Stars of Mithra Box Set: Captive StarHidden StarSecret Star

by Nora Roberts

  His day had been grueling, and had ended ten long hours after it began, with him staring at the group of photos on his board. Photos of the dead who were waiting for him to find the connection.

  And he was already furious with himself because he’d already begun to run a search for data on Gregor DeVane. He couldn’t be sure if he had done so due to a basic cop’s hunch, or a man’s territorial instinct. Or the dreams. It was a question, and a conflict, he’d never had to face before.

  But one answer was clear as glass. He’d been out of line with Grace. He was still standing by the foyer table, frowning at the steps and weighing his options, when Cade strolled in from the rear of the house.

  “Buchanan.” More than a little surprised to see the homicide lieutenant standing in his foyer scowling, Cade stopped, scratched his jaw. “Ah, I didn’t know you were here.”

  He had no business being there, Seth reminded himself. “Sorry. Grace let me in.”

  “Oh.” After one beat, Cade pinpointed the source of the heat still flashing in the air. “Oh,” he said again, and wisely controlled a grin. “Fine. Something I can do for you?”

  “No. I’m just leaving.”

  “Have a spat?”

  Seth turned his head, met Cade’s obviously amused eyes blandly. “Excuse me?”

  “Just a wild stab in the dark. What did you do to tick her off?” Though Seth didn’t answer, Cade noted that his gaze shifted briefly to the roses. “Oh, yeah. Guess you didn’t send them, huh? If some guy sent Bailey three dozen white roses, I’d probably have to stuff them down his throat, one at a time.”

  It was the gleam of appreciation that flashed briefly in Seth’s eyes that made Cade decide to revise his stance. Maybe he could like Lieutenant Seth Buchanan after all.

  “Want a beer?”

  The casual and friendly invitation threw Seth off balance. “I— No, I was leaving.”

  “Come on out back. Jack and I already popped a couple of tops. We’re going to fire up the grill and show the women how real men cook.” Cade’s grin spread charmingly. “Besides, oiling yourself with a couple of brews will make it easier for you to crawl. You’re going to crawl anyway, so you might as well be comfortable.”

  Seth hissed out a breath. “Why the hell not?”

  Grace stayed stubbornly in her room for an hour. She could hear laughter, music, and the silly whack of mallets striking balls as people played an enthusiastic game of croquet. She knew Seth’s car was still in the drive, and had promised herself she wouldn’t go back down until it was gone.

  But she was feeling deprived, and hungry.

  Since she’d already changed into shorts and a thin cotton shirt, she paused at the mirror only long enough to freshen her lipstick, spritz on some perfume. Just to make him suffer, she told herself, then sauntered downstairs and out onto the patio.

  Steaks were smoking on the grill with Cade at the helm wielding an enormous barbecue fork. Bailey and Jack were arguing over the croquet match, and M.J. was sulking at a picnic table while she nibbled on potato chips.

  “Jack knocked me out of the game,” she complained, and gestured with her beer. “I still say he cheated.”

  “Any time you lose,” Grace pointed out as she picked up a chip, “it’s because someone cheated.” Then she slid her gaze to Seth.

  He’d taken off his tie, she noted, and his jacket. He still wore his holster. She imagined that was because he didn’t feel comfortable hanging his gun over a tree branch. He, too, had a beer in his hand, and was watching the game with apparent interest.

  “You still here?”

  “Yeah.” He’d had two beers, but didn’t think crawling was going to be any more comfortable with the lubricant. “I’ve been invited to dinner.”

  “Isn’t that cozy?” Grace spied what she recognized as a pitcher of M.J.’s special margaritas and poured herself a glass. The taste was tart, icy, and perfect. In dismissal, she wandered over to the grill to kibitz.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Cade was saying, and shifted to guard his territory as Seth joined them. “I marinated these vegetable kabobs personally. Go away and leave this to a man.”

  “I was merely asking if you preferred your mushrooms blackened.”

  Cade sent her a withering look. “Get her off my back, Seth. An artist can’t work with critics breathing down his neck and picking on his mushrooms.”

