6
Dominic’s expression was a mix of disbelief and Arctic fury. Although Willa valued honesty, this was not the time for it. Fortunately, poker was a game she played very well. Nine times out of ten, she’d bluff her way into winning the pot. The last few years of disconnection had improved her poker face as well as her ability to keep still and give nothing away.
While she wanted to swear vehemently, she harnessed her terror, took control of the situation and launched herself at Dominic, squealing, “Oh my God, Dominic? What the hell are you doing here?” Before he could answer, she’d wrapped her arms around his waist. “This is incredible! I was going to drop by to see you tomorrow and here you are!”
Dominic squirmed, his large hands begin to push her away, so she let go and spun back to look at the others at the table, continuing to gush before he could get a word in, “I can’t believe it! I run into John four times in one day and now this!”
She smiled at the little strawberry blonde, the vague memory of her gelling in an instant. Willa had last seen the petite woman, briefly, at Kyle Brennan’s christening. Seventeen years ago, Lesley had been married to Terry, Dominic’s slime-ball brother. Back then, she’d been a mouse of a girl with short hair and glasses. She looked completely different now—lovely, anything but timid, and married to Dominic.
Willa knew a thing or two about body language, and Lesley was eyeing her with mistrust, the kind reserved for old lovers and girlfriends. That was good. That would work fine. Wily, Willa drew back her bow—explain this, Astro—and let fly, “I haven’t seen this gorgeous guy in almost two years!” Smiling up at him, she slid an arm back around Dominic and gave him a squeeze. “I could kiss him to bits!”
“Really? Two years?” Lesley’s eyebrows arched over her leafy green eyes. Her lips twisted a little as she looked at her husband.
Willa aimed her next arrow carefully. “Tell me something, does he still hate wearing underwear to bed? Can he make it through a day without eating popcorn?”
With her gaze fixed on her husband, Lesley’s mouth twitched again. And not in good way.
Bulls eye.
Willa felt the weight of a big hand come down on her shoulder more heavily than necessary.
“Judy Jetson here’s an old buddy from my MIT days,” Dominic said, and to prove it, he pounded on her back as if she were a quarterback who’d just scored a touchdown. “Willa and I worked at the Lab together. You know, she’s Kyle’s grandmother—uh, godmother.”
Willa managed to stay upright despite the heavy-handed thumping. She caught sight of John outside on the deck. He waved, eyebrow raised as he watched the faux football-player-type affection. Dominic didn’t care if she was a female less than half his size. He treated her like she was an irritating little sister. She coughed to cover a grunt and barely managed to contain the urge to elbow him in the ribs when he ruffled her hair like an annoying big brother.
Lesley began to nod, “Oh, yes, yes! I suppose I spent too long inhaling paint fumes at work today. Willa. Dominic’s told me all about you. I’ve seen pictures of you, and I think we met once, at Kyle’s baptism, but John called you Queenie, and that threw me. I didn’t make the connection.”
“That’s my fault. I wasn’t around for you to put my name to a face, and I’m sorry. I missed your wedding, I missed a lot, but now that I’ve come back, we’ll have to get together, we’ll have to catch up.” A large thumb dug into a nerve where neck met shoulder. The fingertips of her right hand went numb. Willa shifted her feet and let her spiky heel sink onto Dominic’s little toe.
“Where’d you come back from?” Eva asked, her gaze traveling up Willa from boots to hair.
“Australia,” Dominic answered, pulling his foot away. His reply seemed innocent enough, but it stung, just like he’d intended it to. Teeth bared, he smiled at Willa in a way that said he wanted to tear her head off. “It’s so great to have you back!”
“Yeah. It’s great. Say, Dom, why don’t you go on and get your old buddy a drink?” Sean said over the rim of his Han Solo orange juice glass, “And bring more out here. This stuff is tee-rific.”
“Come on and give me a hand, Willa. Catch me up on things.” Dominic tugged her elbow. Essentially, he dragged her into the kitchen.
