by Nora Roberts
“Well, he’s . . . I can’t,” she realized, baffled. “This is different.”
“Uh-oh,” Lea said, and grinned, ear to dainty ear. “Do you remember what I did the first time John kissed me?”
“You came home, crawled into bed and cried for an hour.”
“That’s right. Because I was scared and thrilled and absolutely sure I’d just met the man I was going to be with for the rest of my life.” The memory made her smile now, sweetly. Smugly.
“You were eighteen years old,” Dora pointed out. “Overly dramatic and a virgin.”
“So you’re twenty-nine, overly dramatic and you’ve never been in love before.”
A windy sigh. “Of course I have.”
“No, you haven’t.”
Dora picked up a dust cloth. “I haven’t said I’m in love with Jed.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“There,” Lea said triumphantly. “My point exactly. If you weren’t, you’d say so. Since you are, you’re confused. Where is he, anyway?”
“Out.” Because she felt she’d been outmaneuvered, Dora scowled. “I don’t keep him on a leash.”
“Testy,” Lea said with a wise nod. “Another sure sign.”
“Look, I’ll analyze my own feelings when I have the time.” She snatched up the cloth again and began to polish the already spotless countertop. “Ever since he came around, things have been upside down. The shop’s broken into, the apartment’s searched. I’m nearly raped and you—”
“What?” Lea was around the counter in two strides, gripping Dora’s hands. “What did you say?”
“Damn.” Though she tried to tug her hands away, Dora knew she’d already gone too far. “It wasn’t really as bad as that. I exaggerated because you made me mad.”
“Just hold on.” Lea strode to the door, locked it and slapped the Closed sign up. “You’re going to tell me everything, Dory, right now.”
“All right.” Resigned, Dora rubbed her hands over her face. “You’d better sit down.”
It took some time, given that Lea interrupted frequently, but it was eventually told, beginning to end.
“I want you to promise not to tell Mom or Dad about this until I have a chance to.”
“You go up and pack.” Lea sprang to her feet. With her eyes glittering blue, she looked to Dora like a slim blonde angel ready to hurl her harp and halo. “You’re moving in with John and me.”
“I am not. Honey, I’m perfectly safe here.”
“Oh, perfectly,” Lea tossed back.
“I am. The police are looking for him, and they’ve even put guards on the building.” She laughed then, adoring Lea. “Jesus, honey, I’m sleeping with a cop.”
That mollified, a little. “I don’t want you left alone. Not for five minutes.”
“For heaven’s sake—”
“I mean it.” The gleam in Lea’s eyes left no room for argument. “If you don’t promise, I’ll get John and we’ll haul you home with us. And I want to talk to Jed myself.”
“Help yourself.” Dora tossed up her hands in surrender. It was impossible to play big sister with a woman who was the dictatorial mother of three. “He won’t tell you anything I haven’t. I’m absolutely, completely safe. Guaranteed.”
They both shrieked when the door rattled.
“Hey!” Terri shouted and banged. “What are we doing locked up in the middle of the day?”
“Not a word,” Dora muttered, and crossed over to unlock the door. “Sorry, we were taking a break.”
Terri pursed her lips as she studied the two women. The air smelled suspiciously of a family fight. “Looks like you both could use one. Busy morning?”
“You could say so. Listen, there’s a new shipment in the back. Why don’t you unpack it? I’ll price it when you’re done.”
“Sure.” Obliging, Terri shrugged out of her coat as she strode to the storeroom. She could always listen through the door if things got interesting.
“We’re not finished, Isadora.”
“We are for now, Ophelia.” Dora kissed Lea’s cheek. “You can grill Jed when he gets back.”
“I intend to.”
“And nag him, too, will you? I’d like to see how he handles it.”
Lea puffed up with indignation. “I don’t nag.”
“World’s champ,” Dora muttered in her best subliminal voice.
“And if you think this is a joke, you’re—”
“Hey, Dora.” Terri poked her head out of the storeroom. There was a puzzled smile on her face, and the copy of the computer-generated picture of DiCarlo in her hand. “Why do you have a picture of the guy who came in Christmas Eve?”
