Just One Look

by Mary McBride

  “Thank you for the roses,” she said for what had to be the twentieth time, then added, “my father used to have roses delivered to my mother on the tenth of every month to celebrate the day they met, but I don’t think they were ever as lovely as these.”

  “Sounds like a pretty romantic guy,” Joe said, wondering if Campbell had ever given his daughter so much as a daisy.

  “He was. My mother adored him. Well, they adored each other.” She took a sip of her wine, which, by some other miracle Joe couldn’t fathom, also matched the roses perfectly.

  “And where did little Sara fit into the equation?” he asked.

  Putting her wineglass down with deliberation, she looked at him with those frank green eyes. “I didn’t, really. Oh, they loved me in their own way. They bought me tons of clothes and toys and stuff. More than I ever needed or wanted. But it was pretty much just the two of them. I was...” Her voice drifted off with her gaze.

  “Just a blip on the screen of their great romance?” he suggested, a little more acid in his voice than he’d intended.

  “Something like that.”

  Her smile was so sad it made Joe want to break something. Either that or take her in his arms and tell her that it would be so easy for somebody to shower her with the love and attention that her parents never did. Somebody like him.

  “You deserved better, babe,” he said. “I should take you to meet my parents one of these days. They had nine kids and love enough for—” He stopped midsentence, put down his fork and blinked.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  He muttered a little curse, then said, “I was thinking so much about your birthday that I completely forgot this is the night of their big anniversary bash.”

  “Oh, Joe.” She stared at him with a mixture of sympathy and mounting anxiety on her pretty face, no doubt anticipating—dreading, actually—what he was going to say next.

  “Sorry, babe.” He folded his napkin, tucked it under his plate, then pushed back his chair. “We have to go.”

  Chapter 9

  Joe rolled his eyes and let out a sigh when the little redbrick house on Pearl Avenue came into view. It wasn’t even Thanksgiving yet, but the house where he’d grown up was decked out from rooftop to porch floor in thousands of multicolored Christmas lights. He’d taken a circuitous route from the Campbell house just to make sure they hadn’t been followed, so it probably seemed to Sara that the Decker house was farther away than it really was. On the other hand, he thought, this three-bedroom brick bungalow was about as far as anybody could get from the mansion on Westbury Boulevard.

  The driveway was crammed with cars, so he eased the Mustang alongside the curb behind his brother Mike’s Blazer.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, turning off the ignition, nodding toward the brightly decorated house. “My mother rushes the season more every year. Pretty soon she’ll have my dad out stringing lights on Labor Day.”

  Sara’s response was a tight, almost brittle smile. In the warm glow of the Christmas lights, Joe could see that she looked pale and scared to death. It probably wasn’t helping that the car smelled like a funeral parlor from the roses she’d insisted he bring as a gift for his parents. He cracked the window open an inch, slipped an arm around the back of her seat, then reached for her hand.

  “This will only take a minute. I promise.”

  “I’ll wait here for you, okay?”

  “If you do, my mother’s going to be coming down the sidewalk in about three minutes with a big welcome smile on her face and a hot toddy in her hand, followed by my dad with a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and one or two sisters...”

  “Please,” she said. “I just can’t do this, Joe. My heart’s already going ninety miles an hour.”

  “Try that special breathing you said your shrink recommended.”

  “It isn’t helping,” she wailed. “And distracting myself from my damn panic isn’t working, either.”

  “Maybe you’re not distracted enough,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This.”

  His right hand cupped her shoulder and pulled her closer while his left hand came up to cradle her face, then he kissed her the way he’d been wanting to do all evening. All week. Her lips tensed in surprise for a moment and then relaxed beneath the soft pressure of his mouth as if she’d been waiting just as long as he had for this, as if she wanted it just as much as he did.

  “Sara,” he breathed before deepening the kiss and tasting her, all wine and birthday cake and musky roses. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand slipped beneath the cloak she wore, seeking the warmth of her velvet-covered breast. She moaned softly while his thumb drifted back and forth across its peak, while his tongue sampled the sweet depths of her mouth.

