by Susan Crosby
His hesitation lasted but a second. “I’m sorry.”
He sounded more matter-of-fact than sympathetic. She moved the plate of cookies to the left a few inches then back again. “The work done here is not just important but critical. I do what I can.”
He seemed to be weighing a response. “Do you like teaching?”
The change of subject silenced her for a few seconds. “I love it. It’s all I ever wanted to do. How about you? What do you do?” His phone conversation earlier made her wonder. What had he lost? What mistake had he made?
“Find new ways to meet interesting women.”
So he did know how to flirt. “For a living?” she asked, teasing him back, feeling flattered and cautious. Maybe her blond hair was having an effect, after all.
Before Quinn answered, a group of people entered the room almost soundlessly. Claire knew by their somber expressions that they were the friends, family and, perhaps, co-workers of someone in need of a transfusion. Those kinds of donors generally came in groups and rarely smiled except in nervousness.
Lorna looked toward Claire and angled her head as if to say, “Come help.”
“Excuse me,” she said to Quinn. “I’m needed. Eat and drink as much as you like.”
She felt his gaze on her as she helped the new donors get situated. She was aware of him every second, even when she wasn’t sneaking a peek in his direction. Her body heated up. Her heart pounded a stronger rhythm, relentless and unsteady. Her reaction was new to her—so new, she wasn’t sure how to respond except to let him know in some way that she wouldn’t mind taking it one step further. She had a lunch break due her later. There was a café within walking distance.
After a while his phone rang. She saw him drag his hand down his face and his shoulders drop momentarily before he slid the phone back in his pocket. He met her gaze and tapped a finger to his watch face, asking his question with the gesture.
Claire walked up to Lorna. “Mr. Gerard is getting antsy.”
“Take his blood pressure and blood-sugar level. You’re trained to do that, right?”
She was. She gathered the equipment and approached his table. Her pulse tripped noticeably. She decided not to hide it, even though she didn’t really understand his interest. It couldn’t just be the hair, could it? She hoped he wasn’t that shallow. And yet she’d let Jenn convince her to go blond for exactly that reason—to see if men warmed up to her more than usual, which was shallow reasoning on her part.
Her main goal, however, had been to shake up her life a little.
“If you pass the tests, you can leave,” she said, donning latex gloves.
“I do better on essay exams.”
You should smile more often, she thought as she reached for his hand, feeling the same warmth as before, and the same sparks, even through the gloves. There was strength there, and a strange kind of comfort.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No.” She focused on her task, cleaning his finger with alcohol before pricking it. She squeezed a drop of blood onto a test strip, then handed him a piece of gauze to press against the puncture. Setting the testing machine aside to count down to the results, she readied the blood pressure cuff.
He peeled off his sweater—
Um. Okay. Not naked underneath, but a white T-shirt that contrasted with his olive skin and showed off muscled biceps and forearms.
The testing machine beeped. Grateful for the interruption she looked at the number that came up. “Normal range,” she said.
“Good.”
She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his arm, then she tucked his arm between hers and her torso and slid the stethoscope under the cuff. She’d tested blood pressure before, but this time her skin seemed to catch fire where his arm touched her body.
“You don’t dress like any first-grade teacher I know,” he commented.
Her eyes sought his.
Oh. She got it, finally. The leather skirt and relatively formfitting blouse seemed to be a signal to him, even though her smock mostly covered her. Disappointment slammed into her. “And how would that be?” She sounded snippy, even to herself.
“Wash-and-wear. Utilitarian.”
He’d described to a T what she usually wore, whether teaching or not.
Claire pumped the cuff, not saying anything. She had a job to do, and it wasn’t to flirt with the donors. She listened for his pulse.
“Blood pressure is fine,” she stated, letting go of his arm and removing the cuff. “You can go.”
“Ms. Winston…Claire.”
She fussed with the equipment but met his gaze, steadily, calmly. “Yes?”
After a moment he looked away. He pushed out his chair and stood. “Have a nice day.”
He didn’t seem like a man who uttered platitudes. Another disappointment. “Thanks. You, too.”
She told herself she was watching him walk away because she wanted to be sure he was steady on his feet. She almost convinced herself of that, too, except that her stomach did a funny little flip-flop when he glanced over his shoulder at her after reaching Lorna’s side.
He said something that made Lorna laugh, then she dropped his keys in his hand. He gave Claire one final look. This time her heart lurched. Crazy. This was crazy. He was a stranger. A dark, intense stranger who hadn’t even told her what he did for a living, but had evaded answering with all the finesse of a practiced deceiver. He’d flattered her instead, sidestepping the question altogether.
She turned away, then felt someone tap her shoulder a moment later.
He’d come back.
“How late do you work?” he asked.
The answer spilled out of her, banishing her disappointment. “Until four.”
He nodded and walked away.
Intrigued, Claire smiled. She’d wanted an adventure. It looked like she was about to get one.
