Passion and Scandal

by Candace Schuler

  "Faith Shannon said it changed their lives," Willow added, immediately sensing what Steve was up to and trying to add fuel to the fire.

  But Ethan Roberts wasn't giving them any more. "I always thought Jack went a little crazy after his brother died," he said, his politician's mask hiding every emotion except a kind of wry amusement. He gathered up the pictures and the card, and handed them back to Willow. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't tell you any more than you already seem to know."

  Steve shrugged, as if he'd expected that answer, and rose to his feet. "We knew it was a long shot," he said, stepping behind Willow's chair to pull it out for her. "A handful of pictures and a greeting card signed with the initial E aren't a whole hell of a lot to go on. Twenty-five years make for a long, cold trail. I told Willow that when she hired me."

  "I'm not giving up hope just yet," Willow said, taking a moment to tuck the card and pictures back into her purse before she, too, rose to her feet. "There's still that box of stuff Mr. Mueller gave Jack from apartment 1-G. There might be a letter or pictures or maybe even a journal of some sort in there. Jack did say his brother was a writer, remember," she said brightly, smiling up at Steve like the bird-brained bimbo he knew she wasn't. "And we haven't talked to Zeke Blackstone yet. He might know something that will help." She settled the strap of her purse over her right shoulder and held out her hand. "Thank you for your time, and for breakfast, Mr. Roberts," she said briskly. "I'm sorry if we inconvenienced or upset you in any way."

  "Not at all," Ethan said smoothly. "I'm only sorry I couldn't be of more help to you myself." He escorted them to the glass doors that opened onto the deck, stepping into the house ahead of them to tug on the embroidered bellpull that hung just inside the door. "Alma will see you out," he said, as the maid appeared in answer to his summons. "I have some calls to make."

  They followed the silent maid through the living room and across the foyer to the front door where Steve paused, turning to speak to her in soft, sibilant Spanish.

  The maid looked over her shoulder, toward the hallway where Ethan Roberts had disappeared, then turned back and answered Steve's question with a rapid flow of words.

  "Gracias, senora." Steve reached into his pocket and took out a business card, holding it out to her with another incomprehensible flow of Spanish.

  She hesitated for a moment, then snatched it out of his hand, speaking quietly as she slipped it—and the twenty-dollar bill he offered with it—into the pocket of her uniform.

  "What was that all about?" Willow asked, as they walked down the brick pathway to the car. "What did you say to her?"

  "I asked her how long she'd been with the family."

  "And?" she said, giving him an impatient glance as he handed her into the passenger seat.

  "Almost eight years." He shut the car door and went around to the driver's side, making her wait for the rest of it.

  "What else?" she demanded, turning to face him as he slid behind the wheel. "I know she said more than that."

  "Are you sure you want to know? It doesn't cast your potential papa in a very pretty light."

  She gave him a level look from under her brows. "I told you I'm not some fragile flower," she reminded him. "I want the truth. That's what I hired you for."

  "It seems Roberts' perfect little family isn't quite so perfect as it appears on the outside."

  Willow gave a small snort of disgust, letting him know she didn't need someone else to tell her that.

  Steve grinned. "You picked up on that, too, huh?"

  "It didn't take a bloodhound," she said dryly. "Or a high-priced P.I. A myopic poodle could have figured out that everything isn't what it appears to be around here." She shook her head. "Nothing's as perfect as all this appears to be."

  Steve's grin grew wider. "Damn, I like your style, sweetheart," he said. "Why don't you quit the accounting business and partner up with me? We made a damn good team in there." He cocked his head toward the house, silently indicating the way they'd instinctively played off each other in their questioning of Roberts. "I could turn you into an ace operative in no time."

  "Thanks," she said, pleased by his playful words of praise, "but I like the accounting business. And you're stalling. Answer my question. What else did Alma have to say?"

  "Well—" he put the car in gear and headed it down the winding driveway "—it seems that Alma Rodriguez was hired a few months after Roberts and his new wife got custody of his two boys. Joanna was pregnant with little Mary Catherine and, apparently, the boys were too much for her to handle, especially with the campaign, and all. Roberts ran for a seat in the California House of Representatives in '88," Steve told her. "Senora Rodriguez says the boys acted like they hated their father, and he didn't seem to care much for them, either. After the election was over, he shipped them off to a military academy on the East Coast. Apparently, he trots them out when the occasion calls for a show of family unity."

  "Then it's more than just extra window dressing for the public, isn't it? The whole thing is just one big lie. The house. The happy family. Everything." She was quiet for a minute, turning it around in her mind. "Which probably means that he was lying about my mother, too. Lying about his relationship with her. And about me."

  "We could call a halt to this right now," Steve said. "Just stop digging and let it drop."

  "No." Willow shook her head. "I've wondered about it for too many years already, telling myself that knowing wouldn't make any difference to my life, but wanting to know anyway. Needing to know." She shrugged. "Maybe knowing won't make any difference to how I feel about myself. Maybe it will make me feel better. Or worse. But good or bad, I have to know." She ran her hands down her thighs, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her skirt. "I want you to keep digging until you find out the truth."

