Crime and Passion
Crime and Passion
Marie Ferrarella
No sooner did number-crunching dynamo Ilene O'Hara uncover fraud in her company than she needed protection for herself and the son she'd been hiding from detective Clay Cavanaugh, a man she still loved. When Clay appeared as their protector, she wondered if the truth would destroy their fiery connection–or bind them forever?Clay had the reputation of being a ruthless law enforcer–and a Casanova. After Ilene, he ensured that love never entered the equation again. But now, years later, she needed his help. As the forbidden attraction between witness and protector raged out of control, Clay could tell she was keeping a secret from him. But would it stop him from taking the ultimate risk?
“Shh,” Clay whispered.
Faced with the promise of tears, not knowing what else to do to calm her fears, Clay did what came naturally. He took Ilene into his arms and held her against him. She struggled for a second before giving in and letting him hold her.
A flood of feelings instantly rushed over him. Six years ago, he’d held her to him because they were wildly, unreasonably in love. Back then, he’d found himself loving—and being terrified of—the moment because she was in it.
She’d always had a special kind of power over him—until he’d taken it away from her. But now she needed comfort, and he needed to be able to give it to her.
Stroking her hair, he murmured against it, “It’s going to be okay.”
Crime and Passion
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARIE FERRARELLA
writes books distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA
Award-winning author’s goal is to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.
To
Brett Walker Richman.
Welcome to the world.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Whistle-blower.
Ilene O’Hara frowned as she looked at the front cover of the magazine she’d just unearthed from beneath the tangled mass of toys in Alex’s toy box. Her five-year-old must have accidentally tossed the magazine into the box during one of the few times she’d gotten him to actually pick up after himself.
After taking it out, she leaned against the wall, sat crossed-legged on the floor and stared at the magazine. The cover depicted three bold, confident-looking women, all of whom had been instrumental in stirring up intense investigations into three separate institutions once thought of as towers of respectability and bastions of power.
When she’d originally bought the magazine, she’d never thought that someday she might be considering joining the ranks of an elite group of people nicknamed, not with complete fondness, whistle-blowers. Nobody really liked whistle-blowers, no matter how necessary those people might be for the well-being of the economy or society in general. To the firm on which they were blowing the whistle, they were deemed traitors. In truth, the public probably wasn’t too crazy about them, either.
Wasn’t that the edict of the playground? Nobody liked a tattletale?
With a sigh Ilene got up and tossed the magazine onto the coffee table before picking up the last armload of toys and bringing them to rest within the toy box. Upstairs, Alex was asleep, worn-out by a long day of play.
Ilene was worn-out as well, but playing had nothing to do with it. Wrestling with your conscience took a lot out of you.
She looked around, a restlessness chewing holes in her usual boundless energy. The rest of the room could wait until tomorrow. Surrendering, Ilene sank down on the tan sofa, her mind once again locked in a silent, one-woman debate over whether or not she should do what she knew in her heart was the right thing. But no one had died and left her the mantle of martyr, she insisted.
Inactivity seemed so seductive right now. Maybe she would just keep her mouth shut. Would it really be so bad to close her eyes and continue as if nothing were wrong? As if things were not out of sync? As if the corporation wasn’t playing hide-and-seek with a huge amount of money?
She didn’t feel she was on some kind of sacred mission here. Her parents hadn’t exactly given her much of a moral foundation from which to build.
She glanced at the one photograph she had of her parents that hung on the far wall. It was a studio shot, and they’d been forced to smile. She didn’t ever remember them smiling. Not on their own. They’d always been too busy sniping at each other and being covertly resentful of the daughter who had been the reason they had—in an unguarded moment of guilt—joined together legally and wound up wasting what were supposed to be “the good years.”
They’d stay married until neither one could stand the other. Until she was eighteen. Try as she might, Ilene couldn’t remember one drop of love being spilt in that house.
Nonetheless, Ilene had always had a strong sense of right and wrong. Even if she hadn’t, it didn’t take a would-be saint to know that misleading stockholders, a vast amount of stockholders, was wrong.
Especially if it was being done on purpose.
And since John Walken, her boss and the vice president in charge of the audit department of Simplicity Computers—one of the leading computer companies of the country, if not the leading company—hadn’t gotten back to her on the audit figures she’d uncovered more than a week ago, she knew the so-called discrepancy was not accidental. She had secretly hoped it would be.
After she’d brought him the news, she’d watched the handsome man pale ever so slightly beneath his perfect Maui tan before he’d flashed a brilliant, engaging smile and told her not to worry, that he’d take care of matters.
He’d all but patted her on her head as he’d ushered her out of his tastefully decorated office with its fifty-inch plasma TV on one wall. He thanked her for her keen diligence and promised her a bonus for what amounted to doing her job. Less than an hour later, he’d sent one of his assistants to press two tickets to Los Angeles into her hand, along with complimentary passes to Disneyland. Walken had expressed in the enclosed note that he had heard about her wanting to take her son there someday. The man made it a point to know his people, one of the things she’d always liked about him. Now she wondered if he just wanted to know which buttons to press when dealing with a subordinate in a challenging situation.
She’d been too stunned to speak at first, then politely had returned the tickets, saying that with the holidays coming up, this was an inconvenient time of the year to travel. It wasn’t strictly true. There was no one she spent the holidays with outside of Alex. She didn’t know where her parents were and there were no siblings, no aunts or uncles to populate her life. She and Alex could have picked up at any time and gone.
But the offer of the tickets hadn’t sat right with her. Neither had the discrepancy, even though she’d wanted to believe in Walken, to believe in the company to which she’d given almost four years of her life. Initially she’d clung to the hope of a plausible explanation as to why the expenses slated for Simplicity’s ledgers had been ascribed to one of their holding companies instead, sending that small company to the brink of bankruptcy. She passionately refused to believe that she’d made yet another mistake in placing her faith with the wrong recipient.
Just as she had with Clay.
Ilene could feel her eyes stinging and closed them defensively.
No.
She wasn’t going to go there. That was a place that she’d deliberately walled up even before Alex was born, but most definitely afterward. Loving Clay, believing in Clay might have been a mistake, but doing so had led her to the greatest joy of her life. It had given her Alex.
She could have reached the greatest of heights careerwise, but without Alex in her life, nothing else would have mattered. She was meant to be a mother first and foremost, and everything else second. Every fiber in her being told her so. There was a vast amount of love within her, love that had been thwarted by her parents, disregarded by Clay. But now it was all channeled toward Alex.
And it was because of Alex, she told herself, that she was going to have to blow the whistle.
There was no other path open to her. She never wanted to look into her son’s eyes and see an accusation, or worse, disappointment shining there. And if she didn’t bring the discrepancy she’d found to light, if she allowed Simplicity—a company that was well respected and touted as one of the few safe investments still left on the shaky stock market boards—to continue lying to the unsuspecting public, she wasn’t going to be able to live with her conscience. Because when the truth finally came out, it would steal millions of dollars away from everyday people who could ill afford to have something like this happen to them.
Ilene dragged her hand through her long, strawberry-blond hair. She knew what she had to do. Right thing or not, she still couldn’t help being afraid. But then, she supposed Joan of Arc had been afraid, too.
Pushing up from the sofa, Ilene rose to her feet. It was late and time to go to bed. Tomorrow she’d do what she had to do.
She tried not to dwell on the fact that Joan of Arc ended up being burned at the stake.
Almost holding her breath, Ilene sat perfectly still as the woman behind the desk studied her. Pert, blond, the woman hardly looked old enough to have graduated from college, much less law school…and much too young to have attained her present position of assistant district attorney. She looked as if she would have been more at home being interviewed for Rose Bowl Queen than taking part in a criminal court hearing.
Ilene glanced down at the woman’s name plate. Janelle Cavanaugh.
The name Cavanaugh leaped out at her.
Was it a coincidence? Or was this just fate’s lop-sided sense of humor aiming itself right between her eyes? Ilene tried to regain control over herself. It wasn’t as if Cavanaugh was an uncommon name, she argued. But here in Aurora, most of the Cavanaughs who were related to Clay were in some sort of law enforcement.
As was he, she’d heard. Those had been his plans when they’d gone together. He was one of those types who always got what he was after. He just hadn’t been after her.
Janelle Cavanaugh folded her hands before her, seemingly calm in the face of the bombshell that had been placed on her desk. Her eyes never left Ilene’s. “You have proof?”
Ilene met her gaze. “I wouldn’t be wasting your time if I didn’t.”
It amazed Ilene that her hands were so still. Inside, she was shaking like a leaf as she reached into her briefcase and took out the printed copies of the files she had audited. The originals were still safely in their place and gave no indication that once she’d stumbled across one discrepancy, she’d conducted an internal audit of her own. Ilene had discovered the tip of the iceberg when it came to corporate corruption. The discrepancy was huge between the true figures and the ones the board was about to release to stockholders in its annual disclosure.
The world at large believed that Simplicity had had a banner year. In truth, the profits were false. A mountain of expenditures had been hidden from the shareholders, making Simplicity seem as if ownership in the company was a very desirable thing in a troubled fiscal age.
She understood the thinking behind the ruse, or thought she did. If investors flocked to Simplicity, waving their money before them, Simplicity would eventually collect enough money to cover their debts and yield at least part of the profit it reported. But if something were to happen, if a story should be leaked to the business world, confidence and stock would plummet and many people would be bankrupt, their accounts completely wiped out.
She knew she couldn’t live with that on her conscience. That was why she was here. This problem had to be cleared up before it went any further.
Janelle quickly scanned the top pages she’d taken out of the manila envelope. Sporting the expressionless face her brothers and cousins swore made her so perfect for playing poker, she raised her eyes to the delicate-looking woman before her.
From all appearances Ilene O’Hara looked as if she belonged on the fast track at some pricey modeling agency. Tall, slender, she had a regal composure and a face that begged for magazine covers. Janelle supposed that was what her cousin had seen in the woman in the first place.
Janelle doubted that Ilene O’Hara even remembered that they had met once, although fleetingly. Six years ago, she thought, give or take a little. She’d stumbled across Clay and his girlfriend of the moment at a coffee shop. Clay had looked a little uncomfortable making introductions, and she’d known it was because he hated being pinned down. Janelle remembered thinking that Clay had finally found someone who didn’t look as if she was living just to have a good time.
But then Clay and Ilene had broken up. He’d been a little funny for a while. Always gregarious, he’d become withdrawn. No one in the family had guessed why. She’d been the only one who even knew about Ilene. In time, he’d bounced back to his old self. But Janelle had felt that the girl had left a permanent impression.
She smiled warmly now at Ilene. “So, how have you been?”
Ilene blinked. The A.D.A. was making polite chit-chat. Why? “Excuse me?”
Janelle’s smile widened. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Small wonder—Ilene had been very wrapped up with her cousin then.
