Beth Kery

by Sweet Restraint

  She looked like she was about to say something but then she stopped herself. Her face looked set and pale—the most beautiful mask he’d ever seen in his life. He resisted an urge to pull the car over and shake her until she showed him something. Her rage. Her sadness. Her passion.

  Anything but this cold indifference.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  He blinked at the mundane question in the midst of such a charged moment. Charged for him, anyway.

  “I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  “So you’re really not taking me in for questioning?”

  He cast a hard look in her direction. “Didn’t the police question you?”

  “Yes. At the hospital. They said they’d be contacting me in the morning to clarify a few other things. I received the news that Huey had passed away as they were questioning me . . .”

  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds when she trailed off. Huey Mays’s unexpected death by suicide pissed him off so much that he’d practically been blind with rage for a few seconds as he stood there in front of his television set forty-five minutes ago.

  Oily little weasel to the finish, wriggling free of the snare he’d caught himself in like the coward that he was. Shane seethed.

  Mays had been the linchpin to the FBI’s continued investigations into corruption at the CPD. The man was slimier than the stuff that got stuck to the bottom of your shoe in a sleazy dive’s john. Except Mays was worse because he was handsome enough to appear on the front of a men’s magazine and just as slick as the glossy cover.

  Shane suspected that Mays would have spilled names to save his own neck, and his instinct was rarely wrong in such matters. He had hoped that he’d sing one name loud and clear—that of the current chief of the Organized Crime Division of the CPD, Randall Moody.

  “Did they tell you that Huey left a note?” he asked Laura. He’d spoken to the commander in charge of the precinct where Huey’s body had been found and knew the basic details of the case.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  He took in her unruffled composure. Shane sighed, ineffectively venting an almost fourteen-year-long frustration at the sight.

  “His body will still be examined by one of the Bureau’s agents at the crime lab, but as long as everything checks out with their report and the note is genuine, there won’t be a formal investigation. It’ll be ruled a clear-cut case of suicide. Picking you up on the street just now wasn’t official business. It was a spur of the moment thing,” he mumbled after a few seconds when he saw her smooth brow wrinkle in puzzlement. “I saw the media charging you. I spend half my life escaping from those jackals.”

  A small smile tilted her full lips. “Still saving me from the bad guys, Shane?”

  “That would require you allowing me to save you, wouldn’t it? You’ve swum way too deep now, sweetheart,” he snarled.

  He paused when he noticed the glaze of shock in her wide eyes. He inhaled slowly and fixed his stare on the road. Jesus, what the hell was wrong with him?

  “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Not tonight.” He felt her gaze on him, making his skin prickle, but she didn’t speak for several moments. Finally she cleared her throat.

  “I suppose they would have told you that he . . . he did it in his car?” she asked. “Another police officer found him. Huey had parked in a deserted area near the Cal-Sag Channel. The police officer thought the car had been abandoned and went to investigate. Huey was still alive but unconscious. He never woke up.”

  “Who was the officer?”

  “Josh Hannigan, from the Sixth Precinct.”

  “Do you know him?”

  Laura shook her head.

  He peered at her suspiciously through the darkness. Laura came from a family of cops. Her uncle Derrick—her guardian—had been a twice-decorated sergeant. Her older brother, Joey, was a vice detective.

  And, of course, her husband had been a cop—though Huey’d made a mockery of the title. Now it looked as if Joey might be entangled in the whole affair as well.

  And Laura sat in the midst of it all, silent and inexplicable. Who was she protecting with her aloofness? Her husband? Joey?

  Herself?

  He blinked to clear the blurriness from his sleep-deprived eyes and took stock of his surroundings. He realized he’d been driving south on Lake Shore Drive without a clue as to where he was going. He got over into the right lane and narrowly made the closest exit.

  Joey Vasquez might be a person of interest in the CPD theft ring case, but he also was an important part of Shane’s history and Laura’s only living immediate family. Joey and he hadn’t seen much of each other since Shane had returned to his hometown, this time to head up the Chicago offices of the FBI. Still, he knew that Joey lived in Hyde Park. He ducked his head and tried to make out the street sign as he passed to get his bearings.

  “You shouldn’t be alone right now. I’ll take you over to Joey’s,” he muttered.

  “No, not to Joey’s. Take me to my house, please.”

  “Laura, you just—”

  “Joey is out of town,” she interrupted calmly. She noticed his skeptical glance. “I’m telling the truth, Shane. He and Shelly took a van-load of kids to Springfield for the high school girls state volleyball championship. Carlotta is playing in the finals.”

  “Carlotta cannot be in high school,” Shane proclaimed flatly, referring to Joey’s daughter.

  His gaze caught and stuck on the tantalizing image of Laura’s small, wistful smile. “She’s a junior at Marie Curie High School.”

  Shane shook his head. You could ignore your advancing age as much as you wanted, but the next generation refused to allow you to remain secure in your denial.

  “You’re thirty-four years old,” he said as he drove down the silent, dimly lit city street.

  “Since November,” Laura replied in a hushed voice.

