Compromising Positions

by Beverly Bird

  He hung up and heard a noise behind him. Angela stepped into the office.

  “What the hell have you done?” he asked with deadly calm, oblivious to the others in the room.

  Angela stopped short. She felt the anger coming off him in waves. What had happened?

  She cried out when he caught her elbow and propelled her back out of the office. All her panic and inherent fear came alive again, clawing and wild. She hurried to keep pace with him as he headed out the nearest exit, the one provided by the rear bay doors, but as soon as they were outside and alone, she wrenched away from him, breathing hard.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

  “Why couldn’t you just have trusted me on this?” he snarled. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”

  Chapter 10

  Angela gaped at him. Then she leaned weakly against the van to watch him. He paced with exaggerated care, every turn one of angry masculine grace. He was tense...dangerous.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s take everything personal out of this for the time being.”

  She found herself remembering the way he had kissed her only that morning, of how treacherously important it had been to her to go home and find that tape-splicing device, that no one had tipped the cops off that it was in her possession. And she did not think she would ever look at this man without thinking personal thoughts again.

  “We won’t call it trust,” he went on. “We’ll call it cooperation . You took that machine to Homicide! Don’t you think I had a right to know what you were up to?”

  “Oh.” Her breath caught. Word certainly traveled fast.

  He stopped pacing to look at her. “Did it ever occur to you to consult with me first? Did it ever occur to you that I might have thought of a better way to handle it?”

  “Then you should have told me!” she snapped, getting angry, as well.

  “I might have if you had bothered to call me back!”

  “Bothered? Bothered? I tried twice!”

  “I was trying to corner Alvin Carper!” he roared. Then he added more quietly, “I was in and out. I just kept missing your calls.”

  She flinched back. He shoved his hands into his pockets as though to keep himself from grabbing her. He swore colorfully enough to make even her blush.

  “I’m sure your constituents in the gutter would be very pleased to know you can speak their lingo,” she said shakily.

  His eyes narrowed. “I wish you’d thought about my constituents half an hour ago.”

  “They have nothing to do with this.”

  “They have everything to do with this!”

  Then she understood, and her jaw dropped. “You think I took that splicer in to deliberately muddy your chances for re-election? And you’re complaining that / don’t trust you?”

  “I don’t think you thought of my re-election at all.”

  It was true enough that she winced uncomfortably. “I don’t see what one has to do with the other. It was found in my house—”

  “Planted there while I was having dinner with you.”

  “That doesn’t implicate you!” she protested.

  “The tape was of my voice! This involves me. Angela. In a highly detrimental way. When it gets out, when the press gets wind of it, my opponent is going to have a field day!”

  “I thought you were running unchallenged,” she managed weakly. Her mind was racing.

  “Not unchallenged. Someone else will run. The Republicans will come up with somebody. The party won’t just lie down and die. But that’s just the D.A. thing. It’s the mayoral race that worries me. They’ll be digging up every scrap of dirt on me then that they can find. And until half an hour ago, I didn’t have any.”

  Angela paled. “But—”

  “But nothing,” he growled again, then raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve got to get back to the office. I’ve got to do damage control.”

  “I don’t know how to play these games,” she whispered wretchedly. “Double-checking my every move to see how the public might take it.”

  “Well, you’d damned well better learn, lady.”

  “Why?”

  Because you’re going to be traveling beside me for a while. The thought stopped him cold. He just barely prevented the words from spilling out.

  She wasn’t a politically proper, drape-over-your-arm kind of woman. That hadn’t changed, but he kept finding it harder to remember. He wanted her. He enjoyed her. She made everything feel different, vibrant, alive.

  “You can’t hide in your morgue forever,” he said finally, awkwardly. “Whether you like it or not, your job is political, too.”

  “I’m hired, not elected.”

  “You were hired by the city politics. And at some point, staying hired is going to require kissing somebody’s backside.” He couldn’t fathom why this was making him so angry all over again.

  Angela shook her head dazedly. “Why are we even talking about this?”

  One corner of his mouth crooked suddenly into a tired smile. He shrugged. “It took my mind off the splicer,” he confessed.

  She watched him. He actually seemed...overwhelmed. And suddenly, her heart went out to him. No matter that he was a Hadley. No matter that his uncle and a man very much like him had destroyed her faith, her heart, her self-esteem. The man standing before her now, looking at the traffic moving by, was a man who might have his future political career snatched away from him through no fault of his own.

  The fault was all hers, though she hadn’t invited it upon herself. Her heart cracked. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t have tried to...to deliberately sabotage you for anything.”

  Something about the admission, her voice, rocked him inside.

  “But we had to do something with that device,” she pleaded.

  Jesse exhaled. He did it deliberately so that nothing would show on his face.

  We had to do something? It was the first time she had said “we,” and that did something to him, too. In spite of the fact that he had more trouble on his hands now than ever, something warm swelled inside.

  “I was going to log the thing into my office personally,” he said at length. “With all the proper paperwork. Nice and legal and aboveboard. I could have had it checked for fingerprints through my office. Homicide would eventually have to be informed of it, but it might have bought us just a little more time.”

