by Wendy Haley
She couldn’t believe how much this hurt. She’d thought herself prepared for anything he might say or do. But this... It would have been less painful if he’d struck her. And still she wanted him, desperately, and it wouldn’t take much to make her forget all about saving herself again.
That was when she broke. Tears welled up in a stinging flood that she couldn’t control, and she turned her face toward the back of the sofa in an attempt to hide them. But he drew his breath in sharply, and she knew he’d seen.
“Rae,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder.
She jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me.”
At another time, Gabriel would have walked out. But she sounded so lost, so hurt, that his heart contracted with pain. With a muttered exclamation, he pulled her up into his arms.
Rae might have been able to stop crying if he hadn’t touched her. But now, all the heartache, all the confusion and anger and love, came pouring out in a wild torrent, and she cried like she’d never cried before.
Gabriel had never heard anyone cry like this, great, jagged sobs that sounded as though they hurt coming out. But then, Rae was not the kind of woman who cried easily. Or at all. She’d needed to be tough and hard and self-sufficient, and he knew she’d think of tears as weakness. Whatever emotion had opened these floodgates was a very powerful one. And he wondered. He wondered.
He stroked her hair, almost overwhelmed by a great surge of tenderness that swelled his heart almost to bursting. “That’s all right,” he murmured, burying his face in the hair at her temple. “Let it all out, sweetheart.”
Rae couldn’t stand it any longer. Tearing free of his arms, she fled the office. She, Rae Ann Boudreau, who had never run from anything in her life, couldn’t get away fast enough.
For once, Gabriel didn’t follow. Stunned by what had happened, he sat watching the door slowly swing shut.
He’d seen the real Rae. Stripped bare to her soul, scoured shiny and pure by tears, she had shown all of herself to him. And she was exactly what she’d presented herself to be. There was no subterfuge in her, nothing dishonest.
She had taken four strangers into her home, befriended them, gave them a chance for a new life. There had been no possible motive for gain. There had been no reason for her to take the Smithfield case at all, let alone pursue it with such determination and at such cost, except to help Barbara and the kids.
He’d been surrounded by cons and players so long that he’d lost sight of what was real. And cynicism was a poor ruler by which to measure truth.
Rae hadn’t called his captain and cried harassment. She hadn’t hounded her ex-husband off the force. This woman was a stand-up, in-your-face fighter. She’d never play it underhanded. And Gabriel had come to that belief without any evidence except that which he saw in her eyes. He needed nothing more than that.
Gabriel MacLaren had found his faith. He’d found it in a beautiful, passionate, infuriating woman named Rae Boudreau. But it wasn’t enough that he knew this.
Somehow, he had to convince Rae, for he knew she’d accept nothing less.
Rae’s doorbell rang at seven the next morning.
She sat up, tumbling the puppy off her thighs as she reached for her pistol. “Barbara?” she called. “Don’t open it if you—”
“Don’t know who it is,” the other woman called back. “It’s all right, Rae.”
With a sigh, Rae snuggled down into the covers. Tom the Dog hurled himself at her, all yips and eagerness and wet, slapping tongue. “Okay, okay,” she said, trying vainly to fend him off.
She got up. The moment she opened the bedroom door, Tom raced out. She could hear his claws skid madly as he hit the wood floor in the living room. With a yawn, she) scrubbed at her sleep-tousled hair with both hands.
It hadn’t been a good night. She should have gone back to the office, to a bar, anywhere but here, where she’d had to spend her night dreaming about Gabriel MacLaren.
“Get over it, Boudreau,” she muttered.
She took her usual scalding, ten-minute shower, then pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversize cotton shirt in a scandalous shade of orange. Just buying it had been an act of defiance; wearing it was a sartorial raspberry to anyone who saw it. She wished she’d had the foresight to buy lipstick the same shade. Then, armed and armored against the world, she walked out of the bedroom.
