by Gayle Wilson
Because if he kissed her…if she leaned toward him, allowing his lips to fasten over hers, he would also embrace her. She knew that It was a progression as natural as breathing. As natural as it had been the first time she had moved into his arms. Surprised that she wanted to. Surprised by how right they had felt closing around her body.
As they would now. Except now…Except now he would know…
She stepped back, away from him. His fingers tightened involuntarily on her arm, but he didn’t exert enough pressure to pull her back to him. Instead, his head lifted, and again it seemed he was looking directly at her.
They stood like that for what seemed like an eternity. Separated by the length of his arm, his fingers still around her upper arm.
“I guess I was wrong,” Nick said softly. His fingers uncurled, freeing her.
Run and hide. It was what she had wanted to do before. Then she had bravely resisted the impulse to cowardice. This time she didn’t even try.
NICK WAITED until he heard the door close behind her. And despite what had just happened, he didn’t believe Abby Sterling would be cruel enough to stay in the room, watching him. Tricking him with the sound of the closing door.
Behind the safety of the glasses, he closed his eyes. He made himself breathe Deeply. Once. And then again. He turned, and leaning forward, put his hands on the top of the desk, palms flat. And he felt beneath the sensitive surface of his fingertips the puzzle he had worked on so long.
Therapy, maybe More likely just something to pass the long hours. It was a puzzle. Nothing else. No great accomplishment. But he had shown it to her as if the fact that he could put a few bits and pieces of cardboard together was some kind of big deal.
He was a cop. An agent. And he had been a good one. Good at working undercover. Good enough that nothing he had done would have given away the role he had been playing. He really believed that. He had done this same job too many times, in too many different locations. Slipping into the role he had been sent to play down here was like slipping into a second skin.
One that was familiar. One that fit. He wasn’t the kind who made careless mistakes. Even Andrews didn’t suggest that he had this time. But still, something had gone terribly wrong.
And that something, he knew instinctively, had to do with Abby Sterling. It had to do somehow with the relationship between them. Only he didn’t know what, because he couldn’t remember her.
Nothing other than how it felt to have that scent all over his clothes. All over his skin. That had been one thing that had come back to him last night. And the reason he had allowed himself to touch her today.
That and the fact that she had sounded so damn vulnerable last night. Blaming herself for what had happened. He had wanted to comfort her. He had wanted to take her in his arms and hold her hard and tight against the protection of his body. And the urge to do that was not unfamiliar.
She was so damn small. Almost too thin. He had worried about that. Worried about her. And he wasn’t a guy who ever worried. It was counterproductive.
Suddenly his fingers tightened against the wood of the desk. They curled inward, pulling a piece of the jigsaw puzzle into his palm. Curling tightly around it because of what he had just thought.
He had been remembering, he realized. Remembering a woman. Who was small and blond. Long blond hair. Very slender. Fragile. And he had worried about her.
He didn’t know where the memories had come from, but suddenly they had floated up to the surface of the dark pool that had been his mind, like something that had finally broken free from the reeking, mud-clogged bottom of a stagnant lake.
He tried to force it now. Tried desperately to see her face, but there was only an impression. An image. A brief memory. Of a woman he had cared about.
Of a woman who didn’t now even want his hand on her arm? Of Abby Sterling? Who certainly didn’t want his mouth over hers, he acknowledged. In spite of whatever might have happened between them in the past, she had made her feelings about that abundantly clear today. And he knew why, of course.
She just didn’t get quite as big a thrill as he did, he guessed, out of the fact that he could almost put together a jigsaw puzzle. Almost. Given an endless amount of time.
Suddenly the rage and self-pity Nick Deandro had fought for months boiled over. As black and as cold as the despair he fought every morning As black as his whole world.
And there was only one clear memory of the time he’d been in the South shining through that darkness. The memory of a woman who had wanted him to kiss her.
With both hands, palms flattened again, Nick Deandro swept the pieces of the puzzle he had worked on for two months off the desk. He heard the soft impacts as they struck the windows and the walls. He didn’t stop until he was certain that there was nothing left on the surface of the desk for his groping, destructive hands to find.
Chapter Six
“Everything checks out,” Blanchard assured Abby. He had insisted on being the one to follow the technicians around the grounds and the outside of the house, and after a couple of fruitless protests, Abby had given in and let him.
Again she reminded herself that her job was to protect Nick. The sheriff was perfectly capable of overseeing the search for an apparently nonexistent glitch in the system. Finally, when the repair crew had completed the job and he had escorted them off the property, Blanchard had come into the house to report that all was well. He was standing again in the kitchen doorway.
Abby nodded in response to his report, knowing that she should be relieved, but also knowing that what the technicians had failed to find put the blame for what happened last night squarely back on her shoulders.
“You never did see our intruder, did you?” the sheriff asked, hitching the leather gun belt up a little to a more comfortable position on his narrow hips.
“Neither hide nor hair,” Abby acknowledged. “And I was in here most of the rest of last night.”
“We probably scared whatever it was off when we arrived. It must have gotten out the same way it got in You leave a window open last night, Maggie?” Blanchard asked suddenly. The blue eyes had left their contemplation of Abby to focus on the caretaker, who was in the process of peeling potatoes for supper.
