The tablecloth slid beneath her, and with each entry, he pushed her farther along the tabletop. The linen fabric burned her behind and her shoulders but she didn’t care.
Joe’s sob turned to a keening sound. He turned his face up and pounded into her harder and faster, all the while matching the speed with the touch of his hands.
A pain, an ache, an electrical current shot from beneath his thumbs, but a second jolt burst inside her and at that moment Joe cried out. He panted, fastened his mouth on a nipple and kept pumping. Heat and wetness filled her.
The inner burst faded. His thumbs were on her again and another wonderful and devastating response rippled through her. Joe broke into a rush of hard lunges, the dam of his fluids broke again, and in only seconds he reached for the far end of the table, behind her head, and hauled himself over her, slid her all the way onto the top of the table.
In the warm, clinging quiet that followed, their lives moved as one. He gathered her into his arms, one of his thighs raised over her belly, and kissed her ear gently, repeatedly. “That’s it,” he whispered.
She opened her eyes. “What’s what?”
“You’re mine. You will never look at me without seeing us making love on your dining table. And I will never look at you without wanting to do it again. You’re stuck with me.”
24
Through a warm, satisfied haze Ellie heard the phone. It didn’t just ring, it roared.
Joe came to at once. His reaction was to hold Ellie tighter in her bed, where they’d staggered to fall among the sheets, who knew how long ago.
“Mmm. Go away,” he muttered. “Let’s make love.”
The phone rattled and jangled again.
“Go away,” Joe said. He used a palm to make circles over her nipples. “This time I’m completely in charge and you will never be the same.”
“I’ll never be the same, anyway. Joe, the phone. It could be something important.” She sat up abruptly. “It has to be something important.”
She leaned over him to reach the receiver and Joe took advantage of the opportunity to use his mouth on whatever took his fancy. Ellie tickled him but he didn’t stop.
The bedside clock read 2:00 a.m. Seemed much later. “Hello.” It could be a creep. She’d had more than her share of those.
“Ellie, you’re there.”
There could be no mistaking Spike’s voice. “Yes.” Where did he think she would be?
“Look, I know how late it is, but could we come over? This is really important.”
“Spike?” she repeated. “You want to come over?”
Joe reached to take the phone from her but Ellie whipped out of his range and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Can’t it wait till the morning?”
Joe already had one of his iron arms around her middle and started dragging her toward him. He reached up to whisper in her free ear. “No. No, no, no. Not tonight.”
“What’s that?” Spike asked.
“What?” she said, planning some evil punishment for Joe when she got off the phone.
“Never mind. You sound out of it.”
“I am. Every day is so long.”
Again Joe made a grab for the phone. Ellie covered the receiver and said, “Pull yourself together, Joe Gable. You’re on the couch, remember. This is Spike.”
He threw himself, facedown, on the bed and made fake sobbing sounds.
Ellie couldn’t help grinning as she walked to the farthest corner of the room. “Okay,” she said. “I’m finally coming to. Can’t you just say whatever it is on the phone?”
“No. Be there in ten minutes.” He hung up.
She switched on a lamp.
“Turn it off,” Joe wailed.
“Spike will be here in ten minutes.”
“We won’t let him in. Come back to bed.”
“Joe, will you wake up and put something on. Go lie on the couch if you like, but please be reasonable.”
“Be reasonable?” He sat up, a big tousled, handsome man who didn’t deserve to be turned out of her bed.
“Joe, dear, dear Joe, would you do it for me?” Now she sounded like his mother. “Do it for us, please.”
Again the phone rang and she picked up once more. Cyrus said, “Spike said you and Joe are expecting him. Is it okay if I come, too? Vivian called and said she thinks I should.”
“Cyrus, you should be in bed.”
“I was.”
Stark naked, Joe threw himself sideways across the bed and let his legs and arms hang over. Ellie flushed. Little wonder he wanted her back in bed with him.
“Of course I won’t disturb you if it’s too much,” Cyrus said. “We can talk tomorrow if you want to.”
