Taste of Passion (Madaris Novels)

by Brenda Jackson

  She was about to ease out of bed when the phone rang. She scooted toward the edge of the bed and then leaned toward the nightstand and picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Standfield, this is Detective Adams. I received a call from Alex Maxwell yesterday with more information that he’d uncovered during his investigation. He flew in this morning and I think the three of us should meet as soon as possible to discuss these new findings.”

  Mackenzie raised a brow, wondering what information Alex had uncovered. “Okay. Is there a particular place you want us to meet?”

  “It’s Saturday morning, but we need somewhere private that’s close to the heart of town. Can we meet at your office?”

  “My office will be fine. I’ll meet you there in about an hour.”

  Chapter 25

  Less than an hour later Mackenzie was walking down the hall to her office with Luke by her side. Although she’d tried to encourage him to stay home and relax, he had insisted on coming with her.

  “What additional information do you think Alex was able to uncover, Mac?”

  She glanced over at Luke. He was looking at her intently and that look alone made flutters go off in her stomach so that she had to take a deep steadying breath before answering. When it came to masculine sexiness, the man was a world-class deliverer. After his shower he had changed into a pair of jeans and a blue chambray shirt along with his signature silver-buckled belt and leather boots. He looked rugged, all cowboy, handsome. “I’m not sure but I’m hoping he’s found out why Whitedyer was willing to pay so much for Mr. Coroni’s land, and also who was behind those incidents.”

  Once in her office Mackenzie opened the blinds but not before Luke pulled her into his arms for a kiss. The spontaneous kiss sent heat throbbing through all parts of her. “This isn’t how I envisioned we would spend our Saturday,” he said, against moist lips.

  She nodded. “I know, but just think, after this meeting we’ll have the rest of today and all day tomorrow.” He wasn’t scheduled to leave until Monday morning.

  “Yes, and I guess at some point we need to contact the family to tell them our good news,” Luke said, smiling. “For some reason I really don’t think they’ll be surprised.”

  He was about to pull her back into his arms for another kiss when he heard a knock at the front door of the building. “That’s probably Alex, Adams, or both.” He turned toward the door and then changed his mind for a second and returned to her. “It won’t kill them to wait for a few minutes,” he said, before pulling her into his arms again.

  Moments later Mackenzie turned from her office window to find Luke had escorted three men into her office instead of two. She recognized Alex and Detective Adams but didn’t know the third man. It was Alex who made introductions.

  “Mac, this is Larry Griffin and he works for the local FBI office here. I thought it would be best if he were included since he’s been my contact in retrieving a lot of the information I’ve acquired.”

  Mackenzie nodded as she crossed the room to shake hands with the three men, giving Alex both a handshake and a hug. “I made coffee for everyone,” she said, indicating the coffeepot sitting on a side table.

  After pouring a cup, Griffin, who’d literally been staring nonstop at Mackenzie since the moment he’d walked into her office, leaned back against a wall and sipped his coffee. Noting the man’s interest, Alex, who recalled just how territorial Luke was last weekend, decided to waylay any hope Griffin was harboring by saying, “Mac, I suppose that ring you’re wearing means you’re now officially taken,” Alex said, holding up Mac’s hand to check out her diamond ring.

  “Yes, she is,” Luke said proudly. He smiled over at her before returning his gaze to Alex. “Very much so.”

  Mackenzie watched as Alex gazed down at her hand. “Nice rock. Congratulations, you two. Has a date been set?”

  Luke chuckled. “No, just happened last night. We haven’t told the family yet.”

  Alex nodded, smiling. “Then they won’t hear it from me. But I’m sure you both know they have been expecting it.” He then said to Adams and Griffin, “Luke and I are related since I’m married to his cousin.”

  After everyone had gotten a cup of coffee and was seated around Mackenzie’s desk, Alex began talking. “It bothered me that Whitedyer would pay all that money for a piece of land, so I began doing a little more investigating,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “It was then that I discovered that another company Whitedyer does a lot of business with, Cunningham Electronics, is housed in Tulsa. Have you ever heard of them?” he asked Mackenzie.