  “Let’s go over here.” Seth took her elbow, and was braced for her jerk. He kept his grip firm and hauled her away into the rose garden.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Grace said furiously.

  “You don’t have to talk. I’ll talk.” But it took him a minute. Apologies didn’t come easily to a man who made it a habit not to make mistakes. “I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

  She said nothing, simply folded her arms and waited.

  “You want more?” He nodded, didn’t bother to sigh. “I was jealous, an atypical reaction for me, and I handled it poorly. I apologize.”

  Grace shook her head. “That’s the weakest excuse for an apology I’ve ever heard. Not the words, Seth, the delivery. But fine, I’ll accept it in the same spirit it was offered.”

  “What do you want from me?” he demanded, frustrated enough to raise his voice and grab her arms. “What the hell do you want?”

  “That.” She tossed back her head. “Just that. A little emotion, a little passion. You can take your cardboard-stiff apology and stuff it, just like you can stuff the cold, deliberate and dispassionate routine you gave me over the flowers. That icy control doesn’t cut it with me. If you feel something—whatever the hell it is—then let me know.”

  She sucked in her breath, stunned, when he yanked her against him, savaged her mouth with heat and anger and need. She twisted once and was hauled roughly back. Then was left weak and singed and shaken by the time he drew away.

  “Is that enough for you?” He hauled her to her toes, his fingers digging in. His eyes weren’t dispassionate now, weren’t cool, but turbulent. Human. “Enough emotion, enough passion? I don’t like to lose control. You can’t afford to lose control on the job.”

  Her breath was heaving. And her heart was flying. “This isn’t the job.”

  “No, but it was supposed to be.” He willed his grip to loosen. “You were supposed to be. I can’t get you out of my head. Damn it, Grace. I can’t get you out.”

  She laid a hand on his cheek, felt the muscle twitch. “It’s the same for me. Maybe the only difference right now is that I want it to be that way.”

  For how long? he wondered, but he didn’t say it. “Come home with me.”

  “I’d love to.” She smiled, stroked her fingers back, into his hair. “But I think we’d better stay for dinner, at least. Otherwise, we’d break Cade’s heart.”

  “After dinner, then.” It wasn’t difficult at all, he discovered, to bring her hands to his lips, linger over them, then look into her eyes. “I am sorry. But, Grace—?”

  “Yes?”

  “If DeVane calls you again, or sends flowers?”

  Her lips twitched. “Yes?”

  “I’ll have to kill him.”

  With a delighted laugh, she threw her arms around Seth’s neck. “Now we’re talking.”

  “That was nice.” With a satisfied sigh, Grace sank down in the seat of Seth’s car and watched the moon shimmer in the sky. “I like seeing the four of them together. But it’s funny. It’s as if I blinked, and everyone took this huge, giant step forward.”

  “Red light, green light.”

  Confused, Grace turned her head to look at him. “What?”

  “The game—the kid’s game? You know, the person who’s it has to say, ‘Green light,’ turn his back. Everybody can go forward, but then he says, ‘Red light’ and spins around. If he sees anybody move, they have to go back to the start.”

  When she gave a baffled laugh, it was his turn to look. “Didn’t you ever play games like that when you were a kid?”

  “No.
I was given the proper lessons, lectured on etiquette and was instructed to take brisk daily walks for exercise. Sometimes I ran,” she said softly, remembering. “Fast, and hard, until my heart was bumping in my chest. But I guess I always had to go back to the start.”

  Annoyed with herself, she shook her shoulders. “My, doesn’t that sound pathetic? It wasn’t, really. It was just structured.” She scooped back her hair, smiled at him. “So what other games did young Seth Buchanan play?”

  “The usual.” Didn’t she know how heartbreaking it was to hear that wistfulness in her voice, then see that quick, careless shrug as she pushed it all aside? “Didn’t you have friends?”

  “Of course.” Then she looked away. “No. It doesn’t matter. I have them now. The best of friends.”