  Angela covered her face with her hands. “I never thought of that.

  “I was terrified to just leave it sitting there, incriminating me. I mean, if someone told the cops it was there, and they went and found it, and I hadn’t mentioned having it...” She trailed off, overwhelmed. “It would have looked so bad for me. I was just trying to protect myself.”

  She was back to “I” again.

  “Ah, Angela.” He moved to her and hooked an arm around her neck, pulling her toward him. She stiffened, but he’d known she would. He waited for her to pull back, but she didn’t. She trembled and remained rigid. “I can’t make you trust me,” he murmured.

  “I want to.” And it was true. She wished she could. Suddenly, she wished it desperately. She wondered what it would be like to believe totally in another human being, to never doubt him, to know that she wasn’t alone.

  “And you won’t tell me why you can’t,” Jesse said.

  This time, she did pull away from him. She took a deliberate step in retreat. “This isn’t the time.”

  No, he realized, it probably wasn’t. At least a small portion of him was worried that at any given moment another city van would drive up, disgorging contents he didn’t really want to see.

  “I’ll call Kennery back.” he said finally. “I’ll give him more of an explanation. He can be trusted as much as anyone can right now. I think he’ll probably be willing to sit on this, too. It’ll be fine as long as the press doesn’t get wind of it before we’ve gotten to the bottom of what’s going on, although the more this guy acts up, the more likel
y some of his antics will get out.” Then he told her about the supposed funeral-home employee coming for Lisette’s body.

  “He came here?” Angela cried.

  “So it would seem.”

  “He’s nuts!”

  “I’ve always been of the opinion that anyone who could murder in cold blood usually is.”

  “But most killers aren’t so cunning! They do it out of passion and then it’s over. This guy is...” At a loss, she stopped. “Nuts,” she said again.

  “I’d guess he thinks he’s indestructible.”

  She shivered. She had known at least one man like that. Charlie Price had thought he could do anything, get away with anything at all. And he had.

  “Are you sure Kennery will go along with us?” she asked weakly.

  Jesse smiled again, but this time it was almost a grimace. “Roger hates situations like this. He won’t touch it with a tenfoot pole unless somebody forces the pole into his hand and closes his fingers around it.”

  She was shivering, though the air was warm. She hugged herself.

  He wanted to hold her. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything, to tell her that it was going to be okay, that he wasn’t angry anymore. But somehow the physical distance she had put between them again seemed insurmountable.

  “Angela, it’s not your fault,” he said quietly instead. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “Of course it’s my fault.”

  “No. If we had just managed to connect this morning, it wouldn’t have turned out this way. It was a matter of circumstances as much as anything else. You were busy, and I was out of the office.”

  Her shoulders slumped anyway. “Talk about looking on the bright side.”

  “I’m an optimist.” He hesitated. “Can I see you again tonight?”

  She was startled, then something in her heart actually yearned this time. “It’s probably not wise,” she managed to croak, her throat closing.

  “To hell with wise.”

  “There’s your image and all that.”

  “To hell with my image.”

  “That’s not what you were saying twenty minutes ago.”

  “I’ve come to my senses.” He needed to see her, he realized.

  She gave him a fleeting smile. “If anyone does get around to leaking it to the press that I might be a suspect, you don’t want to be seen with me, Jesse.” So just tell me we’ll stay at home.

  The thought came out of nowhere. She didn’t realize until that moment just how badly she wanted to be with him. She tried to tell herself that it was just as simple as not wanting to be alone with all this going on. She didn’t entirely believe it.

  She waited, her breath suspended. God help her, she wanted him to say it. She wanted to be able to tell him about Charlie so he couldn’t possibly be surprised by that, too, with all its implications. And she wanted him to believe her when she told him.

  “I’ve got a fund-raiser tonight,” he said instead, and her breath escaped her.

  “On a Monday?” she asked too plaintively for her own comfort.

  “Today’s the deadline for official candidacy for the D.A. race.”

  Her mouth formed a silent, “Oh.” Then she added, frowning, “But I’ve already seen ad spots for your campaign.”

  “I’m allowed to spend all the money I want before it’s official, as long as it’s my money I spend. I can’t take campaign contributions until tonight.”

  “You don’t need them,” she ventured.

  He laughed, enjoying her. God, he enjoyed her. On one hand, she was intuitive, educated, intimidatingly smart. And she was so sweetly naive that it touched him.

  “Everyone needs them,” he assured her.

  “You travel in a whole different world from me, Jesse.”

  He thought about it. “No. Not really. We both work toward the same interests. We go after the bad buys.”

  “Yes, but I don’t have contributors. I don’t do wealthy people.”

  “I’m still holding out hope that you’ll make an exception for me.”

  She looked up at him quickly. She was too startled to be alarmed. Then a burst of laughter escaped her.

  He wished suddenly, fervently, that he hadn’t met her under the bizarre circumstances they were in, with an election hanging over his head, and someone trying to destroy her. He wished he had all the time in the world to dig through her layers, to find out what had hurt her, to fix it and make it better.

