Sudden Engagement

by Julie Miller

  “Just be patient. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

  “Patience is one thing. Wasting my time is another.” She’d be better off at the office, scrolling through the police archives on her computer. She tossed her napkin on the table and scooted across the seat to leave.

  Brett reached across the table and snagged her hand in his. She froze in shock at the rough rasp of his callused palm on her skin. His touch was light, gentle. Yet he trapped her there all the same, her small hand lost in his, an evocative contrast of male and female proportions.

  “Stay.” His deep voice was little more than a whispered plea that vibrated through her with deceptive power. She forced her gaze up from the spot where their hands were joined to the urgent request in his eyes. “If they think you’re with me, they might be more apt to open up.”

  “You mean…” Surely he wasn’t suggesting… “Pretend…?”

  “Look, I know I’m not your type. I imagine you date yuppies in three-piece suits.”

  “I don’t…” No. Her solitary existence was too much to admit to this man. Her inadequacies were difficult enough to bear without offering them up for him to make a joke. “You’re suggesting I go undercover as your girlfriend?”

  “Not exactly. They can still know you’re a cop. But a connection to me might smooth things over a bit. Make you one of us, so to speak.”

  Ginny tugged at his grip, and he released her without protest. She pulled her hand into her lap and rubbed at it with her fingers, trying to dispel the electric aftershocks of his touch there. “I don’t know. That seems like a drastic step. We don’t even know for sure if that was Mr. Bishop chained in the subbasement. I think it’s a little premature to start looking for suspects who wanted to avenge Mark’s death or kill his father for some other imagined slight.”

  “Dating me is a drastic step?” A look of affront played over his features, just as it had back at his office when she’d questioned the amount of money he made. This time, though, he laughed. “Never mind. You run your investigation your own way. I’ll do what I can to help, whether the body is Bishop or not.”

  “I don’t mean to insult you.”

  “You didn’t.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket and plunked a couple of bills down on the table. “Look, I understand you’re all work, and you think I’m all play. Believe me, I’m not. Especially when the people I’m responsible for get hurt.”

  “Like Mark Bishop?”

  “Yeah.” Whatever smile had been left on his features vanished completely. “Trust me, angel, I can be as cold-blooded about this as you. We could be an item around here and it would be strictly business, if that’s the way you want it.”

  Strictly business. For some inexplicable reason, his explanation didn’t give her the reassurance she’d expected. Of course, they could pretend to be a couple. She could move around the Market Street area without raising any suspicions because she’d be labeled something as old-fashioned as “Brett’s girl.”

  But it wouldn’t be real.

  He could blow her logical, self-sufficient train of thought to smithereens with the simple touch of his hand. No, she couldn’t afford to have a relationship of any kind with Brett Taylor—real or pretend.

  “I’ll think about it.” She made the hollow promise, saving face without really meaning it.

  If Brett could see through her insincerity, he didn’t get a chance to comment. A second waitress, twenty years younger and forty pounds lighter than Pearl, but with the same unmistakable flush in her cheeks and the same ample curves to her figure, set two slices of pie on the table.

  “It’s good to see you, Brett,” she bubbled.

  “Ruby,” he greeted her.

  She balanced her empty tray on her hip and turned to him, blocking Ginny from the conversation. “Say, we’re about to close shop. I don’t suppose I can talk a big bruiser like you into walking Mom and me home.” Her round hip sashayed right on cue. “Maybe we can even ditch Mom and keep walking.”

  Brett didn’t laugh with her. He leaned to the side to see Ginny and introduced them. “Ruby Jenkins. This is Ginny Rafferty.”

  “Hi.” Ruby turned and nodded, then sat on the bench beside Brett. He politely obliged and slid farther across the seat. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

  “I work at the precinct office.”

  “You’re a cop?” Ruby’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “She’s a friend of mine,” explained Brett.

  “I see.” Ruby’s wide smile left her eyes, and Ginny was reminded again of a close-knit ganglike mentality to the residents of Market Street.

