She turned in his arms again and wrapped herself around him. "What you're really thinking is that you don't deserve me.
"You're right—I don't deserve you. You're much too good for the likes of me."
"I don't see it that way," she told him as she caressed his cheek, the light beard stubble rough on her soft fingers. "I think you need me. I think I'm the woman you do deserve, a woman who can love you with all her heart. A woman who is capable of devotion and fidelity, a woman you can trust."
Quinn closed his eyes as if her touch and her words combined were more than he could bear. "You deserve a man capable of giving back those same things to you."
She cupped his face, then ran the tip of her thumb across his slightly parted lips. "I hear reformed bad boys make great husbands."
Quinn grinned. "You heard that, did you?"
"Mmm-hmm. It's like sinners who get religion and become religious fanatics. It's a scenario as old as time—bad boy meets good girl and changes his ways. The beast learns that being loved by the right woman can turn him into prince charming."
"Do you believe in fairy tales, querida?"
"Yes, I do."
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. "I should have known you were a romantic."
She sighed. "When I was twenty-two, I became engaged to someone I thought was the love of my life. Christopher. He was everything I wanted in a man, in a husband in a father for my children."
Quinn tensed. "Why are you telling me about this man?"
"Only a short time before our wedding, Chris nearly died in a horrific car crash. His injuries left him paralyzed. I wanted us to marry, but he wouldn't marry me because . . ." She swallowed. "Chris wasn't able to have sex."
Quinn said nothing.
"I loved Chris with all my heart and we remained engaged until the day he died two years ago. During all those years, I remained faithful to Chris, except for . . . I had a one-night stand with an old friend over five years after Chris's wreck and later I had a brief affair with a man I admired and respected but there was never anyone in my heart, except Chris." She shivered when Quinn kissed her fingers. "When I love, I love completely, with all that is in me. No half measures. If our relationship goes beyond a brief affair, I will be yours—heart, mind body and soul."
Quinn kissed her fingers, her hand rubbing his mouth over her flesh as he closed his eyes. "Somehow I knew—instinctively—the moment I first saw you that you were different, that you were special. The feeling hit me like a bolt out of the blue." He opened his eyes, held their hands between their bodies and gazed adoringly at her. "Getting involved with me is wrong for you. You should kick me out of here, tell me to go away, leave you alone and never bother you again. If you were smart you'd—"
"I'm in love with you. Maybe it's foolish. Maybe I'll live to regret it. But I can't change it. I don't think I'd change it if I could. Loving you feels so . . . so incredible."
He settled her back into his arms and held her. The quiet hush of the afternoon, alone together in Annabelle's suite, enveloped them. They lay there on the sofa, savoring the delicious contentment of being wrapped up in each other, physically and emotionally. There was no place on earth Annabelle would rather be, no other man she wanted. Now or ever.
* * *
Marcy looked at her watch again. Eight-fifteen. Where the hell was Quinn? Why hadn't he bothered to call her? Didn't he realize that she worried about him? She glanced at the wall phone there in the kitchen, wishing it would ring.
"Why don't you just call him?" Aaron said as he came into the room.
"What?" Marcy snapped around and glared at him.
"The boss man hasn't checked in all day and you're worried. Call him."
"I shouldn't bother him."
Aaron slipped his arms around her waist and dragged her back against him, then kissed her on the nape of her neck. "If you're worried about Quinn, you'll fuss and fume all evening instead of mellowing out with me and a good bottle of wine."
"What makes you think I'm going to mellow out with you?"
"Because you want more of what I've got to give. And don't deny it."
"I didn't intend to deny anything," she told him.
"So call Quinn, find out where he is and ask him if he's coming home tonight. If he is, you'll want to make sure he doesn't catch us. After all, you're still fantasizing that one of these days you'll be the love of Quinn's life."
"Shut up."
"Just call him, will you?" Aaron released her, went to the refrigerator and grabbed a canned cola.
"I do need to know whether or not he'll be home for supper."