Ilene glanced at the name plate again before raising her eyes back to Janelle. She began to look familiar. “Then you are related to Clay.”
“Guilty as charged.” She leaned into Ilene, allowing herself one more private moment, in part to make the woman less uncomfortable about being here. “I always thought he was a jerk for walking away from you.”
It wasn’t what Ilene wanted to discuss. Not now. Not ever. “He was too young. We were too young,” Ilene amended. She shifted in the seat, gripping the arms, eager, now that she had started the ball rolling, to get on with it. “So where do we go from here?”
There were a myriad of details to be faced. However, Janelle had her own set of priorities that differed slightly from those of the D.A.’s office. “First thing we do is get you police protection.”
Ilene’s eyes widened at the ominous pronouncement. Police protection was for people who feared for their lives. People who were in danger. That wasn’t her. She knew all the people in her department. They were people with whom she’d attended Christmas parties, people whose birthdays she’d celebrated. None of them would hurt her. Despite its size, the company had a reputation as being one big, happy family.
And she’d never been one who’d ever meekly obeyed without question. “Police protection? Why? This isn’t The Mob we’re dealing with.”
“No,” Janelle agreed, “these are CEOs with a great deal to lose. People facing exposure do desperate things.” Janelle could tell that Ilene didn’t like what she was hearing. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.” She got down to business. “Does anyone know you’ve come here?”
Ilene shook her head. She’d taken a personal day, telling the office she was going to the doctor. She’d told Alex’s baby-sitter the same thing. Coming here wasn’t something she enjoyed advertising. “No.”
Janelle tried to read between the lines. “But you did go to your boss about this?”
Ilene could tell by the other woman’s tone that she thought Ilene had made a tactical mistake. But Janelle Cavanaugh didn’t know John Walken, didn’t know that he was an honorable man.
“Yes,” her own tone was defensive, “I thought he’d want to fix it, that he didn’t know this was going on. I can’t find out who gave the initial order.”
Janelle looked at her knowingly. “And Walken said he would get right on it, but you haven’t heard anything so far.”
Ilene hated the way this all sounded so predictable. There had to be some explanation. Good people didn’t do heinous things.
But if she truly believed that, why was she here?
She looked down at her nails, rendering the answer through teeth that were almost closed. “Right.”
Janelle nodded. “And how long ago was that?”
“A week.” It sounded like an eternity. “I thought about talking to him again.” Ilene had almost gone in today, wanting to give Walken another chance. She’d changed her mind at the last minute. “But—”
“Your instincts told you to come here.” Janelle’s blue eyes smiled at the other woman. “Good instincts. Hope your survival ones are just as keen.”
“Is this police-protection thing really necessary?”
“It is if I want to sleep at night. Excuse me for a second.” Janelle drew the phone in closer to her.
Turning her body away from her, Janelle let her fingers quickly tap out the familiar numbers. Her father, Brian, was the current chief of detectives and the younger of the two surviving Cavanaugh brothers. His three sons, her brothers and six of her seven cousins were also with the police force. Only Patience had broken free, following her own destiny to become a veterinarian. But even Patience had continuing contact with the police force. Janelle’s cousin treated the German shepherds that made up the K-9 squad.
There were times when Janelle thought of the police force as her personal cavalry. This was one of those times.
Connected to her father’s private line, she lowered her voice as she began to speak. After a few moments of obligatory give and take and a promise to stop by “soon,” Janelle told her father why she was calling. Quickly, she gave him Ilene’s background story and what she’d brought to the table.
Listening to her father’s answer, Janelle had no way of knowing she was setting into motion something that was going to mushroom out until it touched all of them.
“You look much too happy for a Monday morning,” Kyle Santini, Clay’s partner of two years grumbled as he slumped down in his own seat. The sudden action all but sent his coffee sloshing over the sides of the chipped, worn mug his five-year-old had made him in camp last year. Carefully, he set the misshapen royal-blue mug on his desk, keeping it away from any important papers. Kyle eyed the man considered by the squad to be the personification of the carefree, happy bachelor. “You still seeing that stripper?”
“Exotic dancer,” Clay corrected. “And no, I’m not still seeing her. Ginger and I came to a parting of the ways more than a week ago.”
A knowing look came over Santini’s face. “Let me guess, she wanted to have ‘the talk.”’ Taking a long drag of the mud that passed for coffee in the precinct, Kyle chuckled to himself. “Sooner or later, they all want to have ‘the talk.”’ Kyle shook his head, a man to whom women would always remain a mystery. “What is it about women that makes them want to clip a man’s wings?”
“I don’t know,” Clay said honestly. “But it never got that far with Ginger and me.”
He thought of the woman he’d seen a handful of times in the past six weeks. One fateful night her screams had brought him into the alley where she’d been dragged by some low life intent on turning his fantasy into reality. Rescuing her had earned him Ginger’s gratitude and a few other things, as well. The woman had a body that wouldn’t quit and a mind that wouldn’t start.
Even though he’d told himself that was exactly what he wanted at this stage of his life, Clay had found himself getting restless and looking for an excuse to end the romance. The woman had given him one when she’d suggested a threesome.
“Ginger was a free spirit,” he told a more than mildly interested Santini. “She just wanted to be a little freer than I liked.”
Kyle groaned as if he’d just been deprived of his reason for living. “Don’t let my mind go there. You’re talking to a monk.”
Clay grinned. In the past six weeks, this had been a familiar complaint. “Alice is just about due, isn’t she?”
“If you ask me, she’s about overdue.” Santini sighed. Apparently prenatal was no better than post-natal. “Then I get to listen to her complain about how men should be the ones to have the kids.” Shaking his head, Kyle shot Clay an envious look. “You don’t know how lucky you are, being a bachelor.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Clay echoed then laughed. His partner wasn’t fooling anyone. He’d cut off his right arm before he’d give up what he had. “I’ve seen you with your son. You wouldn’t change that for the world.”
“No, but there are times I’d be willing to trade Alice in, at least for a weekend.”
Clay rocked back in his chair. He knew better. “Any man looks at her twice, you’re ready to knock them into last year.”
Santini shrugged. “That’s beside the point. That’s just my hot temper.”
Straightening up, Clay decided these reports weren’t going to file themselves, no matter how much he wished they would. He got busy, or tried to. “Nothing wrong in admitting you love the woman you married, Santini. Not enough of that going around.”
Santini clearly wasn’t interested in platitudes, he was interested in details. Preferably juicy ones. “You still didn’t answer me. If you didn’t get a little last night, why are you grinning like some loony hyena?”
Clay knew his answer was going to disappoint the man. “Because I just found out we’re going to have a judge in the family. My sister’s getting married.”
“You’re going to give me more of a hint than that, Cavanaugh. You’ve got three sisters,” Santini reminded him.
“Callie.”
Clay couldn’t remember his older sister ever looking so excited. She’d waited until they’d all sat down to Sunday dinner. For once, his father had managed to corral everyone, even his uncle. They’d all but poured out of the dining room, even with the extra leaves added on to the table his dad had specially made for family affairs.
Putting two fingers into her mouth, Callie had whistled the way she used to as a kid, getting the roar at the table to die down to a whisper and then, as sweet as could be, she’d made the announcement. She and Brent were getting married. And just like that, he was going to become an uncle, thanks to the judge’s five-year-old daughter, Rachel.
“You’re kidding me.” Santini whistled, shaking his head. “Damn, and here I was hoping she’d give me a tumble after I leave Alice.”
“Fat chance. In more ways than one.” Clay paused. “Why don’t you call up and send your wife flowers?”
Kyle laughed. Flowers were usually to apologize for something. “That’ll throw her.” And then he grinned. “Maybe I will.”
Captain Reynolds leaned into the cubicle, his gray eyes sweeping over both the men. “Cavanaugh, Santini, the chief just called. He wants the two of you to protect a witness. Apparently this is a big deal. The D.A. doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”
Clay rolled his eyes. He’d never been much for baby-sitting detail. One of the desk jockeys could do just as well. “I’ve got a desk full of work.”
The gray-haired man looked at him, his manner friendly but brooking no nonsense. Reynolds liked to stay on top of things at all times, which meant exercising control, but never holding the leash too tight. Taut leashes had a way of snapping.
“Which’ll still be there whether or not you pull this detail. Consider it a vacation with pay.” About to withdraw, Reynolds stopped again. “Either of you boys got any stock in Simplicity Computers, I suggest you cash it in right now. Seems one of the internal auditors found some dirty business going on.”
Clay sighed. Terrific. A whistle-blower. “This have something to do with the person we’re supposed to be guarding?”
Reynolds nodded. “It does.”
“This person have a name?”
“Yeah.” Reynolds paused to think a moment. “Ilene O’Hara.”
Feeling like someone who had just slipped into the Twilight Zone without so much as a warning flash of light, Clay stared at the captain.
The smile had vanished from Clay’s lips.
Chapter 2
All during the ride to the D.A.’s office Clay had been silently steeling himself for the ordeal ahead.
Beside him, in the driver’s seat, Santini sat expounding on whatever topic floated through his dark head. Occasionally coming up for air, his partner’s nonstop flow of words only managed to bounce off Clay’s ears, hardly penetrating as he thought about the woman he was going to be seeing after all this time.
Ilene O’Hara.
It had been six years. Six years and three months, but who was counting, he thought with a self-deprecating smile. He and Ilene had broken up in August and now they were looking down the calendar at November. Technically, she had broken up with him, but he’d driven her to it. On purpose.
Ilene O’Hara.
He’d thought she’d left Aurora. When had she gotten back? Clay glanced out the window, barely seeing the scenery go by as Santini took the streets a little quicker than they were meant to be taken.
Clay didn’t know how he felt about seeing her again. He was trying not to feel anything at all, but that wasn’t working out too well. Emotions insisted on rumbling through him. He was like a channel surfer who’d accidentally come across an episode of a program he’d once enjoyed. There was a sense of familiarity washing over him, perhaps even a vague sense of nostalgia, but nothing more.
He couldn’t let there be anything more.
“Where the hell are you today?” Santini’s voice finally elbowed its way into his thoughts, demanding his attention. Demanding a response.
Turning, Clay looked at him. “What?”
“You,” Santini repeated impatiently, turning a corner and going down the street that would eventually lead them to the D.A.’s office. “Where are you?”
Clay stopped himself from bracing his hand against the dashboard. “Here, next to you, risking my life as you take turns too fast and give all detectives a bad name.”
Santini snorted. “Don’t give me that. First you come in looking as if you’d been peeled off the top of the morning, now you look like the used gum that you peel off the bottom of someone’s heel.” Santini spared him a penetrating glance before looking back on the road. “After riding around with you for two years, I know that you’re not one of those sensitive guys, so this isn’t a mood swing. What gives?”
Santini was his partner, and he shared as much with him as he shared with any man or any member of his family. At times even more. But right now he didn’t feel like talking about it. He didn’t even want to let his thoughts stray in that direction. He just wanted the assignment to be magically over instead of just beginning.
