The 14th... And Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  “Let me make sure I understand this. You gave Ms. Paretti one hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars to buy this house.”

  The senator peered at him over the peaks of his fingers. “I did.”

  “You reside here...”

  “I reside at my Georgetown town house,” Claiborne corrected gently. “Unfortunately, my schedule doesn’t allow me to get down here as often as I like.”

  “You visit here, then, when your schedule—” his face carefully neutral, he nodded toward Angela “—and Ms. Paretti’s permit.”

  “Back off, Manny,” Jack instructed, his voice low and even more dangerous than the senator’s had been a few moments ago. “You’re reading this one wrong.”

  “I could be. I most definitely could be. But until someone tells me who else lives here besides the senator and—”

  “I live here.”

  The words were so soft, so tentative, that Angela almost missed them. Ramirez, sitting closer to the hall, didn’t, however. He slewed sideways on the sofa, his jaw sagging as a silver-haired pixie entered the room.

  The senator jumped up. Dismay stripped all the oratory from his voice.

  “Lilly! You don’t need to get into this.”

  “I do, Henry,” she replied softly.

  Angela surged to her feet, almost dumping an indignant Buttons on his head. The cat clawed for purchase in her arms as she rushed across the room.

  “It’s all right, Lilly. We’ve got the situation covered.”

  “I know you do,” the delicate-looking woman answered. “You always do. It’s all right, Angela. Truly. I heard Henry tell you to bring these gentlemen here only if they promised not to disclose anything about the house to the press.”

  She turned her aqua eyes to the two men, who’d risen to their feet, as well. “You won’t, will you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jack answered.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Ramirez interjected.

  Jack ignored him. “You can trust me.”

  The tiny woman drifted across the room, trailed by a worried Senator Claiborne and a frowning Angela, with an indignant, ginger-colored fur ball draped over one arm.

  “Angela trusted you,” the unexpected visitor said. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “It’s good enough for me, too, Miss...Ms.?”

  “It’s Mrs.,” the senator said, placing a protective arm around the soft-spoken woman’s shoulders. “Mrs. Henry Claiborne.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Manny muttered from the back seat of the Chevy a short time later. “They’ve been married for almost two years, and no one knows about it!”

  Gritting her teeth, Angela gave him the same answer she’d already given him three times. “Lilly’s a little shy.”

  “Right,” he snorted. “And I’m a little...”

  “Dense?” she supplied. “Thick? Suspicious and bureaucratic and narrow-minded?”

  “Okay, okay. I get the picture. But two years? And she just visits on weekends and special holidays? Jeez, no wonder Coon Dog Claiborne has such a reputation in this town for playing the field.”

  Angela shot him an evil glance in the rearview mirror. “Did I say narrow-minded? Let’s change that to just plain stupid.”

  “Shut up, Manny,” Jack advised, stomping the floor mat reflexively as the woman beside him took a corner some ten miles per hour faster than he would have. “You’re digging yourself into a hole you’re never going to get out of.”

  “What?” The Miami-based agent pulled himself upright after the tight turn. “Are you saying the senator’s reputation as a playboy is all a media invention?”

  Angela shook her head in disgust. “Of course it is. It’s a smoke screen to deflect their attention from Lilly. Which is why I wanted your assurances...your personal , one hundred percent, no-kidding assurances... that none of this business about the house or Lilly leaks out. The media would eat her alive.”

  “Yeah, well, if we don’t find any link between the senator and HeatthMark—”

  “You won’t.”

  “And if we don’t find anything else in his financial records that raises a flag—”

  “You won’t.”

  “You have my no-kidding, one hundred percent, personal assurances I won’t say anything about Mrs. Claiborne.”

  “Good.”

  “But, jeez. Two years?”

  Jack stretched out his legs and settled in for the ride back to Maryland’s western shore. Two years, he mused. His own marriage hadn’t even lasted that long.

  He’d known before he married Marilyn that their goals were different, but he hadn’t realized just how different until it was too late. Sophisticated, well connected and charming, she’d been dazzled by the idea of his grandfather’s millions once she found out about them. She’d wanted Jack to reconcile with the man, who had no desire for or interest in reconciliation. She’d engaged her husband in bedroom discussions, dining room debates and, eventually, armed skirmishes over his refusal to join the ranks of Merritt Communications, Inc. She’d finally walked out when he accepted the position at Children’s, with its corresponding cut in pay.

  Lilly wouldn’t walk out on her mate, Jack reflected. Despite her bone-deep shyness, she’d joined her future to the flamboyant, boisterous public figure’s.

  The senator wouldn’t walk out. For two years, he’d protected the woman he loved from the invasive, intrusive aspects of his chosen occupation.

  Jack angled his head, studying Angela’s face as she sent the Chevy flying along the country roads. She wouldn’t walk out. Jack knew that as surely as he knew his own name. She’d give herself passionately. Completely. As she’d given herself to him.

  Was it just a few hours ago that they’d shared a narrow bed? Only this morning that they’d twisted and strained in each other’s arms? His body stirred at the memory.

