by Lisa Jackson
The fire had hissed quietly, red embers glowing, illuminating the room to a warm orange. Her breathing had been furious, her heart rocketing, desire curling deep inside her. She’d wanted him to touch her, shivered when his tongue brushed her nipples, bitten her bottom lip as his hot breath had caressed her abdomen and legs. She’d opened to him easily as his hands had explored and touched. Her mind had spun in utter abandon and she’d wanted him… Oh, God, she’d wanted him as she’d never wanted another man.
Which had been foolish…but as he’d kissed her intimately and slid the length of his body against her, she’d lost all control. All her hard-fought willpower…
She nearly missed her exit as she thought about him and the magic of the night, the lovemaking that had caused her to steal away early in the morning, before dawn. As if she’d been ashamed.
Now she wended her way off I-5 and down the steep streets leading to the waterfront. Through the tall, rain-drenched buildings was a view of the gray waters of Eliot Bay—restless and dark, mirroring her own uneasy feelings. She pulled the Jeep into the newspaper’s parking lot, grabbed her laptop and briefcase and faced a life that she’d left months before.
The offices of the Seattle Clarion were housed on the fifth floor of what had originally been a hotel. The hundred-year-old building was faced in red brick and had been updated, renovated and cut into offices.
Inside, Randi punched the elevator button. She was alone, rainwater dripping from her jacket as the ancient car clamored upward. It stopped twice, picking up passengers before landing on the fifth floor, the doors opening to a short hallway and the etched-glass doors of the newspaper offices. Shawn-Tay, the receptionist, looked up and nearly came unglued when she recognized Randi.
“For the love of God, look at you!” she said, shooting to her feet and disconnecting her headset in one swift movement. Model tall, with bronze skin and dark eyes, she whipped around her desk and hugged Randi as if she’d never stop. “What the devil’s got into you? Never callin’ in. I was worried sick about you. Heard about the accident and…” She held Randi at arm’s length. “Where’s that baby of yours? How dare you come in here without him?” She cocked her head at an angle. “The hair works, but you’ve lost too much weight.”
“I’ll work on that.”
“Now, about the baby?” Shawn-Tay’s eyebrows elevated as the phone began to ring. “Oh, damn. I gotta get that, but you come back up here and tell me what the hell’s been going on with you.” She rounded the desk again and slid lithely into her chair. Holding the headset to one ear, she said, “Seattle Clarion, how may I direct your call?”
Randi slid past the reception desk and through the cubicles and desks of co-workers. Her niche was tucked into a corner, in the news section, behind a glass wall that separated the reporters from the salespeople. In the time she’d been gone, the walls had been painted, from a dirty off-white to different shades at every corner. Soft purple on one wall, sage on another, gold or orange on the next, all tied together by a bold carpet mingling all the colors. She passed by several reporters working on deadlines, though much of the staff had gone home for the day. A few night reporters were trickling in and the production crew still had hours to log in, but all in all, the office was quiet.
She slid into her space, surprised that it was just as she’d left it, that the small cubicle hadn’t been appropriated by someone else, as it had been months since she’d been in Seattle or sat at her desk. She’d set up maternity leave with her boss late last summer and she’d created a cache of columns in anticipation of taking some time off to be with the baby and finishing the book she’d started. Between those new columns and culling some older ones, hardly vintage, but favorites, there had been enough material to keep “Solo” in the Living section twice a week, just like clockwork.
But it was time to tackle some new questions, and she spent the next two hours reading the mail that had stacked up in her in box and skimming the e-mails she hadn’t collected in Montana. As she worked, she was vaguely aware of the soft piped-in music that sifted through the offices of the Clarion, and the chirp of cell phones in counterpoint to the ringing of land lines to the office. Conversation, muted and seemingly far away, barely teased her ears.