  It took him a half a minute to realize that she was crying. She never made a sound as she stared straight ahead, the tears clinging like ice crystals against her smooth cheek.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Of course it was natural that she should cry under these circumstances, Shane reminded himself. Huey Mays may have been a scumbag, but he was her husband. And he’d just chosen to kill himself instead of confronting the circumstances of his crimes—circumstances that Shane had forced him to face. He didn’t know how to soothe Laura without sounding like a hypocrite, so he drove in silence for the next five minutes.

  “You shouldn’t come in,” she said when he pulled into the long driveway of the prairie-style home and unbuckled his seat belt. He noticed that her cheeks were dry now, as though the tears had never existed. “It’s only a matter of time before those reporters converge on the house.”

  “Which is all the more reason for you not to stay here,” he said loudly.

  She smiled at him. Not the wan, half smile that occasionally had tilted her lips during the car ride, but a full grin. He inhaled slowly to stave off the blow that smile imparted. She’d once gifted him with them regularly, lighting up his world.

  “You haven’t changed, Shane.”

  He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and tried to ignore the burn. God, he needed to sleep. He felt raw—volatile. Christ, what luck to be so exhausted and vulnerable for his first meeting with Laura in more than a dozen years.

  “If you won’t let me take you to a friend’s house, then what about a hotel?”

  “No. I told the police I’d be here in the morning.”

  He sensed her once-familiar steely determination but opened his car door anyway. He gave her a quelling look, cutting off her inevitable protest.

  “I’m just going to check out your house—make sure everything is okay. It’s the least Joey would expect of me in these circumstances.”

  He didn’t like the quick, almost furtive manner in which she glanced out the window. Was she expecting someone? On the night that her husband had committed suicide? Don’t eve
n tell him she expected one of his crime buddies—or worse, one of Huey’s sleazy sex pals.

  His well-honed sense for potential threat ratcheted up several degrees as they walked up the dim driveway and mounted the steps to the front porch, Laura several steps in front of him. Nothing unusual happened, however. Not while Laura unlocked the front door and not while Shane did a thorough search of the premises.

  When he returned downstairs he found her in the kitchen leaning against the counter, the steam beginning to rise off a teapot on the stove behind her. She studied him with those exotic, slightly slanted green eyes that still occasionally haunted his dreams . . . although with less and less frequency, thank God.

  She’d removed her long wool coat and wore an ivory-colored, soft-looking sweater and jeans beneath it. Her dark brown hair hung loose around her shoulders. He could just make out a chain on the side of her neck, but the pendant hung beneath her loose sweater. Other than that glimpse of gold she wore no jewelry. She didn’t wear a trace of makeup.

  Not that she required either.

  He set the manila folder he’d found upstairs on the counter. The small bedroom where he’d found it appeared to be occupied solely by Laura. A surprisingly sparse amount of Huey’s clothing and personal items were in the master bedroom suite. The majority of his personal items were in the basement. Shane tried to ignore his satisfaction at the evidence of their separate existences within the house. Lots of married couples slept apart after thirteen years, after all.

  He flipped open the manila folder, revealing dozens of travel brochures to exotic locations.

  “Planning on going somewhere sometime soon?”

  Irritation and something else—was it embarrassment?—flashed across her impassive face. She shut the folder quickly.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but the answer is ‘no.’ I just like to . . . think about getting away.” Her gaze flicked up to meet his. “You know how Chicago is in the wintertime.”

  “Yeah, the snow in Banff looks like it’d be much more relaxing than Chicago snow,” Shane deadpanned, referring to one of the brochures he’d seen. She merely turned away without responding in typical, infuriating Laura fashion. “Were you in bed? When they called earlier about Huey?” he asked, thinking of the unmade bed he’d seen in her room.

  “Yes. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet, though. I had a show at my gallery this evening. It went well, but I was exhausted from all the preparation. I was in bed by ten.”

  “What time did you leave your gallery?”

  “I had a wine-and-cheese party for the showing. It started at six-thirty. I locked up at around nine-thirty.”

  He nodded his head slowly. She straightened from her leaning position, obviously sensing the tension that suddenly seemed to thicken the air between them.

  “I thought you said you weren’t here to interrogate me.”

  “I asked. You answered. Some people call that conversation. Don’t you think you could use something stronger than tea?” he asked, glancing pointedly at the teapot when it started to whistle.

  “Huey has a bar downstairs if you’d care for something stronger.”

  He frowned as he watched her pour the hot water into two mugs. He’d rather drink the probably foul-tasting herbal tea she prepared than take a sip of Huey Mays’s premium party-time liquor.

  She hesitated when she turned around to hand him the tea. “Would you . . . would you like to sit down in the living room?”

  He nodded once and followed her into the subtly lit living room. She sat in an upholstered chair and he took a seat on the couch. When he glanced up after sipping his tea, trying to hide his grimace at the bitter taste, he noticed the queer expression on her face as she studied him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, the cup still an inch from his lips.

  “I just recalled that Joey told me you were going to be married earlier this year. I suppose by now congratulations are long overdue.”

  He set down the tea on the coffee table in front of him. “Joey and you talk about me?”

