HIS PARTNER'S WIFE

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She watched dazedly as he rolled a condom onto himself. Insanely she would never have thought of it, hadn't known she could be so heedless.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  Lids heavy, eyes a glittering, deep blue, he said, "Someday we'll make love without this." His hand splayed on her belly, he looked his fill at her body, sprawled atop his bed. "Someday," he murmured again.

  The next instant, he rolled onto his back and lifted her above him. "Ready or not," he said in that same rough, urgent voice.

  Oh, yes. She was ready.

  Natalie sank slowly onto him, her body adjusting to the shock of the invasion, stretching, convulsively tightening even as she herself was the one to pull back. She withdrew until he was no more than a nudge at her core, then lowered herself again, back arched, head thrown back, a silent cry coming from her throat. He played with her breasts, let her set the speed, but she felt his gathering need in the way his hips lifted to bury himself more deeply in her.

  Finally, when she faltered, he growled and gripped her buttocks, rolling her onto her back. She spread her legs wide and hung on as he thrust hard, faster and faster, sweat making his back slick beneath her fingers. Pleasure spiraled in her belly, tightening, tightening, until it convulsed like a spring pressed down and released. John groaned and jerked deep inside her, his last thrusts extending the wash of exquisite feeling that traveled as far as her fingertips and toes.

  John being the man he was, he didn't sprawl atop her, but rolled again and tucked her into the crook of his arm. Feeling her breathing calm, listening to his steady heartbeat, Natalie realized she was smiling even as inexplicable tears stung her eyes.

  This, too, she had missed. Stuart had become less and less tender in bed. When they had sex, he often turned away immediately as if she no longer existed. It had made her feel … used.

  John smoothed hair back from her face, his hand lingering. He said unexpectedly, "Hugh says I've wanted you since the day I woke up and realized you weren't married anymore."

  They'd been talking about her? Natalie wasn't sure how to feel about that. "Hugh says?" Did she sound the tiniest bit tart?

  Apologetically he said, "Sometimes they know me better than I know myself."

  She curled his chest hair around her finger, fascinated by the silky, springy texture. "You didn't know you were even attracted to me?"

  "Not a clue." He gave a grunt of laughter. "That's probably not the most tactful thing to say to a woman you've just bedded. But, you know, I never would have admitted even to myself that I wanted my partner's wife. I guess I turned some sort of internal check on, and it took a shock to turn it off."

  Natalie rubbed her cheek against his hand. "A shock?"

  "A threat to you. Fear of losing you." His shoulder moved under her head. "Something out of the ordinary."

  She nodded, knowing he'd feel the movement.

  "What about you?" He reached down and pinched her bottom, making her jump. "When did you start lusting after my manly self?"

  She giggled at his deepened voice. "Lusting?" she said innocently.

  "You did lust?"

  "I guess I must have, or I wouldn't be in your bed, naked, now would I?"

  "And sure you wanted to be here," he reminded her.

  "Did I say that?"

  She earned herself another pinch. Her punch to his chest started a good-humored wrestling match that ended in a slow, sweet kiss.

  With Natalie settled back comfortably against him, John said, "Come on. Fair's fair. I want to know whether I was an idiot not to notice sometime this past year that you might have been receptive to a polite request for a date."

  "I think you would have scared me," she confessed. "I was, um, aware of your manly form when you painted my house this summer. You kept taking your shirt off, you know."

  "Aha." The rumble under her ear sounded pleased.

  "But, of course, my observation was entirely academic. I even tried to think of a friend who I could introduce to you."

  "But you didn't." He was definitely pleased.

  "No." She hadn't been able to think of anyone good enough for him. A confession she would not make.

  "So?"

  "It bothered me how much I wanted you to be the one who came after I found the body. And then when I came home with you, I started having—" how to put it? "—feelings that went a teeny bit beyond friendly."

  "Lust," he said contentedly.

  She very much feared that lust didn't cover it. Love came a whole lot closer.

  "Maybe."