"Good enough excuse."
Marcy's hand wavered over the wall phone. Just dial his cell number. When he answers ask if he 'II be home for supper. Like Aaron said, it's a good excuse to contact him. She glanced over her shoulder at Aaron.
"I'm leaving," he said. "I know you want your privacy for when you talk to lover boy."
The minute Aaron walked out of the kitchen, she lifted the receiver and dialed Quinn's cell number. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, just when she thought voice mail would pick up, she heard Quinn's voice and she also heard music in the background. And something that sounded like the drone of voices.
"Quinn, it's Marcy."
"Yeah? What do you want? Has something happened?" Quinn asked.
"No, no. Everything is okay. I—I just wondered—" "Talk louder, will you, honey?"
She hadn't realized that she'd been practically whispering. "Where are you?"
"At Chez Philippe, at the Peabody. Annabelle and I are having dinner."
"Oh." He was with her. Lulu's cousin. How could he wine and dine his former lover's cousin? What kind of woman was she to succumb so easily to Quinn's advances? "I guess that answers my question."
"What question?"
"I just wanted to know if you were coming home for supper."
"Oh, Marcy, I'm sorry. I should have called you. I wasn't thinking. Annabelle and I have spent the day together and I just forgot to phone."
He'd spent the day with her. Had they been making love? Had Annabelle Vanderley become Quinn's latest conquest? "Aaron told me that neither you nor he turned out to be the father of Lulu's baby. That's good. For both of you."
"Yes, it was. But unfortunately it doesn't let me off the hook," Quinn told her. "Look, I'll explain everything to y'all tomorrow. Okay?"
"Okay."
Marcy thought she heard a woman's voice. Soft, wispy. Annabelle?
Quinn laughed quietly, a sensual tone in the sound- "Marcy, I won't be home tonight."
That's what Annabelle had said to him, wasn't it? Those were the words Marcy had thought she'd heard the woman say. Tell her you won't be home tonight.
"Have a nice time," Marcy finally managed to say.
"See you tomorrow, honey." The line went dead. Marcy stood there in the kitchen, the phone clutched in her hand, and cried. Idiot. You're so stupid, Marcy. You knew there would be another woman. There always is. And you figured it would be Annabelle Vanderley.
Damn Annabelle. Damn her and all the other women Quinn had ever been with. She hated Annabelle. She hated them all. Every last one of them.
Chapter 24
Sanders served Griffin coffee while he checked his e-mail. "Would you care for anything else, sir?"
"No, nothing." Griffin opened the e-mail from Lieutenant Craig Stovall, Baytown PD. Stovall had been the lead detective on the Kelley Fleming murder case two years ago. Ben Sullivan would be in Baytown by morning, looking for a photo of Kelley and digging up all the information he could find.
Scanning the message quickly, Griffin hit print, then turned to Sanders who was halfway across the room. "Wait up."
Sanders pivoted quickly. "Yes, sir?"
"See if you can track down Jim Norton," Griffin said. "If you can, ask him to drop by this evening if he will. I have several other phone calls to make."
Sanders nodded.
Griffin telephoned Ben Sullivan, issued him some last minute orders, then phoned Judd Walker's room. "Walker here."
"Judd, it's Griffin. I just received an e-mail from Lieutenant Stovall from the Baytown PD. He'll fax me a crime scene photo of Kelley Fleming tomorrow morning, but he went ahead and gave me the basic info on her. The woman was forty, had lived in Baytown for only a couple of years. She worked as a waitress. Didn't have any close friends. Lived in a duplex apartment. Kept to herself. The neighbors said a teenage boy lived with her, but the police didn't have any luck tracking down the kid. He wasn't enrolled in school and nobody even knew his name."
"That's interesting," Judd said.
"Gets more interesting. Kelley Fleming was an alias. Her driver's license, social security card!—everything—was bogus. They ran an article about her and the only photo they had of her in the newspaper, asking anyone who had information to come forward, but got no response."