  How had he come to know and crave this woman more intimately in the short time they’d been together than he had his wife? How could he carry the taste of her mouth and the musky, erotic scent of her more clearly in his senses than any other memory he’d collected in his thirty-six years?

  Tony Paretti’s words echoed in his mind. It happens like that sometimes.

  It had happened to Jack on the Fourteenth Street Bridge, when whipped cream and a few moments of violence brought Angela into his arms for the first time.

  Now he had to find a way keep her there.

  Safely.

  Slathered in whipped cream wouldn’t be bad, either, he decided with a tight smile.

  He was still enjoying that image when Angela spun the wheel and took a sharp turn into a shopping center full of trendy boutiques and gourmet coffee shops. Both Jack and Manny jerked into instant alertness.

  “Why the detour?”

  “Is someone following us?”

  Angela pulled the Chevy to her customary screeching halt and cut the engine.

  “No one’s following us,” she announced into the taut silence. “But I refuse to spend another hour in these clothes. Hang tight.”

  Manny’s jaw dropped as she slammed the car door and headed for a shop displaying mannequins draped in a dazzling display of jewel-toned wools.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “I think she’s going shopping,” Jack drawled.

  “She’s going shopping? I’m up to my ass in one of the biggest investigations of my career, and she’s going shopping?”

  Jack shouldered open the passenger side door. “I’ve got to pick up a few things, too.”

  Like clean underwear.

  And a fresh shirt.

  And whipping cream.

  Chapter 12

  Four hours later, Jack tilted back in his chair and admitted what Angela had staunchly maintained all along. There wasn’t any link between Senator Claiborne and HealthMark. Not one that Jack and his two weary assistants could find, anyway.

  “We’ve still got to check a few transactions that went through offshore banks,” he told Ma
nny. “But we’re talking small bucks. A repayment of a loan made to a friend in one instance. A campaign contribution from a Jamaican sugarcane grower in another.”

  The FDA agent nudged aside the remains of the carryout fried-fish dinner he’d procured earlier from the village and planted his elbows on the table. “So you think he’s clean?”

  As clean as any man who’d spent forty years in politics, Jack thought cynically. Henry Claiborne had accepted huge honoraria for speaking engagements before the current ceilings went into effect a few years ago. He’d hobnobbed with kings and princes, who’d showered a small museum’s worth of gifts on him. A good number of these gifts had been reported. A good many more, Jack suspected, had not. The senator also just happened to own a large chunk of property in a woodland area that one of his fellow legislators had recommended for purchase by the U.S. Park Service.

  None of these issues related to the one that had brought Jack to Washington, however.

  “He’s clean, as far as HealthMark is concerned,” he replied, linking his hands behind his head.

  A pointed what-did-I-tell-you “Ahem” drifted from the other side of the cabin. Over the top of his notebook computer, Jack eyed the woman curled up in the overstuffed chair. To her credit, Angela didn’t do more than smirk back at him.

  Even with a smirk on her face, though, Jack had to admit she looked incredible. The cowl-necked sweater in a rich ruby red that she’d picked up during her shopping spree brought out the luster of her dark eyes and hair. And the stonewashed jeans that clung to her slender lines and supple curves had made it difficult for Jack to concentrate these past four hours. Those high-stopped sneakers hadn’t helped, either. The red hearts had flashed distractedly with every idle swing of her foot.

  “What happens now?” she asked, abandoning the armchair to join the small group clustered around the table.

  Ramirez reached for a cardboard box. “We’ll take this stuff back to headquarters with us and check those offshore transactions when the banks open tomorrow.”

  Shaking her head, Angela handed him a stack of computer printouts. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe.”

  It was as close as Manny would get to an affirmative. As Jack had discovered in the months he’d worked with him, the investigator had the tenacity of a pit bull. He didn’t give up on a lead until it was stone-cold dead.

  Nor did he want to give up on this case. As Manny didn’t hesitate to admit, the HealthMark investigation was one of the biggest he’d ever been involved in, with the potential for stiff criminal sentences and millions of dollars in fines. He wanted every charge nailed down, every scrap of evidence documented.

  So did Jack. Or he had, until a midnight-blue Chrysler went up in flames, almost taking Angela with it. His priorities had now shifted. He didn’t want anything or anyone involved in this case stone-cold dead.

  “You’re wasting your time here,” Angela repeated stubbornly, jamming another stack of records into the half-filled box. “You won’t find anything in those offshore whatevers. And if you don’t find anything, where does that leave us?”

  “Back where we were when your car blew up,” Ramirez admitted grudgingly. “With a whole bunch of questions and no answers.”

  Not quite where they were last night, Jack thought. He was now convinced that the senator’s summons to Washington was related to his proposed medical reform legislation, and only to the legislation. Which left only two possible explanations for the car bomb and, Jack suspected, the shooting.

  Someone wanted to prevent him testifying.

  Or wanted to silence Angela.

  The former proposition he could handle. The latter created a hard, cold lump of determination in the pit of his stomach.

  He waited until Angela had carried a box out to the assistants busily engaged in loading the van before he cornered Manny.

  “I want you to talk to your contacts at Justice tonight,” he instructed. “Tell them it’s time to move on this case. We’ve given them enough, more than enough, to issue indictments.”

