Love Under Fire

by Frances Housden

  “Auckland, huh? At least that gives us something to work with.”

  Before Jo could ask him to explain, he bent his head till their lips lined up and covered his mouth with hers. She tasted want and need, tinged with fear for her safety. He pulled her closer, holding her as if he’d never let her go. Like Rowan said, they had something to work with.

  She let herself drift into the kiss, into the magic and leaned against his chest with a sigh as he lifted his head. “I’m glad you stayed on.”

  “Me, too. Tonight we’ve got to talk. And not about Rocky.”

  Hope surged through her. Maybe she had been in the wilderness long enough. She could put in for a transfer to Auckland. Central was out, but there were always the suburbs. Browns Bay might be an option. She’d put the idea to Rowan later tonight once they were in bed. After she’d heard what he had to say.

  Her stomach growled. She looked up at him, laughing. “Lord, am I hungry.”

  “Me, too. But to hell with food. I’d rather eat you.” He leaned forward, his teeth nibbling her earlobe. “What can I say? I can’t get enough.”

  She felt the long hard ridge of his sex pressing into her belly as he pulled her closer. It made her hot all over, and she laughed, uncertain and suddenly vulnerable. Where was it leading? Her and Rowan. Did they really have a chance of making this work?

  Impatient with the direction of her thoughts she pushed at him playfully and took a step back. “Well, I was talking about food. Energy, fuel. C’mon, let’s go, I’m starving.”

  She pulled him by the hand, laughing all the way along the silvered wooden planks of the finger. There was a long slow swell running and every now and then the deck came up to meet their feet, which added to the laughter as they misstepped. Just to be awkward, Rowan hung back so she had to haul most of his weight, protesting, “You weigh a ton.”

  He flashed a look fraught with challenge. “And you love it.”

  They were almost at the berth when he decided to reverse tactics, drawing level. They covered the last few feet in a flash. Side by side, hearts and minds traveling in unison to the same rhythm. The same need.

  A becoming flush colored her cheeks and her hair was all over the place, but her smile was just for him and made his heart squeeze. She’d never looked more beautiful.

  And he loved her.

  Tonight he would tell her. Then, he would explain who he really was. He’d wait till after they’d made love and she was snuggled up in his arms as they savored the afterglow.

  Then he’d tell her.

  “Rowan…did you leave a light on?”

  “Not that I remember.” The galley and lower saloon were dark, but a pale glow illuminated the windows of the upper saloon. “I’ll go first.” He stepped onto the boarding platform and tried the door. Unlocked.

  His first thought was for Jo’s safety. “Keep behind me,” he whispered and silently swung the door back on its hinges.

  “You don’t think it’s the ones who killed Rocky?”

  “Probably not, but we won’t take any chances.” He put a finger to his lips and she nodded. As he reached the steps he heard a clink of glass and glug, glug of liquid pouring from a bottle.

  “Damn cheek,” he whispered, “they’re into the liquor.”

  He took the last few steps in one, saying, “Put that down and turn around.” The bottle went flying and the glass landed on the floor, soaking the thick carpet pile. His brother turned and blasted him with a look.

  “Dammit, Rowan! See what you made me do.”

  As Jo appeared, for a second so did his brother’s usual polished savoir faire. “Sorry about that, I’m Scott Stanhope, and you’re…” Scott’s jaw dropped and all his social niceties with it. His blue eyes, so like their father’s, grew wintry as he looked her up and down.

  Rowan stepped closer, not quite in front of Jo but at her shoulder. Too late, he thought, realizing he couldn’t shield her or their relationship from the ice storm he knew was on its way.

  Scott negligently flicked off a bead of liquor that had landed on his cuff and proceeded to do the same to Jo.

  “You’re that bloody woman who almost killed my brother!”

  Chapter 14

  L iar, liar, pants on fire. The childish retort raced through Jo’s mind every time she stopped for breath.