  Suddenly John rolled onto his side so that he was looking down into her face, his eyes serious. "You've been keeping me awake nights."

  Her pulse sped. "Have I?"

  "Oh, yeah." He nuzzled her cheek. "And appearing in my dreams when I did sleep."

  "A nightmare?" she whispered, just before her parted lips met his.

  John kept the kiss light, teasing. "Only when I came on to you and I could see how taken aback you were. Or repulsed. That was my worst fear, you know."

  She pulled back in astonishment. "That I'd be repulsed?"

  "That I'd shock you." His gaze was watchful again. "We were buddies, you know. I was afraid, if I made a move…"

  "You'd blow our friendship."

  "Yeah."

  Natalie smiled wryly. "I was afraid of the same thing, you know."

  And still was, another of the many things she couldn't say.

  His face cleared. "Yeah? You were?"

  "Of course I was." She framed his jaw in her hands, loving the rasp of a nighttime beard against her palms. "Having you call just to talk, because you needed to talk, not because you were being nice to a lonely widow, was something I really looked forward to." How tepid, how euphemistic. Why not say, I lived for your calls?

  Because he hadn't said any such thing.

  He was silent for a moment. "Me, too," he said at last, and kissed her again.

  This time his mouth was not only tender but hungry. Reassured, she felt the same leap of desire, so quickly fanned into life because it had been banked for so long. If she also felt an ache at the things he hadn't said and a fear for what this vulnerability could do to her, it only intensified her response. Oh, yes. This was a risk she'd had to take.

  Telephones rang; a fight broke out in the hall where a uniform was wrestling a suspect into the booking room. Swearing, a plainclothes officer jumped out of the way and spilled coffee down his shirt.

  Ignoring the familiar chaos, John sat at his desk in the Major Crimes unit and brooded.

  Now what?

  A simple question, but one with many layers for him. Starting with, what did he do this minute? Once he decided on some strategy, he'd join Baxter at Natalie's house to finish digging through Stuart's crap in the garage. Hell, they should have volunteered to price everything for a Saturday sale while they were at it.

  In the longer term, did he come clean to the department? This one made him uncomfortable, because he was an honest man but the answer was still no. He wanted to know more first. He wanted to protect Natalie Reed.

  There were those who'd say he wanted to protect himself.

  If he didn't go to Internal Affairs, the question now what? became especially relevant. Reed had been dead a year. How to figure out what he'd been thinking those last months? How to discover his partner? Where he'd stashed the goods or the bucks?

  Where was he going as far as Natalie was concerned? He was risking his career to shield her. He'd taken her into his bed last night, and he wished like hell he could have her there every night. Until death do us part.

  He frowned at his computer screen, although he couldn't have said what information it displayed.

  A month ago he'd still been struggling with the reluctant belief that he should have Debbie move home, hire nurses, for her sake and the kids'.

  Until death do us part.

  He hadn't even known he was attracted to Natalie, never mind seeing her as the person he wanted to spend the
rest of his life with.

  Was it too quick? Was he reacting to the stress of the circumstances? Or was he head over heels in love with a woman who in one short year had become his best friend outside his brothers?

  Did Natalie feel the same? He wanted to assume she did, because last night she'd come so willingly and joyfully into his arms and his bed. But—oh, hell—times had changed. Maybe she'd seen sex as an uncomplicated pleasure with a friend.

  What would she say if he went on his knees to her tonight and said, "Stay forever. Marry me?"

  And what about Debbie?

  John groaned and tugged at his hair.

  A hand clapped him on the shoulder. "That brain giving you trouble?" asked Ryan Fairman, a good-natured detective. "I always knew it would, sooner or later. Just lookin', a man can tell."

  John mock-lunged at his fellow officer, who feinted and, laughing, continued on his way.

  The interruption helped. John focused on his computer screen, where he'd brought up a list of Det. Stuart Reed's arrests in the month before his death.

  About all the information did was confirm what John had already remembered: while he was on a leave of absence, Stuart had paired with Geoff Baxter, whose previous partner had retired. Thus their own convenient pairing, after the funeral.