“What?” Dora struggled to keep her voice even. “Do you know him?”
“He was our last customer Christmas Eve. I sold him the Staffordshire—the mama dog with pup?” She glanced down at the picture, wiggled her brows. “Believe me, he looks better in person than he does here. He a pal of yours?”
“Not exactly.” Her heart had begun to dance in her chest. “Terri, did he pay cash?”
“For the Staffordshire? Not likely. He charged it.”
Excitement rippled into Dora’s heart, but she was actress enough to void it from her voice. “Would you mind digging up the receipt for me?”
“Sure.” Terri’s face fell. “Don’t tell me the guy’s a deadbeat. I got approval on the card.”
“No, I’m sure it’s all right. I just need the receipt.”
“Okay. He had some Italian name,” she added. “Delano, Demarco, something.” Shrugging, she closed the door behind her.
“DiCarlo,” Brent said, handing Jed a rap sheet. “Anthony DiCarlo, New York. Mostly small-time stuff: larceny, confidence games, a couple of B and Es. Did a short stretch for extortion, but he’s been clean as a whistle for nearly six years.”
“Not being caught doesn’t make you clean,” Jed murmured.
“NYPD faxed this to me this morning. There’s a cooperative detective up there who’s going to do some legwork for me. Shouldn’t be too hard to find out if our boy has an alibi for the other night.”
“If he has one, it’s fantasy. This is him.” Jed tossed the file photo onto Brent’s desk. “Maybe I should take a trip to New York.”
“Maybe you should give our friends in the Big Apple a little time.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You look pretty relaxed for a man who’s thinking about kicking ass.”
Jed’s lips twitched. “Do I?”
“Yep.” Leaning back, Brent nodded. Mary Pat would have commended him on his romantic radar. “That’s what I thought,” he murmured, and grinned. “Dora’s quite a woman. Nice going, Captain.”
“Shut up, Chapman,” Jed said mildly on his way out. “Keep me posted, will you?”
“Sure.” Brent waited until the door closed before he picked up the phone to report to Mary Pat.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
He did think about it. Jed knew Dora would be down in the shop, so he went straight up to his own apartment. He stripped down to gym shorts and a T-shirt before settling on the bench press. He’d think better after he’d worked up a sweat.
He had to decide how much to tell her. She had a right to know it all—but there was a matter of rights, and a matter of what was best for her. If he knew Dora, and he was beginning to think he knew her very well, she’d want to do something about it. One of a cop’s biggest headaches was civilian interference.
Not that he was a cop, he reminded himself, and kept up a steady rhythm with the weights. But when a man had spent nearly half his life on the force, he couldn’t be considered a civilian either.
New York could handle it. But they didn’t have a vested interest. All Jed had to do was let the image of Dora’s pale, unconscious face swim into his mind to remind him just how vested his interest was.
A trip to New York, some poking around wouldn’t infringe overmuch on the o
fficial investigation. And if he could do something tangible, something real, he might not feel so . . .
He paused with the barbell fully extended and scowled at the ceiling. Just how did he feel? Puffing out air, he lowered the bar again, lifted, lowered.
Useless, he realized. Unsettled. Unfinished.
Nothing in his life had ever really had a closure because nothing had ever really been open to begin with. It had been easier to keep himself shut off, removed. Easier, hell, Jed thought. It had been necessary for survival.
So why had he joined the force? He supposed he had finally recognized his own need for order, for discipline and, yes, even for family. The job had given him all of that. And more. A sense of purpose, of satisfaction and of pride.
Donny Speck had cost him that; but this wasn’t about Speck, he reminded himself. It wasn’t about Elaine. This was about protecting the woman across the hall. The woman he’d begun to feel something for.
That was something else to think about.
He didn’t stop lifting when he heard the knock, but his lips curved when she called his name.
“Come on, Skimmerhorn, I know you’re in there. I need to talk to you.”
“It’s open.”
