To Trust a Stranger

by Karen Robards

  Hinkle groaned. “Like I said before: How come I get all the shitty jobs?”

  “Hey, last night I was the one who got my ass grabbed, remember? Rawanda, as of right now you’re on doggy duty. Actually, I’ll probably need you to keep Josephine all night.”

  Rawanda pulled away from Hinkle to plant both fists on her hips, shaking her head vigorously at Mac.

  “Uh-uh! I ain’t keepin’ that dog for you no more. Last time you left her with me, here at the office, she went crazy. Attacked my purse like one of them pit bulls and wouldn’t let go for nothin’. My cell phone was in there, ringing like there was no tomorrow, and she wouldn’t even let me get to it. I missed a call from my parole officer, which ain’t no good thing, let me tell you. She chewed the strap clean off it before I managed to pull it away. I already took the money out of petty cash to pay for my purse—thirty-two bucks, which I cannot afford—but I ain’t takin’ no chances with her going crazy on me again. And I sure ain’t takin’ her home with me. Anyway, this is Saturday. After twelve o’clock, I am o-fic-ially off duty for the weekend. You’re the one whose granny sweet-talked him into taking her dog. In my book, that makes her your problem.”

  “I’m meeting a client this afternoon. Tonight I’ll probably be on stakeout.”

  “Well, boo-hoo, sing me another sad song.”

  Hinkle was grinning. He loved Rawanda’s sass. Mac glared at Rawanda, opened his mouth to continue the discussion, and gave it up. He could tell by looking at Rawanda that there was going to be no winning this one short of firing her, which he wasn’t going to do. And they both knew it.

  “Fine. I’ll take her with me. Josephine.” Mac snapped his fingers authoritatively. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.

  In the sudden silence he became aware of an ominous grinding sound.

  He looked under his desk. Josephine the ever-obedient was going after the right front leg like a beaver in a building frenzy.

  “Josephine.” He would have cursed if he’d been alone. Josephine never even glanced around.

  “Hey, boss, looks like your dog’s eating your desk.” Rawanda was chortling as she looked under the desk with him. “Must be hungry. Whole leg’s just about gone.”

  Shit.

  “I needed a new one anyway,” Mac said with as much equanimity as he could muster, and hauled the culprit out, brushing the crumbs of his admittedly old but perfectly serviceable desk from around her mouth as he straightened with her in his arms. Her tail went wild, and she gave him a look of pure doggy devotion and licked his cheek. Mac tucked the dog under his arm football-style without succumbing to the now-familiar urge to wring her neck, waved, and got the hell out of his office before his guffawing companions drove him to murder. He loved Grandma Henderson devotedly, but why he had let her talk him into taking her dog when she moved into a retirement home was beyond him.

  But he had, and now he was stuck. His grandma loved the thrice-damned animal, and he loved his grandma. He even took the pooch to visit her once a week, which entailed a visit to the doggy beauty parlor beforehand so Grandma would see Josephine looking nice. You couldn’t get much more devoted than that.

  But so far—and he’d been the proud possessor of the purebred toy poodle for approximately three weeks—Josephine had been the canine equivalent of the bad seed. Despite her deceptively angelic looks, she had chewed up an armchair, a briefcase, a plastic trash can, a lamp cord, a bed pillow, a rug, and enough wood products to qualify for the termite hall of fame. When he’d walked back into his house last night after driving Julie Carlson home, he’d found his shower curtain in shreds, which was why Josephine was at the office with him today: he was scared to leave her alone in his house. Now she’d started in on his desk. He was starting to wonder if the dog was part devil. The bad part.

  “Bad dog,” he said dispiritedly. He’d already learned that those words were not, apparently, part of her doggy lexicon. Sure enough, she licked his hand in response.

  “No lick,” he said. She apparently didn’t understand that either, because she did it again.

  Shit. Tromping down the stairs—the ancient elevator had been broken for a week, and given its recent history he felt safer with the stairs anyway—Mac headed toward where his car was parked behind the building. He was a low-country boy born and bred, and the truly oppressive heat didn’t bother him. In fact, he kind of liked it.