“Just drive.”
Santini mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, but Clay managed to pick up enough of it to know that the man was casting aspersions on closed-mouth black Irishmen. For the first time since he’d heard Ilene’s name this morning, Clay smiled.
She looked better than he’d expected.
Six years had taken the promise of beauty and had lovingly polished it until it shone. She’d changed, he realized. She didn’t look innocent anymore. Just knowledgeable, as if she now knew that the world wasn’t some huge playground with all the safety features built into it.
He supposed that was partially his fault. If he hadn’t pushed her toward it, maybe they wouldn’t have broken up.
Maybe…
The land of maybe was mist-filled territory with long, winding, intersecting roads that led nowhere, and Clay wasn’t about to go there. Today was what it was and so was he, there was no point in speculating otherwise. Ultimately he knew he wouldn’t have been any good for her. A woman like Ilene needed stability, and stability scared the hell out of him.
Stability and stagnation both began with the same letter.
As he walked into the room, Clay glanced down at her left hand. She was wearing a ring on the appropriate finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It was sporting a blue stone in its center.
Her birthstone was blue. Sapphire, he thought, not aquamarine. Funny the things you remembered even after all this time.
Her profile had been toward him. When she turned around to look at him, he saw her mouth drop open a second before she shut it again. She was absolutely stunned. He’d always loved the way surprise had blossomed on her face. But this wasn’t that kind of surprise. This was more like shock. She hadn’t known he was the one being called in.
Clay’s eyes shifted toward his cousin Janelle, the only other person in the small, book-lined room besides his partner who had just entered.
So that was it. Janelle.
He might have known.
This was her idea, he was sure of it, even though the order had come down to him from Captain Reynolds. Janelle fancied herself a puppeteer, orchestrating the lives of those around her. He’d figured himself immune. Obviously, he’d figured wrong.
They were going to have to have a talk, he and Janelle. She meddled in things that didn’t concern her, more even, than his sisters did.
As blameless as Mother Teresa, Janelle was on her feet in a moment, rounding her desk and coming to greet her cousin and his partner. She nodded at the latter while flashing a broad, encouraging and amazingly guileless smile at Clay.
“Thanks for coming so quickly. Ms. O’Hara, this is Detective Kyle Santini.” The pause was almost imperceptible as she added, “And you already know my cousin.”
“Yes.” Normally a warm, outgoing person, Ilene could feel herself withdrawing. Freezing up. “I know your cousin.”
Her eyes, Ilene hoped, were cool as she regarded Clay. Her voice and expression were about all she felt she could control. As for her heart, well, that had launched into double time, beating as if she were free-falling off the edge of a cliff. God knows she hadn’t expected this.
She took a small breath to steady herself before asking, with what she prayed was slight disinterest, “How have you been?”
Clay felt as if he needed an ice pick just to chip out the words she’d directed his way. They were two strangers, unceremoniously pushed together on the dance floor. And neither one of them wanted to dance.
“I’m doing all right,” he replied. His eyes shifted toward Janelle. “Captain Reynolds got a call saying something about a witness needing protection?” The words hung in the air like a challenge.
He was mad, Ilene thought, and she didn’t know why. Men were so damn hard to figure out at times.
“That was my idea,” Janelle acknowledged.
Clay’s blue eyes were steely as they regarded his cousin. “I’m sure it was.”
“But it’s not mine,” Ilene declared. This was an omen. She shouldn’t have come.
Rising to her feet, struggling not to hurry from the room or say anything that would give away the shaky state of her emotions, Ilene tightened her hand around the purse strap hanging from her shoulder. The air supply in the small room decreased at an alarming rate. She needed to get out of here. Now.
She’d left Aurora for a while. When she’d returned, she’d always known she’d run into him someday. Aurora wasn’t small, but even in cities like San Francisco and L.A., paths sometimes crossed unwillingly and Aurora was smaller than either of those places.
Even so, she’d hoped that when the day did come, she’d be prepared, that some hidden sixth sense would have forewarned her before she was suddenly thrust into his presence. Then at least she would have felt confident enough to put on a decent performance. One that would convince him that he hadn’t broken her heart in a million pieces.
But right now she had her son and her work and that was more than enough.
Except that now she didn’t have her work, Ilene reminded herself. Or possibly a future, either. She struggled against sinking into a pool of emotional quicksand.
Her hands tightened around her strap again as she deliberately addressed her words to the dark-haired man behind Clay. “Look, I’m sorry you were called out for nothing, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Janelle protested.
Ilene looked at the other woman. She’d never been able to tolerate restrictions well. “Watch me.” But as she began to leave the room, it was Clay, not Janelle, who got in her way.
He was a cop first, he reminded himself. And the situation needed one. “Captain Reynolds doesn’t throw around the term ‘protection’ lightly. Now what’s this about?”
“Ms. O’Hara says that her boss is misrepresenting her company’s profits to the public,” Janelle said.
Her company.
It occurred to Clay that he didn’t even know where Ilene worked or what she even did for a living. They’d been involved while in college, when everything was promising and fresh, and paths hadn’t been laid down yet. He’d always felt she could be anything she wanted to be. After they’d split and she’d left town, he’d purposely tried not to keep tabs on her, knowing if he did, he might be tempted to do something stupid, like tell her what a fool he’d been to walk away from her.
He would have hurt her if he’d remained. He knew that just as surely as he knew his own name. But men like him didn’t marry, Clay reminded himself. They dallied and went on. His one true love was the force and always would be.
“You work for Simplicity Computers, right?” he heard Santini inquiring.
“Yes, I do,” Ilene replied tersely.
At least until they find out what I’ve done. And then she wouldn’t be working for anyone. There was money in the bank, but that would only last a little while. How was she going to provide for Alex then? Oh God, this was a huge mistake.
Santini gave a low whistle. “You’re kidding. I just bought one of those starter computers for my kid.”
“It’s not going to self-destruct,” Ilene told him, her eyes covertly shifting to Clay. Trying not to see how time had only made him better looking. “The problem isn’t with the product quality. It’s still the finest that money can buy,” she assured Santini. “That’s the problem.”
“How do you mean?” Clay asked.
“A great deal of money has gone into producing the best on the market and—” Ilene stopped abruptly. She couldn’t think about that. She’d made a mistake. A bad one. It had taken seeing Clay again to make her come to her senses. She needed to retreat. “Never mind. I just want to go home.” Wanting to flee, she reached for the folder she’d brought.
But Janelle picked it up, holding it to herself protectively. “You came here because you wanted to do the right thing. Don’t let anything change your mind.”
A civil war raged inside her. “All right,” Ilene surrendered, but only partially. “Keep the folder. I’ll be in touch.”
“Ms. O’Hara, I meant what I said about your needing protection. Fortunes are at stake here. Careers, not to mention jail sentences,” Janelle emphasized. “If your bosses suspect that you came here—”
“Then keep my name out of it,” Ilene said.
“Just because they’re busy trying to hoodwink the public doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to everything else,” Janelle cautioned her. She glanced toward Clay as if to garner his support, but he was silent. “If you’ve already brought this to your boss’s attention, he knows that you know and it won’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection.”
Ilene deliberately pushed the thought to the conclusion she thought the woman was trying to reach. “And when he does, he’ll do what? Kill me?”
“Maybe,” Clay interjected.
Ilene swung around. “He wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “He coaches his son’s Little League.”
Clay laughed shortly. For all her worldly appearance, Ilene was apparently still naive. “Ever see how the parents can mix it up over an incorrect call?”
Ilene raised her chin in a way he was all too familiar with. It was part of her go-to-hell stance. He’d once found that adorable. Now he found it irritating.
“I’ll be fine,” she said tersely. “If I have police protection, then they might suspect something.”
“How will they know unless they’re staking out your place?” Clay posed.
The question stopped Ilene in her tracks for a second. She had no answer for that. No, they were trying to frighten her, she thought, trying to make sure she testified. Well, the files spoke for themselves, they didn’t need her.
Squaring her shoulders, she moved to open the door. Clay wrapped his hand around her wrist, gently holding her in place. She looked up, startled. But instead of detaining her, he turned her hand over and placed a small white card into her palm. She looked at him quizzically.
“We can’t force you to accept protection, but if anything goes wrong, call one of those numbers. The top one belongs to the precinct, the bottom one is my cell phone.”
She tried to give the card back to him. “I won’t be needing this.”
But Clay raised his hands before him, unwilling to take the business card back. “You never know.”
Her eyes met his for a long moment. “No,” she said significantly, “you never do.” And then she left the office.
Annoyed, frustrated and feeling a little as if a part of him had just been unceremoniously raked over hot coals, Clay shook his head.
“That has got to be the most stubborn woman I ever met. And considering present company,” he looked pointedly at Janelle, “that’s saying a hell of a lot. Do me a favor, Janelle, next time you have the urge to take out your bow and arrow and play Cupid—find another target.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is a woman who needs protecting. You’re the best man for the job, that’s all. You, too, Santini,” she added, looking at the other man.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m an afterthought here?” Santini looked at his partner. “You and the lady have a history I should know about?”
“No,” Clay said flatly. “If we’re done here, A.D.A, my partner here and I’d like to get back to work.”
Janelle spread her hands helplessly. “I’m afraid it looks like you’re done. For now.” She sat down behind her desk and began to go through the contents of the envelope again.
“Good. C’mon, Santini, let’s go.”
“You do have a history,” Santini insisted as he followed his partner through the door. “C’mon, Cavanaugh, you’re talking to a deprived man here. I’m withering on the vine. Give.”
Clay had absolutely no intentions of satisfying the man’s insatiable curiosity. “Shut up, Santini,” he grumbled as he lengthened his stride toward the elevator.
It took Ilene the entire drive home to calm down, to get her hands to remain steady on the steering wheel. After all this time, Clay still had an effect on her. Could still make her pulse dance just by being in the same room as her.
Except that this time she had no illusions about him. He wasn’t the Prince Charming she’d thought—that she’d hoped he’d be. Like the old song said, no man burning with a pure, radiant light in the night.
Besides, she argued with herself, she’d gotten swept away in the excitement of what she was proposing to do. It had clouded her thinking. Walken would never hurt her. The most he would do is fire her, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that. Not the way she blamed him for sweeping all those numbers under a proverbial rug, she thought grimly. She knew he was only thinking of saving the company, but she’d never believed that the end justified the means, not when the means involved fraud.
She was overthinking again.
God, but she needed some solace, a reprieve, if only for a little while, from the whole situation. She needed to do something fun, something carefree with Alex. There was a soul-renewing purity in her son’s innocence, in the echo of his laugh, that always helped her get back on course. Even when loneliness threatened to drag her down to unmeasurable depths.
Making an impulsive decision, she called her baby sitter and asked her not to pick up Alex today. Then she went and sprang her son from his nursery school.
