HIS PARTNER'S WIFE

by Janice Kay Johnson

  John felt her shaky breath. "Thank you, Hugh."

  "Anytime," his brother said easily. He gave John a light tap on the back and moved down the hall.

  Belatedly John realized how Hugh would read this embrace. Natalie was still plastered against him, still holding on tight, and he sure as hell hadn't made a move to ease back. Little brother wasn't going to believe he was just offering comfort.

  John wasn't so sure he believed it himself, not on the heels of the fear and relief that still had his heart thundering and his knees weak.

  How could he believe it, when he was suddenly becoming aware of the pillowy feel of her breasts flattened against his chest, the curve of hip just below one of his hands, those glorious, bare thighs against his? He took a ragged breath, then went completely still in shock and—God help him—arousal. Was she wearing anything at all beneath the T-shirt that barely covered her butt? Or, if he moved his hand lower still and gathered the fabric in his hands, would he find smooth skin and plump flesh?

  He swore silently. Damned if he wasn't getting hard. He couldn't let her notice. She was taking another hiccuping breath and letting her forehead rest against his chest.

  "You came," she whispered. "I wanted you to come so badly."

  If he'd been hoarse before, now his voice was a rasp, painful to hear. "I asked to be notified night or day if there was a call to this address."

  "Oh."

  John felt the instant when some kind of awareness rippled through her, tightening muscles. As she pulled back, he let her go too hastily, hoping against hope that she was too preoccupied with fear and gratitude to have noticed his arousal.

  Natalie swallowed and brushed her hair back from her face with one hand, the, movement lifting the hem of that damned tee a couple of perilous inches higher. He forced his gaze to her face, seeing that her downcast eyes looked puffy and damp.

  "Why don't you sit down?" he suggested.

  She looked vaguely around. "I should put something on."

  "You're fine. I'd see you in less at the beach." Right now, to see her in less he would have given any body part demanded except… He slammed a door on that one, shocking even himself at this raw lust for a woman he'd never regarded sexually before.

  Her tongue touched her lips, and he saw her swallow. "Oh," she said again, and backed a few steps into the bedroom.

  Relief, he told himself intensely. Damn it, this was just relief. Or adrenaline. Somehow it had gotten out of hand. His brothers ribbing him this evening had put the idea in his head. They'd primed him to notice, big time, that Natalie was a sexy woman with incredible legs, voluptuous hips, a pretty mouth, and a mass of hair any man would want to tangle his fingers in.

  He almost groaned.

  Find her bathrobe, he thought desperately. But how could he, now that he'd assured her she was fine in that oversize shirt and nothing else? She'd be humiliated if he suddenly tried to cover her up.

  The lamplight touching her face, he could see that she was blushing although her chin was high. Her voice was small when she said, "There wasn't anybody in the house, was there? And I scared you, and brought half the Port Dare Police Department rushing over here just because I heard a bump in the night." She was talking fast now, not giving him a chance to break in. "Or maybe I didn't hear anything. I could have been having a nightmare and thought it was real. John, I'm so sorry! It was partly Geoff, seeming so sure I wasn't safe here. But I can't blame him. It was me. I…"

  He laid a hand over her mouth. Natalie gazed mutely up at him over it.

  "There was somebody in here."

  Her mouth moved against his palm, but otherwise she was completely still.

  "The family room window is broken. Looks like he used a rock from the edging around the flower bed. One of them is lying right there. He tapped the glass, made a hole just big enough to get his hand in and unlock the window. It's wide-open."

  A small shudder rippled through her.

  He let his hand drop. "Tell me what you heard."

  "I…" She backed up blindly until she came to the bed, where she sat so suddenly it was as though her legs had given out. "A thump. No, two thumps. That's all."

  He followed her, noticing with a brief, raised brow the chair that sat beside the door—smart, he thought approvingly. Sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, John tried not to notice her thighs. "Where?" he asked patiently.

  "Where…" She sucked in another, shuddering breath. "I think, in the study."

  John swore.

