by Sandra Brown
"I don't like the prospect of being a notorious public figure any better than you. But what can we do about it?"
"We can clear you with the investigators."
"We tried, remember? It only got me into deeper Dutch. You too."
"But we didn't present them with the real arsonist."
For the space of several seconds Lucky gave her a blank stare. Then he began to laugh. "You want to play detective?"
"Look, the sooner we get you cleared, the sooner this thing will blow over and we can get on with our lives. It's not going to be easy to make amends to Greg, but it would be a start if he knew we wouldn't be going through a trial together, and that I wouldn't constantly be in your company. I'm sure he would enjoy hearing that I never had to see you again."
She was batting a thousand on dismal thoughts this morning, but since he didn't have a viable alternative, he remained silent.
"I've cleared my calendar," she said. "I told my editor that I'm taking a week's vacation and plan to devote the time to tracking down the arsonist. When I get back, I promised him a terrific story, as well as an article on how interrogators can and do intimidate witnesses. I think— What are you grinning about so idiotically, Mr. Tyler?"
"You."
"You find me amusing?"
"You like having control over things, don't you? Even police matters."
"So far the police haven't done anything to help you. I can't do any worse than they have."
"Granted."
"I don't trust other people to do things for me."
"Um-huh," he said. "You're what we used to call a smarty britches."
Still grinning, he stood up and stretched. He was feeling a million times better than he had been an hour ago. He had been concerned because he hadn't spoken with Devon since the story of her involvement had been leaked. He'd also been dreading an entire day of not seeing her.
Then, lo and behold, she'd showed up and planned to stay for a while. Damn, he was lucky! The dreary reminder of her convict husband was pushed aside. Greg Shelby was a loser, a jerk, and, if Lucky was any judge of women at all—and he considered himself an expert on the fair sex—not that great in the sack.
If Shelby had been the man Devon deserved, no amount of persuasion could have got her into bed with another man. He hadn't even had to persuade. Something about her marriage to this Shelby character wasn't right. Lucky respected her for not discussing her marital troubles with an outsider; on the other hand he wanted to know why she was married to a man who had made her so unhappy. Apparently he was being granted the time and opportunity to find out.
The only thing that clouded his sunny mood was that he wouldn't be able to touch her. They would be spending a lot of time together, but she was still off-limits. That was going to kill him, because wanting her had become his chief occupation. More than worrying about his failing business, more than worrying about the fabricated arson charge against him, his desire for Devon was all-consuming.
But seeing her under adverse circumstances was better than not seeing her at all.
"I always enjoyed playing cops and robbers," he said. "Where do we start?"
"First, I'd better check into a room. Where's the best place to stay?"
"My house."
"I can't, Lucky," she said, shaking her head adamantly. "The reasons should be obvious."
"My mother would skin me alive if I let you check into a motel. Anybody who knows her knows she isn't going to let any extramarital hanky-panky go on beneath her roof. So you're staying with us, and that's settled," he said with finality.
"But—"
"Devon," he said sternly, staving off her protests by holding up both hands, palms out. "No arguments."
She capitulated, but didn't seem too pleased about it. "First, I think we should find out exactly how the fire started."
"Gasoline and railroad flares," he said. "Pat already told me. I had bought some flares recently. That confirmed their suspicions."
"Can we review the official crime report?"
"I don't know. I don't imagine it's a matter of public record."
"I wasn't talking about publicly. Privately. Couldn't your friend Sheriff Bush sneak us a copy?"
Lucky whistled through his teeth. "I'll ask him." She turned and reached for the phone on the desk.
Lucky snatched the receiver from her hand. "I'll ask him. Maybe he'll show us a copy of the report after business hours."
"In the meantime I'd like to see the site of the fire."
"That's easy. It's only half a mile down the road from here." He surveyed her up and down, taking in her dress, high heels, and pale stockings. "The location is only suitable for roughnecks and raccoons. You can't go dressed like that."
"I'll change."
Lucky retrieved her suitcase from her car. She went into the cubicle in the office that was home to a commode and sink. While she was in there, Chase returned. He glanced around and found only Lucky seated behind the desk, speaking into the telephone.
"Where's Devon?"
Lucky cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. "In there," he said, indicating the bathroom door, "taking off her clothes."
When the bathroom door opened, Chase swiveled his head around so fast, his neck popped. Devon emerged, fully dressed in jeans. She was rolling up the sleeves of a casual shirt.
"What's going on?" Chase demanded.
Lucky shushed him and spoke into the phone. "Come on, Pat. I know I acted like a bad boy. Yes, I deserve to be horsewhipped. Now that I've contritely admitted the error of my ways, will you do it or not?"
He listened for a moment while his eyes appreciated the slender shapeliness of Devon's legs and the soft curves of her breasts. "Great. Ten-thirty. Hell no, we won't tell anybody."
"What's going on?" Chase repeated as Lucky hung up the phone.
"Pat's making the crime report available to Devon and me tonight."
"You just promised not to tell anybody," she cried, placing her hands on her hips.
"Chase isn't anybody. Pat would expect me to tell him."
