by Paula Graves
“Your attempts to embarrass me won’t work,” Lorraine said. But Alicia could hear the unease in her voice. “Does your fishmonger have any sort of college education? What about his parents? What sort of living wage can he possibly make at such an occupation? You can’t live off your fellowship forever.”
“I don’t know if he has a college education. I’ve never met his parents. And I suppose his income would depend on just how good a fisherman he is.” She shifted positions, turning toward the bedroom, and found herself face-to-face with Gabe, who stood in the doorway to the hall, his large frame filling the opening. The look in his eyes left her with no doubt that he’d been there long enough to overhear her conversation with her mother and accurately guess what her mother had said in return.
“Four years of college, great parents, enough money to own a house outright,” he murmured softly. “Any more questions?”
“Mom, I need to go. I’ll call you later.” She waited just long enough for her mother’s goodbye and hung up the phone.
“Gabe, I’m so sorry—”
He shook his head. “No need. I’m not ashamed of what I do for a living. I’m good at it and I make good money.” He pushed away from the doorway and crossed slowly toward her. “But I’ll admit I’m a little interested in why you chose me and my fishing business to bait your mother.”
Chapter Eleven
Alicia stared at Gabe for a second, her cheeks flushing prettily pink. Though he still felt a little annoyed that she’d used him as a tool of rebellion, he wasn’t immune to her ample charms, including the girlish chagrin that tinted her voice when she answered, “Because I’m apparently a teenager still getting her rocks off by making her mother lose her cool?”
“I’ll go out on a limb here and guess your mom doesn’t approve of what you’re doing with your life.”
“Oh, she wanted me to be in academia like she and Dad are, but no, my field of study isn’t anywhere near her list of acceptable areas of expertise.” Alicia dropped wearily to the sofa. She looked as tired as Gabe felt, and it was no wonder, after her stressful day. Clearly her mother’s call hadn’t done anything to soothe her shattered nerves.
“She thought you’d follow her and your father into political activism?”
Laying her head back on the sofa, she looked up at him. “Except I’ve made it a rule to avoid politics like the plague, at least as a topic of conversation or a choice of majors.”
“That must have made your home life pleasant.”
“A Solano who’d rather read books on criminal profiling than march on downtown San Francisco in the protest du jour? Yeah, I was real popular.”
“I guess that’d be like a Cooper who didn’t like to fish.” He sat next to her, close but not touching.
She slanted a wry look his way. “Are there any Coopers who don’t like to fish?”
“Hell, no!” he answered with indignation.
She chuckled.
“But fishing isn’t the same as being notorious for anti-government activities or being an international terrorist,” he added more soberly.
“No. It’s not.” He could see reluctance in her expression, as if she wanted to end the conversation here. He knew a lot about her family life, at least the part that had played out in newspaper articles during her brother’s time on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He wondered how much worse the story got.
He saw the moment she made up her mind to tell him more. Her expression cleared and her dark eyes widened with vulnerability but also with hope, as if she was counting on him to understand what she was about to tell him.
He hoped he’d do justice to her faith.
“I’ve spent my whole life dealing with fans and foes of my family,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground where they’re concerned.”
“Except you. You’re the middle ground.”
“Exactly.” She looked up at him, her eyes shining with gratitude. He wondered what she was grateful for. His understanding her situation? Had she received so little sympathy in her life that she found his common kindness noteworthy?
He felt a rush of pure pity for her, but quickly hid the emotion when he saw uncertainty fill her dark eyes.
He cleared his throat. “I’m guessing the fans would be people you’ve met on your job, right? Professors and students who idolize your parents for their brilliant scholarship and their ideas?”
She nodded. “They’re always so surprised when I don’t want to discuss my parents or their work. Or sometimes they judge me by my parents and find my own ideas and beliefs sadly lacking in countercultural verve.” Alicia kicked off her shoes and propped her feet on the coffee table in front of her. “I’ve had some teachers offer to give me extra credit if I could just introduce them to my parents.”
Gabe grimaced. “Jerks.”
She lifted her chin. “Not that I needed their damned extra credit. I’ve never coasted on my parents’ reputation.”
“No, I can’t imagine you doing that,” Gabe agreed. “I suppose the foes you were talking about are the law enforcement types you deal with in your field of study?”
She sighed. “I don’t think there’s a police department in this country small enough to be unfamiliar with the name Sinclair Solano. Or Martin and Lorraine Solano, for that matter. I mean, my parents literally wrote the book on defying the police to achieve their idea of social justice. They’re not exactly popular with cops.”
“And you get painted with that brush, too?”
She nodded. “The stupid thing is, I never approved of what Sinclair was doing in Sanselmo. Ever. Even when my parents were ambivalent, I wasn’t. I’d done my homework— I knew El Cambio was worse than the government they were trying to overthrow, no matter what their flowery rhetoric might suggest.” As if realizing Gabe might not have a clue what she was talking about, she added, “El Cambio was the rebel group in Sanselmo that my brother was working with to overthrow the Cardenas government—”
“I know,” Gabe said quickly. “Remember when Tony and I were talking about that mess my family had to deal with last year? One of the groups we had to fight off had connections to El Cambio. Two of my brothers were in the Marines—they both had nasty dealings with El Cambio and the connected drug cartels in Sanselmo. And for what it’s worth, I agree with you—as bad as Cardenas was, El Cambio is worse.”
