The Man She Almost Married

by Maggie Price

  She pushed her tangled hair away from her face. “You’re not God, Sloan. You had no way of knowing what would happen. You had no right to make decisions without considering my feelings.”

  He turned. “Do you want to know what I learned about feelings?” he asked quietly. “I discovered you never know how much you love someone until that person becomes a matter of life and death to you. I couldn’t do anything about the fact I might die, but I damn well wasn’t going to take you with me.”

  Her lips trembled before she pressed them together. “And you think all these ‘what-ifs’ justify your lie?”

  “I don’t feel the need to justify anything. I’m sorry I hurt you, Julia, but the truth might have hurt you a lot more. I took the only option open.”

  “No,” she said through her teeth. “You could have stayed.”

  “And allowed a damn illness to shackle you to me? Let it turn you into a young widow after you’d maybe sacrificed your career, your health? I don’t think so. You deserved a future without some black hole at the end of it. I no longer had that to offer.”

  “So you offered nothing. You just turned off your feelings and decided you could control everyone else’s.”

  “You found someone else who can offer you what I can’t.”

  “Which is what you wanted.”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head, seeing with agonizing sharpness the chillingly thorough steps he’d taken to sever their lives. “How satisfied you must feel, knowing you controlled even that.”

  His hands clenched, then unclenched. “If you have one shortcoming, Julia, it’s that you view everything in black and white, right or wrong, innocence or guilt, stay or leave: There are no gray areas as far as you’re concerned. But they exist. Believe me, I know.”

  “You knew you were going to die. You didn’t.”

  “I was told to put my things in order. That’s what I did.” He walked back to the bar, sloshed Scotch into a tumbler. “I survived this bout. So did my father the first time cancer hit him. It came back a few years later and took him.”

  “And you think you’re due the same fate?”

  His eyes cooled and he shrugged. She could almost see the emotional shields coming up around him again. “I have no idea.”

  She nodded. “That’s right, Sloan, you have no idea,” she said, her voice low and bitter. “No idea what it is to love someone. You can’t love someone and just banish them from your life, not for any reason.”

  His gaze held hers for a long moment. “You’re wrong about that, Jules. Very wrong,” he added softly.

  “If I’m so wrong, why didn’t you come back after you’d recovered?” She trembled inwardly. “If you’d loved me, you’d have come back.”

  “I was sick for months,” he answered, his voice as soft as smoke. “Weak as a kitten. After the chemo, it took a long time to get my body back in shape.” He sipped his Scotch. “I’ve kept up with you, Jules. You’ve moved on, both in your career and your personal life. You didn’t need me dragging you down.”

  Julia stared at him, a mix of anger and hurt clawing at her heart.

  In the silence that followed, he lifted his chin, his gaze flicking across the room. “I think there’s been sufficient closure for both of us today. When I complete the launch of the wing company, this house goes on the market. I’m relocating to D.C.—”

  “Not if you’re in a cell,” she shot back, then inwardly trembled with the possibility that her statement might come true.

  “I won’t be.” His mouth curved. “It has always intrigued me how you slide so effortlessly into your cop persona.”

  “That’s who I am.”

  “Yes, I know.” He emptied the contents of his glass, refilled it and leaned a shoulder negligently against the bar. “So, Jules, you’ll marry your D.A., maybe become OCPD’s first female police chief.”

  “You’re right on both counts,” she said. Clinging to the slippery edge of control, she went to the couch, grabbed her weapon and badge, then shoved them into her purse.

  “What about you, Sloan?” The question lashed out like a whip. “Do you plan to sit around D.C., waiting to die?”

  “Does it matter to you what I do?”

  “Not a damn bit,” she said, and surprised herself when she didn’t stumble on her way to the door.

  Chapter 7

  By the time she’d navigated through rush-hour traffic and pulled her cruiser into the lot of Vanessa West’s apartment building, Julia’s head had stopped buzzing. Her breathing had evened. Black dots no longer whirled before her eyes as they had when she’d gunned the engine, leaving skid marks down the length of Sloan’s cobblestone driveway.

