by Beverly Bird
Chapter 8
Kate opened her eyes to find Raphael’s gaze on her. His eyes were as dark as a stormy sea. There seemed to be no green to them at all.
He was close, too close. It made her pulse hammer erratically. She could feel the soft touch of his breath on her cheek. Something sighed deep inside her.
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
Raphael saw her pulse flutter at her throat just a moment before her eyes met his. It reacted on him like a fist he’d never seen coming. “Yeah, they’ll put those words on your headstone.” He straightened away from her.
Kate paled even more.
Damn it, he was no good at this sort of thing, Raphael thought. He didn’t have the knack for comforting and coddling and care. He fixed things. He avenged wrongs and set them right again—he didn’t sit around and console the victims.
He’d kissed her to snap her out of hysteria. Guilt nibbled at his gut. He’d wanted to taste her. He pushed the truth of that away hard and fast.
Kate rose unsteadily from the sofa. “It’s just that I never ate.”
Raphael kept his expression neutral. “You spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen.”
“That food was for the Morleys.”
He wasn’t sure if that meant it hadn’t occurred to her to nibble, or that she hadn’t done so because it somehow went against that starched grain of hers. He decided he didn’t want to know. “Eat now. There’s got to be plenty left over.”
Kate shook her head fretfully. “No, that’s all—”
“Stale.”
“Not finished,” she corrected.
She looked at him as though expecting him to argue with her. She did it with a slight tilt of her chin, but something in her eyes told him she didn’t have enough fight left in her to meet the challenge. She was finally figuring out that her life was never going to be the same until this mob war was settled, Raphael realized. For someone who had not only had her ducks in a row but saluting her, it had to be overwhelming.
“I need to make something,” she said. Then she headed for the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, he began to understand what the cooking was about. He went as far as the kitchen doorway to watch her. Maybe she was honestly starving, but there was more to it than that. He wondered if she even realized it. Just like she had this afternoon, she worked with quick, precise, sure motions. He knew that it was therapeutic.
When he moved cautiously into the kitchen, her expression was softer, less stricken, no longer dazed. She was humming to herself.
The smells emanating from his oven and range top had his stomach rumbling, and he’d had that hoagie this afternoon and a healthy portion of the Morleys’ hors d’oeuvres. Kate had found his stash of T-bones in the freezer. She’d unearthed some potatoes. They’d seen better days, but somehow she resurrected them. Like a phoenix rising from ashes, they came out of his oven diced and sprinkled through with peppers and green onions. She made a trip to her van and eventually served up two plates full of steak, potatoes and a salad. Then she stood holding them, looking vacantly around his kitchen.
“You don’t have a table.”
He didn’t. The breakfast area was barren. “I…uh, haven’t lived here very long.”
“How long?”
“Two months.” Why did that sound interminable now?
“And you never bought a table?”
“I was going to get around to it.” He’d been thinking about it, actually, because if things had gone anywhere with Anna, he might have wanted to invite her over for dinner or something. Then she’d been killed, and he’d determined that no one was going to be having dinner in his home any time soon.
It occurred to Raphael that he’d thought about Anna more in the last couple of days than he had in all the weeks since her death. That annoyed him. It also panicked him.
“I eat at the coffee table,” he said shortly and took one of the plates from her.
Kate frowned. “That’s barbaric.”
“Then stand there and eat yours. I’m going to get comfortable.”
A moment later, she followed him to the living room. Raphael dug in and refused to grin with the pleasure of it.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye as he chewed. She was sitting cross-legged at the far end of the coffee table, keeping as much space between them as possible. She was scowling at her plate. Periodically, she nudged the food around with her fork. For someone who’d been so hungry, she wasn’t doing much about it.
“Would you put some of that in your mouth? I’m not real wild on the idea of you fainting all over the place while I’m trying to sort this mess out.”
Kate looked at him sharply. “I don’t faint.”
“You did one hell of an imitation.”
She put her fingers to her temples as though to still a headache. “It’s not something that’s ever happened to me before.”
“Well, keep starving yourself and maybe you can fix that. Even Wonder Woman needed fuel. And you’re not Wonder Woman.” Though she made a good show of it, he thought. And damned if he wouldn’t like to see her in that sexy little suit.
“What?” she asked warily, noting the changes in his expression.
Raphael opened his mouth to repeat the thought. Then he shook his head. He was not going to joke with her anymore. He wasn’t going to lean over her on any more sofas, and he wasn’t going to kiss her again. He wasn’t going to provoke her to find out what intriguing thing might pop out of her mouth next.
He wasn’t going to get that close, because she was starting to get under his skin.
This job was going to be over soon. He’d wrap up Eagan’s complicity, find a snitch somewhere in the ranks with a grudge against the big guy. Kate could go back to her orderly world. And he’d go back to Remmick’s, the pub he favored over on Eighteenth Street. Remmick’s offered up plenty of women who knew a joke when they heard one, who knew better than to get short of breath and look at him with wide, innocent eyes when he made one. When the women at Remmick’s kissed back, they knew they were doing it. And they knew how to walk away when the kissing was over.
