by Julie Miller
He had to prove his innocence and regain his sight before he dared to pursue any kind of permanent relationship with Julia.
And she was too special, too fragile to settle for anything less.
His wandering thoughts must have registered with Julia. “You’re not still apologizing for what happened at the lab, are you?”
It took a second for his thoughts to move beyond that explosive kiss. “The only thing I’m apologizing for is scaring you to death, and that was only because you scared me.”
“I didn’t want to leave any trail. We don’t want anyone to find us until you’re ready to present your case.”
“You’re right.” He resumed his pacing, needing an outlet for his restless energy. “We’ll have to figure out something so that doesn’t happen again. Since I can’t keep an eye on you, though, I—”
“What if we were connected by sound?”
Mac stopped. His other senses had sharpened since losing his vision, but, “My hearing’s not that good.”
“No.” He could hear her rearrange papers and slide off the edge of the bed. “I mean electronically. Don’t the police have listening devices? Little transmitters we could wear in our ears and microphones you clip on your collar or stick in your pocket?”
“Yeah.” He wondered if she wore the same expectant look on her face that she conveyed in her voice. “Good idea. I’ll call Josh.”
He turned toward the curtained windows and headed for Julia’s bag and the phone inside. Since they couldn’t tell who might be watching or reporting, he didn’t want to use the motel’s line.
“I want to call him anyway and tell him about the two unsolved shootings that match the ballistics from Osterman’s gun.”
“And Lawrence Munoz,” she reminded him.
“Right.”
At first, Mac ignored the soft tapping sound, thinking Julia had gone into the rest-room area for something.
But he stopped when he heard it a second time. Julia was behind him. The tapping was straight ahead.
A bolt of panic swept through him, energized him, put him on guard. “Someone’s at the door.”
Julia was at his elbow in a heartbeat. “Do we answer it?”
He answered her in the same low-pitched whisper. “The motel staff would have announced themselves.”
“Maybe it’s Josh.”
“He said he’d show up in person only if there was an emergency.”
Her fingers curled slowly around his bicep. “Do you think…?”
He covered her hand with his, reassuring her, trying to reassure himself. Another five taps.
“I’ll go look.” She slipped away, and he knew he couldn’t stop her. Shouldn’t stop her.
Damn. He should be the one on the front line. The one protecting her from potential danger.
“Oh my God.”
“The police?” He knew better. They would have announced themselves as well. “Have Niederhaus and Masterson tracked us down?”
“It’s our mothers.”
“What?” Absolute surprise quickly gave way to a sense of relief. But he had moved on to anger by the time he opened the door and dragged in Martha Taylor and Barbara Dalton from the balcony sidewalk.
He hoped Julia took long enough to check behind them before closing and locking the door.
With his hands gripping her shoulders, he glared down toward the Taylor matriarch. “Ma. What the hell are you doing here? You could have been followed.”
“But we weren’t. Barbara kept a lookout. And this is the third motel we stopped at, just in case we needed to throw anyone off our trail.”
“We certainly surprised that gentleman when we knocked on his door at the Holiday Inn,” Barbara added.
It was Julia’s turn to be surprised. “Mom. You didn’t.”
“We did.” A thunk on the table and the slide of a zipper made Mac wonder what kind of container she was opening. But the mouth-watering scents of fresh-baked bread, ham and some kind of vegetable told him it was a cooler filled with homemade food. “We gave him a package of the same cookies we brought you. They should still be warm.”
“Josh said we couldn’t come straight here,” answered Martha. “He said Internal Affairs could put a tail on any one of us in the family.”
“Exactly.” When he bent to hug her, he realized she carried something heavy with her. He slipped his hand down her arm, found an overnight bag and took it from her. He set it on the bed before turning back to her. “I don’t want you to be pestered or hurt on my account.”
“MacKinley.” He stood up straighter at that stern maternal voice. “You are my son. If there’s anything I can do to help you when you’re in trouble like this, I will. A little pestering from that rude Joe Niederhaus isn’t going to stop me. I’ve met men like him before. He just wants to tie up all his loose ends before he retires. If the man took the time to do his job right, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Like the front line of invading troops, the two mothers were a determined force to be reckoned with. They set the table, served food, rearranged the furniture, and had Mac and Julia sitting down together over a delicious, filling meal before they explained the real purpose of their surprise visit.
“Obviously, we don’t want to stay too long.” Martha went to the bed and opened the tiny suitcase she’d brought with her. “We know you have work to do.”
Mac stuffed the last bite of biscuit into his mouth and joined his mother. He heard something suspicious in her voice. The same kind of irresistible baiting she had used when he was a child and she’d make him deduce through easy clues what kind of birthday present she’d made for him before he opened the package.
“What else did you bring?” he asked, already curious.
“It’s something from your house.”
“I thought my house had been sealed off by the police.”
“I was in there for a few minutes before they asked me to leave.”
Julia interrupted to ask her mother a question. “Were you there, too, Mom?”