  She shook her head. “No. Should I have?”

  Alex shook his head. “Not really, I just wasn’t sure if the name ever came up in your conversations with Farley. I found it interesting that a few years ago one of Cunningham’s top executives, Aaron Gerhard, went missing.”

  “Missing?” Luke asked, frowning.

  “Yes,” Griffin responded. “It was believed by some that after he’d embezzled a large sum of money from Cunningham, Gerhard left the country. Those close to him claimed he was innocent and there was no way he would have left the country without taking his wife and child. But everything we had to go on, including a plane ticket in his name, indicated that’s exactly what he’d done.”

  “But now you believe otherwise?” Mackenzie asked, trying to follow the man’s train of thought.

  “Yes. Personally, I never believed the embezzlement story. It was too pat. Granted, a large sum of money was tracked to a Swiss bank, but even that was too easy to trace. It seemed that someone had gone out of their way to make our job rather uncomplicated for us.”

  Griffin chuckled. “That was our first clue that something wasn’t right, but we didn’t have concrete proof of anything.”

  Alex then took up the tale. “From my investigation it seemed Cunningham and Whitedyer had had some backroom dealings with each other a few years ago. And last year a rumor began circulating that the two corporations were thinking about merging. That is one of the reasons the local officials were behind Whitedyer’s getting Coroni’s land. The promise of jobs was a sure boost to the local economy.”

  “And they could definitely make it happen now that they’ve acquired more land for expansion,” Luke said.

  “Yes,” Alex responded. “But that wouldn’t justify or explain the reason they were willing to pay so much for Mr. Coroni’s land, and why that particular tract when other property owners in the area who were willing to sell to them were getting turned down. That brings us back to the question of what made Mr. Coroni’s land so damn desirable.”

  Mackenzie’s gaze shifted between the three men. She saw the intense look in Alex’s eyes and knew he was on to something, so she decided to ask him the burning question. “Why do you think they wanted the land so badly, Alex?”

  Alex leaned forward in his chair. His expression was serious as he said, “I’m going to let Griffin answer that question because apparently there’s been an ongoing investigation right under our noses.”

  Mackenzie switched her gaze to Larry Griffin, whose expression was just as somber as Alex’s. “We have reason to believe that Aaron Gerhard’s body is buried somewhere on that land,” he said.

  “You believe the man was murdered?”

  It was Luke who asked the question. He was sitting on the edge of Mackenzie’s desk while the other three men sat in the wingchairs. He glanced over his shoulder at Mackenzie, saw the look of shocked horror on her face. He studied her for a moment longer before returning his attention to Griffin when the man resumed speaking.

  “I figured that’s what happened to Gerhard a while ago, but without a body there was nothing we could do to proceed in that direction. Marshall Cunningham Sr. had known connections to organized crime, but we could never find any link for the son, Cunningham Jr., who is presently the head honcho. But the more we looked for Gerhard, the more we figured his disappearance was another Jimmy Hoffa case in the making. It’s our understandi
ng that at the time Gerhard disappeared, Cunningham Electronics was working on something big, and very illegal.”

  “But what makes you think Gerhard didn’t embezzle money and leave the country?” Mackenzie asked.

  The three men exchanged glances and then Griffin said, “Because the night before he supposedly fled the country with a few millions of Cunningham’s funds, Gerhard had met with one of our men and had agreed to be one of our informers after we’d become suspicious about Cunningham Electronics’ activities. Unknown to us, they already had considered him a weak link and had set up his demise.”

  “But if you knew that much then why couldn’t you make arrests after Gerhard disappeared?” Luke asked.

  Griffin responded, “To do so would have blown our entire case and we would not have accomplished anything; especially since we didn’t have any proof to back up our assumptions. Cunningham had done an excellent job of making it appear that Gerhard was still alive somewhere outside the country and on the run.”