"Do you think Quinn might have known this woman under a different name?"
"Possibly. We'll show him the crime scene photo and see if he recognizes her."
"Did the police think maybe the kid killed her?"
"That was one theory and a boyfriend was another, but they never found the kid or a boyfriend," Griffin said.
"Could be the teenage boy was her boyfriend."
"Could be. Another theory was that the murderer might have been a serial killer, but when they checked for similar murders, they came up with zero. But if she was the first. . . Quinn's involved in this somehow, someway. He didn't murder these five women, but someone is killing them because they were involved with Quinn."
"That means Kelley Fleming or whoever the hell she was must have been one of Quinn's girlfriends."
"Why would someone want to kill Quinn's girlfriends?"
"Jealousy," Judd said. "A woman who wants Quinn all to herself and is killing off the competition."
"Hmm . . . Or a man who hates Quinn and wants to pin these murders on him."
"Quinn has probably made a lot of enemies over the years, broken quite a few female hearts and pissed off more than his share of men."
"Looking for a possible murderer among Quinn's enemies will be like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Quinn held Annabelle in his arms as they danced slowly, languidly to the soft strains of a quiet-times, cool jazz number playing on the radio. The alto sax mourned low and sweet, while the bass strummed the lazy beat. With her head on his shoulder and her arms draped around his neck, Annabelle sighed. When, with very little interruption, one tune ended and another began, they barely noticed and stayed in each other's arms, their bodies continuing to sway. As the next tune began, a moody, melancholy rendition of "Body and Soul," Quinn brushed his lips across her temple and down her cheekbone.
Nothing had ever felt this right. Being with Annabelle, holding her, dancing with her, kissing her. Despite the horrors surrounding them—the unsolved murders in which he was a suspect—they had been able to separate themselves from the rest of the world this afternoon and evening. After tender, loving hours spent on the sofa in each other's arms, Quinn had called Chez Philippe for dinner reservations. They had dined on one of Chef Jose's specialties—filet de veau. After dinner, Quinn had ordered chilled champagne and an assortment of desserts to be delivered to their room.
For the past hour, they had been sipping champagne, nibbling on chocolates and dancing. Mostly dancing. Neither wanted to be out of touching distance. And the closer, the better.
Quinn had spent hours making love to a woman before and he'd also enjoyed his share of quickies. He had wined and dined plenty of lovely ladies. And on occasion he had forgone any preliminaries and just screwed a woman. But nothing in his past compared to what he was sharing with Annabelle.
They had been making love for endless hours, in the old-fashioned sense that equated to romantic foreplay. Lingering glances, gazing into each other's eyes. Touching tenderly, caressing, stroking. Kissing, tasting, licking. Every heartbeat connected, every breath simultaneous.
"I wish this night never had to end," Annabelle told him, her voice enticing, her words seductive.
Leaning his head over onto hers, he whispered, "I wish that, too."
She inched the fingers of one hand up and into his hair, while the other hand gripped his shoulder. "We can't pretend there aren't any problems to be overcome, but—"
"Leave those problems until tomorrow," he told her as he slid both hands down her back and cupped her buttocks, lifting her up and into his erection. "Tonight, there are no problems. There is no tomorrow."
As the dreamy music filled Annabelle's hotel suite, she stopped dancing, stood on tiptoe and kissed Quinn. "No problems. No tomorrow. Only now, tonight and the two of us."
They kissed again and again, all the while their hands roamed, exploring, discovering. When she was breathless and trembling, Quinn lifted her up and into his arms. She flung her arms around his neck as he carried her across the room to the sofa. He laid her on the soft cushions, then came down over her, balancing his body over hers with his knees and elbows on either side of her. She lifted herself up to meet his kiss. He undid the tiny pearl buttons on her silk blouse, kissing each new inch of flesh he exposed. She mimicked his moves and unbuttoned his shirt, then jerked it free from his pants. While she planted kisses over his smooth, muscular chest, he threaded his fingers through her hair and cradled her head with one hand. When she came up for air, he undid the front hook on her satin bra and spread it apart to reveal her high, round breasts. He couldn't resist touching them, cupping them in his hands. Each were more than a handful, neither small nor large. Just right. Perfect.