  What he didn’t like was truly oppressive heat coupled with perfumed dog frizz. The combination made him itch.

  He dropped Josephine into the backseat—which was useless, as she jumped into the front before he was even all the way inside—and started the car, thinking longingly of doggy shelters all the while.

  The air conditioner shot out a blast of air hotter than anything ever produced by any furnace. The radio blared. Even as he offed the radio with a savage forefinger jab, Josephine planted her front paws on his shoulder and licked his ear.

  “No lick,” he said, jerking his head away, then gave it up. He had already discovered that there was just no reasoning with Josephine. Popping open the glove box, he fished a dog biscuit out of the bag he had learned to keep in there and handed it to her, then peeled rubber out of the parking lot as, satisfied, she settled herself down on the passenger seat for a quick snack. As he headed out toward Summerville to the sound of crunching and the certainty of crumbs, he forced himself to mentally tally the poodle’s good points before the idea of doggy shelters took unshakable possession of his mind.

  The problem was, the only good point he could attribute to Josephine at the moment was that merely being in possession of her made him look gay.

  Which, as far as he was concerned, was only a good point when Julie Carlson was around.

  Probably letting her think he was gay was not exactly ethical, Mac reflected as he blew past most of the light traffic headed away from the beaches. But twice, once after he’d just kind of instinctively checked her out there in the parking lot of the Pink Pussycat and again after he’d shed his Debbie regalia, he’d seen a look on her face that warned him that if she realized he was straight her comfort level with him was going to go way down.

  And he wanted her to be comfortable with him. She represented a tantalizing new link to Sid. What with being fired, getting divorced, and all the hassles involved with establishing a new business, his hunt for Daniel had been kind of on the back burner for the past five years. But he hadn’t forgotten. He would never forget.

  Anyway, if, between the dress and the wig and the poodle, she had chosen to assume he was gay, he could not really be blamed, he told himself. After all, he had not actually lied.

  When she’d asked him if he was gay, he’d asked if it mattered. And that was not lying.

  Exactly.

  But it occurred to him, as he took the Summerville exit and then drove the few blocks to the Kroger, that he did not particularly like the idea that Julie Carlson thought he was gay.

  And even less did he like the idea that he did not like the idea.

  The whys and wherefores of that did not become clear to him until he had been parked behind the Taco Bell for some minutes and at last saw Julie Carlson herself come walking across the steaming asphalt toward him.

  Even through the rising veil of heat she looked cool and tempting as vanilla ice cream in a slim white dress that somehow managed to be both classy and sexy at the same time. Her hair was pulled back from her face to hang in a shining black waterfall down her back. She was frowning slightly, one hand raised to block the sun from her eyes, as she scanned the parked cars. Her long tanned legs flashed beneath the hem of her dress as she moved. He was willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that they were bare, and to his dismay just thinking about Julie Carlson’s bare legs made him hotter than the asphalt.

  Unbidden, lightning snapshots from the night before flashed through his mind: the sweet-smelling suppleness of her in his arms; her breasts, firm and round as oranges with pert little nipples that seemed to beg for
attention, pressing into his chest; her truly world-class ass all slithery in satin as it rubbed up against his definitely noticing crotch; the silky texture of her hair; the creamy smoothness of her skin; the soft warmth of her lips as she kissed his cheek.

  The truth hit him like a hammer over the head: He had a galloping case of the hots for his newest client, who was not incidentally his oldest enemy’s wife.

  He was walking into quicksand here, and if he had the sense God gave a gnat he’d turn around and walk back out again before he wound up floundering over his head.

  9

  DEBBIE—NO, THAT WASN’T RIGHT, hadn’t he told her that he went by Mac on the job?—didn’t look particularly happy to see her, Julie thought as she slid into the Blazer beside him. Which made them even, because she wasn’t all that thrilled to see him, either. Having made up her mind that hiring a private investigator was the smartest thing she could do, she was now suffering a major attack of buyer’s remorse. If he hadn’t shown up, she wouldn’t have been altogether sorry.