  Chapter 8

  "So," Willow said as they finally exited Ethan Roberts' upscale neighborhood and merged into the east-bound traffic on San Vincente Boulevard. "What's our next step?"

  Steve slanted her a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Our next step?"

  "You did say we should be partners."

  "I was speaking facetiously."

  "What?" She turned in the seat, crossing her legs as she angled her body to face him. "You mean you were just leading me on?"

  "Don't start," he warned.

  Willow felt herself blush. "Sorry," she said, quickly shifting around to face the windshield again. "I wasn't thinking."

  "Look, I didn't mean... Oh, hell, don't be mad. I was just teasing you."

  "I'm not mad," Willow said. "I'm embarrassed."

  "Embarrassed? What the hell for?"

  "We went down this road last night, remember? I made a huge fool of myself in front of you once already. I'm not looking to do it again."

  "Gee, that's too bad," he said, giving her a teasing, sidelong look out of the corner of his eye. "I was looking forward to a repeat performance."

  "There isn't going to be any repeat performance," Willow mumbled.

  "Oh, yes, there is," he assured her. "You can count on it."

  There was such certainty in his voice, such absolute male arrogance in his tone, that Willow turned her head to look at him, her embarrassment all but forgotten. "God, you really think you're irresistible, don't you?"

  "To you, I am."

  Willow opened her mouth to refute his statement, then closed it when no words came out. There were no words to refute the truth.

  "If it's any comfort, it works both ways," he said. "All I've been able to think about for the last twenty-six hours and—" he glanced at the clock on the dashboard "—eighteen minutes is getting between your legs."

  Willow squeaked like a frightened Victorian virgin and instinctively clamped her knees together.

  Steve laughed softly, sexily, the sound brushing over Willow's nerve endings like warm fur over bare skin. "That isn't going to do you any good," he said, and reached over, running the blunt tip of one finger up the seam between her legs by feel a
lone, from knees to crotch, very lightly, barely skimming along the material of her dress. "See?" he said, when she gasped and drew in a shuddering breath.

  She slapped his hand away, a moment after she should have if she'd really meant it.

  He returned his hand to the steering wheel, grasping it tightly in order to keep from reaching over and sliding his hand under her skirt to repeat the caress.

  She stared at her lap and wondered what would happen if she reached over and did the same thing to him that he'd just done to her.

  He shifted in his seat as if she had.

  They rode in strained, breathless silence for several long miles, past the tall coral trees that shaded the center median of San Vincente Boulevard, and the huge red barn of a building that housed the Brentwood Country Mart, both of them trying to think of something to say that couldn't be construed as a sexual come-on. Both of them failed miserably because the only words that came to mind were ones that had to do with the wild feeling ricocheting back and forth between them.

  "I'm not going to say I'm sorry about this," Steve said, finally, staring straight out the windshield as he turned from San Vincente onto Wilshire, "because I'm not. Except for the timing, that is. The timing stinks. But as for the rest of it, well..." He shrugged, his broad shoulders moving uneasily under the material of his navy sport jacket. "I'm a man, you're a woman, and it is what it is," he said, not quite ready to put a name to exactly what that was. "We're just going to have to work around it for now."

  "Work around it how?" Willow wondered out loud.

  He dared a glance at her. "Were you serious about that offer to set up an accounting system for me?"

  "Sure." Willow nodded. "I'm always serious about money."

  "Then how about if I drop you off at my office so you can get started on it?"

  "While you do what?"

  "Routine stuff," he said. "I've got a few new questions for my buddy down at the LAPD. Then I want to talk to a couple of people I know who are plugged into the political scene in this town. Maybe stop by the morgue at the Times and catch up on my reading if there's time."

  "I could help you with that."

  Steve shook his head. "I'll get it done a lot faster without you, believe me. And not just because you won't be there to drive me crazy," he told her, "but because I know what to look for. You don't."

  Though she wanted to, Willow couldn't really argue with that. "Okay. Take me back to your office. I'll get started on that mess you call an accounting system."

  * * *

  Steve had cleaned up his office since yesterday morning and the computer and its various components had been unwrapped and were sitting, brand-new and untouched, on top of the desk next to the green account ledger and an accordion-pleated cardboard file jammed untidily full of invoices, receipts, and various miscellaneous bits of paper.

  As Willow took off her ivory jacket, hanging it on the back of one of the chairs in front of the desk, she noticed a large framed photograph sitting next to the telephone on the credenza. Intrigued by this unexpected glimpse into his private life, she circled the desk and picked it up for a closer look.

  The picture had been taken on a boat, with blue sky and a smooth white sail in the background. An older man and woman, presumably Steve's parents, stood side-by-side with their hands on the spoked wooden wheel. Steve stood behind his mother, a little to one side, with his cheek pressed to hers and her hand lifted, resting against the side of his face to hold him there. A young woman, somewhere in her mid-twenties and with a grin just enough like Steve's for Willow to safely assume she was his sister, had struck a similar pose next to their father. The older man's hand was raised, holding his daughter's blowing hair out of his face and obscuring his mouth, but Willow could tell, just by the twinkle in his eyes that was so like Steve's, that he was smiling. Steve's strong arms encompassed them all, one hand curved around his mother's biceps, the other reaching around behind them all to rest on top of his sister's hand where it lay on their father's shoulder. The pose looked completely unstudied, as if they had stopped whatever they'd been doing to mug for the camera. The very naturalness and the easy affection they all so obviously had for each other took Willow aback for a second.

