Taylor left her glass where it was as she studied him. She was completely at a loss on how to read this man.
“Did you ask any other questions?” she asked. The query came out despite her resolve to drop the matter. But she suddenly had to know just how deeply he probed, how much he knew about her.
Something akin to goose bumps formed beneath the sleeves of her jacket. There was no doubt about it, she thought darkly, the man stirred things up inside her.
She didn’t want to be stirred. Not by someone so damn cocky and sure of himself.
“I ask lots of questions,” he answered, again shrouding himself in pseudo innocence.
He knew damn well what she meant, Taylor thought. Although she was hungry, she hardly tasted the dinner she was eating.
“About me,” she supplied tersely. “Questions about me.”
“Oh, that. Well, yes I did.” Without elaborating any further, which he had a hunch irritated her, he asked, “Did I break some kind of rule?”
She was very tempted to use the knife in her hand for something other than her dinner. “Why are you snooping around my life? You’re supposedly here to investigate Eileen Stevens’s murder.”
“No supposedly,” Laredo corrected in all seriousness. He wound spaghetti around his fork like a pro as he spoke. “I am investigating her murder.” That was a matter of honor, involving his word. “And yes, I am asking questions about you.”
“Why?” she repeated.
Laredo put down his fork, his eyes on hers. He dropped his teasing tone. “Because I want to get to know you, Detective McIntyre. Because I’m attracted to you,” he told her honestly, then added what she didn’t want to hear. “And, unless my radar’s completely off, I think that you’re attracted to me, too.”
No, no, she wasn’t, Taylor thought fiercely. “Your ‘radar’ needs an overhaul,” she informed him in a cool, dismissive voice.
When he looked at her like that, she felt as if he could see right through her. Right into her. Could see every thought she had. She knew that was absurd, and yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling.
“Does it?” he asked quietly. “It’s usually pretty accurate.”
The only way she could save herself was if she got angry.
She got angry.
Of all the overbearing, pompous—
Words failed her, even in the deep recesses of her mind.
“Well, I’m sorry. Your ‘radar’ might be fine and dandy when it comes to the legions of other women in your life, but it shorted out when it came to me.”
“There’re no legions,” he told her mildly, finishing his meal. “I was referring to the gut feelings I have when working a case.” He smiled at her. “It’s a general-purpose radar,” he explained amiably. “Look, I’m used to putting my cards on the table. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
Too late.
She took a deep breath, as if that somehow signaled a fresh start. “Fine, then let’s just finish eating. I’ve got to be getting back.”
Laredo looked at his watch. “It’s after six. Aren’t you supposed to be off duty by now?”
She worked a case until it was solved. Hours didn’t matter. “Not while the case is open.”
He watched her thoughtfully, trying to isolate what it was about her that attracted him so. He couldn’t pinpoint it. She just did.
“You know,” he told her, “even batteries need to get recharged. You’ve got to take a break sometime. What do you do for fun, Detective McIntyre?”
Her answer was automatic. “I put smart-mouthed private investigators in their place.”
Laredo inclined his head indulgently. “What else do you do for fun?”
She didn’t want him digging into her life, didn’t want him trying to get close because she was afraid that he would get close. And that would be disastrous.
“Look, for some reason that escapes me, we’re working a case together,” she began, her voice strained. “I am not in the market for a new best friend—or anything else—so let’s just keep this professional, okay?”
“Too bad. I could make a really good ‘anything else,’” he told her teasingly.
Again, his smile slipped under her skin, all but filleting her.
And when he leaned over and slowly ran the back of his hand along her cheek, her heart went into double time, all but bursting out of her chest.
She pulled her head back. “That’s not professional,” she informed him in a voice that wasn’t nearly as strong as she wanted it to be.
“Oh, I don’t know. Professional means business,” he told her, his eyes never leaving hers. “And I mean business.”
Suddenly she didn’t have enough saliva to swallow. “I’ve got to be getting back,” she repeated. Somehow, she got her legs to work, her knees to lock so that they could support her. But as she began to rise, Laredo put his hand over hers.
He vacillated between being amused and being aroused. But whatever state he was in, he knew he was definitely intrigued. And curious. Very, very curious.
“What are you afraid of, Taylor?” he asked her in a low, silky tone.
He was using her first name again, making this feel oh so personal. She didn’t want it to. Instinct told her that if she ventured forward, even a few steps, a trapdoor waited for her just up ahead. A trapdoor that would give way when she least expected it, causing her to plummet down to who knew where.
All she knew was that at the end, when she stopped falling, there would be pain. A great deal of pain. The best solution to avoiding pain was not to take that first step, especially not with someone like Laredo.
Someone who could, for reasons she couldn’t begin to put into words yet, matter a great deal.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Taylor informed him with a toss of her head, rallying. And then she delivered what she hoped was the final, ego-shattering blow. “Except for maybe being bored.”
