by Karen Young
Elizabeth found herself smiling in sympathy. “Good luck.”
“I laid down the law, but I’m not fooling myself that they’ll resist temptation forever. Rick’s been raised right and he’s aware of the circumstances here. I think they’ll be okay until I get home.” Leaving the subject of his daughter, he regarded her with a look of concern. “I didn’t want to leave until Lindsay got here, Liz. She plans to stay the night. And even though Louie’s dead on his feet, he’s determined to stick like a burr, too.”
Elizabeth didn’t know what to object to first. That Lindsay was coming over? That she planned to stay? That Louie refused to go home? And Ryan. She couldn’t even find words to describe the role he had assumed. She blinked as he straightened, watched the overhead light strike his hawk-handsome features and turn him into someone she should have backed away from. Instead she had to stuff her hands into her pockets to keep from reaching for him. It was a bizarre reaction. It was because Gina was dead and overnight her world was changed. She’d never adjusted easily to change. “Lindsay’s coming here tonight? She’s staying?”
“She thinks you need sisterly support. And she’s right. And you know what else?” He straightened, then reached out and cupped her face in his hands. “You look like you need a hug.”
With a flash of intuition, she knew he wasn’t thinking about giving her a hug. He was going to kiss her. “Ryan—” She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from his or make a move that would tell him no.
“Yeah, I know. You never need anything. You’re used to handling whatever comes your way—good or bad—alone. Besides, you’ve got a million things that you think you have to do for Gina.” He was still smiling, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. “No doubt about it, Liz, you look like you could use a hug.” His voice was low, almost a caress. Her heart was fluttering. “But would you settle for a kiss?”
She tried again to say something, to keep him from doing what he planned. For some reason, she knew that to be kissed by Ryan would change everything. Oh, God, more change. She felt dizzy at the prospect. Or was Ryan himself the source of her dizziness?
It was barely a whisper of a kiss…at first. His lips settled on hers, a nonthreatening touch of his mouth to hers. He was not touching her anywhere else. There was just that sweet, gentle blending of their lips and his big hands framing her face, and yet holding her in place. And then she was aware that he moved in a little, crowding her oh, so gently against the edge of the counter. Still nonthreatening, but firm enough so that she felt him, warm and solid, from her breasts all the way to her knees. It had been a long, long time since she’d been in a situation like this. On her rare dates, she never allowed a man to get so close. She was so caught up in the wonder of it that she was hardly aware of his hands leaving her face, skimming down over her arms, then slipping around her, closing about her until she was fully embraced. There was something elemental and so right in finding herself held fast by this man.
And then the kiss was suddenly much more than a sweet melding of his lips with hers. The whole tenor of it changed. It became deep and searching. Wondrously thrilling. He explored her mouth the way he might have the taste of something he’d wanted a long time, and would take his time, not rush and have it all over too soon. Or was that her reaction? Whatever, Elizabeth allowed herself to sink into the magic, to simply feel the heat of it spread deliciously through her. She’d once known something like this kind of pleasure, she thought dimly, but it had never come so close to overwhelming her.
And then a sound intruded. It was several seconds before, out of the delirium of the kiss, she identified it as the front door. Voices.
She stopped. Or was it Ryan who stopped? She honestly didn’t know. Her hand went to her mouth and pressed hard as if to deny what had happened. She stared at him, dazed and shaken and appalled.
Seeing her face, Ryan reached to touch her. She must have looked shocked and unsteady on her feet. She certainly felt that way. “This isn’t happening,” she said shakily, catching his wrist and pushing it aside. “Gina—”
“Wouldn’t deny you the comfort of a kiss,” Ryan said, a rough edge in his voice. Had he been as caught off guard as she was? But he stepped back and allowed her to slip past him and out into the hall. If it felt like escape, she refused to admit it.
Their walk to the front of the house seemed a mile long. When they finally got there, Lindsay was in the foyer in conversation with Louie and the homicide detective who’d questioned Elizabeth at the hospital. “Hi, Liz. Ryan. You remember Shepherd Steele, don’t you? From Homicide?”