  “Come with me tonight,” he said again. She shook her head.

  “We’ll put up a united front,” he persisted, “in case any of this does get out.” But he knew that what he really wanted was to have her shining like the sun right beside him.

  “I won’t hurt you any more than I already have,” she said softly. And she thought of who might be at that fund-raiser.

  “I’ll keep you away from the hors d’oeuvres. I’ll take personal responsibility for it,” he said to lighten the moment. He chose to believe she was talking about her unorthodox behavior at the wedding.

  She hesitated, but she didn’t smile this time. “I wouldn’t be comfortable.”

  “So what’s the alternative? I’m not sure I like the idea of your being home by yourself.”

  It was close enough to her own fears that her heart stuttered. Then she was angry. She was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t. There was fear on both sides. Monsters behind both doors. She was so tired of being afraid.

  She thought frantically of odds. Of the path of least resistance. It was far more likely Charlie would be at the fund-raiser than someone would break into her home again tonight. Wasn’t it? But at the fund-raiser, Jesse would be beside her. At home, she would be alone.

  Butterflies crowded into her stomach, but somehow she managed a reply. “I...okay.”

  He let out a breath that he hadn’t been aware of holding. This was a milestone. He knew it intuitively, though he’d be damned if he could figure out why.

  “I’ll pick you up at six. Wear something like you did last night,” he added quickly, just in case. An image of that hat leaped into his mind’s eye.

  She nodded a little stiffly. Then she looked up sharply as he stepped closer to her again. “What?”

  “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  There was no chance for the words to melt her this time because he kissed her.

  She froze. Every muscle spasmed, then went rigid. For heaven’s sake, they were outside in full view of traffic. Then she realized just how safe that was.

  Something warm and slow seeped through her, melting the ice. Maybe it would be like this morning, she imagined, and everything inside her would stir sweetly and pleasantly. Or maybe it would be like it had always been before, and something inside her would slam down like jail doors closing.

  Suddenly, she needed to find out. She told herself that if there was no real, lasting attraction between them, if it happened once more and everything inside her recoiled, then there was no reason to tear herself up inside over trusting him.

  She ought to be sure. That was what she told herself.

  She came up onto her tiptoes, leaning into him when he didn’t retreat this time. She thought he might have caught his breath, but she was too frightened, too aware of her own pounding heart, to be sure. The last thing she saw was a look of surprise on his face that turned to something hungrier. Then her eyes drifted closed.

  It was not fast this time. And no steel doors came clanging shut.

  He held her arms just beneath her shoulders in a feather-light embrace, and she had the crazy feeling that it was deliberate, that he was letting her know that she could pull away at any time. But he couldn’t know that she needed that.

  His mouth claimed hers, but for a moment that felt like eternity, their lips simply clung. No pressure, emotional or physical. Just...sweetness.

  She’d expected panic. She’d hoped for pleasure. Instead, something pounded suddenly through her, something she could neither identify nor
name. It was needy and desperate, and she found herself threading her fingers into his hair, holding him, wanting more.

  Jesse groaned. And then his mouth opened and his tongue skimmed her teeth. Something shuddered inside her. He drew back a little to nip her lower lip. Oh, he was good at this, she thought wildly. And she had never felt like this before in her life.

  She found herself pulling him back, straining into him now, afraid and exhilarated, stunned and greedy. This time, his mouth was harder on hers. His tongue drove deeper. She met it tentatively, then with more abandon, and his hands moved, tangling into her hair, pulling her head back, making her open her mouth wider.

  Then, suddenly, his hands were gone.

  Jesse swore—though she couldn’t understand why—and dropped his hands abruptly to his sides again. When she opened her eyes, she could not read his expression. He looked confused, and she couldn’t believe that that was an emotion a man like him might be prone to.

  “I still want you,” he said quietly, “and when this is over, when we’re not distracted by this other mess, I’m going to do something about it.” It was a warning. And a promise.

  She watched, dazed, as he turned away and went to his car. A black Mercedes this time, she realized, polished to a high gloss.

  She stared after it as he left the parking lot, finding herself unable to even walk to find a place to sit down.

  Chapter 11

  She wore something that might have been lavender. Or silver. Or a pearly pink. Every time she moved and light spilled over her from a different angle, the dress shimmered and its color changed. It wasn’t short. It was ankle-length. But there was a pretty incredible slit up the front, reaching to a point midway up her thigh.

  Jesse was still surprised that she had come with him. He was more surprised that he had invited her. And he was glad he had, and it had nothing to do with their trouble this time.

  She still didn’t drape well over his arm. It wasn’t her style. But she held her own and she held it well. Only her eyes gave her away, he found. Only her eyes revealed that she wasn’t entirely comfortable here. They moved constantly.

  Jesse kept his own on her as he moved with polished ease among the people gathered for the fund-raiser. He shook hands, laughed when it was appropriate, and once in a while he clapped an appreciative hand on someone’s shoulder. Normally, he enjoyed these functions, and he had no qualms about admitting it. But tonight his mind was elsewhere, on someone holding a flute of champagne on the opposite side of the room.