“Out? You mean, together?”
“Dates generally work better that way.”
“Dates?” she repeated like a silly parrot. “You’re asking me on a date?”
“Well…yes. If you want to. I didn’t know if…” He looked uncomfortable and…nervous. Mitch McAlister, experienced and deadly with the opposite sex, was nervous about asking her for a date. “You’re probably seeing someone else,” he said. “I should have known someone like you wouldn’t be free.”
“I’m free,” she said in a rush. “I’m really free.”
He smiled again…and she wondered if love happened like this for everyone.
“What would you like to do?” he asked. “On our first date?”
“Anything you want.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that to guys like me. I might be tempted to take you at your word.”
A new confidence spiraled up from her toes. “Oh, I know how to handle guys like you.”
He shook his head. “I think I’m in serious trouble here. Maybe I should propose right now and get it over with.”
“Propose?” Her confidence slipped and then surged to a new level. “I wouldn’t even consider marrying you, Mitch. Not until after our first date.”
Then, knowing it was the right thing to do, she let the magic wedding dress slip through her fingers as she put her hands around his neck and drew his lips down to hers.
SONNY’S SNORE was obnoxiously loud inside the cab of Jake’s truck. Gentry shifted her weight, scooting closer to Jake, as her fiancé’s sleepy head clonked onto her shoulder. His heavy breathing stopped for a moment, then resumed with a vengeance, and she tilted her head away from the noise…until she touched Jake’s shoulder and jerked upright again.
There were worse things than having Sonny snore in her ear…like the electric awareness of being so close to Jake…like the insistent knowledge that her body distinctly remembered and craved the warm, muscular angles of the body on her left while it registered only vague discomforts about the body on her right. It wasn’t fair, she thought. Sandwiched between the man she was going to marry and the man she had once been married to, she felt like a traitor to both.
“For someone who has a high tolerance for pain, he seems to have taken a truckload of medication.”
Gentry sighed and tried to adjust her position again, drawing away from Jake and moving closer to Sonny. “I’m sure they gave him a strong dosage,” she said, on the defensive for no good reason. “Sonny does have a high tolerance for pain.”
“He’s clearly a man among men.” Jake drove with one hand draped over the top of the steering wheel and one loosely curled around the side, and it reminded her of the way he’d held her when they danced. So long ago the memory should have lost its charm.
“There’s no need to be snide,” she said irritably. “He’s had a rough day.”
“Yes, well, he isn’t the only one.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. “Why did you come back, Jake?” she asked finally. “Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone?”
He turned to look at her, the intensity of his expression making her very uncomfortable. “Well enough?” he repeated. “Is that what you’ve settled for, Liz? Well enough?”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yes. The question is, do you?”
Sonny breathed in with a loud, low rumble.
“I refuse to engage in this meaningless dialogue with you, Jake. Every conversation we’ve ever had has ended in this I know what you said, even if it isn’t what you said war of words.”
“I remember several conversations that didn’t end with words at all.”
She couldn’t believe he’d said that, and her gaze swung to his profile in surprise. “I can’t believe you said that,” she repeated her thoughts aloud. “But that’s always been the trouble with you, Jake. You say whatever you think, whenever the thought crosses your mind, and you have no regard for whose feelings might get—”
“Hurt?” he suggested. “Have I hurt your feelings, Liz?”
“Lately? Certainly not. I only wish you hadn’t delivered the wedding dress.”
His laugh was ruefully short. “I knew this would all wind up being my fault. You haven’t changed at all.”
“I have changed, Jake,” she said tightly. “I’ve learned I don’t have to argue with you. Take the next exit and turn right.”
He followed her directions precisely, and with a few more stilted instructions, he pulled the truck up in front of the Hotel Regency Pacific. Jake opened the door and stepped out. “You stay put,” he said. “I’ll get him inside and up to his room.”
Ignoring his suggestion, she slid across the supple leather and scolded herself for noticing it retained the warmth of his body. “You’ll need some help. He has a room key in his wallet, but it’s the card type. I don’t know his room number, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to wake up long enough to tell us.”
“I’ll manage.” Jake tried to close the door, shutting her inside, but she caught the handle and held it open. When she slid from the seat to stand on the concrete pavement in front of the hotel, he stayed where he was and she brushed against him, entirely against her wishes…at least against her more sensible wishes. “You stay here, Liz. I’ll take care of Sonny.”
“If anyone should stay in the truck, it ought to be you.” She gave the door a shove to close it and started around to the other side. Just as she reached the passenger door, her heel caught on an uneven bit of pavement and she had to balance against the side of the truck while she adjusted the fit of her shoe. She felt Jake’s gaze sweep over her raised leg as he came up behind her to open the truck door.
Sonny’s snore rumbled into the night air like a Mack truck as he slid into a semireclining position on the bench seat.
“We may not be able to pry him out of there with a crowbar.” Jake glanced toward the glassed-in lobby. “Maybe I should ask the doorman to help me.”
She followed his gaze to where the barrel-chested, stern-faced doorman stood just inside the front doors. “A good doorman would already be out here offering assistance,” she said. “I’ll just have a word with him.”
