by Rebecca York
Relax?
Impossible. How could she relax when her nerves felt like a bunch of live electrical wires twisting inside her? The reaction came from anticipation of what was just ahead. And sitting next to Cal wasn’t helping. Not at all.
She slid him a sidewise glance, thinking that if Tim Fillmore were her escort, he wouldn’t be adding to her case of the jitters. Because she wasn’t attracted to Tim, even though she knew he liked her. But the idea of anything physical with him left her cold.
It was just the opposite with Cal. The idea of doing anything physical with him left her hot and edgy.
And she knew he was having the same problems—even if his sense of honor demanded that he do nothing about the feelings neither one of them could repress.
They wanted each other. And if she’d been more willing to reach out and take what she craved, they might have ended up in her bed together. But thinking about the consequences always stopped her, since she knew that any pleasure she gained in the present was only going to lead to pain in the future.
Cal Rollins would walk away from her when this job was over. Because of the man he was. She knew from what he’d told her that his father had done the best he could, raising him without a wife’s help. But from some of the comments that slipped out, she could tell he’d absorbed a whole trunkload of negative attitudes about man–woman relationships. If there was one thing she knew about Cal after spending four intense days with him, it was that he was never going to let himself be vulnerable to a woman the way his father had let himself be vulnerable to his mother.
So no matter how well she got to know him, no matter how much he liked her cooking or told her that he was in awe of her weaving talent, there was a line he was never going to cross with her or anyone else. They might be playing husband and wife. But for him it didn’t go beyond the superficial level. Which meant that the fantasies she was entertaining about the two of them were going to stay strictly in the fantasy realm. Because she wasn’t going to let him leave her with a scar on her heart.
“I can’t relax,” she whispered now, pressing the back of her skull against the firm support of the headrest. Inside her mind she was silently screaming, Take me home. Just take me home.
“You know your lines. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Impossible. It wasn’t going to be fine. She’d known that well enough from the beginning. When she started to nervously twist the strap of her purse through her fingers, Cal reached out and stilled her hand.
The pressure of his flesh on hers made her go very still. Through her lashes she glanced up at him and saw that his emotions were as conflicted as hers. She believed that he cared about her, at least on some level. Yet at the same time, he was a cop with a job to do. And a man who didn’t believe in the word commitment.
He cleared his throat, and the words that came out of his mouth stunned her.
“Are you, uh, picking up any vibrations?”
He was asking for help from a psychic? Lord preserve us.
“I’m trying not to,” she answered in a voice that was barely above a whisper. She’d wanted him to believe her story about Hallie. And believe how she’d known he was in the well. But she didn’t want to deal with any of that now. Not on top of everything else.
Instead of dropping the subject, he pressed ahead. “I’d like to know if you’re feeling anything unusual about this place. I mean do you sense anybody here, like the man who touched you.”
“But you don’t put much stock in extrasensory abilities.”
“I still want your impressions,” he said, and she heard the cop speaking.
She dragged in a breath, then let it out slowly as she forced herself to answer his question as honestly as she could. “I feel anxious. I feel on edge. I have a headache, like the kind I get when something’s going to happen. But I can attribute all that to a case of nerves.”
“Are you sure it’s just nerves?” he asked insistently.
“I don’t know! Stop pressing me. Don’t you have undercover guys here, watching the parking lot? They’ve got their eyes and ears. They don’t need psychic abilities.”
“Yeah. We’ve got a team taking down every license plate.”
Before she could ask another question, movement on the other side of the windshield caught her attention, and she seized the opportunity to shift her attention away from him. But the change in focus had just the opposite effect from what she’d intended. As she looked past Cal’s shoulder, she saw a group of people she recognized crossing the parking lot. The first one to register was the large bulky form of Billy Nichols, former Glenelg star quarterback. He was still well muscled, still with shoulders as broad as Alaska. With him was Candy Marks, former cheerleader. If anything, she was thinner than she’d been in high school.
Beth had read in the local paper four or five years ago that they’d gotten married. She was surprised that two people with such swelled heads were still together.
Billy glanced in her direction, stopped and squinted, then did a double take as he apparently recognized her. It wasn’t as if she was some anonymous nerd who had faded into the background during her high-school years. She’d been known for her odd behavior, like her headaches that struck in the middle of a class, sending her to the nurse’s office.
Instinctively, she slid closer to Cal, and he slung his arm around her shoulder as he followed the direction of her gaze.
Then he turned so that his mouth was only inches from her ear. “That Billy Nichols?” he asked, apparently recognizing the former football player from his yearbook picture.
“Yes,” she managed to say, her nerves humming, and not just from seeing her former classmate. She and Cal had been careful not to get this close to each other over the past few days, and for several seconds she felt slightly dizzy as she breathed in the scent of his aftershave.