“Of course.” Resisting an impulse to put her hands to her burning cheeks, Elizabeth nodded politely, hoping her agitation didn’t show on her face. It didn’t help that Ryan remained close, his size and sheer presence a solid reminder of her insanity.
Ryan reached around Elizabeth to shake hands with the detective. “You’re putting in some long hours, aren’t you, detective?”
“He’s not on duty now,” Lindsay said. “We stopped at the pub to discuss the case and he insisted on driving me home.”
“Her car’s still at the hospital,” Steele said. “I’ll drive it over tomorrow morning and catch a ride back.”
“I told him I was perfectly capable of driving,” Lindsay complained with exasperation. “How many beers did we have?” she asked him.
“I had a couple,” Steele said with only a hint of a smile. “You, on the other hand—”
She laughed suddenly and gave him a light punch on the arm. “He was probably trying to drive up my blood alcohol so he’d have an excuse to find out where I live.” She shook a finger in his face. “I never, but never, reveal my address or my phone number.”
“Area code 281-555-7628.”
“Where did you get that?” Lindsay hit him again, still laughing. “Oh, I know. Probably from the same illegal source we’re gonna use to flush out Austin’s past relationships, huh?”
Grinning, Steele winked at Ryan. “She’ll be a great investigative journalist just as soon as she learns to put a lid on it or drink less.”
“What are you talking about, Lindsay?” Elizabeth asked.
“Nailing Austin,” Lindsay said, without missing a beat. Then she looked at Ryan. “No offense, Ryan, but I’d rather you didn’t hear the plan. I know he fired you, but you’re still in a delicate position, legally speaking. Not to be forgotten also is his father, Curtiss Leggett. He’s powerful in your law firm and if he suspects you have a hand in bringing Austin down, he could do you some real damage.”
“Thanks,” Ryan said dryly, “but I think I can survive whatever Curtiss and Austin may throw at me at LB and J.”
“If we’re successful, Austin won’t be at LB and J to throw anything, isn’t that right, Steele?”
“It depends.” Steele had a hand on the door, ready to leave. He hesitated, looking now at Elizabeth. “It’s damn difficult to get evidence in domestic violence cases, Ms. Walker. Women clam up, families retreat in denial, the courts won’t act, even some cops turn a blind eye. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to wake us up.”
“I’m aware of that,” Elizabeth said, “but it’s time that Austin was held accountable for his behavior.”
Lindsay was staring at Steele with an open mouth. “Wait a minute. Something about what you said sounds very personal.”
His brown eyes, teasing and friendly until now, were suddenly dark and unreadable. “I don’t think we got around to the personal stuff tonight, did we?” She was shaking her head mutely as he pulled the door open. “My sister was married to an abusive bastard. The signs were all there, but we were blind. Until fourteen months ago when he killed her.”
Gina’s funeral was held two days later. Ryan spotted Austin the moment he appeared in the door of the chapel, mostly because he’d been on the lookout. Liz had mentioned using the restraining order to keep him away, but Ryan had promised to keep an eye on him to see that he didn’t approach Jesse. Better to let him appear to pay his respects,
ignore him and hope he’d leave quietly. Common decency demanded that he attend the funeral of the woman he’d lived with for more than eight years and Ryan was convinced that Curtiss Leggett would have laid down the law, too, forcing Austin to show if for nothing more than to keep up appearances. There would be employees of LJ and B paying their respects to Gina and the law firm must appear to honor her memory. A huge spray of roses from the firm was placed near the registry book, not to be missed. Ryan felt disgust now watching Austin assume a somber expression as he stood looking over the crowd. Ryan noticed that he avoided glancing toward the flower-shrouded casket.
Searching for Liz, he found her across the room talking with one of Gina’s co-workers. Heading her way, he saw her eyes go wide with alarm as she spotted Austin. Her gaze flew to the other side of the room where Jesse sat with Jennifer. She ended her conversation and scanned the crowd, found Ryan and sent him a look of wordless appeal. He reached her in another dozen strides.
“Don’t worry,” he said, touching her arm. “I’m keeping an eye on him.”
