Eliot Tyhurst, she thought, hadn’t reformed. Joe was right.
“You know what I found,” she told him. “The dirt in the lasagna—-a personal account, very well hidden, containing a half-million dollars you neglected to mention to the authorities was yours. You’re not broke, Eliot. You never were.”
“No.” He smiled coldly, taking a step toward her. “I never was.”
Any facade of gentlemanly demeanor had vanished. His eyes were blue ice. His hair was standing on end. His shirt was half-untucked, his tie askew. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. There was blood on his lower lip where he must have bit down too hard.
Rowena had never seen anyone so consumed by hatred.
Hatred of her. It was very specific, and very vicious.
She wondered if Joe had heard her scream. Wondered if she should hope he had—or hope, for his sake, that he hadn’t. She needed to think and get out of this one herself.
“You never wanted to hire me,” she said. “You only wanted to make sure I didn’t uncover your secret account.”
“You’re wrong, Rowena. If possible, his eyes became even icier. “You didn’t know about that account three years ago. I fooled you then. I thought I could fool you again. What you don’t realize is that I have an even greater purpose in contacting you after all this time.”
He reached behind him, into the waistband of his elegant suit pants, and withdrew a gun. It was small and silver, and he pointed it at Rowena.
“Even with a half-million dollars, there’s no way I can stay in the United States. I have to leave the country.” He sounded aggrieved, as if he were the one who had endured the greater wrong, not the people he’d duped. “It’s all planned. Once I knew I’d have to act tonight, I purchased tickets to South America. I’ll be out of here for good in another hour.” He smiled. “With my money.”
“Why didn’t you just go? Why risk coining here?”
“Revenge, Rowena. You ruined me. You destroyed me. I have no family, no friends, no country, no life thanks to you. Do you think I could just vanish without repaying you in kind for what you did to me?”
“So you’re going to shoot me.” She hated how her voice cracked, but she knew she needed to keep him talking, needed to give Joe a chance to act. “Your revenge is to shoot me.”
He shook his head sadly, looking hurt. “I could never shoot you, unless, of course, you leave me no other option.”
With his free hand, he removed a length of twine from his suit coat pocket and ordered her to cross her wrists at the small of her back and turn around. She did so. She had no choice.
He tied her wrists fast and hard, squeezing off the blood supply to her hands.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment for three years,” he said harshly, his breath hot and foul on the side of her face. “It feels even better than I imagined.”
“And you’ve fallen even further than I’d ever imagined possible. I feel sorry for you, Eliot.”
“You arrogant bitch.”
He caught her twisted hair into his hand and pulled hard. Tears sprung into her eyes at the pain. He shoved her down onto the floor, and without ceremony, he snatched up her feet, binding them together with another length of twine.
Where the hell was Scarlatti when she needed him?
Tyhurst kicked her in the thigh, pushing her under her desk. “You can die under your damn computer.”
Then he was gone.
And in a moment she smelled smoke.
Ignoring the pain in her hands and feet, Rowena inched backward out from under her desk. Smoke was everywhere above her. She could hear the crackle of flames. Smell the gasoline Tyhurst had used to start the fire.
She flipped over onto her bottom and sat up, her nostrils and mouth filling with smoke. She coughed. “Joe!” she yelled.
There was no answer.
“Scarlatti, where are you? The bastard’s got a gun!”
Smoke billowed in from the hall where Tyhurst had obviously started the fire. Rowena grasped a filing drawer with her numb fingers and pulled herself to her feet, into the deadly smoke. She kept an artist’s knife in her mug of pens and pencils. Coughing, perspiring, she got it out with her mouth and dropped back down to the floor, tucking her knees up under her chin and immediately getting to work on her bound ankles. If she could get free, she could break a window, climb out onto the rickety, ancient fire-escape ladder.
If only Joe Scarlatti had sense enough not to brave an armed man and a fire to get to her. But that was his job.
The smoke was thickening, stinging her eyes, making her work nearly impossible. She didn’t stop. She sawed relentlessly at the twine. It was around her ankles in four layers. If she could get through two, surely the other two would be loose enough to permit her to work them free, or at least to walk.
One layer snapped.
She started immediately on the next one. She could no longer see through her tears and could barely hold on to the knife in her mouth with her coughing, but it didn’t matter. She had her rhythm down. And she had to get out, find Joe.
Don’t let Tyhurst be his undoing. Please don’t let it, if not for my sake, for his grandmother’s sake...
Somewhere from beyond the flames she heard a shot.
“No!”
The second layer snapped.
With a sudden burst of energy, she forced her ankles apart, oblivious to the pain of the twine bearing into her skin.
She was free.
“Joe,” she yelled, “I’m all right. I’ll go out the fire escape!”
How, she thought, with her hands still bound?
She had to find a way.
Then his voice came to her over the roar of the flames that were consuming Aunt Adelaide’s house. “Rowena!”
And he was there, coming through the flames and the smoke, hair and clothes singed, smoldering. Blood poured down his arm. Rowena stumbled toward him. Her feet ached as circulation returned and blood rushed through them.
