Private Affair

by Rebecca York

  “Did the technique help?”

  He laughed. “Unfortunately, no. I didn’t have enough information at the time. But you might have better luck with class members. I mean, you remember them. And being at that meeting brought back more memories, right?”

  “Yes.” She cleared her suddenly clogged throat. “Maybe I’ll try.”

  “Something you haven’t thought about before.”

  He left the bathroom and headed for the stairs. She started to turn away, then changed her mind, realizing she might as well get ready for bed. She wanted to go to sleep and forget the murders, and the plan he’d suggested made her nerves jangle. She firmed her lips. If she tried it and failed, maybe he’d stop pressing her for high school memories.

  Again she turned on the water and couldn’t help picturing the scene a few moments ago when she’d washed off Max’s wounds.

  A lot of guys she’d met were babies about being hurt. Apparently Max was too macho to let her know if he was hurting.

  Trying to get him out of her mind, she reached for her toothbrush, but as she brushed her teeth, her mind continued to wander. When she’d come down here with the idea of finding out who had killed Angela, she’d felt unsettled, and she’d even thought of herself as a target. But there had been no proof. From what had happened with the intruder tonight, it seemed she’d been wrong. And now she was reevaluating the whole plan. What if she just gave the investigation up and went back to New York? And then what? Get back into the rat race she’d vowed to escape?

  Was she planning to run away so somebody else could get killed instead?

  That thought made her grimace. Really, what guarantee did she have that someone who sneaked around her family farm wouldn’t come up to New York and stalk her there? Maybe it would depend on how focused they were on her.

  She went back to her bedroom, closed the door, and changed from the clothes she’d been wearing into shorts and a T-shirt. Not what she usually slept in, but she didn’t want to be wearing a nightgown when there was a strange man in the house.

  No, not a strange man. The man she had hired to track down Angela’s killer. And her best bet to stay safe was to stay here and stick close to Max Lyon, who had already demonstrated his worth in a couple of tight spots. But staying close to Max presented its own problems. She could admit to herself that she was attracted to him, but she was very sure that it wasn’t smart to act on that impulse—for a whole lot of reasons.

  Chapter 8

  Max walked down the steps, listening to the stair treads and then the floorboards creak. The house was old and showing the usual wear, but it was solidly built, not like the cheap apartments where he’d grown up, where you could hear the people above and below you talking and flushing the toilet.

  The toilet upstairs flushed, and he shook his head. Well, that wasn’t so different. But this had been a one-family home, not an apartment where you were supposed to have some privacy.

  He crossed the darkened living room and pulled the shade aside, looking out at the farmyard. Everything was still and quiet. But he hadn’t expected to see movement. If someone came close enough for a visual sighting, he’d hear the alarm again first.

  Still, it was reassuring to look out and see nothing that caused concern.

  He sighed. Important aspects of this job had changed in the past few hours. When he’d accepted the assignment, he hadn’t really thought of Olivia as a target of the Reunion Class Killer, as he now dubbed the murderer. But seeing the former classmates at the meeting had made him consider everyone as a target, including Olivia. And the attack tonight had reinforced that conviction.

  Before tonight, he’d assumed that he could leave her here alone while he went out and did some poking around. Now he was thinking that he’d better stick with her—or, more likely, keep her with him when he went out, although he was sure she wasn’t going to like that. He didn’t like it, actually. He was used to having time alone. Even with Jack and Shane, he wanted his own space, but he’d have to put his own needs on hold until he found out who had killed Angela Dawson, Patrick Morris, and Gary Anderson. There were some other deaths he’d like to investigate as well, but right now he was focused on the most recent.

  Of course, he could get Shane or Jack to come over here while he went out investigating. But he wasn’t going to call in his partners every two seconds. They’d been outside checking the area around the restaurant tonight. That was enough for now.

  Was he rationalizing? Maybe he wanted an excuse to tell Olivia she’d better stick with him. He snorted, annoyed that he was second-guessing his motives the way he’d try to second-guess a suspect.

  Dropping the shade back into place, he brought his laptop over to one of the easy chairs and sat down. There were a lot of problems with this assignment, including the large number of suspects. The killer could be anyone in the reunion class or anyone from the school who had something against the class members. Like what if they’d been involved in a prank that had pissed off a janitor or a teacher? And, of course, it could turn out to be someone from a rival school, although that would mean they’d been involved enough with Olivia’s reunion class to go after a lot of the people. It was a possibility, but he’d bet it was closer to home. Which led him back to the idea of a homicidal janitor or teacher running around. He’d get a line on as many of them as possible and have Jack and Shane check them out. There would surely already be some evidence.

  He returned to his laptop and accessed the files that Jack and Shane had already compiled, looking at some of the material they’d entered. One of their jobs was to see which class members were living in the area. He scrolled down, counting the names, and found more than two hundred. Great! A lot of suspects that the other guys were going to have to check out while he was working from this end. He sent an email telling them what had happened tonight, then knew he’d better turn in if he was going to be any good in the morning.

