Dangerous Attraction

by Susan Vaughan

  “The Rêve de coeur. It means ‘heart’s dream’ or ‘heart’s desire.’ And I’ll take you to the boatyard once we’ve talked.”

  “I said before that I work alone.” A fierce scowl drawing his brows together, he spoke in a rumbling timbre that slid up her spine. “It’s bad policy to take clients along on an investigation.”

  She cleared her throat, both to shake his strange effect on her and to ready herself for combat. She folded her arms. “I understand that, but I insist.”

  “In your case, I see why you’re anxious, and there seems to be little danger.”

  “So why can’t—”

  He held up a hand. “Here’s the deal. You can come along, but I’m in charge. I conduct the interviews, backgrounders, searches, whatever. You observe, take notes if you want, but keep your mouth shut.”

  Shocked that he didn’t challenge her escort further, she found no words, merely inclined her head in acknowledgment. He didn’t seem like a man who’d yield easily, who’d give in at all, but she wouldn’t question his about-face now.

  A skimming glance took in his dark blue corduroys and knit shirt. The open collar revealed a smattering of tautly curled hairs, as crisp as the man himself.

  She felt his penetrating gray eyes on her, and the warmth of unwanted awareness feathered through her. She gestured toward the living room. “You might as well call me Claire. Have a seat. If you like, I’ll go make us some coffee.”

  “Please. Coffee would be good.” One side of his mouth quirked, but the flinty eyes showed no humor.

  “We’ll need wood for the stove. I haven’t used the living room this morning.”

  Rather than question his attitude, Claire hurried from the room. In the refuge of her kitchen she could regroup her defenses against this man.

  “I’ll carry the wood,” Quinn said from behind her.

  She stifled a gasp, not wanting to appear startled.

  His demeanor was pleasant, but his gaze surveyed every detail of the modern renovations—custom mahogany cabinets in a Victorian style, Corian-and-granite countertops, European appliances, her display of French tin dessert molds that had replaced the original oil painting Paul had hung.

  Did Quinn intend to snoop all through her house? And through her life? Is that why he consented to her working with him? She shook off her suspicions. Since the phone calls began, she saw bogeymen everywhere.

  After a low whistle, he said, “Mighty fancy kitchen.”

  “Paul insisted.” She fisted her hands at her side. How could she protect herself against his compelling presence if he invaded her space like this? “I believe I invited you into the living room, not my kitchen.”

  “Pull in your stinger…Claire. I’m not out to get you. This is just a job. Since you insist on our working together, we might as well be cordial. Is the woodpile out here?” A grim set to his mouth, he stalked to the back door.

  With a sigh, she nodded. “I’ll show you.” She stepped into her lined boots and led the way through the small covered back porch and down the steps into the snow-blanketed yard.

  No new snow had fallen, but the leaden clouds and the cold remained. Unusual in southern Maine, snow this early in December, perhaps a harbinger of the winter. Plenty of snow for the ski areas.

  A shiver skittered over Claire’s arms. After last winter’s tragedy, she wasn’t sure she’d ever ski again.

  A spate of happy yips greeted them. Bright-eyed and curious, Alley pranced up to her mistress. She diligently sniffed Quinn’s shoes and trouser legs, then sat and offered him a canine smile.

  The severe line of Quinn’s mouth softened, and he knelt. “Yo, pup, you’re a friendly one. What’s your name?”

  Her small head seemed swallowed by the surprisingly gentle caress of his wide hand.

  Irrationally, an image of that blunt-fingered, square hand on her breast flashed into Claire’s mind. She blinked it away and wondered how his hands—along with all the rest of him—became so muscular. Not a question she could ask him.

  Alley always barked and growled at newcomers, especially men. Claire counted on her pet’s protective nature to intimidate Quinn, to distance him. Quelle blague, what a joke. She turned away so Quinn wouldn’t see her disgruntled amazement.

  “Her name’s Alley,” Claire said, willing indifference to Quinn’s liking her dog—and vice versa. “I thought we were out here for firewood. It’s over here.”