  Now all she saw was red.

  Damn him. Damn Sloan Remington for what he’d done. And damn her for letting it get to her after all this time.

  She should have shot him. Just pulled out her 9 mm Smith and blasted him square between the eyes. If she hadn’t despised him before, she did now.

  He had torn her apart, put her through two years of gut-wrenching hell... all because of some moronic, arrogant attempt to protect her. Protect her!

  “Idiotic bastard!”

  She jerked off her sunglasses and slung them onto the car’s dashboard. Rage, fierce and hot, had her entire body trembling.

  How could Sloan have done it? How could he have loved her, and just walked away? How could he have known he was ill—terribly ill—and banish the one person who would have done everything ... anything to comfort, to help?

  Julia’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. It didn’t matter how he could do those things. What mattered was he’d done them...and with such blood-chilling deliberation.

  Knowing what she did now didn’t change a thing, not a damn thing. She felt the same way about Sloan as she had for the past two years. No, that was wrong. She loathed him now. Loathed everything about him—his icy selfconfidence, his simmering aloofness, his... touch.

  Groaning, she leaned her forehead against the steering wheel.

  What had just happened between them was nothing more than pure and simple lust. Chemistry. Animal attraction. A volatile situation that, granted, she’d started, but Sloan had done his part to stoke the flames. Her heedless, mindless surrender to him meant nothing. Nothing.

  Something stirred inside her, something she didn’t dare name, something that had her body buzzing like a hormonal teenager’s. Her heart kicked against her ribs. Her bruised lips tingled, as if Sloan’s hot, demanding mouth had again taken possession of hers.

  “No!” she said through gritted teeth as her stomach twisted into a knot.

  She would not let herself want him. Not again, never. He hadn’t just sent her world tilting when he walked out. He’d sent it crashing down around her. She’d learned a hard and bitter lesson, and she knew how to deal with this.

  She’d bury herself in work—Lord knows she had enough of it. She’d find who murdered Vanessa West. If it was Sloan, fine. If it was somebody else, fine, too. She didn’t care. She just wanted the damn case closed. In what spare time she had, she’d hit the streets and work on her other unsolved case. She’d get things back to normal, think about Bill instead of—

  “Oh, my God,” she muttered as guilt seeped through her anger. She had a fiancé, yet less than an hour ago she’d had her body willingly wrapped around another man’s. So willingly that she’d come perilously close to pulling Sloan down onto his Oriental rug and having her way.

  But she hadn’t, she instantly countered. She’d stopped the madness, hadn’t allowed things to go further.

  Forcing her hands to unclench, Julia leaned and retrieved her sunglasses off the dash, then slid them on with slow deliberation. She was in control. She knew what she wanted. And that something wasn’t to sleep with Sloan Remington, but to hammer him into dust.

  Or at least lock him in a cell and let him rot.

  Setting her jaw, she fought to pull her emotions under control. Halliday was already
inside the building. She’d seen his cruiser when she pulled into the lot. She had to get out of her car, find her partner and search a dead woman’s apartment for computer disks. She could not let what Sloan had done affect her, damn sure couldn’t let it interfere with her job.

  Pulling in a deep breath, Julia stared out the windshield, forcing herself to take in her surroundings. Well-maintained patches of lawn bordered the high-rise structure where planters spilled ivy and vibrant blooms over each apartment’s scrolling ironwork balcony. Stone benches on either side of the gleaming glass entry doors baked in the afternoon sun. Julia closed her eyes. The quiet refinement of the place Vanessa West had called home did nothing to calm the storm raging inside her.

  She hooked her holster and badge onto her waistband, then opened the car door and stepped into the skin-soaking heat. Eyes narrowed, she stared up at the looming building, wondering if she’d find evidence in Vanessa’s apartment that would put Sloan in a cell.

  She caught up with Halliday in the building’s airy, brightly lit lobby.

  “Traffic was hell,” Julia said, thinking too late she should have checked her cruiser’s rearview mirror to see if Sloan’s mind-numbing kiss had left her lipstick smeared.