Which might be why he never wanted them to distraction, he realized suddenly.
“What did I see that night?” Kate cried suddenly, jolting Raphael from his thoughts.
He put his fork down, and the steak was good, too. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Kate pushed her own plate away angrily. “There was nothing. But there had to have been something, or they wouldn’t be doing this to me.”
Maybe, Raphael thought, maybe not. Even the possibility would galvanize these people. “What about between the time you called 911 and when Fox got there? Anything unusual occur in that time span?”
Her eyes narrowed. She was thinking. Hard. And for some reason, that touched him more than anything she had said or done yet. He felt his heart crack a little at her courage. For that stubborn—and yes, strong—determination.
“Actually, a couple of officers got there before him,” she said finally.
Officers, Fox—what did it matter? His temper kicked all over again.
Kate caught his expression. “I went back to the dining room after I called 911,” she said quickly. “Then Allegra came back, too, and she made like she was going to lift McGaffney’s head out of the salad.”
Raphael frowned. “She came back? From where?”
Kate blinked. “From the kitchen. She followed me when I went to call 911.”
If the killer hadn’t gotten out of the house earlier, Raphael thought, then he certainly did it then. He picked up the thread of her story. “So then you sat on her.”
Kate shook her head fretfully. “No, not right away. First I grabbed her arm to stop her. But she kept trying to yank away from me. So I kind of knocked one of her feet out from under her. And she went down. Then I sat on her.”
Something clicked hard in Raphael’s brain. It almost hurt. “Which side of McGaffney were you two standing on
?”
She looked at him, startled. “What?”
“Were you on his right or his left when you knocked her down? Assuming a position behind him, facing the same direction. Were you looking at the hallway door, or at the kitchen door?” There’d been two entrances to that dining room, he remembered. And they’d been on the kitchen side when he’d found her perched on Allegra’s back.
Kate’s eyes widened. “I was facing the hall.”
“Was that door open?”
“It—yes,” she realized. “It was.” Because Allegra had come in through that door right after Kate had found the dead man. She was pretty sure Allegra had never closed it again. Neither had she.
Someone had been out there. Someone, Raphael thought, had been in that hall. And at some point, Kate must have looked squarely in that direction.
So the guy thought she’d seen him. Who? Someone she might recognize in a mug shot, Raphael decided. Otherwise, it still wouldn’t be enough to easily ID the scumbag—unless the scumbag knew that his mug shot was already on file.
“I saw him,” Kate whispered, stricken. “I must have seen him through that door. But I didn’t. All my attention was on Allegra.” Her eyes were getting wild again.
“Okay, calm down. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay! Someone wants to kill me for it and I don’t even know who was there!”
Raphael dropped a piece of steak at the dog, who was circling under the coffee table. Belle darted forward and caught it in midair, whining for more. When he didn’t offer any, she went in the other direction. A moment later, Raphael saw her needle nose come up over the edge of the coffee table, her nostrils quivering as she caught wind of Kate’s untouched plate.
Kate swatted at her without looking at her. The dog’s brows came together and she growled, snapping her teeth at air.
“No one’s going to kill you,” Raphael said. “They’d have to get past me to do it.”
Kate snorted. “Oh, I forgot. Mr. I’m So Good At My Job.”
Raphael’s eyes narrowed. “I am.”
“I don’t think Betty Morley appreciates your skill.”
“Damn it, letting you do that dinner went against every fiber of common sense I had!”
“Then why did you?”
His blood pressure skyrocketed in disbelief. “Because you picked at me!” Raphael held up a hand. He reined his temper in. Again. “We’ve got two avenues here. First, tomorrow I’m going to have you look at some mug shots.”
“I keep telling you, I didn’t see anyone out there.”
“Not consciously. Maybe you saw something unconsciously.”
“If I did it unconsciously, then how am I supposed to recognize this guy in a picture?”
“Maybe his face will tweak something in your mind. Will you stop arguing with me? I’m the cop here. I know how to go about these things.”
She looked down her nose at him. “I thought you were a detective.”
“I’m—” He snapped the sentence off. She was doing it to him again.
“What’s the other avenue?” she asked.
“Maybe it would be worth it to have you hypnotized.”
Her back snapped ramrod straight. Belle chose the moment to stand up, brace her front paws against the table and with her nose just barely angled over Kate’s plate, she lifted her steak.
“I don’t like the idea of someone taking over my mind,” Kate said quickly.
“What you don’t like is not being in control.”
Kate drove both her hands into her dark curls. “What are you saying now? That I’m a control freak?”
“If the shoe fits.”
“Well, the shoe does not fit.”
“You’ve been pushing me around from the moment I met you. I want prosciutto. I decided I’m going to keep the dog,” he said in a falsetto. “Who, by the way, just made off with your dinner.”
Kate looked at her plate sharply. Her steak was gone. She gave a cry of pure frustration, then she put her head down hard on her forearms on the table.
“You think about everything you do before you do it,” Raphael said.
