White Hot

by Carla Neggers

  But of course it hadn’t been love. It had been infatuation, obsession, hormones, a dip into the kind of life she didn’t live. And chose not to live. She didn’t do torrid affairs. She wasn’t even much of a party girl, not at twenty, not at thirty. She worked hard, but she didn’t play hard. Her appearance at the Greenaway last night had been for the music and her work, her need to establish a presence and a reputation in the area-the fun of it was just a pleasant by-product.

  It was Jeremiah’s work, too, that had led him to the Greenaway. He had staked out last night’s party in case the jewel thief showed up. Which he had, the police apparently arriving not long after Mollie had headed home.

  She gasped, choking on a mouthful of pool water as she shot to the surface.

  Of course.

  She leaped out of the pool, wrapped up in her towel, slipped on her flip-flops and stalked upstairs. Before she could think, analyze, or calm down, she’d pulled out the phone book and dialed the Miami Tribune’s number. The switchboard put her through to Jeremiah, and finally he answered. “Tabak.”

  “I don’t know anything about your jewel thief,” Mollie said, breathless from her swim, her mad dash upstairs, her indignation. “I didn’t see anything last night, I didn’t do anything last night, and I don’t know one damned thing. I don’t have access to him, I don’t have any information about him, I didn’t even know he was on the loose until twenty minutes ago.”

  “You doing anything for dinner?”

  “What?”

  “I’m in Palm Beach. The call got put through to my truck phone. The miracles of modern technology, eh? I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  He hung up.

  Mollie stared at her phone. How had that just happened? Given Leonardo’s state-of-the-art security, she didn’t have to let him in. But she didn’t think she could explain two altercations in her driveway with a man in a beat-up brown truck to her neighbors. That left her less than two minutes to get into dry clothes before he arrived on her doorstep.

  She raced down the hall, pushing back images of Jeremiah peeling off her wet bathing suit and making love to her at the same time.

  “This is not good,” she muttered. “Not good at all.”

  But like ten years ago, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  4

  Mollie personally ushered Jeremiah through the gates and almost made him park in Leonardo’s garage. She wasn’t up to explaining him to any friends and neighbors who happened by, but decided sticking him in the garage would only encourage him to stay longer.

  “Hop in,” he said through his open window. “We’ll walk on the beach and talk.”

  “You mean you’ll talk. I have nothing to say.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Fine.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. Something had changed. The earlier cockiness and game-playing had disappeared. She wouldn’t say he looked guilty, but something was different.

  “Mollie,” he said, “get in. I’d like to say what I have to say on neutral ground.”

  “You want witnesses?”

  He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, and his eyes sparkled, sending a tremor of awareness through her. “Witnesses would be nice.”

  Neutral ground just might be to her advantage, too, she decided, and went around and climbed up into the passenger seat without a word. He had his phone, steno pads, maps, phone books, pencil stubs, and an array of newspapers and magazines tucked on seat and floor. A Post-it note with “lizard food” scrawled across it was stuck to the glove compartment. Jeremiah saw her staring at it and said, “It’s a reminder. There’s no lizard food inside.”

  “I see.”

  “You spoiled by Pascarelli’s Jaguar?”

  She attempted a smile, too uptight still to relax. “Not yet. I admit I’m enjoying it.”

  “Well, this old heap suits me. It doesn’t stick out in the neighborhoods where I usually hang out, and I won’t lose any sleep if it gets stripped.” He backed out into the street, and Mollie pulled on her seatbelt, trying not to dwell on the play of the muscles in his arms, the shape of his hands on the gearshift. “What about the gates?”

  “I’ll leave them unlocked. I’m sure we won’t be long.”

  He didn’t argue, just shifted into first and rolled down the smooth, sunlit road. Mollie sat with her hands fisted on her thighs. If only he’d lost his appeal, she told herself, this wouldn’t be so difficult. He wasn’t handsome in any traditional sense. He was possibly more cynical, harder-edged. But he was also every bit as edgy and sexy as he’d been when she’d first realized he would be her first lover, and time hadn’t tempered her reaction to him. If anything, it was more uncontrollable, more dangerous. She’d had the illusion of her safe world in Boston then. Now, no more. Nothing seemed safe or permanent, which only left her feeling more vulnerable.

  “I’m going to have to put your picture back on my dartboard,” she said half under her breath.

  He grinned over at her, a touch of this morning’s irreverence back. “And adjust your aim?”

  She didn’t answer, just felt herself sinking into her seat high above the road. He drove the short distance to the water and pulled into a narrow parking strip. He got out without comment, and Mollie was still fiddling with her door when he came around and opened it for her. “Watch your step,” he said, staying close as she stepped down.

  A stiff wind had kicked up off the water, which lay a good fifty yards down a set of wooden stairs and across the width of sandy beach. The lot was almost full, but she and Jeremiah were the only people around. She took a breath, keeping tension and frustration at bay. “We can talk here.”

  He looked out at the sparkling water, the beach that was only lightly dotted with bright umbrellas, sunbathers, kids running with plastic buckets. “I don’t get up here that often. Let’s go down by the water.”