  “Do you know any one of the three of you can start a sentence and either of the other two can finish it?”

  “We don’t do that.”

  “Yes, you do. A dozen times tonight, at least. You don’t even realize it. And you have this code,” he continued. “Little quirks and gestures. M.J.’s half smirk or eye roll, Bailey’s downsweep of the lashes or hair-around-the-finger twist. And you lift your left brow, just a fraction, or catch your tongue between your teeth. When you do, you let each other know the joke’s your little secret.”

  She hummed in her throat, not at all sure she liked being deciphered so easily. “Aren’t you observant….”

  “That’s my job.” He pulled into his driveway, turned to her. “It shouldn’t bother you.”

  “I haven’t decided if it does or not. Did you become a cop because you’re observant, or are you observant because you’re a cop?”

  “Hard to say. I was never really anything else.”

  “Not even when you were young Seth Buchanan?”

  “It was always part of my life. My grandfather was a cop. And my father. My father’s brother. Our house was filled with them.”

  “So it was expected of you?”

  “It was understood,” he corrected. “If I’d wanted to be a plumber or a mechanic, that would have been fine. But it was what I wanted.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s right and there’s wrong.”

  “Just that simple?”

  “It should be.” He looked at the ring on his finger. “My father was a good cop. Straight. Fair. Solid. You can’t ask for more than that.”

  She laid a hand over his. “You lost him.”

  “Line of duty. A long time ago.” The hurt had passed a long time before, as well, and left room for pride. “He was a good cop, a good father, a good man. He always said there was a choice between doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Either one had a price. But you could pay up on the first and still look yourself in the eye every morning.”

  Grace leaned over, kissed him lightly. “He did the right thing by you.”

  “Always. My mother was a cop’s wife, steady as a rock. Now she’s a cop’s mother, and she’s still steady. Still there. When I got my gold shield, it meant as much to her as it did to me.”

  There was a bond, she realized. Deep and true and unquestioned. “But she worries about you.”

  “Some. But she accepts it. Has to,” he added, with the ghost of a smile. “I’ve got a younger brother and sister. We’re all cops.”

  “It runs through the blood,” she murmured. “Are you close?”

  “We’re family,” he said simply, then thought of hers and remembered that such things weren’t simple. They were precious. “Yes, we’re close.”

  He was the oldest, she mused. He would have taken his generational placement seriously, and, when his father died, his responsibilities as man of the house with equal weight.

  It was hardly a wonder, then, that authority, responsibility, duty, sat so naturally on him. She thought of the weapon he wore, touched a fingertip to the leather strap.

  “Have you ever…” She lifted her gaze to his. “Have you ever had to?”

  “Yes. But I can still look myself in the eye in the morning.”

  She accepted that without question. But the next subject was more difficult. “You have a scar, just here.” Her memory of it was perfect as she touched her finger just under his right shoulder now. “You were shot?”

  “Five years ago. One of those things.” There was no point in relaying the details. The bust gone wrong, the shouts and the electric buzz of terror. The insult of the bullet and the bright, stupefying pain. “Most police work is routine—paperwork, tedium, repetition.”

  “But not all.”

  “No, not all.” He wanted to see her smile again, wanted to prolong what had evolved into a sweet and intimate interlude in a darkened car. Just conversation, without the sizzle of sex. “You’ve got a tattoo on your incredibly perfect bottom.”

  She laughed then, and tossed her hair back. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

  “I noticed. Why do you have a tattoo of a winged horse on your butt, Grace?”

  “It was an impulse, one of those wild-girl things I dragged M.J. and Bailey into.”

  “They have winged horses on their—”

  “No, and what they do have is their little secret. I wanted the winged horse because it was free. You couldn’t catch it unless it wanted to be caught.” She lifted a hand to his face, changed the mood subtly. “I never wanted to be caught. Before.”

  He nearly believed her. Lowering his head, he met her lips with his, let the kiss spin out. It was quiet, without urgency. The slow meeting of tongues, the lazy change of angles and depths. Easy sips. Testing nibbles.

