by Jane Graves
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
Still chuckling a little, he turned to look at her. “Cletus knows a joke or two.”
“Care to share?”
“Sorry. They’re not fit for a lady’s ear.”
“Now, Alex,” she said quietly, “you know I’m no lady.”
His broad smile faded to a softer one. “I don’t know any such thing.”
Alex continued to stare at her, and slowly something seemed to come alive between them. His gaze was sure and steady, focusing on her face as if it were the first time he was seeing it.
“What?” she whispered.
“You look beautiful tonight.”
Her heart jolted hard, then settled into a maddening rhythm.
“It’s the tiki torches. Every woman looks good by the light of a tiki torch.”
“I don’t think the torches have anything to do with it.…”
An Ivy Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Jane Graves
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ivy and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-49320-0
v3.1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dedication
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
chapter one
It was nearly eight o’clock before the massive front door of the colonial mansion opened and Shannon Reichert stepped onto the front porch. Halfway down the block, Valerie Parker snapped to attention, adjusting the side mirror of her van just enough that she could watch the woman sashay down the sidewalk toward her late-model Lexus. She wore her red hair upswept in a wild, cascading style, complemented by a skimpy scarlet dress that was so hot it practically set the shrubs on fire.
Red dress, red heels, red lips, red hair. Bingo. A man-hunting ensemble if Val had ever seen one.
If only Shannon’s husband could see her now.
Shannon got into her car and started it. As soon as she pulled away from the curb, Val waited a few moments, then made a U-turn with her van and followed at a discreet distance.
The Lexus made its way down Augusta Drive, a swirling ribbon of road that ran through the heart of posh Waverly Park. They passed one extravagant home after another, all testimonies to just how lavishly one could live if one could swallow the price tag that went along with the lifestyle.
Shannon turned left onto Russell Road and headed east. The Friday-night traffic in Tolosa, Texas, made surveillance in a moving vehicle a challenge, but the bumper beeper Val had slipped onto the Lexus, while not the world’s most accurate apparatus, would at least help her zero in on the direction the car was traveling if she happened to lose it along the way.
Every mile Shannon drove took her out of her home territory of exclusive shops and four-dollar cups of coffee and moved her closer to a neighborhood that Val swore she would have avoided at all costs. White collars became blue, Porsches became pickups, and the ethnic mix became obvious because there actually was one.
To Val’s surprise, Shannon pulled into the parking lot of a bar called the Blue Onion, one of those working-class establishments with a red neon sign out front, a trashy alley out back, and a considerable amount of after-hours relaxation going on in between. Val had been there only once, tracking down a deadbeat dad who was known to spend his child-support money on alcohol and women. She knew people came to places like this for three reasons only: to play pool, to get drunk, and to get laid. By the way Shannon was advertising herself tonight, Val could only assume she was heavily focused on number three.
Yes, Shannon was definitely going slumming. But for what purpose? To meet a current boyfriend, or to find a new one? That remained to be seen. Val hadn’t recorded calls to anyone except Shannon’s manicurist and yoga instructor. If she was planning a rendezvous with a lover, she hadn’t used her home phone to confirm it.
Val cruised along behind the Lexus, following its driver into God-knew-what situation. The games rich people played were positively amazing. Of course, Shannon was rich only by the grace of Jack Reichert, her fifty-four-year-old husband. She had exactly the kind of hot little body that would trip the trigger of a man who had enough money to buy just about anything he wanted except his youth back. Marrying a twenty-something woman was his way of reassuring himself and the rest of the world that his equipment was still intact and functioning, since the Porsche 911, the big-game hunting, and the hair-replacement surgery hadn’t done the trick. And for Shannon, marrying a rich older man was her way of reassuring herself that she’d always have plenty of what she wanted most in the world: money.
Then two days ago, Reichert coughed up some of that hard-earned wealth—a thousand dollars, to be exact—and instructed Val to find out what kinds of activities his young wife was engaging in whenever he was out of town on his frequent hunting trips. Reichert, like most men with gold-digging wives, felt he had a right to know if she was handing out to other men for free what he’d bought and paid for.
In her relatively short life, Val had discovered that people betrayed each other right and left, and she found it more than a little ironic that she’d ended up in a career that threw her right into the heart of the very thing she hated the most. But, at least most of the time, she had the satisfaction of ensuring that morally deficient people paid for what they did to those who trusted them. If there was dirt to be had, she never stopped digging until she came up with it. Tonight, as always, failure was not an option.
Shannon slid her Lexus into a parking space and stepped out. She turned on the charm as she headed for the bar, and by the time she reached the door, three men who had just arrived were fighting over who got to open it for her.
