by Jan Coffey
The phone slipped through Gavin’s fingers as he admired Lacey’s body, the silhouetted movement of her breasts and the swing of her hair. She must smell like soap and perfume, and he could only imagine what her skin would taste like. God, he wanted to find out first-hand—
His phone vibrated in his lap—and it wasn’t the only thing.
He tested his voice first before answering. “Hel… hello?”
“Hi. Did you just call me?”
She leaned down, displaying her perfectly heart-shaped ass. He was disappointed when she straightened up and pulled on black underwear.
“Gavin?”
“Yes. I’m here. I called because I’m running early.”
Her one-handed struggle with the bra was the best part of the evening...so far.
“You don’t have to wait until seven. Drive over now. Where are you?”
He grimaced, looking up and trying to take his fill. “In your driveway.”
The shade on the window came down with a snap. “Oh. Well…give me a couple of minutes…uh, to put myself together.”
The phone clicked off.
“Please don’t,” he murmured. “Not on my account.”
~~~~
“Oh, my God!” Hyperventilating, Lacey stared at the closed shade. Now he thinks I’m an exhibitionist, too.
What was she thinking? She wanted to start off making a good impression. Keep their interaction at a professional level. Getting naked was not what she had in mind.
As good as it sounded, crawling under the bed and pretending that he wasn’t in her driveway probably wouldn’t help either.
Lacey hurriedly pulled on her jeans and grabbed a green oxford shirt from the basket of clean clothes on the bed. Stupid of her to think she had plenty of time to take a shower and look decent after her last customer left. Peeking at her reflection in the mirror, she flinched at the beet red blush on her face.
“Crap. Crap. Crap.” No amount of makeup could hide this.
The car door opened and closed. Her hair was wet, but she had to go down before losing what was left of her courage. Making him wait would only make things worse. She rolled an elastic band onto her wrist and went out into the hallway.
Going down stairs was still a challenge. Her nightmares of falling never went away…and with good reason. The operations seventeen years ago had left her right leg was almost an inch shorter than the left; that’s what the doctors told her. Lacey thought the difference was growing.
“Be calm,” she whispered, taking some slow breaths as she reached the bottom step. The front door lay ahead of her. Through the beveled glass panels she saw he was already on her front porch.
Lacey stole another look at her reflection in the mirror near the door and pulled the wet strands of her hair into a ponytail. Wild green eyes, no makeup, flushed face… This was absolutely not the way she’d intended to look for this meeting.
Gavin was watching her through the panels and gave her a casual wave.
Heart racing, she unlocked the door, yanking it open. “Hi, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m sorry for being so early.”
Lacey couldn’t look him in the face. She didn’t know how long he’d been in her driveway or how much he’d seen. She stared at the flowers he held out to her. “Who are these for?”
“You.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“This is nothing, considering the show.”
Her eyes snapped up to his. “What show?”
“I was in Litchfield, discussing floral arrangements for an upcoming show.”
Gavin MacFadyen had glittering black eyes and dark hair that was going salt-and-pepper at the sideburns. His face was angular and well-proportioned with a strong chin. He was squarely built and tall, a couple of inches over six feet. Damn, he was even more handsome than she remembered.
“I’d like to hear more about it,” she said finally.
“Sorry, can’t. Client privacy. I can’t discuss any details.”
She stared into his serious expression. He was being a devil.
At Terri’s funeral, she’d been upset. The crowd attending had been a wall of dark suits and uniforms. She’d been impatient to get out of there when he’d stopped her in the parking lot, looking just like the rest of them. Well, sort of. The suit had been the same, but the look in his eyes…
And right now, in his leather jacket and jeans, he looked comfortable. Handsome. He had the air of someone stopping to see a friend.
“The flowers. I hand picked them just for you. At the grocery store.”
Lacey was happy to take the bouquet and bury her face in it. The smell of lilies always tickled her nose—and it was a great excuse to cover her blush.
Of course she only blushed more when his gaze ran over her face and down her body to her bare toes. She knew what he was doing. He wasn’t looking for similarities to Terri as most people did. He was telling her he’d seen her naked. Lacey’s body tingled in the most private places.
“Am I allowed in the house?”
“Oh, yes.” She opened the door wide and stepped back. “Come in.”
He paused by a pegboard in the hall and hung his jacket next to hers. His shirt stretched across the taut muscles of his broad back. His hair was longer now than it’d been the first time they’d met. Lacey caught a hint of spicy cologne and barely stopped herself from leaning in to take a deeper whiff.
“Place looks good.” Taking a couple of steps, he perused her office and the parlor beyond the doorway. He turned around and did the same thing to the living room to their left. “Looks like you’re settled in.”
“Pretty much.”
Facing her, he smiled. “You’re wearing flower pollen on your nose.”
She started to wipe it away, but he got there first. His callused thumb brushed her cheek then the tip of her nose. Lacey’s heart beat so fast she was worried it might pop out of her chest. She was a coward and couldn’t look into his eyes for fear of what she might see. What he might see…
“I should put these in water.” She slipped around him, heading to the kitchen at the end of the hall. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Sure. What are you having?”
