Deadly Valentine

by Davis, Justine; Davis, Justine

  The first thing she noticed was that, halfway around the world in the U.K., Angus Kincaid wasn’t a rare name. But a quick scan of the offered links showed nothing particularly helpful, nothing she could even pin down as being related to her Angus Kincaid.

  Oh, please, she thought. He’s not yours. He was playing a part because he had to. It’s not his fault you lit up like a Christmas tree every time he touched you.

  She shut the browser and went back to work. Until the next time she weakened and went searching again.

  For the next week, she spent far too much time having to push the images out of her mind. She tried to work, but had problems finding her usual efficient focus. More than once she found herself digging more, working her way through those weblinks she’d found. Occasionally—but only occasionally—she spotted something. Never anything she could say with one hundred percent certainty was related to him, but possibilities. A post on a suicide hotline forum, about a man named Kincaid who had helped someone find out why their brother had done it. A blog entry about a man named Kincaid who had found a runaway child when the police hadn’t been able to. There weren’t many, and one indicated his desire to remain anonymous, which might explain the dearth of references.

  And when she finally turned away from the seemingly fruitless task, she was always startled to realize how long she’d been digging. She had to snap out of this. Had to put him out of her mind and get back to work. Even her boss’s prodigious patience could run out if she kept on like this.

  J.W. was pushing her to see a counselor after her terrifying experience, but she kept putting him off. The last thing she wanted to do was face some stranger and maybe end up letting slip that she’d done the stupidest possible thing, and genuinely fallen for her white knight. One who had walked away without a backward glance, once the crisis was over.

  Maybe she just needed to see him, talk to him. Maybe now, when she wasn’t scared or in danger, she’d see that that was all it had been. Because of the situation, he’d become this heroic being in her mind, maybe she just needed to see him in reality, in everyday circumstances. Maybe without the fear-spiked adrenaline flooding her system she’d see him more clearly, realize her reaction to him had been disproportionate, and due to the circumstances.

  Maybe.

  Would he even talk to her? He hadn’t even said goodbye, hadn’t called to see how she was doing, hadn’t even asked about her through J.W., because she knew her boss would have said something, he was so worried about her.

  All right, so maybe she should call him. Ask him to meet with her, promise him it would be short, that she just needed…what? Closure? She hated the psychobabble word, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

  J.W. would give her his number, she was sure he would. Maybe just talking to him on the phone would do it, she thought, brightening. He’ll just be brisk and impersonal, kind but uninvolved, and she’d finally be able to put this all behind her and get back to her life.

  That was it. She’d talk to him, and just his demeanor, which would be professional and nothing more, would help her yank herself back to reality. She would—

  “Ms. Burke.”

  The voice came from her right and behind. She spun around in her chair, startled. And in the doorway to her boss’s office stood the man who had been tormenting her thoughts for days on end.

  Chapter 13

  T aylor wondered inanely if anybody in the office had even recognized him. Because this was the real Angus Kincaid, the one only she and, she guessed, J.W. had seen.

  Dressed in a gray pair of khaki-style pants and a matching ribbed sweater, any resemblance to the disguise he’d adopted here was long gone, as was the awkward demeanor. This man exuded a quiet, steady sort of confidence, a quick intelligence and a barely leashed energy that made her wonder how she hadn’t seen it before, no matter how well concealed.

  He shut the door behind him and walked slowly into her office, a cup from J.W.’s coffee set up in his hand. She marveled anew at how he moved differently, the smooth, controlled motion diametrically opposed to the jerky, fumbling movements of the office drone.

  As he crossed her office she stood up, not sure why, but wanting to be on her feet.

  To run? she chided herself, acknowledging the irony of the urge to flee after spending a week wishing she could see him.

  Her usually quick and agile mind floundered, and when he came to a halt a bare three feet away and just looked at her, she blurted out the first stupid thing she could find words for.

  “Plain coffee?”

  He got there instantly. “All I drink, contrary to…appearances.”

  So it had been affectation, the fancy drinks.

  “Do your friends really just call you Kincaid?” She nearly groaned inwardly. Nice non sequitur, Burke. So what’s the third stupid thing you’re going to say?

  He didn’t give her the look she deserved. “Mostly,” he said. “Only the closest call me Kin.”

  “Who calls you Angus?”

  “No one who wants to call again,” he said dryly.

  The wry humor unknotted the tension inside her a bit.

  “I— It’s good to see you,” she said, wondering if she was doomed to complete inanity around this man.

  “You look good,” he said, and it took everything she had to make herself believe the unspoken addendum was “after what you’ve been through,” rather than “I missed you.”

  “So do you,” she said, keeping her tone neutral with a tremendous effort, and striving for some kind of normal conversation. “If I didn’t know, I doubt I’d recognize you, now.”

  “Give people something predictable to focus on, and they often miss the rest.”

  “I always thought there was more to you than what I saw, but everything I heard and found out supported your…cover. I decided I must be wrong.”

  “John told me you seemed…disappointed when he gave you the story we’d concocted.” A new undertone had come into his voice, as if he were pleased that, even slightly, she’d seen more than anyone else.