Willa’s mouth went dry and the waistband of her tights pinched nearly as much as Dominic’s grip. When he let go, five polka-dots of pink showed on her arm. She stood at the sink and pumped soap from a dispenser onto her hands. The automatic process of washing them would give her a moment to think.
He pulled a green pitcher from the refrigerator and took a glass from a cupboard before he sidled up beside her, the tall Darth Vader-emblazoned glass in his right hand, pitcher in his left. “I said I’d be there tomorrow, so what the fuck are you doing,” he said, his voice low, “keeping me under surveillance?”
“No. There’s another agent who’ll be doing that.”
“What? Why would I be under surveillance?” The lip of the pitcher paused at the mouth of the glass.
Willa adjusted the water temperature before she ran her soap-coated hands under the faucet. “I told you you’re on a list of potential suspects. You’re going to be investigated. At some point they’ll question your friends, check your banking details, have a look at your marriage, your son, and your driving record. They’ll even go through your garbage, and they’ll be very discreet about it until they turn up something. That’s why we have to find something else first. “
“If you’re not here to watch me, then why are you here?”
“I was invited,” she said softly, smiling. Her top lip stuck to her front teeth.
“Right. Of course you were.”
“I met John this morning. He helped me change a flat tire.”
“You let someone help you? I thought you were never doing that again.”
“What’s that crack supposed to mean anyhow?”
“Precisely what you think it does.”
The foaming soap on her skin began to tingle while her tongue felt as dry as a crouton. “Just what are you pissed off about here? Exactly?”
“I don’t see you or hear from you in eighteen months. You were family, Willa. I was closer to you than to my own brothers. And you shut me out.”
”Miles died.”
“But you didn’t. And you didn’t have to go through it alone.”
“There was nothing else you could do. There was no other way you could help me. I had to work through the fact my husband died on my own. So cut the crap. This isn’t about how I grieved for Miles. It’s about you.”
“If it’s about me, then why are you having dinner with John, my wife’s cousin, my friend? Why aren’t you out there catching bad guys,” he leaned close to whisper, “Special Agent Heston?”
“I’m allowed to have a life.”
“Congratulations for working that out.”
She shoved her hands under the running water, wishing she could stick her parched mouth there as well. “I thought you didn’t care.”
“I don’t. We’ve been over this. I get it. I know how to accept help when it’s offered. I just want to clarify you don’t get to insert yourself back into my life.”
“So,” Willa squinted one eye, “you’re telling me who I can and can’t see?”
“Yes.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. Stay away from my wife and John.” Dominic poured juice into the glass and held it out to her.
“I had no idea you were going to be here.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say, Willa. I can’t tell if you’re lying or telling the truth. You used me, and as far as I’m concerned our whole friendship’s based on nothing but a lie.”
“I didn’t use you, and I never lied to you.” Willa dried her hands on a curry-spotted towel beside the sink before she snatched the waiting juice from his hand. Her mouth was so desiccated she chugged the orange liquid then thrust the glass out to him.
Lips curled into a sneer
that wouldn’t have been out of place beneath a villainous handlebar moustache, he took the glass and refilled it.
Willa watched him and tried not to make a face. The juice was an awful mix of tropical flavors, but it was momentarily lubricating. “I’m not the only one who’s kept secrets here, Dominic,” she said. “Don’t talk to me about cover-ups and hiding things about yourself.”
Dominic’s bright blue eyes narrowed. Acid laced his laugh. “I’ll do what you want, I’ll help you, but you leave my son, my wife, and her cousin out of this,” he said. Then he reached over and ruffled her hair. Hard. “Here, my old, old friend,” he slipped Darth Vader into her palm, “have some more juice.”
Willa watched him take the pitcher into the dining room. She blew strands of hair from her eyes, guzzled the juice and made a face after she swallowed the last bit. “Yech, pineapple,” she muttered, filling the glass with tap water. In a way, it served her right to have a bad taste in her mouth.
John peered back into his house through the French doors. He saw Lesley talking a mile a minute. She looked at him through the glass, looked at Queenie in the kitchen, and then waggled her eyebrows. He made a face and gave his cousin the finger.