“Hi, Mama.” He beamed at her. “Where are we going?”
“What makes you think we’re going somewhere, sport?”
His eyes danced as he looked at her. “Because we always go someplace when you come.”
“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I, Alex?” He cocked his head, looking at her. She could almost see him pulling in the words, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes she just wanted to eat him all up, he was that dear to her. “We’re going to the park, Alex. That okay with you?”
Alex loved the park. If she let him, he’d be happy to live there. “Okay,” he echoed, dragging her by the hand to the car.
And they were off.
She was so busy enjoying Alex, enjoying the day, that she didn’t become aware of the feeling until sometime into the second hour. The feeling that someone was watching her.
At first she convinced herself that the A.D.A., aided and abetted by Clay, had spooked her and that she only imagined things. After all, the park was full of parents, mainly mothers, with their children. With all that movement around her, it was easy enough to mistake that for someone watching her. The main park in Aurora had rides galore and diversions for children of all ages. At any given time, a great many people populated the area.
Despite her arguments to the contrary, the gnawing feeling that there was someone shadowing her persisted. Drawing her courage together, Ilene pretended to go the ladies’ room with Alex. Once inside, the boy looked puzzled as they began to leave by the rear exit. “We playing a game, Mama?”
“Yes, a game, Alex. Kind of like hide-and-seek.” Holding his hand, she circled around until she was behind the front entrance again.
She was doing it to prove to herself that she was imagining things.
She wasn’t.
No wonder she felt as if she was being shadowed. She was. Clay was leaning against a tree, watching the entrance. Waiting for her to emerge again.
Angry, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face her. It was hard to keep from shouting at him, but she didn’t want to frighten Alex. “Why are you following me?”
Clay looked at her, not surprised that she had caught on, only that she had done it so quickly. But one of the things he’d always liked about her was that she was sharper than any woman he’d ever been with.
“Because Janelle and Captain Reynolds seem to think you’re in danger.”
“The only thing I seem to be in danger of is running into people from my past who I don’t want to see.”
Though tempted to make a flippant reply, Clay was more interested in the small boy whose hand she held. The one looking up at him with big blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile so like his mother’s.
He nodded at the boy. “Is this your son?”
Ilene placed her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. “Yes, this is Alex.”
Not standing on ceremony, Alex tugged on Clay’s shirt and said, “Hi.”
He spared the boy a smile in kind. “Hi.” Clay raised his eyes to Ilene. The boy’s existence raised a host of questions in his mind, questions he should have been able to bank down. “When did you get married?”
She felt her back stiffening. “That is none of your business and neither am I. Go away, Detective Cavanaugh. Before I call a cop.”
He couldn’t resist. “Half the force is related to me.”
“Then I’ll find someone who isn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away with her son.
This time Clay remained where he was.
Chapter 3
“Leaving already?”
On his way through the crowded bar where he and other members of the police department gathered at the end of a long, hard day, Clay stopped several feet short of his goal, the front door. Even with the din cranked up an extra decibel or two, he still recognized the familiar voice. He’d been hearing it for all of his twenty-seven years.
The bar was extra crowded tonight with retired as well as active police personnel taking up much of the available space. They’d come together to throw a party for one of their own. After several false starts at retirement, Detective Alvin “Willie-Boy” Jenkins was finally leaving the force. The older, florid-faced man had been a fixture with the department for as long as Clay could remember, having even gone six years partnered with his father until Andrew had been promoted to chief of police.
It was Andrew Cavanaugh who had cleared up the mystery behind Willie-Boy’s nickname. It derived not from a familiar form of a name given him at birth, but from the fact that the police detective had become enamored with the old Robert Redford movie, Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He had seen it more times than even he could remember and could spout off lines of dialogue at the drop of a hat. No one knew why he was so fascinated with that particular piece of celluloid and no one wanted to ask. Willie-Boy tended to be very long-winded once he got started.
Clay had toyed with the idea of saying good-night to the members of his family who were still in attendance, then decided that slipping out unnoticed was the better way to go. He’d underestimated his father’s eagle eye. At an age when most men were squinting to make out the written page or see beyond the reach of their hand, his father’s vision was still twenty-twenty.
“Keeping tabs on me, Dad?” Clay turned to face the older man.
Andrew raised a mug of dark brew and took a small sip before answering. “No, just wondering what’s up. You’re usually one of the last to go.”
Clay shrugged, looking away. “I’m starting a new trend.”
The hell he was, Andrew thought.
Andrew wasn’t one to pry into his children’s affairs. Or so he liked to claim. In reality, the complete opposite was true. He took his role as father to heart and it had only intensified ever since his wife had disappeared fifteen years ago.
That was the way he saw it. Rose had disappeared. Which meant that someday she would reappear. He refused to accept the fact that she had walked out of his life with heated, hurtful words hanging in the air between them, and then died. Everyone else outside of the family had long since taken the scenario as a given. Rose Cavanaugh had died in the river where her car was discovered. But since neither her body nor her purse had ever been recovered, to Andrew the case was still open.
Rose was still his wife and she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.
And Clay was still his son, one of two, and always would be no matter what his age. Being a father meant being concerned. Rose would have wanted it that way.
He studied his younger son closely now. His instincts, rather than mellow, had only grown sharper with age. “Something eating at you, Clay?”
Yes, something was eating at him, Clay thought. And had been ever since he’d seen Ilene this morning. It had only increased while he’d watched her at the park with her son. Seeing her playing with the boy, laughing, had created an incredible ache in his chest, one he didn’t know how to handle.
But he wasn’t about to talk about it, at least not until he worked it through in his system. “You mean other than those spicy meatballs?”
Clay nodded toward the large tray of browned meatballs that were still waiting to be plucked up from their perch. The bartender’s wife, Greta, had made them. They smelled a great deal better than they tasted, at least to those who were accustomed to better fare.
“The woman tried her best,” Andrew said, then grinned. “Can’t hold a candle to mine, can they?”
“Nope.” Clay watched his father do further justice to the beer he was holding. “And might I add that your modesty is blinding.”
“No reason for modesty.” Finished, Andrew set down the mug on a nearby table already littered with empty mugs. “Just the facts.”
About to comment, Clay held his finger up, stopping his father from continuing. His cell phone was vibrating in his back pocket.
“Hold it, Dad, I’m getting a call, Dad.”
Andrew sighed, waving him away to take the call. “No getting away from technology these days, is there?”
“Price you pay for progress.” Clay made his way out of the bar to take the call.
“See you at breakfast,” Andrew called after him before turning back to the party and the very inebriated guest of honor.
While Callie and Shaw dropped by the house for breakfast with a fair amount of regularity, Clay, like his twin sister Teri and Rayne, had only to come down the stairs. He’d moved out of the family house with fanfare at twenty-one and grudgingly moved back in approximately six months ago. Circumstances had necessitated it.
The apartment he’d been subletting had been reclaimed by its owner who’d decided to come back to Aurora in order to pursue his career. That left Clay pursuing apartments, not an easy task for a police detective on call most of his days and nights. Especially when his funds were of the limited variety.
Clay was always being generous with his money, an easy touch for friends, or even acquaintances, who found themselves down on their luck. That left him with little money to spend on the things that were important to his own life. Like shelter.
But every weekend found him sitting down with the newspaper, determined to find an apartment that suited his purposes and his pocket, and every Monday found him still home, much to his father’s secret contentment.
Though he wouldn’t admit it, they all knew that Andrew missed the sound of another male voice in the house. And another male set of hands he could commandeer whenever the whim moved him to undertake yet another remodeling of the house or another much-needed repair project. Unwilling to accept any money from his son in exchange for food and shelter, Andrew took it out in trade. Clay called it slave labor. Both men seemed to be happy with the arrangement, knowing it was only temporary and would change all too soon.
Stepping outside the bar, Clay turned his collar up as the air swirled around him. In contrast to the almost hot atmosphere inside, it was downright cold out here. Standing under the streetlamp, he flipped open his phone. “Cavanaugh.”
“Clay?”
Even though the person on the other end had only uttered his name, he knew who it was. Her voice was never far from the recesses of his mind.
And right now he could hear fear echoing in it. “Ilene?”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Clay, I think someone’s trying to break in.”
The address she’d given him was less than fifteen minutes away by car.
He made it in seven.
The Ilene he remembered didn’t frighten easily. Which meant that this was serious and not just the figment of an overactive imagination.
He should have stuck with his instincts and kept up watch, he upbraided himself. If she hadn’t been so damn adamant about making him leave…
It wasn’t an excuse and he knew it.
As he drove, peeling through yellow lights and ones that had just turned red, Clay kept his siren on. With any luck, it would scare away whoever it was who was attempting to break into her house. He tried not to let his imagination run away with him.
It was the longest seven minutes he could ever remember spending.
Pulling up in front of Ilene’s fashionable, tidy two story tract house, Clay all but ripped the key out of the ignition. He was out of the car almost before it stopped moving.
Someone raced from the side of the house.
Clay lost no time giving chase.
With a decent lead, the darkly clad figure dashed straight for the entrance in the gray cinder-block wall that led onto the greenbelt beside the development.
He was only a few seconds behind the man, but by the time Clay reached the entrance, he couldn’t see anyone in either direction. Whoever had tried to get into Ilene’s house had melted into the shadows.
Clay bit off a scalding curse and hurried back to Ilene’s house. The lights were on in the front, but he couldn’t see any movement through the curtains. He rang the bell. There was no answer.
His heart froze in his chest. Had he caught the perpetrator breaking in or leaving the scene of a crime? Abandoning the bell, he knocked on the door. Pounded on it would have been a more apt description. He wasn’t a patient man when agitated.
“Ilene, damn it, it’s Clay, open the door.”
Taking out microtools that were not exactly smiled upon by the department, he was about to break into Ilene’s house himself when he heard the lock on the other side being flipped.
The next moment the door opened. Ilene stood there, her eyes wide with a fear she desperately tried to contain. A fear she was clearly unaccustomed to and hated.
She scanned the area right behind him. The street-light showed the street to be empty. Ilene held on to the door for support, her knees feeling horribly rubbery. “You came.”
Clay walked in, taking command of the situation the way he always did. His voice remained deceptively laid-back. “Protect and serve, that’s our motto.”
He could see that she was trying to hold herself together as she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Only when her breathing was steady did she ask, “Did you see him?”
He nodded. “I saw someone running from the side of the house into the greenbelt. But then I lost him.”
Ilene knew how he hated that, hated losing at anything, whether it was a card game or a sporting event. Clay was destined to be a winner and expected to be, no matter what the situation. He’d always equated losing with having a personality flaw. Being part of a large family had made him competitive at a very young age.
Just having him here made her feel better. Stronger. And maybe a little silly for overreacting. But that was partially his fault. He and his cousin had made her believe her life was in danger.