“Yes. We probably did something we shouldn’t.”
“What?”
He heard Barbara moving closer to Julia. “We visited Detective Banning in the hospital. He’s a very nice young man. I think I’ve met his mother before, as a substitute in one of my bridge groups.”
Mac schooled his patience. This was his mother and her dearest cohort in crime he was talking to, after all. “Why did you talk to Merle Banning?”
“So we would know what we needed to do with this.” She took his hand and placed a flat, square piece of plastic in it. A computer disk. “I borrowed a laptop computer from Mitch. I have no idea how it works, but he said it would run the files on that disk.”
“What files?”
“Something about background checks?”
“Ma!”
Score one for the meddling mothers. Mac grasped Martha by the shoulders and zeroed in on her cheek to give her a kiss.
“You just saved us a ton of time in research.”
Martha’s skin warmed with a blend of pride and embarrassment. “We just wanted to help out.”
“Barbara?” Mac turned, found Julia’s mother, and kissed her as well. “Thank you.”
She patted his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “You just take care of my little girl.”
“I will.” She didn’t have to ask, but it was a promise he intended to keep.
“Well, Barb, we don’t want to overstay our welcome.” The room surrendered to another attack of mothers, packing everything they needed to take with them, and folding and fluffing almost everything else left behind.
Julia checked the balcony and parking lot before letting them out the door, and after a flurry of hugs, they were on their way.
Mac tripped all three locks that were on the door and smiled as he leaned against the steel partition and listened to them heading down the stairs.
“He’s feeling better,” Martha insisted.
“He should
be,” Barbara answered. “Julia’s here.”
He did feel better with Julia around. Healthier. More alive. More interested in being alive.
Barbara continued. “You know, I should be concerned that your son has my daughter locked away in a motel room. But I’m not. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve always thought that your son and my daughter would make a wonderful couple. Of course, I didn’t know which of your sons it would be.”
As their voices faded into the distance, Mac realized Julia was standing beside him, listening to the same conversation.
“How’d we end up with two mothers like that?” she asked.
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Do you want to finish eating, or turn on the computer first?”
Julia’s eagerness fed into his own. This was better than his birthday.
“Both.”
ACCORDING TO Merle Banning’s research, Melanie and Jeff Ringlein were living way beyond a police chemist’s means. Melanie had expensive tastes, developed in her pampered childhood as the daughter of a wealthy, third-generation banker. Julia’s instincts about her had been right. Jeff’s widow was used to getting her way, and with Jeff gone, she had turned to Mac for help.
Was Jeff financing Melanie’s spending habits by taking bribes to alter or destroy case evidence? Did Melanie know about her husband’s illegal activities? Perhaps even encourage them? Was she the one trying to pin the crimes on Mac in order to cover up her own collusion?
Julia shifted in her chair again. It was the third or fourth time in as many minutes. A sign that she was growing fatigued. How long had they been at this? Mac wondered. With his own internal clock gone haywire, they could have worked straight through the night and he wouldn’t know it.
“Tired?” he asked.
“A little.”
He suspected her answer was a concession to her innate honesty, despite her refusal to complain about the less than ideal hours she’d been forced to work as his nurse.
“Maybe we should call it a night,” he suggested.
That king-size bed sat there in the middle of the room, beckoning them to sleep. But Mac doubted there’d be much rest involved if he crawled onto that mattress with Julia.
He would have made love to her on the counter of the lab this afternoon, if Josh hadn’t knocked on the door. He had a sense of incompletion, a memory of almost-heaven imprinted onto four of his senses. It would only take a spark—a touch, a smell, a taste, and he’d want her like that all over again.
But, fortunately, Julia could be sensible.
“I’m stiff, more than anything.” When her chair creaked again, he knew that she’d gotten up. “Do you really think Wade was a hit man? I know Merle’s records show he had problems with his gambling—but to kill someone in exchange for paying off his debt? He seemed like a nice guy. I kind of felt sorry for him. I mean, the man broke into your house to steal food.”
“Maybe he broke in to plant that evidence from the Sanchez case.”
Her heavy sigh filled the room with a frustration that matched his own.
“So is Sanchez paying off everybody?”
Mac shook his head. “Then why try to kill me? If I’m alive, he has a fall guy so his case will be dismissed. There has to be something else that ties this all together.”
“This is making my head hurt. If it’s okay to take a break for a few minutes, I think I will jump into the shower and run some hot water over my achy muscles.”
“You go ahead.”
Mac leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to listen to the concise sounds of Julia sorting through her toiletries and preparing for her shower.
The instant the sounds stopped, he turned his head, waiting for the spray of running water and all the fantasies that could create. He heard Julia’s voice instead.
“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re still alive.”
Mac tipped his head and wondered if the longing note he heard in her voice was an accurate observation, or part of his suddenly wishful imagination.
A timeless moment later, he heard the sound of her footsteps in the tub, and the sudden gush of water as it worked its way through the pipes before settling into a rhythmic, pulsating spray.