  Joe could feel her heart beating beneath his hand, but it wasn’t the wild tattoo of panic anymore. It was the solid, sensuous cadence of desire, and it matched his own heart, beat for beat. He was sorely tempted to start the car and race to her house, to her pillowy bed.

  Instead he broke the kiss and drew back his hand. The car windows were steamed up, making the Christmas lights little more than a multicolored blur. He put his head on the seat back and blew out a breath.

  “I don’t know about you, Campbell, but that just distracted the hell out of me.”

  “Me, too,” she said softly.

  “Look. I’ll leave this up to you. I’d really like to see my folks on their anniversary, but if you want to go home, that’s okay, too. I’ll just give them a call and tell them I can’t get away from work.”

  She chewed on her lower lip a moment, then muttered decisively, “Let’s go.”

  “Home?”

  “No. Here.” She opened her door. “And you better move fast, Decker, before I lose my nerve and change my mind.”

  He snatched the roses from the back seat and met her on the sidewalk, sliding his arm around her waist and urging her gently toward the house. Ahead, he could see several curtains being pulled back and one or two slats of venetian blinds being pried apart. God help her, he thought. Sara Campbell was about to be Deckered.

  If Sara had longed to be distracted from her palpitating heart and her clammy hands, then the Decker house was the perfect place to be distracted. At least a hundred people—and at times it seemed more like a thousand—had gathered to help Rose and Mike Decker celebrate their wedding anniversary. There were big people with hearty handshakes and hugs. There were little people—girls in velvet dresses and lace collars, boys in plaid bow ties—giggling and spilling punch and filling paper plates with cake and brownies and mixed nuts. There were sisters and brothers and in-laws and neighbors and swirls of cousins and uncles and aunts.

  The little house was bursting with people. Happy people so in contrast to those who attended the parties her parents used to give, where everyone looked either suspicious or bored. And little people having just as good a time, if not better, than the grown-ups. When there were parties at her house, she used to be fed her dinner early and put to bed before the first guest arrived. Later, when she was older, she was expected to have a proper escort and to look as suitably bored as everyone else. She usually was.

  It was a bit like being swept along in a victory parade after a football game. And if Sara couldn’t quite keep track of who was who, the one thing she knew was that Joe’s strong arm was constantly around her, and every minute on the minute, he was searching her face with his intense gray eyes and whispering “Are you okay, babe?”

  Actually, she was pretty okay. The smile on her face wasn’t one of those painful, plastic ones. Her voice, when she heard it above the general din, was level and calm. Her hands weren’t shaking. Well, not so much that she couldn’t bring a glass of punch to her lips without fear of spilling it. It was amazing, really. She’d gone for probably five or ten minutes without even thinking about fainting or fleeing in sheer panic, and she’d managed to focus on others instead of herself for a blessed change.

&n
bsp; “Are you okay, babe?”

  Joe was gazing at her, holding her even closer against his side. He had maneuvered her to the only quiet corner of the jam-packed living room.

  “Fine,” she said.

  “Honest?”

  Sara nodded. “I haven’t even considered fainting, and we’ve been here, what? At least fifteen minutes now.”

  Joe checked his watch. “More like forty-five minutes. And, hell, if you fainted in here, there’d be no place to fall down.” He grinned. “To tell you the truth, the noise is starting to get to me a little bit. I think we should—”

  A speeding ball of yellow fur, dragging a long red leash, cut between their feet, only to disappear in the opposite direction. A second after that, a tiny girl in a red velvet dress rammed into Sara’s legs, looked up, said, “Oops,” then disappeared in the same direction as the puppy. Hard on the little girl’s Mary Jane heels was a woman with eyes the exact gray of Joe’s.

  “Joey,” she said with a beleaguered sigh, “will you do me a favor, please, and catch my wild child and that blasted animal before they knock somebody down?”

