I looked up at the drifting flakes. I couldn’t look at him when I admitted, “I’m here with…friends.”
“Friends?”
I nodded.
“One of them wouldn’t be called Jerome, would he?”
I looked at him then. His face was expressionless in an unsettling way.
“How did you know?”
“He left a message on your answering machine.”
It took a few moments for my mental gears to grind round to the obvious. “You…bugged my phone?”
“And your apartment.” He didn’t look the least bit repentant.
“You—I—how could you do that?” Had they heard me singing in the shower? Of course they had. This was the CIA. They could hear a gnat pass gas if they wanted to.
“We needed to monitor the inside of your apartment for your protection. You don’t have to be embarrassed. We all liked your singing. Especially Wild Thing.”
I covered my face. “You could’ve warned me.”
“If I had you would’ve been too quiet. I’m trying to protect you, but it isn’t easy. Sneaking off for a late date…”
“I left in the open with your guys on my tail.” It occurred to me that he sounded jealous. I started to smile. “Actually, it wasn’t a date.”
“Not a date?” He sounded as disbelieving as he looked.
“No. It was…dates.”
“Dates?”
“Jerome. Tommy.” I paused. “Drum.”
“You went out with three men at once?” He gripped my shoulders. I kind of liked his look of incredulity.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess they’re men.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I studied his tie carefully. “They’re a little younger.”
“How much younger?” he asked.
“Does it matter? If they’d been ten or sixteen years older than me, no one would say a word. And it’s not like I seduced them. They asked me. They’ve been reading Cosmopolitan.”
I smiled at him, inviting him to share the joke. After a moment, he started to grin and the joke was on me because I was already in a weakened condition.
“If it tells a guy how to deal with a woman like you, I’m going to get me one.”
I felt the change in his hands, saw it in his eyes, as he changed from clutching to caressing. I didn’t mind. I needed the heat spreading through my body.
“Are we forgetting who came through whose sun roof onto whose lap? Or is that whom’s lap?” My voice wobbled. He slid his hands across my back. My back liked it a lot. In the spirit of cooperation, I put my good arm around his neck.
“I can’t forget anything. I sure as hell can’t forget…” his mouth brushed the edge of my mouth, “…this.”
He was temptation wrapped in an almost irresistible package, but I was a proper Baptist girl with a mandate from God to try.
“You’re the CIA. I’ll bet you know more about me than I know about myself.”
His hands slid to center back. Our hips came together like it was their reason for being. My blood was thundering in a way that probably wasn’t wise when there was a hole in my blood stream.
“I know you’re susceptible to strays and that you try to do the right thing.” His mouth moved over the curving skin of my cheek. “I know you sing in the shower and smile when you sleep.” He turned his attention to the area around my eyes.
I closed them and gave silent thanks for his attention to detail. “See,” my words came out in little gasps, “I knew you knew…something…”
I lost track of what it was I was trying to say, when his exploration moved to where my neck and shoulder met.
“I see desire in your eyes, Bel.” He traced their outline, his touch torturously sweet. “But it’s not enough. I want to watch them change while we make…fax.”
I don’t like admitting it, but if he’d just kept kissing me, he might have got fax. Instead he gave me a choice. He put me in charge of my own seduction. Cold air rushed between us when I stepped back. I could tell Kel wasn’t thrilled with my choice. I opened my mouth to explain, but Willis and Dillon were making a beeline for us.
If there’s one thing I hate in a cop, its lousy timing.
Both men looked at me, but Dillon said to Kel, “Got an ID on the shooter. Name of Robert Howard. Drug squad is on its way to his apartment, but I’ll bet money he’s not a dealer.”
“He could be,” Willis protested.
“No.” Kel came in on Dillon’s side. “I don’t know what this is about, but it isn’t drugs.”
“He’s a red neck, not a druggie,” Dillon agreed. “In the same National Guard unit as the Mitchell kid. The gun he was carrying was military issue. Mitchell was assigned to the supply depot. My gut is telling me someone was dealing in stolen military supplies.”
Kel looked thoughtful. “Pilfering has always been a problem. With all that’s going on in the Gulf, be a prime time to make some money.” He sighed. “Damn. This means military intelligence will want to get involved. We get anymore government agencies sniffing around this case it’ll be more crowded than the Desert Storm briefings.”
Now that Kel wasn’t warming me, I started to shiver. My coat was inside with the guys and I’d lost blood. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about this stuff, well, actually I didn’t care. How could I when each shiver felt like knives stabbing in my arm? “I need to go get my coat from the club. Look, my friends can run me home…”
Kel quickly shrugged off his coat. “You shouldn’t go back inside.”
“Why not? There’s no danger anymore, is there?”
Willis coughed. “You haven’t had a chance to see yourself, have you Miss Stanley?”
“Oh.” I guess I had kind of wallowed in garbage. And blood. I let Kel help me into his unpleasantly fragrant, but nicely warm coat. I must have looked as tired as I felt, because Kel turned to the detectives.
“Can you have someone contact Miss Stanley’s friends for her?”
Dillon pulled out a notebook. “Names? Descriptions?”
I looked into his sardonic face and wished I was unconscious again.
