Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. He had to caution himself that she might not remember anything significant.

  Jack moved restlessly around her room, peered into the bathroom to ensure it was empty and closed the drapes while Gabby waited, stock-still, in the middle of the room. She still clutched her handbag. Only her head turned to allow her to watch him.

  He’d expected her to be nervous, but scared to death wouldn’t help.

  “Hey.” He took the bag from her hand and dropped it on a table. Then he summoned a wicked grin, not hard considering his exhilaration. “You need to get comfortable before we start our session. I’d suggest you change clothes, preferably into something less confining. Say, a lacy negligee. Then you can stretch out on my couch.” He waggled his eyebrows as he nodded toward the queen-size bed.

  That broke the spell. She shook her head, rolled her eyes and laughed, if huskily. “Forget the couch. I do think I’ll change clothes, though, if you don’t mind waiting.”

  “Not at all.” He planted himself in one of the room’s pair of easy chairs. Waiting five minutes was no problem; he’d already waited fifteen years or more for this opportunity. Longer than that, of course, if he were to include the years before he started college with a single goal: arresting the man he’d blamed for shattering his father’s life.

  Gabby grabbed a few things from her suitcase that lay open on a luggage rack in the closet, then disappeared into the bathroom.

  His mood strange, Jack thought about the most recent call with his father. Had he blinded himself all these years to the truth, that his parents’ divorce had little to do with the brief police interest in Dad? That while there were things his mother had always refused to tell him, his father was hiding plenty, too?

  Gabby had become more of a priority than he’d expected, too, and he truly believed that she needed to know her mother’s killer was behind bars, that she herself would be safe. She needed to let go of guilt, to be able to release those horrific memories so they were out in the open instead of taunting her from the shadows.

  The toilet flushed behind the closed bathroom door, and a moment later water ran.

  Damn. Should he tell her now that he was already deep into a cold case investigation of her mother’s murder?

  But enough of his exhilaration lingered to make him balk. No, that wasn’t all of it—but in telling her, he’d be taking a significant risk that she’d refuse to talk to him. She’d be mad, he felt confident of that. If she decided not to trust him...

  He swore under his breath.

  If he went ahead with this, he was very possibly ruling out any chance that she’d ever trust him again. He could be throwing away any hope of getting this woman who’d made him feel so much, so fast, into bed. But he’d be a fool to let this chance go by, he told himself grimly. If she couldn’t understand why he’d made the decisions he’d had, then what kind of relationship would it be, anyway?

  The bathroom door opened and she appeared, expression tentative. His body clenched at the sight of her in pajamas, even if they were the furthest thing from sexy. Still, beneath those flannel pants and thin knit T-shirt, she had to be naked. The movement of her generous breasts beneath that top as she walked toward him had his fingers flexing.

  Too quick, she was past him and on the bed. Sitting back against the pile of pillows at the headboard, legs crossed, she clutched a pillow from the other side of the bed to herself, hiding her magnificent breasts.

  He had to order himself to breathe. It was just as well she’d assumed such an obviously defensive posture. She wasn’t trying to be seductive. In fact, between the pretzel she’d formed with her entwined legs and the way she hugged that pillow to herself, he was unpleasantly reminded of the little girl whose timid voice he’d heard on those damn tapes.

  He forced a grin. “You followed my advice.”

  “It...seemed to make sense.”

  After a brief hesitation, Jack crossed the room and gestured toward a spot at the foot of the bed. “Okay if I sit there?”

  “What? Oh, sure.”

  The mattress shifted under his weight, but he was a safe distance from her. “How do you want to do this?” he asked her. “I’ll ask questions if you want, or you can close your eyes and tell me what you remember in order. Or what your nightmares are suggesting you remember.”

  Her beautiful eyes met his. “I...that might be best.”

  He pressed the heel of his hand against his breastbone in hopes of easing the unexpected ache.

