Man Shy

by Catherine Mulvany

  Mallory tucked the corners of her mouth in tight and shot him a look that would have wilted a lesser man, but she did slow down to thirty. “What did you think you were doing investigating that truck without backup? Without even telling me where you were going?”

  “Couldn’t see any point in worrying you.”

  “Worrying me? Worrying me? I sat inside the restaurant stewing for half an hour. If I’d known you’d gone out to the parking lot to play Sam Spade, I would have checked on you sooner. Dammit, half an hour! You could have bled to death, Brody Hunter!”

  “Bled to death? The blow didn’t even break the skin.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that. I looked in that Dumpster and darned near had a stroke.”

  “It was only spaghetti sauce, Mallory.”

  “Well, it looked like blood, dammit!” She jerked the Jeep to the side of the road and killed the engine. Her hands were shaking. She looked sick.

  “Mallory.” Brody laid his hand on hers. “I’m sorry.”

  She took a long, quivering breath, then turned to face him. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m acting like an idiot. But dammit, Brody, you scared me.”

  He gave her hand a squeeze. “Scared me too.”

  Mallory woke a little before noon. She was stiff from trying to sleep curled up in a chair. Brody, on the other hand, was sleeping like a baby. He lay diagonally across bed, rolled up in the covers like a human enchilada.

  How would it feel to be tucked in there with him, to have his big, warm body spooned along her backside, his arms wrapped around her, holding her close? How would it feel to have his breath tickling her neck? His c Oh, boy.

  Mallory’s heart raced; her cheeks grew warm. Jeez, what was the matter with her? If Brody woke up and saw her slobbering all over him like some sex-starved old maid, she’d probably give him a stroke. Or at the very least, the wrong idea.

  Who are you kidding, Scott? You’re the one with all the wrong ideas. You’re the one whose hormones have run amok. You’re the one whose body is tingling in anticipation.

  The problem was she could be one big tingle from head to toe and it still wouldn’t make any difference. Sooner or later the memories would kick in and short out her libido.

  She threw off the blanket covering her and stood up, shivering in the borrowed T-shirt and sweatpants she’d donned after her shower. Her chic new dress lay crumpled in a heap next to the chair. Eighty bucks down the drain.

  Terrified that Brody’s injuries were life threatening, she’d cradled his head in her lap all the way to the emergency room. She’d been relieved to learn he wasn’t dying after all, but by that time the dress was a goner, permanently stained with spaghetti sauce.

  Mallory checked her watch. Noon. The emergency-room doctor had given her strict instructions to wake Brody every couple hours or so to make certain he didn’t slip into a coma. She’d roused him last a little over three hours ago, shortly before she’d zonked out herself. She really ought to wake him again, but he looked so comfortable, she hated to disturb him.

  Yeah, but what if he wasn’t sleeping? What if he’d already lapsed into a coma?

  She nudged his shoulder. He snorted once and rolled over onto his back. Did people in comas move around like that?

  Brody Hunter lay spread-eagled across the king-sized bed, snoring like a chain saw. She frowned at him. No man had a right to be so damn gorgeous, particularly when he wasn’t even trying.

  His thick, black hair spread out on the pillows in tangled disarray. A loose tendril curled against one lean cheek. She longed to brush it away but didn’t dare. She’d die of embarrassment if he caught her taking such a liberty.

  Even with a double layer of lash-building mascara, her eyelashes were no match for his. Long and lush, they fanned out against his cheeks, the only hint of softness in an angular face.

  One brown arm was flung out to the side, the other bent at the elbow, his hand resting on his chest. A big, blunt hand she suspected was capable of handling a gun or a woman with equal finesse. Mallory shivered.

  Enough of that, girl.

  She gave his shoulder a shake. “Wake up, Brody.”

  He groaned and thrashed around, flinging half his covers aside to expose one muscular brown leg to the thigh. Then he settled back into the mattress with a sigh and started snoring again.