Two
Quinn had been parked for hours near Claire Winston’s house, an old but well-maintained Victorian in the family-friendly Noe Valley area of San Francisco. There had been no signs of life in the house. He hadn’t expected any. A few days ago Jennifer had marched up to the car of the D.A. investigator assigned to tail her and challenged the man, which had led to the D.A. hiring Quinn, who’d built his reputation on his success at clinging to the shadows.
But she must have spotted Quinn, as well, then laid the foundation for ditching him using her sister’s makeover to switch identities. Was Claire part of the ruse? He couldn’t answer that question for sure, but she suddenly bleaches her hair, parks her car on the street instead of in the garage, then her sister-the-suspect disappears? It seemed well planned to him.
It ticked him off that Jennifer had made him. No one had before. How could he explain the screwup to Magnussen, the D.A. who’d hired him because Magnussen’s own investigators had, well, screwed up?
Quinn glanced at his watch. Almost five o’clock. An hour after the end of Claire’s shift. She should be home by now—unless she was going to wear that sexy little number out somewhere.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. People made their way up and down the street. A typical Saturday in June, the weather was cloudy and cool. So far no one had reported him for loitering in his car, which happened occasionally during a stakeout.
His luck held. He spotted Claire’s car. The garage door opened as she reached it. She started to pull in then stopped. Jennifer’s red convertible filled the space.
Quinn blew out a long, slow breath. Okay. She hadn’t left, after all. Okay.
He watched Claire park up the block then stroll to her house, no overt sway to her hips, but sexy nonetheless, her short skirt giving him plenty to admire as she climbed the steps, a grocery sack in each arm. She juggled the bags for a minute before setting them down to open the door, then he got an eyeful of her long, slender, perfect legs.
The door shut on his entertainment. He made himself comfortable in the car, grateful to be there instead of having to
report to the D.A. that he’d lost his subject. It was Saturday. Date night. Jennifer would leave the house sometime, and Quinn would be on her tail, his reputation intact.
But several hours later, she still hadn’t emerged.
Claire took a few steps back to admire the flowy white curtains she’d just hung, her first step in redecorating what had been her parents’ bedroom and now would be hers. It had taken six months since their deaths before she thought she might be able to sleep there.
She looked at the dog sitting at her feet. “What do you think, Rase?” she asked.
Eraser grinned up at her, his tail wagging slowly. She crouched beside him and buried her face in his thick, white-tipped gray coat. He let out a little growl of contentment as she scratched his flanks then hugged him a little tighter. He was just a mutt, but he was her mutt, even if he wouldn’t obey a single command.
“The curtains look beautiful, don’t they?” she asked, sitting cross-legged beside him, patting him as she inspected her handiwork.
She’d gotten over her disappointment that Quinn Gerard hadn’t returned to the blood bank at four o’clock. In fact, she’d decided she should be grateful he hadn’t. Obviously he was a con man of some kind or, at the least, a jerk.
“Not worth my thoughts, is he?” she asked the dog.
Rase’s ears pricked up, then he took off down the stairs, running and barking. A moment later the doorbell rang.
Claire saw with surprise that it was almost ten o’clock. She’d intended to keep herself distracted, but had done such a good job of it that she hadn’t noticed that night had fallen. She had no reason to feel guilty, but—
The bell rang again. Rase barked more frantically, alerting and calling her at the same time. She couldn’t imagine who would be coming around this late. Some friend of Jenn’s, she supposed. Someone who didn’t know….
Claire grabbed her portable phone and made her way to the door without turning on any lights, a streetlight providing just enough illumination from outside that she could negotiate the stairs. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t turned on any lights. She could pretend she wasn’t home if the visitor wasn’t someone she wanted to talk to.
Without telling Rase to quiet down—as if it would’ve done any good anyway—she crept to the door and looked out the peephole. She hadn’t turned on the porch light, however, so she could see only a dark blob silhouetted from behind by the streetlight. Now what?
“I know you’re in there,” came a man’s voice.
She hopped back. Rase picked up on her surprise and reared up, slamming his paws against the door, digging at it, barking louder. “Who’s there?” she asked.
“Quinn Gerard.”
Quinn— From the blood bank? She looked again through the peephole but still couldn’t identify the man. How did he— He’d followed her?
She put a hand over her mouth. How stupid could she be? She’d told him what time she got off work. He’d followed her to her home.
“Please open the door,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
Grateful for how ferocious Rase sounded, she called out, “You’re stalking me. I’m calling the police right now,” she said, meaning it, squeezing the portable phone a little tighter.
“You’ll save us both a lot of time if you don’t do that,” he said, his voice raised but calm. “I’m under contract with the district attorney. If you open the door I’ll show you my identification.”
The D.A.? She relaxed a little, but no way was she removing the safety of the wooden barrier between them. “What do you want?”
“You can call off your dog, for one, so I don’t have to yell. Unless you like having your neighbors hear your business.”
He had a point. “Sit,” she said to the dog. “Quiet.”
Rase wagged his tail, barked once, but didn’t sit. She sighed. “Okay. Now, what do you want?”
“I’d prefer to tell you face-to-face.”
“You can prefer all you want.”
A pause ensued. Her grandfather clock ticked off time, the sound seeming to gain volume.