In the back of her mind she wondered if Kurt Striker had followed her. If, even now, he was making small talk with Shawn-Tay in the reception area. The thought brought a bit of a smile to her lips. Striker wasn’t the type for small talk. No way. No how. For the most part tight-lipped, he was a sexy man whose past was murky, never discussed. She had the feeling that at one point in his life, he’d been attached to some kind of police department; she didn’t know where or why he was no longer a law officer. But she’d find out. There were advantages to working for a newspaper and one of them was access to reams of information. If he wasn’t forthcoming on his own, she’d do some digging. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Hey, Randi!” Sarah Peeples, movie reviewer for the Clarion, was hurrying toward Randi’s desk. Sarah’s column, “What’s Reel,” was published each Friday and was promoted as “hip and happening.” A tall woman with oversize features, a wild mop of blond curls and a penchant for expensive boots and cheap jewelry, Sarah spent hours watching movies in theaters, on DVDs and tapes. She lived and breathed movies, celebrities and all things Hollywood. Today she was wearing a choker that looked as if it had been tailored for a rottweiler or a dominatrix, boots with pointed toes and silver studs, a gray scoop-necked sweater and a black skirt that opened in the front, slitted high enough to show off just a flash of thigh. “I was beginning to think I might never see you again.”
“Can’t keep a good woman down,” Randi quipped.
“Amen. Where the hell have you been?”
“Montana with my brothers.”
“The hair is new.”
“Necessity rather than fashion.”
“But it works for you. Short and sassy.” Sarah was bobbing her head up and down as if agreeing with herself. “And you look great. How’s the baby?”
“Perfect.”
“And when will I get to meet him?”
“Soon,” Randi hedged. The less she spoke about Joshua, the better. “How’re things around here?”
Sarah rolled her eyes as she rested a hip on Randi’s desk. “Same old, same old. I’ve been bustin’ my butt…well, if you can call it that, rereviewing all the movies that are Oscar contenders.”
“Sounds exhausting,” Randi drawled.
“Okay, so it’s not digging ditches, I know, but it’s work.”
“Has anything strange been going on around here?” Randi asked.
“What do you mean? Everyone who works here is slightly off, right?”
“I guess you’re right.”
Sarah picked up a glass paperweight and fiddled with it. “Now, when are you going to bring the baby into the office and show him off?” Sarah’s grin was wide, her interest sincere. She’d been married three years and desperately wanted a baby. Her husband was holding out for the big promotion that would make a child affordable. Randi figured it might never come.
“When things have calmed down.” She considered confiding in Sarah, but thought better of it. “He and I need to get settled in.”
“Mmm. Then how about pictures?”
“I’ve got a ton of ’em back at the condo. Still packed. I’ll bring them next time, I promise,” she said, then leaned back in her chair. “So fill me in. What’s going on around here?”
Sarah was only too glad to oblige. She offered up everything from office politics, to management changes, to out-and-out gossip. In return, she wanted to know every detail of Randi’s life in Montana, starting with the accident. Finally, she said, “Paterno’s back in town.”
Randi felt the muscles in her back grow taut. “Is he?” Forty-five, twice divorced with a hound-dog face, thick hair beginning to gray and a razor-sharp sense of humor, the freelance photographer had asked Randi out a few years back and they’d dated fo
r a while. It hadn’t worked out for a lot of reasons. The main reason being that, at the time, neither one of them had wanted to commit. Nor had they been in love.
“He’s been asking about you.” Sarah set the paperweight onto the desk again. “You know, unless you’re involved with someone, you might want to give him another chance.”
Randi shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You hiding something from him?”
“What?” Randi asked, searching her friend’s face. “Hiding something? Of course not… Oh, I get it.” She shook her head and sighed. No one knew the identity of her son’s father; not even the man himself. Before she could explain, Sarah’s cell phone beeped.
“Oops. Duty calls,” Sarah said, eyeing the face of the phone as a text message appeared. “New films just arrived. Well, old ones really. I’m doing a classic film noir piece next month and I ordered a bunch of old Peter Lorre, Bette Davis and Alfred Hitchcock tapes to review.” She cast a smile over her shoulder as she hurried off. “Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend? Drop by if you don’t have anything better to do….
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I won’t hold my breath.”