His body pulsed with a matching rhythm, and a groan of desire rasped inside his throat.
There must be some logical way to fight this. Some way to put his physical needs on hold until he could prove his innocence. Until he could prove to Julia that her perception of herself held many intrinsic fallacies.
He rubbed the skin at his temples and dragged his hand down his weary face. The scratch of a two-day stubble on his jaw and neck gave him an idea.
He couldn’t clear his name tonight. In the morning, they’d pay a visit to the district attorney’s office and take a look at the D.A.’s dismissed cases. He had a theory he hadn’t yet shared with anyone else. A theory he hoped he couldn’t prove true.
But there was one thing he could do. He might not be the best man for the job, but he’d be damned if he’d let anyone else do it.
Mac stood and pulled his shirt off over his head. He’d kicked off his shoes and socks when they first sat down at the computer. He unsnapped the top button of his jeans as he crossed the room on the now-familiar path. He didn’t need any lights to find a towel or the disposable plastic razor that Josh had bought him.
With his hand on the doorknob to the shower room, Mac hesitated.
I’ve only had sex once, and he said… If the bastard hadn’t told Julia she was the most caring, giving, innocently sensuous creature that God ever put on the face of the earth, then the man should be lined up in front of Wade Osterman’s hired gun.
But Mac had a sick feeling the man’s words had been less than flattering, that the man hadn’t taken into account Julia’s past and the misconceptions about herself she carried with her as a result.
She needed to understand that she was more than a resourceful thinker, more than a good friend, more than an excellent nurse.
She was a desirable woman.
He could do that for her. If she’d let him.
He needed to do it for himself.
Mac pushed open the bathroom door. “Jules?”
“What?” He’d startled her. Good. He had a better chance of proving his point if she didn’t have those defensive walls locked into place. He heard the scrape of metal and rattle of plastic that indicated she’d turned off the water and stuck her head around the edge of the shower curtain. “Did you need something?”
He held the towel open between his outstretched arms. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re alive, too.”
Chapter Eleven
“Can you see me?”
“Jules.” And then he realized she was serious. Mac closed his eyes and gave her a serious answer. “In my mind’s eye, yes. And I like what I see.”
“How?”
“Touch. Sound. Scent. Taste.” He could hear the plastic curtain rattle as she shivered, and he reminded himself to go slowly. And explain everything thoroughly so she had no reason to second-guess anything. “I could tell you that I extrapolate the data I gather through those four senses and create a theory about what you look like, but mostly I just enjoy the discovery process.”
“Oh.”
“Come here.” He gave the towel a tiny el toro shake. “Before you catch a cold and I have to tell your mother how it happened.”
She laughed at that one. Good. Laughter was good.
“Okay.”
As she stepped out, he swore he could hear the sound of water running off her body. Streaming down her legs. Catching in that dimple beside her mouth. Dripping off the tips of her breasts.
A switch turned on in his body, sending a rush of flaming heat straight to his groin and to the itchy tips of his fingers and toes.
Too fast, too fast, he warned himself. This was all about Julia, remember?
She turned her back to him and reached f
or the ends of the towel, but he took the opportunity to wrap her up in it himself, tucking the ends beneath her arms and folding his arms beneath her breasts. He lifted her a fraction, catching her up close to his chest. He buried his nose in the wet curls behind her ear and drank in her raw scent. He hugged his body around her, letting her warmth, her smell, her softness ease the frantic charges stabbing his body with instant desire.
He held her close, with her arms clutched over his, her temple turned in to the rasping caress of his cheek, until the electrons in his body hummed at a rapid, but even and controllable rate.
Only then did he let her heels hit the floor. Only then did he allow her to tuck the ends of the towel more securely around her. Only then did he dangle the razor in front of her face.
“Will you do the honors?”
Her nervous laugh was his only answer. But she took the razor from his grasp and pushed at his shoulder. “Sit.”
When she got busy sorting through the toiletries for the shaving cream, and running the water until it was hot in the sink, he knew she was nervous. Mac smiled. He hoped he could find another way to channel that nervous energy.
He knew when she returned. Her skin still radiated the heat from her hot shower.
But his instinct to reach out and touch that skin was put on hold when she pressed a hot washcloth to his face and neck. “Ow!”
He leaned back, away from the sudden, overwhelming heat, but Julia stayed with it, stepping between his legs and holding the washcloth in place.
Gradually, the initial shock wore off and Mac sat up straight. But Julia was right there, and he would have knocked her backward if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her. As his hands settled at her waist, he decided this was nice, after all, and that active brain behind those blind eyes started rebuilding a steaming heat that meandered slowly, but surely, through his veins.
He closed his eyes and let her work. The minty smell of the shaving cream tickled his nose, but it was nothing like the wonder of Julia’s hands gliding over his face, sliding down his neck, caressing every pore, and stoking the furnace burning inside him.
She worked quickly, gently, efficiently, until his face was clean. But when she wanted to get a towel to dry him, he stopped her. “Wait.”