Embarrassed, annoyed at having to ask for help, she shrugged, moving toward the mantel and straightening photographs that were perfectly orderly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take you away from anything.” When he looked at her curiously, she explained, “I heard noise in the background when I called.”
Ilene felt herself fumbling for words as if they were covered with slippery soap and she was trying to grasp them with her hands. Damn it, what was happening to her? To her life? She’d always wanted to be in control and now it felt as if everything was spinning all around her.
He hadn’t realized that the noise in the bar had followed him out. “No, you didn’t take me away from anything. Just a retirement party I was leaving, anyway.” He could swear that she looked as if she was about to pass out. The color had suddenly drained from her face. She looked vulnerable, he thought. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said defiantly just before she felt herself crumbling inside. She shut her eyes to keep the tears from suddenly leaking out. Where had they come from? she thought accusingly. This wasn’t like her. She was strong, resourceful.
But he and his cousin had made her think that her baby was in danger, and that changed everything.
“No, I’m not,” she admitted. “Someone tried to get in here, Clay. Someone I didn’t know or want in my house was trying to break in. They could have scared my son. I—” Her voice cracked and she covered her mouth with her fingertips to keep the sob from breaking free.
“Shhh.”
Faced with the promise of tears, not knowing what else to do, Clay did what came naturally. He took Ilene into his arms and held her against him. She struggled for a second before giving in and letting him hold her.
A flood of feelings instantly rushed over him. Six years ago, he was holding her to him because they were wildly, unreasonably in love. Back then, at times like this, he’d find himself loving the moment he was in because she was in it, as well.
And being terrified of that same moment. Because Ilene represented everything that could make him weak, that could make him codependent. Everything that could take his manhood and cut him off at the knees.
She’d had that kind of power over him. Until he’d taken it away from her. But for now she needed comfort, and he needed to be able to give it to her, such as it was.
Stroking her hair, he whispered against it. “It’s going to be okay.”
Just for a moment Ilene allowed herself to cling to him, to cling to the moment and pretend that he could protect her. Pretend that nothing had changed and she could put her faith and trust in this man who would always be there for her.
But he hadn’t been.
And he couldn’t be. No one could. He’d proved that to her.
A cold resolve came over her. She couldn’t depend on anyone but herself. She was all that Alex had. Which meant she had to be brave for both of them. Being brave meant not falling to pieces.
With effort, she pulled herself together and drew away.
“No, it’s not. Nothing’s going to be all right, not yet. And nothing is ever going to be the same again.” She wiped the heel of her hand against the tears. Tossing her head, she tried to regain some of fragmented composure. For a second she tried to deny the obvious. “Maybe it was just a common burglar.”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes on her face. “But you don’t believe that.”
Another shaky breath left her. She’d never been much for lying, even to herself. “No, I don’t believe that.”
With a sigh she sank down on the sofa, then rose again, as if there were springs in her legs that wouldn’t allow her to relax. She couldn’t sit, couldn’t remain still. Someone had tried to break in, to harm her. To harm her son. And she was powerless to do anything about it except dial a phone.
Frustration chewed at her. Had Walken actually authorized this? Had the man who’d played Santa Claus at last year’s Christmas party, who’d had her son climb up on his knee, given the go-ahead to someone to attempt to break into her house? And do what? Threaten her? Or worse?
Unable to stay still, she began to pace the room again. But there was nowhere to go.
Clay watched her as she prowled about the space. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Talking. Talking about it was good, she thought. Talking about it brought it into the light and maybe would make it fade away. She ran her hands along her arms as she spoke. She was cold.
“I just came down from putting Alex to bed. He likes me to read to him until he falls asleep, and sometimes it takes a while,” she said, a hint of a smile playing along her lips as if she was seeking comfort from the familiar act. He could remember when that smile had been his exclusive property. Now it belonged to anyone but him. “I came downstairs to put away the dishes and thought I heard something at the back of the house. There’s a sliding glass door that leads out to the back patio,” she explained. “When I got there, I didn’t see anyone, but then I thought I heard someone walking along the side of the house.”
She knew she should have checked it out herself first, but all she could think of was that it would leave Alex alone in the house.
“I thought I heard him rattling the window. I guess I panicked and called you.” Her shrug was dismissive as she ran her hands along her arms again. “Maybe it was the wind,” she muttered.
“The wind was dressed in black and wore sneakers.”
Her last shred of hope tore away from her fingertips. Even so, she fell back on another attempt at denial. She didn’t want to believe the worst, not about someone she’d worked so closely with. “Then it was a burglar.”
“Or someone trying to blend into the night until he got in. Let me take a look outside, see what I can find. You stay here,” he told her sternly as she began to follow him. To his surprise, Ilene nodded her head and remained where she was.
He was back within a few minutes, holding something in his hand. A drawing of some sort. “I don’t think whoever it was was trying to break in. He was trying to warn you off.”
“Warn me off?” she repeated, puzzled.
In response, Clay held up what he’d found taped to the window she’d heard being rattled. It was a drawing of three monkeys sitting side by side. One covered his mouth, another his ears, the third his eyes. The message was clear.
“This is only the first step. It’ll escalate. The next time he’ll be inside the house.”
She looked at Clay accusingly. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good,” he retorted flatly. “I want to. I also want you to take Janelle’s suggestion seriously.”
She didn’t want to. Janelle’s suggestion meant going into hiding. She wanted to stand her ground, to stay in her own home. To continue with her life as if nothing had happened.
But she knew that something had happened, and just as she’d said to him when he first came in, nothing was ever going to be the same again.
She couldn’t hide her head in the sand. Not when she had Alex to think of. “So what do I do?”
“Well, you can’t stay here. We can place you in a hotel and—” Clay began to outline the familiar course of action in these cases. She was a witness and had to be kept alive.
But Ilene was already adamantly shaking her head. “No.”
He could feel his temper suddenly getting frayed. No one had that kind of effect on him—except for her. But then, she could always make him feel things no one else could.
“Ilene, this isn’t the time to be stubborn.”
“I’m not being stubborn. But I won’t disrupt Alex’s life.”
He stared at her. “And having people break into his house and possibly abduct his mother or worse isn’t going to disrupt it? Think, Ilene, use your head. This time he was asleep, maybe next time he won’t be—”
She wasn’t going to let him scare her, at least not any more than she already was. “There’s got to be another solution.”
Did she think this was some kind of game that if she didn’t like it, she could just pick up all the marbles and go home? She’d set something in motion by bringing the audit’s discrepancies to light, something that couldn’t be stopped. All he could do was get her out of the way of the rolling boulder that threatened to crush her.
“There is.”
“What?” she demanded.
He didn’t like her tone, didn’t like the situation they found themselves in. Didn’t like to think what could happen to her if he couldn’t convince her. “First you can start by trusting me.”
Chapter 4
Ilene looked at the man standing before her for a long moment. How could he ask her to trust him after the history they had?
“If I remember correctly, that was where I made my mistake.”
The next moment she forced herself away from the emotional vortex that was sucking her into its midst. The past was over. She had to leave it behind her. She hadn’t called him because they had a history, she’d called him because she needed a policeman and he was familiar with what was going on. She hadn’t wanted to go into long explanations, she’d just wanted to have someone come quickly.
“Sorry, that was uncalled for.” Her voice was crisp, devoid of feeling. Ilene told herself that the only way she was going to get through this was to keep a very tight rein on her emotions. “After all, you’re just trying to do your job.”
Clay couldn’t shake the feeling he was out in the middle of nowhere, trying to find his way through a minefield. “Right, and my job is to keep you and your son safe even if you don’t want to be.”
Her temper erupted. “I never said I didn’t want to be safe. I just don’t want to have complete chaos.” She thought of her own childhood, of how she’d never felt as if she could count on anything. “A child needs stability in his life, otherwise there’s no foundation, nothing to build on.”
She could see by the expression on his face that Clay thought she was blowing this all out of proportion.
“And going to a hotel would cause chaos?” He wasn’t mocking her, but he might as well have been.
Ilene didn’t expect him to understand. He didn’t have children. And from what she gathered, his own life had been cushioned by a family that cared about him.
“He has a routine,” she insisted. “Kindergarten, friends. If I give up our liberty to a tag-team of policemen, how is that going to make Alex feel? I would be taking him away from everything that’s familiar to him.”
“Except for the most important ingredient. You,” Clay pointed out quietly. “And maybe your son’s more resilient than you think.” She just continued to look at him, not saying a word. She didn’t have to. Her eyes did it for her. Clay sighed, dragging his hand through his hair. He went back to the thought he’d had when she made her initial protest. “Okay, maybe I have an idea.”
Here came the trust part, she thought, her eyes never leaving his face. “Like what?”
Even though he was pretty sure his father would go along with this, he knew he couldn’t just take it for granted. “Give me a second.”
Turning from her, Clay took out his cell phone and pressed a preprogrammed number. It belonged to his father’s new cell phone. The cell phone had been an impromptu gift that hadn’t been all that warmly received. Andrew maintained that he didn’t need a cell phone. That the old-fashioned method of using a stationary telephone was just fine with him.
But Callie and Teri had insisted that he needed to get “with the times” and that this allowed them to always reach him if necessary. The deciding argument that he could also reach them whenever he wanted had finally turned the tide.
Now if his father had only remembered to leave it on, Clay thought, they’d be home free.
The cell phone on the other end rang a total of ten times before the annoying automatic message finally came on. Not bothering to listen to the theory that “the party you are trying to reach is either not answering or currently out of the calling area” Clay closed the phone and then opened it again. He hit redial immediately.
This time he got a response.
“Hello?”
“Dad, it’s Clay.” There was some kind of din accompanying his father’s voice. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like singing. Very bad singing. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Was that you? I thought I heard something ringing, but it’s so damn noisy in here, I thought maybe it was just me.”
“You’re still at the party?” Clay had difficulty picturing his father in that kind of social situation. Ever since his mother had disappeared, his father had become the very core of the family unit. Because he’d become such a fixture, there were times Clay had to remind himself that his father needed to get out among his own kind.
He heard his father chuckle. In the background the noise level picked up. “You’re missing a hell of a time. By the way, Adrienne Ballard is asking after you.”
Patrol Officer Adrienne Ballard was just one of the scores of women he’d gone out with since his breakup with Ilene. Blond, vibrant and nicely endowed, Adrienne was a woman who knew how to enjoy herself and how not to complicate things by trying to bring up the matter of strings. In short, his kind of woman.
Still, the notion of seeing Adrienne right now did nothing for him. He tried to tell himself it was because he was on duty but the truth of it was after a handful of dates with the woman, he’d found himself getting bored, wanting to move on. She hadn’t kept his mind occupied—the way Ilene had.
“That’s nice,” he said dismissively. “Listen, Dad, I need a favor.”
“Ask.”
That he was one of the lucky ones was once again brought home to him. His father was always there, always willing to help. Clay knew by experience that not too many people could say that about either of their parents.