  Jeans, jacket and T-shirts came out of the locker in a jangle of hangers. Liar— She punched them into the soft duffel bag. Drawers opened, one, two, three. Fists of underwear hit the pile. Liar— Tissue box scrunched and flattened as the zip closed. Pants on fire. Two foil-covered missiles exploded against the wall. That was it. She was outta here!

  But first she had to walk through the saloon she’d left precipitately, holding her anger in check. Rowan’s story might have appeased his brother, but his “later” to her, putting his explanation on hold, was never going to happen. Not now. Not ever.

  And damn Scott Stanhope for the archetypal, self-centered bastard that he was. He’d just ripped her world asunder and what did he say when Rowan asked him what he was doing here?

  “I’ve just bought a million-dollar horse!” Then he’d laughed when Rowan scowled fiercely.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t dip into our money. I bought it myself. It was a bargain.”

  Jo left the stateroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Her feet hit the stairs.

  Mike Gallagher, a horse trainer, gets into debt and Stanhope helps him out by buying a horse that could win the Melbourne Cup next Tuesday and make him more than his money back, all within a week. Typical! And he was the man Nicks Landing looked up to.

  She entered the saloon.

  Rowan and his brother were talking together until Rowan spied her duffel and his expression changed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away.”

  Rowan strode over, reaching for the bag, as she flipped it round behind her. “Don’t go.”

  Two words couldn’t mend a broken heart. She’d fallen for a man who was no more than real vision she’d had of their future. And he didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it.

  Such betrayal. She had ended relationships for smaller deceits than the one Rowan perpetrated. “How can I stay? You’re a stranger. Someone I only thought I knew.”

  His face might have been carved in stone. She bit back a sob that came up to choke her. His dear face. She never wanted to see it again. He’d turned her world upside down and all she had to show for it was a killer of a pain in her heart.

  The man she loved had never existed.

  She stepped round him, missed, and had to shoulder him aside. Five steps down and she was away. She raced for the exit and could hear them behind her. Rowan’s feet pounding the stairs, his brother’s lighter ones following.

  How could she have been so dumb? She’d seen photos of Scott Stanhope, hosting parties for local dignitaries, with a few actresses and models thrown in to sweeten the mix. Together, their similarities hit her eyes like a poke with a sharp stick.

  Why hadn’t she realized they were brothers?

  The whole of Nicks Landing must have been laughing at her.

  Rowan McQuaid!

  Rowan Stanhope!

  She pulled open the door and turned. Rowan was almost upon her. His eyes narrow and his expression furious. “Thanks for the ride, McQuaid…Stanhope. It was fun while it lasted.”

  She slid the door across in his face, stepping from the boarding platform to the long finger of decking.

  The wind came from offshore and blew her tears away.

  They’d been arguing in Jo’s office for five minutes and Rowan wasn’t getting anywhere. He’d been calling Jo since this morning. She’d left a message with Seth at the reception desk that she wouldn’t accept his calls, was too busy to see him. He’d circumvented her instructions by asking for Harry.

  She looked like hell—the way he felt. Ever since he’d arrived in her office she’d been masking her true feelings by acting offhand. It hadn�
��t worked.

  But she still wasn’t ready to listen to his explanation. “Excuses,” she called them. She played tough. She played explicit—liar—and she countered every argument.

  Only the memory of holding her in his arms with him moving inside her, listening to her moans of pleasure, kept him persisting. Jo loved him. He knew it. She knew it.

  All he had to do was make her admit it.

  Easier said than done.

  “This isn’t over, not by a long chalk. I love you, Jo.”

  She blanched, not entirely the response he’d hoped for when he’d played around with the words “I love you” in his head, but neither had he expected her to look as if she might swoon at his feet. If only he knew what she was thinking, but she’d closed her eyes and wouldn’t let him in.

  He stepped closer. Her throat moved convulsively as his breath stirred the dark curls framing her face. He lifted her hair back from her ear. She tensed. He dipped his head toward her cheek. Jo quivered, fragile as a crystal glass in sync with the note his body played. “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he whispered.

