by Lyn Stone
Clay felt his heart swell with the praise. “Thanks, Holly. I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think so hard, hon,” she advised. “I’m telling you, you think a thing to death. Go with your feelings on this. Want me to talk to Jack about it for you?”
“No, I’ll do it. But later. First, let me try to ditch these rose-colored glasses I keep seeing her through. Even if I am falling for her like I’ve lost a parachute, I do need to see her as she really is, you know?”
“Lotsa luck,” she said laughing wryly. “And Clay? Don’t screw this up. The thing with her, personally, I mean. The job will take care of itself.”
“Okay,” he muttered. “Gotta go. I never called you about this, right?”
“Right,” she quickly agreed and was gone without a goodbye.
Clay could picture her running straight to Will. He would be the joke of the office tomorrow. What the devil had he been thinking to call Holly?
Something inside him seemed to be opening up, welcoming in outside interference, asking for it. Hell, for a man who had always prided himself on being so self-contained, he seemed to have lost it in a hurry. Vanessa had changed him, was still changing him. In a way, he resented it, but in another, he felt a little relieved that he could change at all.
When rules collapsed, even rigid, self-imposed rules, that left a void, a wide-open field where there had once been a definite road with signposts to follow. How was he supposed to find his way?
“Want some fudge?” Vanessa asked from the doorway.
The way she stood, one slender hip cocked, her head tilted just so, made her as enticing as any confection in the world. He could almost taste her sweetness. “You made fudge?”
“Me? Nope, I’m not much of a cook. The grans keep a pretty good supply on hand. Chocolate cures everything,” she declared as she came over, plopped down next to him on the sofa and tucked her bare feet beneath her. With a groan of pleasure, she proceeded to savor one of the squares from the saucer she had brought from the kitchen.
He frowned at the amount stacked on the little plate. “You must be seriously ill.”
She licked her lips and grinned, her dark eyes as rich as the candy. “Have some.”
Have some. Clay sucked in a steadying breath and dragged his gaze away from her delicious mouth. He was pretty sure fudge wouldn’t cure what ailed him right now, but he took a piece anyway. It melted in his mouth, the sugar high hitting him almost immediately. Yep, just as he feared. Chocolate was not a cure-all. It was an aphrodisiac.
“I need to get out of here and get some exercise,” he said, hoping for escape before he did something foolish. Even if he decided to go for it, as Holly advised, he couldn’t just jump Vanessa with no warning. “I ought to change and go for a run.”
“I could come with you!” she said. “Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”
It was way too late, Clay thought. The wide-open spaces beckoned with all sorts of possibilities he’d never allowed himself before. Who needed a road with signposts anyway?
With regret, he knew what he had to do. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Vanessa, I’m going to have to turn over your evaluation for the COMPASS team to someone else. Of course, I’ll stay until you’ve completed this investigation, but I can’t be objective about your performance. I promise this won’t preclude your being considered. I’ll make it very clear that the personal involvement is one-sided and all my doing.”
She shoved herself up off the sofa. After pacing for a minute, she faced him directly. “I don’t care about the position. Tell them I’m not interested.”
“But you are,” Clay argued. “I know that you are.” He could see it so clearly in her eyes, even now. She wanted it. She also wanted him and he could see that, too.
“Okay, I admit it,” she said with a one-shoulder shrug and took her seat again, this time facing him, one foot tucked under her. “But we don’t have to let this… Whatever it is between us doesn’t have to make a difference. You know as well as I do it’s just a galloping case of lust. I find you wildly attractive and obviously you see something in me that excites you a little. Let’s just come to terms with it.”
Wildly attractive? Clay’s pulse stuttered. “And how do you suggest we do that? You think if we lay it out in the open this way, it’ll just go away?”
She pursed her lips, as if weighing their options. Then she came to a decision. “As it stands now, the forbidden factor makes it loom very large. All we can think about, right?”
He nodded with a wry grimace. “All the time.”
“So we burn it out,” she suggested, giving her knee a thump with her palm. Her fingers flared and then came together as she fisted her hand. “You know as well as I do that once the tension is relieved, once that seductive unknown is known, you’ll see I’m nothing special.”
He laughed. “Nothing special? You’re kidding right?”
“Not at all,” she assured him, shaking her head vehemently. “This will work, Clay. Once it’s played out, you’ll get your objectivity back and I can function a lot better. No harm, no foul. Just a very short fling to take the edge off and put things back in perspective.”
Her naivete drove him crazy. Crazy enough to tell himself what she suggested might work. But there was a danger here she didn’t understand and he needed to warn her of it.
He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “What if it doesn’t play out, Vanessa? What if one of us gets in too deep to let it go?”
“Me?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “No way. I’m not looking for any promise of commitment from you. Never even occurred to me.”
Ah, the temptation to let it go at that, but Clay knew he couldn’t, in all good conscience, do that. “It’s not you I was worried about.”
He could see he had shocked her speechless. With reluctance, he let go of her hand and sat back to see what she would do with the information.
Much to his surprise, she didn’t run from it. Instead, she took a deep breath and asked point-blank, “So you’re afraid to chance it?”