  Still, he sat for long moments on the sofa with the computer in his lap. He and Olivia had been sitting here before the attack, and his mind went back to that domestic scene. They were playing an engaged couple—a role he’d never expected to fill. Not that he thought marriage was a bad idea for his two Rockfort partners. But they hadn’t lived with the turmoil in his parents’ apartment. The yelling. The slamming doors. The late-night beatings. He’d decided long ago that a kid who’d been through that was doomed to repeat his parents’ mistakes. And he’d figured that the best way to avoid it was to steer clear of the institution of marriage.

  He laughed. And now here he was playing at being engaged and enjoying it on a certain level.

  Well, don’t start trying to decide whether Shane or Jack should be your best man, he cautioned himself. A few days with a gorgeous model shouldn’t change the convictions you’ve built up over a lifetime.

  It was good advice. The question was, could he follow it? Or was he already getting sucked in over his head? He looked toward the ceiling. He and Olivia had been uncomfortable with each other from the start—partly because of the attraction simmering between them. In the bathroom when she’d been tending his wounds, he’d felt like they were two cats, a female in heat and a tom, thrown into a burlap bag where they couldn’t escape from each other. He knew she’d felt the same sexual pull. He’d seen it in the brightness of her eyes, smelled it in the scent of her body. They’d both fought the attraction—and managed to cool themselves down.

  But they’d also gotten to know each other a little better. Some of it was from observing her behavior at the reunion meeting, and some of it was from their conversation. Which was good for the working relationship, he told himself.

  When he realized he was still looking upward toward her bedroom, he lowered his gaze. There were no noises from the second floor. Olivia must be in bed, and he was headed there soon. Not to her bed, he reminded himself.

  ***

  Upstairs, Olivia plumped up her pillow and tried to relax. At first all she could think about was Max. He’d pr
obably be glad to come up here and relax her. For a few tempting minutes she let herself think about what the two of them could be doing. When she found her body starting to heat up, she pushed Max Lyon out of her mind. Instead she focused on the relaxation exercises she’d learned from a DVD, deliberately tensing various muscle groups, then relaxing them. As her body settled down, she found herself thinking of the assignment that Max had given her. She’d never tried anything like that before, and she was pretty sure it wouldn’t do her any good. But she was going to try it so she could tell him in the morning that it had been a waste of time.

  Why was that so important? Because she wanted to needle him? Or distance herself from him? She wasn’t sure of her own motivation, but she knew that it was counterproductive to be at odds with him. The better she learned to work with him and be comfortable with him, the faster she could get him out of her life. He was the wrong kind of man for her. He was too aggressive and too sure of how things should be done.

  Like her father. And maybe like Jerry, she silently admitted.

  The thought brought her up short. Was that the problem with her view of Max? That he reminded her too much of the men who had run her life? And that she’d let strong men have too much power over her?

  She made a dismissive sound, but now that the notion had lodged in her head, it was worth examining. Had she left her strong-willed father back in Maryland and wound up in a similar situation in New York? And could she really say that her father had ruined her life? It had felt like it when she was living here because of all his rules and his reactions when you didn’t follow them. And she’d vowed to get out from under his thumb as quickly as she could.

  Her father had been very sure of his values—and of how the women in his family should comport themselves. He was the one in charge, and his word was law in the Winters’ house. He hadn’t been harsh—if you fell into line with his plans. It had been easier to comply than to overtly rebel. A few times she’d done stuff she knew would make him angry and lied to him about it to cover up. Maybe her teenage behavior had been her failing. But she’d told herself Dad was the reason she’d gone off to New York without even considering furthering her formal education. Dad had argued against her making the break. But she’d been too determined to be swayed. She’d been nineteen at the time and sure that the best thing for her was to get away while she still could.

  Then Jerry had taken her under his wing. She’d told herself he was making her career possible. And that was why she’d fallen in line with all his advice. But was she really just repeating her experience with Dad?

  And here she was back at the old homestead—with another aggressive man. Like Jerry and Dad, he was telling her what to do. She knew it was for her own good.

  And to be fair about Max, he hadn’t been trying to force his will on her—at least not unless he thought she was in danger. He had very strict ideas about safety, and she knew she’d be foolish to ignore the advice he was giving. Not simply because she was paying him her hard-earned money to solve her friend’s murder—she didn’t want to end up as another one of the class whose life was cut short.

  She was safe at the moment with Max in the house.

  She closed her eyes, getting comfortable on the bed as her mind drifted back to the meeting they’d attended this evening, thinking about the men and women who had been there. They’d been in their teens the last time she’d seen them. Some of them seemed pretty much the way they had been in high school. Others had changed—mostly for the better.

  As she thought about the meeting, she felt herself drifting off. Getting to sleep had never been a big problem for her, and soon she crossed the divide. For a little while, she slept peacefully, despite all the stress of the evening. Then everything changed as she fought to figure out where she was and who held her captive.