  Ruby refocused her attention on Brett, and they caught up on local events from the past week while Ginny, virtually ignored, nibbled on her pie. She had to be borderline exhausted and uncharacteristically depressed to push around something loaded with so much sugar, instead of devouring it.

  The curly-haired blonde must be an old friend, Ginny speculated. A very good friend, judging by the way she flicked a stray lock of hair from Brett’s forehead as if she had done so many times before.

  Maybe that’s what Brett had meant when he said he could have a strictly business relationship with her. He flirted with every woman. And every woman flirted with him.

  Except one.

  Ginny’s fork clattered to her plate, stopping the conversation across the table and earning two curious stares. She’d forgotten her job and gotten caught up in some silly battle-of-wills game with Brett.

  He’d lured her so far from her usual routine that she’d stopped asking questions. A resentful anger gave her new energy. “Ruby, do you remember Alvin Bishop?”

  Ruby’s eyes widened in surprise. “Mark’s dad? Sure.” She turned and offered the rest of her answer to Brett. “I used to date Mark in high school, remember? Old man Bishop tried to break us up. Said he needed Mark at home all the time. Mark would sneak up to our apartment sometimes. Even stayed the night once or twice. Until my dad found out.”

  Ruby’s soap-opera tale went from proud to wistful to angry.

  But Ginny tuned in to something else altogether. “You lived at the Ludlow Arms?”

  “Yeah. We even talked about gettin’ married one day. That is, until he met that uptown girl, Amy what’s-her-face, and decided she was the end-all of the world. Once he set his mind to runnin’ off with her…”

  The sensation of darkness rushed in, spiraling to a pinpoint of acute awareness that left Ginny shaking. “Did you say Amy?”

  Oh God, no. No, no, no.

  “When? What year?” She snapped the questions.

  “Gin, what’s wrong?” She heard Brett’s deep voice through a thick fog of memories and fear and injustice. A heartbeat later, a warm hand touched hers, making her realize how icy cold she had become. “Ginny?”

  She cleared her head and looked at Brett. His mouth had thinned into a grim line. She pulled her hand away, detaching herself from her emotions and him at the same time.

  “I need to go home now.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.” He started to rise, but the table and Ruby blocked his path.

  Ginny had no such hindrances. She slipped from the booth and pushed through the door. The entrance bell pierced her eardrum like a siren. It jangled again and she ran from the sound. She had rounded the corner before Brett caught up with her.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  She slowed to a walk but didn’t stop.

  “Dammit, Gin.” Brett grabbed her and whirled her around. She twisted away from him, but his quick reflexes snared her again. This time he wrapped his arms around her back so he couldn’t lose his grip. Her elbows bent and caught between them as he pulled her up against his chest and lifted her right off the ground.

  She knew how to disentangle herself from an assailant. But the steel-hard warmth of his body pressed beneath her hands and along her stomach and thighs and shocked her into stillness. Eye level with his chin, she dangled there, mesmerized by the blun
t strength of his jawline. Inch by tantalizing inch, his warmth seeped into her, clearing her mind to the textures of soft cotton at her fingertips, worn denim against her legs and solid man beneath it all.

  Suspended in time and space, she clutched at him, seeking his strength and shelter. His broad hands imprinted themselves at her back and waist, thawing the chill within her from inside and out.

  “You with me?” he asked. She watched the play of his lips, felt the deep rumble in his chest within her own.

  All male. Too male.

  Like the stinging pain that follows the thaw from frostbite, she realized she had her legs wrapped around his. She clung to him in a most intimate way, on a sidewalk beneath a streetlight in the middle of downtown Kansas City.

  The humiliation felt all too familiar. The heat in her cheeks was sudden and deep.

  “Put me down.”

  His laughter shook her as he bent and lowered her feet to earth. “Now you’re back.” He released her and retreated a step, as if respecting her discomfort with the situation. “You want to tell me what just happened?”

  She straightened her blazer, checked her holster and bought herself time to collect herself. “I’m sorry I was rude.”