“No, sir,” Maggie said without turning around. “I don’t leave no windows open around here Me, I know better than that.”
The sheriff nodded, but his mouth pursed and his eyes followed the movements of her thin hands as they chopped up the firm white flesh of the potato she had just peeled. The snick of her knife against the wood of the chopping board was the only sound in the room for a few seconds.
“I hope so,” the sheriff said finally “I hope you know how important security is around here.”
His questioning made Abby uneasy. Whatever had happened last night hadn’t been Maggie’s fault It also seemed to her that in emphasizing the seriousness of a breach in security the sheriff might be giving too much away.
Rob had said that they were only tenants to Maggie. But given Blanchard’s comments and the invasion of the technicians, it must surely be obvious that they were something more.
“I know,” Maggie said. She didn’t look up from her work. The same response she always had to Blanchard’s presence.
“This wasn’t Maggie’s fault,” she said
Maggie surely didn’t need her defense. The caretaker hadn’t struck Abby as someone who was reticent about speaking her mind. But she had to admit there was something peculiar about Maggie’s reactions to the sheriff. Almost out of character.
“If anyone was careless about security,” Abby added, “I suppose it must have been me Considering the fact that they found nothing wrong with the system.”
“Well,” the sheriff said, drawling out the syllable as his sympathetic gaze came back to her. “Don’t beat yourself up too much about it, Abby. We all make mistakes. I expect you’ve got other things on your mind these days.”
His eyes dropped to her thickened waistline and stayed there
a moment before they came back up to smile into hers. “When’s the happy event?” he asked This was the first time he’d openly referred to her pregnancy, although his eyes had made this same examination the first day he’d shown up out here.
“The end of December,” Abby said. This wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. Not here. Not now.
“I’m surprised your husband was willing to let you come way out here by yourself.” There was a question implicit in the comment, and his eyes found her left hand, the one that was wrapped around a glass of iced tea, the empty ring finger in plain sight.
His gaze, lifting quickly to hers, openly questioned that. He had probably noticed it before, Abby figured. She didn’t think much of what happened in his parish escaped Lannie Blanchard’s notice. That was only an impression, of course, but a pretty strong one
“I’m not married,” Abby acknowledged. “But despite the preconceptions, pregnancy really isn’t an illness, you know. Or a disability. It doesn’t prevent me from doing my job. I don’t know what happened to the alarm last night, but whatever it was had nothing to do with the fact that I’m pregnant,” she declared. “I can assure you of that.”
He smiled, amused, it seemed, by her quiet passion. “I’m sure it didn’t,” he said, a little condescendingly Abby felt her temper rise. “Sorry I can’t stay and eat, Maggie”
His gaze had shifted again to the caretaker, who still did not look up from her preparations, not even to remind the sheriff that he hadn’t been invited for supper tonight. Seemingly unperturbed by Maggie’s lack of response, Blanchard went on.
“Whatever you’re fixing smells mighty good. However, duty calls. I’m sure y’all understand.” His blue eyes had come back to Abby’s with the last comment. He nodded to her and then stepped back into the hall that led to the front door.
Which she would need to close and lock after him, Abby realized. She’d be damned if she’d give anyone further grounds to doubt her ability to do her job. She put the glass of tea down on the kitchen counter and followed the sheriff. He had stopped at the foot of the stairs and was looking up them.
“I think I’ve seen him before,” he said, softly enough that there was no danger of his voice reaching the upper level of the old house. “Can’t remember where that was, though.”
He turned to her as if he expected Abby to supply the information. She said nothing, leaving the expectation lying unacknowledged between them. His lips lifted in amusement, his smile again creasing the lean, tanned cheeks
“And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where it might have been,” he said.
“I don’t suppose I am,” she agreed.
She walked over to the door, opening it to the twilight. There was a breeze blowing across the marsh, and it was filled with the scent of backwater and the soft noises of the night creatures who had already started their serenade of welcome to the falling darkness.
He obligingly stepped through it, out onto the veranda. Once there, he carefully set his hat on his head, adjusting it to the perfect angle to flatter his lean features. It shaded his eyes, but she could still read the intensity in them when he turned back to face her.
“You may not have a husband, Abby. But that baby you’re carrying’s got itself a daddy. That’s a conclusion it doesn’t take a law degree to come to. I don’t understand what any man’s doing letting you come out here on this kind of assignment”
“This kind of assignment?” she repeated, a hint of challenge in the question. She found that she was really interested in exactly what Blanchard thought they were doing out here.
“Don’t you make the mistake the rest of the country makes about us,” he warned softly. “Don’t you believe just because we talk slow that it means we aren’t too smart. Brains have got nothing to do with living in the sticks. You should know that as well as I do.”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything. Neither denial nor affirmation, although she was as Southern as he, both by birth and experience.
“That man upstairs is somebody,” he said finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence he’d created. “Somebody real important. Somebody NOPD needs to keep safe. And if you’ve read the New Orleans papers lately, it doesn’t take much of a brain to figure out why. Just like it doesn’t take much of one to figure out who would be most interested in finding out where he is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheriff Blanchard,” Abby said calmly. “I’m not sure you do either.”