  He shook his head and said, “They went to the trouble of finding a double, someone they could pass off from time to time as Gerhard, but his wife knew the pictures she got occasionally were fakes and so did we. Unfortunately, when Gerhard went missing we did not know about Whitedyer’s connection to Cunningham. That information was recently discovered when news of a possible merger was released,” Griffin was saying. “Gerhard did tell us another company was involved at the time in whatever was going on, but he never identified the company. I’m leaning toward believing it was Whitedyer.”

  Mackenzie frowned. A few things didn’t make much sense and the attorney in her propelled her to ask, “Okay, let’s say your theory has merit. How will Whitedyer gain anything when construction begins? Once the bulldozers come in and start turning over soil, they run the risk of—”

  “There won’t be any construction going on in certain areas of that land,” Adams interjected. “I’d bet any amount of money on it. After reading over the FBI cold-case file, as well as the current information Alex has accumulated, I’m willing to bet Whitedyer was only interested in getting that land to make sure nobody else did. Oh, I believe they will do something with it, to satisfy the city’s requirement for eminent domain, but they intend to keep certain parts intact.”

  Mackenzie drew in a deep breath. But still . . .

  She glanced at the three men. They had thought this through. Clearly they had discussed the case in detail. “But if what the three of you are thinking is true, then it seems you’re back to square one. You can’t make a company dig in an area they don’t want to.”

  “Yes,” Alex agreed. “Unless there is just cause. First we will need to identify what area of the land Whitedyer wants to avoid and then get court orders to proceed with limited excavation. Before that’s granted, a judge might require us to have lab researchers test soil samples for human remains, but I’m willing to bet it can be done.”

  He smiled and added, “And if the judge is someone who happens to be on Cunningham’s or Whitedyer’s payroll then we’ll go to the governor. I happen to know that he’s a good friend of Jake’s, and if he’s presented with probable cause, he’ll give us the okay we need to move forward.”

  “There’s only one thing in all of this that doesn’t add up, though,” Griffin said as he looked over in Mackenzie’s direction. “The harassment against you, Ms. Standfield. If anything, it would have behooved Whitedyer not to ruffle any feathers, and especially not to do anything that would draw negative attention. For some reason I don’t think they would have risked it.”

  “And,” Detective Adams decided to add, “after talking to Farley I could tell the man was actually looking forward to facing off with you in the courtroom. In his mind he had imagined it as beauty-versus-the-beast, so I can’t see him deliberately doing anything to scare you off.”

  Luke raised a brow and glanced around at the three men’s faces. “If not Whitedyer, then who?”

  Adams shook his head and he looked a bit frustrated as he said, “That’s the only part of this puzzle we haven’t been able to figure out yet.”

  “We need to plan an engagement party, Lucas.”

  Luke grimaced as he glanced up at Mackenzie who was sitting on his lap while he talked to his mother on the telephone. “You don’t have to go to any trouble, Mom.”

  “No trouble at all. I’m just happy for you and Mackenzie. I can’t wait to tell everyone. Now put Mackenzie back on the line.”

  Luke quickly handed Mackenzie the phone. He’d planned to suggest to Mac that they fly off to Vegas one weekend to marry, but after talking to his mother he knew that wouldn’t be happening. His family would want a wedding. They would no doubt expect one.

  His hold tightened on Mackenzie as she leaned back in his arms while continuing to talk to his mother. He figured his mother was only the first in a line of Madaris women she’d be conversing with over the next few days. Regarding their wedding, he didn’t care how the deed was done as long as it happened in a timely manner. He did not want a long engagement.

  Something his mother said made Mac laugh and the sound of her laughter wrapped around his heart. She was happy, he could tell. He was beyond happy. He was exhilarated. The only damper was knowing that when he left her Monday, it would be another two weeks before he would see her again. The Reno rodeo was two weeks from this very weekend and he needed the time to prepare. She understood and said that she would be there in the stands with his family to cheer him on.