  “Well,” she said. “Um, here goes.”

  * * *

  INSTEAD OF CLOSING her eyes, she lowered her gaze to be sure she wasn’t sucked into Jack’s force field. For the first time in a very long while, she dragged herself back to that morning.

  “My mother let me run through the sprinkler,” Gabby told him. “She said I had to turn off the water before I came in, so I did. Only, I didn’t take a towel outside, so when I came in I was dripping.”

  Dripping. Oh, God.

  She corrected herself hastily. “I left wet footprints. Mom said to go to the laundry room and strip. There’d be towels in the dirty clothes basket I could use to dry myself before I went upstairs to change.”

  Beginning before the intruder appeared seemed to be helping. It was as if, once the reel had started, it didn’t stop running. “That’s where I was, when I heard the back door open again. Mommy said, ‘Ric? Is that you?’ Then...then...” Gabby swallowed. “She said, ‘What are you doing here?’”

  When she froze up, Jack asked gently, “Could you see him?”

  “Uh-uh. Only Mommy.” Vaguely, she knew how childish she sounded, but that’s who was telling this story: the little girl she’d been. “She looked scared, like the time I crossed the street when I wasn’t supposed to, and for a minute she didn’t see me in the yard.” She frowned. “I think that’s when I crouched down behind the laundry basket. Mommy being scared made me want to hide.”

  “Good call.” Jack’s soft murmur barely touched her.

  “Mommy backed up until she bumped into the island in the kitchen.” Now Gabby closed her eyes as she strained to see. “She sort of shuffled sideways, like she was trying to go around it.”

  “How are you seeing this?”

  “I’m peeking over the top of the laundry basket. She’s yelling at him. I don’t know what she’s saying.” She squeezed her eyes shut even harder, trying to pull herself back from being the child again. Failing. “Then he’s in the way. All I can see is his back, but he’s like the scary monster in Ghostbusters. He’s so big! And...and he has something in his hand. Mommy is yelling about how she won’t tell, she promises, and he says, ‘Now I know you won’t.’”

  Lord. She was shaking, her teeth chattering, just like they probably were then. He could so easily have heard. The mattress compressed a little, and somehow she knew Jack had moved even before he wrapped an arm around her.

  That warmth helped settle her. It’s all over. I’m not that little girl anymore. I never will be again.

  “She kept screaming,” Gabby said dully, “and he yelled, ‘You ruined my life.’ Over and over. He lifted his arm and brought it down, over and over. Blood sprayed. I didn’t know that’s what it was, I just saw red. Red ran all over the floor. In my dream, it looked like veins in the human body, except it was blood that wasn’t in a human body anymore. I...got so scared I pulled a pile of dirty sheets over me.” Green sheets, which meant they were from Ric’s bed. How odd. If someone had asked, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. “But it got quiet, so I peeked. My mother was just lying there, but her face was wrong, like she smashed it in spaghetti sauce. I couldn’t really see him, but I knew he was still there. I think he turned on the water in the kitchen sink. I don’t know what he was doing.” She sounded robotic now, not like child Gabby or adult G
abby. “Then...he walked toward me. He had a full plastic trash bag in his arms. I had this moment of wondering if he was taking the garbage out. That was supposed to be Ric’s job.”

  Abruptly, she realized she was wheezing. The safe distance wasn’t working anymore. She pressed her face into Jack’s chest and felt him lay his cheek on her head. He was saying something that sounded urgent, but she couldn’t make it out.

  Horror held her in a terrible grip. “He looked right at me. I never moved, and...and he walked by. That’s when he was dressed in blue.”

  “Jeans?”

  She did hear that. “No. I think they were like uniform pants. Navy blue. His shoes were black and shiny. Dad used to let me help shine his. These were like that.”

  “Bigger than your dad’s?”

  After a minute, she said, “Yes. Lots bigger.”

  “Did he go out the back door?”