Clay couldn’t be anything but frank now that he had opened this particular can of worms. “I’m terrified. Maybe sex with you would be enough. But what if it’s not?”
He didn’t simply want her, Clay realized that. He craved her with every ounce of his being, but not just her body. He wanted all that she was. Maybe it was not love, but envy he was feeling. She had everything that he didn’t, was everything he wasn’t, embraced everything he couldn’t.
“I need you, Vanessa,” he admitted, dropping his gaze from hers, unable to meet it any longer. “God, that sounded desperate and I didn’t mean it to. I’m not desperate. If I left you right now, I could get on with things, maybe be better off for it, but…” He looked up at her, not caring now if she saw into his soul. “I would never be able to forget you or stop wanting the essence of what you are.”
Her brown eyes softened even as they flared, but her tone was teasing. “Are you saying you’re in love with me, Clay?”
“I don’t know,” he said, releasing a breath of frustration. “I can’t say that, because I honestly don’t know.”
Her soft laugh sounded a little bitter. “Well, at least I can count on your being up front about it. I think maybe I’m a little bit in love with you. Or probably just fixated on what you are. Hard to tell.”
“When in doubt, do something,” he said with a sigh. “My father always said that. He was always wrong.”
Now her laugh was sincere, though definitely dry. “When in doubt, don’t,” she replied. “My grandmother always says that. And she’s invariably right. So I’m not going to bed with you, Clay, as much as I would like to. Forget I suggested it. It was a bad idea.”
“A dangerous idea,” he said with a nod. “I don’t blame you for changing your mind. But that still leaves us with the initial problem, doesn’t it? What to do about the job. About us.”
She shrugged. “Well, there’s no
t an us as yet. Let’s table it for now and see how the op goes. Nothing says we have to decide anything right now.” She shot him a mock frown. “Just don’t kiss me again. I tend to start justifying anything that might happen the minute our lips meet and I suspect you do, too. No hand holding. No touching.”
Reluctantly, he nodded. “No kissing, no touching,” he agreed, wondering if he could follow through on that. Even now he could still taste her, feel the firm ripeness of her mouth, the vibration of the moan she made in her throat, and the encompassing heat that any contact with her sent rushing through his body. The mere memory of it was enough to arouse him.
He wished he had kept his mouth shut and taken her to bed when she suggested it.
She wiped a palm across her brow. “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”
Clay burst out laughing and she joined him. The moment was incredibly intimate, he thought, probably more so than if they had given in to the lust. What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Concentrate on the op, do what he could to assist Van in wrapping it up and get the hell out of Dodge, that’s what. She had him thinking along lines he knew he couldn’t afford to consider.
This was precisely why he didn’t do relationships. He didn’t know how. When should a man be totally honest with a woman and when should he keep his big mouth shut? There was a question he had waited about ten minutes too long to ask himself.
The EOD team arrived, two guys, a sniff dog and a trunk-load of gear. Buoyed by their earlier find in the judge’s car, they did a thorough search. They found nothing remotely suspicious. Vanessa thanked them and sent them back down the mountain to continue checking out other vehicles and homes.
As long as the team had been there, she’d kept her mind on the investigation, but the minute they left, her thoughts turned right back to Clay and their earlier conversation.
He was the most unusual man she had ever met. He seemed wholly incapable of doing all those little dodges guys did when it came to discussing anything personal. She liked that about him, but it was disconcerting to say the least.
No playing games. No talking in circles. She was used to guys doing that. In her experience, she sort of expected to have to guess at a lot and read between the lines.
If only they had met under other circumstances. However, it probably wouldn’t have made that much difference. She wasn’t looking to get involved. Her main goal was to excel in her job, to make a difference and try to make the world a little less susceptible to crime.
She also wanted to set an example for girls with her background who needed a role model. Maybe that was pretentious of her, but Vanessa saw too many of them settle for less than they could be simply because they didn’t know what that was or how to find out.
She liked giving talks in the school about fulfilling potential and, to be perfectly honest, enjoyed the way some of the students looked up to her and wanted to emulate her career path. She wasn’t out to recruit for the Bureau, but to show how important it was for young minority women to make good grades, set goals, focus and follow through.
If she deviated from her current path in order to have an affair with a man she found attractive, or worse, to marry one, start a family and alter her goals, what would that say about her? Would she be setting a poor example? She needed to put things back in perspective and stop mooning over Clay like a lovestruck groupie.
From now on, she planned to keep her distance.
For two days, they behaved like strangers in a state of limbo. Nothing was happening with the investigation. No other explosives were found, much less detonated. And no sightings of Hightower were reported. She and Clay actively searched for the man, but it was as if he had fallen off the earth.
“He’s waiting for things to die down,” Vanessa said as she and Clay sat in the parking lot of the local Burger King and ate their lunch. “I think he’ll strike when he thinks everyone’s lost interest.”
She grimaced and plunked her French fries back into the sack. “And I think that time has arrived. The mayor wants his conference room back.”