Except once, Kate thought, suddenly miserable. She hadn’t considered anything at all when he had kissed her.
He watched pink steal up her neck. And he knew what she was thinking…because he was thinking the same thing. If she had kissed him back like that in sheer surprise, what would she do if she really got swept away? Instantly, Raphael felt things gather hard and hot in the center of him, things that should not have been awake at all.
He got to his feet fast, taking his plate. He saw her sit up out of the corner of his eye. He felt her gaze on his back as he went to the kitchen. He put his plate on the counter and returned to the living room.
He wasn’t going to tease her, he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to provoke her. That was real dangerous ground, getting more shaky with every moment they spent together. “In the meantime,” he heard himself say, “we could practice. You know, so you could get the hang of it.”
She cocked her head a little to the side and her eyes went thin. “Practice what?”
“I could hypnotize you. I’m trained.”
“You are?”
“A while back, a good many major city police departments offered that kind of instruction to isolated personnel.”
“And Philadelphia chose you?”
“Philadelphia chose the best.” He felt compelled to get that in there again.
“I don’t think so,” Kate said quickly. “It’s my mind. I don’t want anyone else…you know, tinkering with it.” She didn’t want him getting inside there. In fact, the very idea appalled her. It would be like having him peer right into her heart. And if he did that, what would he see in there?
He would know that she’d liked kissing him a lot more than she detested him.
Raphael came back to the sofa. This time when he sat down, he did it inches from her. “It’s not true, you know.”
She reared back a little, looking at him. “What isn’t?”
“That a hypnotist can make you do anything your conscious mind wouldn’t accept when you’re awake. So what won’t your conscious mind accept, Kate Mulhern?”
Wanting you. It leaped into her mind and had her heart kicking.
She wanted to feel again the way she had when he’d kissed her, with every nerve ending alive, throbbing, sensitive. She wanted that feeling of being unable to breathe for the wonder of it. Because nobody had ever kissed her like that before. No one had ever made her feel like that. And she had liked it.
But she didn’t want to like it. Because it had meant nothing at all to him.
Raphael watched something come over her face. A whimsical softening. A yearning. A wistfulness. She hugged herself. And when Raphael’s heart rolled over this time, it took his breath away and it was painful.
He shot to his feet. “I think dogs need to be walked or something, don’t they?”
“Dogs?”
“Like that one who just finished your steak.”
“We don’t have a leash.” Everything inside Kate settled again. For a moment, it had gathered, lifting, her very bones feeling weightless with the way he had looked at her. But now he wanted to walk the dog.
She watched him pick Belle up in the palm of one hand. Her short legs dangled and she looked indignant. Actually, Kate thought, she looked horrified. Then Raphael was out the front door, dog and all.
Kate got up shakily from the coffee table. She hunted up the bone that was left from the steak Belle had stolen and started dazedly for the kitchen. Her hands shook for a moment, then they steadied. She shoveled in a few mouthfuls of cold potatoes as she stood at the counter, and they hit the pit of her stomach like rocks.
She had to get a grip on herself. It was just…just his way to swerve the conversation like that. He was smooth. He was as mellow and warming as good, aged red wine.
Kate began washing up the dishes. Ten minutes later, Raphael still hadn�
��t returned, but she had herself together. He had said that his behavior meant nothing. If she allowed herself to believe that it did, even in a secret part of her heart, it would end up hurting abominably. It would hurt far more than just his backhanded explanation for that kiss.
She was smart. She was talented in certain areas. She was not a bombshell, not a sex kitten like Allegra… Jeff had made that plain, and she would do well to keep it in mind. She dried her hands on a kitchen towel and smoothed her hair.
When the kitchen shined and there was still no sign of Raphael, she went in search of his bedroom. After all, he’d said she could sleep wherever she wanted. And she felt just as inclined tonight as she had last night to do it behind a locked door.
His bedroom was on the second floor, a single room at the top of the stairs across from a small sitting area and a bathroom. Something about it made her shiver. It was so male, so him. It was mahogany and deep, dark blue. The bed was king-size. But then, she supposed he would be as irrepressible in sleep as he was awake.
The dresser was heavy, large, masculine. She crossed to it slowly, running an exploratory hand over the top of it. It was surprisingly neat. There was nothing personal on top of it. Given the general disarray of his habits, she’d expected pocket contents from the last six weeks.
What else didn’t she know about him? She realized that she’d wanted some peek inside him.
Where was some glimpse of the things that mattered to him? Turning, she saw a basketball on the floor in one corner. Beside it were a pair of high-top sneakers with the socks still stuffed down inside them. She had a sudden image of him running, dribbling the ball, sweating, pushing himself against any defender. Angling up, muscles straining. Poised for the shot, all male grace, then the ball would leave his fingertips. Something invisible punched her in the area of her chest. Kate decided, shivering again, that Raphael would be very good at basketball.
“What are you doing?”
Kate gasped and spun for the door. “You said I could sleep anywhere I wanted.”
His eyes were wary for a moment. “And this is it.”
She nodded stiffly. “This is it.”