  Her image of Steve Hart hadn't included a loving, affectionate family. Somehow, she'd formed the impression that he was a loner. Maybe it was his obvious air of independence, the sense of utter self-sufficiency he seemed to exude. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a private investigator that had given her the idea. The public imagination usually cast men—and women—of his profession as mavericks. Obviously, she was wrong. She put the picture down, giving it one last lingering look, and went to work on the computer.

  It took her less than thirty minutes to connect all the components and get them running. It took another fifteen to load the accounting software. How long it would take to make sense of his personal accounting system was another matter entirely. She stood up and stretched, telling herself she'd get busy on it in a minute or two, and started on a slow tour of the office.

  She began by taking a few experimental jabs at the punching bag hanging in the corner, curling her hand into a loose fist and striking at the smudged spots that showed where he habitually landed his blows. The surface was harder than she expected it to be, the bag not nearly as easy to move as she'd imaged. She put both hands against it and shoved. It moved a few inches at most before settling back into place.

  "Jeez," she muttered to herself, her tone admiring. "No wonder he has shoulders like Rocky Balboa."

  She inspected the coffeepot and the small store of supplies he kept to go with it—a can of ground coffee, paper filters, two plain ceramic mugs, both spanking clean, a small jar of powdered creamer and individual packets of real sugar—all neatly stacked in a large rectangular plastic box on top of one of the files.

  And then, finally, after telling herself she absolutely wouldn't, she started poking into unlocked desk drawers and snooping in his files. He had given her complete access to his financial records, she rationalized. And what could be more personal than that?

  But Steve Hart was a careful man. The only unlocked file drawer held folded towels and clean clothes—gym shorts, T-shirts, thick white socks, and a spandex jockstrap she spent a few heated minutes imagining him wearing. There was nothing incriminating in any of the desk drawers. No photographs of old girlfriends. No notes from rejected, love-starved clients. She found pens and pencils, paper clips, boxes of staples and rubber bands, quality white bond stationery with his name in black ink across the top and small three-by-five-inch notebooks all neatly stacked. All of which convinced her that the mess she'd seen—was it only yesterday morning?—had been some temporary aberration on his part, probably brought on by trying to make sense of his own accounting system. Contrary to his offhand remark about not being much of a housekeeper, the man was obviously as neat as the proverbial pin, as well as careful of his clients' privacy.

  She was just about to give up her haphazard search for clues into his life and personality and get back to work when she found his cache of condoms in the lower right-hand drawer.

  She felt a rushing tide of heat spread through her body, starting with her face and working downward over the suddenly aching tips of her breasts, curling through her belly to lie coiled and hungry, between her legs.

  She slammed the drawer shut and pressed both hands to her face, as if she could somehow hold back the emotions that flooded through her, and then reached down and opened the drawer again, cautiously, like a child irresistibly drawn to touch a tempting, forbidden treasure that she knew ahead of time was only going to get her into trouble.

  There were three boxes of thirty-six condoms each, assorted colors and textures, reservoir-tipped. One box was open, the top neatly torn off to allow easy access to the contents. It was half-empty.

  Back on the commune when she was growing up, her aunt Sharon had seen to it that each and every kid on the place got all the information he or she wo
uld ever need about sexual responsibility and the various methods of birth control, starting with a straightforward, no-nonsense talk about human reproduction the first time any one of them asked where babies came from.

  Carefully, with the tips of two fingers, Willow reached into the open box and pulled out one of the individually wrapped foil packets, automatically putting one of those lessons to good use. The packet was soft and supple in her fingers, indicating that it hadn't been sitting in the desk drawer for any great length of time.

  Not only was Steve Hart neat, careful, conscientious and a loving son and brother, he was also, judging by the evidence in her hands, a very busy boy when it came to the ladies.

  Willow wondered if that fact made her feel better or worse about the overwhelming attraction she felt for him. On the one hand, she didn't like the idea of being one of a crowd. On the other, there was undoubtedly a great deal to be said for a man who knew what he was doing in bed. And she had no doubt—none at all—that Steve Hart knew exactly what he was doing. In bed or out.

  The question was, did she?

  This insane attraction she felt toward him was something entirely outside of her experience. Oh, she'd had lovers. Two, to be exact. But the feelings they had evoked in her—even in the throes of what she'd obviously mistakenly thought was passion—were lukewarm compared to what Steve Hart made her feel just by looking at her with that teasing sideways glance of his.

  She had no idea where they were headed with this—except, it seemed, to bed—but she wanted to follow it to the end. The lure was as irresistible as it was unfathomable.

  With a soft heartfelt sigh, Willow dropped the foil packet back in the box and closed the drawer, determined to buckle down and make some sense of his ledger. Immersing herself in debits and credits, income and outgo, profits and losses was the best way she knew to get her mind off of anything that was bothering her.