White Hot

by Carla Neggers

  Now here she was, ready to make the same mistake all over again. Wanting a man she was crazy to want. Desperate to trust him, even when he suspected her of knowing something about a jewel thief, even when he promised if the truth led him where she didn’t want him to go, so be it.

  She reminded herself that love and romance and physical attraction didn’t necessarily respond to logic and will. If she’d once loved Jeremiah, if a part of her loved him still, there was nothing to be done about it beyond accepting it and moving on.

  And not giving in, she thought.

  Never giving in. She was thirty, and she liked her life, and she wasn’t in the mood to let falling for the wrong man turn it upside down all over again.

  8

  The telephone didn’t stop ringing in Mollie’s living room office all Monday morning, but most of the calls were about business, none were about Jeremiah, only two were from friends about her Friday-night attack-and Deegan was there to answer them all.

  “You are a godsend,” Mollie told him as he left with a stack of stuff for the printer.

  He laughed. “Nice to be appreciated. You’ll manage without me the rest of the day? I don’t mind coming back this afternoon.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll manage. I’ve got to write those press releases for the Renaissance Music Society. I’ll probably just hang in here the rest of the afternoon. I’ve got a dinner tonight.”

  “Not another one-”

  “It’s not business. Some friends of Leonardo’s invited me over. Anyway, if the phone doesn’t let up, I’ll just let voice mail handle it.” She smiled. “And if you see your grandmother before I do, please thank her for the flowers.”

  A big bouquet had arrived first thing that morning, with a charming card from Diantha Atwood, wishing Mollie a speedy return to normal. Her thank you card was already in the mail. Deegan said, “I’ll do that,” and headed out, leaving Mollie to the phone, a stack of mail, and tons of work.

  Her own parents had called last night after Leonardo, as promised, had ratted her out. They’d listened carefully to the details of the attack and offered to fly down at once-and said if she wanted to return to Boston, they’d clear out her old room, which they’d converted into a music library, and she could stay there until she got settled. Mollie had to fight back tears at their unconditional support. Unanchored in the real world as she knew them to be, she never doubted their love and affection for her, nor their total, if sometimes irrational, belief in her. But she’d assured them that the worst was over-and for a moment, she almost believed it herself-and when she’d hung up, she had to admit she felt better.

  After Deegan left, she sat at the computer. The weather was as unsettled as she felt, with dark clouds, intermittent showers, and a breeze that was downright chilly. At least she wasn’t tempted to go sit out by the pool. She could just stay in and work.

  The phone rang, and she briefly considered leaving it to her voice mail, but picked up. “Mollie Lavender.”

  “I know.”

  She sat up straight at the tinny, obviously altered voice on the other end. “Who is this?”

  “Miami’s a dangerous place, Miss Lavender. Perhaps you should consider going back to Boston.”

  A click, and then silence. Her hand shaking, Mollie quickly got a dial tone and hit the code for a playback of the most recent number called. But the disembodied voice said that the number wasn’t available.

  She laid the portable phone on her computer desk.

  “Oh my God.”

  Her voice was a panicked mumble, and she thought she would throw up. Holding her stomach, she jumped to her feet and raced into the kitchen, not thinking, just reacting to the urge to get out, away from her office, her phone, her life. She grabbed keys and handbag and tore outside, not knowing where she was going, only that she had to get out of there.

  “Shoes,” she said, stopping midway down the steps.

  She ran back inside, still shaking, still nauseous, and pulled on a pair of old sandals she kept by the door.

  Two minutes later, she was in Leonardo’s Jaguar, chewing on a knuckle as she beat back panic, not thinking, not planning, just driving. She hit winding A1A and cursed the tourists going too slow, gawking at the beautiful houses, the beautiful beaches. She spun off onto a street that connected with 95. She took the south on-ramp. A truck honked furiously when she wove into the middle lane too close in front of him.

  She gripped the wheel with both hands and tried to calm herself. Concentrate on the present, she told herself, the moment. Early Monday afternoon, I-95 South, drizzle. She flicked on her wipers. She lifted her foot off the gas. She breathed.