  “Don’t sweat it. Something got to you. I’m just hoping you’re going to explain.”

  Apparently, she couldn’t erase the hard imprint of his body on hers. The April night had been cool, but now every part of her seemed to be on fire. “If I promise to slow down, you won’t pick me up again, will you?”

  “Deal.” She noted the way he shortened his stride to match her pace. Maybe there were a few pluses to being an old-fashioned male, she conceded.

  She had parked on the street just outside the trailer that housed his office near the Ludlow Arms building. She didn’t speak, and he didn’t press her until they stopped on the sidewalk beside her dark blue Taurus.

  She unlocked the passenger-side door and retrieved her purse from the glove compartment. She wondered if he would have said anything more if she hadn’t broken the silence first. “Your young friend, Mark Bishop. Did he ever say who he was running away to meet the night he was killed?”

  He stood beside her, his hands splayed at his waist in that self-assured, macho pose. But she could read the caution in his expression. She hadn’t been able to understand much about him as a man, but she knew the distress and distrust of a witness who had to recall an unpleasant scene from his life.

  “Just Amy,” he said finally. “He never told me her last name, didn’t want to get her in trouble. He was afraid his dad would go after her. He showed me a picture once.”

  Ginny unsnapped her purse and pulled out her wallet. With the most reverent of care, she slipped a frayed photograph from its plastic sheath. A family portrait taken the year she graduated from high school. She and her sister wore their hair long, in fluffy curls. Her parents looked so proud.

  She passed the picture to Brett and pointed at the girl on the left. “Did she look like this?”

  The streetlight cast shadows across his downturned face, but there was no mistaking the shock of recognition when he glanced up at Ginny. “Yeah. That’s her.” He pointed to the other girl in the picture. “Is that you?”

  Ginny nodded and returned the treasured photo to its place of safekeeping. “Her name’s Amy Suzanne Rafferty. My sister.” She caught her breath and asked one more question. “Do you remember the date Mark died?”

  Something like guilt or regret tightened the set of his mouth. “October seventeenth. The Chiefs were playing a football game. I went down to a bar to watch it. Got caught up in the game and friends and beer, and was running late to meet him. I wanted to talk him out of eloping. Tell him he had his whole life ahead of him.” His powerful shrug sent ripples through the air around him. “Empty promise, right?”

  She watched the connection hit him. The same discovery that had rendered her mute prompted Brett into a surprising fury. “Your sister was the girl? Did she talk to Mark that night? Did she know he’d been hurt?”

  “I don’t know.” The familiar emptiness welled inside her, nearly swallowing her whole. The hollowness echoed in her voice. “My sister died that night, too.”

  BRETT SAT at the bar, rolling the warm beer bottle back and forth between his palms. What the hell was he supposed to do? He’d always been a man of action, at times to his parents’ chagrin, at times with a note of pride. He made things happen.

  But how could he make this right?

  He’d not only failed Mark Bishop, but he’d failed to protect Ginny’s sister as well.

  So much for his big-brother instincts. So much for making the world a better place.

  He could build buildings, give good workers steady jobs.

  But he couldn’t come through when it really counted.

  He watched the golden liquid swirl in the neck of the bottle. The rich amber color paled in comparison to Ginny’s silvery-blond hair.

  He’d held her in his arms tonight. She’d been soft and sweet and full of fire. Not so fragile as he first thought. She’d fought like a frightened animal, acting on instinct alone, without the filter of that quick-thinking mind of hers. She’d wrapped herself around him, holding on as tightly as she’d first tried to escape. Did she know how much passion lay dormant and untapped inside of her? Did she have any idea how badly he wanted to find the extent of it for himself?

  At least she had the ability to maintain some good sense, and avoid depending on him.

  He was stewing deep in his bottle of untouched beer when he heard the vinyl stools creak on either side of him.

  “This doesn’t look good.”

  From the corner of his eye, he glanced to the brother on his right, then to the brother on his left.

  “You gonna drink that or just play with it?”