“If you don’t tell me right now why you’re here,” she said, “I’m calling the cops.”
“I want to talk to you about your sister, Jennifer.”
She closed her eyes. Great. Just great. She should have guessed. Just as she should’ve guessed he hadn’t been attracted to her. They were as different as night and…tuna. For one thing, she was honest.
“Did you follow me from the blood bank?” she asked. If so, he’d been sitting in his car for hours, biding his time, waiting for darkness to fall.
“I followed you to it. I thought you were your sister. Look, is she in there?”
“No.”
A long moment of silence sat like an invisible wall between them. “Will she be home soon?”
Claire leaned her forehead against the door. “No.”
She was tired of covering for Jenn, who was two years older than Claire and should’ve been the big sister but had never behaved like one.
“Is she gone, Claire?”
He asked the question quietly, almost sympathetically. It made her throat ache. Rase picked up on her mood and nudged her thigh with his muzzle. She patted his head. “That’s Ms. Winston to you.”
“Is she?”
She needed to tell someone, even this stranger. Maybe especially this stranger. “Yes,” she said quietly. Jenn had taken so few personal possessions with her that Claire might not have realized she was gone, except that she’d left—
“How do you know?” he asked.
She propped herself against the doorjamb. “She left a note.”
“May I see it?”
“No.” She certainly was not opening her door to a man who’d pretended to like her, who’d lured her just with promise in his eyes. Give her a dull but honest man anytime.
“Why didn’t she take her car?”
“I don’t know. Go away or I’ll sic my dog on you.” Quinn couldn’t see Rase, all twenty-five wimpy pounds of him. He only sounded like a hundred pounds of ferocity. In truth, he’d been known to run from cats.
“Do you know why the D.A. wants her?” Quinn asked.
Knowing Jenn, it could be anything. After all, she’d gotten herself involved with an investment broker who’d embezzled millions from his clients, investments they’d made in good faith. Jenn was as gullible as those clients. She’d just been lucky not to have any of her money taken by him.
“The D.A. believes she’s got Craig Beecham’s stolen funds,” he said when she didn’t answer. “Or at least knows where they are.”
“That was settled in court. Jenn didn’t know anything about it.”
“She’s been under investigation because no one believes that. How far gone do you think she can get on five million dollars, Ms. Winston?”
“She didn’t take the money.” Jenn had assured Claire of that, many times. Claire had sat beside Jenn in the courtroom, supporting her, believing in her. Jenn might be self-centered and immature, but she wasn’t a criminal. “She inherited a lot of cash when my parents died, enough to equal the value of this house, which I inherited. She’s got plenty of money.” More than she should have access to, Claire thought. She’d been spending it, too. On clothes and jewelry and that snazzy car. “She wouldn’t have need for more.”
“Everyone has need for more, but I hope you’re right. Good night.”
She moved to her front window in time to see him jog across the street and climb into an almost invisible gray sedan parked between two streetlights so that she couldn’t see into the interior. Picking up on her tension, Rase looked out the window then at her, then out the window and back at her again. She waited for Quinn to drive away. He didn’t.
Fifteen minutes later he still sat there. A half hour more. An hour. She went upstairs to her bedroom to sit by her window. Another half hour went by. Then a car pulled up beside him and stayed for close to a minute before backing up twenty feet. His car pul
led out. The other parked.
A changing of the guard. Claire gave up and went to bed but barely slept. When the sun came up, she peeked outside and saw the car was still there. Why? They already knew that Jenn was gone.
After showering and changing, she went downstairs into her living room where she could get a good view of the driver, a woman, who seemed to be staring right back at her as Claire peeked through the slats of her blinds.
She couldn’t talk herself out of the guilt that had burned a hole in her yesterday when she’d come home to an empty house, even though Jenn had merely done what Claire had asked. She should be celebrating Jenn’s departure. Instead, she hovered in front of the window like she was to blame for something.
She was tired. Having Jenn underfoot the past six months, enduring her boyfriend’s trial, putting up with her moods—it had drained Claire, especially since she was still in mourning for her parents. And maybe besides being tired she was also angry. She felt used and manipulated—her own fault, since she’d known what Jenn was like, had given in to her all her life.
Still, Claire had needed her own space, needed Jenn and her wild lifestyle gone. Now she was.
And now Claire was a prisoner in her own home. Someone would probably be watching her house, or following her if she went out, presumably to see if she made contact with her sister.
Half sister. She didn’t usually make much of the distinction until lately, when she wanted to disconnect from Jenn and live her own life.
But Claire had made enough concessions to and for Jenn. She also knew when Jenn was lying. She’d looked Claire straight in the eye and said she didn’t know anything about the money.
That was good enough for Claire. It should be good enough for the D.A., and Quinn Gerard, who was just pulling up across the street.
Rase came up beside her, his leash clenched in his mouth. She glanced from him to the window. She smiled.
“Ready for a run, boy?” she asked, taking the leather strap to fasten to his collar.
Rase barked once, his rear swinging from side to side as he wagged his tail in answer.