  She seemed not to notice, and her brow creased as she concentrated. "As if he'd bumped against the wall. Staggered. Or … or was carrying something cumbersome and misjudged distances."

  "Like a cardboard box," John said thoughtfully.

  "Or…" She swung a pleading look his way. "Did you go into the study? Tell me there's not another body."

  "No body," he said positively. "I can't swear one of the boxes in the closet hasn't been taken, but I'd have seen a body."

  "Oh." She slumped with relief, then stiffened again. "Could … could there be one somewhere else in the house?"

  "No body," he repeated patiently. "We checked out the whole house. What do you think, your place has become a dumping ground for the mafiosi?"

  Natalie let out a choked laugh. "Well, you have to admit finding the corpse of a total stranger in your house is a little odd. Followed by somebody breaking in during the night a week later."

  Oh, yeah, he thought sardonically. "Odd" about covered it. Tonight's episode left him considerably less satisfied with the "burglar turning on burglar" theory about the murder.

  He nodded toward the door. "Did you have the chair under the knob?"

  Her hair fell over her shoulder when she nodded. "I felt really silly when I braced it under there, but it just made me feel more secure."

  "Smart," he said.

  "As it turned out—" she gazed doubtfully toward her maple dining chair "—I don't know how well it would have held under a determined assault."

  "I don't, either, but at worst it would have slowed our guy down."

  She nodded again, saying nothing this time. The silence felt less comfortable than it once might have, maybe because John was trying so hard not to stare at her thighs.

  Hearing voices from just downstairs, he said hastily, "Maybe you should find that bathrobe before half the Port Dare P.D. strolls into your bedroom."

  She gave another tiny laugh and slipped off the bed, heading for the closet. John took one hungry look at her incredible legs and then squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "What?" His eyes snapped open.

  She was shrugging into a terry-cloth robe and looking inquiringly over her shoulder at him.

  "Oh." He pulled himself together. "No. Just thinking."

  "About?"

  "You. We can go two ways here. If you want to grab some stuff, we can head for my place. Or you can go back to bed, and I'll get some shut-eye on your couch."

  "But…" Her eyes widened and she said in alarm, "Maddie and Evan aren't home alone, are they?"

  "Connor's with them. I expect he'd bunk down there if I call."

  "What would you prefer?" she asked simply. "Whatever is easier for you."

  He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. "If you're okay with it, why don't you just go back to bed. We can get your statement in the morning. Tell me where to find a pillow and blanket, and I'll stretch out downstairs on the couch."

  "He won't come back, will he?"

  John knew who "he" was without asking. With regret and a certain ferocity, he said, "I wish he would. But, no. The etiquette book for crooks suggests no more than one visit in a night."

  He loved her chuckle, especially under the circumstances.

  Her eyes were shadowed but her mouth still soft from the smile when she came toward him. "Okay. I feel safe with you here. Tomorrow I'm going to order a security alarm."

  "And you're coming home with me again until it's in," John
said, tone inflexible. "No. Don't argue. Or at least, not until we've had breakfast."

  "Okay," she said again. When he stood, she made an abortive move toward him, but was suddenly fiddling with the belt on her robe, her gaze downcast. Had she nearly kissed him on the cheek again?

  He had a vivid flash of the night she'd surprised him with a kiss. Darkness beyond the kitchen, quiet, her bare toes curled around the stool, the rush of air as she neared and the scent of her hair and the texture of her skin up so close and the soft brush of her lips.

  If she'd done it tonight, he would have had a hell of a time keeping from turning his mouth to meet hers.

  Until he cooled down and figured out what to do about this unexpected lust for a woman he considered a good friend, it was probably just as well if she didn't kiss him.

  "It sounds like Hugh's coming," Natalie said. Footsteps neared in the hall. "Um, I'll just go back to bed."

  He was between her and it. No wonder she sounded tentative. She couldn't quite say, For crying out loud, will you get out of here?