Gabriel MacLaren sat at her kitchen table. Sarah had dragged a chair close beside his, and was chattering away while he worked on a plate of eggs and sausage. Mike and Joey worshipfully imitated his every gesture.
Gabriel glanced up at her. Their gazes locked, hers reluctant, his so intense she thought it might burn her. And her heart, treacherous thing that it was, banged against her ribs.
“Good morning,” he said.
Rae would have liked to say a lot of things, none of which had anything to do with morning, good or not. But not in front of the kids. She looked at Barbara, who was busily breaking eggs into a cast-iron skillet. The blond woman shot her a glance out of the corner of her eye, and her face bore an unmistakable I-know-better-than-you expression.
No, you don’t, Rae thought. “Morning,” she said.
She grumped over to the table, feeling very antisocial. In fact, she was feeling a definite urge to stick a fork somewhere in Gabriel’s anatomy, preferably somewhere sensitive. The thought must have showed in her face, for he gave her one of his sharp-edged cynical smiles.
“Give me a kiss, Rae,” Sarah said.
With real affection, Rae bent and kissed the little girl’s cheek. Then she looked at the boys. “You, too?”
Their eyes widened in alarm. “Uh-uh,” Joey said. “I’m not kissing any girls.”
Gabriel laughed, and the deep, smoky male sound seemed to fill the room. “I’ve got news for you, fellas. The day will come when you’ll beg to kiss girls.”
“No way!” Mike exclaimed.
Apparently driven from the room by sheer horror, they retreated into the living room to watch TV. Lured by the sound, Sarah slid out of her chair and went to join her brothers.
Rae pinned Gabriel with her best withering stare. “If you speak to me again, I’ll become violent,” she whispered, her voice no less intense for its lack of volume.
“Become as violent as you please,” he replied. “Because I intend for us to have a nice, long talk.”
“You—”
“Be nice, Rae,” Barbara said, setting a plate before her.
Rae stared down at her food. The sunny-side-up eggs stared back at her as though mocking her helplessness to do anything about MacLaren. She could no more have eaten them than she could have cut her own throat. With a hiss of frustration, she pushed the plate away and got to her feet.
“Let’s get this over with,” she snapped.
Gabriel rose with lazy grace. “Fine by me.”
Turning toward Barbara, Rae said, “I’m sorry about the food. I just can’t eat this morning.”
“I understand,” the other woman said. Adding in an undertone, “I just hope you do.”
Rae shot her a glare. Barbara met it blandly, and smiled. MacLaren called goodbye to the kids, then turned toward the door. There was nothing for Rae to do but grab her purse and follow him.
The ride to her office passed in frosty silence. Icily polite, Rae stepped into the elevator and waited until he joined her. When the doors closed, she turned to look at him.
“I’d rather have my teeth extracted than spend the day in close quarters with you,” she said.
He didn’t even frown. “Whether you want to or not, we need to talk. No quarreling this time, no competition, no games. Just talk. You and me.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little late for talking? she asked.
“It’s never too late,” he replied. “As long as two people care about each other.”
Startled, Rae stared at him. Then the elevator doors opened, forestalling any reply. She walked down the hall to her office, overly aware of hi
m striding beside her like some great jungle cat. His eyes were closed and blank, showing nothing of what might be going on behind them. And still ... there was an air about him, a tense sort of anticipation that sent her nerves twanging crazily.
Her hand shook just a little as she fitted the key into the lock. He laid his hand over hers, steadying it.
Then he smiled, a tender, infinitely possessive smile that completely paralyzed her brain, and pushed the door open. With an effort of will that left her shaking, Rae managed to disengage from those blue crystal eyes and turn toward her office.
And found herself looking into chaos.
Chapter 16
Rae stared openmouthed at the wreck someone had made of her office. All the papers had been dumped out of the file cabinets and lay in drifts on the floor. The drawers of her desk hung open, and the sofa cushions were disemboweled. Worst of all, her diskette storage boxes lay open and empty on the floor.