  “No problem,” Halliday said, his unconcerned look erasing that possibility. “I used the time to have another chat with the landlord.” He punched the button for the elevator, then swept an arm in the direction of the lobby. “Get a load of this place.”

  Julia glanced at the comfortable-looking armchairs positioned against a wall streaked in beige and coral tones. A carved cherry armoire stood against another. Positioned in the center of a polished end table was a gilded urn overflowing with sprays of gladioli, snapdragons and baby’s breath. The flowers’ heavy scent reminded her of the cloying smell of a too-small florist’s shop.

  “Learn anything new from the landlord?” she asked as the elevator’s doors slid open. She dropped her sunglasses into her purse, then stepped into the elevator, Halliday behind her.

  “He reminded me that Vanessa was a lovely young woman,” Halliday said, and jabbed a button on the control panel. “Very discreet.” The doors closed; the elevator shot up soundlessly.

  Julia arched a brow. “Discreet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How so?”

  “If she ever brought a man home, the landlord never saw him.” Halliday shrugged. “That doesn’t mean much, considering the guy’s in his seventies. If he’s not in bed by eight, I bet he’s catching z’s in his recliner. Our Miss West could have hosted an orgy in the lobby and it’s probable he’d have slept through it.”

  Dinner with S. Julia again pictured Vanessa’s entries in the black leather appointment book. Drinks with S. Spend night with S.

  The thought of all the nights Vanessa had spent with S put an unwelcome tightness in Julia’s stomach. In the silent moment that followed, she realized how desperately she wanted S to be someone other than Sloan.

  “Okay,” she said, the thought drawing her brows together as she stared up at the floor numbers blipping on the elevator’s panel. “Maybe Vanessa never brought a date here. She could have gone to the guy’s place. That way, she’d avoid the hassle of having to nudge him out the door the next morning.”

  “You could be right,” Halliday agreed.

  Julia slicked her tongue across her tender lips. Having experienced innumerable nights of hot, searing sex with Sloan Remington, she doubted there was a woman alive who would toss him out the door the following morning.

  But then, Vanessa West was no longer alive.

  The elevator came to a smooth stop, the doors sliding open with a hushed sigh. Julia stepped into a white-carpeted corridor, as softly lit and silent as a new snowfall.

  “Down there,” Halliday said, gesturing toward a door at the far end of the hall.

  As they walked, she rummaged in her purse for her latex gloves. “What did the lab print yesterday?”

  “Phone, answering machine, toilet handles, doorknobs, TV remote,” Halliday said as he pulled a pair of gloves out of his suit coat and began nudging them on. “The usual places you’d find a visitor’s prints. The computer, too, before we turned it on.”

  “Have you heard back from the lab?”

  “They got plenty of smudged partials. Anything identifiable belonged to Vanessa. Also, the hairs we found in the shower and the bed are hers. If she had recent visitors, there isn’t any evidence to prove it.”

  At the door, Halliday slid the key into the lock, snapped open the dead bolt and swung the door open.

  They stepped into elegance.

  Julia stood motionless, her gaze performing a slow study of the high-ceilinged living room and spacious dining area beyond. Vanessa’s taste ran to antique woods and classic fabrics, ultraconservative, cool colors. Having grown up working summers at her mother’s interior decorating business, Julia instantly identified the muted-toned landscapes that hung on the pale living-room walls as original oils.

  “Mother would love this place,” she commented, thinking of Georgia Cruze’s knack for combining furniture and fabrics that whispered of class and expense.

  “Maybe she did the decorating.”

  “Not hardly. If Vanessa had chanced into Mother’s shop, she’d have gotten chucked out the door the minute her employer’s name came up. Mother carries a distinct grudge against anyone or anything connected with Remington Aerospace.”

  Pulling off his glasses, Halliday used the end of his paisley tie to polish the lenses. “Including its CEO, I bet.”

  “Especially Sloan.”

  Halliday nodded, then strolled across the room to a bar of crystal decanters tucked into an alcove. “I also had the lab fingerprint the liquor bottles. Only Vanessa’s prints showed up.”