“No such thing,” Ellie said. “Please come. If Vivian thinks I need you then I do. I’ll get Joe up and put some coffee on.”
Once more she hung up.
“Spike and Cyrus are coming for coffee,” Joe said, and crawled from the bed. “Later, cher, I shall show you how a man can be emotionally mangled by interruptions at times like this.” He looked down at himself and shook his head. Then he moved fast and left the room.
Spike didn’t arrive alone. Guy came with him and added to Ellie’s discomfort at the general disarray in her flat. Joe’s sheets trailed from the couch. She looked at the table and wished she could disappear. The bottle of lotion stood on the ruckled tablecloth and she could see oily marks from across the room.
“You aren’t going to be ready for this,” Spike said.
Joe, dressed only in jeans, shrugged and said, “We’re ready for anything at almost any time, aren’t we, Ellie?”
“I think we’ve learned to be,” she said, chalking up another point to settle.
Ellie also wore jeans, and a yellow shirt. Fortunately her hair didn’t take much to look normal—which was more than she could say for Joe, who hadn’t attempted to use a comb.
“Cyrus is coming,” Joe said, and reclined on the couch. “I wonder who he’s bringing.”
Ellie glowered at him.
The doorbell rang again and she ran down to let Cyrus in. He looked at her closely. “What’s wrong with you? You look terrible.”
She swallowed a smart retort. “Just tired.” How come he could look great in a day’s growth of beard, uncombed curly hair and a rumpled black shirt minus his collar? “Let’s go up.”
He waved her ahead of him. “Any idea what this is all about?”
“No. I’m surprised Vivian called you.”
“She’s a sensitive woman and I think she gets anxious about you dealing with the heat.”
Ellie snickered. “The heat? You’ve been watching too many cop flicks.”
“That’s very likely,” Cyrus said lightly.
The three men she’d left stood exactly where they’d been and she doubted if a word had passed between them.
“Hi, Cyrus,” Spike said. “Did my wife contact you? She said she might.”
“She’s a good woman,” Cyrus responded.
Spike’s eyes took on a distant quality. “The very best. Sometimes I have nightmares about what would have happened if I’d never met her.”
Guy cleared his throat. “If a man finds a special woman he’s a fool if he doesn’t hang on to her.”
“Very true,” Cyrus added.
“Oh, yeah.” This was Joe.
Ellie looked from one to the other of them and felt as if she’d accidentally walked through the looking glass. “I’m glad you all understand that important fact,” she said.
Guy was the first to reestablish contact with reality. He rolled items over and over in his palm—dice, maybe, Ellie thought. He said, “This isn’t good news. We’ve got to rethink everything and our options aren’t reassuring.”
“Spit it out,” Joe said. He got up and looped an arm around Ellie’s shoulders. She was glad of it and leaned against him.
Cyrus went to her other side and patted her back.
Ellie felt she was about to be senten
ced to death. “Tell me, Spike. You’re scaring me.”
“New cast,” Guy said.
“Ellie,” Spike said. “Charles Penn is in custody.”
Her stomach leaped. “That’s great news, isn’t it?” She turned into Joe’s arms and hugged him. She glanced at his face and his frown puzzled her.
“Don’t drag this out,” Cyrus said. “I can tell you two are skatin’ around the edge of somethin’. You’re only makin’ it harder for all of us.”
Guy deferred to Spike, who breathed out through pursed lips. “Okay. Charles Penn is in custody. In Canada. He was picked up drivin’ a stolen car across the border and with false ID. That was late on the night before Billie Knight was murdered.”
25
Gratitude, that’s what Ellie felt for being inside the chalk-pink door of Jilly’s All Tarted Up, Flakiest Pastry in Town.
She and Joe had spent the rest of the night locked together in Ellie’s bed, and when the phone rang just before 7:00 a.m. Joe wouldn’t let her touch it. He snatched it up himself, snapped out “Yes,” “No,” “No” and “Yes,” and bundled her to stand on the floor without offering an explanation.