“It’s your lucky day, Detective,” Captain de Silva said.
Having Queenie in his house certainly made John feel lucky, but he was also dumb enough to think De Silva had called to tell him the lawsuit with ‘Madam Meatfork’, the drunk whose finger he’d broken, had been dropped.
”You’re not that lucky,” De Silva laughed. “We’re suddenly short-handed. Golding, Orrick, Simmonds, and LaPaz are out with the flu. Maudsley’s on special assignment. You’re reinstated.”
“I’ll be there in the morning.”
“No,” De Silva snorted, “you’ll be here in an hour to cover the duty desk until Cristobal comes back from dinner. How’s the arm, anyway? You’ll need it for paperwork.”
Well, there goes any hope I had of maybe getting lucky. “I hung up the sling two days ago. Another six weeks and I’ll have more range of motion and a cool scar that’ll impress women.”
“Yeah, well, at least you’re not looking at permanent nerve damage.”
“Is that what Madam Meatfork is claiming now, she’s got nerve damage?”
“Let’s see, besides grievous bodily harm and good ol’ police brutality, there’s…”
John listened to the Captain list further items that had been added to the lawsuit against the county and one of its law enforcement officers. In a way it was a good thing he was outside, because the frigid air kept him from turning hotheaded, but John also knew that being angry about the circumstances wouldn’t change anything or make the case disappear. When the call ended, he slipped back inside, feeling a little jaded and more than half-frozen from spending several minutes in the cold.
He headed for the kitchen. Knowing Queenie was there raised his body temperature a little. No, it raised it a lot. As much as he was struck by the urge to touch her, his frosty fingers would spoil the hot ideas glowing like a blowtorch in the back of his mind.
He smiled at her when she turned around. She had a glass of water in her hand. “Sorry about that,” he said. “That was my Captain. My vacation’s been cut short. I have to be at work in an hour.”
“That sucks.”
“No, not really. I was sort of forced to use vacation time, but it’s been rescinded since half the force has the flu, and I’m relieved. Not that they’re all sick, but because I was going batshit with all the free time. I guess we’ll both be burning the midnight oil, huh?” he said, pulling open a drawer and rummaging around in it.
“Looks that way.”
“Judging from the squeal you let out when I was outside, I gather you and Dominic have some kind of … history?”
“Yes,” she said after a sip of water.
“You both winding up here is quite a coincidence, isn’t it? Oops. Sorry. I know. You don’t believe in coincidence.”
“I’ve known Dominic since we were at MIT—over twenty years. He’s sort of the older brother I never had. I owe him a lot.”
John found the ladle he wanted. He dragged it out of the drawer and smiled, oddly pleased that she’d said older brother rather than old boyfriend. “When I saw the way he was pounding on you, I thought you might have been choking on something. Then I figured you must know each other pretty well since he was treating you like, well, one of the guys.”
She stared into her glass for a moment. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other. We had a sort of … falling-out and I missed his wedding. One of life’s complications, I guess, but here I am and here he is, and I’m really glad to see him.”
“That’s the great thing about old friends rather than family. Friends can shrug off stuff. With family, the bloodline seems to make it easier to hold a grudge. Or maybe that’s just an Irish thing—I’m Irish on my mother’s side.
”An Irish cop. How—”
“Clichéd?”
“I was going to say iconic.”
John nodded. “Oh, but of carse ya were, pet.”
Queenie’s eyebrows arched. “Was that your attempt at an Irish accent? Tom Cruise does a better one in Far and Away.”
Sniff-sniff-sniff. “Ouch. Anyhow, my uncle didn’t speak to my mother for ten years. And it was over a handkerchief that belonged to my grandfather.”
She chuckled very softly and smiled. It made her whole face light up. “My sister thinks I excel at grudge-holding, whereas I believe she does it better.”
“What’s your sister do?”
