"That's not why you're here."
"Isn't it?"
He raised himself slightly off her, pushing up her sweater and unclasping her bra. He took one nipple into his mouth, and she thought she'd melt into the blankets, turn completely to liquid. She took his hips and pulled him back inside her, memorizing the feel of him, as if this had never happened before and might never happen again. She lost herself in their movements, and this time when she came, she was aware of him watching her, as if this was the image that had sustained him during his long, hard, painful drive to Blackwater Lake.
But before she realized what was happening, he was back on his feet, grabbing his pants. He slipped into them, then bent down and kissed her lightly. "Hell of a cure for a lump on the head."
She eyed him in the dark. "I feel downright wanton.
My God, I didn't even wait to get undressed all the way." She smiled. "Consequences?"
"You knew this would happen when you decided to sneak out on me. The knock on my head was the only surprise." He grinned at her. "I had you a little worried there when I pitched my cookies."
"If you're suggesting I plotted this—that I wanted you to drive up here and pounce—" She didn't finish. There was absolutely no way she'd win this one, not after what they'd just done. "There's a sofa bed in the loft at the top of the stairs." This was why she was living with Gran, she thought. Who could think straight with Jack Galway too close? "If you die in your sleep, it serves you right."
"At least I'll sleep," he said, laughing softly, knowingly, as he shut her door on his way out.
* * *
When Maggie and Ellen woke up and started making noise in the next room, Jack reminded himself that they didn't know he had a raging headache. They didn't know he'd been knocked on the head and threw up curried corn chowder and nearly killed himself making love to their mother. Or that he'd lay awake half the night, his head pounding, thinking he should at least have properly undressed her. That would have been more romantic. There was every chance, however, that he'd have passed out before he finished, and he'd been very intent on the lovemaking part.
So had she, as he recalled.
There was also the matter of not freezing to death. Shivering made his head hurt even more. He only had a couple of thin blankets, and if the place had heat, the loft wasn't getting any.
"Dad!"
"You made it!"
The girls' voices reverberated in his head, producing sharp arrows of pain that sliced into the backs of his eyes, which were shut. He wanted to go back to sleep. Desperately. A couple of aspirin and warm clothes would help, but he could manage just with silence and sleep.
His daughters plopped on the edge of his sofa bed. "You're awake, aren't you?" Ellen's voice was cheerful, even perky. "The sun's up. Mom wants to take us snowshoeing. It's about four degrees out, but she's determined. You should come with us."
"You can rent a pair at the local inn," Maggie said. "But you'll need warm clothes. You can't go out in jeans and a cowboy hat. You'd freeze."
He had to open his eyes. There was no choice. They'd sit here all morning until he acknowledged their presence. "Hey, kids." He managed what he hoped would pass as a smile. "Do you see me on snowshoes?"
"Sure, Dad." Ellen's chestnut hair caught a ray of light from a window somewhere. It was like a hot needle in his eye. She grinned at him. "We see you on cross-country skis, too."
They were both devils, Jack thought.
Maggie slid to her feet. She had on a sparkly turquoise robe that Rosalind Russell might have worn in Mame. "Do you want coffee?"
"I'll get up." He managed to ease onto an elbow with no sign of nausea. That was good. "Just give me a minute."
They pounded down the wooden stairs, making far more noise than seemed necessary. He threw back the skinny covers and staggered out of bed, pulling on his pants. He should have slept in them, it was so damn cold. He shrugged on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as another arrow of pain stabbed both eyes. He hadn't packed aspirin. No gun, no aspirin. A hot shower and fresh clothes would help put him back fully on his feet.
He looked out the loft window at the impressive landscape of snow-covered lake and mountains. The sky was clear blue, no clouds. He could feel the cold seeping through the glass. How the hell had he ended up here? He'd learned a long time ago that with green-eyed, black-haired Susanna Dunning Galway, his life didn't always go as he planned. She liked curves and side trips, surprises and secrets.