  Her body shifted fluidly, her hands sliding up his chest to link at the nape of his neck. A purr sounded in her throat. “It’s been a long time since I necked in the front seat of a car.”

  He nudged her hair aside so that his mouth could find that sweet, sensitive curve between neck and shoulder. “Want to try the back seat?”

  Her laugh was low and delighted. “Absolutely.”

  The need had snuck up on him, crept into his bloodstream to stagger his heart. “We’ll go inside.”

  Her breath was a bit unsteady as she leaned back, grinned at him in the shimmer of moonlight. “Chicken.”

  His eyes narrowed fractionally, making her grin widen. “There’s a perfectly good bed in the house.”

  She made a soft clucking noise, then, chuckling, rubbed her lips over his. “Let’s pretend,” she whispered, pressing her body to his, sliding it against his. “We’re on a dark, deserted road and you’ve told me the car’s broken down.”

  He said her name, an exasperated sound against her tempting lips. It was only another challenge to her.

  “I pretend I believe you, because I want to stay, I want you to…persuade me. You’ll say you just want to touch me, and I’ll pretend I believe that, too.” She took his hand, laid it on her breast and felt the quick thrill when his fingers flexed. “Even though I know that’s not all you want. It’s not all you want, is it, Seth?”

  What he wanted was that dark, slippery slide into her. His hands moved under her shirt, found flesh. “We’re not going to make it into the back seat,” he warned her.

  She only laughed.

  He wasn’t sure if he felt smug or stunned by his own behavior when he finally unlocked his front door. Had he been this randy as a teenager? he wondered. That ridiculously reckless. Or was it only Grace who made such things as making desperate love in his own driveway one more adventure?

  She stepped inside, lifted the hair off her neck, then let it fall in a gesture that simply stopped his heart. “My place should be ready by tomorrow, the next day at the latest. We’ll have to go there. We can skinny-dip in my pool. It’s so hot out now.”

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  She turned, surprised at the mix of resentment and desire in his voice. He stood just inside the door, as if he might turn at any moment and leave her.

  “It’s a dangerous weapon. Lethal.”

  She tried to smile. “Arrest me.
”

  “You don’t like to be told.” He let out a half laugh. “You don’t like to be told you’re beautiful.”

  “I didn’t do anything to earn how I look.”

  She said it, he realized, as if beauty were more of a curse than a gift. And in that moment he felt a new level of understanding. He stepped forward, took her face gently in his hands, looked deep and long.

  “Well, maybe your eyes are a little too close together.”

  Her hitch of laughter was pure surprise. “They are not.”

  “And your mouth, I think it might be just a hair off center. Let me check.” He measured it with his own, lingering over the kiss when her lips curved. “Yeah. Just a hair, but it does throw things off, now that I really look. And let’s see…” He turned her head to each side, paused to consider. “Yep. The left profile’s weak. Are you getting a double chin there?”

  She slapped his hand away, torn between insult and laughter. “I certainly am not.”

  “I really should check that, too. I don’t know if I want to take this whole thing any further if you’re getting a double chin.”

  He grabbed her, tugging her head back gently by the hair so that he could nibble freely under her jaw. She giggled—a young, foolish sound—and squirmed. “Stop that, you idiot.” She let out a shriek when he hauled her up into his arms.

  “You’re no lightweight, either, by the way.”

  Her eyes went to slits. “Okay, buster, that’s all. I’m leaving.”

  It was a delight to watch him grin—that quick, boyish flash of humor. “I forgot to tell you,” he said as he headed for the stairs. “My car’s broken down. I’m out of gas. The cat ate my homework. I’m just going to touch you.”

  He’d made it up two steps when the phone rang. “Damn.” He brushed his lips absently over her brow. “I have to get that.”

  “It’s all right. I’ll remember where you were.” Though he set her down, she didn’t think her feet hit the floor. Love was a cushy buffer.

  But her smile faded as she saw his eyes change. Suddenly they were flat again, unreadable. She knew as she walked across the room toward him that he’d shifted seamlessly from man to cop.