  “I don’t know,” she had to say again. “I guess he must have. I just...made myself small, wrapped in sheets and thought, He can’t see me. He can’t.”

  “All right.” Jack sounded angry. “That’s enough, Gabby. Do you hear me?” He pushed her away enough to lift her chin with one of his hands. “No more.”

  “He can’t see me,” she whispered. “He can’t.”

  “No. Damn it, he didn’t see you!”

  If he had, she’d be dead. Gabby had always known that.

  But I must have seen him, she understood in horror. And that’s why he wanted her dead.

  Panting, she stared at Jack. “What if I told the police that I saw him look right at me? If I did—”

  “You didn’t,” he said sharply. “Anyway, how would he know what you told them?”

  “But if I didn’t, why did he try to kill me back then?” she begged. “And why does he still think he has to kill me?”

  “Because there’s a risk you did see him. He must have heard there was a child witness. Even if you didn’t see his face,” Jack’s voice slowed, “there might have been something else about him that would point investigators his way.”

  “Like him wearing blue.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t as much help as it could have been, because blue uniforms are fairly common in the service industry, and he might have happened to wear blue chinos with a chambray shirt.”

  “No.”

  He tipped his head. “No?”

  Gabby scrambled. Why did I say that? Because...she could picture that much. “Chambray is usually a lighter shade of blue. I think his pants and shirt matched exactly.”

  “So we’re back to a uniform. You said navy blue.”

  She nodded cautiously. “Is that the color of your dad’s uniform?”

  His mouth compressed and he nodded.

  “Did he wear shiny black shoes?”

  Jack stared at her for a long moment. “No. Work boots. He had to protect his feet from dropping something heavy on them. Shiny sounds like...”

  “Dress shoes,” she supplied. “Only...” She tried really hard to arrow in on that one specific detail. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I can’t quite see it.”

  His expression became calculating in a way that bothered her, but what had she expected? He was a cop. What a coup it would be for him if he could actually arrest her mother’s murderer.

  “He looked right at you.”

  She bit her lip. “At the pile of dirty clothes in front of the washer.”

  “If you know that, you must have seen his face.”

  Inexplicable panic rose in her. “I didn’t really. I don’t remember.”

  “Okay, sweetheart.” His hands swept up and down her nearly bare arms. Did she actually have goose bumps? “Let’s try it another way. Did he have a beard?”

  “No.” How do I know that, if I didn’t see his face? But she was sure. Nobody in the neighborhood had a beard. A few of father’s friends had moustaches. She’d have noticed anything like that.

  “Was he blond?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dark haired?”

  She shook her head and kept shaking it.

  “Isn’t hair color one of the first identifiers we notice about people?”

  She opened her mouth to say, I don’t know, but shut it.

  “Was his face blurry?”

  “Blurry?” And then she got it. “Like in movies when a bank robber wears pantyhose over his head.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t think so. I just think his head sort of turned toward me but I couldn’t see that much of his face.”

  “Because your peephole was so small?”

  “No...yes.” Then words came from her mouth before she could analyze them. “He had on a hat.”

  The triumph on Jack’s face disturbed her as much as the way he kept rapping out questions. Fast, inexorable. “A fedora?”

  “You mean, like the man on the hotel tape wore?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gabby frowned. “I don’t think so.”

  “But it had a brim to shadow his face.”

  She nodded, because it must have.

  “Baseball cap?”

  She didn’t even know why she hesitated, but that didn’t seem quite right. The trouble was, her four-year-old self thought only hat. At that age, she had no idea what a fedora was or how to describe it, never mind a newsboy cap or—

  Her mind shut down. All she could see was the glint of eyes beneath a brim. When she shook her head, Jack studied her, then tucked her close to his body again.

  “It’ll come to you,” he said softly.

  “I wish I could remember everything now. Get it over with.” Something an awful lot like grief seized her in sharp teeth. This was twenty-five years too late, but she’d just seen her mother murdered again, and this time she’d understood what she was seeing.