“Get ready,” he’d said. “Don’t ask questions. It’s important and there isn’t time to talk. I’m taking you to Jilly’s. Now.”
He hadn’t stopped her from asking those questions, but neither had she managed to get an answer out of him. They would talk about his high-handed behavior later…
A warm, fragrant haze filled All Tarted Up. Ellie had been there more than an hour, arriving even before the shop opened and while trays of fresh-baked goodies were still sliding into the glass display cases.
“Don’t look so worried,” Vivian Devol said. She’d already been at the shop with Jilly when Ellie arrived. The green-and-gold Rosebank van hugged the curb outside.
Ellie tried a smile, then said, “I am worried, Vivian.” She didn’t know if Spike had told his wife about Charles Penn being caught in Canada. “I don’t even know what’s happening. Why would they roust me out of bed so early and tell me to come here?”
Vivian shook her head and her smooth black hair swished across the tops of her shoulders. “You mean you weren’t told a thing?” She let out an exasperated puff. “Not about the big search this morning?”
“Nothing,” Ellie said, and narrowed her eyes. Wait till she got Joe alone again. Her automatic smile surprised her and she pursed her lips.
“What’s funny?” Vivian asked.
So much for control over her emotions and the way they presented themselves. “I think I’m getting hysterical,” she fibbed. In truth she couldn’t keep her mind off Joe, and Joe with her on the dining room table. She shivered and looked away.
“They’ve brought dozens of people in to search,” Vivian said.
Jilly strolled to the table where Vivian and Ellie sat, wiping her hands on a cloth as she went. “Joe said you’ll stay till he gets back,” she said to Ellie. “Something about having to do everything all over again.”
“Back to square one,” Ellie said. “They don’t have any idea who did those things to me.”
Vivian and Jilly looked at each other.
“Exactly,” Ellie said. “A fine army we three would make if we had to fight off the enemy.”
A rap on the glass in the door and they all jumped. Cyrus angled his head to peer inside and gave a little salute when they saw him.
“Now I feel better,” Jilly said. “One day I’m going to tell Cyrus he isn’t hiding a thing—certainly not his muscles—under his priestly disguise.”
“It isn’t a disguise,” Vivian said quietly.
Jilly reached the door, and before she turned the bolt she said “I know that” over her shoulder. “Just a little joke.”
“Good morning, ladies,” Cyrus said, beaming. “I’m a lucky man. I drew the short straw. That means I’m here rather than digging around in the mud.”
“What mud?” Ellie asked sharply.
He shrugged but colored slightly as he always did when he felt uncomfortable. “Just a figure of speech.”
That earned him hostile stares all around and he ducked into a chair beside Vivian. “Could I get some black coffee and a marzipan tart?” he said, and picked up the paper.
“We’re not open,” Jilly said, although she couldn’t keep a straight face. “And we won’t be unless you agree to tell us exactly what’s going on.”
He turned his eyes balefully upon them. “Perhaps I don’t know.”
“Spike told you not to tell us,” Vivian said at once.
Cyrus folded the paper and put it down again. “Not exactly. He said it would be better not to say too much.”
“Why?” all three of them asked together.
“Is that Missy Durand I hear out there?” He craned around and looked toward the kitchens. “She would never keep me without coffee.”
“Missy’s busy with the ovens,” Jilly said. “Tell the truth and shame the devil.”
Cyrus leaned back in his chair and laughed. “That sounds like something Madge would say.”
They waited.
“Very well, I’ll go against my better instincts. Ellie, I’m not making fun of any of your problems, but if we don’t keep our heads up it won’t be a good thing. We may not have Penn to worry about—he’s in jail in Canada and who knows when he’ll be brought down here again—but what happened, happened. Now there isn’t a single lead on Billie Knight’s killer.”
“But doesn’t that mean it’s unlikely he or she has anything to do with…There wouldn’t be any reason for someone other than Penn to come looking for Ellie,” Vivian said.
Jilly ran her fingers through thick blond-streaked brown hair and pushed a comb in each side to keep it back. “Someone did, though.” She snapped her mouth shut.