“Don’t do that.”
She stopped in midstep. “Why not?”
He grabbed Sonny’s ankles and pulled him forward, not even causing a change in the pattern of snoring. “Don’t make me spell this out for you, Liz. Just get in the truck and let me deal with the doorman.”
“Spell it out, Jake.”
He pursed his lips in a frown, then canvassed the distance between her pearl gray high heels and the hem of Sonny’s suit coat with a pointed gaze.
Gentry suppressed the impulse to bend her knees and make the coat seem longer. “You’re surely not trying to imply that just because I’m wearing Sonny’s jacket, I shouldn’t go inside the hotel, are you?”
“You shouldn’t go anywhere near a hotel looking like you do at this minute. A doorman could reasonably get the wrong idea.”
“Because I’m wearing a man’s jacket?” she asked in a sudden huff.
“That, and because you have a certain…shall we say, tousled look.”
She cocked her head to the side, offended by the direction he was heading with this. “Are you saying I look like a tramp?”
“You look sensational. I only meant that Harris is very careful about appearances and he might prefer not to give the hotel management anything to talk about…if you know what I mean.”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Nor do I care to know. Now, wait here and I’ll be right back…with the doorman.”
JAKE WATCHED HER SASHAY up the hotel steps like a duchess, admiring her savoir faire, as well as her long, elegant legs. Her heels made saucy little clicks against the terrazzo tiles, and the vent in the back of Sonny’s jacket parted with each step to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of derriere. Inside the lobby, a bellhop tripped over his own feet trying to bypass the scowling doorman and ope
n the door for her.
Gentry opened the door for herself, and with her chin at a dangerous angle, she marched past the doorman and up to the registration desk. Although Jake couldn’t hear what was being said, he could follow the conversation by the set of her shoulders and the toss of her fire red hair. When she put her hands on her hips, he groaned, knowing nothing good could come of that.
Within a matter of minutes, she was being ushered out the door by the scowling doorman, who seemed impervious to the demands she made along the way. As the door closed behind her, she stared in amazement at Jake. “They asked me to leave,” she said. “I went up to the desk to report their slovenly doorman and to ask for Sonny’s room number, and the clerk wouldn’t let me finish a sentence before he advised me he would call security if I didn’t leave immediately.”
“Hmmm.” Jake grasped Sonny’s ankles and began to slide him out of the truck once again.
“Hmmm? That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“If you think I’m going to try to persuade the management of this hotel that you’re appropriately dressed, you can think again.”
“I was dressed like this at the hospital and no one asked me to leave.”
“I don’t believe the emergency room has the same problem with uh…solicitors…as the hotel does.”
Her swiftly indrawn breath signaled a brewing storm. “Are you suggesting that anyone—excuse me, any doorman—would reasonably assume I’m a prostitute simply because I’m wearing an ill-fitting jacket in a hotel?”
Jake dropped Sonny’s legs and turned around to face her. “Could we please discuss this later? Although I’m sure getting booted out of a hotel lobby is hard on your ego, it really isn’t a serious problem. Your fiancé, on the other hand—”
Umph. Jake whirled in time to see Sonny slide off the bench seat and crumple into a lazy L-shape inside the angle of the truck cab and the open door. His head drooped awkwardly onto his chest and he sagged against the truck like a rag doll.
“Aa-aa-aah!” A woman’s scream ricocheted out of the dark, somewhere off to the right. “Help! Help!”
Jake spun toward the outcry, ready to race to the rescue, his muscles tensed for fight or flight. Gentry, too, turned, backing unconsciously against his body for protection. In a split second, he processed a dozen different emotions—from fear to tenderness—and knew they were all centered on the woman beside him. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he moved her behind him. “Stay here. Let me find out what’s hap—”
“Help! Murder! Call the police! 911! Help, somebody help!” The woman’s voice rose like August temperatures, drawing the doorman outside to investigate, corralling the attention of a group of men who were leaving a supper club across the street, and acquiring quite a crowd with her frenzied cries.
Until the woman, who wore the uniform of the hotel housekeeping crew, stepped out of the shadowed portico and tossed her cigarette aside, Jake really thought she had stumbled onto a murder. But her pointing finger, though shaky, was dead-on, and he followed its indication straight to Sonny’s limp and, to all appearances, lifeless body.
Oh, hell, Jake thought.
Chapter Seven
“Pain medication,” Gentry repeated to the police officer for the third time. “I don’t know what kind or how much he was given. I also don’t know what is written on the prescription, but it is clearly a doctor’s handwriting.”
She was weary of questions. The policeman—his name badge read Sergeant P. Henry Orange—was openly suspicious of her, even though it was obvious she hadn’t murdered Sonny, because it was obvious Sonny was still breathing. His snores practically rattled the crystal chandelier overhead in the hotel lobby.
If he’d made that dreadful noise when Mrs. Deets, one of the hotel’s housekeepers, first saw him slide out of the truck, she wouldn’t have mistaken him for a dead body. But Sonny had slept like a baby during those awful minutes when the crowd gathered and the accusing stares swung from Jake to Gentry… only to linger suspiciously on the skimpy length of her jacket. She had never been so embarrassed in her life.