“How come you make me lock mine?” she demanded. She walked in looking all business in a hunter-green suit, and smelling of sin. “Oh.” Her eyebrows lifted as she took a long slow scan of his body stretched out on the bench, muscles oiled with sweat and rippling. Her heart did a fast somersault. “Sorry to interrupt your male ritual. Shouldn’t there be drums pounding or some sort of pagan chant in the background?”
“Did you want something, Conroy?”
“I want a lot of things. Red suede shoes, a couple of weeks in Jamaica, this Böttger teapot I saw over on Antique Row.” She walked over to kiss his upside down lips, tasted salt. “How soon will you be finished—I might get excited watching you sweat.”
“Looks like I’m finished now.” Jed rattled the bar back in the brace.
“You won’t be so cranky after I tell you what I found out.” She paused, dramatic timing. “Terri recognized the picture.”
“What picture?” Jed slid off the bench, reached for a towel.
“The picture. The magic picture we put together on the computer. Jed, he was in the shop on Christmas Eve.” Excitement had her pacing the room, heels clicking on bare wood, her hands gesturing. “His name is—”
“DiCarlo, Anthony,” Jed interrupted, amused when Dora’s jaw dropped. “Last known address East Eighty-third Street, New York.”
“But how did you . . . Damn.” Sulking, she shoved the receipt back in her pocket. “You could have at least pretended to be impressed with my skills as a detective.”
“You’re a real Nancy Drew, Conroy.” He went to the kitchen, took a jug of Gatorade from the fridge and gulped it straight from the bottle. When he lowered it, she was standing in the doorway with a dangerous glint in her eye. “You did okay. The cops just work faster. Did you call it in?”
“No.” Her lip poked out. “I wanted to tell you.”
“Brent’s in charge of the investigation,” Jed reminded her. He reached out and flicked a finger over her bottom lip. “Stop pouting.”
“I’m not. I never pout.”
“With that mouth, baby, you’re the world champ. What did Terri say about DiCarlo?”
“Brent’s in charge of the case,” she said, primly. “I’ll go back to my own apartment and call him. He might appreciate it.”
Jed caught her face in his hand, gave it a little squeeze. “Spill it, Nancy.”
“Well, since you put it that way. She said he was very smooth, very polite.” Moving around Jed, she opened the fridge herself, gave an involuntary and very feminine sound of disgust. “God, Skimmerhorn, what is that thing in the bowl?”
“Dinner. What else did she say?”
“You can’t eat this. I’ll fix dinner.”
“DiCarlo,” Jed said flatly, and took her by the shoulders before she could poke into his cupboards.
“He said he had this aunt he wanted to buy a special gift for. Terri said she showed him the Foo dog—which I’m now sure he helped himself to when he broke in.” She scowled over that a minute. “She said he was a snappy dresser and drove a Porsche.”
He wanted more than that. “Is she downstairs?”
“No, she’s gone for the day. We’re closed.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Well, sorry, I don’t know where she is now. She had an early dinner date with some new guy she’s seeing.” Dora let out a huff when Jed walked out of the kitchen. “If it’s important, you could catch her at the theater later. Curtain’s at eight. We can grab her for a few minutes backstage between scenes.”
“Fine.”
“But I don’t see what good it would do.” Dora followed him toward the bedroom. “I’ve already talked to her, and we have the name and address.”
“You don’t know the questions to ask.” After stripping off his T-shirt, Jed tossed it into a corner. “He might have said something. The more we know, the easier it’ll be to break him down in interrogation. We’ve got a couple hours if you really want to cook . . .”
But she wasn’t listening. When he turned back, she was standing very still, a hand pressed against her heart and a look of utter shock on her face.
“What?” Instinct had him spinning around, scanning the room through narrowed eyes.
“The bed,” she managed. “Oh . . .”
His tensed muscles relaxed. The quick flutter of embarrassment annoyed the hell out of him. First she criticized his cooking, now his housekeeping. “It’s the maid’s year off.” He frowned at the rumpled sheets and blankets. “I don’t see the point in making it when I’m just going to mess it up again.”