“How do you feel about having a houseguest? Two,” he amended, remembering the boy sleeping upstairs.
“Two?” The long pause on the other end surprised Clay. “Look, Clay, this is just as much your house as it is mine, you know that, but, call me old-fashioned, I draw the line at something kinky—”
The seriousness of the situation eroded for a moment as Clay struggled not to laugh. Obviously, his father thought of him as a wild stud. “Dad, Dad, hold it. It’s not like that. I need a safe place for a friend and her little boy.”
There was relief in the sigh Clay heard. “Oh, sure. When?”
“Now.” Clay kept his fingers mentally crossed.
His father didn’t disappoint him. “Right. I can be home in about fifteen minutes.”
Clay grinned. The man was a rock. He should have known there was nothing to worry about.
“Thanks, Dad.” Time to launch into the second phase of his plan. “Do you know if Shaw and Callie are still at the party?”
“Callie left with Brent, but Shaw’s still here.” Andrew made no effort to disguise his curiosity. “Why?”
Clay glanced toward Ilene and wasn’t surprised to see that she appeared to be listening to every word. Why shouldn’t she? It was her future that was being bandied about here. “I’m going to need decoys.”
This time the pause was pregnant, as if Andrew was entertaining various scenarios. “Is it that serious?”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t.”
“Well, I don’t know where Rayne is, I never do with that girl, but I did see Teri a few minutes ago, will she do?”
All three of his sisters had basically the same height and coloring. Their hair was lighter than Ilene’s, but their builds were similar and they just needed the suggestion of Ilene, not an exact duplicate. “Just as good. I’ll give them each a call. See you in a little while.”
Clay rang off. But before he could start punching in his brother’s cell phone number, Ilene placed her hand on his wrist. “Why do you need decoys?”
He saw the heightened state of alert in her eyes. Despite her protest, maybe she was finally beginning to see how really serious the situation was.
“Because if I’m right, they might still be watching the house, waiting for me to leave. If I leave with you, they’re going to follow.” He saw her brow furrow. “But not if they think we’ve already left.”
“I don’t understand.”
He didn’t have time to go over the particulars. There were things left to do. “Just leave it all to me.” He flashed her a smile. “Think of it as your tax dollars at work.”
She dropped her hand from his wrist. Like an arrow with a homing device, the smile he’d flashed at her had gone right through her. She doubted that he knew the effect he still had on her, and there was no way in hell she was ever going to let him even guess. But having him in charge of the situation did make her feel better.
“Why don’t you go and throw a few things together for you and the boy? Take some of his favorite toys so he doesn’t feel so uprooted,” he added.
“I’m whisking him out of his bed in the middle of the night. How can’t he feel uprooted?” she challenged. She stared at the drawing he’d taken down from her window. Clay was right, even if this was just a warning, it had spooked her. And it could only escalate from here.
“Because you’re whisking him away to another home. Trust me, he won’t be traumatized. My father’s very good with kids.”
“Your father?”
“I thought you and the boy could stay with him. Dad’s good with kids,” he repeated before he turned away to call his brother.
Within a few minutes he had everything arranged.
“Is this really necessary?”
Ilene left the question open to anyone who wanted to answer it. Clay had just admitted two people into her house via the patio door. From what she could ascertain, the man and woman had entered via the backyard. Which meant that they had to climb over the fence, coming from one of her neighbor’s yards. How could they have done that without being detected?
The same way whoever had left that warning had, she told herself. He’d been in her backyard before she’d heard him.
Nothing seemed safe anymore.
“This is all so cloak-and-dagger,” she protested when no one answered her question.
The woman was the first to speak. Her eyes were kind and her smile looked as if it had been lifted directly from Clay’s face.
“A lot more cloak, a lot less dagger,” she laughed. Extending her hand, she took Ilene’s in hers. “Hi, I’m Teri. Clay and I are twins,” she said in response to the quizzical look creasing Ilene’s brow. Then winked. “But I’m the pretty one.”
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Marie Ferrarella
No sooner did number-crunching dynamo Ilene O'Hara uncover fraud in her company than she needed protection for herself and the son she'd been hiding from detective Clay Cavanaugh, a man she still loved. When Clay appeared as their protector, she wondered if the truth would destroy their fiery connection–or bind them forever?Clay had the reputation of being a ruthless law enforcer–and a Casanova. After Ilene, he ensured that love never entered the equation again. But now, years later, she needed his help. As the forbidden attraction between witness and protector raged out of control, Clay could tell she was keeping a secret from him. But would it stop him from taking the ultimate risk?
“Shh,” Clay whispered.
Faced with the promise of tears, not knowing what else to do to calm her fears, Clay did what came naturally. He took Ilene into his arms and held her against him. She struggled for a second before giving in and letting him hold her.
A flood of feelings instantly rushed over him. Six years ago, he’d held her to him because they were wildly, unreasonably in love. Back then, he’d found himself loving—and being terrified of—the moment because she was in it.
She’d always had a special kind of power over him—until he’d taken it away from her. But now she needed comfort, and he needed to be able to give it to her.
Stroking her hair, he murmured against it, “It’s going to be okay.”
Crime and Passion
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARIE FERRARELLA
writes books distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA
Award-winning author’s goal is to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.
To
Brett Walker Richman.
Welcome to the world.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Whistle-blower.
Ilene O’Hara frowned as she looked at the front cover of the magazine she’d just unearthed from beneath the tangled mass of toys in Alex’s toy box. Her five-year-old must have accidentally tossed the magazine into the box during one of the few times she’d gotten him to actually pick up after himself.
After taking it out, she leaned against the wall, sat crossed-legged on the floor and stared at the magazine. The cover depicted three bold, confident-looking women, all of whom had been instrumental in stirring up intense investigations into three separate institutions once thought of as towers of respectability and bastions of power.
When she’d originally bought the magazine, she’d never thought that someday she might be considering joining the ranks of an elite group of people nicknamed, not with complete fondness, whistle-blowers. Nobody really liked whistle-blowers, no matter how necessary those people might be for the well-being of the economy or society in general. To the firm on which they were blowing the whistle, they were deemed traitors. In truth, the public probably wasn’t too crazy about them, either.
Wasn’t that the edict of the playground? Nobody liked a tattletale?
With a sigh Ilene got up and tossed the magazine onto the coffee table before picking up the last armload of toys and bringing them to rest within the toy box. Upstairs, Alex was asleep, worn-out by a long day of play.
Ilene was worn-out as well, but playing had nothing to do with it. Wrestling with your conscience took a lot out of you.
She looked around, a restlessness chewing holes in her usual boundless energy. The rest of the room could wait until tomorrow. Surrendering, Ilene sank down on the tan sofa, her mind once again locked in a silent, one-woman debate over whether or not she should do what she knew in her heart was the right thing. But no one had died and left her the mantle of martyr, she insisted.
Inactivity seemed so seductive right now. Maybe she would just keep her mouth shut. Would it really be so bad to close her eyes and continue as if nothing were wrong? As if things were not out of sync? As if the corporation wasn’t playing hide-and-seek with a huge amount of money?
She didn’t feel she was on some kind of sacred mission here. Her parents hadn’t exactly given her much of a moral foundation from which to build.
She glanced at the one photograph she had of her parents that hung on the far wall. It was a studio shot, and they’d been forced to smile. She didn’t ever remember them smiling. Not on their own. They’d always been too busy sniping at each other and being covertly resentful of the daughter who had been the reason they had—in an unguarded moment of guilt—joined together legally and wound up wasting what were supposed to be “the good years.”
They’d stay married until neither one could stand the other. Until she was eighteen. Try as she might, Ilene couldn’t remember one drop of love being spilt in that house.
Nonetheless, Ilene had always had a strong sense of right and wrong. Even if she hadn’t, it didn’t take a would-be saint to know that misleading stockholders, a vast amount of stockholders, was wrong.
Especially if it was being done on purpose.
And since John Walken, her boss and the vice president in charge of the audit department of Simplicity Computers—one of the leading computer companies of the country, if not the leading company—hadn’t gotten back to her on the audit figures she’d uncovered more than a week ago, she knew the so-called discrepancy was not accidental. She had secretly hoped it would be.
After she’d brought him the news, she’d watched the handsome man pale ever so slightly beneath his perfect Maui tan before he’d flashed a brilliant, engaging smile and told her not to worry, that he’d take care of matters.
He’d all but patted her on her head as he’d ushered her out of his tastefully decorated office with its fifty-inch plasma TV on one wall. He thanked her for her keen diligence and promised her a bonus for what amounted to doing her job. Less than an hour later, he’d sent one of his assistants to press two tickets to Los Angeles into her hand, along with complimentary passes to Disneyland. Walken had expressed in the enclosed note that he had heard about her wanting to take her son there someday. The man made it a point to know his people, one of the things she’d always liked about him. Now she wondered if he just wanted to know which buttons to press when dealing with a subordinate in a challenging situation.
She’d been too stunned to speak at first, then politely had returned the tickets, saying that with the holidays coming up, this was an inconvenient time of the year to travel. It wasn’t strictly true. There was no one she spent the holidays with outside of Alex. She didn’t know where her parents were and there were no siblings, no aunts or uncles to populate her life. She and Alex could have picked up at any time and gone.
But the offer of the tickets hadn’t sat right with her. Neither had the discrepancy, even though she’d wanted to believe in Walken, to believe in the company to which she’d given almost four years of her life. Initially she’d clung to the hope of a plausible explanation as to why the expenses slated for Simplicity’s ledgers had been ascribed to one of their holding companies instead, sending that small company to the brink of bankruptcy. She passionately refused to believe that she’d made yet another mistake in placing her faith with the wrong recipient.
Just as she had with Clay.
Ilene could feel her eyes stinging and closed them defensively.
No.
She wasn’t going to go there. That was a place that she’d deliberately walled up even before Alex was born, but most definitely afterward. Loving Clay, believing in Clay might have been a mistake, but doing so had led her to the greatest joy of her life. It had given her Alex.
She could have reached the greatest of heights careerwise, but without Alex in her life, nothing else would have mattered. She was meant to be a mother first and foremost, and everything else second. Every fiber in her being told her so. There was a vast amount of love within her, love that had been thwarted by her parents, disregarded by Clay. But now it was all channeled toward Alex.
And it was because of Alex, she told herself, that she was going to have to blow the whistle.
There was no other path open to her. She never wanted to look into her son’s eyes and see an accusation, or worse, disappointment shining there. And if she didn’t bring the discrepancy she’d found to light, if she allowed Simplicity—a company that was well respected and touted as one of the few safe investments still left on the shaky stock market boards—to continue lying to the unsuspecting public, she wasn’t going to be able to live with her conscience. Because when the truth finally came out, it would steal millions of dollars away from everyday people who could ill afford to have something like this happen to them.
