It Had to Be You

by Delynn Royer

  That was the choice she’d made when she’d gone to Johnny.

  Sean forced his thoughts back to the present where Nell’s plump breasts and slim flanks were still as nubile as he remembered. It was evident that she had spent time in a warm climate recently. There were clear lines between where the sun had baked her skin to a deep golden hue and where it had not.

  He’d asked her the previous night about her travels and she told him about a beach house Johnny owned in Miami. That was where she went most often in the winter, though she also traveled to Paris, London and the Bahamas. Her answer gelled with what he’d seen in her passport.

  He watched her now as she donned frilly silk undergarments—this woman, so beautiful and so manipulative. He had to remind himself that she was not the same girl he’d known. She’d changed. They both had. What did she want from him now? Not just sex. He suspected now that sex might have always been a means to an end for her.

  Comfort?

  A safe place?

  She wanted him to walk away from this case. Why? For his own good? Or did she have other reasons for wanting to distract him?

  She slid him a sidewise glance as she put on her stockings. “You had your chance, Sean. Close your mouth.”

  He closed his mouth.

  Always... So simple a word but packed with meaning. He’d been young and foolish when he’d had that word engraved on the inside of an engagement ring. What had she done with it? Thrown it away? Pawned it? Or kept it somewhere, concealed away in a box in some dark closet?

  Sean turned away. Nell had always known how to seduce a man, but that would never be the whole picture with her.

  “Fool me once,” he said under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” But being fooled once was enough. Enough to remind him why he’d spent the night on the couch. He went to take a cold shower.

  * * *

  It was almost nine-thirty by the time Sean dropped Nell off on the West Side and then pulled up in front of Trixie’s rooming house. By now, he would be in hot water at headquarters. Not only had he failed to bring Nell in for questioning, he’d also missed that morning’s briefing, leaving only a terse message for Carter that he was following a new lead.

  As he closed the driver’s door behind him, he cast a glance up and down the busy residential street. Men and women and children, many dressed in their Sunday best, strolled along the wide avenue. In the distance, church bells rang over the occasional rumble of cars in the street. None of the vehicles parked along the curb were occupied, but that meant little. If Carter still had a man here, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to blend in on this bright Sunday morning.

  The front door was unlocked but not unguarded. Twinkles ratted him out and he was obliged to talk his way past Trixie’s steely-eyed landlady.

  “Ongoing case,” he said, flashing his badge.

  “Case, schmace,” she said. “Do I look like I was born yesterday?” But she waved him through.

  He took the stairs by twos. Before he could knock on Trixie’s door, there came from inside a shout followed by the thumps and pounds of a physical struggle. Instinctively, he pulled his revolver.

  Was it possible that someone other than Carter’s men had been watching? Johnny’s killers would have good reason to want to find Danny O’Roarke, and they wouldn’t blink at eliminating one inconvenient girl reporter if she got in their way.

  The door was unlocked. Sean shoved it open, heart pumping, tensed for a confrontation.

  The situation he found, however, was not the one he dreaded. It was not Trixie and the boy struggling against an assailant, but evidence of a different sort of struggle. A chair had been overturned, a lamp lay on the floor, and spilled milk dripped from the kitchen table. More shouts and thumps came from the bedroom.

  “Why are you being such a ’fraidy cat?”

  “I ain’t no ’fraidy cat!”

  “It’s just water!”

  “I ain’t taking no bath!”

  Sean swore under his breath, holstered his gun, then closed the door behind him. He followed all the racket to stand in the bedroom archway, blocking their exit. Not that it mattered. It was the wrong exit.

  Danny had pushed up the window sash and was scrambling for the fire escape. He was almost clear except that Trixie had latched onto one of his flailing legs. After the scare they’d just given him, Sean would have been glad to let them both tip out the window if one of them wasn’t a possible eyewitness.

  “Hey! Knock it off.” His bark had the intended effect. The pair froze long enough for Sean to cross the room, grasp the kid by his free leg and haul him back inside. No sooner was the kid on his feet again than he launched a compelling man-to-man appeal.

  “She’s tryin’ to wash me.”

  He made the word “wash” sound like “murder.”

  “He smells like a garbage pail,” Trixie countered.

  Despite her fluster, she looked beautiful, casually attired in trousers and with her curls bobby-pinned back from her face. He hadn’t been sure until that moment if he cared for the idea of women in trousers. He decided now that he did. Very much.

  Trixie frowned at him. “Say, what are you staring at?”

  “Huh? Nothing.” But that was a bald-faced lie. He was thinking that Trixie’s bright young allure was different from Nell’s exotic charm, but, in its own way, no less tempting. His gaze dropped to her mouth before he caught himself and looked away.

  Hell, he needed to get more sleep. What did he think? After this case was wrapped, he could take her out sometime? Where would he take her? Some fancy French restaurant he couldn’t afford? Boating?

  Lucky for him, the kid was putting up a noisy argument. It was as good a distraction as any.

  “I ain’t takin’ my drawers off in front of no dame!”

