by Nancy Bush
Now they were driving back in his Land Rover. The situation was intolerable. She was near breaking point and far too aware of his masculinity. It seemed to seep into her pores. The seductive, musky way he smelled. The easy way he moved. The quirk of a smile. The storm of anger and puzzlement in his deadly blue eyes. The lean, good-looking overall maleness he exuded like a potent chemical meant to inflame her senses.
And inflame them he did.
Desire ate away at her like a cancer and Dinah could do nothing about it.
Unless I leave.
“The gate’s open,” John said in surprise as they turned off the main road.
“You left it open.”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
This was more conversation than either of them had made all evening. Dinah slid him a sideways look. She didn’t believe all those things about him anymore. Things Denise had said. Lies meant to make her look better. Or maybe Denise believed them herself, but Dinah definitely did not.
Still, Callahan was dangerous. Dangerous to her. And there was no way to rectify the situation. None at all.
“My God!” he muttered, and Dinah snapped to attention. Lights blazed in every window. “Robbers?” he asked, baffled, sliding the Land Rover to a halt thirty feet from the house.
“What kind of robbers leave on the lights?”
He shook his head, jumped from the Land Rover, and strode toward the house.
“Wait! Wait!” Dinah scrabbled for the door handle, scared. “What are you, crazy? They could have guns! Stop!”
He hesitated only briefly, then tried the front door. With an inscrutable look back at Dinah, he pulled out his key and gently pushed open the door. She held her breath. Her pulse pounded dully. He could be killed. Shot. Dead.
“Oh, God . . .”
Common sense won over masculine bravado. He jogged back to Dinah. “Get in the car,” he ordered. She didn’t have to be asked twice. The door wasn’t even shut when he was backing down the drive, doing a 180 on the road and tearing back the way they’d come. Then he was on his cellular, tersely relating to 9-1-1 what had happened. Police cars arrived in droves, sirens wailing.
They followed the blur of blue and red spinning lights, stopping the Land Rover a few yards behind the front line of police cars. In the dark, he grinned at her, boyish white teeth flashing. Dinah grinned back. After a tense, taut evening where neither one of them could think of anything to say but the most meaningless small talk, it was a relief, a roar of adrenaline through the veins.
“Nobody here,” the cop in charge related rather disappointingly. “Nothin’ broken, maybe some things taken. Check it out. Might not realize what’s missin’ at first. Take your time.” A pause. “No forced entry.”
And then they were gone and John and Dinah were alone. They walked into the house together, cautiously. In silent agreement they stayed together as they checked every room. Discovering Bobo asleep under her bed, Dinah hugged the confused little kitten before laying him back on the bed.
Finally, in the kitchen, John and Dinah looked at each other in puzzlement.
“A prank?” John suggested.
Dinah lifted her palms.
“Want a brandy?”
“I don’t drink brandy.”
“Yes, you do,” he said tiredly, as if he’d finally run out of patience with her, the robbery and everything else. He brought them each a snifter and gulped half his drink down, watching her closely. Dinah took a sip, held back a gasp as the stuff burned down her throat, then met his gaze defiantly.
Silence pooled between them. A living silence. Dinah got a creepy feeling down the back of her neck. She was in trouble.
Callahan swirled his drink reflectively. “I’m done holding hands on Borrowed Time. It’s Frankie’s baby now and good riddance.”
Frankie. The director. “What’s wrong with it?”
“The cast. The screenplay.” He regarded her moodily. “You should have been the lead.”
“Really.” In the midst of attempting another sip, Dinah choked on her brandy. She put the snifter down but her eyes teared and her lungs coughed and coughed.
“Not that I would have cast you, but hey, it would have been better than what I’ve got. I’m turning it over to Frankie and moving on to Blackbird.”
“Is that why you’ve been coming here?” she managed between fits of coughing. “To escape.”
“To gain a little perspective,” he agreed with a nod. He’d produced the bottle of brandy from a kitchen cupboard and now he poured himself another healthy dose. Lifting an eyebrow, he silently asked if she wanted to join him.