“I guess one good thing came out of what happened to my brother,” she murmured, pain sharp in her eyes. “The bomb that killed Sinclair ruined El Cambio in the eyes of the public that had been supporting them.”
“It didn’t hurt that Cardenas died of a heart attack just in time for a more moderate reformer to swoop in and pick up the slack.” Gabe couldn’t keep the cynicism out of his voice, but he softened his tone as he added, “It must have been hard for you, losing your brother that way, half a world away, without even getting to say goodbye.”
Tears filled her eyes. “But I did say goodbye.”
“You were in contact with him at that point?” Gabe asked when she didn’t continue. He was surprised.
She stared at him, conflicting emotions playing across her expression. She released a shaky breath. “It was the night before he died. I hadn’t heard from him in years and he called, out of the blue.” She leaned forward, looking ill. “I was so surprised to hear from him, it took a minute to realize what he was trying to tell me.”
“What was he trying to tell you?” Gabe asked, moving his hand in comforting circles over her back.
“He wanted me to understand why he was doing what he was doing in Sanselmo. I don’t know, maybe he was asking me to forgive and forget.” She buried her face in her palms. “I didn’t let him get that far. I told him not to call me again. As far as I was concerned, he was dead. Then I said I hoped he blew himself up the next time he set one of his stupid bombs.”
Gabe groaned in sympathy.
“That was the last thing I said to my brother.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. She dashed
them away, as if angry at her weakness. “What if I was the reason—?”
“You weren’t,” Gabe said firmly. “Anything that happened to your brother happened because of his own choices and actions. You know that.”
“It haunts me. Every day. Any time I think of Sin.”
Regret burned in his gut like acid. “There are always going to be things we do or say that we can’t take back. So we just live with the consequences the best we can.”
“How do you live with it?” she asked aloud.
He knew she didn’t know the full story of his involvement in Brenda’s death, but her question was so pointed, it hit the sore spot festering in his gut, making him flinch.
He found his voice after a couple of seconds. “You just get up in the morning, do what you have to do and try to get enough sleep that night to do it all over again the next day.”
She frowned at his answer, as if she didn’t like what he had to say. “Where’s the joy and the meaning? I can’t live that way. No one can.”
Gabe rose to his feet and moved restlessly to the window, gazing out into the darkness as he searched for a reason to leave this heavy conversation behind.
“Do you see anything out there?” Alicia asked.
He shook his head. “I think he’s gone for tonight.”
“Maybe he’ll come back tomorrow night and we’ll catch him.”
“Maybe.” Gabe didn’t sound convinced. She wondered why.
He answered her unasked question a moment later, turning to look at her with a serious expression. “I know you’re not going to want to hear this, but have you ever considered that it could be Tony who’s stalking you?”
Alicia rose from the sofa, her dark eyes flashing with anger. She dodged the coffee table and crossed the floor to him in a few quick, purposeful steps. “Have you lost your mind?”
He stood his ground, remembering the stolen looks Tony had shot her way every time she wasn’t looking. She might be over their former relationship, but Tony Evans clearly wasn’t. “If we’re going to be unbiased investigators, then we have to look at all the possibilities, not just the first one that fits.”
“And you really think it’s possible that Tony Evans was standing outside my apartment watching me tonight?”
“Yes. You couldn’t reach him at home, right? You only got him on his cell phone.”
“So, he was out having dinner or catching a movie or something. So what?”
“So, it took him maybe six minutes to get here. He was in the area when you called.”
“Millbridge is about the size of a postage stamp. Everywhere in town is in the area,” Alicia retorted, bristling like a sexy little porcupine.
Clearly, she was deeply loyal to anyone she chose to call a friend, a trait Gabe usually admired. But if her loyalty was getting in the way of seeing the situation clearly, she could end up getting badly burned.
“I’m not accusing Tony of anything here,” Gabe clarified, trying a different approach. “All I’m saying is, it’s worth considering the same potential suspects you’d want to take a look at if you were a cop working a stalker case. Tony is your ex-boyfriend. He’s still in touch with you, still has feelings for you—”
“Not those kinds of feelings,” Alicia insisted.
Gabe knew better, but he didn’t argue. “Even so, if I were a cop, I’d still take a good, hard look at him.”
“Why? Are you saying he’s the beta killer? Because I can tell you right now, I can give him an alibi for the first two murders here in Millbridge.”
“Not the beta, no,” Gabe answered, trying not to wonder what, exactly, she and Tony had been doing together during the first two Millbridge murders. “But our mystery stalker hanging out across the street, watching your place? It’s exactly the sort of behavior a jilted ex might indulge in.”
“He wasn’t jilted. The breakup was mutual.”
“Who brought it up first?”
He saw the answer, heard it in her slight hesitation, before she answered. “I did. But he agreed.”
