by Lilian Darcy
She didn’t even think about showing it to Daniel, about what he might think, just pulled open each drawer in turn and found the subtle evidence of someone else’s fingers every time—fingers that had been careful, but not quite careful enough.
She didn’t say a word, but he could read her expression with no trouble.
“I guess there are times when you being Martha Stewart’s more perfect cousin pays off. I could have birds nesting in my pile of boxer shorts, and I probably wouldn’t notice. Whoever it was, they obviously realized they had to be pretty subtle.”
“It’s worse that way,” she answered. Her voice squeaked then cracked, and she couldn’t control it. “I’d have rather seen everything flung on the floor, and the drawers still hanging open. Like this, it’s personal.”
She groped out a hand and closed it around his forearm again, needing the ropy hardness and male strength of it. He gripped her in return, his fingers reaching much further around her. They brushed the fine skin in the crook of her elbow, making her body tingle.
“What do you want to do? We’ll change the locks again, of course, and the alarm codes, and you’ll have to watch your keys like the English crown jewels. Don’t leave your purse lying around, even in your own house. Change Bridget’s hours so she only cleans when you’re home and don’t give her a key at all. Don’t have any friends over. I can put men on twenty-four-hour surveillance, inside and outside the house. I can put an intercept on your phone line so we can trace the source of any incoming calls. I can help you move to your dad’s, or set up a safe house for you.”
“No.”
“No to which thing?”
“No to all of it, except the locks and the alarm. I refuse to let this defeat me.” She took a deep breath. “There’s only one new thing I want you to do.”
“Tell me. I’ll do it.”
“I want you to help my sister, Stephanie, organize my baby shower.”
“What?”
“She can’t do it from Paris, the way I want it now. It’s only two weeks away. She’s had some great ideas. But I want to make some changes. I don’t want it just to be my female friends. I want their husbands and boyfriends as well.” As she spoke, she saw the understanding growing in his face. “You can set up a TV in the basement and they can watch a football game, drink beer and play poker, or something. I want to ask Bridget to help with serving food, and I’m going to suggest she bring a couple of her family members as well, to help with serving.”
“Are you sure?” His voice sounded husky and strained. “A trap?”
“More like just a chance for you to observe without being too obvious. Yes, I’m sure.”
“You know what you’re saying?”
“Yes. And it’s only what you’re thinking yourself. This is someone that knows me. This is someone I think is a friend.”
Daniel didn’t know who was making the most noise, the men in the basement watching football with the wide-screen TV turned loud, or the women in the living room squealing and laughing over baby shower games.
“Help yourselves to more beer,” he told eight broad male backs, cast in silhouette by the bright light of the TV screen. The third quarter had just started, and it was a close game.
A few of the men grunted or said, “Thanks,” but most ignored him. The husbands or boyfriends of Lauren’s prenatal-class buddies and other friends, they didn’t look as if they had any sinister motives in being here today.
Daniel had had Lauren’s locks changed on New Year’s Day, nearly two weeks ago, and Lauren hadn’t let her single set of keys out of her sight since. There was no evidence that anyone had gotten in. There had also been two more letters. The way they were worded still made Daniel think of some angry, spoiled college kid who wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as he thought he was, but the police had widened the circle of their inquiries, had interviewed several people and still no one checked out.
He strolled back upstairs, disguising the deliberate silence of his footsteps as simply a lazy gait. In the kitchen, Bridget was deftly arranging platters of hot and cold finger foods, with the help of her twenty-three-year-old daughter, Trish. Both women smiled at him and invited him to sample their offerings. They looked busy and content and above suspicion.
He grabbed a couple of steaming morsels and ducked out of the room again, saying, “Deyyishush!” with his mouth half full, like a starving schoolkid.
Prowling along the hall in the direction of Lauren’s bedroom, he heard her voice behind him, coming from the center of the party. As usual, its familiar, musical tone arrowed straight to his gut.
“Oh, Catrina, this is gorgeous! Thank you!”
She was unwrapping the gifts, which Stephanie had piled onto a side table when each guest arrived. Including Lauren, there were fourteen women present.
The baby’s nursery was silent, and so was Lauren’s study. Her bedroom was empty, and he was about to turn on his heel when he heard a noise coming from the adjoining bathroom. The door was closed and probably locked.
He heard a heavy gush of water and thought, Yeah, okay, that’s what bathrooms are for, then came back to the lounge room, passing the guest half bath on the way.
Its door was open, showing a vase of fresh pink roses on the marble vanity unit, a spotless guest towel folded on the heated rail and a little basket of shell-shaped soaps beside the gleaming faucet.
So why was someone using Lauren’s private bathroom? he wondered.
He stole some more of Bridget’s finger foods and leaned in the kitchen doorway, where he could see a good stretch of the lounge room through the double doors that opened from it into the dining room. He’d committed the guest list to memory, and he could see everyone on it except Catrina Callahan, Anna Hazelwood and Corinne Alexander. Two of those women could simply be seated in a corner, out of his range of vision.
He paused a little longer.