“I don’t drink brandy . . . very well,” she amended.
“So why aren’t you pressuring me for a part?” he asked. “Thought you’d jump all over me. I just told you you’d have been better than what’s-her-name.”
“I don’t want a part,” Dinah replied flatly. “Besides, you wouldn’t give me a chance anyway. I’m too big a risk.”
“You’re box office. Big box office. Probably bigger now, with all the scandal. I’m a producer. A deal-maker. I’d be crazy to turn you away.”
Panic thrummed along her nerves. What was this? No way. No way could she test for Denise! “You’re not serious. Not really.”
Their gazes dueled and Dinah’s panic escalated. But then Callahan shook his head, raked a hand through his hair, and muttered, “God, no. I can’t be that much of a masochist.” His blue eyes searched hers a moment longer. She swallowed. With a muttered imprecation, he grabbed the neck of his beloved brandy bottle and headed upstairs. “Good night, my love,” drifted down to her, and Dinah folded her arms around her chest and wished she hated him as much as she used to.
Neosporin on the nail marks Hayley had so generously given him, although they weren’t quite as red as they’d been. Connor looked at the side of his face in the mirror and grimaced. Still, she’d really done it to him. He’d barely touched her and she’d come on like a wildcat.
Fear. He’d seen it in her eyes, and it was the fear of someone who expects to be abused. Someone used to it. A couple hours of her company had been long enough to convince him that she was deathly afraid of men in general. Thomas Daniels’s legacy?
But she was also a go-getter. Almost obsessively so. She didn’t want to talk about her sisters, her past, or anything to do with Wagon Wheel. Even when he’d mentioned that his hometown was very near hers, no response.
She wanted to talk about her career. Her goals. Her future.
He’d brought up Denise a dozen different ways but Hayley Scott didn’t want to hear it. She was deaf, dumb, and blind when it came to any subject dealing with her childhood.
It didn’t take a shrink to make this diagnosis: she was in complete, utter denial.
And Denise . . .
Connor’s face darkened when he thought back to his encounter with her. Denise Scott’s beauty was what had struck him first. Second, how pale and vulnerable she was. And Lambert Wallace forcing pills on her . . . it had been all Connor could do to keep from bodily removing the man from Denise’s side.
Lambert Wallace. He’d asked his buddy Bennie, in Vice, why the name had rung a bell. Bennie was a veritable fountain of information.
“Lambert Wallace? Man, you don’t know shit, do ya?”
“The name sounded familiar.” Connor defended himself.
“His old man left him a ton of money. Like oodles and oodles. But Lambert was in trouble a lot as a kid. Sexual trouble. Fondling little girls, that sort of thing. Got himself sent to boarding school, pronto. Dad forked over a fortune to clear his son’s name, and the victims’ parents always dropped charges. The only difference now is, he controls the money, and his playmates are older.” Bennie stroked his chin. “There was some other stuff, too. Want me to look it up?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You investigating the guy?”
“More like I tripped over him while checking into something else.”
“Watch your step,” Bennie said in all seriousness. “I mean it, man.”
Connor was wired. All that coffee with Hayley. And thoughts circling his head. Not hungry, but bored, he hung on the refrigerator door, oblivious to half-empty mayonnaise and mustard jars and leftover pizza. In his mind’s eye, he saw Lambert Wallace and Denise Scott.
He was in a quandary. Gus Dempsey was losing interest in the Daniels case. He wasn’t the kind of law enforcement agent who believed in championing an unpopular cause. Nobody liked Daniels. At best the man was a lowlife adulterer and sexual harasser, at worst a sexual abuser and rapist. His other charms included gluttony, loutishness, laziness, and general meanness. His death was a blessing to all.
Connor himself was certainly no idealist. He believed Daniels was as bad as painted. And he, Connor, certainly had enough cases to fill his time while he decided whether he wanted back on the force or something else. Maybe something in Oregon.