  He didn’t want to wake up, and Mallory didn’t know whether to be worried or not. Not waking up was bad, but people in comas didn’t snore, did they? Or did they? Dammit, she was a teacher, not a nurse. What was she supposed to do now?

  If at first you don’t succeed c

  She prodded his shoulder again, harder this time. “Wake up, Brody!”

  He gave one last grunting snort and opened his eyes. He blinked several times, frowning as if his head ached. Then he caught sight of her, and a smile spread across his face.

  “What?” Mallory did her best to appear nonchalant. Surely he hadn’t been faking the snores. Surely he hadn’t seen her practically drooling over him.

  “You’re nice to wake up to, that’s all. Almost makes up for the jackhammers in my head. What’d you do? Get me drunk so you could take advantage of me?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  He frowned. “Oh, yeah. The Dumpster.”

  “Followed by a visit to Brunswick General and a second interview with the cops. Not the sort of date I’m used to.”

  He grinned. “At least it wasn’t boring.” He reached out and captured her hand between his. “Bet you never slept over on the first date before.”

  “I didn’t exactlyc.” Mallory stared down at their clasped hands. Brody twined the fingers of one hand through hers while he used the other to trace the tendons on the back of her hand. If pinching her earlobe had been tingle to the tenth power, this was tingle to the hundredth. Her heart did an Olympic-caliber double axel. Oh, boy.

  “I want to thank you for saving my life.”

  “But I didn’t. Your situation was never really life threatening.” She couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “What do you call damned near gagging to death?” Brody fell silent for a moment, then said, “Mallory, look at me.”

  She did and her racing heart skipped a beat at the tender expression on his face.

  “Thanks. Thanks for everything.” He tugged gently on her hand, pulling her down on the edge of the bed.

  He was going to kiss her. She could tell by the look in his eyes. And she was going to let him. The look in his eyes told her that too. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, so loud she almost missed hearing his beeper go off.

  But Brody heard it. The smoky heat in his eyes vanished in the space of a heartbeat. “Damn,” he said. He closed his eyes for a second and she saw regret flicker across his face. When he opened his eyes again, they held the glitter of steel. He dropped her hand. “Where’s my pager?”

  She dug it from the pocket of his discarded jacket and passed it to him along with the phone.

  While he called in, Mallory wandered out to the high-ceilinged living room and glanced out one of the big front windows. She took a startled step back when she saw the black Lexus parked across the street. Jeez, surely Lindsey and Evan hadn’t tracked her here! Her heart raced again, but this time it wasn’t passion that triggered the response.

  She took a series of deep breaths. Okay, it was a black Lexus, but Evan Corby didn’t own the only black Lexus in town.

  Or did he? Her heart sank as she saw Evan’s familiar form emerge from the house directly across the street. It plummeted clear to her socks when she saw the gorgeous brunette waving to him from the recessed doorway. What was he up to?

  Evan paused at the curb next to his car, looking up and down the street as if he were taking inventory. His gaze seemed to linger on Brody’s house, and for a split second Mallory feared he’d spotted her. But he hadn’t. He couldn’t have. Otherwise he wouldn’t have climbed into the driver’s seat and driven away without a backward glance.

  Oh, b
oy. She backed away from the window until she bumped into a chair. She sat, trying to make some sense of her swirling thoughts. This was terrible. This was worse than terrible. In six days Evan was supposed to marry her sister. So what was he doing at the brunette’s house?

  There was probably a simple explanation, an innocent explanation, but she was darned if she could think what it might be. The buxom brunette had looked vaguely familiar, though Mallory couldn’t quite place her. One thing for certain, she wasn’t the bride-to-be.

  Maybe Lindsey’s suspicions had some basis in fact. Like it or not, maybe Mallory really should have a little chat with Evan.

  FIVE

  Brody found Mallory in the living room staring at the dusty split-leaf philodendron in the corner as if she’d never seen one before. “Problem?” he asked.

  “What?” She turned slowly to face him. “Oh, no. It’s nothing. Who was on the phone?”

  “Lieutenant Kirkwood.”