  “Yes, ma’am. Of course I won’t let Luke talk me into flying off to Vegas.”

  Mackenzie’s words reclaimed his attention and he couldn’t help but smile to hear that his mother had anticipated his thoughts. He had a feeling that while he was using the next two weeks to get in shape for his competition in Reno, the women in his family would start planning an engagement party and then the wedding.

  He thought about the meeting at her office. The issue of who had set out to harass Mac still bothered him. Although no further incidents had occurred, he still wanted the persons responsible found and dealt with. And he wouldn’t be completely satisfied until that happened.

  Later that night while she was still entwined in Luke’s arms after making love, Mackenzie’s heart rate had not slowed and sensations had yet to cease flowing through her. However, she found the willpower to shift her focus from the man sleeping beside her to the meeting that was held earlier that day in her office.

  What had started out as a case she’d taken on merely to help an elderly man retain rights to his land had now turned out to be a possible murder investigation, if Larry Griffin, Detective Adams, and Alex’s theories were right. And then they were still suspicious of Lamar Perkins’s role in what had gone down with Mr. Coroni. Detective Adams had confirmed that nothing had changed and they were still keeping an eye out for new developments there. And what role had Farley’s assistant played in any of this since she was secretly sleeping with Farley and Perkins? And from what Miller had said, the affairs with both men were still going on. Coroni had received his money so what motive did the woman have to continue her betrayal?

  Mackenzie suddenly sucked in a deep breath when she felt Luke’s hand begin making circles on her stomach, right below her navel. The way his fingers were lightly touching her skin had pressure forming in the area between her thighs, an area he had claimed a lot over the past twenty-four hours.

  She tilted her head back and her gaze collided with a set of dark, intense eyes. He drew her body closer to his as he continued to stroke her tummy. “You’re awake,” he said in a low, husky tone. The sound of his voice alone could arouse her from head to toe. She had grown accustomed to the sensuality the two of them seemed to generate.

  “So are you,” she said as her lips curved into a smile.

  “Yes, but you’re bothered by something. I can feel it,” he said.

  Mackenzie kept her gaze locked with Luke’s and thought, yes, he probably could since they were so attuned to each other.
So much in sync. “I was thinking about our meeting earlier,” she said. “A murder is a lot different than a fight for land rights. Different and a lot more serious. You’re talking about the taking of another person’s life. If what Griffin said is true and Cunningham and Whitedyer were into illegal activities a few years ago and Gerhard found out, I can’t help but wonder just how far they would go now to keep things a secret.”

  Luke shifted, pulling her closer in his arms while keeping their bodies entwined. “Some people are capable of doing just about anything. They’re just that greedy for power and money. I have a feeling that Alex, along with Adams and Griffin, will get to the bottom of it. But until they do, I intend to continue doing everything in my power to protect you and keep you safe.”

  Mackenzie raised a brow. “Protect me? Keep me safe?”

  “Yes. Hadn’t you noticed the extra men working for Jake around here?”

  She nodded. “Yes, he placed them here to keep an eye on his cattle.”

  He smiled. “Some of them are here for that reason. But I talked to Jake and made sure a number of them had expanded duties. They were to make sure you were safe and to make sure that whoever was up to no good with your mailbox, office, and Uncle Jake’s cattle didn’t decide to turn their antics personal and start messing with you.”

  Mackenzie swallowed, deeply touched. “And you were concerned about them doing that?” The look she saw in the depths of his eyes revealed more than possessiveness. There was an insurmountable degree of love that she could actually feel. He reached out and took hold of the hand that wore his ring.

  “Yes. I couldn’t eliminate the threat, but I could do whatever was in my power to protect you, which I did while giving Detective Adams time to pursue his investigation. In the meantime, Jake’s men were watching the place, protecting you in my absence,” he said.