She gave him a quick, concerned look. “Do you think he’ll try to get to Jesse?”
“He might try, but it won’t happen,” Ryan promised, his grim gaze following Austin as he worked the room. Liz was right to be concerned. In spite of his reassurances, he was worried that Austin would try to approach Jesse. He was a desperate man and as such Ryan considered him a danger to the little girl. If he’d had any doubt, it had been erased on the night Gina died.
He had driven home that night after leaving Liz in the care of Lindsay and Louie to find Jennifer in her pj’s ready for bed, talking on the phone to her mother in Dallas. He had stood outside her room listening as she told Diane about her role as Jesse’s nanny and described the household, including in her dialogue Louie, Archie, the dog, and even Liz. He was relieved to hear none of the usual bickering between them. He had smiled then, thinking his little girl was growing up….
Jennifer heard him at her door and told her mother to hold on. “Dad, can we drive to Dallas after all this is over and get Mocha? We could take Jesse. I don’t think Liz would mind.” She hesitated, then added craftily, “You could ask Liz to go, too.”
He went in and sat on the side of the bed, no longer surprised at Jen’s uncanny insight into his libido. As for her dog, he’d expected her to ask for Mocha before now. But the aging pet probably wouldn’t transplant to the rather confined quarters of the condominium. “Are you willing to take on the responsibility of exercising her and seeing that she’s taken outdoors to do her business?” He gave a tug on her hair. “She’s old, baby. She might not adjust as well as you.”
“We could ask Louie if she could stay with him. She’d be good company for Archie.”
“We’ll see.”
She sighed and said into the phone, “That means no, Mom. But I’m not giving up. Talk to you later.” She made a kissing sound and disconnected.
“That was Mom.”
He smiled. “I guessed that.” He pulled the comforter back and motioned for her to climb in. “How’s she doing?”
Jennifer made a face, plumping up her pillow. “She’s still dating that bald guy. His name is Gerald, can you believe that? It sounds so nerdy, doesn’t it? Actually, he is nerdy, but I guess she likes that. It’s light-years different from you.”
“You don’t see me as nerdy?” he asked, still smiling.
“You’re hot, Dad. Every woman who sees you goes nuts.”
“Hmm.”
“Mom was really dumb to let you get away.”
“Jen—”
“I know, I know. We don’t talk about how she got into an affair with Sam, who turned out to be a turd.”
He forced himself not to chuckle. “As opposed to a nerd?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.”
“But about Gerald, he’s really old, Dad. She just told me, he’s forty-five!”
“Whoa, that ancient, huh?”
“Well, it’s a lot older than you. What does she see in him, I wonder?”
Ryan knew exactly the appeal of Gerald Winthrop from Diane’s point of view. He was wealthy, besotted with her, semiretired so that he had time to lavish on her and did not want her to have his child. Ryan had been forced to listen as she’d gushed about Gerald a couple of days ago when she’d called for an update on Jennifer. But telling Jennifer exactly what Diane saw in her next husband wasn’t an option. “He seems a nice man and I’m sure they have a lot in common.”
Again, she made a face. “I just hope they don’t want me to come live with them if they get married.”
He hoped the same thing. He’d found he liked having Jennifer around. It was just a few short years until she’d be in college and then she’d be gone forever. He planned to make the most of the time he had with her while she still thought he was cool. Or un-nerdy. “So, how are you and Jesse hitting it off?”
“She’s a real sweet little girl, but she’s got some majorly big problems, Dad.” Jennifer sat up, punched at her pillow and shoved it against the headboard. “She does not talk at all since the accident. Isn’t that weird? Because that first afternoon when we met and had cookies and all, she was a little chatterbox. She talked my ear off. Now—” Jennifer shook her head, looking troubled “—not a sound.”
“Liz is concerned, too. Hopefully, it’s a temporary thing.”
“Like I said, it’s weird.” Jennifer wrapped her arms around her knees. “You know what I think, Dad? I think she’s scared.”
“Do you have any real basis for thinking that?”
“Well, all it takes to make her eyes go big and round and scary is to mention her scummy dad.”