  She started in surprise at the question. “Not much. Occasionally. Why?”

  He shrugged. “He and I never discuss you. Ever. He seems to think you’re a taboo topic where I’m concerned.”

  “I see,” she said after a pause. He watched as she took a sip of the tea, momentarily mesmerized by the sensual movement of her throat as she swallowed. “Just like family, isn’t it? Never to talk out loud about their ugly secrets?”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Joey was never ashamed of you. You’re the one who kept the secrets, Laura. And not the Vasquez family’s—Huey Mays’s secrets.”

  She just stared at him, as calm and enigmatic as the Sphinx. Years of frustration, fury, and thwarted desire bubbled up to the surface. He found himself engaging in a full-fledged offensive when he’d never even planned for battle.

  “You realize, don’t you, that your husband and his little gang represented everything that your father hated? All the government corruption, the selfish grappling for power and money at the expense of the people—all of those things he wrote about in his books . . . what he lived for to defeat?” Shane prodded, referring to Laura’s father, who had been a Cuban political dissident. Shane had liked and respected Richard Vasquez enormously, and he’d always sensed the regard had been mutual.

  When Laura’s father was finally released from a Cuban prison he’d fled to the United States where he’d eventually become a respected professor at the University of Chicago. He’d published extensively on the topic of the crushing effect of corrupt government and dictatorships on the human psyche and spirit.

  “And how could his daughter have turned around and married the devil? Is that what you’re thinking, Shane?”

  Her quiet voice infuriated him even further.

  “How his daughter could have bedded down with him, sold her soul to him, bent over for him or any one of his greasy pals whenever he demanded it. Yeah, I’ll bet your father’d love to know the answer to that if he were still alive. I know I’d give my left nut to hear that explanation myself—not that I’m holding out for any substantial answers. The only thing I ever got from you was that crap you fed me thirteen years ago after you married Huey about your undying love for your saintly husband.”

  She set down her mug stiffly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Electronic surveillance, Laura.”

  “You had this house bugged?”

  He shook his head in mixed frustration and disgust when he saw the last vestiges of color drain out of her face.

  “That’s right. We were lawfully intercepting Huey’s phone and Internet conversations for almost a year, but he was careful about what he revealed. He was a suspicious guy, your husband. I finally convinced a federal judge that wiretaps weren’t enough. We got a court order to listen in on his little playpen downstairs. It never paid off in regard to the case in the way that I’d hoped. It took a jewel and fur thief who also just happened to be a Chicago cop for a period of time—a little weasel who’s in the witness protection program—in order to get the names, written documents, and details that we needed to pin Huey. Everything about how they would use police computers to track jewelry, fur, and rare coin salesmen’s car rental and hotel information, all the dirt on their little extortion ring . . . how they took regular payments from known criminals in return for keeping silent about their rackets.

  “So the bugs down in your basement didn’t pay off in the way I’d hoped,” Shane continued, “but the agents who got assigned the monitoring detail weren’t complaining much even though it’s usually a shit job that nobody wants.” He leaned forward intently. Despite his intense anger, he kept his voice low, although he couldn’t dull the bitter edge of his sarcasm. “Especially when Huey threw one of his little sex parties for his friends. You know about those parties. Don’t you, Laura?”

  She just stared at him, her silence and coldness sending his fury near the boiling point.r />
  He stood up abruptly and grabbed her shoulders. She didn’t resist him when he pulled her up. He pressed her to him, crushing her full breasts into his lower chest, the sensation of her distended nipples making his cock harden with amazing alacrity. Her scent—soap mixing with the once-familiar underlying odor of sweet, succulent woman—entered his nostrils, sending him further into a spinning chaos of desire and rage.

  He leaned down and spoke in a soft, vibrating voice just inches away from her parted lips.

  “Nothing to say, Laura? Always so controlled. But you weren’t so silent down in the basement entertaining Huey and his friends, were you? You screamed and moaned and begged like a good little whore while they took their turns with you, double-teamed you—whatever Huey demanded of you, you did. Yeah, your father would have been so proud to know about his daughter’s generous hospitality to her husband’s friends.”

  Her green eyes flashed. “How do you know it was me?”

  He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Let’s see—what was my first clue? Oh yeah—‘That’s right, Laura, suck him nice and deep like a good little wife. Show him how nice we treat our guests.’ ”

  He blinked in shock when she slapped his cheek, the evidence of her crumbling façade shattering his own brittle control once and for all. He grabbed the wrist of the offending hand and twisted it behind her back, pressing her tighter against him in the process. She cried out in surprise and discomfort.

  “Is this how you like it, Laura?” he growled. Their eyes met briefly, her startled stare searing right through his shattered defenses. “How could you do it? How could you let those assholes touch you? You’re mine.”

  He saw her eyes go wide but he didn’t give her a chance to respond to his totally irrational proclamation before he covered her mouth with his own.

  He drank from her furiously. Pain vibrated through his flesh. Not the discomfort of a wound or an injury, but the raw, searing pain that came from exposing a desire that had long been denied.

  At that moment he needed Laura Vasquez just like he needed to breathe.