Ilene dragged her hand through her long, strawberry-blond hair. She knew what she had to do. Right thing or not, she still couldn’t help being afraid. But then, she supposed Joan of Arc had been afraid, too.
Pushing up from the sofa, Ilene rose to her feet. It was late and time to go to bed. Tomorrow she’d do what she had to do.
She tried not to dwell on the fact that Joan of Arc ended up being burned at the stake.
Almost holding her breath, Ilene sat perfectly still as the woman behind the desk studied her. Pert, blond, the woman hardly looked old enough to have graduated from college, much less law school…and much too young to have attained her present position of assistant district attorney. She looked as if she would have been more at home being interviewed for Rose Bowl Queen than taking part in a criminal court hearing.
Ilene glanced down at the woman’s name plate. Janelle Cavanaugh.
The name Cavanaugh leaped out at her.
Was it a coincidence? Or was this just fate’s lop-sided sense of humor aiming itself right between her eyes? Ilene tried to regain control over herself. It wasn’t as if Cavanaugh was an uncommon name, she argued. But here in Aurora, most of the Cavanaughs who were related to Clay were in some sort of law enforcement.
As was he, she’d heard. Those had been his plans when they’d gone together. He was one of those types who always got what he was after. He just hadn’t been after her.
Janelle Cavanaugh folded her hands before her, seemingly calm in the face of the bombshell that had been placed on her desk. Her eyes never left Ilene’s. “You have proof?”
Ilene met her gaze. “I wouldn’t be wasting your time if I didn’t.”
It amazed Ilene that her hands were so still. Inside, she was shaking like a leaf as she reached into her briefcase and took out the printed copies of the files she had audited. The originals were still safely in their place and gave no indication that once she’d stumbled across one discrepancy, she’d conducted an internal audit of her own. Ilene had discovered the tip of the iceberg when it came to corporate corruption. The discrepancy was huge between the true figures and the ones the board was about to release to stockholders in its annual disclosure.
The world at large believed that Simplicity had had a banner year. In truth, the profits were false. A mountain of expenditures had been hidden from the shareholders, making Simplicity seem as if ownership in the company was a very desirable thing in a troubled fiscal age.
She understood the thinking behind the ruse, or thought she did. If investors flocked to Simplicity, waving their money before them, Simplicity would eventually collect enough money to cover their debts and yield at least part of the profit it reported. But if something were to happen, if a story should be leaked to the business world, confidence and stock would plummet and many people would be bankrupt, their accounts completely wiped out.
She knew she couldn’t live with that on her conscience. That was why she was here. This problem had to be cleared up before it went any further.
Janelle quickly scanned the top pages she’d taken out of the manila envelope. Sporting the expressionless face her brothers and cousins swore made her so perfect for playing poker, she raised her eyes to the delicate-looking woman before her.
From all appearances Ilene O’Hara looked as if she belonged on the fast track at some pricey modeling agency. Tall, slender, she had a regal composure and a face that begged for magazine covers. Janelle supposed that was what her cousin had seen in the woman in the first place.
Janelle doubted that Ilene O’Hara even remembered that they had met once, although fleetingly. Six years ago, she thought, give or take a little. She’d stumbled across Clay and his girlfriend of the moment at a coffee shop. Clay had looked a little uncomfortable making introductions, and she’d known it was because he hated being pinned down. Janelle remembered thinking that Clay had finally found someone who didn’t look as if she was living just to have a good time.
But then Clay and Ilene had broken up. He’d been a little funny for a while. Always gregarious, he’d become withdrawn. No one in the family had guessed why. She’d been the only one who even knew about Ilene. In time, he’d bounced back to his old self. But Janelle had felt that the girl had left a permanent impression.
She smiled warmly now at Ilene. “So, how have you been?”
Ilene blinked. The A.D.A. was making polite chit-chat. Why? “Excuse me?”
Janelle’s smile widened. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Small wonder—Ilene had been very wrapped up with her cousin then.
Ilene glanced at the name plate again before raising her eyes back to Janelle. She began to look familiar. “Then you are related to Clay.”
“Guilty as charged.” She leaned into Ilene, allowing herself one more private moment, in part to make the woman less uncomfortable about being here. “I always thought he was a jerk for walking away from you.”
It wasn’t what Ilene wanted to discuss. Not now. Not ever. “He was too young. We were too young,” Ilene amended. She shifted in the seat, gripping the arms, eager, now that she had started the ball rolling, to get on with it. “So where do we go from here?”
There were a myriad of details to be faced. However, Janelle had her own set of priorities that differed slightly from those of the D.A.’s office. “First thing we do is get you police protection.”
Ilene’s eyes widened at the ominous pronouncement. Police protection was for people who feared for their lives. People who were in danger. That wasn’t her. She knew all the people in her department. They were people with whom she’d attended Christmas parties, people whose birthdays she’d celebrated. None of them would hurt her. Despite its size, the company had a reputation as being one big, happy family.
And she’d never been one who’d ever meekly obeyed without question. “Police protection? Why? This isn’t The Mob we’re dealing with.”
“No,” Janelle agreed, “these are CEOs with a great deal to lose. People facing exposure do desperate things.” Janelle could tell that Ilene didn’t like what she was hearing. “Welcome to the twenty-first century.” She got down to business. “Does anyone know you’ve come here?”
Ilene shook her head. She’d taken a personal day, telling the office she was going to the doctor. She’d told Alex’s baby-sitter the same thing. Coming here wasn’t something she enjoyed advertising. “No.”
Janelle tried to read between the lines. “But you did go to your boss about this?”
Ilene could tell by the other woman’s tone that she thought Ilene had made a tactical mistake. But Janelle Cavanaugh didn’t know John Walken, didn’t know that he was an honorable man.
“Yes,” her own tone was defensive, “I thought he’d want to fix it, that he didn’t know this was going on. I can’t find out who gave the initial order.”
Janelle looked at her knowingly. “And Walken said he would get right on it, but you haven’t heard anything so far.”
Ilene hated the way this all sounded so predictable. There had to be some explanation. Good people didn’t do heinous things.
But if she truly believed that, why was she here?
She looked down at her nails, rendering the answer through teeth that were almost closed. “Right.”
Janelle nodded. “And how long ago was that?”
“A week.” It sounded like an eternity. “I thought about talking to him again.” Ilene had almost gone in today, wanting to give Walken another chance. She’d changed her mind at the last minute. “But—”
“Your instincts told you to come here.” Janelle’s blue eyes smiled at the other woman. “Good instincts. Hope your survival ones are just as keen.”
“Is this police-protection thing really necessary?”
“It is if I want to sleep at night. Excuse me for a second.” Janelle drew the phone in closer to her.
Turning her body away from her, Janelle let her fingers quickly tap out the familiar numbers. Her father, Brian, was the current chief of detectives and the younger of the two surviving Cavanaugh brothers. His three sons, her brothers and six of her seven cousins were also with the police force. Only Patience had broken free, following her own destiny to become a veterinarian. But even Patience had continuing contact with the police force. Janelle’s cousin treated the German shepherds that made up the K-9 squad.
There were times when Janelle thought of the police force as her personal cavalry. This was one of those times.
Connected to her father’s private line, she lowered her voice as she began to speak. After a few moments of obligatory give and take and a promise to stop by “soon,” Janelle told her father why she was calling. Quickly, she gave him Ilene’s background story and what she’d brought to the table.
Listening to her father’s answer, Janelle had no way of knowing she was setting into motion something that was going to mushroom out until it touched all of them.
“You look much too happy for a Monday morning,” Kyle Santini, Clay’s partner of two years grumbled as he slumped down in his own seat. The sudden action all but sent his coffee sloshing over the sides of the chipped, worn mug his five-year-old had made him in camp last year. Carefully, he set the misshapen royal-blue mug on his desk, keeping it away from any important papers. Kyle eyed the man considered by the squad to be the personification of the carefree, happy bachelor. “You still seeing that stripper?”
“Exotic dancer,” Clay corrected. “And no, I’m not still seeing her. Ginger and I came to a parting of the ways more than a week ago.”
A knowing look came over Santini’s face. “Let me guess, she wanted to have ‘the talk.”’ Taking a long drag of the mud that passed for coffee in the precinct, Kyle chuckled to himself. “Sooner or later, they all want to have ‘the talk.”’ Kyle shook his head, a man to whom women would always remain a mystery. “What is it about women that makes them want to clip a man’s wings?”
“I don’t know,” Clay said honestly. “But it never got that far with Ginger and me.”
He thought of the woman he’d seen a handful of times in the past six weeks. One fateful night her screams had brought him into the alley where she’d been dragged by some low life intent on turning his fantasy into reality. Rescuing her had earned him Ginger’s gratitude and a few other things, as well. The woman had a body that wouldn’t quit and a mind that wouldn’t start.
Even though he’d told himself that was exactly what he wanted at this stage of his life, Clay had found himself getting restless and looking for an excuse to end the romance. The woman had given him one when she’d suggested a threesome.
“Ginger was a free spirit,” he told a more than mildly interested Santini. “She just wanted to be a little freer than I liked.”
Kyle groaned as if he’d just been deprived of his reason for living. “Don’t let my mind go there. You’re talking to a monk.”
Clay grinned. In the past six weeks, this had been a familiar complaint. “Alice is just about due, isn’t she?”
“If you ask me, she’s about overdue.” Santini sighed. Apparently prenatal was no better than post-natal. “Then I get to listen to her complain about how men should be the ones to have the kids.” Shaking his head, Kyle shot Clay an envious look. “You don’t know how lucky you are, being a bachelor.”
“Yeah, lucky,” Clay echoed then laughed. His partner wasn’t fooling anyone. He’d cut off his right arm before he’d give up what he had. “I’ve seen you with your son. You wouldn’t change that for the world.”
“No, but there are times I’d be willing to trade Alice in, at least for a weekend.”
Clay rocked back in his chair. He knew better. “Any man looks at her twice, you’re ready to knock them into last year.”
Santini shrugged. “That’s beside the point. That’s just my hot temper.”
Straightening up, Clay decided these reports weren’t going to file themselves, no matter how much he wished they would. He got busy, or tried to. “Nothing wrong in admitting you love the woman you married, Santini. Not enough of that going around.”
Santini clearly wasn’t interested in platitudes, he was interested in details. Preferably juicy ones. “You still didn’t answer me. If you didn’t get a little last night, why are you grinning like some loony hyena?”
Clay knew his answer was going to disappoint the man. “Because I just found out we’re going to have a judge in the family. My sister’s getting married.”
“You’re going to give me more of a hint than that, Cavanaugh. You’ve got three sisters,” Santini reminded him.
“Callie.”
Clay couldn’t remember his older sister ever looking so excited. She’d waited until they’d all sat down to Sunday dinner. For once, his father had managed to corral everyone, even his uncle. They’d all but poured out of the dining room, even with the extra leaves added on to the table his dad had specially made for family affairs.