  Chapter 9

  Olivia was somewhere else. Not in her bed. In the middle of chaos. Back in her own past in a crowd of high school kids frantically trying to get away from danger.

  Around her people ducked behind furniture or tried to stampede up a flight of stairs. A lot of them were charging toward her, and someone grabbed her, trying to pull her to safety.

  They crashed to the floor, and she cried out, “Let me go,” even though she knew he wanted to drag her out of danger, away from the terrified crowd and a gunman behind them.

  “Take it easy. You’re all right.” The words were spoken by a hard male voice that sounded too deep to be coming from one of her high school classmates

  But she couldn’t take it easy. She was frightened, and she lashed out, striking the man who held her. When she landed a blow to his face, he grunted, and pinned her arms down so she couldn’t hit him again.

  As she struggled against him, she realized that she wasn’t lying on a cold tile floor as she’d thought. She was on a bed, and the man who had spoken was lying across her, holding her down, with a terrifying restrained power that sent panic zinging through her.

  She redoubled her efforts to get away, and he circled her wrists with his hands, keeping her in place. She knew from the way he held her that this man could hurt her, yet she also knew that he was trying to be gentle.

  “Olivia, don’t. You’re all right. You were having a bad dream.”

  Finally the familiar voice registered.

  Her eyes blinked open and she found herself staring up at Max, illuminated by a shaft of light coming through the bedroom door.

  “Max?”

  “Yeah.”

  She felt heat rise in her face and was glad of the darkness. “I hit you. I’m sorry.”

  “You were having a bad dream,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” she murmured, dragging herself back to present reality. She wasn’t in the middle of some wildly panicked scene. She was in her own bed, and Max Lyon was lying there with her. And as she looked up at him, she saw that he was naked. Or maybe he was wearing shorts, she couldn’t be sure.

  Embarrassed by her out-of-control behavior, she stammered, “You… you told me to work on the case while I was sleeping, and… and I think I did that.”

  “Okay. Yeah.”

  She heard his automatic reassurance but knew he couldn’t understand what she was talking about. He hadn’t been there with her in the dream. He’d only come in when she’d been trying to free herself from the nightmare.

  When he started to pull away, she involuntarily gripped his arm, needing the physical connection on some deep, primal level. Like the sky would come down around her if he left her now. She couldn’t tell him that. All she could say was, “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Okay.”

  Before she could stop herself, she moved over to make room for him, and as he settled down beside her on the bed, she saw that he was wearing a pair of boxer shorts.

  He lay on his back, and she lay beside him, her shoulder touching his. As her emotions settled, she decided that she probably shouldn’t have invited him to stay in her bed. Somehow doing that in the house where she’d grown up felt very wrong, but she wasn’t going to send him away because she hadn’t lied to him. The dream was too vivid for her to cope with it alone.

  She wasn’t sure what he was feeling when she heard him drag in a breath and let it out.

  “Can you tell me what was so upsetting?” he said.

  Although she was the one who had stopped him from leaving, the idea of talking about the dream brought a breathless wave of cold to her body, as though she’d been pulled into an arctic lake and dragged below the surface by a sea monster. He probably felt her shiver. And when she remained silent, he prompted, “You said you were working on who might have killed Angela?”

  Yeah, that was the crux of the problem. “Yes,” she answered in a low voice.

  “And that’s what triggered the dream?”

  “I think so.”

  When she went silent again, he shifted toward her, his hand stroking her arm. “Can you tell me about it?”

  She swallowed hard. “Okay. I wa
s back at a party in my senior year of high school. With a lot of the same people who were at the meeting tonight… And some who weren’t…” Her voice trailed off. “Well, I guess it was yesterday.”

  “Some who weren’t?” he asked.

  “Well, like Angela.”

  He waited for her to say more.

  “I can’t be sure if it was exactly the way it really happened back then.”

  “Why not?”

  She swallowed hard. “Because in the dream, you were there.”

  He laughed. “I guess that means it was a total fantasy trip, since I didn’t run in your circles.”

  “We did meet once,” she said.

  She felt his hand go still. When he spoke, his voice had thickened. “You remember that?”

  “Of course.”

  “But you never mentioned it.”

  When she didn’t respond, he asked, “What do you remember, exactly?”

  “Angela and I were in a pizza parlor. Some guys we didn’t know were harassing us, and you came up and stopped them. Then you left, and I never got a chance to thank you.”

  In the darkness he swallowed hard. “I didn’t do it to get thanked. I did it because I didn’t like seeing what was happening. But I thought you didn’t remember.”

  “How could I forget something like that?” she asked.

  “Because it was me.”

  Her head shot toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was a guy your crowd avoided.”

  “Maybe they thought you were dangerous. But that night in the pizza parlor you proved you weren’t what I’d assumed.” It was her turn to swallow hard. “But I wasn’t going to go looking for you after that. I had enough problems.”

  He could have asked what that meant. Instead he said, “Maybe we’d better talk about that dream, before you forget the details.”