  “On a Sunday? I thought officers were strictly nine-to-fivers.”

  “None of us will be nine-to-fivers again until we catch the burglars.” And GI Joe. The rapist had attacked another victim last night, according to Kirkwood.

  “Were they able to trace the pickup, using the partial you gave them?”

  “Yeah, only one truck registered in Paiute County fit the description, so they hauled the owner in for questioning. The lieutenant wants us to come down to see if we can ID the guy.”

  “But what about your head? Didn’t you tell him you were on the casualty list?”

  He’d slept well and the golf-ball-sized lump on the back of his head had shrunk to mosquito-bite proportions. Aside from a headache, he felt pretty good. “I’m okay. How about you?”

  Mallory looked pale and fragile with her hair wisping around her face and faint violet shadows under her eyes. Then she grinned at him and the illusion of fragility vanished. “I’ll live. Did your lieutenant say who the owner of the truck was?”

  “Arlo Davis. Name ring a bell?”

  She shook her head. “Never heard of him, but I bet it’s the same guy we saw outside Dixon and Alexandra Yano’s house. And probably the same one who clobbered you, then stashed you in the Dumpster. According to the witness, the man who followed you outside was ‘smaller than an elephant, but not by much.’”

  Brody nodded. “Good description of our burglary suspect, all right.”

  Unfortunately, the witness’s description wasn’t a good match for Arlo Davis, a frail, white-haired man in his late seventies.

  “I don’t get it,” said Mallory. “Why did they just let him go? Even if he wasn’t the human tank who bashed you over the head and ripped off my friends’ house, the old boy had to have some idea who the culprit was. After all, we know it was his truck that was used in the robbery.”

  “No,” said Brody. “We don’t know it was his truck. All we know is that it was a truck that looked like his. I didn’t get the partial license number at the crime scene.”

  “Yes, but someone attacked you when you bent down to check the plate number on Davis’s truck. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  He shrugged. “No, but it’s not evidence, either. Maybe if Arlo Davis had been the big guy we saw at the Yano house, we could have convinced a judge to issue a search warrant so we could have checked his truck and his house for stolen goods. As it is, we’ve got nothing except, in my case, a killer of a headache. I’m going back to bed to take it easy like the doctor said, but c” A smile spread slowly across his face.

  Mallory felt the reaction all the way to her toes. “But what?”

  “Why don’t we try this dinner-date thing one more time? Say tomorrow night at seven?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know, Brody. I think the fates are trying to tell us something.” Another date wasn’t a good idea. She was way too attracted to him already, and she suspected he wasn’t exactly indifferent to her. Normally a strong mutual attraction was a good thing, but Mallory’s approach to relationships wasn’t normal. Her fear of intimacy ran deep. She and Brody had no future, and it wasn’t fair to him to pretend otherwise. All she needed was an escort for the wedding festivities. Nothing more.

  “Come on, Mallory. Give me a chance to make it up to you.”

  She gave an involuntary shiver of excitement at the look in his eyes. “No. I’m not really your type, Brody. We have nothing in common.”

  “What are you talking about? I love hot-fudge sundaes and you love hot-fudge sundaes. I love puppies and sunsets and long walks on the beach. And you—”

  “Love kittens and sunrises and curling up in a chair with a good book. I rest my case.”

  “Hell, woman, give me a chance. We spent the night together, and you survived that. This time I’m only asking you out to dinner.”

  “Last time you only asked me out to dinner.”

  Brody laughed. “So I did, but I plead extenuating circumstances. Please, Mallory. It’ll be my way of thanking you for all you did last night.”

  The look of entreaty on his handsome face was hard to resist.

  She bit down on her lower lip. “No, I don’t think so.” Jeez, why did he have to smile like that? Her pulse pounded in her ears like heavy surf. She felt a little dizzy and a lot shaky. But she could hold out as long as he didn’t touch her.

  He touched her, a double whammy, one hand on her arm, the other cupping her chin. Electroshock therapy couldn’t deliver any more voltage than the gentle pressure of his fingertips. “Please, Mallory?”