When he flicked her nipples with the pads of this thumbs, she keened softly and arched her back so that her mound aligned with his straining erection.
He was so ready. Wanted her so badly. Needed to be inside her now.
"Oh, Quinn, please . . ."
He lowered his head and kissed her directly below her breasts, then unzipped her black slacks and smiled when he saw the black satin bikini panties she wore. He shoved the slacks aside and the panties down far enough to expose a glimpse of dark blond hair covering her mound. He licked a path from between her breasts to the edge of that curly hair.
Tugging on her slacks, he managed to maneuver them down her legs and off, taking her panties, too. She lay before him wearing only her open shirt and bra, her body exposed.
"You're lovely," he said. "But I knew you would be."
When she tried to reach for his belt, he gently slapped her hands away. If she touched his penis, he might not be able to wait. And he wanted to wait. There were things he wanted to do before he took her completely.
"Quinn?"
"Later, querida. For now, leave everything to me."
He spread her legs apart and placed himself between them, then lifted her thighs up and over his shoulders, giving him easy access to his objective. He kissed her inner thighs, first one and then the other. She clutched his shoulders. He licked around her pubic lips, tasting the musky sweetness. She shuddered.
His lips encompassed the soft, pink tissue and sucked gently. Annabelle gasped then panted when he tongued her clitoris.
"Oh, God Quinn."
Her moisture gushed dampening his mouth. He worked his tongue over her sensitive nub. Relentlessly. Passionately. When he realized she was on the verge of coming, he reached up and pinched her nipples, then rubbed them between his thumbs and index fingers. She cried out, then fell apart, her climax hitting her hard. But he didn't ease up, didn't slow down. With his fingers tormenting her breasts, his tongue took her over the edge and beyond until she was totally spent and begging him to stop. Her body shook and shivered, almost convulsing in the intensity of her orgasms.
Jim and Griffin talked about old times for a good hour, drinking the Guinness beer that Griffin remembered Jim liking so much when they'd worked together a number of years ago on the art store rob
beries. He'd had Sanders go out and buy this particular brand, just for Jim. They had been college buddies, teammates, even double-dated several times back in the good old days. He knew Jim wanted to ask him about those mysterious ten years of his life when he had disappeared off the face of the earth, but he couldn't talk about those years, not even to an old friend, a guy he would trust with his life.
When there was a lull in the conversation, Jim asked, "What's up? It's not that I'm not enjoying your companionship and your beer, but you didn't ask Sanders to call me and invite me over just because you wanted to see my ugly face again so soon."
"Actually, I did have an ulterior motive."
Jim chuckled. "No kidding?"
"I've got a client I believe is innocent and the only way to prove he's innocent is by finding the guilty party," Griffin said. "Just like Quinn and Annabelle Vanderley, you and I want the same thing. Hell, all four of us want the same thing."
"Okay. We all want to find out who murdered Lulu and Kendall." Jim held up his hand to signal Griffin to let him finish before he spoke. "And yeah, you think the same guy killed both of them and those three other women—the two in Texas and the one in New Orleans."
"I think we should be working together. Unofficially, of course. We each have resources we can use. There are things you can do that I can't because I'm not law enforcement. And there are things that I can do that you can't because I'm a private investigator."
"If I agree, it would have to be unofficially. So, what comes first?"
"We decide on the most likely scenario," Griffin said. "Which would be?"
"A serial killer with a direct tie to Quinn Cortez," Griffin said. "Either a woman who wants to eliminate the competition or a man seeking revenge. Somebody with a reason to want to hurt Quinn, either by making him feel guilty or by pinning these murders on him."
Killing Her Softly Page 29