  “I was. But you played it so perfectly…”

  “I’ve gotten pretty good at it, over the years.”

  “I noticed.” She gave herself a mental shake. “I should thank you for what you did. For helping us.”

  “John already has.”

  “And paid you?” she asked. “Do I need to cut a check?” She wondered how much you paid a man for doing what he’d done.

  “He already made a nice donation to a private charity I selected. That’s what I charge people.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “I don’t need the money.”

  “So J.W. said. But you do this for nothing?”

  “Not for nothing. Some things offend my sense of order, and need to be set right. And I only take cases that move me to that.”

  Damn.

  She had hoped seeing him again would help her get over this silly infatuation. Instead, he’d shown up and made himself even more appealing. He truly was some sort of white knight, riding to the rescue.

  And then riding off into the sunset, she reminded herself.

  “John tells me you’re efficient, practical and that you don’t beat around the bush,” he said.

  She stared at him. Not about the assessment, which she supposed was accurate, but at the fact that he’d been discussing her at all.

  “True?” he asked.

  His gaze was fixed on her steadily, and she remembered for a moment that sense of shock when she’d seen his eyes for the first time, without the heavy glasses. They really were an incredible blue, she thought.

  “I suppose,” she said, suddenly realizing he was waiting for an answer.

  “Then I’ll be direct.”

  He paused, and she saw him suck in a breath. He looked almost…nervous, she thought, although her common sense—something that had seemed strangely absent in the past few days—told her that was unlikely.

  “I’ve spent the last week w
orking harder than I have in a long time,” he finally said. “And I haven’t gotten anywhere. I keep backsliding, and no matter how much I try, I can’t seem to break free.”

  “Free of what?”

  He took another deep breath. Kept his gaze fastened on her, saying bluntly, “You.”

  Taylor nearly gasped aloud.

  “I’ve told myself it was just situational. Adrenaline and all that. Then I told myself that I just admired you for how you defended John, how you stood up to Sanders. All of which is true.”

  Taylor opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again when she realized she had no idea what to say.

  “Then,” he said, his voice changing, taking on that husky note she’d heard when he’d been setting her blood boiling, “I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t what it had felt like, that kissing you, touching you hadn’t really been the most incredibly, impossibly, searingly hot thing that I’d ever done.”

  The memories nearly swamped her, and this time she did gasp aloud, she couldn’t help herself. But any coherent words seemed beyond her, and she could only gape at him.

  “And when I asked you to play along in that little scene, I never expected it to practically take the top of my head off when you did. You just touched me and I…”

  For the first time since he’d come in, he looked away. Lowered his gaze from her face, as if he didn’t want to see it when he said his next words. That in itself amazed her anew; she doubted he went out of his way to avoid much of anything.

  “Then I told myself if you…had any interest, you’d let me know.”

  Taylor was stunned at what she was hearing. That he’d spent the past week in the same confusion that she had. A million words rose to her lips, but she still couldn’t seem to get any of them out.

  “Then I told myself I’d get over it, if I just stayed away.”

  Taylor finally found her voice. “It didn’t work for me,” she said softly.

  His gaze shot back to her face. “Taylor?”

  She put everything she thought into the look she gave him, everything she felt into the smile. And when she spoke, she let it all pour into her voice.

  “Elf will do,” she said. “I’ve decided that from the right person, I rather like it.”

  He crossed the distance between them in a stride that was almost a leap. He grabbed her shoulders, held them with that strength she remembered, that had been so startling then.

  “You mean it?”

  “In addition all those other sterling qualities John mentioned,” she said with a self-deprecating smile, “I also have a tendency to say what I mean and mean what I say.”

  “Hallelujah,” he said, pulling her into the embrace she’d wanted since the moment he’d appeared.

  She resisted the urge to say, “Amen.”

  And then, looking down at her intently, his voice quiet, he asked, “You felt it, too? You weren’t just…playing along?”

  She smiled rather wryly. “I’ve spent the past week trying to convince myself that’s what you’d been doing.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said. “I never expected…what happened.” His mouth quirked. “How could I, when I’ve never felt anything like it before?”

  She reached up then, brushed his cheek as she had that day. And as he had that day, he turned his head and kissed her fingers. And as it had that day, it sent a shiver through her that was deliciously hot and cold at the same time.

  “I never knew anything like that was even possible,” she said. “And no matter how often I told myself I was only reacting so strongly because you were saving me, it didn’t matter.”

  He drew back, grinned at her; it took her breath away. “Saving you? As I recall, you’re the one who gave Sanders a concussion with that laptop.”

  “I should have hit his foul mouth, not his nose.”

  He laughed. She loved the sound of it.

  He loosened his arms, but didn’t let go. “I ruined your Valentine’s Day,” he said.

  She drew back slightly. “That reminds me. That card. How did you know how I feel about that?”

  “John told me.”

  The simplest of explanations were often true, she thought. She smiled. “It was hardly ruined, considering.”

  One day, she thought, maybe she’d tell him how often she’d read and reread that card he’d given her.

  “Let me make up for it.”

  “All right,” she said simply.