He smiled at her again, but the smile didn’t quite light the shadowed blue eyes as it had the first day he’d come out here.
“That’s okay. I don’t expect you to tell me anything else. But you be careful, Abby You hear me? Don’t you take any chances. And you call me if you hear anything. Anything. I’d rather come out here to find another raccoon m that kitchen than to find the two of you…”
He bit off the rest. He didn’t need to say it. She knew what he meant. And what he was warning her about. And he was right, of course The people who were after Nick Deandro weren’t the kind who played games. Or the kind who cared about babies or pregnant women.
Protecting the women and children. It was Blanchard who had said that to her. Something about getting into law enforcement to protect the women and children. Maybe that’s all he was trying to do now. At least he seemed to be taking the situation out here more seriously than anyone else had been. He nodded, touching the brim of his hat in a silent, old-fashioned gesture of farewell.
“I’ll call,” she promised, grateful for his concern. As Maggie’s had been, it was welcome, if unexpected. She waited until he had crossed the veranda before she decided to tell him that.
“Lannie,” she said. He turned in response, blue eyes questioning. “Thank you,” Abby said. “Thank you for being concerned. Thanks for everything.”
He smiled at her, and then he turned and stepped off the porch, moving quickly down the broad steps, the tap of his boots against the wood brisk and confident, and then onto the path. She watched in the gathering dusk until the taillights of the patrol car had disappeared into the darkness at the end of the tree-shadowed drive. Then she closed and locked the front door against the approaching night, double-checking the lock before she went back to the kitchen.
And the whole time, she was remembering his warning. If you read the papers it doesn’t take much to figure out why. Just like it doesn’t take much to figure out who would be most interested in finding out where he is.
It was a little ironic that Blanchard thought Nick was their Mafia informant. He had put the right two and two together, but he had come up with five. Still, the fact that the sheriff had connected Nick in anyway with what the D.A. was doing in New Orleans was troubling. Because he was right, of course, about Nick’s importance to that investigation. And apparently it hadn’t taken much at all for him to have figured that out.
“I GOT TO GO,” Maggie said earnestly. “You got to understand that. I don’t have no choice ‘cause this here is my baby we’re talking about.”
This on top of everything else, Abby thought. And it had come totally out of the blue. “He called you?” Abby probed.
She supposed that was possible. She had been out of the house a few minutes with the technicians, before Sheriff Blanchard arrived to take charge. It was possible someone had called Maggie in that short window of opportunity, but it also seemed pretty unlikely.
“Called today,” Maggie said, nodding vigorously. “I hate to leave you in the lurch out here, shug, but I got to go.”
Abby took a breath, trying to think. She’d have to call Rob. He would have to get someone else out here. She could handle the cooking for a few days, although she was no great shakes at that. There wasn’t much else that Maggie did around the house that was vital.
But Abby couldn’t leave to do the shopping And besides, there was the much larger issue of security. Maggie Thibodeaux knew a lot about them, and she might have figured out even more, after the sher
iff’s pointed questions tonight. She knew all about the alarm setup. Way too much, as far as Abby was concerned, despite the fact that she didn’t really distrust the caretaker.
“I’ll have to make some arrangements,” Abby said. “About supplies and things. Get someone in to clean Can you give me a few days, Maggie?”
“I wish I could I wish I could, for true But I gotta go. You know how it is when your baby needs you.”
Not exactly, Abby thought, but she didn’t see how she could refuse. She didn’t have any control over Maggie. That had been part of this flawed setup to begin with. She had thought that from the first. Now it was coming back to haunt them. But at least it was Rob’s problem and not her own Except immediately.
“Until tomorrow?” she said.
“Dawlin’, I swear I can’t I would if I could, but I can’t. They coming for me. Be here in ‘bout half an hour. They gonna blow, and you need to turn off them sensors till we get gone.”
Abby didn’t like this at all. She didn’t like that Maggie had planned it without telling her. Had given someone—her son, she supposed—information about how security worked around here.
“But don’t you worry,” Maggie continued reassuringly. “You and that baby be all right out here You got the alarms. Y’all be all right tonight, and then tomorrow you can do something else. Go somewhere else.”
Abby nodded. She supposed she didn’t really have a choice. Maggie Thibodeaux was not a prisoner. She was not even an employee of the NOPD. And Maggie had waited until the supper dishes had been washed and the kitchen made spotless before she had dropped her bombshell Too late, Abby supposed, for her to do anything about it tonight. Other than to inform Rob. She’d have to call him at home, but that was all right. This was his headache One of the perks of being the man in charge.
“I’m sure sorry,” Maggie said softly, probably reading Abby’s face. “But it’s for the best. You’ll see.”
Whose best? Abby wondered, but given what had happened with Nick upstairs this morning, maybe Maggie was right. Maybe moving somewhere else would be for the best. It might give her an opportunity to evaluate her feelings about Nick, and to do it in a situation that wasn’t rife, as this one now was, with far too many emotions. And far too many memories.