  “Sure, Lissie.” He handed her his punch glass. “Take care of my date, okay? Don’t let her escape.”

  He disappeared in the throng of people. Sara, left to fend for herself, felt a little twinge of panic rush through her. Date? His date?

  “Sara, right?” the woman asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Melissa, Joey’s big sister, and I promise you it isn’t always quite this much of a madhouse around here.”

  “I’m enjoying it,” Sara said.

  “Have you met everybody?” She laughed. “No, of course you haven’t. But you will eventually. So, how long have you known Joey?”

  “About a week now.”

  Melissa edged a little bit closer, then lifted Joe’s punch glass in a kind of toast. “Well, I’d like to congratulate you on achieving the impossible.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Making my brother smile again. We’re grateful.” Melissa gestured across the crowded room. “All of us. Especially my mom and dad. Joey’s been hurting for such a long time and nothing any of us did seemed to help all that much.”

  The incipient panic in Sara’s heart melted from the warmth in the woman’s voice and her obvious sincerity. “He’s lucky to have such a loving family,” she said.

  “Yes, I guess he is. But right now I’d say he’s even luckier to have you.”

  Sara didn’t know what to say, but before she could reply, Joe was back, a giggling niece under one arm and a squirming puppy under the other.

  “Here go you, Sis.” He deposited them in Melissa’s arms, then kissed her cheek. “We’re going to make a quiet escape out the back door. Cover for us, will you?”

  “Sure.” She winked at Sara. “Thanks again. I mean it.”

  Joe took Sara’s hand and began to thread through the maze of people. “What was Lissie thanking you for?” he asked.

  “Oh, just the roses,” Sara said.

  And before they managed to make their escape, Sara heard whispered thanks from two more sisters and at least three brothers. There was a warm embrace from Joe’s mother. But best of all was the giant bear hug from Joe’s father when the big man whispered brokenly, “It’s good to see my son happy again.”

  All the way home Joe regaled Sara with family stories, partly because he loved the sound of her laughter, mostly because—for the first time in a long time—he wanted to share them. It hadn’t escaped his notice that just about everyone at the party had been whispering behind his back about this sudden and unexpected appearance with a woman after three years of coming home sullen and solo.

  He kept thinking how happy Sara had looked after she’d gotten used to the crush and the noise in the little house. His big, boisterous family had done her a world of good, he thought, and she hadn’t given him the least indication that she felt she was slumming. Hell, if nothing else, it was a step up from his ramshackle pad.

  In her driveway, he turned the engine off and watched Sara a minute while she gazed at the big house, wondering what was going through her head. Was his little recluse relieved to be about to retreat to her sanctuary again? Was she glad it wasn’t dripping with premature Christmas lights and full of people drinking punch and beer? “Home, sweet home,” he said.

  Her sigh didn’t give him much of a clue to her thoughts. “I had fun tonight, Joe,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Good. We can do it again on a smaller scale, if you want. I guess you heard my mother invite you for Thanksgiving.”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  It sounded more like no than maybe, and suddenly Joe experienced a kind of panic of his own. He had the feeling Sara was slipping away from him now that her sanctuary was in view, and he didn’t want to let her go. He didn’t want to lose her. Not to the Ripper. Not to another man. Not even to this house. It was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and kiss her and touch her and love her until she begged him not to stop. That was the problem, though. Whether she begged him or not, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Under the circumstances, with the Ripper out there somewhere, that was risking far too much.

  “It’s getting cold out here,” he said, blowing on his fingertips. “Let’s go inside.”

  They walked up the sidewalk arm in arm. It felt natural, but Joe hoped a patrol car didn’t come by and give everybody down at the precinct tomorrow’s hot gossip. He recalled Maggie’s caution this morning. What if he was falling in love with Sara? he asked himself. He was a big boy. He could handle it. And if she didn’t reciprocate his feelings, well, he knew how to handle hurt, too.

