by Beverly Bird
“Oh, get real. You would not have had him.”
Several small percussion instruments began sounding in his head. “What, you’re casting aspersions on my professional capabilities now?”
“Aspersions? And you think I talk funny?”
Raphael scrubbed his hands over his face. Aspersions, indeed. She was rubbing off on him. “I’m not a dumb cop.”
“Of course not. You’re a detective. But even detectives need some forensic evidence to go on, don’t they? And you don’t have any yet.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Because you’ve been carting that phone around with you all morning but you haven’t talked to anyone even once! Wouldn’t someone have called you if they’d found something?”
He’d just lost another half hour arguing about this. And he didn’t even know what they were arguing about. “The killer was one of Charlie Eagan’s goons,” he said finally. “There probably won’t be much in the way of forensic evidence. These guys tend to be real careful about stuff like that. Which is why I need to shake a few trees here. And the sooner I do that, the sooner you’re rid of me.”
There was that, Kate thought.
“I don’t have time to go chasing down prosciutto.”
“One hour, then we’ll be back at my apartment. You can make phone calls while I get things together for tonight.”
“I can’t do what I need to do over the phone.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I use the phone, people who don’t want to talk to me can hang up on me.”
“So if you do it in person, you can bang a few heads to force the issue?”
“Now you’re catching on.”
He meant it. Kate was appalled. What had happened to life as she’d always known it, where people reasoned with each other and drank out of glasses?
“Don’t do that,” he warned.
“What?”
“That thing with your eyes.”
“I didn’t do anything with my eyes.”
“Yeah. You did. You closed them for a second.”
“It’s called blinking!”
“Not the way you do it.”
“How do I do it?” She widened them deliberately.
“Like you’re suffering.”
“Well, the PPD has saddled me with you.” His eyes narrowed. “Although I have no doubt you can keep me alive,” she added quickly, just in case he decided to leave again.
“Then let me.”
“After the prosciutto.”
It wasn’t really the prosciutto he had a problem with, Raphael thought. It was what it meant. “Where’s this job tonight?”
“Literally? You mean the address? It’s a high-rise on Park Avenue. Twelve twenty-two, I think.”
“How many ground-level entrances?”
Kate stared at him, flabbergasted. “How the hell should I know?”
He grinned suddenly. “Oh, stop.”
“What?”
“You’re swearing again, and I told you how that turns me on.”
He was impossible! And, Kate was reasonably sure by now, he was teasing her on purpose, to divert her. But it didn’t matter. Something slow and hot curled up and rolled over in the pit of her stomach anyway.
She could handle the flirting. She could. She was practical enough to know that he didn’t mean anything by it. All she had to do was look at him to understand that. He was all animal grace and golden good looks, just like Jeff had been. He was so…well, contentedly male, she thought, so complacent and confident with himself inside his own skin. How many times with Jeff had she marveled and rejoiced that a man like that should want her? Now she knew better. Allegra was Raphael’s type, she thought again, not someone who was five foot four if she stood on her tiptoes, someone who did not have a bad hair day now and again, but was having a bad hair life.
The problem was…his eyes.
Raphael had a way of looking at her when he said things, a steady way with that smoky green gaze, while one corner of his mouth crooked up in a secret smile. Like there was something shared between them that no one else would understand. Like he meant every word he said, and she ought to know it. Jeff had never looked at her that way.
“All right,” he said finally. “We’ll do your dinner.”
“We will?”
“But there are conditions.”
“Such as?” Her heart kicked. Was he flirting with her again?
“You can’t take any help. No employees. It’s just you and me, honey.”
Just you and me, Kate thought dazedly.
“I don’t want any other bodies to watch out for.”
“Oh.” Kate straightened her spine abruptly as though a car had just whipped around the corner and thrown cold puddle water at them. Business. “Of course not.”
“All right, then. Let’s go get your prosciutto.”
He picked up the crate box. Kate nodded cautiously and walked on without him, but she looked back once, warily, to make sure he followed.
He was out of his mind, Raphael thought. This was going to shoot the holy hell out of the rest of the day. He was going to have to background check these customers. He’d need to get officers to stand on all the downstairs entrances to the building. But maybe he could touch base with Fox and get him to move on to McGaffney’s boys when he got through with the Eagan supporters, he thought. They weren’t both hamstrung by this infuriating, stubborn brunette.
It was her eyes, Raphael thought. It was that bleak, I’m-losing-it-all-here way those midnight-indigo eyes could turn down at the corners. She was a victim. And he just had a soft spot for victims.
It had nothing to do with the tight little way her hips moved as she strode up the sidewalk ahead of him. Not a thing to do with the way her breath had quickened again when he had joked about being turned on. Or with that guileless, bemused smile she’d gotten on her mouth, the one that made it seem fuller, softer.
Raphael dug his cell phone out of his pocket while he followed her, and called his partner.
“Yeah,” he said shortly. “We’ve got a little change of plans here.”
