them or his insistence that they stay out of the murder investigation and let Kaplan handle it.

  Unlocking the Trans Am, she slid onto its leather seat. The trapped heat only added to her unsettled, disgruntled feeling. She missed the pull of the wind in her hair as she drove home through the gathering twilight, the Blazer’s lights reflected in her rearview mirror. She’d put the top up this morning for the first time in ages. She’d even taken to locking her car doors.

  As it had in the restaurant, a surge of resentment swept through Molly. Balling her fist, she pounded the steering wheel. Dammit, she’d come to Nevada to regain control of her life. She’d taken such joy in owning her first home, in wandering through the empty rooms and visualizing how she’d fill them. Now she’d barricaded herself behind a security system that could keep Fort Knox impregnable. She jumped at every shadow. She’d even gotten nervous about leaving the convertible’s top down.

  To heck with it! She was tired of sitting back and...and waiting. She wanted to do something.

  Pulling into the garage, Molly grabbed her purse, slid out of the car, and hit the remote. A quick duck under the rumbling door brought her out into the cooling twilight. She waited while Sam tucked the Blazer into its berth next to his Mustang.

  “Do you still have the tape you made last night?”

  The Blazer’s door thudded shut. “Yes.”

  “I’d like to take another look at it.”

  A frown settled in his gray eyes again as he ushered her inside. The house echoed only unbroken stillness. Tonight, the gleaming steel gym that took up most of his great room stood silent. No black weights rattled and clanged. No lonely lament wailed from the radio. Sam wasn’t suffering tonight, thank goodness, even if he retrieved the cassette from the VCR and moved toward her with a slash between his dark brows. He tapped the videocassette against his palm.

  “You sure you want to watch this again, Molly?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why?”

  She spun away, fighting a new surge of irritation. She didn’t like having to explain herself, particularly when she knew Sam wouldn’t agree with what she wanted to do. For an uncomfortable moment, she felt as though she were back in Boston again. Scowling at the jungle of smooth steel bars and beams that blocked her way, she took a deep breath and turned back to Sam.

  “There was a trailer at the end of the ad. It listed dates and locations for a series of public forums Walters is attending to meet with his constituency.”

  “I saw it.”

  “I’m going to go to one of those sessions. Maybe if he sees me or hears my name, he’ll know that I’ve recognized him and...”

  “It’s too risky,” he said flatly. “I won’t let you expose yourself to that kind of danger.”

  Her chin snapped up. “I don’t recall asking for your permission.”

  Cursing his blunder, Sam knew he had to act fast if he wanted to recover. He tossed aside the cassette and moved to the gym. His hands folded around the well-worn grips of the crossbar.

  “Bad word choice, Mol. Of course you don’t need my permission, but I hope you’ll take my advice. Let Kaplan handle this.”

  Let me protect you.

  The words hammered in Sam’s chest, worked their way to his throat. She wasn’t ready to hear them, though. Anger stained her cheeks and sparked in her eyes. Struggling to keep his protective instincts on a short leash, he tried a different tact.

  “You don’t know Walters.”

  Sam could see at once that he’d pushed the wrong button.

  “And you do?” Her eyes flashed green fire. “I know it’s hard for- you to believe that your sainted Josh Walters could kill someone in cold blood....”

  “Dammit, you’ve convinced me, Molly. That’s why it’s pure idiocy for you to waltz into one of those forums and confront the man.”

  Without meaning to, he crowded her back until her calves hit the narrow leather bench. Or maybe he’d meant to crowd her. Hell, at this point, Sam wasn’t sure of anything except a fierce headache was starting to pound in his temples, only this one had Molly Duncan’s name written all over it.

  “Look,” she began coolly, “I’m not some lieutenant under your command, and I don’t respond well to orders cloaked as advice. I appreciate your concern, but...”

  “Concern, hell!”