He was right behind her. “I started a pot of coffee before getting in the shower.”
She opened and closed cabinets, looking for a vase, trying to buy herself time to pull her scattered wits together. Men didn’t usually have this kind of effect on her. Then again, she’d never dealt with someone like Gavin MacFadyen.
“Coffee would be great, thanks.”
The flowers were beautiful, and she found the perfect vase for them.
“How do you take it?” she asked, taking two mugs out of the cabinet and pouring the coffee.
“Black.”
He stood in the doorway, watching her with an amused expression on his face.
“What have I done now?” She wiped her nose, her face. “Have I got petals in my hair?”
“No. Not anymore anyway.” He sat down at the kitchen table.
He was more manageable seated, thank God. She needed the break.
Then she put his mug in front of him and her nerves got shot to hell all over again.
“How’s the business going?” he asked as if her insides weren’t churning.
“It’s good,” Lacey replied, leaning against the counter, going for nonchalance. She prayed it worked. “Having a client base to start with is helping. I’m busy enough right now to pay the bills.”
Gavin sipped the coffee, and it was impossible to miss the grimace on his face.
This time her blush had nothing to do with him seeing her naked. “Sorry. Terri always claimed my coffee was too strong.”
“Undrinkable,” he corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“She said your coffee could fuel a rocket to Mars.”
“She was a wuss and so are you. You don’t have to drink it.”
“No, this is good. I have a
lot of work to do tonight.” He eyed the cup with new appreciation. “This should keep me up all night.”
She opened the fridge and took out the milk, adding a dab to her cup. He extended his mug for some, too. She took the sugar bowl out of the cabinet and put it on the kitchen table and pretended not to look as he reached over to add a heaping spoon to his.
There was history between Terri and him. Her sister had liked him. Trusted him. Lacey wondered just how much of their family’s past he knew.
“You mentioned on the phone that you've been here before.” She slid the flowers to the center of the kitchen table. The more obstacles between them, the more at ease she felt.
Gavin immediately moved his chair until he had a clear view of her.
“A few times over the years. Mostly when your grandfather, Walt, was still alive. He liked to have Terri invite her cop friends over to watch a baseball game and shoot the shit. We’d barbeque in the backyard. I’m also kind of handy with tools so I was a favorite whenever there were projects that needed to be done.”
Lacey never really got to know Walter O’Connor very well. But he was the only one who’d stepped up for her and Terri during the tough times. He’d never turned his back on them.
“You and your sister were pretty young when you moved in with him, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “Terri came to live with him first. She was a senior in high school. I came a few years later.”
Lacey took a deep swallow of the bitter coffee. She’d lived with her grandfather for only four months before she’d screwed up all their lives. Still, he’d put money in her jail account and sent her a letter once a week. No earth-shattering prose and very little news; just a few words to remind her that there were people beyond the razor wire who loved and cared about her.
“He had a soft spot in his heart for you.” The dark eyes were studying her face too intently for comfort.
“I was a lot of trouble for him. I always wondered if he’d wished he’d never asked me to come east.”
“That was never an option for him, considering what you walked away from. And he never blamed you for any of it. You were only fifteen.”
Gavin knew too much. Lacey went to the sink, dumped out her coffee, rinsed out the mug, and refilled it. It was so much easier when people didn’t know. She’d mastered living in a void. Move often. Never let people get close to you. Have no past. Don’t plan for a future. That way, there was no sympathy, no doubts, no regrets. It was simply better not to feel.
They drank their coffee in silence for a moment. He let her get a grip on her emotions, saying nothing until she turned around.
“How are you doing, settling Terri’s things?” he asked. “I ran into one of her neighbors last week who said no one has been to the apartment.”
“I've been ignoring it. Hiding away, I guess.” She shrugged. “I know I have to get out from under this rock and deal with all of it. Her life. The apartment. Her car is in the garage behind the house here. There’s a mountain of paperwork.” She took a deep breath; she’d been rambling. “I'm sure there are other things I've ignored. I keep expecting that she's going to come back and take care of everything.”
Gavin nodded. “She liked to be in charge.”
“It wasn't time for her to go so she had no plan for what needed to be done. You know, the way she always did.”
“I worked with her. She was my partner. I know.”
Lacey watched him nurse his coffee. Trust and friendship didn’t come easy for either her or Terri. Their upbringing had made sure of that. Still, Terri called this man a friend. That was a feat on so many levels.
“Has anyone from New Haven PD contacted you?”
Lacey focused on the present and why she’d wanted to contact him. “I met one of Terri’s bosses right after the accident to hand over some files she’d brought here the weekend she died. But do you mean since this morning?”
“Something happened this morning?”
“The Westbury police were here. Collecting information.” She left her coffee on the counter and started for the door. “There’s a new file on my computer. It has to do with Terri. That’s why I wanted to see you.”