“I think you know them…Jerome and Tommy…” I faltered as his brows rose towards his hairline. “…and Drum.”
He stared at me for a long moment, then turned and stalked towards the club. I looked at Kel and Willis.
“That went—” I stopped, because that summed it up.
Someone called Kel, leaving Willis behind to stare at me with brooding gaze, until I finally asked, “What?”
“I think I have you figured out and filed away, then you pop up again. Always as the victim.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t try.
“A great, big question mark that the CIA has thrown a blanket over, so wide that a lowly cop like me can’t penetrate it. Why is that, I wonder?”
I shrugged, my arm protested, making me wince. “I don’t know. I’m harmless.”
“Harmless?” He turned and looked at the body in the black bag being wheeled past us.
I looked away. “He was trying to kill me. And he did kill Mrs. Carter and Paul Mitchell. It’s not my fault he’s dead.”
Willis shrugged. “Well, at least Bobby can’t hurt you now. You should be safe.”
“I certainly hope so.” I sighed. “I have to play the organ for Mrs. Carter’s funeral tomorrow. It’ll be easier now that I know her killer has been caught.”
He nodded somberly and turned to go, then hesitated. “Did you remember that sketch you promised me?”
“What? Oh, sure. I’ll get it to you real soon.” When I found my sketch book. If I found my sketch book. I’d have to ask Kel if he found it.
“I guess you wouldn’t reconsider giving me that one with me and Dillon in it?”
I looked at him. “You recognized yourself?”
He grinned. “Sure. You’re not kind, but you’re good.”
“Well, I guess I could give you a copy,” I said,
“when I get my sketchbook back.”
“Back?” He looked surprised. “Did you lose it?”
“Oh, no. Just temporarily misplaced it.”
“Oh, well, I’ll check back with you.”
I nodded. I suppose it was the murky lighting that made his eyes look unfriendly.
* * * *
The guys were both defiant and solicitous when they arrived with Drum’s dad and my coat. I think they were also chagrined they’d missed the chance to play hero. They wanted to waft me home, but Kel protected me from their overly enthusiastic care by implying the police weren’t done with me yet and that I would be conveyed home officially.
“This is official?” I asked, as Kel settled me into his little Porsche, then expertly maneuvered the car away from my second crime scene. Or was it my third? I’d lost count.
“You could look on it as a chance to discover for yourself what’s under the hood.”
I was too tired to blush, so I gave him a look.
He grinned, steering the car with a slight air of bravado, and putting the car through its paces. I’d noticed him eyeing the guys biceps and had to smile. “Your dates were a tad defiant there at the end.”
“Yeah, that must have been some meeting with Drum’s dad. A pity about the goodnight kiss.” I started a silent count. Only got to seven.
“Goodnight kiss?”
“Yeah, they thought it wouldn’t be sensitive to line up on my doorstep, so I was supposed to choose which one got it. It’s just as well. If I picked Jerome, then what would I do about his dad?”
“Why do I feel another bombshell coming?”
“Not a bombshell. A date. With his father.”
“You have a date with Jerome’s father?”
“For bingo and accordion polkas. It’s so depressing. He’d be perfect for my mother. She loves bingo and accordion—” I straightened up and looked at Kel, stunned by my inadvertent brilliance. “Of course. Mike fell for Rosemary. Steve can fall for my mother.”
“Steve.” Kel gave a half laugh. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re one sick puppy?”
“Pretty much everybody. I write about a roach, remember?” I sank back in my seat, covering a yawn with my un-winged hand.
“Tired?”
“I passed tired a long time ago.”
“My shoulders may not be as broad as your young men’s, but I’m told they’re comfortable.”
By who, I wondered, too tired to ask, but not too tired to be curious. I settled against his solid warmth, felt his strength flow into me. And whatever he thought, his shoulders were every bit as broad as the boys—unless you added them all together.
“Would you tell me something?”
I blinked sleepily. “If I can.” Life with my mother had taught me to be wary of committing to unknown questions.
“What was the real reason you ran out on me yesterday?”
“I was hoping you’d forgotten that.” I kept my eyes closed, hoping the discussion would go away.
“It took ten years off my life.”
“Then you owe me some. You took twenty off mine when you dived through the sun roof.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.” I tried to ignore his expectant silence, but he was good. Almost as good as my mother. “Let’s just say I got a little mixed up…about who was on who’s side and who was doing what to whom and leave it at that, okay?”
“You thought because I was the only one you’d told about your round-headed guy that I was trying to kill you, didn’t you?” He pulled his car to a stop in front of my house and looked down at me.
“Well, yes, but not just because of that.” It seemed impertinent to be using his shoulder after just accusing him of trying to murder me, so I sat up. “You kept kissing me, too.”
“You thought because I kissed you…I wanted you dead?” I could tell he tried hard not to sound incredulous.
“It seemed logical at the time.”
“And what made you decide you could trust me?” He turned to face me and the small car with the big engine shrunk to the space of a heart beat.