  Sam had passed concern the moment she blasted through her damned hedge and tumbled into his arms. He’d passed lust, too, although he didn’t quite know when. At this particular moment, he hovered somewhere between irritation and love, which scared the hell out of him. His savage thoughts must have shown in his face. Her eyes narrowing, she issued a warning.

  “I think you’d better back off, Henderson.”

  It was too late for that. It was probably too late the first time she flaked all over him.

  “Not this time, Duncan.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I backed off last night. I’m not retreating again.”

  “Oh?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. Against the superstructure of polished steel, she was all bronze knit and angry female.

  “You’re treading shaky ground here, Major. Real shaky.”

  “I got that impression,” he drawled.

  “Let’s get something straight. I left Boston to get away from a man who tried to dictate my choices. I don’t want or need another one trying the same thing here in Vegas.”

  The idea that she would lump him in the same category as the wimp who let her walk out of his life without a backward glance rubbed Sam exactly the wrong way.

  “So what are you going to do if I press you too hard or too soon, sweetheart? Run away again?”

  The soft taunt cut through the air between them, as alive and explosive as electricity.

  Molly sucked in a swift breath. He wasn’t talking about Walters now, or her determination to attend one of the congressman’s forums. With a seismic movement she’d somehow missed, the ground had suddenly shifted.

  This was between her and Sam. About her and Sam. Despite his gruff refusal to back off, he wouldn’t force her. Molly knew that, as surely as she sensed that he’d tumble her down onto the leather bench behind her if she so much as blinked.

  Still simmering, she tilted her head back. His tanned skin stretched across his cheekbones. The edge of his jaw could have cut glass. But it wasn’t pain that darkened his eyes, she saw with a lurch. It was hunger, raw and primitive, and a fierceness that skidded right past lust into an emotion that made Molly’s heart trip.

  Her anger fractured, breaking into smaller shards that splintered away. In its place came an answering emotion so strong that she didn’t try to fight it anymore.

  “No, Sam,” she said at last. “I’m not running away. This time I’m standing my ground.”

  Chapter 11

  Molly didn’t remain standing for long.

  At her soft declaration, Sam’s eyes flared with a satisfaction that looke
d possessive and felt primal. He moved a step closer, still gripping the crossbar, the muscles in his arms bunching.

  Molly felt caged by the steel around her. Claimed by the man before her. Trapped in a way that should have panicked her, but didn’t. Much. He must have sensed her brief flutter of uncertainty. His voice dropped to a rough cured leather.

  “If it makes you feel any better about what’s about to happen between us, you can have my couch. I don’t use it, anyway.”

  Her hands trembled with the need to slide them up, over those wide shoulders, around his neck.

  “What do you use, Sam?”

  He smiled, a slow slash of male amusement that had Molly’s nails digging into her palms.

  “Upstairs, I use the bed. Downstairs, the easy chair in the corner. The floor. The...”

  “Okay, okay, I get the picture.”

  She drew in a shaky breath. He was so close. Too close. She could feel his heat. See the tendon that corded in his neck like rawhide thongs. She made one last stand before surrendering completely to the desire that raced through her like summer wildfire.

  “Just remember that I don’t take orders very well, Major.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “No military dictatorships or heavy-handed tactics allowed on either side.”

  “Got it. Anything else?”

  “Not...” Molly dragged her tongue across dry lips. “Not that I can think of.”

  Who was she kidding? With Sam’s mouth only inches from her own, she could barely breathe. Thinking had passed into the realm of the impossible.

  “Good.”

  His knee nudged hers apart, separating them. He edged her backward, until she straddled the narrow, padded bench. Her skirt inched up her thighs with a soft slither. Her breath hitched somewhere in the middle of her throat.

  “Why do I get the feeling we’re not going to make it upstairs?”

  “Molly, sweetheart, you’re not going to make it to the floor.”

  The husky promise sent her stomach into a roll. She stared up at Sam’s eyes, unsure where this searing urgency between them was going but in more of a hurry to get there with each passing second.