  The two had had a good month, last September. At the top of the list was a rare triumph. They'd cleared a "cold" murder—a teenage girl who'd been abducted on her way home from high school ten years before. She'd been raped and her body dumped the same night. A tip had come in, but unlike most tips this one had panned out. The Sentinel, John recalled, had spread this one over the front pages, congratulating officers who never gave up on such a heinous crime. Stuart had modestly declared that this arrest was thanks to the murderer's current girlfriend, who had seen a "souvenir" and not been satisfied by his explanation. Nonetheless, it had involved solid police work.

  "Damn it, he was a good cop," John muttered. "What happened?"

  Still paging down, he mulled over the one case, however, because when he thought about it, it represented Stuart Reed perfectly. He was smart, dogged, but also a publicity hound. On some level, John had always known that Reed didn't serve selflessly, that he dove into the water to save a kid's life thinking already about the headlines that would proclaim him a hero.

  So, okay, he had an ego. Whose motives were unmixed? Wanting to come out looking good was a far cry from committing a brutal murder to steal and sell a drug that destroyed lives, all for money.

  Maybe Lindmark's story was BS. But John's gut said no. Stuart had changed. John had felt it. His partner had become more closed, even irritated, and a couple of times he'd said something like, "Screw the department," then given a secret smile that had unsettled John.

  Oh, yeah. He'd done it. The question that mattered most wasn't where he'd stashed the money but rather who felt entitled to half of it. And how Ronald Floyd entered into the picture. A dead man couldn't broker a drug deal.

  John hated even suspecting Geoff Baxter. Damn it, he'd known Geoff for years. They weren't close friends, but they ended up at the same backyard barbecues, knew each other's wives, trusted each other on the job.

  Last night he'd just stopped himself from saying something to Natalie. Bad enough that he had to investigate under the table. But if he was wrong—and he hoped like hell he was—John didn't want his partner ever to know that any suspicion had even crossed his mind. Those kind of doubts weren't something a man could forgive.

  Using his cell phone during the drive to Natalie's, John put out some tentative inquiries. He'd like to know how deep in debt Baxter was, and especially whether he'd bought some goodies last year without waiting for the cold cash to pay for them. Alternatively, had he been falling into debt for years? Had he taken to spending Saturday nights at the tribal casino down the road?

  Or was he the stodgy guy he seemed, who put away ten percent of his paycheck, regular as clockwork, into a retirement fund?

  The calls, once made, couldn't be unmade. John only hoped he'd chosen the right people to ask. Discreet people. Any ripple would tip off a cop that he was being investigated.

  Geoff was already there, pacing restlessly in the driveway. "Damn it!" he exploded. "Where the hell have you been? Doing your weekly grocery shop?"

  "Just looking up Stuart's arrest records for more ideas."

  Baxter gave a disgusted grunt. "How are you going to draw a line between A and B? We arrest people all the goddamn time. They don't break into our houses hunting for something the minute they get out of the pokey."

  John unlocked the front door and let them into the quiet house. Already the air felt musty, as if the place had been empty for too long.

  "Maybe we've been jumping to conclusions," he said mildly. "Who says he's looking for anything?"

  "Huh?" Already at the door to the garage, Baxter stared at him as if he were crazy. "Why'd he come back the second time if he was done?"

  "Could've left something behind the first time. Maybe he likes revisiting murder sites. Maybe he was rooting around looking for something likely to tie Natalie up with." None of which John believed, but why not play devil's advocate?

  Baxter wasn't interested in any half-baked theories. Shaking his head in disgust, he headed into the garage. "You and I know there's something here."

  Actually, John didn't think there was. Or else they'd already missed it, whatever it was. The dust in the back of the garage was too thick, the cobwebs weighed down by years, not months. Gray dust clung to oily parts of the carcass of a car that Stuart had apparently started to restore and then lost interest in. Most of the cartons in the depths of the garage contained the detritus from Stuart's mother, who had died ten, twelve years ago of a heart attack that was an unheeded warning to her son.