  There, she thought.

  The call didn’t have to be from the man who’d attacked her on Friday night. Perhaps she’d made a business enemy who was capitalizing on her experience, which was no secret, and trying to tip the scales into having her leave town. Go home to her family and friends and old life in Boston. That scenario was bad enough, but not as bad as having whoever had attacked her in the Palm Beach Sands Hotel take another crack at her.

  But she couldn’t imagine how she, with her short list of fun but not exactly wealthy clients, could be a business threat to anyone.

  The rain picked up as she headed south, became briefly torrential, a perfect distraction. She turned her wipers on high and had to concentrate to negotiate the slowing, half-blinded traffic. Then the shower was over, and the sun was shining, and traffic speeded up-and her mind again raced, replaying the call, running down all the possibilities.

  She spotted the Miami Tribune building up ahead, just off 95. She took the exit and found her way to the visitors’ section in the parking garage. She still wasn’t thinking, just acting on instinct. She locked up and headed for the elevator before rational thought could assert itself.

  Jeremiah, she told herself, had just the kind of bulldog tenacity-the arrogance, the skill, the connections-to help her find out who was responsible for Friday’s attack and this afternoon’s call. Whether two different people or one, he could help her get to the truth. Unwittingly, against her will, she was involved, if not in the thick of things, as his source apparently believed, at least on the periphery. And she didn’t like it.

  And if she didn’t get Jeremiah’s help, she at least wanted everything he had, and she wanted it now.

  Which sounded pretty much like a plan to her.

  She signed in with a security guard in the lobby and provided the name of a contact in arts and entertainment. Best to give herself an out in case she got cold feet before she reached Jeremiah’s desk. Since the guard didn’t give her a second glance, she assumed she didn’t look any more frazzled than the average Trib reporter. She’d worn a white linen shirt with a collar to hide her bruised neck.

  She found her way to the newsroom and stood at the entrance, surveying the rows of desks, the flickering computers, the humming fax machines, the ringing telephones. A trio of men were arguing in front of a glassed-in corner office. No one seemed to be paying attention to them. Reporters went about their business, displaying an enviable ability to concentrate amidst the noise and general chaos.

  “Looking for someone?” a young woman with a mug of coffee asked mid-stride.

  Mollie took a breath. “Jeremiah Tabak.”

  “His desk’s over on the wall.” She motioned with her cup, carefully matter-of-fact. “Doesn’t look like he’s in. Lucky for you. He’s in a bitch of a mood.”

  She went on her way, and Mollie, sucking in a breath, plunged on across the room to a cubicle on the far wall. She was aware of eyes on her. Strangers in a newsroom wouldn’t go unnoticed. Someone looking for Jeremiah Tabak definitely wouldn’t go unnoticed. If she left now, she had no doubt his colleagues would be able to provide him with a detailed description of her. Blonde hair. White shirt, little tan skirt. Shaking like hell.

  He wasn’t at his desk. His monitor was stuck with Post-it notes and clippings of cartoons, its screensaver of fish swimming across t
he screen on. The keyboard needed cleaning. His desk was cluttered with magazines, newspapers, notebooks, letters, scraps of paper, cheap pens, Star Wars pencils that might have belonged to a ten-year-old. An alligator paperweight held down one eight-inch stack of letters, many still in unopened envelopes. His ancient swivel chair looked as if he’d banged it against the wall a few too many times.

  This wasn’t where Jeremiah lived, Mollie thought. The man was no more interested in his surroundings than her parents and sister were in theirs. They lived in their music. He lived in whatever story gripped him.

  Her pulse drummed in her ear as she debated taking a quick cruise through his desk for anything related to a certain jewel thief plaguing the Florida Gold Coast.

  “You looking for Tabak?”