  He turned first to Mac on his right. “Are you guys the search party?” he asked.

  “Should we be looking for you?” asked Mac. Brett couldn’t tell if he heard concern or mockery in his brother’s voice.

  Gideon, his second eldest brother, ordered two beers. With short, dark hair, and equally dark eyes, he was the spitting image of their father. He pulled a ten-dollar bill from the pocket of his fire department uniform and handed it to the bartender. “Mac called me at the station house with an interesting question. Wanted to know the last time the Ludlow Arms had had a fire inspection. I said, ‘Isn’t the place condemned?’ and he…”

  Brett knew a taunt when he heard one. He took the bait anyway. “Is there a point to this story?”

  “No.” Gideon grinned. “But the glare in your eye tells me you’re still alive and kickin’.”

  Ever the voice of reason, Mac pried the bottle from Brett’s fingers. “How many of these have you had?”

  “None.” Brett scowled at both siblings. “I’m a lousy drunk these days. I sit down and buy one, but I never drink it.”

  Mac and Gideon exchanged knowing looks across Brett’s shoulders. They knew he hadn’t touched an alcoholic drink since the night of Mark’s death, when he’d been too plastered to keep track of the time.

  “Good.” Mac set the bottle on the bar. Brett sensed the subtle change in his demeanor, and suddenly knew this visit wasn’t accidental, and that it had more to do with familial support than with camaraderie.

  Brett sat up straight. “What?”

  “I got a positive ID on the body in the subbasement of your building.” Brett had a sickening idea that he already knew the answer. “It’s Alvin Bishop.”

  The accuracy of Ginny’s suspicions didn’t make the fact any easier to swallow.

  “Old man Bishop didn’t run off?” Gideon asked. “You mean somebody killed him?”

  “Somebody he knew, judging by the elaborate setup,” answered Mac.

  “Wait a minute.” Brett hushed them both. He had a more important question to ask. “Have you told Ginny yet?”

  “I left a message on her machine.”

  “Damn.” Brett sto
od and headed toward the exit.

  “Where are you going?” Gideon asked. “It’s almost midnight. Stay and I’ll buy you a soda.”

  Mac added, “It’s not like the two of you are friends. This is her work, big brother. Ginny can take care of herself.”

  Yeah. A lot better than he could.

  Brett stopped in his tracks. Man, he hated when those little weasels were right.

  He raked all ten fingers through his hair as if he could sweep away his troubling thoughts as easily. Surrendering to practicality for the moment, he stalked back to his stool and ordered a ginger ale.

  Who was he to ride off in his pickup truck to rescue the damsel in distress from bad news? He had no business rescuing anybody.

  “MR. RASCONE.” Ginny bit her tongue to control the frustrated scream that threatened to erupt from her throat.

  “Excuse me, my dear.” The balding jeweler moved to the far end of the counter and asked the lady who had told him she was just looking whether he could help her.

  Again.

  Her fingers itched to snatch one of the long strands of silver hair that he combed over the top of his head and yank him back to the conversation she had started nearly ten minutes ago.

  The corpse recently discovered down the block has been identified as Alvin Bishop, a one-time resident of the area. You’ve been in business here nearly fifty years. Did you know the victim? Were you ever at the Ludlow Arms where the body was found?

  Can you hear me talking? she wanted to shout. Apparently Mr. Rascone hadn’t heard the third-time’s-a-charm cliché. Neither the elderly Bert Hampstead at the shoe repair shop, whose hearing aid was suddenly on the fritz, nor the hide-behind-his-paper Dizzy from the barbershop next door, would answer any of her questions about Alvin Bishop.

  Oh, they’d been friendly enough when she walked into their shops. But once she showed them her badge, they suddenly had very little to say.

  Ginny eyed the elderly woman and the rest of the empty shop. Retreat seemed the best answer for the moment. She straightened her navy blazer and headed back into the April sunshine, scanning the streets for Merle, and wondering if her partner was having any better luck piecing together Alvin Bishop’s story.