Lauren looked fabulous today. Her hair was streaming loose, past her shoulders, and her eyes were bright. She wore bright pink—a frivolous, feminine color that she normally disdained in her role as a company executive. There was a softness about her that caught at his heart. Because she was only thinking about the baby, instead of about all the other things she generally had on her mind?
The dreamy, contented look suited her, and he tried to picture how she’d look when she first held her baby in her arms. He felt a sudden need to witness that moment, and it scared him. Associated images from his own past toppled one after another into his thoughts like dominoes. They reeked of commitment, shackles, unhappiness, pressure and failure.
Oh, no, he didn’t want to be on hand to see Lauren’s face, after all. He was too gun-shy about everything that went with it.
Back down the hall at a stroll, he was alert for the possibility of one of the men coming up the stairs, but heard a chorused roar of male voices that suggested total absorption in a touchdown. Yeah, he wouldn’t have minded seeing the game himself, but Lauren had been skewing a few of his priorities lately, and this was one of them. Her well-being was far more important to him than any football game.
The bathroom was still occupied. No more flushing sounds. Instead, he heard the stealthy click of a cabinet door, the slide of a drawer, the rattle of what sounded like makeup or medication containers.
He waited.
The sounds continued while a couple more minutes passed, then he heard the lock click back. The door opened, and there was Corinne. For the length of a heartbeat, her perfectly groomed face betrayed her, but then she set a bright smile in place and said, “Hi, Daniel” as she moved to step past him.
Standing in the bedroom doorway, all he had to do was lean a little and place a strategic hand against the frame of the door to block her exit. His size and strength did the rest.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Please, Daniel!” She gave a little laugh. “I want to see Lauren unwrapping the gift I gave her.”
In silence, he stepped into the room and r
eached back to close the door behind him. Then he placed his hands on his hips like a nightclub bouncer, knowing he was big enough and strong enough to make the physical threat in the gesture extremely subtle without it losing any of its power. He’d give her a minute or two, and he was pretty sure she’d dig her own grave. If she didn’t, he’d dig it for her.
As he’d expected, she saved him the effort.
“This isn’t what you think,” she blurted, after about twenty seconds of tight silence.
“Tell me what I think,” he invited her calmly.
“That I’m stealing from her.”
“You don’t look like you need to do that.”
“Exactly!” She looked relieved. “You’re in this sort of area professionally, Daniel.” Her voice dropped to a seductive, confiding pitch. “I admit, I’m only an amateur, but it’s perfectly valid. I’m simply looking for evidence to support Ben Deveson’s bid for sole custody, if he decides to make one. He’s been weighing his options on this for months, and he wants more facts.”
“What sort of facts?”
“Oh, you know the sort of thing. Evidence of drug use, an unstable personality, multiple sex partners. You’d have to understand that in your business, Daniel. Having you around, and all these extra security precautions, has made it much harder than it was supposed to be. But her lawyers will have people trying to get exactly the same dirt on Ben.”
“People who pretend to be close friends of his?”
Hell, he’d never been so angry in his life, and she hadn’t even blinked.
“Lauren ditched him,” she said. Her lips knitted at the corners. “I knew him first! I introduced them, for heaven’s sake! Where does she get the right to assume I’m on her side?”
“Maybe because you pretend to be. And how about the slashed tires and the graffiti and the letters?”
“That’s not me doing those things.”
No, I didn’t think so, but it was worth the question.
“I don’t know who it was,” she went on. “It was convenient, at first, apart from bringing you on the scene, because I know Lauren assumed it was all the same person. But then I felt real bad about it. Poor Lauren! I wouldn’t have done something like that to her!”
She fixed him with a pouting expression that said, “Feel my pain, I’m a nice person!” then ruined the unconvincing performance when she added, “She doesn’t have anything to worry about with the custody thing. The gal is so squeaky clean you could use her as a tablecloth. Ben’ll drop it now, I think, which suits me.” She smiled. “I don’t want Lauren’s kid around when Ben and I move in together.”
“Right,” Daniel answered through his teeth. “Thanks for filling me in. You can leave now.”
He didn’t say another word, just bent her arm behind her back, held her wrist, opened the door and marched her out of the room.
“You’re hurting me,” she claimed on a whimper.
“I’m not.” His grip was looser than she deserved. “You’ll know it if I start to hurt you.”
He was tempted. He was so damned tempted! He wanted to jerk her forearm up parallel with her spine. He wanted to see her bend and twist and beg. This woman had betrayed her so-called friend at a point when Lauren was vulnerable, fighting her hardest, and incredibly in need of true supporters.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’m taking you to the door,” he answered. “You’re going to hell on your own. And if so much as the shadow of your little finger appears in Lauren’s life again, I’ll have the police slap an arrest warrant on you so fast it’ll get fused to your skin.”
“On what grounds?” she bleated. “What evidence?”
“We’ve had hidden cameras in here for over a week.”
It wasn’t true—he’d have liked to install some, but Lauren wouldn’t permit it—but his seething anger gave the words a conviction he was sure she wouldn’t challenge. If she did, if she was foolish enough to come back for more, he’d break her entire life into a thousand miserable pieces.