  But she would have been on her own. And the thought of that made her shiver despite the heat.

  “Hi,” she offered as she closed the door, then smiled with genuine delight as Josephine jumped into her lap from the backseat. “Hi, Josephine.”

  “Hey.” He sounded about as glad to see her as he looked. Scratching an ecstatic Josephine behind the ears, Julie frowned at him. “Careful, she’ll lick you to death.”

  “I don’t mind.” Her frown deepened as Josephine licked her chin. There was something about his expression . . . “Is something wrong?”

  Their gazes met and held for the space of a couple of heartbeats. Then one corner of his mouth quirked up wryly.

  “What could be wrong?” He reached past her, opened the glove compartment, and extracted what looked like a dried-up brownie from a paper bag. “Josephine.” When the poodle looked at him, he tossed the brownie into the backseat. “Go get it.”

  With an eager yap, Josephine leaped into the back. He put the Blazer into reverse, and pulled out of the parking space. Julie absently watched the play of light and shadow over his classic profile and then, as he turned his head, the chiseled planes and angles of his face. As she’d lain awake into the dawn, his had been one of the many images that had chased themselves endlessly through her mind. Remembering her physical response to him in his male incarnation had both stimulated her sex-deprived senses and, by extension, depressed her even more than she was already. He was, she was less than delighted to discover, just as attractive by the glaring light of day. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a white T-shirt with a blindingly bright Hawaiian shirt open over it, and he looked good enough to eat.

  Good thing there was no chance of him being on the menu. Her life was messed up enough right now without adding another potentially explosive element to the mix.

  “Where are we going?” Unlike last night, she didn’t feel particularly nervous about the answer, Julie realized. Whatever her feelings might be about hiring a private investigator—and they were so tangled that it would probably take years if she tried to sort them out—she no longer had any qualms about the man beside her. He was, quite simply, a friend.

  “We’ll attract less attention if we drive around as we talk. Put your seat belt on.”

  He pulled out onto the street as she complied, and turned left, heading away from the business district. Traffic was fairly heavy, and there was a good possibility that she had at least a passing acquaintance with most of the people in the surrounding cars. Flipping her visor down to provide some degree of cover, she sought to make herself as invisible as possible.

  “You can quit trying to hide. The windows are tinted.” He glanced at her. “So how’s your elbow?”

  “Fine. Nobody even noticed the Band-Aid.”

  “What happened after you went in last night?”

  Julie grimaced. “Sid came in at the same time he always does—and didn’t say anything about the car being missing until nine this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Clearly he understood the implication of that.

  “Yeah.” Her tone was glum.

  “Actually, I saw him go into the house. I decided to hang around for a while in case . . .” The words trailed off.

  “In case what?”

  He glanced at her again, his expression unreadable. “In case you needed me. In case your husband lost it when he found out the Jaguar was gone, and started roughing you up or something.”

  Touched, Julie smiled at him. “That was sweet. Thank you.”

  His eyes held hers for the space of a heartbeat, and his mouth did its wry thing again. “Sweet’s my middle name.”

  His attention returned to the road.

  “For your information, Sid doesn’t rough me up. He’s not the violent type. Anyway, I don’t see how you would have known if he did.”

  He grinned, and the atmosphere lightened. “Hey, I’m a professional. I have ways. So what happened at nine this morning when he supposedly made the big discovery?”

  “He threw a tantrum. And called the police.”

  “Oh, yeah? You have any trouble there?”

  “By the time they got to the house I was so mad at Sid I didn’t even care if I was lying to the police.”

  He laughed. “That works.”

  Turning down East Doty, where Civil War–era relics were crammed doric-columned porch to doric-columned porch, he turned serious again. “Calling me was a smart thing to do. Following your husband around yourself would only have gotten you into trouble.”

  “I found that out last night.”