  The glass shattered. Her eyes flew open, fear expanding her pupils, stark black replacing chocolate brown. “Don’t tempt fate, Rowan. You’re not indestructible.”

  Hell, he knew that. Knew it as surely as he knew the pain in his chest was because she’d left him. It had taken that to learn the truth about love. The heart had no defense against it. “Fate has already had its way. I freely admit I didn’t want to fall in love with you. I knew the danger, but love isn’t that simple.” He held her shoulders as if that would force her to look at him. “I want to learn from my father’s mistakes and not repeat them. And I won’t stand back and let you, my woman—my life—walk away. If it means fighting for your love…I’ll do whatever it takes. Just listen.”

  “No! How can love exist where trust is dead? Lies brought us together. Rocky lied about my father. That gave me the incentive to become a cop. Your deception, your lie, has torn us apart. When were you going to tell me the truth? You had loads of opportunities, I gave you plenty of openings but you didn’t take one of them. Seems you didn’t really trust me.”

  “Dammit, woman, I do trust you. I’d trust you with my life.”

  “What’s new? You did that by saving mine, but I gave it back to you. That makes us quits.”

  He cupped Jo’s nape in his hand, tightening his grip as she flinched away from him. “I refuse to give up.”

  She tried to shrug him off. He forked his fingers through the black silk of her hair, turning her head until she had no place to look but at him.

  “Let me go, you oaf. I have a job to do before it turns into another fiasco, and you’re in my way.” Her dark eyes flashed angry shards of jet.

  Just as he thought he was past hurting, past feeling any more pain, his heart clenched on its force. “Resign from your job…make a fresh start…come work with me.”

  A harsh laugh that sounded more like a plea for help, escaped her lips. “Great. Two police castoffs. Who’d take us seriously?”

  Anger and frustration ripped at his control. The insults were getting down and dirty, balancing on the cutting edge of slanderous. But it couldn’t stop him loving her. Theirs was a match made in hell, a product of their days working together in Auckland Homicide Division. If you got out of there still clutching your sanity you were lucky. And he felt lucky.

  Lucky enough to push his hand up her skirt and discover the little swatch of silk hiding her womanhood. He wanted Jo. Wanted her now! Down on the desk with her legs tight round his waist as he hammered into her.

  He started with a kiss, swift and hungry, but it got his message across. Her chest heaved as he clamped her tight against his hip. At last, he found her, cupping her through the sleek barrier. Their gazes fought and he knew he was winning as the first quiver of surrender rippled through her….

  “Hrrumph.”

  The noise came from behind him. He hid Jo from view as he released her and turned to find Harry standing in the office doorway. Passion had made him deaf to it opening.

  She stepped past him, flinging him a venomous glance. Jo was keeping score again, but at least she was thinking of him.

  “Come on in, Harry. What can I do for you? Stanhope here was just leaving.” Could she have put it more pointedly? She didn’t think so. Yet, a pang of emotion she didn’t want to acknowledge smote her as his wide shoulders filled the door of her office, perhaps for the last time.

  After Rowan left, fist clenched round an envelope Harry handed him, she walked over and closed the door, more as a way of stifling regret than anything else. Reluctantly, she released the handle. The click echoed in her mind for a long time afterward.

  “You ought to give him a chance, Jo.”

  Her brows rode high on her forehead and the back of her neck pricked. But she recognized concern in his gaze and stance. Compassion was a rare thing and she accepted it graciously. “Thanks, Harry, but he lied. Couldn’t trust me with his name.”

  “You know what the bard said, ‘A rose by any other name…’ You knew the real Rowan McQuaid Stanhope.”

  There had to be a funny side to Harry quoting Shakespeare at her, but her spirits were too low to see it. They’d been scrabbling at the back of her mind since the moment Scott Stanhope turned up, trying not to hit bottom. How ironic that their only moment of relief had been Rowan’s kiss.

  “Has the whole town been laughing at me?”