"I still don't know what's going on," Chase reminded them.
"We're going to try to find out who set the fire, so I can be cleared of the charge."
"And I can be reconciled with my husband," Devon added.
Lucky declined to comment on her statement. Chase divided his incredulous glance between the two of them. He said, "Devon, would you please give me a minute alone with my brother?"
"I'll wait for you outside, Lucky."
"Be right there."
As soon as she was out of earshot, Chase encircled Lucky's biceps in a death grip. His face close, he said, "Have you lost your friggin' mind? You can't tamper with something like this. Who the hell do you two think you are, Kojak and Nancy Drew?"
"I'm a whole lot better looking than Kojak," Lucky replied cockily.
"I'm not joking," Chase said angrily.
"Neither am I."
"Aren't you?"
Lucky's blue eyes narrowed. "What do you mean by that crack?"
"Isn't this all just a game to you? A game that will keep you in close contact with a woman you have no business being around?"
"Stay out of this," Lucky said tightly, his humor vanishing. "What I do with Devon—"
"You'd better do nothing with Devon. She's married."
Lucky, resenting his brother's sermon, though it echoed the one he'd been preaching to himself, jerked his arm free. "I'm a grown-up. I don't need you for a conscience any more, big brother."
"I'm not trying to be your conscience." Chase sighed with chagrin. "Okay, maybe I am. But I'm more worried about her than I am you. She's the real victim here, Lucky. Her life has been turned upside down, and it's your fault."
"I don't need you to remind me of that either."
"When you're done playing your games, what's she going to be left with, huh? A broken marriage and a broken heart?"
"You're wrong, Chase."
"Am I?"
; "Yes! This time it isn't just a game."
Chase stared at him long and hard before stating softly, "That's what really worries me."
* * *
All that was left of the machinery garage was a dark area on the ground, covered by ashes that had been sifted through so many times they resembled gray face powder. The remains of the machinery had already been hauled away. What little that could be salvaged had been sold as scrap metal. The revenue from that sale had barely covered the crew's expenses to Louisiana.
Devon sighed as she kicked up a cloud of ashen dust with the toe of her sneaker. "Not much here to look at, is there?"
"I told you." Lucky was squatting; he scooped up handfuls of the ash and let it filter through his fingers.
"The fire was meant to be destructive, not just to serve as a warning of some sort," she observed aloud.
"The agents said that from the beginning. That's one of the reasons they pointed accusing fingers at me. They said it burned quick and hot. The fire trucks never had a chance in hell of putting the thing out. The best they could do was save the woods surrounding it."
Devon moved to an area of green just beyond the perimeter of scorched ground. She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree.
Lucky joined her. They silently contemplated the charred area.
"This is just one of several company buildings, right?" she asked.
"Right. But this is where we kept most of our heavy equipment. This was definitely the place to set the costliest fire and make it look like I did it."
Tilting her head, she looked at him curiously. "Why do you automatically assume that the revenge was directed at you?"
He shrugged. "Who else? Mother? She's got more friends than she can count. Sage? She's just a kid."
"Jealous boyfriend?"
He dismissed that possibility with a curt shake of his head. "She hasn't ever been that seriously involved with any one guy. She scares off even the most determined. Chase has probably cultivated a few enemies, but I feel it here," he said, flattening his palm against his stomach, "in my gut, that it was aimed at me."
"Why?"
Setting her hands behind her, she braced herself up on her arms. The pose drew her shirt tight across her breasts. Lucky had to concentrate on the caterpillar creeping along the tree trunk in order to keep himself from staring at them.
"I'm the one who's always getting into trouble." He lifted his eyes to hers. "Seems I have a knack for getting myself into tight places." Spiders spinning webs between branches of the nearby trees were making more racket than Lucky and Devon while they peered deeply into one another's eyes. The breeze lifted their hair and flirted with their clothing, but they remained motionless, unblinking, thoroughly absorbed.
After a long moment, Devon roused herself. "Who have you been in trouble with?"
"Why are you curious?"
"Everyone's a suspect."
"Or are you just nosy?" he teased.
She blushed slightly. "Maybe. It's a habit. See, when I do a story on someone, I talk to everyone close to the subject. I gather bits of information from here and there until I can piece together the entire personality of the individual. Sometimes the least likely interview produces the most valuable tidbit, the single element that makes all the other elements click into place."
"Fascinating."
What he found most fascinating wasn't the topic, but her animated way of explaining how she worked. Her eyes weren't one pure hue, but myriad shades of green that sparkled when she was angry or excited about the subject under discussion.
They could also look as deep as wells when she became introspective or sad, as they had done that night in the orchard when she had talked about her parents. He doubted she knew how expressive her eyes were. If she did, she would train them not to give away so much. Drawing himself back into the discussion, he asked, "But what has your work method got to do with me?"
"To get to the culprit, I have to go through you. So I'll approach it the same investigative way as if I were writing a story on you. I want to talk to a variety of people with whom Lucky Tyler has had contact. Tell me about everybody you've had trouble with in say, hmm, the last six months."