  Julia set her purse on a table beside a tufted couch done in soft beige. Everything was neat, tidy, organized. That was how the Remington staffers she interviewed the previous day had described Vanessa...in appearance and work habits. Her personality was the thing that had garnered harsh comments. Mean minded. Into control. Bitch.

  “One thing that doesn’t add up is this Scotch,” Halliday said, holding up a bottle he’d pulled from a shelf beneath the bar. A fine dusting of black fingerprint powder covered the bottle and its label.

  “Why?”

  “The brand. You’d think someone with a six-figure income would buy decent booze.”

  “You’d think,” Julia said against the stiffening of her spine. She pictured Sloan, his dark eyes cool and assessing as he leaned negligently against the bar in his study, a crystal tumbler of Scotch in hand.

  “This brand’s rotgut,” Halliday announced, and twisted off the cap to take a sniff. “Je-sus! Stuff is strong enough to cause a nosebleed.”

  Julia walked across the room to join him, her heels sinking into carpet so thick it would muffle the sound of a jackhammer. Halliday handed her the bottle, adding, “Bet it goes down as rough as it smells.”

  She took a whiff and grimaced. The Scotch had a decidedly unrefined aroma—a definite contrast to the heady, liquid gold she’d sipped earlier.

  “It’s not Sloan’s brand.” Privately, she conceded the relief that settled inside her.

  Halliday met her gaze. “Maybe it didn’t used to be his brand. His tastes could have changed over the past two years.”

  But not the past hour, Julia thought. “Trust me on this, Halliday,” she said, handing him the bottle. “It’s not Sloan’s brand.”

  She caught her partner’s assessing look before she turned and headed toward a set of French doors hung with white lace panels. Glancing out, she took in the sunbathers sprawled on towels around a glistening swimming pool.

  “You take this room, the kitchen and dining room,” she said, turning back to face him. “I’ll do the others. Look behind picture frames, under corners of the carpet, inside sofas—anywhere big enough to hide a computer disk.”

  “Got it.” Halliday replaced the Scotch bottle,
then reached and checked the label on another before closing the cabinet door.

  Julia headed down the hallway, then stepped into an enormous bedroom where sunlight spilled through curtains of dotted Swiss voile. A massive four-poster covered with a white eiderdown quilt angled from one corner. One wall was done completely in mirrors, making the room seem enormous. On the wall opposite the bed, a marble-topped dresser displayed a framed photograph of Vanessa West. A collection of crystal perfume decanters sat beside the frame.

  Julia scowled as she walked across the room. What the hell kind of woman kept her own picture on display?

  A gorgeous one, she decided, taking in Vanessa’s flawless porcelain skin, light-blue eyes and blond shining hair. From all reports, the woman had used her beauty and her body to get what and where she wanted. Chances were, that same blind-sided ambition was the thing that had gotten her killed.

  Julia dropped her gaze and pulled open the dresser’s top drawer. A heady fragrance rose invitingly from delicate pieces of silk and lace. Her fingers paused amid the meticulously folded lingerie as her mind again returned to the appointment book, its pages carrying the same soft scent. Vanessa’s scent.

  A vague, hazy realization drifted through Julia’s thoughts, tightening her mouth. She turned her head and stared at the eiderdown-covered bed. She could not picture Sloan there, lying on quilted softness in Vanessa’s arms. Could not visualize him pouring himself a Scotch at her bar, couldn’t even envision him stepping off the elevator and walking along the silent, snow-white corridor.

  Following on the heels of that realization came an intense punch of doubt over his guilt.

  “Get a grip,” she muttered, then pulled the drawer out to check for disks taped to its bottom, back and sides. Finding nothing, she shoved the drawer closed and checked the next one, while reminding herself that just because she couldn’t picture Sloan here didn’t mean he hadn’t spent untold hours jumping Vanessa’s bones in this very room. Didn’t mean he hadn’t swilled her cheap Scotch, or strode down the building’s pristine white hallway.