  Harry’s expression was sheepish, “Except for Bull and me no one knew, and we weren’t laughing. Though, I have to admit it did raise a smile, seeing McQuaid sickening for love. He hasn’t spent a lot of time here since his parents died, and we only wanted what was the best for him. That seemed to be you.”

  The man was good, but she wasn’t falling for any of his tricks. Sure, Rowan had said he loved her, but it wasn’t enough, fool that she was, she needed more. She needed everything. Love, trust, the whole nine yards. Hands balled, she doused the excess of emotion, making them tremble as she walked back to her desk and sat down before acknowledging Harry again.

  She had murder in mind but it wasn’t Rowan’s. Oh, she’d thrown out a lot of insults, but he was right, she did love him. Who else could turn her insides to mush with a look, melt her heart with a smile, rescue the tender feelings she’d locked deep inside? Hell, how could she have fallen for a liar?

  Jo’s stomach clenched so hard she felt sick. It had been years, at least two, since she’d taken out her feelings and examined them so closely. Time to fold them up in a small neat square and bury them again. She had a job to do.

  “Anything on the autopsy report?”

  “I called the M.E., but he wasn’t finished. Said to let you know the blade you’re looking for is eight inches long, sharp tapered point and two inches wide at the handle with a nick in the blade near the hilt.”

  “Sounds like the chef’s knife Moira uses. But at least I know where she was on the night of the crime.” Harry was one of the only cops they’d let in on the secret. On top of everything else she didn’t want to be responsible for spreading gossip about her landlady.

  Besides, there was the little matter of having lived at Moira’s house for two years without cottoning on.

  “Oh yeah, he also said Rocky wasn’t laid out like a sacrifice when they stabbed him. He was standing. The knife went in and up under his ribs with a lot of force behind it.”

  “Short-order cook got him, huh?” Uh-uh, no wisecracks. “Sorry, that was uncalled for, I expect you were Rocky’s friend.”

  Harry eased a hip onto her desk. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  Spying the envelope Harry slipped onto the desk, she tensed. Stark white, it stood out against the dark wood, like another she’d received. Fingers crossed, she asked, “Is that for me?” Her voice sounded a note too high and a shade too feeble. A fine time to become superstitious.

  “Don’t worry. It’s not another anonymous letter. It’s the results of the fi
ngerprint check you ordered done on them.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to Bull?”

  “He and Jake dashed off a while ago. They were up in arms when they heard the Smale brothers had been bailed by the youngest of the brood. Besides, when you read the report, I think you’ll catch on to the paradox quicker than Bull will.”

  Paradox? That was an unusual word coming from Harry. He was full of surprises. “I take it you’ve read the results? I thought you said you never opened my mail?” She inserted a fingernail under the sticky resealed edge and ran it along its length.

  “This wasn’t personal.”

  And the other one was? Harry was correct in his assessment. What else could a threat on her life be considered, but personal?

  She pulled out the results and read. As she’d thought, the only prints on the letter to Rocky were his own. And on the one to her? Only one print found. And it was taken off one of the letters cut out and pasted. It matched Rocky’s thumb-print.

  Her jaw dropped as the meaning sunk in. She closed her mouth quickly as she stared up at Harry.

  “I knew you’d find it interesting,” he remarked dryly.

  Now that was more like the Harry she knew, the one given to understatements.

  “Read the footnote.”

  She read. One of the technicians had noted the unusual font, matching it up with a heavy-metal magazine he subscribed to.

  That gave her two options. Either Rocky had sent the letters or someone he knew had cut the letters out of a magazine Rocky had read. Maybe he’d traded magazines? As there was no way his death could count as suicide, she settled for the latter option.

  Picking up the envelope, she pushed the sheets inside.

  “No one else knows about this?”

  “Just you, me and forensics.”

  She could have hugged him. This might stave off the impending invasion by Wellington cops if Molly would cooperate. “Well, I’m off, Harry. You’ll know where to find me.”

  “That I will. Good night, Detective.”

  She flipped him a grateful smile and left the office.

  At last something was going right.