MacLaren pulled a gun from his back waistband and moved into the room ahead of her. She followed, her feet slithering on what had once been her well-organized files. Outrage shot through her with every beat of her heart. How dare they!
“Looks like somebody thought we were getting too close,” she said.
“Yeah.” Satisfied that the room was safe, Gabriel returned his pistol to its hiding place.
“I thought they made you turn in your gun,” Rae said.
“They made me turn in a gun,” he replied.
Rae went to her computer and tried to boot it up. Instead of going through the usual run-through, however, the screen brought up a “No operating system found” message. She let out a cry of sheer rage and frustration.
MacLaren drew his pistol again. “What’s the matter?”
“They slicked my drive!”
“I don’t know what slicking a drive is,” Gabriel said. “But if I were them, I’d erase everything you had.”
“Bingo, Detective. Everything we did yesterday is gone.”
“We still have the printouts you made for me,” he said.
“Well, okay.” She slapped her palm down on the desk. “But they wiped my case files, three years of business records—”
“Are you going to let that stop you?” he asked.
Slowly, Rae turned around to look at him. His eyes held the same outrage she felt, but there was also a light of challenge that appealed to that stubborn part of her that had sustained her through greater losses than this.
“They don’t have enough men, money or intimidation to stop me,” she said.
Looking into Gabriel’s reckless eyes, she knew he felt the same. Their gazes lingered for a long moment. Then she righted her chair and sat down in front of the computer.
Gabriel came to stand beside her. He looked tough and hard and infinitely capable, and made her pulse leap. They might fight each other bitterly, but now, when it really mattered, they’d stand side by side against a common enemy.
That knowledge sent a thrill racing through her. She didn’t know what to do about it, or whether the feeling would last once the crisis was over. But it felt good to have a partner.
“Unless they defragged the drive after wiping it, I can retrieve the information,” she said. “The only problem is that reinstalling DOS will mess up my files. But I can pull this drive out, put a new one in, then designate the old drive as something else.” She tapped her fingertips on the arm of the chair, then glanced up at him. “There’s a computer store right next to Mr. Fedderman’s flower shop. Do you remember Mr. Fedderman?”
“How could I forget? He gave you that blue-eyed dog.” But Gabriel remembered the florist because of that stunning portrait Rae had made with her face framed in blossoms. “Let me guess. You want me to buy a hard drive.”
She took her wallet out of her purse and handed him her credit card. “I’ve been wanting one of those 2-gig hard drives for a while. When this is all over, I might even thank those bozos for making me take the plunge.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what a gig is,” he said. “But this is going to be my treat.”
She raised her brows. “Most guys think a treat is taking a girl out for ice cream.”
“I’m paying,” he said. “This—” he waved at the trashed office “—is my fault.”
“Sure, it is,” she agreed, enjoying the look of shock that crossed his face in the wake of her statement. “After all, you came here and forced me to take the Smithfield case.”
“Oh,” he said, “I get it now. Sarcasm.”
“I pay my own way, MacLaren.”
“So take me to lunch sometime.”
He tossed her credit card like a Frisbee, dropping it right into her lap. Before she could say anything else, he walked out, leaving her with no one to argue with.
“Men,” she muttered.
She walked to the office next door. Harry Stryzinski, financial adviser. Rae had never quite understood exactly what Harry did, but she knew he did it with other people’s money. A real shark, was Harry. Since she never had money to invest, she and Harry had reached a sort of nonaggression treaty, and he never failed to give her a box of chocolates at Christmas.
The secretary looked up as Rae walked in. “Morning, Rae.”
“Morning, Charlene. I’ve got a problem.”
Charlene’s dark eyes widened. “I know a good doctor—”
“No!” Rae held her hands up in a warding-off gesture. “I need to borrow some software.”