  Sean looked at him wearily. “You may change your position on that someday, pal, but for now, you’re in luck because I ain’t no dame.”

  Danny looked suspicious. “Who are ya anyhow?”

  “A friend.”

  Danny seemed hesitant, then he glimpsed the shoulder holster beneath Sean’s open coat and his eyes widened. “Cop!” He struggled to pull away. “Hail Mary...full of grace... Holy Mary Mother of God... Hail Mary...”

  Sean wasn’t sure how the Blessed Virgin came into this, but he suspected that Danny’s fractured recitation of her prayer attested to how dire he considered his predicament.

  Sean firmed up his grip on the boy’s arm and dropped to his haunches to look him in the eye. “Danny, listen to me. I said I’m a friend and I meant it. I don’t go after kids. I don’t send them to orphanages and I don’t arrest them. I only arrest criminals, grown men, robbers and killers. You understand?”

  Danny did not seem to understand and so Sean calmly repeated himself. Once and again and then a third and fourth time.

  * * *

  Trixie stood back, one hand over her mouth, aghast at the child’s fear, as Sean’s litany finally appeared to work. The boy eventually calmed and the panic in his eyes began to subside.

  “No orphanages?” Danny repeated.

  “No.”

  “What about churches?”

  “No churches either.”

  Danny’s frown was fierce. “And that means no priests and no nuns and no schools.”

  Sean gave Trixie a half-amused side glance that nearly melted her heart. “Okay, kid. For today at least, you got my word. No priests, no nuns and no schools. Anything else?”

  Danny’s frown remained but he said nothing.

  Sean rose to his feet. “I’m gonna let go of you now. You won’t scram on me, will you?”

  “Nah.”

  Sean released him and signaled to Trixie to close the window. “So how about t
hat bath?”

  Danny grimaced but the fight in him seemed quashed.

  “Okay, pal.” Sean steered him toward the bathroom. “Let’s do this fast and clean. In and out and no one but the fleas get hurt.”

  Trixie sighed as the door squeaked closed behind them. She busied herself for the next few minutes tidying up the living room and wiping up spilled milk. She heard no more commotion.

  Just as she was wringing out the washrag she’d used to clean the table, she heard the bathroom door open and shut and then Sean appeared. Now that the excitement had died down, she noticed that he looked tired. There were shadows beneath his eyes.

  “Did you get behind his ears? What’s he doing now?” she asked.

  “Relax. I told him there’s a quarter in it if he gets one layer of grime off. That’ll take some time and elbow grease. How’d you find him, anyhow?”

  “I didn’t. He found me. When I got home, he was with Mrs. Liebowitz. He followed me home from the office the other night and then took the train again yesterday morning to show up here. Only I wasn’t home, I was out with you, traipsing all over Gotham looking for him. He told Mrs. L that he’s my nephew.”

  “Why didn’t he just show up at your office like you asked?”

  “He said he saw a guy outside the Examiner offices that scared him. I think he believes it was the same man who killed John Murphy.”

  “Wait.” Sean raised a hand. “Are you saying he told you for sure that he actually saw Murphy’s killer?”

  In the light of day and in the face of Sean’s scrutiny, Trixie wasn’t entirely sure. It was possible she’d misunderstood Danny. “Look, I can’t say for certain. That’s what it sounded like, but he clammed up and—”

  She stopped, taking notice for the first time that Sean hadn’t removed his coat. It was now splashed with bath water. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, you’re soaked. Let me take that.”

  He removed his coat along with his hat and gave them to her. “I’ll have to question him.”

  “I know. Just be gentle. He’s not as tough as he pretends to be.” Trixie moved to hang Sean’s coat on a rack by the door, then paused. What was that smell?

  “Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with kids before.”

  “I noticed. You did a swell job with him in there.” Trixie sniffed, trying to identify the familiar floral scent. It was perfume. When she moved away from the coat rack, the scent faded.

  Trixie was midway across the room when it hit her. Jasmine. Fleurs de Paris. She felt a hot flush of indignation and glared at Sean.

  Sean looked back at her blankly. “What?”

  “You’ve been with her.”

  “Who?”

  “What do you mean, ‘who?’ Her! That’s who. You smell like a cheap flower factory.”

  He still looked puzzled. “You mean, Nell?”

  “Of course I mean Nell!” She had to get control of herself, but it wasn’t so easy. She didn’t understand this new and inexplicable roil of emotions. “She’s poison. She’s bad for you. How can you be so stupid?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Trixie opened her mouth and then shut it again before she could blurt too much. She couldn’t let on that Joey Mack had told her about Sean’s past with Nell, but neither could she let it go.

  She knew all too well about women like Nell Murphy, women whose devious natures were clear to other women but maddeningly invisible to the men who were unable to resist them. Hadn’t she experienced her own grief at the hands of just such a woman, a woman she’d called a friend until the night Trixie had found her in the backseat of a Pierce-Arrow runabout with her fiancé?

  Sean was looking at her like she needed to be committed. She had to say something. She swallowed hard. “Nothing. Never mind, It’s just... Well, she’s no good for you. She’s a vamp.”