  "I'll bet Stuart never looked in these," John commented after a wasted half hour. "This is minutes of garden club meetings. Can you believe it?" Muttering under his breath, he hauled the whole box out to a pile they would suggest Natalie recycle.

  The middle-aged detective added another. "Tax returns from the fifties. Looks like he moved his mom's stuff here intact. Probably never had time to do anything with it."

  John grunted. "He never had time to do anything with his own crap. Lucky he didn't live to an old age. He'd have been one of those coots who has to tunnel between towers of newspaper to get to the bathroom."

  "Or else he'd have made a fresh start somewhere on his ill-gotten gains." Baxter's tone of irony didn't quite disguise something else. Envy? Anger? Longing?

  Or, John thought ruefully, was he tuning his own ears to pick up waves that weren't there?

  Instead of going back to work, Baxter blocked John's path, his arms crossed. His tone was that of somebody starting an argument. "I say we get into the safe-deposit box."

  "Natalie says there's nothing unexpected there."

  "Maybe her eyes aren't as sharp as ours."

  John tried to hide his instinctive anger. Baxter was a cop, and they were suspicious by nature. "You mean," he said mildly, "she didn't notice half a dozen zeros in a bankbook?"

  "Could be she doesn't know what a stock certificate means. Or a little, bitty key to a storage locker."

  "You really think that's likely?"

  Face set in pugnacious lines, Baxter said, "Could be she did see those zeroes."

  John gave himself a minute, until the red haze cleared. "She's your friend, too."

  "We were both friends with Stuart." The big cop shrugged. "Kind of makes you wonder how much you can trust your gut, doesn't it?"

  Oh, yeah. It did. Having your judgment prove to be so wrong did set a guy to thinking. Things that weren't so pretty, like whether a cop might have murdered a man for one reason only: so that he'd have the right and even the duty to search a house for something he was personally seeking.

  Something like his share of a half-a-million-dollar take. Hell, no, not his share anymore—the whole garbanzo.

  But then Baxter unde
rcut him by giving a heavy sigh and running a hand over his balding head. "What the hell am I saying? Natalie Reed? I can't see it. Tell you the truth, I don't know what Stuart did to deserve her. I always did wonder. No, I don't think she saw all those zeroes. I just figure … a fresh eye…" He grimaced.

  "And you're right, too." Easy to be generous when a man felt guilty as hell. "I'm being defensive, and I know better."

  His partner raised his brows. "You want to talk to her?"

  "I don't think she'll have a problem with it. I'll try to set it up for tomorrow."

  Baxter nodded and looked reluctantly toward the depths of the garage. "I suppose we'd better get back to it."

  "Hey." John slapped him on the back. "Look at it this way. Maybe his mom had a jewelry box full of pearls and diamonds. If Stuart never looked…"

  Baxter's dour face creased into what might have been the start of a grin. "What? We'll sell them and run away to Jamaica?"

  "I was thinking the Riviera. Maybe the hills of Tuscany."

  Det. Baxter finally did smile, a rusty twitch of the mouth. Stretching, he said, "In that case, we'd better get back to work."

  He walked in the door to find his mother, both brothers, Natalie and his kids all hanging out in the kitchen. Natalie looked incredibly good in a V-necked sweater the color of a ripe Italian plum over snug jeans and clogs.

  He didn't have a chance to linger on his appraisal or the faint flush that pinkened her cheeks, because his mother bent a critical look on him.

  "What have you been in?"

  Natalie made a face. "My garage, I'm afraid."

  "You should be afraid," John muttered.

  Connor cuffed him. "Don't talk bad to the lady."

  "The lady has stolen goods in her garage." He didn't wait long enough to let her get scared. "All the records from the Port Dare Garden Club."

  His mother started. "Treasurer's reports? Minutes?"

  "Every one of them."

  "Well." She appeared bemused. "I know there are some missing years. Nobody seemed to quite know where they'd disappeared to."