He laughed. "That'll take all afternoon."
"We've got all afternoon."
"Oh yeah. Right. Chase did say he had that drilling in Louisiana under way, didn't he? Well, let's see." Absently he scratched his neck. "Of course, most recently there was Little Alvin and Jack Ed."
"For the time being, let's set them aside. We'll come back to them. They're almost too obvious to be suspects."
"Okay, for starters, there was this guy in Longview. Owned a club over there."
"A club? Health club? Country club?"
"No, a, uh, you know."
"A nightclub?"
"Yeah. It's a … the kind of place where guys hang out. It's got girls. They hustle drinks and, you know, dance a little."
"A topless bar?"
"Sorta like that. Sure. I guess you could call it that."
Rolling her eyes, she said, "Don't spare my sensibilities, Lucky. We'll save time. What about this guy?"
"He accused me of coming on to one of his girls."
"Did you?"
"I bought her a few drinks."
"And for that he got upset?"
"Not exactly," he said, shifting uncomfortably.
"What? Exactly."
"I flirted with her. She read more into it than I intended. When I lost interest and stopped going there, she got depressed."
"How do you know?"
"This guy calls and starts bawling me out. Said she cried all the time, wouldn't work. Said I was bad for his business, 'cause she was a favorite with his customers. He told me to stay away from his club and his girls, this one in particular. I think he had the hots for her and was just jealous."
"Jealous enough to burn down your building?"
"I doubt it."
Devon took a deep breath. "Bears looking into. Who else?"
"There was a farmer."
"Let me guess," she said drolly. "He had a daughter."
"No. He had a cow."
After a moment's wary hesitance she shook her head. "I don't think I want to hear about this one."
Frowning at her lack of faith in him, he explained, "I was driving one of our trucks through a pasture on my way to a drilling site when a cow decided to play chicken with it."
"With what?"
"The truck."
"In other words, you ran over a cow."
"It was an accident! I swear, the dumb animal ran straight for my hood ornament. Anyway, she died."
"Surely you paid the farmer for the cow?"
"Hell, yes. We paid him more than she was worth. But he pitched a conniption fit and threatened to sue us for further damages."
"What happened?"
"Nothing. We never heard from him again, and assumed he had decided he'd come out ahead."
"Maybe not. Although I doubt a poor old farmer would have the moxie to set a fire."
"Poor old farmer, my foot. He was straight out of Texas A&M. You should have heard some of the names he called me."
"Okay, he's a possibility. Remember his name, and we'll check to see if he's bought any flares lately. Who else have you tussled with?"
He squinted into the sunlight. "Hmm. Oh yeah, the Irvings."
"Plural?"
"There's a clan of them over in Van Zandt County."
"Swell. That narrows it down," she muttered. "What did you do to them?"
"Nothing!"
"What did they accuse you of doing?"
He reached for her hands and sandwiched them between his own. "Swear to God, Devon, it wasn't me."
"Who did what?"
"Got Ella Doreen pregnant."
She stared at him in stupefaction for several seconds, then she began to laugh. "Is this a joke?"
"Hardly. You wouldn't have thought it was funny either if an army of shotgun-toting rednecks in overalls had come
after you. They surrounded the office one day, demanding I make an honest woman of Ella Doreen and acknowledge her kid as mine."
"Was there any possibility that you were the, uh, donor?"
He shot her a retiring look. "She's just a kid, younger than Sage. I didn't even remember who she was until one of her kinfolk produced her from the back of a flatbed truck. Uncle Somebody shoved her forward to accuse me face-to-face."
"You recognized her then?"
"Sure. We had met a couple of weeks earlier in an office building in Henderson. I was there to see a client. As I was crossing the lobby, I noticed this girl sitting there fanning herself, looking ready to throw up or faint or both. I asked if she needed any help. She told me she'd gotten dizzy and hot. And it was hotter than hell in there.
"So I helped her to her feet, escorted her outside, and offered to buy her a can of cola, which I did from one of the vending machines at the nearest filling station. We walked there. I was never even alone with her. The only thing I touched was her elbow.
"During our conversation she asked me what I did for a living, and seemed impressed by the business card I gave her. I remember her running her fingers over the engraving. That's it. After she assured me that she could call someone to come pick her up, I left her there, sitting on a stack of retreads, sipping her coke.
"As it turns out, she had been in Henderson to see a doctor in that building, and was already about four months pregnant. I couldn't possibly have fathered her child. I was just a convenient scapegoat. Eventually she broke down and admitted it."
By the time he finished telling the tale, Devon was shaking her head with amazement. "You attract trouble like a lightning rod."
"Not intentionally."
"And it always centers around women. Even the cow." She looked away from him, adding softly, "And now me."
Laying his palm along her cheek, he turned her face toward him. "You look so sad."
"I am."
"Why? Was it terrible yesterday?"
"Yes. It was awful having to face my husband, both of us knowing that I had betrayed him. Physically. With you."
"And knowing you want to again."
She sucked in a quick little breath. Her eyes widened, and her lips parted. "I didn't say that, Lucky."