  In the den, he shrugged out of the jacket of his tux, undid his cummerbund and adjusted his shoulder holster. Sara had gone upstairs to change, so he slung himself on the couch in front of the cold fireplace. It was probably too late to light a fire, he thought, then chuckled about the other fire that had been flaring up in him all evening, the fire it was too early for.

  He must have dozed off for a few minutes, because the next thing he knew Sara was brushing his hair off his forehead as she knelt beside him.

  “Too much partying,” she said softly. “Why don’t you come upstairs and get some sleep?”

  He smiled into her deep green eyes and murmured, “So, Campbell, are you going to be the kind of mother who wakes a kid who’s sound asleep on the couch and tells him to go to bed?”

  “Probably.”

  “It’s your sense of order, right?”

  She laughed. “Well, beds are for sleeping.”

  “Yeah.” He brought her fingers to his lips for a kiss. “Among other things that I don’t even want to think about right now.”

  “Too distracting?” she whispered.

  “Much.”

  “Then come upstairs and just hold me, Joe.”

  “I have a better idea.” He shifted onto his side and toward the back of the couch, then patted the empty space in front of him. “You come up here.”

  When she did there was just enough time to glimpse the sheer gown she was wearing beneath her loosely tied silk robe. She burrowed against him, her head in the crook of his shoulder, her backside warm against his crotch. “This is nice,” she said with a sleepy sigh that turned into a yawn. “I’m warning you, Joe. I could fall sound asleep right here.”

  “Go ahead, babe.”

  “Really? Will you be comfortable?”

  He stroked her soft hair. “Yeah. No problem.” Yeah. Right.

  The problem arose when she grew restless in her sleep and flopped over so they were lying face-to-face.

  “I thought you were a quiet sleeper,” Joe grumbled softly, edging back a little more and tucking in his chin, the better to see her pretty face, her long soft lashes, her mouth relaxed in sleep.

  He smoothed his hand along her silk-covered arm, over her silken flank where her robe and gown had ridden above her knee.

  “You’re not making thi
s any easier for me, Campbell,” he whispered. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Reaching up, he smoothed a few stray curls from her face, smiling as he did so. It was the kind of smile that seemed to float from his heart all of its own accord A goofy smile, he thought. A helium balloon with a happy face on it.

  Okay. So he was in love for the second time in his life. And this time with a woman who was so different from his first love that he hardly knew how to compare the two. He searched Sara’s sleeping face, looking for physical traces of Edie, finding no resemblance at all. Edie’s features were sharp, intense, from her perfectly delineated eyebrows to her high cheekbones and sharply defined chin. Sara’s features were soft. A kitten to Edie’s cat.

  A very distracting kitten, too. By God, if he didn’t bring the Ripper in soon, he was going to be a physical and emotional wreck. Not only that, but if he didn’t get back to his regular work at the precinct house, he was going to be up for suspension, or worse, termination.

  Dammit. He almost wished the Ripper would make a move tonight, right this minute, so he could put an end to him. What was he waiting for?

  It suddenly occurred to him that maybe the Ripper hadn’t been around because he thought he’d been successful in killing his only witness the other night. Joe had been going on the theory that it had been quiet at the Campbell house because the Ripper was waiting. Maybe, though, just maybe the son of a bitch had quit.

  If it hadn’t been for Sara in his arms, Joe would have been up and on the phone that instant because he already knew what his next move would have to be in order for the Ripper to find out he hadn’t killed the star witness after all. But it could wait a few hours, he supposed.

  Leaning forward, he kissed the tip of Sara’s nose, then whispered, “Sleep well, babe. This is going to get a lot worse before it’s over and done with.” Then he closed his eyes to store up some sleep in preparation for the coming fireworks.

  The fireworks began around five o’clock the next day when Sara read the afternoon edition of the Daily Express. It was another gray day with sleet giving way to a light but steady snow. Joe was just putting another log on the fire when Sara, snuggled in her usual corner of the couch, bolted upright and snapped the newspaper like a whip, then wailed, “I don’t believe this!”