Good thing, Randi thought, as she didn’t seem to have a moment to breathe. She had way too much to do, she thought as she turned on her computer.
And first item on her agenda was finding a way to deal with Kurt Striker.
“…that’s right. All three of ’em are back in Seattle,” Eric Brown was saying, his voice crackling from his cell phone’s connection to that of Striker’s. “What’re the chances of that? Clanton lives here but the other two don’t. Paterno, he’s at least got a place here, but Donahue doesn’t.”
Striker didn’t like it.
“Paterno arrived three days ago and Donahue rolled into town yesterday.”
Just hours before Randi had returned. “Coincidence?” Striker muttered, not believing it for a second as he stood on the sidewalk outside the offices of the Clarion.
There was a bitter laugh on the other end of the line. “If you believe that, I’ve got some real estate in the Mojave—”
“—that you want to sell me. Yeah, I know,” Striker growled angrily. “Clanton lives here. Paterno does business in town. But Donahue…” His jaw tightened. “Can you follow him?”
“Not if you want me to stick around and watch the condo.”
Damn it all. There wasn’t enough manpower for this. Striker and Brown couldn’t be in three places at once. “Just stay put for now. But let me know if anything looks odd to you, anything the least bit suspicious.”
“Got it, but what about the other two guys? Paterno and Clanton?”
“Check ’em out, see what they’re up to, but it’s Donahue who concerns me most. We’ll talk later.” Striker hung up, then called Kelly McCafferty and left a message when she didn’t answer. Angry at the world, he snapped his phone shut. All three of the men with whom Randi had been involved were here. In the city. Great… Just…great. His shoulders were bunched against the cold, his collar turned up and inside he felt a knot of jealousy tightening in his gut.
Jealousy, and even envy for that matter, were emotions Striker detested, the kind of useless feelings he’d avoided, even while he’d been married. Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe if he’d felt a little more raw passion, a little more jealousy or anger or empathy during those first few years of marriage, shown his wife that he’d cared about her, maybe then things would have turned out differently… Oh, hell, what was he thinking? He couldn’t change the past. And the accident, that’s how they’d referred to it, the accident had altered everything, created a deep, soul-wrenching, damning void that could never be filled.
And yet last night, when he’d been with Randi… Touched her. Kissed her. Felt her warmth surround him, he’d felt differently. Don’t make too much of it. So you made love to her. So what? Maybe it had just been so long since he’d been with a woman that last night seemed more important than it was.
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t forget how right it had felt.
And it had been so wrong.
In an effort to dislodge images of Randi lying naked in front of the fire, staring up at him with those warm eyes, Striker bought coffee from a vendor and resumed his position not far from the door, protected by the awning of an antique bookstore located next door to the Clarion’s offices.
A familiar ache, one he rarely acknowledged, tore through him as he sipped his coffee. Leaning a shoulder against the rough bricks surrounding plate-glass windows etched in gold-leaf lettering, he watched the door of the Clarion’s building through a thin wisp of steam rising from his paper cup. Pedestrians scurried past in trench coats, parkas or sweatshirts, some wearing hats, a few with umbrellas, most bareheaded, their collars turned to the wind and rain that steadily dripped from the edge of the awning.
His cell phone rang and he swung it from his pocket. “Striker.”
“Hi, it’s Kelly.”
For the first time in hours, he smiled as Matt’s wife started rattling off information. The men at the Flying M were still upset about Randi’s leaving. Kelly was working to find a maroon Ford, one that was scraped up and dented from pushing Randi’s vehicle off the road in Glacier Park. Kelly was also double-checking all of the staff who had been on duty the night that Randi was nearly killed in the hospital. So far she’d come up with nothing.
Striker wasn’t surprised.
He hung up knowing nothing more than when he’d taken the call. Whoever was trying to kill Randi was either very smart or damn lucky.
So far.
Cars, vans and trucks, their windows fogged, sped through the old, narrow streets of this part of the city. Striker glared at the doorway of the hotel, drank coffee and scowled as he considered the other men in Randi McCafferty’s life, at least one of whom had bedded her and fathered her son.