Even though Vanessa had already released the EOD personnel the day before so that they could get back to their regular jobs and answer other calls, one four-man team from Redstone had elected to stay. They were calling it a training exercise. Three guys performing on the job training and one experienced man and dog to cover countless possibilities. The sheriff had to consider the available funds when keeping extra deputies on duty. They had already been dismissed. “I’ve lost almost all support.”
“Cases go cold, Vanessa. You know it happens. If Hightower’s given up on his original plans, there’s nothing you can do but hope that he finally came to his senses.”
“I know better. He’s just waiting. I feel it in my gut,” she argued.
“A premonition?” he demanded, his dark eyes alert, as if she had said something vitally important.
“Just a strong feeling that he’s not through yet,” she explained. “Why do you ask? Are you giving up, too? Going back to McLean?”
“Not yet,” he stated, taking a huge bite of his sandwich.
“Why not?” He had been unusually quiet today and looked vaguely troubled. Vanessa couldn’t think why he would stick around unless he believed she was right about James. She decided to come right out and ask him. He had been honest to a fault before. “You agree with me, don’t you?”
He swallowed and took a sip of his drink. Then he crumpled up his trash and held it between his palms for a minute, looking at it as if it had the answers. He seemed to be trying to reach a decision about something, then looked defensive when he met her questioning gaze. “I had a vision last night.”
His expression told her he wasn’t joking about this. She got serious, too. “I’ll bet that revelation cost you, didn’t it?”
He smiled. “Yes. I generally don’t mention that I have them, but if there’s a chance it could help us, it would be wrong to ignore it.”
“You continue to surprise me,” Vanessa admitted. “You want to share what you saw?”
He shook his head. “Not until I try to figure it out.” His gaze met hers. “But it was strong enough to make me determined to wait here with you until something breaks.”
“Did you see me in your vision?” she asked. “Maybe if you tell me about it, we could try to interpret it together.”
He pursed his lips as if debating about how specific he would get. He carefully disposed of the remains of his lunch, then propped his arms on the steering wheel. “You were there. A sly little fox darting through the trees and around rocks.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, probably trying to visualize it again. “I ran to keep up with you. Thunder boomed and lightning struck, breaking everything beneath our feet. Chasms opened, earth crumbled.”
“You were the panther,” she told him, unable to look away from his face.
The gray eyes flew open and he stared at her. “What?”
“The panther,” she said with conviction. “You see me as a fox, I see you as a panther. I tend to associate people with animals, too. You move like a panther. Graceful, agile, lethal. I can see you stalking, muscles bunching to leap, eyes narrowing as you plot the next move of your prey.”
For a long minute, he said nothing, just continued looking at her in a speculative and intense way. “And Hightower, how do you see him?”
She grinned. “Well, the image of warthog sort of stuck in my mind after Du-da put out the pretense for Dilly. He’s like one, don’t you think? Razor-sharp, quick, unpredictable and very dangerous. Ugly. At least to me, he is.”
Clay didn’t agree or disagree, but changed the subject entirely. “How much stock do you put in the old ways of your people?”
“Which old ways?” They had changed a lot over the centuries.
“The ones dealing with harmony and balance. In particular, the one that requires a life for a life to keep things even?”
Vanessa’s heart sank. Was he subscribing
to the vengeance theory that some of the others were hinting at? She took a deep breath. “Studied us, did you?”
He nodded, running one long finger along the dashboard, creating a line in the film of dust there. “Before the whites intruded, that was the solitary reason for war among the Cherokee. Avenging a death or deaths. The warriors never fought about property, either land or goods. They simply exacted what they thought was due when someone was killed, retribution.”
“I have no vendetta against James for killing Brenda. I just want to stop him from hurting or killing anyone else,” she assured him. “You need to get over this obsession with the ways, Senate. I don’t know anyone who’s still living in the dark ages around here. One of the foremost attributes of the Cherokee is adaptability. We adjust to new ways of doing things. I took an oath as an agent and I didn’t have my fingers crossed or add any silent huts in there.”
He smiled at that and inclined his head a little as if he accepted her at her word. “Noted. Only asking. See, I didn’t grow up with all the verbal history you must have had mixed in with your bedtime stories. For all I know, you could be a closet purist.”
She smiled at that. “We’ll put you in the Booger Dance at the festival and make fun of you if you don’t watch us. That’s what we did with the other tribes and then the whites way back in the day. Anything strange, we sort of brushed off as ridiculous. That wound up killing off ninety-five percent of us when the Spanish came over and lost forty percent of what was left with the English settlers. We should have gone to war when we had the manpower and we should have fought over property rights. So, no, I don’t hold with keeping things the way they were. We weren’t right in some cases. Respecting culture is one thing, learning from mistakes is another.”
“Would you kill him if you had the chance?” Clay asked point-blank.
Vanessa thought about it. “If it came down to him or me, I like to think it would be him, but I wouldn’t shoot him on sight just because I could.”
“Your people used to run the offender off a cliff. Or give him the necessary push.” When she frowned at him, Clay added, “Part of the vision made me ask. Probably not significant. Most of the time, these little scenarios are so loaded with symbolism they’re impossible to understand until after the fact.”