“Oh, is that all? Darn. I thought you might actually give me some excitement for a change. And all you came here for was something for your computer. Go figure.”
“You still have Microsoft Undelete, don’t you?” Rae asked, hastily sorting through Charlene’s comments for something that could be safely answered.
“Of course. You know how many times Harry pushes the wrong button,” Charlene said, handing over a large diskettestorage case. “Have fun. God knows this is the least we can do after you debugged that virus for us last year.”
“Thanks, Charlene. I appreciate it.”
Rae went back to her office. She couldn’t do anything with the computer until Gabriel got back, so she started cleaning up the mess. Computer tools being a priority just now, she first got her desk in order. Then she started on the scattered papers.
“Whoever you are, I hope I get to take this out of your hide,” she muttered.
She was on her hands and knees when Gabriel came back in. Her back was to him, so he had plenty of time to admire the view. Those jeans were just a bit on the tight side, and lovingly showed off the enticing curve of her derriere.
Then she leaned forward to retrieve a paper that had slid partway under the sofa, and Gabriel nearly dropped the box he was carrying. His imagination took over, painting her absolutely, stunningly naked.
Ah, what a sight that would be.
He took a step toward her, drawn by a need too powerful to resist. Papers crackled underfoot. She jumped to her feet, turning toward him in the same startled motion.
“Hi,” he said.
Rae looked him up and down. He held a large manila envelope in one hand, and in the other, an enormous bouquet of flowers. Roses. Suddenly, she remembered what Mr. Fedderman said about roses being the thing to buy if a man got himself into real trouble. Oh, no. He wanted to be forgiven.
“Forget it,” she said. “There aren’t enough roses in the world to buy you that.”
“Of course there are,” he replied. “Mr. Fedderman guaranteed this method. Although I can’t figure out why he wouldn’t sell me a plant for you. There was this really neat hanging basket—”
“I kill them.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“I’m the kiss of death for anything green,” she said.
“These are red,” he argued.
“Semantics.”
He smiled. “No, roses.”
Her gaze faltered and fell. Then her expression changed completely. “My drive!” she cried, pouncing.
Look at this,“ she crowed, cradling the drive in both hands. ”Two gig. And with my other drive as storage backup, I’ve got so much room I won’t know what to do with it.“
Chuckling, Gabriel tossed the roses on the desk. Rae was something else, he thought in mingled rue and admiration. Other women got excited about flowers or diamonds or real estate, but what popped Rae’s cork? Gigs.
She’d already dived into the computer’s innards. “Here, hold this,” she said, extracting the old disk drive and plopping it into his hands.
He watched as she installed the new drive. “Hey, they’re just components. Slide them in and out, and you’re done.”
“Dead on, Officer,” she said, glancing up. “Once this is installed, I’m going to designate it as drive C, and the old drive as D. Then I’ll install my DOS operating system and reload my programs. There are several that can retrieve erased information.”
“Right. But the most pressing thing now is to trace our gambling buddies.”
She nodded. “Did you call Folsom?”
“Yeah. The sheriff there didn’t think a lot of Dietrick. The term he used was, ‘shyster.’ Seems Dietrick isn’t a homegrown fella, moved there about five years ago. He doesn’t seem to have much of a local practice.”
“Aha.”
“‘Aha’ is right.”
Gabriel sat down on the sofa to start on the printouts, and Rae turned back to the computer. Within a half hour, she’d loaded the programs she needed into the new drive. Once she got her computer to recognize all its innards again, she went on-line.
“Did you get anything from that printout?” she asked.
He nodded. “As far as I can tell, Elliston Enterprises is running as an umbrella for five different corporations. But in the past four months, three other corporations passed out of Elliston’s hands, either through bankruptcy or being sold.”
“Names?” Rae asked.
“Twylie, Inc., E & L Corporation, Krueger Realty—” He broke off as revelation hit, and saw Rae swivel in her chair to look at him with surprise in her eyes.