  “There are worse things than getting your car stolen.” The Blazer stopped at a light, and his gaze met hers. “Look, I’ve got to tell you: I’ve never worked on one of these cheating-spouse cases where the party who hired me was wrong about what was going on.”

  Julie took a deep breath, and her hands clenched in her lap. “I’m prepared for that. And I don’t think I’m wrong. But I have to be sure.”

  “You will be. Either way.”

  Josephine jumped back into the front seat and landed in Julie’s lap.

  “Good girl, Josephine.” Julie hugged the little dog.

  “I think she likes you.”

  “What’s not to like?” Julie sent a teasing glance his way as Josephine curled up in her lap like a cat.

  “Nothing that I can see.” His response was barely audible. But the tone of it seemed so infused with purely heterosexual meaning that Julie frowned. He met her eyes for the briefest of pregnant moments, then slid his gaze along the bare length of her legs, his expression openly covetous. Julie’s eyes widened. Then he added: “I have to tell you, girlfriend, those are absolutely to-die-for shoes. Are they Manolos?”

  So much for her sudden suspicion that he was behaving in a very male way. She should have remembered: Debbie had a thing for shoes. He’d recommended heels with last night’s lingerie, after all.

  “Jimmy Choo.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Nice. Too bad they don’t make ’em in a size twelve.”

  Julie grinned. “I doubt there’s much market for Jimmy Choo sandals in a man’s size twelve.”

  “You’d be surprised, Miz Carlson. You’d be surprised.”

  “Julie, please.”

  “Julie, then. And I’m Mac. It’s kind of hard to get taken seriously in a business setting when you’re a man and then someone goes and calls you Debbie.” He braked at a traffic light.

  “Did I cause a problem for you at work? I’m sorry.”

  “Lucky I own sixty percent of the business. With a more conservative boss, you could have gotten me fired.”

  Julie laughed. Then she sobered as she got down to business. “You’ll have to tell me how this private-investigator thing works, because I don’t have a clue. Do you have a daily rate or something? Do you take checks? Credit cards?”

  “In your situation you’re better off paying me cash.” He was suddenly all business, too. “That way
nothing can be traced back to you if your husband should somehow get suspicious and start looking into things. You should know that can happen. Domestic cases have a way of getting real nasty sometimes.”

  Julie had no doubt of that. As soon as Sid found out she was thinking divorce the proverbial excrement was going to hit the proverbial fan.

  “I’ll bill you for my hours,” he added. “It’ll probably end up being two or three thousand dollars by the time everything’s said and done. If I think it’s going to go over that, I’ll get your approval first.”

  Julie nodded. “Okay. And you’ll let me know how much your car is to fix, won’t you?”

  “I’ll add it to the tab. If you’re not careful, you’re going to wind up owing me your firstborn child.”

  The words were meant to be humorous, but they caused a tiny pang in the region of Julie’s heart. If the divorce happened, the children she wanted and that Sid had resisted would never become reality. And at twenty-nine, her biological clock was already starting to tick loud and clear.

  “So tell me about your marriage. For example, when did you and your husband first meet?”

  Julie was glad to be distracted. “I met Sid the night after I was crowned Miss South Carolina. There was a big reception at the governor’s mansion and he was there. I was talking to the governor, so thrilled to be there that I was pretty much on cloud nine anyway, and then Sid came up and that was that. He swept me off my feet. We dated for the year of my reign, and then married a month after it was over.”

  Instead of being moved by her story, Mac frowned as he listened. Which, considering how her marriage looked like it was turning out, was probably a more appropriate response anyway.

  “What were you, twenty when you met him? Didn’t your family have any objections to you getting involved with a man so much older?”

  “Eleven years isn’t that much,” Julie said. “And no, my family didn’t object. Are you kidding? There were just the three of us—my mother and my sister Becky and me—and we were so poor that eating at McDonald’s was like going to a fancy restaurant. Sid was rich. He was handsome. He was charming. And I was in love with him. My family—my mother especially—was over the moon.”