  She didn’t know if he’d expected to have to coax her or persuade her, but his smile was instant and warm. And then, with slow, gentle care, he kissed her.

  She’d almost been dreading the moment, afraid that what had flashed unexpectedly to life between them in their dangerous ordeal had been born only of those moments. The first touch of his mouth on hers shattered her fears into dust; the fire leaped to life as if it had never been banked.

  When he finally broke away, she felt so wobbly she had to lean against him.

  “Proof?” he whispered.

  “Conclusive, Kincaid,” she agreed.

  He chuckled. “You’d better start calling me Kin now. Save time.”

  Only the closest call me Kin.

  “What if I want to call you Angus?” she teased.

  He winced, then sighed. “Then I’ll answer. An exception I wouldn’t make for anyone else.”

  The admission told her everything she wanted to know.

  And Taylor Burke realized that perhaps, just perhaps, she didn’t loathe Valentine’s Day after all.

  THE FEBRUARY 14TH SECRET

  Cindy Dees

  This book is dedicated to everyone who thinks love will never happen to them. Love yourself, love life, and remember love may be waiting just around the corner for you. From my heart to yours, Happy Valentine’s Day.

  Chapter 1

  T he Valentine’s Day card—from a dead man—slipped out of Layla’s numb fingers and fluttered to the floor. No. It couldn’t be. Peter had been gone for months. She’d been to his open-casket funeral in their hometown, Sturgeon’s Corners, Oregon. In fact, his funeral was just about the only thing on earth that could drag her back to that god-forsaken place.

  Peter. Was. Dead.

  And yet…

  She bent over and picked up the card, touching it reluctantly, as if it might bite her at any moment. She opened it and read the message again in the familiar and distinctive spiky handwriting.

  Happy V-Day, Lulu,

  You up for our annual feeling-sorry-for-us dinner? Let’s do it up big—The Pleasant Peasant, seven o’clock, on Valentine’s Day weekend—Friday night. Lots of annoyingly content couples to hex. We’ve got a lot to talk about.

  Love, P.

  It had to be him. No one in the world but Peter called her Lulu. And who else would know about their annual Valentine’s tradition of going to the most romantic restaurant they could find and jokingly cursing all the blissfully romantic couples around them to have miserable love lives? A chill crawled up her spine. How could a dead man invite her to dinner?

  Layla looked around the funky San Francisco restaurant nervously. Despite its carefully eclectic decor and elegantly vegetarian menu, The Pleasant Peasant was still a hippie joint at heart. The waiters wore tie-dye T-shirts and long hair pulled back into ponytails. Bongs sat on high shelves around the room, and photographs of peace protests, love-ins and Woodstock lined the walls. This had always been Peter’s favorite restaurant in the Bay area. She hadn’t been back here since he’d gone missing last year at right about this time, in fact, in some tiny central Asian country. Something-i-stan.

  Who was she about to face now? She’d considered every possibility, from Peter having elaborately faked his death, to him returning from the dead as a vampire. Perhaps in his supersecret research for the U.S. government, he had learned how to temporarily suspend life.

  “May I refill your glass?” a waiter asked, startling her badly.

  “Uh, sure,” she mumbled.

  The waiter poured her
a bloodred pomegranate cocktail. She hoped the gruesome-looking drink wasn’t prophetic of things to come. Her watch said it was almost seven o’clock. She had a weird premonition something life-changing was about to happen. Her heart started to pound and her body felt hot and feverish.

  Trying not to stare at the entrance, she nonetheless gaped when the unlikeliest possible person stepped inside. People here would call him “The Man.” And they wouldn’t mean it as a compliment. The patron looked like a soldier who’d tried completely unsuccessfully to disguise himself as a civilian. His hair was dark and short, his spine rigid, his bearing distinctly military. Even his tie looked uptight, all stiff and perfectly knotted. He must have lost a bet to have wound up in this place, which catered to the Haight-Ashbury district’s most liberal elements.

  The misfit was tall and muscular beneath that suit. Not her type, but seriously built in spite of the whole Dragnet cop impersonation. With a little more hair and a whole lot less spit and polish, she might even consider photographing him. She looked away as the stranger’s piercing gaze roamed across the restaurant.

  A moment later, a voice spoke quietly beside her. “Layla?”

  Her heart in her throat, she looked up and froze. The tall, dark, military man loomed over her. Who was this guy? And how did he know her name?

  “I’m Colt McQuade. Peter sent me.”

  Peter? Was he alive? What had the military done with him? She leaped to her feet, her heart racing in staccato panic. “How?” she demanded. “Who are you? Where’s Peter? What has happened to him?” Other patrons stared as she asked rapid-fire tense questions at the big man.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” McQuade suggested carefully, his voice obviously pitched to soothe the crazy woman. “I’ll explain over dinner.”

  She settled into her chair warily as the man took the seat opposite her at the tiny table. He was too rugged for a movie star but had a hint of old Hollywood glamour to him. He’d look good on black-and-white film. Use of shadows would be important in the photograph composition to catch the hard angles of his face and cold, intelligent calculation in his clear brown eyes.