Val could either stay out here and wait for Shannon to emerge with the man of her dreams, or she could go inside and observe the process up close and personal. She opted for the latter. Even if Shannon didn’t stray from her wedding vows tonight, she still might exhibit the kind of bad behavior that would keep her husband shelling out more money to keep the case alive.
Val waited for a minute or two, then stepped out of her van. She was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt, wearing almost no makeup, with her long spirals of dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She’d blend right in with the crowd.
Shannon, on the other hand, was clearly out to be noticed.
Once inside, Val spotted Shannon on a stool at the bar, so she moved across the room and found a secluded table along the wall beneath a neon Bu
dweiser sign. People were laughing too loudly, drinking too hard, and smoking as if the surgeon general had never even addressed the subject. The twang of country music filled the air.
A waitress approached her, a tall, busty woman whose coarse blond hair showed an inch of dark roots.
“What can I get for you, sweetie?”
“A beer. Whatever you have on draft.”
“Coming right up.”
“Tell me something,” Val said. “That redhead over there. Does she come here often?”
The waitress turned toward the bar and eyed Shannon. “Nope. Never seen her before.”
Okay. Shannon was new around here. But Val still couldn’t say for sure why she’d chosen to come to this particular place.
“Do you know her?” the waitress asked.
“No. But it’s hard to miss her, isn’t it?”
The waitress leaned in. “Just between you and me, I wish she’d pick some other place to strut her stuff.”
“Really? Why?”
“Peacocks like that one always cause problems. The women customers hate them because the men won’t stop looking at them, and the waitresses hate them because the men get all hung up with the view and forget to tip.”
Val gave her a phony sigh. “I hear you. I’m meeting my boyfriend for a few beers. If he gets an eyeful of her, I might as well not even be here.”
The waitress shook her head sadly. “What is it with men, anyway? They can have good, quality women like ourselves, and instead they make fools of themselves over ones like that.” She huffed with disgust. “Morons.”
“Yeah,” Val agreed. “Morons.”
“I’ll get your beer so you can drink to that. And believe me, sweetie, if I wasn’t working, I’d be drinking to it right along with you.”
A moment later, the waitress brought Val her beer. Val left it untouched in front of her and settled back in her chair, waiting for Shannon to make a move.
An hour and a half later, she was still waiting.
Shannon’s antennae seemed to be up and fully operational, but all she did was watch the crowd, turning away the countless men who tried to buy her a drink, sipping the one she’d bought for herself instead. She did glance toward the door occasionally, though, which led Val to believe that maybe she was supposed to meet somebody here and had gotten stood up. Then again, she didn’t look the least bit annoyed. If the average woman had waited an hour and a half for a man who hadn’t bothered to show, she’d be in a major snit by now.
In the meantime, Val had been forced to fend off a few guys herself, ones who weren’t drunk enough yet to think they could approach a showstopper like Shannon. Fortunately, they’d been easily dissuaded by her “I’m waiting for my boyfriend” line.
A couple of times in the early days of her career, she’d tried “No, thank you, I’m a lesbian,” hoping to shut down any male hormone activity in the vicinity, only to discover that instead of discouraging men, it turned them on. The last time she’d said, “No, thank you, I have gonorrhea,” the guy got a big smile on his face and said, “So do I.” That had been it. She’d sworn off the smart-ass remarks forever.
Okay. So every profession had a few built-in hazards.
Actually, Val could put up with the negatives as long as enough positives flowed her way. Unfortunately, tonight it looked as if the positives were going to be few and far between. Evidently Shannon had painted on her red dress, teased her hair, slipped into stiletto heels, then planted herself on that bar stool because she needed a drink or two and enjoyed breathing secondhand smoke. It was the only explanation for her presence there, because it sure didn’t look as if she intended to cheat on her husband.
Or maybe she was just an old-fashioned girl. One who didn’t cheat unless she found Mr. Right.
Since the waitress thought the guy Val was supposedly meeting hadn’t shown up yet, she reiterated her opinion that men were morons and offered her something even stronger than beer. Val bitched a little about her imaginary boyfriend to make things look good, but, since she was still on the job, she declined the drink. She sighed with disgust, feeling absolutely certain that her surveillance tonight was going to be a complete bust.
Then Alex DeMarco walked through the door.
For a long, tense moment, Val sat frozen in her chair, staring in disbelief. Her heart kicked wildly, then settled into a hard, thudding rhythm.
Alex.