  Hard to resist? Ha! Make that darned near impossible to resist.

  “Mallory?” A whisper of sound that shuddered down her spine. She shivered in anticipation.

  He leaned closer, brushing her lips with his. “Please?” he asked, his mouth so close to hers, she felt the words as well as heard them.

  Oh, boy. She closed her eyes to shut out the sweet intensity of his expression, but it didn’t help.

  He kissed her eyelids and she went limp in reaction. His hand on her arm was all that kept her upright. “Please, Mallory. Say yes.”

  She took a deep breath, fully intending to tell him no. “Yes,” she said instead, and he hugged her tight.

  “Good girl.”

  No, dumb girl. Stupid girl. Idiot girl. “What time did you say?” Her voice emerged as a choked whisper.

  “Seven.”

  She opened her eyes to find him smiling down at her. “I’ll be ready.”

  “And I’ll be there.”

  Yeah, sure he would. By seven-thirty or a quarter to eight. She was learning.

  Brody dropped Mallory at her house at a little after three. She planned to catch up on some laundry, run over to Aerobics Plus for an hour or so to work some of the kinks out of her muscles, then coddle herself with a bubble bath.

  Her sister screwed up the schedule.

  “Where have you been?” Lindsey launched her attack before Mallory was through the door.

  “Out.” She glanced pointedly at the empty soda can on the end table, the rumpled TV Guide, the blaring television. “You certainly know how to make yourself at home.”

  The sarcasm was wasted on Lindsey. She frowned. “You didn’t come home last night. I waited up for you until after midnight. This morning I started calling at five, then punched redial again every fifteen minutes until Evan dropped me off about ten. What have you been doing all this time?”

  “Long version or short version?”

  “How about the PG version?”

  “With me, every version’s a PG version.”

  “That Brody Hunter’s X-rated if I ever saw X-rated.”

  “He just looks X-rated. He’s really very sweet.”

  Lindsey shot her a skeptical look.

  “Okay, don’t believe me, then. Here’s the short version, editing out all the sex orgies and most of the violence.”

  Lindsey rolled her eyes.

  “First, I interrupted a burglary and consequently spent hours wading through a sea of red tape dow
n at police headquarters. Then—”

  “Mother said you’d called.”

  “Right, so then Brody took me to Denny’s—we’d missed dinner and both of us were starving—and that’s where I discovered what I thought was a dead body in the Dumpster.”

  “Wait! Why were you pawing through a Dumpster at Denny’s?”

  “I was looking for Brody. He left to go wash his hands and never came back.”

  “Oh, sure, that explains it. Dumpster’d be the first place I’d check for a missing boyfriend.” Lindsey made a face. “So who was the body in the Dumpster?”

  “Brody, of course. He wasn’t really dead, though.”

  Lindsey nodded. “Yeah, I kinda figured that since I just saw him drop you off.”

  Mallory knew she wasn’t making much sense; she was too tired to think clearly, let alone frame coherent sentences. She hung her coat and shoulder bag on the hall tree, kicked her shoes off, and collapsed on a chair, yawning so widely she felt as if her jaw were about to come unhinged.

  “What happened? Did he pick a bar brawl with the wrong guy?”

  “Lindsey, just let it drop. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep and I’m not in the mood for a cross-examination.”

  “Didn’t get a whole lot of sleep? You mean c How long have you known this man, Mai?”

  “Long enough.”

  “You should be careful. Evan and I discussed Brody Hunter and we both decided he’s bad news. As an investigative reporter, Evan’s seen guys like that before—usually in handcuffs. Evan said he wouldn’t be surprised to discover Brody Hunter was on the FBI’s most wanted list. He has the kind of face you find decorating the post-office wall.”

  “Brody’s a cop, not a crook. I think Evan’s been watching too much tabloid TV.”

  “Hunter claims to be a cop, but how do you know he really is? Have you checked him out with the department?”

  “Linz, believe me, he’s legit. If you need references, though, check with Kyle Brewster. They went to school together.”