“Now, where were the three of you going?” Sergeant P. Henry Orange asked again.
Gentry sighed audibly before she answered. “We were coming from the emergency room where, as I believe I mentioned, Mr. Harris was treated for a broken hand.”
The officer made a note. “And how did he break his hand?”
“I shut a door on it.”
“Accidentally?”
She gritted her teeth. “Of course it was an accident. I certainly wouldn’t injure my fiancé on purpose.”
Sergeant Orange looked up from his notepad. “Ah, but what if he wasn’t your fiancé?”
“What if he wasn’t my fiancé?” she repeated with a frown. “What are you getting at?”
“The facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”
She glanced across the lobby at Jake, who was being questioned by a second officer. Her frustration level rose considerably as she watched him stand and demonstrate a fly cast. “Couldn’t you go over and get a few of the facts from him?” She pointed an accusing finger at Jake, but Sergeant P. Henry Orange merely scribbled more notes in his notepad.
“You seem angry.” He glanced at Jake. “Would you shut his hand in a door if you had the opportunity?”
“Of course not.” She leaned back in the chair and studied her interrogator. Maybe she was going about this all wrong. “Look, Sergeant Orange. I don’t know what you think happened here tonight, but it’s all very innocent. No one was murdered. Mrs. Deets admitted she never misses an episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote.’ She was taking her smoke break and she overreacted when she saw Sonny fall out of the truck. You could probably save a lot of time and paperwork if you’d call the hospital and have them verify that we left there less than an hour ago.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Sergeant Orange licked the blunt lead of his stubby pencil before he made another entry in his notebook. “It’s my job to ask you questions,” he said. “For the report.”
“Do you have to write a report every time there’s a simple misunderstanding?”
His glasses slid down his nose when he looked at her, and he jabbed them back into place With one finger. “What if it turns out not to be simple? What if he—” he nodded at the sofa where Sonny was sawing logs “—isn’t your fiancé at all, but a guy you picked up tonight? And what if he—” he nodded across the lobby where Jake and the other policeman were chatting amiably “—is really your partner? And what if the two of you—” the nod swung to her “—were planning to rob him?” The nod returned to Sonny. “But the Mickey Finn you slipped him took effect before you could get him back to his hotel room, and you got caught in the act by Mrs. Deets. What about that?”
She stared at P. Henry. “I thought you were interested in the facts.”
“There’s facts, and then there’s facts. I’ve spent twenty-one years on the force, ma’am, and believe me, I’ve learned not to take anything at face value.”
“So what will it take to convince you that he—” she nodded at Sonny “—accidentally got his hand caught in a door? And that he—” she tilted her head in Jake’s general direction “—drove us to the hospital. Which was where he—” she tilted her head back at Sonny “—was given some pain medication. And that put him into such a sound sleep that he didn’t wake up when he fell out of his—” she nodded at Jake again “—truck.”
Sergeant Orange pursed his lips, wrote furiously, then jabbed his pencil against the notebook to make an emphatic period. “What would it take to convince me?” He repeated her words in a considering mumble. “Now, that’s an interesting question. You wouldn’t, by any chance, be thinking you could bribe me, would you?”
She straightened in the hotel lobby chair. “I believe this is getting dangerously close to being harassment.”
A faint smile tweaked the corner of his mouth. “Now, ma’am, let’s stick to the facts. You posed an interesting question and I asked you
what you meant by it.”
Stoked by weary frustration, her temper flared. “I meant, I can’t take this anymore. You’ve worn down my resistance. I’ll tell you the whole sordid story. Just don’t ask me any more questions!”
“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere.” Sergeant P. Henry Orange flipped to a clean page in his notebook and poised the pencil lead above it. “Let ‘er rip.”
She did.
“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED to know he’d think I was confessing? He didn’t believe anything I said up until then.”
At the police station, Gentry and Jake sat side by side on a bench that was harder than it had been when they first were told to sit there. The room they were in was crowded, noisy and a good ten degrees warmer than it should have been. Across the room, Sergeant P. Henry Orange and two other policemen were sitting between two cluttered desks, having what appeared to be a rather heated discussion.
“It should have occurred to you that fabricating a crime might tend to annoy an officer of the law.”
“You should have heard the fabrication he came up with,” was her weak defense.
Jake’s eyes met hers with the unspoken truth that her impulse had landed them on this bench, a mere step away from a night in jail.
“You can stop giving me that look now,” she said.
“This look?” Jake narrowed his eyes accusingly.
“No,” she answered irritably. “The one where you squinch your lips together and lower your eyebrows in that unattractive scowl.”
“Oh, this look.” He squinched his lips and lowered his brows. “Which one should I use for my mug shot?”
“I don’t care. They’re equally disagreeable.” Her gaze followed a man in handcuffs as he was led past their bench, then she turned a worried frown to Jake. “You don’t think they’ll really put us in jail, do you?”
“Tough call,” he said, seeing no reason to make her feel better just yet. If she’d only kept her cool in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this predicament now. “You did confess to some pretty amazing crimes.”
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