Her reaction to him was swift and unrelenting, putting every one of her senses on alert. For several seconds she held her breath, feeling as if the world had suddenly jolted to a halt. It had been five years since she’d seen him, but he hadn’t changed one bit. He was still six feet four inches of rock-solid cop, who looked as if he could take on the entire criminal element of Tolosa, Texas, with both hands tied behind his back.
Tonight he was dressed down in jeans, boots, and a denim shirt. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was still in top-notch physical condition, radiating an aura of superiority that only a man with such a physically imposing presence could. And seeing him now made her feel as if the last five years had never happened.
She remembered the first day he’d walked into the police academy classroom and stood at the podium. Her visceral reaction to him then was just as she was having now—a breathless, heart-stopping feeling that he was a truly extraordinary man. And now, for just a few moments, she forgot everything that had happened between them and succumbed to that attraction one more time. No matter how much she resented the inner man, she’d admire the outer one until the day she died.
He stood by the door for a moment, scanning the bar with an intense, vigilant expression that said he could instantly become more dangerous than any situation he found himself in, a characteristic that made other men instinctively wary of him, while at the same time it made women swoon. When he moved through the crowd in the direction of the pool tables, women’s heads turned like dominoes falling. And Alex wasn’t one of those self-deprecating men who didn’t realize the impact he had on the opposite sex. He knew. With every move he made, every breath he took, he knew.
Once he glanced vaguely in her direction, and Val ducked her head. She waited until he turned away again, then reached into her purse, grabbed a barrette, and pulled her long, dark hair into a low ponytail. Then she pulled out a pair of amber-tinted glasses and put them on. She wasn’t taking any chances that he might recognize her. She wished she didn’t give a damn one way or the other, but she’d never been one to lie to herself. Alex DeMarco was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to.
When he reached the pool tables, one of the three men standing there lobbed him a cue. He said something to a waitress, who immediately handed him a beer, giving him a smile that said the special this week was a free waitress with every drink. Alex merely nodded his thanks for the beer and racked up the balls.
The men he was with actually smiled and even laughed once in a while, displaying none of the intensity Alex radiated with every heartbeat. Were they friends of his? Other cops? Val didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about him at all anymore, except that he was a totally uncompromising man with a code of behavior that was impossible for any mortal to live up to, and that she’d once been foolish enough to think she was desperately in love with him. He’d had more power over her than any man ever had—the power to shatter her dreams and break her heart all in one swoop.
He’d done both.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world …
Oh, stop being so melodramatic, will you?
It was behind her now. Said and done. Ancient history. And if she still couldn’t be in the same room with him after all this time without coming unglued, she had more problems than she’d ever be able to deal with.
Then Val realized a good five minutes had passed during which she’d failed to glance even once in Shannon’s direction. She turned and looked toward the bar, and she almost wished she hadn’t.
Whatever ambivalence the woman had shown onl
y minutes before had vanished. She’d turned on her stool and was gazing across the room toward the pool tables. She was quite a distance away, but still there was no question which man had finally gotten her attention. She sat up straighter, eyeing Alex with the tense, hyperaware look of a sleek, hungry leopard who’d spotted its prey and was preparing to attack.
Val had been on the right track. Apparently Shannon never cheated unless she found Mr. Right.
And Mr. Right had just walked through the door.
“Hey, DeMarco,” Botstein said. “Blaylock says he can pick up that redhead at the bar. I told him to put his money where his mouth is. You wanna get in on some of that action?”
No. What Alex wanted to do was play a few games of pool, have a couple of beers, then go home and forget this god-awful day had ever happened. But curiosity made him turn to check out the woman in question.
Blaylock didn’t stand a chance.
Blaylock was a nice guy, after all, and when it came to women like that, nice guys finished last. She sat at the bar wearing a nearly nonexistent dress, and the pose she struck—her body turned outward toward the crowd, her legs crossed provocatively, and her breasts thrust forward—indicated that she was looking for something more tonight than meaningful conversation with a member of the opposite sex.
A man-eater if he’d ever seen one.
He started to look away, then realized that she was looking back at him. She held his gaze for one second, two, then shifted casually on her stool to allow her skirt to inch farther up her thigh. She looked away for a moment, running her fingernail around the rim of her glass, then flicked her gaze back toward him again. This time she raised her chin a notch and tilted her head, indicating that she was looking for a response.
Subtle, but to the point. And Alex wasn’t the least bit interested.
Not that she didn’t make him think twice before discarding the idea. Women who dressed to thrill generally made sex a breathtaking experience without a lot of strings attached. When he was younger, that had worked for him. Often. But now that he was well past the thirty mark, he was more discerning about the women he kept company with. Quick rolls in the hay with predawn departures didn’t hold the same appeal for him as they once had, especially with women who had razor-sharp edges like that one.