  “Jeremiah-”

  “I’ve got something I need to say, Mollie. I don’t want to say it in a parking lot.”

  “If it’s about this jewel thief, it can be said right here.”

  “It’s not.”

  He walked out ahead of her, leaving her little choice but to follow. They headed down the sand-covered steps to the beach. The wind must have pushed the crowds off the water, but Jeremiah seemed undaunted as he walked across the sand to the ocean’s edge. The air was cooler, the wind stiffer, penetrating the lightweight khakis and black henley Mollie had pulled on in haste. She wished she’d brought her windbreaker. She reminded herself she was with a man who’d always lived in this ecologically complex maze of water, land, wildlife, and people. She remembered walking on the beach on a late afternoon such as this, with gulls wheeling in a clear sky as he’d told her about growing up in the Everglades, an only child with a widowed father, his soul as tangled up with exotic birds and tall grasses and mysterious waters as hers was with music.

  If he was to be believed. For all she really knew, he’d grown up in Buffalo.

  The tide was going out, wide stretches of sand dampened and packed down from the recent influx of water. That was where they walked, leaving footprints. The wind whipped Mollie’s hair into tangles, but she had to admit it felt cathartic, as if it were trying to whip some of the anger and confusion out of her.

  “Here’s the deal, Mollie.” He walked steadily beside her, his mind clearly made up to say whatever he’d come to say. “I lied to you ten years ago.”

  “Yes. We’ve been over that ground. You wanted your story, and you used me to get it. It happened a long time ago. And I forgave you a long time ago.” She smiled. “Sort of.”

  He didn’t smile back. There was a seriousness about him, a weightiness, that hadn’t been there this morning. In the harsh late afternoon light, she saw lines at the corners of his eyes she hadn’t noticed, either. “I wanted the story,” he said, “but I didn’t lie to you or use you to get it.”

  Mollie kept walking, ignoring the catch in her knees. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I t
hought it would be easier for you if you hated me. So I made up the story about using you.”

  “Whoa, back up. You’re saying you didn’t use me for your drug-dealing story?”

  “Correct.”

  “And you thought painting yourself as a morally corrupt journalist who’d bed a twenty-year-old flute player-i.e., me-to get a front-page story would be easier on me?”

  He nodded, expressionless.

  Mollie sputtered, nearly speechless. “Easier than what?”

  “The truth,” he said.

  “You mean it gets worse?”

  He squinted against the wind and sun, regarding her with infuriating calm. “I guess that depends on your point of view. The truth is I did fall in love with you that week.”

  “Well, hell,” Mollie breathed.

  A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “But I knew it never could have worked, and so I tried to spare you-spare myself is more like it-by making sure you went back to Boston in high dudgeon over having been used by your first-what was it you called me?”

  “A son of a bitch, I believe.”

  “Your first ‘dark and dangerous’ man. That was it.”

  She scowled. “I was young.”

  “So you were.”

  “And you were dumb, Jeremiah. Good God, what were you thinking? Here you were, caught in this inconvenient, impossible relationship with a Boston flute player, trying to end it as gently as possible-and so you make sure I hate your guts. Boy. That makes sense.”

  Now that he’d said what he’d had to say, he seemed more at ease. The wind gusted, kicking up the surf. Down the beach, a middle-aged couple packed it in for the day. Jeremiah just kept walking, the water lapping almost at his toes. “I was trying to be honorable.”

  “The truth, Tabak, is honorable. A lie is a lie.”

  “What can I say? I was twenty-six, I wanted to do the right thing, and now, here we are.”

  “Yes. Well, no wonder you wanted witnesses.”

  He smiled, and she thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes, half-closed as they were.

  “Did you pine for me?” she asked.

  “For weeks.”

  “Good. Would you have lied to me if I hadn’t been a virgin?”

  “Mollie, you weren’t a virgin when I made the decision to lie-”

  “That was at the end of the week. At the beginning of the week, I was a virgin. Did it matter?”

  “Of course it mattered, just not in my decision.”

  “Well,” she said, “I know how you men can get all chivalrous and protective and make perfect asses of yourselves when you’ve realized you’re a woman’s first lover.”

  Jeremiah stopped and stared at her. “Mollie, we men didn’t sleep with you. I did.”

  As if she needed the reminder. But she’d brought up the subject. “All right. So I have to adjust my thinking about your journalistic ethics. I’m just not sure how that plays into your visit this morning. You are on this jewel thief story, aren’t you?”

  “Unofficially. I can’t write it now that your name’s come up.”

  She swallowed hard. “How in hell did my name come up?”

  “It came to my attention that you’ve attended every event that the thief’s hit so far.”

  “I’m sure a lot of people have-”

  “I don’t think so. You’re the only common denominator we have right now.”

  “We?”

  He shrugged, some of his natural cockiness returning. “Consider that an editoral we. In any case, hearing your name, discovering you were in Palm Beach and a publicist, piqued my curiosity.”

  “Jeremiah, the last thing I’d want to do is pique the curiosity of a Miami investigative reporter. That it’s you just makes it worse. How can I un-pique your curiosity?”

  “Tell me what you know,” he said.

  “I don’t know a damned thing. I didn’t even realize a jewel thief was on the loose until a few minutes before I called you.”