He pushed the chair back and followed her.
“Someone hacked into my system and put it there,” Lacey pulled a second chair up to the desk when they got to her office.
His legs were too long. His thigh was pressed against hers when he sat down, and she tried to pull back. There was nowhere she could go.
“Do you have a secure system?”
Lacey explained what she had, told him about the radius of her network, and Amy. Then she opened her directory and found the folder before pushing the keyboard and mouse in front of him. There wasn’t enough air with him so close.
She stood up. Trapped against the wall by his chair and desk, Lacey motioned to the file. She feared she’d fall apart if she looked again at that photo of Terri’s face.
“That’s it. That folder…Road Kill. It’s not mine. It has pictures of Terri. The day she was killed. But the cops who came over this morning didn't seem to believe me.”
Her voice shook. Gavin’s eyes were glued to the screen. A couple of clicks and he had the file and the pictures open.
Lacey didn’t want to see them again, but her gaze involuntarily drifted to them, her throat burning.
His attention was riveted to the images, studying every detail. He enlarged them, getting a close-up of Terri’s face. At the areas around the body.
Lacey looked away and blinked back tears, focusing instead on an unraveling piece of yarn on a shawl Amy had left on her chair.
“When did you call the police?”
His tone had changed. She recognized the cop’s voice. Interrogating. Trusting no one.
“Last night. That’s when I found the folder on my computer. But since it wasn’t an emergency, they sent a cruiser over this morning. But it's even more complicated than that.” She told him how someone had inserted one of the pictures in her customer's wedding book.
“There will be an electronic fingerprint of everything having anything to do with this file on the hard drive of your computer. Someone who knows what they’re doing can give us a lay down of the whole exchange.” His jaw clenched jaw.
“I want to compare these to the crime scene photos the police took. Is it okay if I email them to myself?”
“Yes. Do whatever you have to do.” Lacey wished she could stop the tremble in her voice. She wanted to tell him how she suspected Terri’s death was retaliation for Stephanie Green’s murder. Sixteen years ago, everyone held her responsible. The teenager’s family thought of Lacey as the criminal who’d lured their daughter away from home. The others involved had blamed her for calling Terri and later accepting a deal from the district attorney for a reduced sentence. Lacey had been a key witness when the other five had been tried on a score of charges.
All these years later, Lacey still felt like the outsider. Nothing had changed.
She couldn’t say the words, but her sister was dead because of her. All of a sudden, she was freezing. Still, she didn’t want to leave the room and risk losing this chance of Gavin helping her. She watched in silence as he emailed the folder to himself.
“This morning, what did the cops do?”
“Took copies of the file. I haven't heard from them since.”
“The locals had a chance to seize your computer and take it back to the station, but they didn't.”
“I asked them not to. My business is dependent on this equipment.”
“Good. It gives us the green light to do some checking without interfering with an official investigation.”
She looked at him curiously.
“I don’t work for NHPD anymore,” he explained. “But I have to steer clear of obstructing anyone’s work. In my job I need them on my side.”
“Then you can help me?”
“Definitely. At least, I can push for some answers about who’s doing what o
n Terri’s case. And I’ll get these photos into the right person’s hands.”
She nodded. He stood up and she stepped back, her back coming up against the wall.
“Do you remember seeing Terri’s badge after the accident?”
Lacey slipped past him and went around the desk. “No. They asked me about it. She came here the night before directly from work so she might have had it with her. I didn’t find it in her bedroom, and it wasn’t in her car either. I still haven’t gone to New Haven to check her apartment.”
“Would she have taken it with her jogging?”
Lacey shrugged. “I don’t know. Actually, I don’t remember ever seeing her badge. I couldn’t tell you what it looked like. She never showed it to me.”
With the exception of her sister, Lacey didn’t have a high opinion of people in uniform and Terri had known it. When they were together, they almost never talked about the cases she was working on.
“She had her wallet on her when she died,” Lacey told him. “The police returned it to me after they found her body.”
“Was anything missing?”
“If there was, I wouldn’t know. I did notify the bank, so except for automatic bill payments, her accounts are on hold until I get around to…to taking care of things.”
“How about her cell phone?”
“She’d forgotten to bring her charger. We have different cell phones. It had gone dead overnight. So she’d left it upstairs next to the bed.”
“Have you done anything with it, yet? Like closing the account or checking her voicemail?”
Lacey shook her head. “There’s a lot that I haven’t done yet. It’s been easier to lose myself in the work and try not to deal with reality,” she continued without any prodding. “I know…it’s almost five weeks.”
He rose to his feet and touched her on the arm. “You’re doing okay. There’s time for everything.”
Lacey felt her knees go soft. His hand was warm and her skin tingled beneath the shirt. She wanted to lean into him, let him take away the chill.
“Have you had dinner? I haven’t eaten yet. We could go out.”
“No. No. I already had dinner,” she lied. He had a way of knocking off her balance, making her mind stray. He was too attractive. Too much for her to handle. No way was she going to put herself in temptation’s way.