  Mollie jumped, startled. A small, handsome older woman approached Jeremiah’s desk, an unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers. Mollie reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong, just had considered it. “Yes. Is he in?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. He took off upstairs for coffee. I tried to follow, but he growled at me. Figure I’ll catch him when he’s caffeined up. Me,” she said, waving her cigarette, “I just smoke. I’d light up now but the freaking Nazis around here would have me shot. What we’re getting in for reporters today, you just wouldn’t believe.” She paused, scrutinizing Mollie with a clarity that reminded her of Jeremiah. “You’re Mollie Lavender, aren’t you?”

  “I am, but how…who…”

  She grinned, pleased with herself. “I’m Helen Samuel, dear. I’m paid to know these things. Leonardo Pascarelli’s goddaughter, attacked coming out of the ladies’ room at Diantha Atwood’s party Friday night. That must have been terrible. Are you all right now?” Mollie must have looked suspicious, because Helen Samuel, the legendary gossip columnist, grinned at her. “Relax, we’re off the record.”

  “I’m fine,” Mollie said. “I just had business in the building and thought I’d stop and thank Jeremiah for his help.”

  The old reporter’s dark eyes registered interest and a level of suspicion that, Mollie decided, was probably natural to her. Finally, she pointed her cigarette across the open newsroom. “Check the cafeteria. One floor up.” Then came a quick, compassionate smile that caught Mollie totally off guard. “I won’t tell him you were snooping.”

  “I wasn’t-”

  “Dear, what do you think I’m doing here?”

  Mollie couldn’t resist a smile at the woman’s cheekiness. “You’re going to snoop in Tabak’s desk? What if he catches you?”

  “He’ll be pissed as hell. What do I care? It’s not as if he’ll have left out a damned thing of use to me. If Tabak knows anything, he keeps it to himself. And believe me,” she added with a wink, “he doesn’t trust any of the rest of us.”

  With good reason, apparently.

  Before she could change her mind, Mollie found her way up to the cafeteria, a large, almost empty room that smelled of stale coffee. Jeremiah was at a table in a corner of windows, staring out on the interstate and the now glorious Miami afternoon, a mug of coffee in front of him.

  If she had made her peace with the Jeremiah of the past, Mollie thought, she’d done nothing of the kind with the Jeremiah of the present. He attracted her, unnerved her, and preoccupied her in ways she never could have anticipated. It wasn’t just the jewel thief, his stubborn refusal to eliminate her as a suspect. It was his physical presence, his alertness to every nuance of his surroundings, to every nuance of her. He had an ability to make her rethink everything-her priorities, her life, herself. It was unsettling, but also irresistible.

  She slid onto the chair opposite him and tried to look calm, in control, not as if she’d raced down here on impulse after receiving a nasty phone call-just in case she decided not to tell him about it. Because if he sensed she was holding back, he’d pounce. She smiled. “You look as if you’re waiting for your coffee to say something profound.”

  He glanced up, squinted at her as if he had been so lost in thought he’d forgotten where he was. But the remoteness quickly vanished, and he grinned. “Nah. There’s no hope for a higher life form in there. I don’t know, either this stuff is getting worse or my tastebuds are finally improving.”

  He paused, and his eyes, with all their golds and greens and grays, took her in, seemed to drink in her very soul. Mollie forced herself not to look away. No wonder he was so good at what he did. Nothing escaped him. Nothing was beneath his probing interest. Yet, she thought, it couldn’t be an easy way to live. Sometimes he had to wish he could just climb out of his own skin for a while and be as oblivious as most of the rest of the world.

  “Helen send you up here?” he asked.

  Mollie nodded. “She said you were in a bad mood.”

  “I am. She was angling to get me away from my desk so she could rummage through it. Drives her crazy thinking I know something she doesn’t.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yep.”

  “She won’t actually go through your desk, will she?”

  “Probably not. But she had to play it out. I can just see her standing there, itching to see what I’ve got, then congratulating herself when she doesn’t go through with it.”

  “She knows you wouldn’t leave anything out in the open.”