“Isabel’s in law enforcement, like you. She works for Customs and Immigration—Homeland Security now.” Queenie leaned against the counter. “Do you think it’s awful that I’m closer to Dominic than to my own sister?”
John waved the ladle. “No, not at all. Sometimes I wish I were closer to Dominic too.”
This time her laugh came from her belly.
The sound made John feel all warm and sunshiny inside. “That came out so wrong.” He chuckled too. Smiling, he rested his hip against the counter beside her and began to twirl the ladle.
“You look like you’re planning to do evil with that thing,” she said.
“Oh, I’m too nice to be a crazed kitchen-utensil murderer. I have other ideas for this ladle.”
“Patented ideas?”
“Ah, you’d like to hear more about my patents?” John leaned a little closer to her. Damn, she smelled wonderful. She had a soft scent, shampoo and skin cream mixed with a hint of something floral that made him want to bury his nose up against her skin and breathe in as if he were sampling a bouquet of tiny flowers. “Would you like to know what I was thinking about while I was outside and my captain was telling me it was my lucky day?”
“Let me guess. ‘Man, I’m starving?’”
“Yes. Hoo-boy, yes. I’m hungrier than I have been in years.”
His mouth pursed into a smile—the slightly crooked smirk that made Willa’s tummy do a couple of jumping jacks. She said, “So maybe you’d better go eat.”
“Eat. Good idea. I wish you could stay.” He straightened. The tip of one finger traced along a curve of hair framing her face. “But come on. Sit with us for a bit. Keep me company for a little while before I have to go.”
Willa followed him into the dining room while an uncomfortable sensation pinched her, the same way her tights bit into her waist. She liked John. She liked how he made her feel. It didn’t seem to matter that she knew next to nothing about him or that she’d only known him a day. He was instant fun, and God knew she was entitled to some fun in her life.
It might have been a little soon, but she could imagine doing stuff with him, doing stuff to him, and there was part of her that wanted to pull him back into the kitchen just so she could suggest a few ideas about stuff she’d like to have him do to her.
He’d be willing. She knew that. Perhaps not a let’s-go-all-the-way willing—he seemed too gentlemanly for that—bu
t she was sure she could get a little over-the-clothes action and a whole lot of kissing. Yes. Kissing. An entire evening of locked lips and tangled tongues … now that would be lovely.
Unfortunately lust had popped up its head at entirely the wrong time. Nothing was going to happen, and the reason wasn’t Dominic’s dictatorial command. She’d see whomever she damn well wanted to, make out with whomever she felt like. And she wasn’t too old for this sort of thing either, regardless of what her mother said about how Miles had been her ‘last chance’. The point was, if she wanted to keep Dominic safe, she had to remain clear-headed and responsible. She couldn’t lose sight. Nothing could get in the way. Neither fear nor John’s pretty eyes could interfere. Nothing could hinder the investigation.
Not even Dominic’s hostility.
In the dining room, when John held out a chair for her, his fingers brushed down her shoulder and, as she sat, their eyes met. Willa felt the thrum that came with being close to a few thousand volts.
Why now? Why does this have to happen now?
In the next moment, she caught Dominic looking at her with an expression that was also electric, but the way a cattle prod or taser was.
The tension headache that had threatened her back in the loft finally made good on its promise. The inside of her skull began to ache dully.
“You sure you don’t want anything to eat?” John asked as he took the seat beside her.
“What?” Lesley sounded disappointed. “You’re not eating, Willa?”
“No,” she said, “I can’t stay long. I’ve got a bit of work to do tonight.”
John reached for a basket filled with naan bread. “That makes two of us. Half the station’s got the flu so vacation’s over. I’m out of here in an hour, but you are all feel free to stay on and clean up my kitchen. Eva, the potatoes please.”
“And what sort of work do you do, Wilma?” Eva smiled thinly and passed a bowl of spiced yellow potatoes to John.
“Yeah, Wilma.” Dominic snorted as he dumped saffron rice onto his plate. “Tell them what sort of work you do. Tell them what you’re here to do. It’s really exciting stuff.”
For Your Eyes Only Page 9