  “They’re not ready to move,” the agent protested. “They think they can catch a few more fish in this net. So do I, for that matter.”

  “We’ve caught enough. Let’s start reeling them in.”

  “I’m not sure Justice will agree.”

  Jack’s jaw hardened. “I’m not giving them a choice. Tell them they’ve got until tomorrow afternoon to get their stuff together, then I’m going public.”

  Manny thumped down the box he’d been holding. “Tomorrow afternoon!”

  “The senator kept his end of the bargain. I’m keeping mine. I’m going to testify before his subcommittee.”

  The agent’s shrewd gaze darted to the partially open front door. Angela’s figure was an indistinct blur in the deep purple twilight.

  Jack knew Manny hadn’t been blind to the interplay between Angela and him this afternoon. Nor did it take the FDA agent long to connect her involvement in the investigation with Jack’s sudden desire to rip away the shroud of secrecy.

  “Look,” Manny said doggedly, “if this is about the shooting and the car bomb, we still don’t know that either of those incidents were connected to our case. Give us a little more time. Let us track down all the leads.”

  Jack shook his head. “I’ve been willing to walk point for you up. to now, but I’m not willing to let anyone else get caught out there with me.”

  “Anyone else? Or anyone Angela?”

  “Just tell your contacts at Justice to get those indictments written out and the marshals ready to knock on a few doors tomorrow.”

  Ramirez drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Head cocked, he studied Jack thoughtfully.

  “You’re setting yourself up, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re going to stroll up the steps of the Capitol Building tomorrow, as bold as brass. If someone’s trying to stop you from testifying, that will be their last chance, because after that, the case will break wide open.”

  “That’s the way I see it.”

  “Why, Jack? Why not just let us keep you and Angela nice and safe and out of sight until we discover which of you was the target?”

  “What if you never pin that down? What if the trail is so well covered, you never find out who or why?”

  “Yeah, well, there’s always that possibility.”

  “I’m done working with probabilities and possibilities. If I’m the one they’re after, I want to force their hand. Tomorrow.”

  “And if you’re not?”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Then we throw every resource at our disposal in with Ed Winters and the Parettis to find out who’s after Angela.”

  It didn’t take Angela much longer than it had Manny to grasp the implications of Jack’s decision to testify. As the tan-colored van’s taillights disappeared, he suggested she call the senator and his senior staffer to confirm the hearing on the following day.

  Her head swung around. “You’re going to testify? In support of the senator’s proposed legislation?”

  “Yes, to the first. Not necessarily, to the second.” His hand shot up to forestall her protest. “I’ll share my views and answer any questions I’m asked, but I’m still not convinced that increased government regulation is the answer to the problems in our health care system.”

  “You’ll answer any questions?” she repeated. “Even about HealthMark and Gromorphin?”

  “Yes.”

  Her foot tapped the pine floor as she digested that one. After a moment, deep parallel grooves appeared between her brows.

  “You’re calling their hand, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  The grooves disappeared, and a determined glint came into her brown eyes. “Good! We’ll smoke the bastards out, Jack. Then we’ll burn them.”

  Her fierce avowal didn’t surprise him. Jack had suspected that Angela wouldn’t protest his decision. But he still wasn’t pr
epared for the way she threw herself so completely and intently into the fray.

  “I’ll call the senator,” she said, heading for the phone. “Then Marc Green. If he sets the hearing up for late afternoon, that will allow time for word to get out to all interested parties. We can—”

  He caught her arm. “Before you call anyone, I want you to understand one thing. There’s no ‘we’ involved. Not tomorrow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t want to expose you to any more danger than I already have. Manny’s going to arrange a driver and set up the route in.”

  He expected fireworks. He anticipated a storm of protest and hands slashing through the air. Instead, she folded her arms over the front of her sweater and locked her eyes with his.

  “Let’s get something straight, Merritt. I’ve been trained in offensive and defensive road techniques, escape and evasion and counterterrorist measures. All that aside, no one—I repeat, no one—can overtake a Paretti in the lead position.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  She looked so fierce, so determined, that Jack almost conceded. But his need to protect her went far too deep at this point. The seeds of that need had been sown on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. They’d germinated while he watched her handle the Browser. When the Chrysler lifted off the ground, they’d wrapped their roots tight around his heart.

  Angela soon disabused him of the notion that he had the final say in the matter, however. Hands on hips, she laid it on the line.

  “I’m your driver. Period. Until this is over, at least. Then I think we need to talk about future roles and missions.”

  She was right. Jack knew she was right. Whatever would come between them had to wait until this was over. But he couldn’t have stopped himself from taking her in his arms at that moment any more than he could have stopped breathing.

  “We’ll do more than talk,” he promised, imprinting every sculptured curve and shaded hollow of her face in his memory.

  Angela ran the tip of her tongue over suddenly dry lips. The shimmering, tingling sensation that overtook her whenever she got too close to this man worked its way in from her fingertips and up from her toes, until her entire body shivered. Her heart hammering, she shaped his chin and cheeks with her palms.