When he’d closed the door behind Corinne, he had to clench his fists to stop them from shaking, and he couldn’t move for several minutes. Just had to stand here, head bowed and eyes closed, fighting for control.
His need to protect Lauren was so strong that it terrified him. He was angry at himself for not checking Corinne out more thoroughly. He’d ascertained that she had no shares in Ben’s company and no past criminal record and left it at that. He hadn’t considered the personal angle. He’d also looked into Ben’s business affairs as far as he could, but it wasn’t his area, and anyhow the police supposedly had that covered. He wanted to catch the next plane to Switzerland to personally draw Ben Deveson’s blood. He wanted to go through every piece of police evidence himself, examine every one of Deveson’s company files, turn the whole of Lachlan Security Systems into an investigative task force, until the “convenient” second stalker they were looking for had nowhere left to hide.
Most of all, he wanted to hold Lauren’s swollen, vulnerable form, using the male strength of his body as a promise.
You’re safe. I’m here. I won’t let you down.
That’s exactly what I said to Becky. That I wouldn’t let her down. And I made both of us miserable. I don’t owe Lauren anything. I don’t have to step in and do the honorable thing this time, like I did with Becky. I’m not the father of her baby. I can steer clear of the whole mess and save both of us from all the pain and regret that would follow.
Restless, still angry and with a sore feeling in his gut that he couldn’t explain, Daniel prowled back to the kitchen and stole some more of Bridget’s tempting nibbles. He ate without tasting a thing, just listening to the sound of Lauren’s voice as she exclaimed in delight over the rest of her gifts.
“You had no right!”
“Good grief, Lauren, what did you want me to do? Pat her on the head and send her back to the party? Hand her over to you so you could chew her out in the middle of a sea of wrapping paper?”
The sea of wrapping paper was gone now. It was six in the evening, dark and cold outside. The place was tidied up and everyone had left. Lauren and Daniel faced each other in the middle of her lounge room, which was filled with pretty new things for the baby. The gifts were incongruous as a backdrop to their anger.
“It was my battle!” she told him. “Corinne betrayed me, not you! You had no right to do what you did. You denied me the chance to look her in the eye, hear it from her own mouth and tell her what I thought of her supposed friendship! Instead, you confronted her, threatened her, ejected her from my house without my even knowing!”
She shook her head, as if further speech was impossible.
“Do you have any idea what a control freak you are?” He almost yelled it. “I was trying to protect you! That’s only ever what I’m trying to do!”
“It’s not about control.”
“No? Like the baby nursery isn’t about control, and the child care books and the perfect diet?”
“Yes, those things are about control,” she agreed, lightning fast. “And I know that. I can see it, and I laugh about it and I go right on doing it. It helps right now! This isn’t like that. This is about closure, Daniel. Or Lock,” she corrected. Her tone dripped sarcasm the way a piece of honeycomb dripped sweet stuff. “You’re starting to make a habit of denying me closure, and if you think you’re helping, you’re wrong. If I’m a control freak, you have an overdeveloped need to protect. Maybe that isn’t a concern for you, but it sure as heck is a major pain for me!”
“I’m protecting you because that’s what I’m paid to do. You agreed to it, and the fact is, you need it.”
“You go way beyond what you’re paid for, Daniel!” Her eyes sparked and her voice shook. No one wearing a bright pink tunic and leggings should be able to look that sure of herself. “But when I let you do it, like the times I’ve taken your tips on how to be a parent and got involved in your church, you’ve turned on me and lashed out as if
I’m trying to smother you or something. You’re the one sending the mixed messages.”
My, but you’re beautiful when you’re angry!
Yeah, just imagine what she’d do if he really said it! Daniel thought.
His mouth tasted sour. He’d had a beer while he hung out downstairs, watching the game and waiting for the party to end. Then he’d had a second one. He regretted both of them now. They sat in his gut, weighing him down, and blurred the sharp focus that was so important to him when he wanted to think.
He really wanted to think right now, and in all honesty, it wasn’t the beer that was preventing it. It was Lauren. She was so electric and magnetic and beautiful when she was angry.
“Here’s another mixed message for you, then,” he told her, and moved forward to kiss her with more certainty and intent and confidence than he’d ever felt about a woman before.
Had he ever kissed a woman this angry before? Most of his experience—Becky, of course, and a couple of others before her—had involved women kissing him, after what he’d only later realized was detailed planning and strategy on their part. He didn’t like that crafty premeditation, that sense of an agenda. This was so different, and so much better.
Her eyes were bright and there were spots of hot color in her cheeks. Her loose hair was wild around her face because she’d been running her hands through it and tossing it back as she lifted that fine-boned yet oh-so-stubborn chin. She watched him coming at her, had to know what he intended and just went on glaring at him as if to say, “I dare you!”
He rose to the challenge without a second’s pause.
“If you think this is going to make a difference,” she said, hissing like a cat. The sharp turn of her head brought his lips to the corner of her mouth, and he tasted the sweetness of strawberries, spongecake and cream.