  “A what?” Sean smiled—he found this amusing. The ingrate.

  “A vamp. V-A-M-Pee.”

  “I know how to spell it. I just never heard anyone actually use the word.”

  He stepped toward her and they were suddenly close, too close, and Trixie’s heart started to pound from more than just indignation. “You know what happens to fellas who fall for those types, don’t you?”

  “Fall for them?” His tone softened but the amusement in his eyes didn’t fade. “So what? What’s it to you anyhow?”

  Trixie stared at his mouth, the only soft feature in an otherwise hard-angled face—a mouth that she’d wondered more than once how it would feel pressed against her own.

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing to me. I just thought you were smarter than that.”

  “Oh, I’m smart enough, I guess. Smart enough to see what this is all about.”

  “All about?”

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Trixie was incredulous. “Why would I be jealous of her?”

  “Hell if I know. Beautiful women are sometimes jealous of each other, aren’t they?”

  Had he just called her beautiful? “That’s ridiculous. Where did you get a stupid idea like that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe from the stupid way you’re acting.”

  “How I’m acting,” she said, pointing at his chest, “is like a person who can see a she-wolf in sheep’s clothing but the stupid boy-sheep won’t listen because all he can think about is his—”

  Sean took her face in his hands. “This sounds serious. Should we call the sheep-cops?”

  Trixie knew she should pull away. She could tell by the way he looked at her, by the way the amusement in his eyes seemed to fade, by the way his gaze dropped and lingered too long on her mouth. She hadn’t wanted anything more to do with men after Nick. They took too much time, too much energy, too much—

  “Laugh if you want,” she said, “but if you’re too blind to see through her—”

  Sean kissed her. Hard. Hard enough to shut her up, hard enough to steal her breath, hard enough to make her forget what day it was much less what point she’d been trying to make.

  Trixie should have ended it then, but she didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

  And then Sean got serious.

  His hands slid down from her face all the way to her hips and he pulled her flush up against him. If Trixie had one shred of good sense left by then, it fled like a spineless rabbit.

  Sean kissed her again and then again and again, each time more insistent, urging her lips apart and taking his fill. He backed her up against the wall.

  Oh, Trixie had been kissed before, mostly by Nick Welles, but also by other young men over the years—prep school boys, Yale, Princeton and Columbia men. But she’d never been kissed like this. Full, open mouthed, raw, body to body. The heat between them climbed until Trixie wanted to rip her clothes off.

  From somewhere a great distance away, miles at least, Danny called out. “Hey, I need a towel. And where’s my drawers? Anybody there?”

  Sean tore his mouth from hers and Trixie opened her eyes.

  They stared at each other.

  “Hell,” he said.

  Yowza.

  Her heart pounded so hard, she could feel it in her throat. Her brain was a train wreck. At some point she’d wound both arms around Sean’s neck and hiked one knee up to wrap her leg around him. Oh, dear. Was that too much?

  “That’s Danny,” he said.

  “Who?”

  Sean released her and stepped back so quickly she might have been a fire hazard. She felt like a fire hazard. She didn’t move, didn’t trust her legs not to wobble if she tried.

  Sean wore a bemused expression, a little dazed, a little perplexed. He looked like a man who’d just discovered that he’d gotten off at the wrong subway station. Or the wrong girl...?

  “Towels?” he asked.
<
br />   It was an effort to keep her voice steady. “In the cabinet under the sink. Did I hear him say his drawers are missing?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Huh?”

  “In case he got any more bright ideas about taking the fire escape.” He paused, looked almost apologetic. “You okay?”

  “Huh? Yeah.” She was pretty sure that was a lie.

  By the time he left her to go take care of Danny, some of Trixie’s good sense had begun to return. Enough to suspect that kissing Sean Costigan might have been a bad idea. And as for trying to climb him like a tree?

  A very bad idea.

  Hadn’t she just learned that he’d been with Nell? When he’d said that he had something to take care of that morning, was that “something” Nell Murphy?

  Had they spent the night together?

  Trixie didn’t want to know. Couldn’t so much as form the thought without feeling something clench painfully in her stomach. She busied herself by checking her hair, which was fine, and her blouse, which was wrinkled but fixable.

  If only she could have just as easily set to right her foolish heart.

  Chapter Eleven

  Once provided with clothes and a towel, Danny was capable of drying and dressing himself, but Sean stayed in the bedroom anyway, glad for a few minutes away from Trixie. He needed at least that much time to finish kicking himself in the ass.

  What had he been thinking?

  There were all sorts of reasons why kissing Trixie Frank was wrong. For starters, she was part of an active case and she was a reporter. That combination alone was enough to brand her off limits. The fact that she was Wil Frank’s daughter only made matters worse.

  She came from a world different from Sean’s—a world of abundance and excess. It was a cold, self-contained, snobbish world that cared nothing about the hand-to-mouth existence of the many. Sean had no choice but to occasionally brush up against it in his work, but he had no interest in inviting it into his personal life.

  Which brought him to another unsettling question. Was some perverse part of him attracted to her precisely because he knew he shouldn’t have her?