But the meeting with Denise Scott had got to him. He’d never felt sorrier for another human being. Dependent personality. Too much too fast. Probable abuse at the hands of her stepfather and a sick relationship with Lambert Wallace who possessed too much money and too little conscience.
Could he leave her like that? Just walk away? It was her choice, wasn’t it? She was an adult. But Lambert Wallace . . . No morals. No respect. No ethics. Beverly Hills scum, but basically clean. Oh, yeah, money could buy anything.
Connor wanted to yank Denise away from him and clean her up. Denise Scott was under the influence of Wallace and a whole lot more. Drugs. Alcohol. God only knew.
Thomas Daniels’s body wouldn’t be the only corpse if Denise didn’t clean up her act and soon.
Grabbing a piece of cold pizza, he stood over the sink and munched without tasting. His nephew had called this afternoon and left a long message, one that was continually interrupted by his friend Mikey. The two boys wrangled on the phone until Mary shooed them off. Disapproval radiated over the line while she reported that the two boys, in their quest to provide him with “hot” tips, had followed Mr. Lancaster to his house and eavesdropped on the elderly man whose property abutted the Daniels’s place. Mr. Lancaster, hearing noises, had grabbed his shotgun, stood on the porch flailing it around, and scared the living shit out of Mikey and Matt, who’d dived into the underbrush as the old man fired his shotgun into the air.
Connor promptly got the boys back on the phone and ordered them to cease investigating. His sister’s smug “I told you so” voice had irritated him, but the boys’ actions were dangerous and had to be stopped. He’d then patiently explained to Matt and Mikey that he’d interviewed everyone connected with the case already and that he’d only asked them to keep a notebook to make them feel like they were helping.
Deflated, they’d mumbled they would be good and hung up. Connor was left with a major guilt trip and the realization that maybe he should drop the case entirely, too.
Except now he’d met Denise and Hayley.
Hayley . . . He hadn’t known what to think about her. Fresh, bold, cheeky, and playing a dangerous game. She and Denise were both hiding information about Daniels, and why not? He’d tortured them. The how’s and why’s didn’t matter; Connor knew he’d abused them.
They didn’t want to talk. Hell, they didn’t want to remember. Getting anything out of Denise would take a professional therapist; she needed serious help, that was for sure. But Hayley . . . He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed, because she was a stronger personality, he might be able to break through her self-obsessed wall and get to the core of the problem.
But was it worth it? This was Dempsey’s investigation and Connor was just helping out. With all the serious crime and bad news plaguing the country, should he really keep at what three tormented sisters did, or didn’t do, to their abusive stepfather?
There was no good answer, but he aimed to keep on looking for one anyway. Maybe after the truth would come the healing.
Brrr-rr-ing! Brrr-rr-ing!
The funny little purr of the guest room phone intruded on Dinah’s sleep. Screw it, she thought. The only person who ever called her was Flick, and she damn well wasn’t going to talk to him at—
She squeezed open one eyelid. One A.M. Did the man have no respect at all?
Full wakefulness. A jerk of her heart. Not Flick. Not in the middle of the night.
Denise!
“Shit!”
Snatching up the landline, Dinah answered urgently, “Hello?”
She heard someone pick up another extension. “I’ve got it, John,” she warned.
“Who is it?” he asked.
Nothing. Dinah strained to hear, but only the click of a disconnection reached her ear. For a moment she stayed listening to Callahan’s breathing. The miserable eavesdropper. Her own breath was fast and light. Dropping the phone back in its cradle, she huddled under her blankets, convinced, with that strange telepathy she and Denise occasionally shared, that her screwed-up twin was trying to reach her.
Well, it’s about time.
She lay in bed, counting her heartbeats. A part of her half expected him to materialize in her doorway. A part of her wanted him to.
Oh, good, Dinah. Good thinking. Get physically involved with John Callahan while he thinks you’re Denise. Brilliant.