Ryan winced. “Jen. Describing someone as scummy is about as low as you can get.” It was one thing for him to see Austin as he was, but to hear Jen express the raw truth was uncomfortable. It seemed that her perception of other people didn’t end with her own dad. He didn’t know whether to be impressed or alarmed.
“Get over it, Dad. Scummy’s the right word. I think it describes him perfectly. You remember I told you Jesse used to talk about her dad scaring her mom and she’d hide under the bed listening to the yelling and screaming and who knows what all else. Then her mom would cry. Well, in all the time I’ve spent with Jesse, she’s never mentioned her dad wanting to be with her. Now, ever since the accident, this guy’s nagging everybody to see his little girl. Well, get real, for heaven sake.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a lie, Dad. I mean, he wants to see her, all right, but it’s not for love of Jesse. It’s because she knows something about that accident and he doesn’t want her telling.”
“How do you know this, Jen? Or is it just something you’re theorizing?”
“Oh, Dad, quit sounding like a lawyer again!” Jennifer ticked off points on her fingers. “One, Austin is hell-bent to talk to Jesse when he’s always ignored her. Weird! Two, Jesse acts scared. She gets paranoid over stuff like telephone calls. Or when the doorbell rings. Like, she’ll run to the bathroom and lock herself in. Me and Louie have to talk her out of there and it’s not easy, trust me. And third, she drew a picture and wow, it was something else!”
“What kind of picture?” Ryan asked.
“Well, it was pretty crude, like she’s not much of an artist at five years old, but you could tell she was drawing two cars on a road and you could tell it was night, too. When I asked her who they were, she said her mom and dad.”
“I thought you said she doesn’t talk anymore.”
“She doesn’t. I ask questions like, ‘Who’s in this car, your mom? Your dad? Is this the night of the accident?’ and she’ll nod her head. Or shake it if the answer’s no. But what made the picture scary was that she scribbled all over it with black crayon. You could tell the whole thing was…well, scary. Whatever she was drawing in that picture, it was not a sunshiny message, Dad. It was mean stuff. I’m even thinking, like dangerous stuff.”
Ryan rubbed his face with both hands. He hadn’t ant
icipated that having Jennifer baby-sit Jesse might expose her to the chilling prospect of a father who posed a threat to his child. “Did you keep the picture?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.” Jennifer scrambled out of bed and took her backpack out of the closet. Rummaging around in it, she finally produced a wrinkled sheet of Jesse’s art. Ryan was no child psychologist, but one look told him his daughter had not overreacted. He could see terror in Jesse’s childish rendition of that last ride with Austin and Gina. It was unsettling that Jennifer came to the same conclusion as Liz and Lindsay. Jesse was the only eye-witness to the accident. What if she did, indeed, know something that was damaging to Austin? And if Austin somehow managed to gain access to Jesse, what would he do? And was there any danger to Jennifer while she was taking care of Jesse? Would he harm Liz if she put up a struggle, which she was bound to do?
“What is it? What’s wrong, Ryan?” Liz’s hand was on his arm and she was looking up at him with concern.
He covered her hand with his own and managed a smile. “I hate funerals.”
“Don’t we all,” she said. Then he felt her fingers clench on his arm. “Look, Ryan, he’s moving toward the girls.”
Austin was moving amiably across the room, but was steadily closing the distance between himself and Jesse and Jennifer. At the moment, both were oblivious to the mourners and guests paying their respects to Gina. Jennifer had given Jesse a new Barbie doll and both were intent on dressing it. Austin, without making his true intent obvious, paused here and there to receive words of sympathy from people who knew of his relationship with Gina and assumed he was saddened by her death. Liz guessed his purpose and headed quickly toward the children while Ryan moved in an oblique line to intercept him. But just before Liz reached Jesse, she looked up and saw Austin.
The sound of her scream, high-pitched with terror, startled everyone. The somber atmosphere in the room splintered like glass shattering on stone. The shocked crowd stared as Jesse scrambled off the couch, strewing tiny Barbie accessories everywhere, searching frantically for Elizabeth.