  “Oblivious as ever, eh, Mollie?”

  “I just don’t have a suspicious mind. Plus I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she added, “and I’m new in town. I’m not tapped in.”

  “You’re still an outsider.”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “But because of Leonardo and your work, you have an insider’s access. You didn’t see or hear anything-you have no reason to believe your name came up as a common denominator except by coincidence?”

  She shook her head. She was feeling chilled now, the sand shifting around at the bottoms of her shoes, grinding in between her toes. “None. I’m not a witness, and I’m not a credible suspect. If you want to go back right now and search Leonardo’s place from top to bottom for jewels, clues-”

  “Mollie, it’s way too early to consider you a suspect.”

  “It’s more than too early, Jeremiah, it’s nuts.”

  He paused. “You could be right.”

  She tightened her hands into fists. “I am right!”

  “I’m just trying to remain objective.” He turned to her, the wind at his back, his mouth a hard line. “Which isn’t easy.”

  Her breath caught at what she saw in his eyes. “Jeremiah…”

  He took another step closer, and he brought his mouth to hers, said, “In fact, objectivity where you’re concerned is downright impossible,” and kissed her lightly, softly, as if he’d appeared in one of the countless dreams she’d had about him over the past ten years, elusive, there but not there. He straightened, becoming real, yet somehow also more distant. “We should go.”

  “I should…” She cleared her throat, her insides quivering, burning. “I should take some time to digest what you’ve told me. I can walk back to Leonardo’s.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  He fished a dog-eared card out of a pocket. “Here’s my number at work and at home. If you want to call for any reason, don’t hesitate.”

  She took the card and tucked it into a pocket without looking at it, and he headed off across the sand. She continued along the beach, watching seagulls and children and waves, hearing laughter carried on the wind, and remembering herself at twenty, in love with a man she wanted to believe she knew.

  Two hours of four constant, humming lanes of traffic had a strangely calming effect on Jeremiah, and he felt pretty good when he took the causeway to South Beach, a barrier island of eighty blocks, with much more than just the expensive, trendy stretch of renovated Art Deco buildings along the water. His street was a few blocks inland, untouched by celebrities, speculators, and tourists. He found a space in front of his building, which did not have security gates, fancy landscaping, or a pool, and said hello to the handful of bony old retirees sitting out front on lounge chairs, enjoying the warm evening.

  He turned down their offers of beer and a whittling knife and took the stairs up to his fourth-floor apartment. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, an eat-in kitchen. No maid, no gardener, no high-tech security. The upkeep was minimal, his neighbors were all so deaf they didn’t object to his state-of-the-art sound system, and his landlord didn’t come by often enough to know about his snake, turtle, and lizard, castoffs from a friend’s pet shop. He kept their cages on his kitchen table. He’d found that lizards in the bedroom were a deterrent to romance. He didn’t eat in much himself, and only his snake ate the occasional live animal, so it wasn’t as if his critters were disgusting on a regular basis. Nevertheless, when he had company, he removed their cages from the table.

  It was not the sort of lifestyle he expected the goddaughter of Leonardo Pascarelli to appreciate. Then again, her parents were flakes. Who knew? Maybe all Mollie needed was a place to hang her dartboard.

  He checked his voice mail, his eyes glazing over at the polite requests for his presence and expertise at three different functions. Maybe four. He wasn’t paying close attention. His had been an unintentional leap to celebrity status, not a calculated one. He’d erase th
ese messages without answering them. He knew it was rude. But rude didn’t worry him.

  The last message was from Croc. “Tabak? You there or did your lizard eat you for an afternoon snack? I’ll call back at eight.”

  It was quarter of now. Jeremiah got a beer and some spinach from the refrigerator and waited for Croc to call. He sipped the beer, fed his turtle the spinach, and thought about Mollie walking on the beach with the wind in her hair and the sand in her shoes. She hadn’t gone to pieces. She hadn’t tried to drown him. And when he’d kissed her, she hadn’t smacked him one. All in all, things could have gone worse.

  He just wished he knew how she’d come to Croc’s attention.

  When the phone rang, he picked it up on the first ring. “Croc?”

  “None other,” he said.

  “I need a way to reach you.” Jeremiah suddenly felt grouchy. “I can’t just sit around waiting for you to call. You have a phone number, an address?”

  “I’m calling from a pay phone up in Broward. It’s costing me. You got anything?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. I know this Mollie Lavender’s hooked into this thing somehow.”

  “Why her, Croc? Tell me the rest. You’ve got more, and I know it. Is it something to do with Leonardo Pascarelli, a client, the gardener, someone she pals around with? I’m not playing games with you. I need everything you’ve got.”

  “I gave you my best lead.”

  Best didn’t mean only. Jeremiah gripped the phone. “Croc, you’d better not be this damned thief yourself. If you are, I swear to you I’ll find out and I’ll nail your hide to the wall one inch at a time.”

  Croc took no offense. “What, you think I wouldn’t stick out in Palm Beach? I’m insulted. Keep digging, Tabak. I’ll dig on my end. Anything comes up, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m hearing stirrings. I don’t like it.”