It didn’t have the hoped for effect. Taylor could swear she saw something enter his eyes. She’d seen it before. The look of a man rising to a challenge. And she had just issued it.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said, her voice cold enough to freeze over a lake. She left the table—and him—quickly, without a backward glance.
Laredo didn’t call out her name the way she’d expected him to. Didn’t try to stop her.
Maybe she was rid of him, she thought, at least for the evening. Cheeks flushed as she made her way through the restaurant, she felt oddly feverish. Was that triumph? Or was it simply the result of being so close to him for the length of the dinner?
She didn’t know, didn’t care, Taylor told herself. All she wanted was to be in her car, driving away from here—and Laredo.
Though she loathed to admit it, the damn, irritating man was right. It was past her shift and maybe, just for tonight, she’d go home to ponder over the notes she’d taken and to backtrack over things. Maybe while doing that, she’d find something that would help her untangle these two murders.
Having Laredo hovering around her definitely did mess with her thinking process and she didn’t need that. Didn’t need a tall, dark, handsome man watching her as if he knew what made her tick—as if he knew what she wanted.
How could he when she didn’t know herself? she thought, pushing open the front door and hurrying out of the restaurant.
The breeze that greeted her was a cool one, stinging her heated cheeks. The air was moist and heavy with humidity. Winter was California’s rainy season. That was all she need now, rain. Everything seemed to be working against her.
For a moment, she tried to get her bearings, scanning the area for her car. As she stood there, Taylor thought she heard someone coming up behind her. She heard the footsteps half a second before her name was called.
“McIntyre.”
She would have swung around on her own, but she never got the chance. The person who’d called out to her caught her arm and did it for her, bringing her around to face him one shaky heart
beat before he pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth down to hers.
If asked, Laredo wouldn’t have been able to say just what had come over him. Despite the image he projected, he wasn’t the kind who let impulse rule him. At least, not usually.
This time was different.
This time, there had been an almost insatiable need to satisfy his curiosity. To satisfy a strange hunger he had never encountered before. Somewhere deep in his soul, he knew she’d forgive him.
But if he didn’t find out what her lips tasted like, he would never forgive himself.
Besides, he had something to prove.
Self-defense reflexes were as automatic to her as breathing. Or, at least, they had been. But they failed her now, freezing and breaking up like so many brittle shards of glass. They might have been as automatic as breathing, but then, she wasn’t really breathing, either. Her breath had backed up in her lungs.
Taylor found herself spinning off into a place where neither time nor space played a part. She was only aware of a tremendous wave of heat, beginning in the distance and then suddenly, like a back draft, whooshing over her.
Consuming her.
Making her knees and torso feel so weak that they barely supported her. It took every fiber in her being not to embarrass herself by sinking down to the ground.
But she was certainly sinking into something far greater than she was. If she didn’t act, it would overpower her.
Vaguely, the thought occurred to Taylor that she should be angry at Laredo. She should be pushing this egomaniac away with both hands.
And yet, she couldn’t.
Didn’t want to.
Instead, she wound her arms around his neck and brought her body in closer to his. She could feel the very blood rushing in her veins. Could feel every single rock-hard ridge of Laredo’s frame against hers.
Adrenaline raced through her, heightening what she was feeling.
The fact that she was aware of his arms closing around her, of his mouth working nothing short of magic over hers, only deepened her pleasure rather than ignited her indignation.
What the hell was wrong with her? Why was she enjoying this? Didn’t she realize that he was pleasuring himself at her expense?
Why wasn’t she angry?
Because she was too swept away. And enjoying this far too much.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Taylor was conscious of the restaurant door opening and then closing again. Of people—a couple—sidestepping them as they left Fiorello’s.
Were they staring at them? She didn’t know. Didn’t care. All she wanted was for this delicious sensation to continue.
And then it stopped. Just like that, there was space between her lips and his. The contact, the almost spiritual binding of souls, was suddenly broken.
She only realized that her eyes were shut when she had to open them. At the same moment, she heard Laredo say, “Wow.”
Had she possessed the strength, she would have pulled back her hand and slapped him. But as it was, her arms hung almost limply at her sides.
Useless.
At least he wasn’t smirking.
“You certainly pack some kind of a wallop, Detective McIntyre,” Laredo murmured as his eyes swept over her face. There was something different in his voice, something she couldn’t identify. “Maybe I should be the one who’s afraid.”
She cleared her throat, hoping that she wouldn’t squeak when she spoke.
“Maybe you should be,” she agreed.
“Would it be too presumptuous if I assumed that you weren’t bored?”
She stared at him, trying to process what he was asking. Her mind was as numb as her body was not. “What?”
“Bored,” he repeated. “Back in the restaurant, you said you were afraid of being bored. You didn’t act as if you were bored, but I’ve learned never to take anything for granted.”
Bored? Ecstatic, delirious, excited beyond belief, yes. Definitely not bored.