Two newcomers joined the couple looking in their direction. Ted Banner and Libby Humphry. Again, Beth did a quick evaluation. Ted looked kind of stressed out, his face aged more than the ten years that had passed since she’d seen him, and his dark hair thinning. Libby had put on a few pounds. As they all stared in her direction, she wanted to slide down below the level of the window, but Cal didn’t allow her to escape.
“Don’t let them get to you before the meeting even starts.”
“I…”
“You’ve got your husband in your corner. Your husband who’s going to make it very clear to the jerks out there that if anybody gives you a hard time, they’ll have to answer to him.”
Absorbing the words, she leaned into him.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea for us to show them how your husband feels about you?” he added as he gathered her closer.
There was a stunned moment when she could only stare at him, trying to follow his logic. She saw the intent in his eyes and tried to pull away, but his hand came up to steady her head. When his lips touched down on hers, the world went away.
For days, she’d been trying not to think about how those lips had felt on hers, how his body had felt pressed to hers. Now she was helpless to do anything besides respond to the challenge he’d issued.
Somewhere in her mind she was thinking that nobody was going to be watching this performance with a telephoto lens. As far as she was concerned, all they had to do to convey the impression of a loving relationship was to remain with their lips lightly pressed together. But apparently, Cal didn’t think that the light pressure of mouth against mouth was enough.
Beth’s brain stopped analyzing the situation when his tongue, wicked as sin, played with the seam of her lips. Helpless to resist, she opened her mouth, granting him the access he requested.
She had lived through what felt like aeons of self-denial since he’d moved into her house. Now the feel of his tongue against her inner lips and the pressure of his hand against the back of her head was intoxicating. She forgot they were in a car in a parking lot, forgot that four of her former classmates were watching th
em with interest. Forgot why they were here.
Instead, her world was reduced to sensory impressions: the wonderful taste of his mouth, the feel of his hands splayed across her back, the cocoon of his strong arms.
She felt him make a low growl of conquest as he changed the angle of his mouth, plundering her as though he still meant to be kissing her when time stopped.
“Beth,” he murmured, his hand stroking through the thick curtain of her hair, then moving lower to skim the sides of her breasts.
When she answered with a small sound of pleasure, his palms slid inward to cup her fullness.
She was helpless to hold back a moan as his fingers found her hardened nipples through the thin fabric of her lacy bra and silk blouse.
At night as she’d lain in her bedroom, vividly aware that he was just across the hall, she had secretly thought about him caressing her like this. Longed for it. And now that he was actually doing it, his touch burned through her. She wanted it to go on forever, wanted more. Wanted things from him that she could hardly articulate.
But just as she was sure she was going to drown in sensations, he broke the contact, leaving her head spinning and her breath coming in small gasps.
His breath was just as labored as he drew back. When her eyes snapped open, she saw his gaze burning down into hers with an intensity that seared her flesh.
“Beth…” Her name sighed out of him. Then he straightened, ran a hand through his hair. “I…” Again, the syllable trailed off.
She saw his face change, saw the moment when he went from lover to Cal Rollins, police detective. “Come on, we’d better go in there,” he said.
She wanted to know what had just happened. But she didn’t have the guts or the time to ask what the kiss had meant to him. Instead, she gave a tight nod, then looked up to see that their audience had departed while they were too involved to notice. The realization made her flush. Pulling down the visor, she stared at her own face in the mirror. There was nothing she could do about the swollen look of her lips, but she took the time to run a comb through her hair and straighten her blouse.
“We’d better go,” he said again.
Knowing there was no way to put off the inevitable, she opened the car door and joined him in the parking lot.
THEY WERE HALFWAY across the parking lot when Cal felt Beth stumble. Automatically, his arm shot out to grab her.
She was leaning on him heavily as she staggered to the side of the building.
“What? What is it?” he asked urgently.
It was several moments before she could talk. “I…felt something. Somebody.”
“Here? Watching you?”
“I don’t know.”
He turned to scan the parking lot, pretending he was watching for new arrivals to the meeting, then moving in close to her. Eyes closed, she leaned into him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling the tension ripple through her body.
“I’ll be fine,” she said in a voice that sounded far from fine. “Just give me a minute.”
Still with his arm around her, he turned his back on the open area and pulled a phone out of his pocket, hiding his action from view with his body. Punching in a number, he waited until one of the men from the plainclothes detail answered the phone, then said without preamble, “Double-check the immediate vicinity.”
“We have,” the officer informed him curtly.
“Do it again.”
“You got some reason to get us stirred up?”
Yeah, he thought. The civilian working with me is picking up bad vibes. But he couldn’t say that. Because he knew what kind of reaction that would get him. So all he said was, “I’ve just got a feeling.”
“Okay. Yeah.”
Lucky that was an acceptable way to put it. When he finished the call, he turned back to Beth. “We’d better go in.”
She nodded tightly, looking as if she was on the way to her execution. He didn’t feel much better as he took her arm and steered her toward the door.
Inside he spoke to the hostess, pretending he needed directions to the meeting room, although he’d checked it out himself a couple of days ago. He cut Beth a quick sideways glance. She was so pale her skin stood out against the darkened interior of the restaurant. And he felt like a slime for dragging her here.