Why, I wondered dreamily, was he the one who made my heart beat fast? My mother had paraded a brigade of men past me, in hopes of sparking this reaction in me, all to no avail. Instead, my heart had chosen to beat for a guy I knew almost nothing about. He was a spy who could take a bullet. He was a guy who could kiss a girl right out of her principles. He drove a Porsche and had a mother. Not an impressive array of facts.
Nothing to build a future on, if a girl were inclined to think along those lines, which of course I wasn’t. I’d had a front row seat for the train wreck that was my sister’s venture into the murky waters of matrimony. It served to confirm my instinctive belief that men and women were incompatible beings placed on earth with a longing to be together as part of a diabolical cosmic practical joke.
None of which explained why I trusted Kel. I went for the non-answer. “How could I not trust a man in a cherry tree? It would be un-American.”
Of course there was trust and trust. I knew I could trust him with my life, but my palpitating body and my vulnerability were another story altogether. I gave him a sleepy smile.
He smiled back, seduction emanating from his pores in tempting waves. His arms slid around me. His head bent. My anticipation rose to meet him. It was every bit as wonderful as I’d expected. And I was right not to trust him.
I just hope he didn’t take it personally when I fell asleep.
SEVENTEEN
I woke face down in my bed. It shouldn’t have felt wrong. I often wake face down in my bed. But something felt wrong. I examined the part of my anatomy I could see without moving and found the problem. Why wasn’t I wearing my pajamas?
It wasn’t like me to go to bed wearing a strapless bra and brief briefs. I wiggled my head in the other direction and saw the bandage on my arm. I dredged through my memory for anything that would get me from under Kel’s mouth, out of my clothes and under my covers under my own steam.
None surfaced.
I could only conclude, I’d been undressed by a spy.
And now I had to go play the organ in a church.
Goody.
I got up. Started getting ready, all the while brooding on the perfidy of a certain spy. If Kel thought that undressing a semi-conscious Baptist and tucking her in bed was acceptable behavior, then he probably thought Congress should get a pay raise. If I got the chance I was going to tell him so. If I knew who his mother was, I’d tell her, too. I’m sure she’d hate him undressing me. Suddenly I could see her. Small, delicate, beautiful. All the things I wasn’t. Oh yeah, she’d hate him undressing me.
This depressing realization was perfect preparation for the funeral. My mother rode with me. She wanted to give me tips on how to promote Reverend Hilliard’s non-existent courtship. I’d added harassed to depressed by the time we got to the church. We were early and I ditched her to warm up. It was a major relief to settle behind the old organ in blissful solitude. My wound bothered my playing but it was a minor irritant that soon faded when my hands slid over smooth, cool keys, picking out some mournful blues tunes that fitted my present mood. I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until I heard a giggle almost at my elbow.
I looked up and found a row of childish faces staring at me. I didn’t flinch, but only because they were from my Sunday school class. Show no weakness was my mantra when dealing with the wee ones. Sometimes it even worked.
“Play something happy, Miss Stanley,” one of the wee folk urged.
Since depression wasn’t getting me anywhere, I launched into the rollicking reggae beat of “Under the Sea” from the Walt Disney’s “Little Mermaid” for them.
They began to dance and sing along, inviting me to join their exuberance. I probably shouldn’t have succumbed. I ended with a flourish and looked up, my smile fading when I saw Reverend Hilliard and my mother staring at me.
* * * *
It was a relief when t
he funeral ended. I noticed Kel at the back, sitting with an elegant looking older woman who looked just as petite and beautiful as I’d imagined. She also looked rich and disapproving. I don’t think she liked the spiritual twist I added to “How Great Thou Art.” Neither did my mother. Before I could escape, Reverend Hilliard cornered me.
“I was wondering, that is, your mother thought you wouldn’t be averse to accompanying me to Bible study class tomorrow evening?”
“Bible study class?”
“We can bring dates sometimes and I thought you might enjoy it.” He looked like he thought I might enjoy it. I guess a minister would have to be an optimist. Was it a sin to say no to a man of the cloth? Wasn’t bingo and accordion enough punishment for the sin of lusting after Kel?
“Could I get back to you? I need to check my schedule.” Anybody but a pastor would have known that was an attempted brush off. He just gave me his reverent smile.
“I’ll check with you after service tomorrow.”
What a week I was having.
My mother passed on the graveside service in favor of ragging on me for the sins she knew about. Outside, my car was the only car left in front of the church. As we started across the parking lot, my mother stopped with an exclamation of annoyance. “I think I’ve dropped my gloves.”
She half turned back toward the church, rooting through her purse to be sure.
I expelled a sigh of relief at the brief respite from being lectured and kept walking. The sudden acceleration of a car had me looking around. The last time this happened, an Uzi sprayed bullets into Rosemary’s car. This one didn’t have an Uzi, but it was coming right at me.
I kept thinking it would swerve. When it didn’t, I did a running jump onto the hood of my car vacating the spot just before the car went over it. It didn’t stop, just sped away, squealed around the corner and disappeared from sight.
“Oh, here they are, in my purse.” My mother turned around. “Isabel! What are you doing up there? Get down before someone sees you like that!”
I brought my knees back together and smoothed down my dress. “Didn’t you see that car?”
The Spy Who Kissed Me Page 14