Gabe couldn’t imagine any man finding it easy to walk away from Alicia. Hell, he’d known her for one day and he already found himself thinking about her when she wasn’t around. How much worse must it be for Tony Evans?
He’d met Gabe this afternoon at the crime scene. Maybe caught some of the sparks flying between him and Alicia. Could it have been enough to send him into stalker mode? Had he wanted to see for himself how Alicia and Gabe behaved when they were all alone at her place?
If so, they’d certainly given him an eyeful with that kiss at the window.
“Does your suspicion of Tony have anything to do with the fact that he’s my ex?” Alicia asked.
Gabe wished he could say no, but he’d never been a good liar and she certainly didn’t deserve deception. “If you’re asking whether or not I’m being a territorial jerk, then the answer is…maybe.”
Her lips curved slightly. “Fair enough.”
“But setting that aside, I do think you have to be careful, even with people you know well.”
She cocked her head, the half smile widening until it carved delicious little dimples in her cheeks. “Or people I met a day ago?”
“Another fair point,” he conceded. “And maybe it’s a good idea for you to find out more about me before you entrust me with your safety. I’d probably start with the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Department. I had to go through some security clearance measures to join as an auxiliary and most of the people there know me and can vouch for me—”
She touched his arm. “I don’t need to check up on you. I trust Cissy and she trusts you. That’s enough.”
“I don’t know, Alicia.” He frowned, wishing he could take pleasure in her obvious ease around him. “I want you to feel safe on one hand, but if you feel too safe, you’ll start taking foolish risks—”
“I’ll be careful. I’ll go to work and I’ll come home. Period. I won’t give anyone a chance to get me alone.” She dropped her hand from his arm. The air that filled the void felt cold and empty.
“Speaking of that, what’s your schedule like tomorrow?”
“I have a couple of classes in the morning, a lab before lunch, then two labs right after lunch. Home by five, I promise.” She flashed him a cheeky grin that made his whole body go blistering hot.
He knew he should back away, put distance between himself and the tempting little minx, but his mind seemed to have no control over the rest of him. He walked toward her slowly, watching with feral satisfaction as her pupils darkened and her lips parted as if anticipating his kiss.
Well, sweetheart, if you insist…
She put her hand up as if to push back against his chest, but almost as soon as her palm flattened against the front of his shirt, her fingers curled in the fabric and clung, pulling him closer. She rose on the tips of her toes and tilted her head back, her breath soft, chocolate-scented and warm against his cheek. “I’m going to kiss you now,” she murmured, her voice velvety and low. He noticed that, while she mimicked the warning he gave her before their first kiss, she didn’t offer him a chance to back out.
Fine with him.
Her mouth was hot and demanding, skipping any sort of introductory foray and moving straight to seduction. Gabe found himself losing all sense of equilibrium, something that he’d never experienced before. It was as if the world had stopped spinning, hurtling him into a void where there was no up or down, no in or out.
Alicia slid her hand beneath the hem of his shirt, her fingers cool against the hot skin of his back. She left a sizzling trail of electric sparks along the nerve endings where she traced the muscles of his back, almost distracting him completely from the maddening things her mouth and tongue were doing to his.
Suddenly, she made a groaning noise deep in her throat and lifted both hands to his chest, palms flat and firm. This time, she didn’t clutch his shirt and pull him closer. She pushed away, dragging her lips from his, and took a couple of unstead
y steps backwards.
“No,” she breathed, scraping her hair out of her flushed face. She was still breathing hard, her rising and falling chest threatening to distract him from what she was saying. “No, no, no, I’m not going to do this.”
“I think you already did,” he murmured.
She shot him a blazing look. “It’s the damned accent! And the way you Southern guys look at women like you can’t decide if you want to take us to bed or put us on a pedestal. Which is so damned sexist, you know, and you really shouldn’t do it, and I really shouldn’t like it.”
“But you do?”
A mewling sound of frustration escaped her lips. “Yes.”
“And it’s all because of my accent and the way I look at you? Nothing to do with me in particular. You jump any guy that drops an R or looks at you a certain way?”
“Yes. No!” She pressed her face into her hands, shoved her hair back again and raised her chin. He saw the moment she regained control of herself, when her hands stopped trembling and the steel in her spine asserted itself. She leveled her gaze with his, the heat gone, replaced by fierce determination.
It was about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
“There’s a lot at stake here, Gabe. Not just for me but for you, for your brother, for Cissy and her little brother.”
Her mention of his family had a quick, sobering effect on Gabe. He pushed aside the clamoring demands of his body and tried to mimic her self-control. “I know.”
“If we keep doing this, we’re going to lose focus. If we’re not paying attention at some crucial juncture because our hormones are calling the shots—”
“I know,” he repeated. “You’re right.”
“So we don’t do this again. Agreed?”
“Never?” He felt his control starting to slip at the realization that he’d be spending the next few nights alone in the apartment with her. Her sofa had made a surprisingly comfortable bed, but he didn’t think there was a bed on earth, no matter how lush and comfortable, that would help him sleep well tonight.