“Rowena,” he said again, “thank God.”
“Tyhurst?”
“Threw him off the second-floor landing. Probably didn’t kill him. We gotta get out of here.”
“I know, there’s a fire escape, if you can manage to cut my hands free—”
She stopped, and time seemed suspended. Something was terribly wrong about the way he was looking at her. “Joe?”
“You’ll have to give me a knife or a pair of scissors and I’ll get you free. Come on, hurry.”
“Joe.”
His face was filled with grime and pain. He blinked, and she knew.
He touched her arm. “It’s okay, love, but I can’t see.”
Twelve
Rowena paced outside Joe’s hospital room.
It was late, after midnight. Hank Ryan had come, Sofia Scarlatti, Mario. Joe was holding his own, the doctors had said. The bullet had only skimmed his left upper arm. The effect on him of smoke inhalation wasn’t as severe as they’d first anticipated. His burns were all first-degree.
But he still couldn’t see. Smoke, a blow to the head, heat—even the doctors weren’t yet sure what had caused his blindness.
Hank put a big hand on her shoulder. “You sure you don’t want to have a doctor look at you? Place is crawling with them.”
“No, I’m fine.” Even to herself her voice sounded faraway. She rubbed her raw wrists. Blinded and bleeding, Joe had managed to cut her free. And she had managed to get him down the fire escape. “I’ll just be coughing up smoke and stuff for a few days.”
Hank nodded. She had given him her statement. She didn’t know what Joe had told him. A neighbor had called the police and the fire department. Eliot Tyhurst was in custody, being treated not too far from Joe Scarlatti for, as Hank had put it, the thrashing of his life. He would be charged with attempted murder.
The fire department had put out the fire on the third floor of Cedric Willow’s strange house before it had spread to any of the other floors. She’d rescued h
er cats. A neighbor had offered to take them in.
“Do you have a place to stay?” Hank asked.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“My wife and I would be happy to have you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.”
He sighed, dropping his hand from her shoulder. “I’m getting you a cup of strong coffee. You need it.”
“But I don’t drink coffee.”
“How could you be in love with Joe Scarlatti and not drink coffee?” He managed a soft laugh, laced with concern for his wounded friend. “I always told him the woman who’d get him would surprise the hell out of everyone, including him. You break the molds, Rowena Willow. Give me five minutes. If I can find you tea, I’ll do it. Otherwise it’s coffee.”
She made herself meet his eyes. They were so dark, so filled with pain for a fellow policeman, a friend. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
A moment later Sofia Scarlatti joined her. “He’ll be fine, my Joe. I’ve seen him in lots worse shape.”
“What about his sight?” Rowena asked softly.
She patted Rowena’s hand. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Hank returned with a cup of coffee that tasted surprisingly good to Rowena. “You ready to head out?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’d like to see Joe one more time.”
“I’ll be out here.”
The doctors and nurses had retreated for the time being, and Joe was dozing in his dimly lit room. Rowena leaned over him and realized she was crying only when she saw her tears glistening on his cheek. His eyes were bandaged, his wounded arm, his burns treated. He wasn’t in danger of dying. He would recover.
But would he see again?
He stirred, and found her hand, squeezed it gently. “You still here?”
“Always.”
“I smell coffee. Someone with you?”
“No, it’s mine. Hank brought me a cup.”
“Life is full of surprises,” he said, startling her with his undampered humor.
“I don’t know, it tastes all right to me, not that I’d know the difference. Maybe the smoke killed my taste buds.”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m fine. You?”
He stroked the top of her hand with his thumb. “Go on and get some rest, Rowena. You don’t need to stick around.”
“I can’t leave. Joe, I owe you so much—”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said sharply, cutting her off. He dropped her hand. “I was just doing my job.”
Her one consolation was that he couldn’t see the hurt that washed over her. But she knew what he was doing. He was pushing her away because he was injured, blinded, and his future was uncertain. He didn’t want to burden her.
It wasn’t going to work.
* * *
She ended up staying in Joe’s apartment above Mario’s Bar & Grill because his cousin insisted it was what Joe would want if he were in any frame of mind to articulate what he wanted. As it was, Joe said he thought Rowena should stay with a friend or get a room at a hotel, charge her insurance company.
“Ignore him,” was Mario’s advice.
Hank Ryan and his wife had her over for dinner. Sofia Scarlatti loaded up the refrigerator and cupboards and checked her grandson’s apartment for “vermin,” pronouncing it habitable after a close inspection. Mario prepared her eggplant parmesan and bean chili and bought a case of mineral water to keep on hand.
Her life was changing, had changed, and although so much of that change was out of her control, Rowena was surprised and delighted. And amazed at how good it felt to rely on other people, not just herself.
Her own friends came to her assistance without prodding and provided her with technical and personal support in salvaging, repairing and restoring her office, damaged by smoke and water. The fire itself hadn’t got that far. She would be back in business soon.
But where? And under what circumstances?
Right now, however, for once, she wasn’t preoccupied with the future.