“The bed,” she repeated, reverently. “French Art Nouveau, about nineteen hundred. Oh, look at the inlay.” She knelt by the footboard to run her fingertips gently over the image of a slender woman in a flowing gown holding a pitcher. The sound that came from her throat was one a woman makes in the heat of passion. “It’s rosewood,” she said, and sighed.
Amused, Jed watched her climb onto the bed and examine the headboard on her hands and knees. “Oh, the workmanship here,” she murmured. “Look at this carving.” Lovingly, she caressed the curves. “The delicacy.”
“I think I’ve got a magnifying glass around here,” Jed told her when she all but pressed her nose to the wood.
“You don’t even know what you have here, do you?”
“I know it was one of the few pieces in that mausoleum I grew up in that I liked. Most of the rest’s in storage.”
“Storage.” She closed her eyes and shuddered at the thought. “You have to let me go through what you have.” She sat back on her heels, all but clasped her hands in prayer. “I’ll give you fair market value for whatever I can afford. Just promise me, swear that you won’t go to another dealer until I can make an offer.”
“Pull yourself together, Conroy.”
“Please.” She scrambled to the edge of the bed. “I mean it. I don’t expect favors because of a personal relationship. But if there are things you don’t want.” She looked back at the headboard, rolled her eyes. “God, I can’t stand it. Come here.”
“Uh-oh.” A grin tugged at his mouth. “You’re going to try to seduce me so I’ll lower my price.”
“Seduce, hell.” Her breath had already quickened when she unbuttoned her jacket, peeled it off to reveal a flimsy camisole in the same deep green. “I’m going to give you the ride of your life, buddy.”
“Ah . . .” He wasn’t sure which emotion was uppermost. Shock or arousal. “That’s quite an offer, Conroy.”
“It’s not an offer, pal, it’s a fact.” She rose to her knees to unzip her skirt, wiggled out of it. When she’d finished, she knelt on the bed wearing the camisole, a matching garter belt, sheer black hose and spiked
heels. “If I don’t have you on this bed, right now, I’ll die.”
“I don’t want to be responsible for that.” God, his knees were weak. “Conroy, I’m covered with sweat.”
She smiled. “I know.” She made a grab, caught him by the waistband of his shorts. He didn’t put up much of a fight. “You’re about to get a lot sweatier.”
She tugged. Jed let himself be taken down. When she rolled over on top of him, he caught at her hands. “Be gentle with me.”
She laughed. “Not a chance.”
She crushed her mouth to his, nipping his lips apart and plunging in a kiss that erased every rational thought from his mind. Even as he released her hands to hold her, she was pressing down on him, mercilessly rubbing heat to heat.
He pulled in air that did nothing more than clog thickly in his chest. “Dora, let me—”
“Not this time.” Fisting her hands in his hair, she ravished his mouth.
She was rough, relentless, reckless, tormenting him to within an inch of sanity until he didn’t know whether to curse her, or to beg. Sensation after staggering sensation whipped through him leaving his system churning and edgy and desperate for more. His hands streaked under her camisole and he tortured himself with the firm, ripe swell of her breasts.
She arched back at his touch. A low, feline sound of approval purred in her throat as she stripped the material over her head. With her head thrown back, she covered his hands with hers, riding them down over her torso, over her flat belly. Her fingers tightened on his when he drove her over the first, shuddering peak. But when he tried to roll her over, she locked her legs tight around him, laughing huskily at his oath.
She slid down, dug her teeth into his shoulder. He tasted of salt and sweat and hot-blooded male. The combination whirled in her head like a heady wind. He was strong. The muscles under her urgent hands were like rippled iron. But she could draw a breathless, vulnerable moan from him with the dance of her fingers. She could feel his heart thundering under her lips.
He clutched at the smooth flesh over the top of her stockings, too frantic now to think of bruises. Now, at last now, she let him lift her. His vision grayed when she lowered herself onto him, taking steel deep, deep into velvet. Dazed, he watched her body bow back, her eyes closed, her hands sliding up her own sweat-slicked body in an uninhibited caress as she tightened urgently around him.