  Behind the porch, cordwood towered in three even rows, the first as high as Claire’s head. Trying to ignore him, she grabbed two logs.

  Inexplicably, he pounded on the middle of the first row. “This one’s about to topple,” he said. “It’s way too high for such a narrow pile. I suppose that old man stacked these.”

  His critical tone pricked her temper. She’d stacked them herself, even if Quinn thought she’d imposed on old Elisha. There weren’t enough logs for a fourth stack, so she’d piled it high.

  “It’s not as precarious as you think.” She slammed another log atop her load.

  “Here,” he said, relieving her of her burden, “I can carry a lot more than you. Heap me up.”

  She didn’t want to hand him the logs, to be that close to him, to feel the heat of his large body, to risk brushing against his hard form. But he was right. He could carry more. It made sense.

  When she complied, he continued, “Nice dog. What happened to her leg?”

  “Someone took her to the animal shelter, her left hind leg badly mangled. I don’t know where she’d come from, but they found her in a back alley. Must have nursed her wound for days, poor thing. The vet had to amputate.” She deposited one final log atop the pyramid in his massive arms. “There, that’s enough.”

  He followed her into the house. “They found her in an alley, so you named her that?”

  “It seemed appropriate.” He was the first person to understand that small fact. Others thought the name some French derivation.

  Claire closed the door behind him, then slipped out of her boots. She placed them in a boot tray beside the door.

  “Do you still want coffee?” she said, not meeting his gaze.

  “I do. I’ll build the fire,” Quinn said as he carried his towering load toward the living room.

  Busying herself with the grinder and the drip coffeemaker, she tried to suppress her awareness—heat suffusing her blood, heart hammering. She’d buried all that, hadn’t she?

  But her insides softened to pudding at the sight of Quinn’s broad shoulders and rugged face.

  Mon Dieu, not him, of all people.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  At the rumble of his deep voice close behind, Claire bobbled the two coffee mugs she was removing from a high shelf.

  Instantly, his arms surrounded her. Quinn caught one mug, and she the other.

  “You sure spook easy,” he said. Remaining with his arms caging her, he set the cup on the granite counter.

  “I’m not accustomed to having people sneak up on me,” she said between gritted teeth. She pivoted to face him.

  His glower matching hers, his sandy brows beetled.

  Glaring at him was both easy and difficult because he didn’t budge. Arms as hard and thick as marble pillars still bracketed her. His wide torso, oozing heat and power from every pore, blocked her.

  She smelled the fresh scent of his soap. If she advanced a millimeter, her breasts would brush the solid contours of his broad chest. Before she was tempted to do that or more, she leaned against the counter’s sharp edge.

  “Did you really come out here to offer help?” she said. “Or did you think I’d dump arsenic in the cream?”

  “Isn’t it only husbands and fiancés you kill?”

  In her overactive imagination, his hard arms closed in on her like walls. Her heart tripped on itself at the pure sexual current flowing through her.

  Eh bien, nothing pure about it.

  “No cream,” he continued in that deep, mesmerizing voice, “just sugar,
but maybe you make coffee the French way. What is it—café something?”

  “Café au lait.”

  His gray eyes gleamed with light, lasers that seemed to see inside her. If so, he knew how his nearness affected her.

  “You’re in my way. The coffee’s ready.” She tipped her head toward the coffeemaker.

  With a mocking nod, Quinn sidestepped as if opening a door.

  With what dignity she could muster, Claire swept across the room. She poured the steaming brew, then placed the mugs on a silver tray aligned with the cream and sugar.

  “Look,” Quinn said, “scrap all the fuss. This is no tea party.” Before she could lift the tray to carry it to the other room, he snatched a mug, dumped sugar in it and stirred it briskly. Risking a scalded mouth, he gulped a third of the steaming brew.

  Three spoons of sugar. A sweet tooth in such a disciplined man surprised and amused her. Maybe for quick energy on those midnight stakeouts to catch philandering husbands. Or murderers.