  She grabbed a handful of the Jack’s collar and pressed her face harder into that solid chest. I won’t cry, I won’t cry. But of course she did. Not long, but when her body quit shaking, she felt drained, empty.

  She hadn’t known Jack had shifted her over on the bed and now sat where she’d been, his back against the cushioned headboard, his legs stretched out. Both of her arms wrapped his torso, and now she had his sweater in back squeezed in a fist.

  “Your sweater is cashmere, isn’t it?” she mumbled after a minute.

  “Ah—I don’t know. It was a Christmas present from my mother a few years back. I don’t wear it very often because it has to be dry-cleaned, but I wanted to impress you. Did it?”

  She gurgled a laugh. “Yes, except now I’ve cried all over it. There’s probably a little snot mixed in.”

  His chest shook with a husky laugh. “That’s what dry cleaners are for.”

  She kept lying against him, feeling no urgency to move. In fact, she drifted, thinking about, oh, small, immediate things. Sensations and textures. The deep blue of the cashmere was perfect with Jack’s eyes. His mother had good taste, she thought dreamily. It was incredibly soft beneath her cheek, too.

  Blue—no, she didn’t want to think about colors anymore, except Jack did have beautiful eyes. After a bit, she began to wish the layer of cashmere wasn’t between her and his broad, powerful chest. She could see brown hair curling at the neck opening. She could lift herself a little bit and kiss him there, on that hollow at the base of his throat.

  Somehow, Gabby wasn’t nearly as relaxed as she’d been. She was tempted to squirm even closer than she already was. She could pretend she was just trying to get more comfortable...

  He hadn’t moved in a couple of minutes, she realized suddenly. She’d swear his heartbeat had picked up. Was he breathing at all? She stole a peek and that’s when she saw a ridge beneath the zipper placket of his chinos.

  This was why she’d resisted inviting him into her room.<
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  * * *

  DAMN, HE’D HOPED she wouldn’t look down. This was the worst of times for him to get so obviously aroused. Gabby had just been through another traumatic experience, had cried on him and was pulling herself together. And him? He couldn’t stop thinking about the curvaceous body he held in his arms.

  Then a small, husky voice said, “Will you make love with me?”

  Jack froze. Did she mean that? He gritted his teeth as his need for her surged. His brain didn’t seem to want to work. He was already kneading her hip, his other hand making circles on her belly, easing upward toward her breasts.

  “You’re sure?” His voice had gone guttural.

  “Yes.” Gabby tipped her face up. Her even white teeth nibbled on her full lower lip. “I don’t want to be a coward anymore.”

  With a groan, he twisted so that he could kiss her. He had her flat on her back in seconds, his body half covering hers. Her breast overflowed his hand, just firm enough to make him think of ripe fruit. The taut bud pressed against his palm. He wanted to see her, all of her, which meant backing off and stripping her, but from the moment he had set eyes on her, he’d also wanted to free her glossy black hair from the braid. It wouldn’t hurt if he could rip his own clothes off, too. At least he had a condom; he’d carried a couple around since meeting her.

  She tried to tangle her fingers in his hair, but it was too short to cooperate. He didn’t mind her pulling it.

  Feeling her struggle beneath him, he dragged his mouth from hers, only to realize she was trying to tug his sweater off. He cooperated and yanked the T-shirt over her head while they were at it. Then, when he saw the ripe swell of her breasts and the taut nipples, he lost it.

  What reason he’d retained went AWOL. Forget his shirt, he was already suckling one breast while he reached beneath the elastic waistband of her pajama pants and slid his fingers along the slick passage between her folds. Whimpering, she arched upward, lifting her breast to his mouth, her fingernails biting into his shoulders.

  He kissed and suckled her breasts, returning every few minutes to her mouth. There was so much he wanted to do to her, with her, but he became increasingly desperate.