She couldn’t keep up this charade much longer. He was wondering about a lot of other things. Her interest in the computer and writing baffled him. She didn’t blame him. Denise wasn’t exactly the esoteric, literary type, and she sure wasn’t organized—at least not like Dinah. Callahan had to be thinking she’d metamorphosed into someone else.
Footsteps sounded on the gallery and stopped outside her room. Dinah sat bolt upright, clutching the sheets close to her throat.
The door opened and illumination from a lamp in the living room below the gallery silhouetted him in the doorway.
“You don’t have to creep,” she said carefully.
“Who did you warn away?”
Dinah’s mouth dropped. The man was nothing, if not direct. “I don’t need you monitoring my phone calls.”
“I’m going downstairs and getting something to eat.”
He left on that, surprising Dinah because he’d sounded so . . . mad. Like it was her fault that he’d tried to eavesdrop? Gimme a break.
She lasted about five minutes, muttering in frustration until she leaped from bed, slid into Denise’s pink mules, and tossed on a silk, flowered kimono over her Coyote Café T-shirt.
He was seated at the table, eating cookie dough ice cream out of the carton. He wore black sweat pants and a solid black warm-up zippered jacket. His chest was bare beneath the jacket; she could see a light dusting of dark brown chest hair. The hair on his head was uncombed and unruly, and for some reason this sent a strange sensation into the pit of Dinah’s stomach.
I don’t like him, she reminded herself distinctly.
“I’m surprised you joined me.”
He wasn’t the only one. She must be out of her mind.
Annoyed with herself, Dinah poured the last of the orange juice into a glass, then leaned against the counter and examined him thoroughly, her brows drawn into a frown.
“I asked you to dinner so we could talk, but it didn’t happen,” he said.
“I guess there’s nothing to say.”
“Why did you really come back here? Did you think I’d just hand over the house if you started acting mysterious?”
“No.” Dinah snorted.
“I looked up one of your files. ‘Love Makes the World Go ’Round and That’s Why We’re All Motion Sick.’ It reads like a newspaper column.”
Dinah choked on the orange juice. Tears sprang to her eyes. She gasped and wheezed for breath. John calmly put down his carton of ice cream, walked over, and slapped her on the back. Hard.
“You’ve got a habit of doing that.”
She stumbled sideways, batted him away, and brushed tears from hot, blurred eyes. “Get . . . away
.”
“You know, it wasn’t half-bad. I didn’t know you were so light and ironic about love and romance. That’s if you really wrote it.”
Dinah coughed hard once more and took another swallow from her orange juice. Her throat quivered. Slowly, she drew a long breath.
“Come on.” He went back to the ice cream, spooning it into his mouth. “That ain’t you, babe. You can do a lot of things, but you can’t write.”
He was needling her. On purpose. To figure her out. To learn what game she was playing. She wouldn’t fall for it. She wouldn’t.
“I won a writing contest in high school.”
“Uh-huh. Before or after you dated the football team.”
Dinah’s eyes narrowed. “After.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Dinah watched him warily.
“What was that guy’s name?” he asked.
“What guy?”
“The guy you almost married.”
Dinah held his gaze, calculating rapidly. She decided to err on the side of honesty. “Jimmy. And I did not ‘almost’ marry him.”
John nodded. Did he really know anything about his ex-wife’s past? Was this a test? For a moment Dinah’s heart constricted, but then her cool head came to her rescue. What could he know? Denise was a great storyteller—fiction, her specialty. So she’d told him one thing and now Dinah’s story didn’t jibe. Big deal. Denise was so scatty about everything and Dinah was one hell of an accomplished liar when it suited her.
She could play this cat-and-mouse game as well as anyone, she concluded. She’d managed to so far while Callahan popped in and out whenever he liked. And though it had played havoc with Dinah’s writing, a couple of good glares at His Highness had kept him out of her office most of the time.
“His” office, he’d reminded her yesterday, but she could tell he’d been more amused than serious. Her most effective way of dealing with him, she’d learned, was simply to be obdurate.
“Stay outta my life,” she’d told him a few days earlier when he’d asked too many questions.