But not telling him about Beau McGarrity was irrational. Even dangerous. Bolting last night—the same. He didn't care if it was an instinctive reaction to having murder—his work—affect their lives this directly.
Of course, he hadn't confronted her about McGarrity. He'd found out by accident, talking to his neighbor a few days after Susanna had run off to Boston. Wasn't that Beau McGarrity at his door last week? Wow, that must have pissed you off.
Susanna apparently had gotten rid of McGarrity as fast as possible, and Jack knew she'd have told him if Beau had said or done anything the detectives conducting Rachel McGarrity's murder investigation could use.
She had been in Boston, safe. Maggie and Ellen were with her, safe. Alice Parker was on her way to prison, and Jack knew—everyone knew—she'd made a complete mess of the Rachel McGarrity murder investigation. It would have been a hard enough case to unravel without her incompetence at the crime scene and subsequent misconduct.
Still, he was madder at Susanna for her silence than he was at himself for his silence. Easier that way. Sometimes he wondered what he'd have done if she'd told him about McGarrity that rotten day he'd confronted Alice with the evidence against her, told her police chief, arrested her. If he'd come home and found out then that Beau McGarrity had scared the hell out of his wife, what would he have done?
Not that he for one moment thought Susanna had kept her silence just to spare him.
He shoved such thinking to the back of his mind and made it downstairs without falling on his face. Maggie glanced up from her spot in front of the fireplace. "Mom and Gran got up early and built the fire."
"Where is she now?"
"Mom? She went into town for some things she forgot."
"She said not to wait for her if you have stuff to do," Ellen added.
"Uh-huh."
"Gran's out on the porch looking at the lake," Maggie said.
Jack went into the kitchen. There was coffee made. A plate of muffins on the counter. He found a mug in a cupboard and poured himself coffee, sinking onto a chair at the big oak table. There was a window with a view of the driveway and the woods and a lot of snow.
Iris came in from the porch and sat with the girls in front of the fire, discussing possible snowshoe routes. She glanced over at him, and Jack guessed from her serious expression that Susanna had told her grandmother about the intruder. But Iris would give him a chance to have a cup of coffee before she asked him about last night.
Alice Parker. The intruders in Iris's house. The walking stick to the head. Beau McGarrity and his murdered wife, Rachel Tucker McGarrity. Jack reminded himself those were his reasons for being up north. Not sex with his wife, regardless of what he'd said and done last night. Not vacationing with his daughters and Iris. This was Susanna's cabin—her space. First things first.
The coffee humanized him. He refilled his mug and grabbed a blueberry muffin.
Iris joined him at the table. "How's your head this morning?"
"I'll be fine. I might have cracked your walking stick."
She waved a thin hand. "Oh, I have a dozen of those things. The students I used to take in all loved to give me walking sticks as presents." She took a chunk of his muffin and began tearing it apart with her fingertips, staring at a fat, juicy blueberry. "There's something you should know, Jack. I didn't think of it until this morning when Susanna told me what happened. I gave Au-drey—Alice Parker—a key to my house the other day."
Jack said nothing, drinking his coffee, watching her tear apart her
bit of muffin. There were crumbs all over the table.
"I asked if she could look after the house for me while we were up here," Iris said. "I hemmed and hawed about whether I would come. You know how I am about traveling."
"Jim Haviland said a lot of people have keys to your house."
"That's because I've rented to so many students. It's never been a problem." She raised her vibrant eyes to him. "I hate to think it was Audrey who snuck up on you, that I was the cause—"
"You're not the cause of any of this, Iris. Alice Parker is responsible for the choices she makes. You aren't."
"I thought she was my friend."
"We've all been fooled by people at one time or another."
Iris shook her head. "This time it was dangerous. What if you'd been killed last night?"
"I wasn't."
She smiled weakly, trying to rally. "Can you imagine, a Texas Ranger killed with an old woman's walking stick in his wife's bedroom in Massachusetts? Do you think your pals back in Texas would put together a posse and invade?"