  She sipped her coffee halfheartedly, no longer wanting it. Suddenly she didn’t want to be cooped up with this man in a cozy living room. “Suppose we drive to the harbor while we talk?” she said.

  “Suits me,” he said immediately. He downed the remainder of his coffee. “I haven’t lit the fire yet. Let’s go.”

  Before she could reply, he marched to the hall for his parka.

  He agreed so quickly; did he need space, too? Not that a moving vehicle meant space. She was probably imagining it, she told herself as she donned her own coat and boots.

  When the telephone rang, she ignored it and locked the door behind her.

  “You have an answering machine to get that?” Quinn asked from the walkway.

  “No, they’ll call back if it’s important.” If it was a real call. She wanted to know Quinn better before she told him about the calls, two more since his first visit.

  Once outside in the crisp air, Michael’s control returned. Waiting in the drive, he watched his employer stroll toward him. It wasn’t the kitchen’s roasted coffee aroma that had him salivating like a starving man outside a bakery shop window, but the languid sway of the widow’s hips in that slinky black skirt that molded to every curve.

  He’d used his offers of help as an excuse for scoping out more of this showplace house. Then when he’d snatched the falling coffee mug, he couldn’t move away from her. From her herbal scent. From her soft curves enticingly detailed in a fluffy black sweater—close enough to touch. From her dark, fathomless eyes, wide with awareness—or maybe fear.

  Why the hell would she be afraid of him? Damn! Was it that easy? Is that how she sucked in those other men? Not him. It was only a fleeting impulse. What he’d needed was that coffee. Hot and strong.

  His assignment was to learn as much about her as he could, but that compromised his personal goal of maintaining distance. Hell of a situation.

  He tore his gaze from her. Decked in the reds and greens of the season, two-story Victorian and colonial homes sat solidly on both sides of the street. Across the street, a tan Volvo rolled into the driveway of a stately colonial. A fur-covered woman slid out, eyed Michael and Claire with tight-lipped disapproval, then dashed into the house without a backward glance.

  Claire made her careful way toward him down the icy walk. A long black quilted coat hid her curves, to Michael’s relief and regret. Did she wear nothing but unrelieved black? Black slacks, black sweater, black skirt. Widow’s weeds or camouflage?

  Her serene gaze straight ahead, Claire revealed her tension at the woman’s shunning only in her tight grip on her small black leather purse. Michael would bet the knuckles hidden beneath her leather gloves were bone white. A pariah in her own neighborhood.

  He didn’t like the twinge that idea gave his heart. No emotional involvement, he reminded himself. He couldn’t handle it or the tragedy it might lead to. His cop’s brain called that faulty logic, but, damn, it was how he felt.

  Besides interfering with his methods, having her accompany him every step of the investigation would damn near tie him in knots. Cruz said that, for some unfathomable reason, the chief insisted he comply with her request. Not only had he stepped into the widow’s web, now he was going to wrap himself in its sticky strands.

  After holding the door for Claire, he eased into his seat, started the ignition and backed out of the driveway.

  “The police reports said the wind came up while your second husband was out on the Rêve de…de, on the Rêve,” he said. Keeping the conversation on the case would maintain distance. “How savvy was Paul on the bay?”

  His peripheral vision caught her nod.

  “He grew up lobstering with his dad,” she said. “Once he bought the Rêve, he went fishing when he wasn’t using it for business. Paul knew these waters as well as anyone.”

  “Did you ever go with him?” What he really wanted to ask was more intimate. Like if she’d loved him…or Jonathan. But was it a question for the case or for him? Dumb to think driving in a closed vehicle would distance him from this dangerously tempting female. “Where were you that day?”

  “What you mean is, what’s my alibi.” A now familiar acerbity tinged her voice. “I hardly ever went out with him. And that day in August, I was in South Portland, at the university library.” Her laugh rang as bitter as her words. “No one can vouch for me. I spent the day in the reference room. Didn’t check out a book or ask for help.”

  Before he could inquire why she was at the university, she said, “Here’s the harbor. Drive down the hill and turn left. There, the red metal building to your left. That’s Greavey’s Boatyard. The Rêve’s stored in there.”