Chapter 6
She could have used an extra pair of hands for the Morley dinner, but Kate definitely wasn’t going to argue the point. She called Beth Olivetti as soon as they got back to her apartment and told her she wouldn’t be needing her after all.
The Morleys weren’t easy clients under the best of circumstances, and she would need all her wits about her to pull this off by herself. Denny Morley had made his money in merchandising, and the couple had more of that than taste. They had somehow gotten it into their heads that shellfish was de rigueur for an elegant dinner, and they requested their menus accordingly. Kate would not be able to streamline the meal as she had with the McGaffney engagement.
Her seafood delivery arrived and she spent the afternoon cracking open lobster claws and peeling shrimp. Her hands were beginning to cramp when she glanced over the breakfast bar at Raphael. She did not want to squabble with him again and give him an opportunity to change his mind about this job. But still…
“You’re dripping.” He’d brought a huge hoagie home from the Italian market and he was eating it over the wrappings he’d spread out on her coffee table.
He looked over his shoulder at her from his seat on the sofa. “What?”
“You’re dripping,” she repeated. “Oil. Maybe an onion or two. On my floor, I believe. Or maybe my sofa caught it.”
He looked at the cushions. “There’s a pity. You might have to break down and buy a new one.”
She was startled enough to forget she was annoyed with him. “Why would I want to do that?”
“So strangers can sleep on it without discomfort?”
“Strangers don’t sleep on it.”
He cocked a brow at her.
“As a general rule. And it’s perfectly serviceable otherwise. Why would I want to throw away a thousand dollars on a sofa? Do you know how far that money
would go toward outfitting a restaurant kitchen?”
Raphael thought that if he gave her any provocation at all, she would gladly tell him.
He popped the last bite of hoagie in his mouth and wadded the wrappings up in a ball. Then, incredibly, he took aim at her trash can with it. She jumped into its path and caught it in midair, grimacing at the slick oily spots. Then she began washing her hands to get the onion aroma off them before it could taint everything else she touched.
Raphael sat back and put his feet on her coffee table. Her magazines slid to the side when his heel made contact with them. Kate reached for a knife and began chunking the lobster, imagining that it was his throat laid bare on the cutting board.
She listened to Raphael talk on his cell phone, then he clicked a button with his thumb and disconnected. “This is going to cost the city a pretty piece of overtime.”
Kate’s hands paused over the lobster. “Why?”
“Two officers in the lobby and two each on every entrance, one inside and one out. That’s a grand total of eight.”
Kate chewed her lip. She really didn’t like the idea of what she was doing to the city’s poor, beleaguered budget. “Is all that necessary?”
“You want to take the chance that it’s not?”
She got that cold feeling at the nape of her neck again.
His phone rang. He grabbed it and muttered into it a few times and began writing something down. This time, Kate moved around the breakfast bar to peer over his shoulder and see what it was. Then her eyes widened.
When he disconnected, she couldn’t hold her tongue. “You investigated the Morleys? How could you do that?”
“Background check.”
The kitchen towel began whipping in her hands as she dried them. “That’s an invasion of their privacy! If they find out—”
“He’s got forty-two thousand dollars in his checking account.”
Her hands stopped cold. “He what?”
“It seems like a regular monthly deposit. Maybe his salary. I’ll check into his company next.”
Kate sat down hard on the love seat.
“Watch the eyes,” he warned. “You’re doing that thing with your eyes again.”
This time she didn’t give a damn. “Just destroy me!” Kate cried. “Just…just put an ad in the Inquirer announcing that I killed clients with salmonella. It will be quicker.” She gulped breath. “You’re going to ruin everything I’ve spent four months working toward!”
“Maybe, but I’m not going to let you go in there tonight if there’s any chance that these people are associated with O’Bannon, McGaffney or Eagan.”
“With mob bosses? The Morleys? Are you out of your mind?”
“Honey, you’d be surprised.”
Kate opened her mouth and shut it again. Don’t argue with him. What if he should change his mind about tonight? “Is there any way the Morleys can find out we poked into their private business?”
“Not really.”
Kate breathed again.
“Unless that guy at the bank is a pal of theirs and he tells them. Come to think of it, I might have used your name.”
Kate blanched. He laughed.
She fisted the dish towel around her hand to keep from hitting him with it. She closed her eyes briefly, then she realized that he’d probably say she was suffering again. Kate forced herself to smile weakly. She’d smile if it killed her.
Someday this would all be over.
“This dinner was booked a week ago,” she pointed out in her best reasonable tone, “before McGaffney was killed. I can’t believe that it’s a setup to draw me in and off me.”
Raphael cocked a brow, his smile fading. “Off you?”
Kate flushed. “You know what I mean.”
“Do you advertise?”
She scowled, trying to gauge his point before she answered.
“In magazines, newspapers, the Yellow Pages, that sort of thing, to draw in business.”
“Rarely. It’s expensive.”