  "Yeah. Sure." Somehow his feet weren't moving. The bed was two steps away. She was right here in that short T-shirt and maybe nothing on under it. He had to curl his fingers at his side to keep from reaching out to plunge them in her hair. If she lifted her mouth he'd ravage it with his. He could get rid of Hugh in short order and…

  From the doorway, his little brother said, "What's the plan?"

  He gazed contemplatively from Natalie to John, blue eyes missing nothing, thoughts unreadable. John cursed himself for the hoarseness still in his voice. "I'm going to see if Connor can spend the night, and I'll bed down on Natalie's couch. Tomorrow, she's getting out of this place again."

  Hugh's brows twitched, but he nodded. "Then I'll hitch a ride home with Wently and Jacobson." He gave Natalie a surprisingly gentle smile. "Sleep tight."

  "Thank you," she said again. He lifted a hand and disappeared from the doorway.

  John picked up the telephone beside her bed and dialed home.

  When his brother answered, he told him the situation. "Can you stay with the kids?"

  "And make 'em the best dang pancakes they've ever had in their life," Connor promised. "Rest easy, and no rush tomorrow. Give Natalie my best."

  When John passed on the message, tears sprang to her eyes. "All of you have been so nice." She dashed away the dampness on her lashes.

  "Hugh's right." John went to her, rested the back of his hand against her cheek, and felt her nuzzle it. "Go to bed. Sleep tight."

  She blew her nose and insisted on getting him the pillow and blankets. A moment later, the bedroom door was shut firmly in his face.

  He checked to see that the broken window had been blockaded—it had, crudely, with an ill-fitting piece of plywood the men had found who knows where—and that the house was otherwise locked up, turning off lights as he went. Stretched out on her living room couch, which wasn't quite long enough for his six foot two frame, John was left to stare at the dark ceiling, ignore the sexual ache that he couldn't conveniently turn off, and brood.

  Were these feelings artificial, an outgrowth of his brothers' razzing and the scare he'd gotten tonight? Or was he in real danger of falling for Stuart Reed's widow?

  And even if he was, what, if anything, did he want to do about it? He liked Natalie. He could talk to her. He'd miss her more than he liked to admit if any advance he made blew their friendship.

  Whether she gently rejected him, or kissed him torridly back, nothing would ever be the same again. Change could be good, but it was more likely to be bad. He didn't want to risk losing her friendship just so he could scratch an itch.

  Adjusting the pillow, he tried to get comfortable. He clunked his heel against the end table and swore. His exasperation with the too-short couch was tempered by the knowledge that tonight, hyperalert for any sound, sexually aroused, in turmoil about what he felt, he wouldn't have been comfortable in a king-size feather bed.

  An itch.

  The convenient if vulgar explanation for his hard-on played in his mind.

  Even the ferocious itches from chicken pox passed, John thought grimly. This one would, too, unless it was more complicated than that. If so… He swore again, quietly, the word lingering in his ears.

  If so, he might lose the only woman friend he'd ever had.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  John met his partner at the curb in front of Natalie's house the next morning and told him the tale of the night.

  Baxter, still standing on the driver's side with his car door open, rapped his fist on the roof. "Son of a bitch! I knew it!"

  "It's not nice to say 'I told you so.'"

  His partner gave him a feral grin. "If you'd just accepted my superior wisdom in the first place, I wouldn't have to be saying 'I told you so.'"

  John made an obscene suggestion regarding the superior wisdom, to which Baxter only laughed.

  "What say we go do what we should have done in the first place and take this house apart?"

  "Maybe our friendly visitor last night left with what he was after," John suggested, playing devil's advocate.

  Baxter slammed his car door. "If it had been that easy, he would have taken it the first time."

  John waited until his partner joined him on the sidewalk. "The fact that he was back in the study last night doesn't sit right with me. He had time after he conked Floyd over the head. The garage … well, now, that might take you a month to search. But unless the guy is looking for something so small it could be anywhere … hell, say, a microchip, he had plenty of time to check out the study."