Paterno. Clanton. Donahue. Bastards every one of them.
But he was narrowing the field. He’d done some double-checking on the men who had been involved with Randi. It was unlikely that Joe Paterno had fathered the kid. The timing was all wrong. Kurt had looked into Paterno’s travel schedule and records. Paterno had been in Afghanistan around the time the baby had been conceived. There had been rumors that he’d been back in town for a weekend, but Kurt had nearly ruled out the possibility by making a few phone calls to Paterno’s chatty landlady. Unless Paterno hadn’t shown his face at his apartment and holed up for a secret weekend alone with Randi, he hadn’t fathered the kid. Since Randi had been out of town most of the month, it seemed Joe was in the clear.
Leaving Brodie Clanton, the snake of a lawyer, and Sam Donahue, a rough-around-the-edges cowboy; a man whose shady reputation was as black as his hat. Again jealousy cut through him. Clanton was so damn slick, a rich lawyer and a ladies’ man. It galled Striker to think of Randi sleeping with a guy who could barely start a sentence without mentioning that his grandfather had been a judge.
A-number-one jerk if ever there had been one, Clanton had avoided walking down the aisle so far, the confirmed-bachelor type who was often seen squiring around pseudocelebrities when they blew into town. He was into the stock market, expensive cars and young women, the kind of things a man could trade in easily. Clanton had been in town around the time Joshua had been conceived, but, with a little digging into credit card receipts, Striker had determined that Randi, at that time, had been in and out of Seattle herself. She’d never traveled as far as Afghanistan or, presumably, into Paterno’s arms, but she’d been chasing a story with the rodeo circuit, where Sam Donahue was known for breaking broncs and women’s hearts.
If Striker had been a betting man, he would have fingered Donahue as the baby’s daddy. Twice married, Donahue had cheated on both his wives, leaving number one for a younger woman who’d grown up in Grand Hope, Montana, Randi’s hometown. And now he just coincidentally had shown up here. A day before Randi.
Striker’s jaw tighten
ed so hard it hurt.
DNA would be the only true answer, of course, unless he forced the truth from Randi’s lips. Gorgeous lips. Even when she was angry. Her mouth would twist into a furious pout that Striker found incredibly sexy. Which was just plain nuts. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let his mind wander down that seductively dark path. No matter how attractive Randi McCafferty was, he was being paid to protect her, not seduce her. He couldn’t let it happen again.
He felt a bit of hardening beneath his fly and swore under his breath. He shouldn’t get an erection just thinking of the woman… Hell, this was no time. None whatsoever for ridiculous fantasies. He had a job to do. And he’d better do it quickly before there was another unexplained “accident,” before someone else got hurt. Or before the would-be murderer got lucky and this time someone was killed.
Six
She pushed open the revolving glass doors and found him just where she’d expected him, on a rain-washed Seattle street, looking damnably rough-and-tumble and sexy as ever. Obviously waiting for her. Great. Just what she didn’t need, an invitation to trouble in disreputable jeans and a beat-up jacket.
Yep. Kurt Striker in all his damn-convention attitude was waiting.
Her stupid pulse quickened at the sight of him, but she quickly tamped down any emotional reaction she felt for the man. Yes, he was way too attractive in his tight jeans, leather jacket and rough-hewn features. His face was red with the cold, his hair windblown and damp as he leaned a hip against the bricks of a small shop, his eyes trained on the main door of the building. He was holding a paper cup of coffee, which he tossed into a nearby trash can when he spotted her.
Why did she have a thing for dangerous, sensual types? What was wrong with her? Never once in her life had she been attracted to the boy next door, nor to the affable, respectable, dedicated man who worked nine to five, nor the warm, cuddly football-watching couch potato who would love her to the end of time and never once forget an anniversary. The very men she lauded in her column. The men she advised women to give second glances. The salt-of-the-earth, give-you-the-shirt-off-his-back kind of guy who washed his car and the dog on Saturdays, the guy who wore the same flannel shirt that he’d had since college—the regular Joe of the world. One of the good guys.