"Iris…"
But her eyes gleamed with mischief, and he remembered this woman was a survivor. She was absorbing the blow of who her new friend had turned out to be. "You're no fun at all, Jack Galway. I suppose you're here for answers?"
He thought of Alice Parker. His wife. "Oh, yes. And that's just for starters."
* * *
He'd seemed familiar, even that first day she'd spotted him in downtown San Antonio, probably because of his notoriety as a real estate developer and a murder suspect.
Now, Susanna wasn't sure about any of the assumptions she'd made about Beau McGarrity. She wasn't sure about anything.
She'd pulled into a scenic overlook on the river not far from her cabin. A snowbank kept her from getting too close to the fence above the waterfall with its massive ice formations and rush of clear, cold water. It was a natural waterfall, not one of the dams left over from the industrial revolution that still choked rivers and streams all over the northeast. Here, the river tumbled freely out of the mountains, carving its way through rock and earth.
She didn't feel the cold. As Iris maintained, the air was different in the High Peaks. Susanna had bundled up in her north country layers. Moisture-resistant long underwear and leggings, wind pants, fleece vest, heavy duty anorak, hat, gloves, socks, boots. The high-tech fabrics and design kept everything from weighing a ton. Gran still preferred wool.
On the day Beau McGarrity had walked into her kitchen, Susanna would never have imagined herself here in the mountains of upstate New York, in the dead of winter.
She remembered how absorbed she'd been in her tai chi tape, doing the movements, the breathing, the concentration and balance. She'd knocked off work early, the girls were at school and Jack was out on an investigation. Police corruption. He hated corruption cases, and she knew few of the details about this one. He had been more silent and uncommunicative than usual in recent weeks. She was preoccupied with how she'd tell him about their growing net worth, not with stories of the terrible murder of a woman in a small town not far from San Antonio.
While she'd practiced her tai chi—she wasn't very good—she didn't think about anything that bothered her. She didn't worry about how money could change her relationship with her husband, if he'd resent her because the millions were her doing—if the money might affect his work when word got out. He was a Texas Ranger. It was all he'd ever wanted to be.
Oddly enough, it was her parents who'd helped her make her first big investment, when they'd introduced her to a woman who'd just bought artwork from their gallery and owned an Austin computer firm. Jack knew about that investment. But Susanna hadn't told him how well it had done, providing the bulk of the ten million they were now worth. She'd also timed her entrance into and her exit out of technology stocks well. Not all luck, but a lot of it.
None of that was on her mind while she was doing her tai chi.
The sound of the patio door opening and shutting had broken her concentration. She assumed it was Jack or the girls coming in early and hit the pause button on the VCR to go check.
The tall, gray-haired man she'd seen downtown and then again the other day at the high school was standing in her kitchen, on the other side of the table with its vase of small sunflowers. She'd tried to tell herself he hadn't actually followed her. She hadn't mentioned him to Jack, because she knew she was just being paranoid. Of course, he wasn't following her. Who would follow her? Now he was in her kitchen.
She'd managed a quick smile. "Just a sec," she said, as if he were a neighbor who'd stopped in for a chat, and slipped into the family room. She spotted Maggie's tape recorder and set it on a bookcase on her way back to the kitchen, hitting the record button. She'd considered running out the front door, but it, she knew, was locked. She didn't think she had enough time—she needed to stay calm.
At least if this man did anything to her, her husband would have it on tape.
"You don't recognize me," he said.
"No, I'm afraid I don't. Look—"
"I'm not going to hurt you." He had a twang to his accent, making him seem folksier than he was. He ran a finger over the back of a chair. "I didn't knock because I wasn't sure you'd let me in, and I need to talk to you."
"Why? What do you want?"
"Your husband has to know I didn't kill my wife. I'm being framed by an overzealous police officer."
Suddenly Susanna knew who he was. Beau McGarrity, the wealthy real estate developer and political aspirant whose wife had just been shot to death in their driveway.
No wonder she'd thought she'd seen him before.