No, not just for that. For the whole thing. He’d told himself that the only way to handle the little husband-and-wife game they were playing out at her house was to keep his paws off her.
So what had he gone and done? He’d come up with an excuse to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, telling her he was putting on a show for the members of the reunion committee, when he knew his own selfish needs had been his primary motivation.
He’d always been absolutely sure of what he wanted from the women he dated. Hot sex and the understanding that commitment wasn’t part of the package.
Well, he still wanted the hot sex. In fact, he’d never wanted a woman more in his life. She was tempting him beyond endurance, though this was hardly the place to think about that. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.
“Get your mind back on business,” he muttered, mentally giving himself a kick in the rear.
“What?” Beth asked.
“Nothing. We’d better get in there.”
SHE WAS GOING to melt into a puddle on the floor, Beth thought. Or maybe she was going to start screaming. Either way, she would make a spectacle of herself, the way she had so many times in high school. Like the morning when she’d fainted in the middle of an assembly and two football players had picked her up and carried her down the aisle. Later in the day one of her favorite teachers, Mr. Lipman, her social studies teacher, had had a heart attack.
Cal kept his arm tightly around her as they crossed the restaurant, and she wanted to lean on him.
Then a long-forgotten mechanism kicked in. Somehow she was able to summon the invincible aura she’d wrapped around herself like armor when her classmates had been making her feel lower than a worm’s belly.
Her head rose, her shoulders straightened, and she took several breaths of the stale, refrigerated air. Cal noticed the change in her immediately. Turning his head, he murmured, “That’s my girl.”
His girl. She felt the warmth of those words spreading through her, even though she was sure he had only meant them as a figure of speech. Or had he let his real feelings slip out?
Before she could work her way through the implications, they reached the door of the Dorsey Room where the meeting was being held.
Beth took in the scene in one quick sweep. Small tables had been pushed together to make one long conference-type table. Around the room were about twenty people, some sitting in captain’s chairs, some loading plates from a snack buffet and some standing in small knots talking. Included in the latter group were the people she’d seen in the parking lot.
She had the feeling they’d rushed inside to tell everyone she was going to be walking through the door with a hunky-looking guy, because as she and Cal entered the room, all eyes turned toward them.
For a moment her facial muscles felt frozen. Then she forced a smile that she knew didn’t meet her eyes. “Hi, everyone. I’d like you to meet my husband, Cal Roberts. Cal, these are some of the people I’ve been telling you about.”
Her eyes took in varying reactions to the short speech. A few mouths dropped open. Some people looked as if they wished a weirdo like her hadn’t intruded on their private party. But the majority of her former classmates at least made an attempt to look as if they welcomed her presence. Maybe time had dulled their memories of her, she thought. Or maybe maturity had made them more tolerant.
Donna Pasternack, who had sent out the letters inviting people to the meeting, crossed the room to greet her. “Beth, it’s good to see you after so long.”
“Good to see you,” Beth answered automatically. In truth, Donna had been one of the girls who’d made her feel least uncomfortable—although that was hardly a rin
ging endorsement of their former relationship.
In high school, Donna had been a brunette whose parents were pretty strict with her about wearing makeup or dating. Now her hair was blond and her mascara looked as though it had been laid on with a putty knife. Apparently she’d decided to have more fun.
To her vast relief, Beth didn’t have to say anything else because Cal took over, reaching out to shake Donna’s hand like a long lost friend, explaining in his warm southern drawl that he and Beth had gotten married recently and that he’d considered the reunion committee a perfect way to meet her former classmates.
Within minutes, he’d introduced himself to everybody in the room. And as five more people arrived, Donna told them who he was. It was obvious he knew how to work a crowd, how to get people to like him. The women were practically eating out of his hand, she thought as she watched them flirt with the handsome new husband of their geeky former classmate. But despite the female attention, he was able to quickly make friends with the guys, too.
Even Skip Sorenson. Beth had always considered him a space cadet. A few minutes ago she’d heard him telling Donna that he had his Ph.D. and was doing research at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Well, good for him, she thought before her attention switched back to Cal.
She watched the people’s expressions close up a bit when he steered the conversation down a less pleasant avenue. “You hear about that girl, Hallie Bradshaw, disappearing?” he asked when the noise level in the room dropped a little. “Pretty scary.”
The rest of the conversations stopped dead. And the sound of Paul Sampson crunching on a taco chip was the only noise in the room.
The guy Cal was talking to, Jim Fitch, filled the sudden quiet. Tall and thin with a shock of thick sandy hair, Jim had been the president of the business club. Now a successful insurance agent in Ellicott City, he appeared to have combed his hair to the side to conceal a rapidly retreating hairline. “Yeah, I read about it in the Baltimore Sun.”
Ned Brentley chimed in, “She was supposed to meet me and a group of friends at McKinley’s but she never got there.”