  He turned into a slush-covered gravel parking lot and stopped. The day’s damp cold hung over Weymouth Cove in a veil of fine mist. No pleasure craft and only a few fishing boats sat at their moorings.

  Claire led the way across the treacherously sloppy expanse to a door in the lower side of the massive storage shed. A man stood at the window of a small office wing attached to the larger building. She glanced toward the man, who nodded in acknowledgment.

  Inside the metal building, the air seemed colder, damper, sharp to the nose. One wall contained open slots, like giant mailboxes, for smaller outboards. Larger sail and power craft, like the Rêve, stood around the cement floor propped up on metal stands or on boat trailers. At the far end of the cavernous structure whined a power sander.

  “They don’t mind owners going in,” Claire said. “Some are in here all winter working on their boats.”

  “Not you?”

  He’d thought the boat was still in the water. If the widow were involved with the drug smuggling, she sure wasn’t using the Rêve in that effort. There it sat, high and dry, propped securely on a framework.

  “I hardly ever use it. In the spring, I’ll probably sell her.” Claire hugged herself against the cold.

  Scanning its equipment and lines, Michael circled the sleek power yacht. It occupied most of one corner of the building. His only experience with boats came from Boston’s commercial shipping, not luxury craft, yet he recognized quality when he saw it. The Rêve was forty feet of aerodynamic fiberglass, its superstructure bristly with the latest electronic gadgets.

  Was the sonar for locating fish or for skirting the Coast Guard to meet smugglers with bales of marijuana and bindles of crack cocaine?

  “You can climb aboard,” Claire said in an oddly mechanical voice. “There’s a ladder against the wall.”

  Is it painful for you to be here? Did you love him? Or was the strain in her voice because she’d killed him?

  Michael said, “The file reported the prop was tangled in fishing line. His skiff must have overturned in the choppy waves when he tried to free it.”

  “Yes.” She came to stand beside him at the stern. “A scallop dragger found the boat farther out in Casco Bay than he usually went. Beyond the islands. Just drifting.”

  “And Santerre?”

  “The skiff turned up a we
ek later on the north shore of Great Chebeague Island. Paul’s body, or what was left of him, was jammed beneath the wreckage.” Her eyes looked as bleak as a winter sea, and just as mysterious.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said, and suddenly headed to the exit.

  Michael adjusted the wooden ladder against the boat’s hull and climbed up. A few minutes’ superficial search turned up nothing except assorted compartments and bilge areas where contraband could have been stowed. He’d have to return with an evidence kit and without his “partner.”

  Outside, he found Claire at the dock gazing at a lobster boat and its entourage of squabbling seagulls. The scent of her herbal shampoo mingled with the tang of salt spray and seaweed.

  Stick to business.

  “Tell me about Santerre,” he said. “How did you meet?”

  She flicked a sharp glance at him. “You’ve spent three days studying the police files, and you have to ask me that?”

  He sighed and ran a hand over his hair. “Come on, Claire, the files aren’t exactly a complete biography.”

  Her Gallic shrug, a lift of one shoulder accompanied by a sultry moue, expressed reluctant acquiescence. “Jonathan and Paul were best friends and roommates at Yale. I met both when they came home for Christmas their senior year.” Claire made no effort to continue.

  A little irritation might loosen her tongue. “Jonathan was your cousin’s stepson. Conveniently intimate, living under the same roof. Babe, seeing you traipse around in a negligee would jump-start any romance.”

  The image of her tousled and warm from sleep hardened him instantly. Damn.

  “Espèce de— damn you, Quinn,” she bit out. She turned on him, fiery flecks burning in the depths of her dark eyes. “Don’t make it into something sleazy.”

  He’d pushed her buttons for sure. Most of the time she spoke flawless English, albeit with a sexy Acadian lilt and some trouble with th, but emotion popped French phrases from her mouth.

  “Then you tell it. Don’t leave me room to infer.” To keep from reaching for her, he stuffed his hands in his pockets.