"You have to make him understand."
"I'm sorry," she told him carefully, "I don't get involved in my husband's work."
"Of course you do. You provide comfort to him. You make it possible for him to give his work the focus and attention it requires to be done well." McGarrity stepped around the table, coming toward her. "Your husband couldn't make the lives of the criminals in this state a living hell without your cooperation."
"Jack's a Texas Ranger. He follows the law. He's not out to make anyone's life a living hell. Mr. McGar-rity—that's who you are, isn't it? Beau McGarrity? I want you to leave. It's really not a good idea for you to be here."
His gaze was steady, absolutely determined. "The witness against me is lying. Your husband needs to understand that."
"All right. I'll give him your message—"
"As if dealing with Rachel's death weren't enough— " Some of the fierceness went out of his expression, and he ran a hand through his gray hair, as if he were suddenly tired. "Susanna, Susanna… you don't believe I killed my wife."
Her instincts—her fear—told her not to make a move for the knife rack or do anything that might provoke him to violence. He had size and position on her. The smartest course of action was to get rid of him as fast as she could.
She remembered what she told her clients about money. Listen to your fear. Your fear can protect you if you let it.
"I'll talk to Jack. I promise."
McGarrity smiled in approval, perhaps a touch of relief. "I know I must sound desperate. There's no need for your husband to know I was here." His tone was controlled now, self-assured, that of a man convinced of his rightful place in the world. "Do you understand?"
She nodded. "I do."
He stood back on his heels, watching her through half-closed eyes. He said casually, as if it were a non sequitur, "Your daughters finish up play practice in ten minutes."
Susanna stopped breathing. He knew their schedules. He knew where they were.
Beau McGarrity touched her then, a feathery brush across her chin. "You should be running along to pick them up. You're a good mother. That's what good mothers do. I know," he added, "I've seen you."
He slipped out the patio door, and Susanna popped the DAT out of the recorder, her hands shaking. She was reaching for the phone to call Jack when a police officer knocked on her front door.
Alice Parker. She introduced herself as the officer working on Rachel McGarrity's murder and asked if Jack was there.
Susanna told her about Beau McGarrity and gave her the tape.
Then Maggie and Ellen came home, and Susanna didn't tell them anything. She decided to wait for Jack, but he came home late, short-tempered and obviously distressed. Alice Parker had been arrested for witness tampering. She'd screwed up the crime scene. The Rachel McGarrity murder investigation was a mess. There wasn't a damn thing anyone could do about it now. His role in the whole business was over.
When he didn't mention the tape, Susanna assumed it was worthless. Alice Parker wanted to nail Beau Mc-Garrity for murder to the point of fabricating a witness. If there'd been anything on that tape they could have used against Beau, surely she'd have given it to Jack, at least to prove to the world McGarrity was a threat and she wasn't so awful for having tried to make sure he was caught for his wife's murder.
Not that anyone would have believed anything, coming from a corrupt police officer.
With or without the tape, prosecutors wouldn't have touched Susanna's tale of possible stalking and veiled threats. A good defense lawyer would say it only proved Beau McGarrity had been so upset by Alice Parker's conduct that he'd inadvertently scared the hell out of the wife of a Texas Ranger.
Even if Susanna couldn't prove it, Beau McGarrity had followed her twice. He'd walked into her kitchen.
She didn't know what Jack would do if he found out. He was a professional, but his work had never come this close to his family.
She'd never felt so completely paralyzed.
It was simpler to say nothing. Simpler for him, as well, that she did nothing. So, that was what she did. And for that and a thousand other reasons that seemed to make sense at the time, she'd packed up and joined her daughters heading north.
A few weeks to clear her head had turned into months, and now she'd bought a cabin in the mountains.
But it was beautiful here, she thought. Stunning and invigorating, and she meant to enjoy her week here. With any luck, Alice Parker had cleared out and last night was just an innocent mistake, Jack stumbling across a burglar or one of Iris's legion of friends.
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