He would have bet on that answer. “You probably do a lot of business by word-of-mouth. Friends telling acquaintances, hey, you ought to try this new catering service.”
Kate thought about it and nodded cautiously. “But there was also that newspaper review. That kick started things. That’s how the Morleys first came to me.”
“So who do you suppose told McGaffney about Dinner For Two?”
“I—” It could have been the Morleys, she realized. Or the Cornwalls or the Santangelos. She had amassed a list of wealthy regulars after that review. Anyone could have passed the word on. Any one of them could be peripherally associated with the man.
Kate shivered a little. It was all so complex, so tangled.
Raphael caught the reflex. Her eyes changed, too. He realized that they went black whenever she realized the magnitude of the truth of her situation. He stood from the sofa abruptly before she could do it to him again, before those eyes could make something soft and protective start moving around inside him, rolling his heart right upside down.
Then she sighed heavily. It was as bad as that blinking thing she did with her eyes.
“How long is it going to take you to get all your food ready and get out of here?” he asked shortly.
“At least another hour.”
“You’ve got thirty minutes.”
“What? I can’t! They don’t want dinner until seven! I can’t invade their home three hours early! And I’ve still got to skewer the shrimp and make the mayonnaise!”
“You can always cancel. Which would actually be the best thing.”
“No!”
“Then get that pretty little tail of yours in gear. I want to get everybody, including us, in place early so I’m sure we have the lay of the land.”
Kate started to argue. Then she registered his words. Pretty little tail?
No, she thought, she was definitely not going to start considering again if he meant it or if things like that just rolled off his tongue as a matter of course. Then again, her tail wasn’t all that bad. It was one of her better assets. Though Jeff had never specifically mentioned it—he’d been too busy eating her cooking—she thought that maybe in that one tiny area, she might have given Miss Belly-Button Ring a run for her money.
Raphael leaned toward her and snapped his fingers in front of her eyes. Kate jumped. “What?”
“Did you hear me?”
“Thirty minutes,” she repeated breathlessly.
He looked at his watch. “Nope. Twenty-nine now.”
He waited for a retort and didn’t get it. She shot to her feet and hurried to the kitchen. Which, he thought, was probably just as well.
He was starting to enjoy her reactions just a little too much.
Kate called ahead to warn Betty Morley that she would be arriving early. She told her that their dinner was very complex and would need some special time, and each word of the lie felt as unwieldy as pebbles on her tongue.
At a quarter to four, they wrestled Belle into the new crate. It took a concerted joint effort. Kate put the contraption in the bedroom and closed the door against the dog’s aggrieved barking. Then she towed her wagon out the door.
Raphael went ahead of her up the hallway. He checked the elevator before she stepped into it and held her back from leaving it when the car stopped. Kate rolled her eyes behind his back.
“I saw that.”
Kate started. For the first time in all the years she had lived in the building, she realized that there was a mirror positioned at the top corner of the elevator. She looked into it and stuck out her tongue.
It flicked, fast and almost unnoticeable, but Raphael caught it. He felt a flash of something instantly alert under his skin, tightening his flesh. And that ticked him off.
The lobby was deserted. He moved quickly across it, letting her hurry to catch up. As she followed him through the doors onto the street, he stopped suddenly. “Watch out!”
Kate jumped out of her skin. S
he dropped the wagon handle, and it hit the sidewalk with a clatter. She nearly lost her balance jumping backward.
He turned to her and grinned. Her heart pressed up into her throat. “That was a hideous joke!”
“Got your attention, didn’t it?”
She was scared. But admitting it—giving in to it—just seemed so…weak. And it was senseless. Fear was a waste of energy and emotion. She was determined that she was going to plow her way through this…this accidental mess with her life intact. She would keep sane, no matter how paranoid he tried to make her.
“They’ll make it painless for you,” Raphael said. “You haven’t done anything to cross them. You’re what they call an ‘unfortunate.’ Something that shouldn’t have happened but you did, so now your existence has to be rectified.”
He watched the color wash from her complexion. He went on anyway.
“You won’t feel a thing. It will be a quick shot while I’m looking the other way, say, checking to see which prosciutto looks fattier. Watching your tongue slide in and out of your soft, full mouth. Raphael snapped his fingers. “Just like that, and you’ll be gone.”
“Stop it,” she whispered.
He put a hand out to steady her. He thought of touching her shoulder, of kneading out some of the tension he’d deliberately put there to make his point. But they were on the street, where anyone could be watching. And he remembered what had happened the last time he’d done it. Don’t touch me, she’d said.
For a minute, Kate thought he was going to reach for her again, the way he had last night. And this time, she realized, she really needed him to. Because no matter what else he was, no matter what he had done to her world, he had also coldcocked a serial killer a month ago. And knowing that made her feel…safer.
She was, after all, his job. She had a feeling he would go at it full throttle.
If he touched her, she thought, she’d feel all that in the contact. And for a moment, just a moment, she craved the reassurance. But then his hand went back to his side. She bent for the wagon handle.