  "Unless he panicked." Baxter gazed at the house with the avid look of a hunter sizing up a set of antlers from a blind.

  John grimaced. "Possible."

  "Natalie home?"

  "She went to work." He'd wondered about that, since it was Saturday, but she'd claimed she had to. And maybe it was just as well that she'd be busy today.

  "What's she going to do tonight?"

  "Sleep in my guest room. She intends to have a security alarm system installed, but that'll take a few days. In the meantime, I don't want her here."

  The balding detective jerked his attention from the house. "Did he know she was home last night?"

  "Car was in the driveway." That really bothered John. It took serious balls to break into a house knowing the home owner was sacked out in the master bedroom. Had the intruder been willing to kill again? Hell, he'd done it at least once before. Was the idea now so casual to him, he didn't mind taking that kind of risk? Or, worse yet, had he half hoped he'd have an excuse to do her? Even more sickening, had he intended to kill her when he was done in the house? Maybe rape her first?

  Those were the fears that made John sweat.

  Baxter grunted. "I didn't like her moving back in here."

  "We noticed," he said dryly. "And, yeah, you were right. Consider it acknowledged."

  Geoff Baxter's grin didn't last long. "This is one time I wish I'd been wrong. I don't like to think of Natalie in there with the bejesus being scared out of her."

  "I think she's tougher than that." Like many cops, John didn't much like the idea of every home owner keeping a gun under the pillow, but he was going to suggest that Natalie buy one and take a few lessons at the range on how to use it. If that bastard had come through her bedroom door last night, he would have been asking to get blasted.

  Once in the house, he and Baxter each took a room and began a meticulous search of the residence. Bookcases: every book came down, got flipped through, the space behind examined. Using a small screwdriver, one or the other took the back off all the electronics components to see if something had been tucked away. Baxter pulled up loose carpet in a corner of the study; John yanked a few more inches of peeling vinyl in a corner of the utility room. Light fixtures that weren't encased in years' worth of dried paint came off so that one of the two detectives could reach a hand into the cavity behind.

/>   When they started on the kitchen, neither man commented on the implications if they found something here or in Natalie's bedroom. They searched the cupboards—behind the pans and the soup cans and the bucket in the broom closet. They looked for false cans designed to hide valuables, opened the tops of spice containers, checked to be sure cereal boxes held cereal. John's partner pulled the panel off the front of the dishwasher, groped the pipes under the sink, felt to be sure nothing was taped to the top of a cupboard. They didn't look at each other when they were done, but John at least breathed a sigh of relief.

  Feeling even more squeamish, he took Natalie's bedroom while Baxter went down to the utility room. One of the two closets he found nearly empty. She'd evidently either packed away most of Stuart's things or given them to the Salvation Army. Nonetheless, he inspected the closet carefully. The master bath didn't take long. Natalie was neat, her makeup relatively simple and all in one drawer. Nothing was concealed in the toilet tank or on the rim along the top of the shower stall.

  Trying hard to divorce himself from images of Natalie splayed on the bed, John lifted mattress and springs and found more of nothing. The woman had even vacuumed under it, clearly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd moved his own. Lining up the pillows, tucking in sheets and respreading the comforter tested his discipline. Her scent, flowery in a way that never cloyed, clung to the bedding. For just an instant, he saw her, hair spread on the pillow, arms flung above her head, nightgown pulled tight across her breasts and high on her thighs, which were splayed invitingly. Her dark eyes laughed at him.

  Swearing, John turned to her closet.

  It was as neat as the bathroom, shoes set in pairs on the floor, the suits, dresses and blouses that hung all categorized. Feeling like a bastard, he checked pockets, the boxes on the shelf, the depths of ski boots and riding boots.

  He was probably too hasty by the time he got to the dresser. One drawer held nightgowns, a couple of T-shirt ones on top of an old-fashioned lacy white gown—the kind parents bought their daughter and hoped she'd wear on her wedding night—and at the bottom a spaghetti-strap, teal silk number that would cling to her body like a teenage boy's wet dream.