She spent as much time as she could every day with Joe, staying until he or the doctors kicked her out. He was clearly trying to keep his distance. She didn’t press, but they found themselves talking about their lives, their hopes, their regrets. They exchanged funny stories, and some sad ones.
They became friends.
Away from the hospital, Rowena discovered that Joe Scarlatti led a life filled with people. She enjoyed the coziness of his apartment, the constant presence of family, friends, perfect strangers. She got to know his neighborhood. And she realized that she couldn’t go back to her old life, to its relative isolation. Instead, she found that she wanted things she’d long thought she was too different, too odd, to have—a little house, a garden, a yard. She wanted to give parties.
She wanted to have children.
She wanted to have a husband.
Joe Scarlatti had changed her perspective on her life and her future. Loving him had changed her.
On a cool, bright morning a week after their ordeal with Eliot Tyhurst, she was nursing a pot of tea and going over a report for a client at what she’d come to know as Joe’s booth at Mario’s Bar & Grill.
Mario burst out of the kitchen. “The hospital just called. Joe’s getting sprung today, Row.” He always called her Row now. “He can see.”
* * *
Joe grinned when Rowena came into his room. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
He meant it. He had never seen her look so alive and beautiful. After two weeks of darkness, he drank in the sight of her. Her eyes were as blue as the California sky. Her gleaming spun-gold hair hung down her back in a thick French braid. And she had on jeans. Rowena Willow in jeans. It was a sight to see.
He couldn’t stop smiling.
“I’ve come to take you home,” she said, and tears sprang into her eyes. I’m so glad, Joe…I couldn’t.. .if I’d been responsible for your losing your sight...”
He touched her cheek, gently brushed away a tear with his knuckle. “You wouldn’t have been responsible.”
She held her breath. “I never thought I’d hear those words from you, Joe Scarlatti.”
“I know. I’ve had a lot of time to think these past few days in a way I haven’t let myself think in months. You weren’t responsible for what happened to me any more—” for a moment, he choked on his words “—any more than I was responsible for Matt’s death. I miss the crazy bastard—I guess I always will. But it wasn’t my fault.”
Rowena smiled through her tears and kissed him about a quarter-inch from his right eye. “You look terrific.”
Desire shot through him, hot and electric. If she’d kissed him on the mouth, he’d have hauled her down onto his hospital bed and made love to her. As it was, it was all he could do to finish buttoning his shirt. He already had on his jeans. All he had to do now was put on his sneakers and be gone.
“So,” he said, “are we taking a bus back?”
“Nope.”
“You’re driving?”
“Uh-huh. You’re in for a surprise, Sergeant Scarlatti.”
He suspected this wouldn’t be an uncommon event. But he was sure about one important thing—how he felt about her. “You don’t own a car.”
“I’ve got your truck.” And she reached into her jeans pocket and withdrew his keys, dangling them in front of him.
“You’re going to drive my truck-—”
She grinned at him. “I’ve been driving it.”
“Mario gave you the keys?”
She nodded without a hint of guilt. Her eyes were sparkling the way Joe had imagined them for the past week.
“What else haven’t you told me?” he asked.
“Well, your grandmother has started to teach me how to knit and crochet and says she’s going to teach me how to make lasagna, but I don’t know—she puts sausage in her lasagna. And Mario taught me how to pour beer. I helped Hank and his wife put
up a new swing set for his kids—you should see the thing, it’s even got a tent.” She licked her lips. “And I’ve been staying at your apartment.”
He just stared at her. She seemed very pleased with herself. Smug, even. Like she’d outwitted him just as she had that very first day when she’d spotted him out on her street. It seemed so long ago. What had his life been like before Rowena Willow came into it?
“My apartment,” he repeated.
“Yep. I’d have told you except I thought picturing me sleeping alone in your bed might inhibit your recovery.”
She was out of the room and into the corridor before he could grab her.
“By the way,” she told him on their way out to the parking lot, “I had the oil in your truck changed. It needed it.”
“You had it changed?”
She glanced sideways at him. “I don’t do oil, Sergeant.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“I did vacuum and clean the interior. I found an old doughnut under the seat. I called the Smithsonian to see if they were interested—”
“Very funny. I hope you didn’t touch any of my guns.”
She shook her head. “Guns make me nervous.”
She fell silent and Joe reached out to touch her arm.
“I was scared,” she said suddenly, in a quiet voice. “When Tyhurst pulled out that gun and tied me up...”
“Should you have been anything else but scared?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I was pretty cowardly, complying with him the way I did.”
“Rowena, if you hadn’t done as he asked, he would have shot you.”
They headed out into the bright day, and Joe inhaled the cool air, relishing his freedom. The doctors had given his eyes a clean bill of health. Told him to take it easy for a few days.
“Were you scared?” she asked as they crossed the parking lot.
“Yeah. Scared and madder than hell. I thought the bastard had killed you.” He hesitated, then decided he might as well tell her the rest of it. “I didn’t care what happened to me. I saw those cats and knew he was there, then heard you scream—it was all I could do not to barrel up the stairs and have at him. But I kept my cool.”
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