“Jilly’s right,” Cyrus murmured. “And it won’t make things better if we try to pretend otherwise. I hope they don’t decide you need to go into the Witness Protection Program.”
“I won’t.” They couldn’t be thinking about such a thing. “Spike said…everyone said that if that man wanted me dead, I’d be dead. But I’m not, am I?”
“Who has proof of what he wants?” Cyrus asked. “What if they’re all wrong and they get careless? If whoever’s been hangin’ around you is just settin’ things up so we all decide he’s a joke, well then, if we let our guards down we could…you might get hurt.”
“Say what you mean,” Ellie told him. “I might get killed.”
“I agree with them,” Cyrus said, fidgeting. “So does Joe.”
“Agree about what?”
Cyrus took hold of her arm. He looked at Jilly. “Sit down with us.” When she did, he gave his entire attention to Ellie again. “We agree with Guy and Spike that you may have to go somewhere much safer until the case is cleared up.”
“Coffee, everyone?” Missy Durand asked, coming from the kitchens with her light brown hair twisted into tight curls by the moist heat. “Something to eat?”
“Coffee and pastries, please,” Jilly said. “Father will want marzipan tarts.”
“When did the search start?” Ellie asked when Missy returned to the kitchens.
“Spike called and said he and Guy had just left your place,” Vivian said. “He didn’t think he’d be home for hours so he wanted to make sure I wasn’t worrying. They’d got the call on Penn and the manpower was already coming in.”
“I’m not leaving,” Ellie said. “If necessary Spike can lock me up, but I’m not leaving Toussaint.”
The door handle rattled. This time Paul Nelson put his nose to the glass and Jilly hurried to let him in and left the door unlocked. “Hey,” she said. “You’re one early bird, Mr. Nelson.”
“Maybe I’ve got a worm to catch,” he said and kissed her lightly on the lips.
Ellie met Vivian’s eyes. It was no secret that Paul and Jilly were getting close, but Ellie didn’t recall any public displays of affection before. She glanced sideways at Cyru
s and her skin prickled. His eyes were as cold as she’d never seen them and he stared at Paul.
“What’s with the summit?” Paul said, smiling and holding Jilly with one arm. “I thought I’d find Jilly alone.” His grin broadened and he aimed it only at her.
He didn’t get a response to his question.
“Cyrus,” he said, “I’m glad you’re here. I want to tell you something if you’ve got a moment.”
“Surely.” Dread had filled Cyrus from the instant Guy called him. That had been around six-thirty. He’d joined Spike, Guy and a gaggle of various official types, and he had waited until they told him to go to Jilly’s. Wasting time on a man whose intentions he couldn’t read came low on his list of priorities.
Paul didn’t come to his table so he waited, and took a long swallow of coffee from the mug Missy put in front of him.
“Cyrus.” Jilly bent over beside him and whispered, “I don’t know what’s on Paul’s mind but he really wants to talk to you alone. Over at the corner table, if that would be okay.”
“Yes.” Cyrus picked up his coffee in one hand and took a napkin and a warm marzipan tart in the other. He stood up, registered the anxiety in Jilly’s face, and could have kicked himself. “D’you want coffee, Paul?” he asked.
“That would be great.” Paul already sat at the little table between the far end of the longest counter and the windows.
Missy brought a mug and a coffeepot before Cyrus could slide safely into a chair without dropping anything.
The bell over the door jangled and Doll Hibbs from the Majestic pushed her way in. She made to sit at a table alone but Vivian called, “Join us, Doll. You work so hard we never see you.”
Cyrus gave thanks that the women had removed Doll from a perfect eavesdropping spot. And it made him feel good to see a smile on Doll’s usually worried face.
“Father,” Paul said, leaning across the table. “I need to clear something with you. I want to. You’ve got the wrong impression of me and I’d like to change it.”
“I thought I was Cyrus to you these days.”
“Yes, Cyrus. I’ve unloaded on you without thinking things through first. I apologize for that. What I should have done was rely on myself to straighten my head out.”
Now You See Him Page 21