  “Even if I did, she’d stop herself. I’ve known Helen since I landed at the Trib as a know-it-all eighteen-year-old. She knows what lines she can cross and what lines she can’t, not just with me. Part of the reason she’s lasted as long as she has is she knows the First Amendment protects what we say, not what we do.”

  “Such as fraud, breaking and entering, harassment, trespassing.”

  He shrugged. “Such as.” He eyed his coffee. “I used to pride myself on drinking swill. Times change. So, Miss Mollie,” he said, shifting his gaze to her, “what brings you to Miami looking as if you’ve had another good scare?”

  “I have.” She sat on a chair at the end of the table, feeling formal, even awkward. “Had another good scare, that is.”

  His eyes bored into her, darkening. “Tell me.”

  “A phone call. It came on my business line, about ninety minutes ago. The voice was obviously altered, like those unnamed whistle-blowers on 60 Minutes. It suggested I go back to Boston because Miami’s dangerous.”

  “Did you report it to the police?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s only my word that the call happened or that the caller said what he said. I don’t want the police getting the wrong idea about me.”

  “You don’t want to become a suspect.”

  “Or the crazy woman looking for attention.”

  Jeremiah pushed back his chair. “But the call happened.”

  She nodded.

  He rose, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ve got a friend on the Palm Beach police you can talk to. It’ll only take a minute. You can call from my desk.” He grinned at her, an obvious attempt at levity. “Helen’s had long enough to pull herself back from the precipice, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Jeremiah-”

  “It’ll take two minutes tops. You’ll see.”

  They took the stairs back down to the newsroom, no sign of Helen Samuel at his desk. Jeremiah pulled out his chair and made Mollie sit. Then he flipped through a dog-eared Rolodex, dialed a number, got through to some guy named Frank, and handed the phone to her. She told him what had happened, the time, the altered voice, its exact words. Jeremiah made no pretense of not listening in. He sat on the corner of his desk, taking in every word. “I don’t know that this is connected to the robbery on Friday,” she said. “It could just be a nut who saw my name in the paper.”

  “Could be,” Frank said. “I’ll write this up. Give me your number in case I have any questions.”

  Mollie gave it to him. As she reached over to hang up the phone, her shoulder brushed Jeremiah’s arm, immediately sending warm shivers
through her. To be this close to him when she was this vulnerable wasn’t too smart.

  “There,” he said. “Duty done. Feel better?”

  “Marginally.”

  He slid off the desk. “It’s a start.”

  She remained seated, blood rushing to her head as another impulsive plan took vague shape. “I have a dinner tonight in Boca Raton. Friends of Leonardo’s invited me. It’s at a private home on the water, probably about thirty guests.”

  “Our thief hasn’t hit anything that small. Smallest was seventy-five.”

  “I know, but if I’m…” She inhaled, hating the word. “If I’m involved in any way, perhaps we should look at my pattern of activity, too, and not just the thief’s.”

  Jeremiah went still. “We?”

  She got to her feet, took a breath, and felt more certain about her still-in-progress plan. “I leave Leonardo’s at six-thirty. I intend to keep my eyes open. If anything strikes me as suspicious, I will do what I have to do.”

  “Nancy Drew strikes.” But there was no humor in his voice.

  “Don’t patronize me, Jeremiah. I’m your ‘common denominator.’ I was attacked. I received that nasty phone call.”

  “Precisely why you should skip the dinner tonight and stay home and watch TV. Throw darts. Drag out your flute and play some tunes.”

  She raised her chin to him, aware of his penetrating gaze, unintimidated by his relentless intensity-or the sense he was making. “That would be giving in.”

  “That would be making an intelligent decision.”

  “Maybe, but you do what you have to do, and I’ll do the same. Thank you for your time,” she said, and started briskly across the newsroom.

  “When you said we,” he called quietly to her, “did that mean I’m invited tonight?”

  She ignored him and kept on marching, and if he was frustrated and even a little irritated with her, so be it. She had come to him in the misguided hope he could be a friend, and he’d gone dictatorial and protective on her. Call the police. Stay home and throw darts.