But she would die before she admitted it. She wasn’t in the business of feeding egos and his, she was certain, was large enough.
“Maybe you should learn not to ask so many questions,” she told him, turning her back on Laredo and beginning to walk away.
“Can’t,” he called after her. For the time being, he let her go. He needed time to himself to process what had just happened. “It’s the nature of my job.”
“See you tomorrow, Laredo,” she said without turning around.
“Count on it.”
That, she thought, was just the problem.
What she needed, Taylor told herself as she got in behind the steering wheel of her vehicle, was a cold shower and a hot drink. Preferably something to knock her out. And to erase the lingering effects of his mouth on hers.
She wondered if there was an eraser large enough.
Chapter 8
“S omething wrong, Johnny?” was the first thing Chester Laredo asked when he opened his front door that evening.
As tall as his grandson and almost as muscular and trim, Chet Laredo had the same bright blue eyes and he sported an identical full head of hair, although his was a mixture of black and gray with just a little white weaving through.
He stepped back now, allowing Laredo to enter, studying his grandson carefully. There was something different about him tonight, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
In his seventies, Chet had worked for all of his adult life, but he had never been one of those people, no matter where his work took him, who’d been too busy for his family. Johnny’s welfare always had top priority over everything else and he’d lived his life accordingly.
The aroma of something tasty and familiar wafted from the kitchen. No matter where he traveled, this would always be home to him, Laredo thought fondly. More accurately, the man he’d stopped by to see would always be home to him.
Comfortably planting himself on the sofa, Laredo looked up at the older man. His grandfather was studying him. You can take the man out of the CIA, but you can’t take the CIA out of the man, he thought, amused.
“Does something have to be wrong for a grandson to stop by to see the crusty old man who raised him?” Laredo asked innocently.
About to lower himself into the richly padded armchair adjacent to the sofa, Chet pretended to scowl.
“Hey, watch that ‘old’ stuff, boy,” Chet warned. “I can still take you, you know.” And then he added with a fond smile, “Just not with one hand tied behind my back anymore.”
“Take me?” Laredo questioned.
“Yup.” Reaching for his remote, Chet shut off the early news program he’d been watching off and on for the last hour. “I still have a few moves up my sleeve.”
Laredo laughed. “I thought you taught me everything you knew.”
A look that could only be described as wicked amusement slipped over the older man’s features. “Not everything, Johnny. Some things I kept back for a later date. A man always wants to be useful to his family.”
Laredo smiled at that. He couldn’t help thinking how very different his life would have turned out had his father’s father not been there for him. Chet had taken both him and his mother in when his father, Bret, a Navy SEAL, was killed on a mission whose exact details he would probably never learn. And then, several years later, his mother had died in a car accident. Laredo knew he would have been deemed an orphan and absorbed by the system had it not been for his grandfather’s very large heart.
There were no words to describe how grateful he was—and always would be—to his grandfather.
“I think you went way beyond ‘useful’ a long time ago, Chet.”
Chet smiled, both at the compliment and at the fact that his grandson remembered to address him by his first name. “Grandpa” had always made him feel as if he were being put out to pasture prematurely, something he’d vowed a long time ago would never happen.
That was the reason why he’d taken himself off the active roster at the CIA and
opened up his own security firm a little more than five years ago. He firmly believed that work, the right kind of work, kept a man vital.
So did the right kind of woman. He’d shared both thoughts with his grandson more than once, especially the latter. It pained Chet that while his own son had been married and a father at Johnny’s age, Johnny was still very much unattached—and appeared to be content to remain that way.
Though he didn’t say it, he wanted to bounce his great-grandchild on his knee before he was dispatched on his final mission.
“Flattery will get you nowhere, boy.” Piercing blue eyes narrowed as Chet looked at his grandson. “And it won’t distract me. Now, I repeat, is there something wrong?”
There were times Laredo could swear his grandfather was clairvoyant. But he kept a poker face as he said, “Why would you ask?”
Chet leaned over the arm of his chair, moving a shade closer to his grandson. “Because you look like something’s just rattled the foundations of your world.”
Laredo shook his head. “Nope, foundations are just fine and unrattled.” Quickly, he changed the subject. Chet had a way of being able to delve right into his head and he really didn’t want to talk about Taylor and what had happened outside the restaurant. “Look, I stopped by to let you know that your girlfriend’s daughter’s murder might not be an isolated incident after all.”
That surprised Chet. He slid to the edge of the armchair. Johnny had his attention. “What do you mean by that?”
“There was another murder today.” Laredo was surprised that the TV stations weren’t carrying the story yet. “A middle-school teacher. They found him in the supply closet. Whoever killed him used the same M.O. that Eileen’s killer had.”
“You mean there’s a serial killer running loose?” Chet asked. Serial killers were not as uncommon as the public might think. It just took the right detective to make the connection between crimes. Being able to share information made the discovery that much easier.
The Cavanaugh Code Page 8