Putting two fingers into her mouth, Callie had whistled the way she used to as a kid, getting the roar at the table to die down to a whisper and then, as sweet as could be, she’d made the announcement. She and Brent were getting married. And just like that, he was going to become an uncle, thanks to the judge’s five-year-old daughter, Rachel.
“You’re kidding me.” Santini whistled, shaking his head. “Damn, and here I was hoping she’d give me a tumble after I leave Alice.”
“Fat chance. In more ways than one.” Clay paused. “Why don’t you call up and send your wife flowers?”
Kyle laughed. Flowers were usually to apologize for something. “That’ll throw her.” And then he grinned. “Maybe I will.”
Captain Reynolds leaned into the cubicle, his gray eyes sweeping over both the men. “Cavanaugh, Santini, the chief just called. He wants the two of you to protect a witness. Apparently this is a big deal. The D.A. doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”
Clay rolled his eyes. He’d never been much for baby-sitting detail. One of the desk jockeys could do just as well. “I’ve got a desk full of work.”
The gray-haired man looked at him, his manner friendly but brooking no nonsense. Reynolds liked to stay on top of things at all times, which meant exercising control, but never holding the leash too tight. Taut leashes had a way of snapping.
“Which’ll still be there whether or not you pull this detail. Consider it a vacation with pay.” About to withdraw, Reynolds stopped again. “Either of you boys got any stock in Simplicity Computers, I suggest you cash it in right now. Seems one of the internal auditors found some dirty business going on.”
Clay sighed. Terrific. A whistle-blower. “This have something to do with the person we’re supposed to be guarding?”
Reynolds nodded. “It does.”
“This person have a name?”
“Yeah.” Reynolds paused to think a moment. “Ilene O’Hara.”
Feeling like someone who had just slipped into the Twilight Zone without so much as a warning flash of light, Clay stared at the captain.
The smile had vanished from Clay’s lips.
Chapter 2
All during the ride to the D.A.’s office Clay had been silently steeling himself for the ordeal ahead.
Beside him, in the driver’s seat, Santini sat expounding on whatever topic floated through his dark head. Occasionally coming up for air, his partner’s nonstop flow of words only managed to bounce off Clay’s ears, hardly penetrating as he thought about the woman he was going to be seeing after all this time.
Ilene O’Hara.
It had been six years. Six years and three months, but who was counting, he thought with a self-deprecating smile. He and Ilene had broken up in August and now they were looking down the calendar at November. Technically, she had broken up with him, but he’d driven her to it. On purpose.
Ilene O’Hara.
He’d thought she’d left Aurora. When had she gotten back? Clay glanced out the window, barely seeing the scenery go by as Santini took the streets a little quicker than they were meant to be taken.
Clay didn’t know how he felt about seeing her again. He was trying not to feel anything at all, but that wasn’t working out too well. Emotions insisted on rumbling through him. He was like a channel surfer who’d accidentally come across an episode of a program he’d once enjoyed. There was a sense of familiarity washing over him, perhaps even a vague sense of nostalgia, but nothing more.
He couldn’t let there be anything more.
“Where the hell are you today?” Santini’s voice finally elbowed its way into his thoughts, demanding his attention. Demanding a response.
Turning, Clay looked at him. “What?”
“You,” Santini repeated impatiently, turning a corner and going down the street that would eventually lead them to the D.A.’s office. “Where are you?”
Clay stopped himself from bracing his hand against the dashboard. “Here, next to you, risking my life as you take turns too fast and give all detectives a bad name.”
Santini snorted. “Don’t give me that. First you come in looking as if you’d been peeled off the top of the morning, now you look like the used gum that you peel off the bottom of someone’s heel.” Santini spared him a penetrating glance before looking back on the road. “After riding around with you for two years, I know that you’re not one of those sensitive guys, so this isn’t a mood swing. What gives?”
Santini was his partner, and he shared as much with him as he shared with any man or any member of his family. At times even more. But right now he didn’t feel like talking about it. He didn’t even want to let his thoughts stray in that direction. He just wanted the assignment to be magically over instead of just beginning.
“Just drive.”
Santini mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, but Clay managed to pick up enough of it to know that the man was casting aspersions on closed-mouth black Irishmen. For the first time since he’d heard Ilene’s name this morning, Clay smiled.
She looked better than he’d expected.
Six years had taken the promise of beauty and had lovingly polished it until it shone. She’d changed, he realized. She didn’t look innocent anymore. Just knowledgeable, as if she now knew that the world wasn’t some huge playground with all the safety features built into it.
He supposed that was partially his fault. If he hadn’t pushed her toward it, maybe they wouldn’t have broken up.
Maybe…
The land of maybe was mist-filled territory with long, winding, intersecting roads that led nowhere, and Clay wasn’t about to go there. Today was what it was and so was he, there was no point in speculating otherwise. Ultimately he knew he wouldn’t have been any good for her. A woman like Ilene needed stability, and stability scared the hell out of him.
Stability and stagnation both began with the same letter.
As he walked into the room, Clay glanced down at her left hand. She was wearing a ring on the appropriate finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It was sporting a blue stone in its center.
Her birthstone was blue. Sapphire, he thought, not aquamarine. Funny the things you remembered even after all this time.
Her profile had been toward him. When she turned around to look at him, he saw her mouth drop open a second before she shut it again. She was absolutely stunned. He’d always loved the way surprise had blossomed on her face. But this wasn’t that kind of surprise. This was more like shock. She hadn’t known he was the one being called in.
Clay’s eyes shifted toward his cousin Janelle, the only other person in the small, book-lined room besides his partner who had just entered.
So that was it. Janelle.
He might have known.
This was her idea, he was sure of it, even though the order had come down to him from Captain Reynolds. Janelle fancied herself a puppeteer, orchestrating the lives of those around her. He’d figured himself immune. Obviously, he’d figured wrong.
They were going to have to have a talk, he and Janelle. She meddled in things that didn’t concern her, more even, than his sisters did.
As blameless as Mother Teresa, Janelle was on her feet in a moment, rounding her desk and coming to greet her cousin and his partner. She nodded at the latter while flashing a broad, encouraging and amazingly guileless smile at Clay.
“Thanks for coming so quickly. Ms. O’Hara, this is Detective Kyle Santini.” The pause was almost imperceptible as she added, “And you already know my cousin.”
“Yes.” Normally a warm, outgoing person, Ilene could feel herself withdrawing. Freezing up. “I know your cousin.”
Her eyes, Ilene hoped, were cool as she regarded Clay. Her voice and expression were about all she felt she could control. As for her heart, well, that had launched into double time, beating as if she were free-falling off the edge of a cliff. God knows she hadn’t expected this.
She took a small breath to steady herself before asking, with what she prayed was slight disinterest, “How have you been?”
Clay felt as if he needed an ice pick just to chip out the words she’d directed his way. They were two strangers, unceremoniously pushed together on the dance floor. And neither one of them wanted to dance.
“I’m doing all right,” he replied. His eyes shifted toward Janelle. “Captain Reynolds got a call saying something about a witness needing protection?” The words hung in the air like a challenge.
He was mad, Ilene thought, and she didn’t know why. Men were so damn hard to figure out at times.
“That was my idea,” Janelle acknowledged.
Clay’s blue eyes were steely as they regarded his cousin. “I’m sure it was.”
“But it’s not mine,” Ilene declared. This was an omen. She shouldn’t have come.
Rising to her feet, struggling not to hurry from the room or say anything that would give away the shaky state of her emotions, Ilene tightened her hand around the purse strap hanging from her shoulder. The air supply in the small room decreased at an alarming rate. She needed to get out of here. Now.
She’d left Aurora for a while. When she’d returned, she’d always known she’d run into him someday. Aurora wasn’t small, but even in cities like San Francisco and L.A., paths sometimes crossed unwillingly and Aurora was smaller than either of those places.
Even so, she’d hoped that when the day did come, she’d be prepared, that some hidden sixth sense would have forewarned her before she was suddenly thrust into his presence. Then at least she would have felt confident enough to put on a decent performance. One that would convince him that he hadn’t broken her heart in a million pieces.
But right now she had her son and her work and that was more than enough.
Except that now she didn’t have her work, Ilene reminded herself. Or possibly a future, either. She struggled against sinking into a pool of emotional quicksand.
Her hands tightened around her strap again as she deliberately addressed her words to the dark-haired man behind Clay. “Look, I’m sorry you were called out for nothing, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Janelle protested.
Ilene looked at the other woman. She’d never been able to tolerate restrictions well. “Watch me.” But as she began to leave the room, it was Clay, not Janelle, who got in her way.
He was a cop first, he reminded himself. And the situation needed one. “Captain Reynolds doesn’t throw around the term ‘protection’ lightly. Now what’s this about?”
“Ms. O’Hara says that her boss is misrepresenting her company’s profits to the public,” Janelle said.
Her company.
It occurred to Clay that he didn’t even know where Ilene worked or what she even did for a living. They’d been involved while in college, when everything was promising and fresh, and paths hadn’t been laid down yet. He’d always felt she could be anything she wanted to be. After they’d split and she’d left town, he’d purposely tried not to keep tabs on her, knowing if he did, he might be tempted to do something stupid, like tell her what a fool he’d been to walk away from her.
He would have hurt her if he’d remained. He knew that just as surely as he knew his own name. But men like him didn’t marry, Clay reminded himself. They dallied and went on. His one true love was the force and always would be.
“You work for Simplicity Computers, right?” he heard Santini inquiring.
“Yes, I do,” Ilene replied tersely.
At least until they find out what I’ve done. And then she wouldn’t be working for anyone. There was money in the bank, but that would only last a little while. How was she going to provide for Alex then? Oh God, this was a huge mistake.
Santini gave a low whistle. “You’re kidding. I just bought one of those starter computers for my kid.”
“It’s not going to self-destruct,” Ilene told him, her eyes covertly shifting to Clay. Trying not to see how time had only made him better looking. “The problem isn’t with the product quality. It’s still the finest that money can buy,” she assured Santini. “That’s the problem.”
“How do you mean?” Clay asked.
“A great deal of money has gone into producing the best on the market and—” Ilene stopped abruptly. She couldn’t think about that. She’d made a mistake. A bad one. It had taken seeing Clay again to make her come to her senses. She needed to retreat. “Never mind. I just want to go home.” Wanting to flee, she reached for the folder she’d brought.
But Janelle picked it up, holding it to herself protectively. “You came here because you wanted to do the right thing. Don’t let anything change your mind.”
A civil war raged inside her. “All right,” Ilene surrendered, but only partially. “Keep the folder. I’ll be in touch.”
“Ms. O’Hara, I meant what I said about your needing protection. Fortunes are at stake here. Careers, not to mention jail sentences,” Janelle emphasized. “If your bosses suspect that you came here—”
“Then keep my name out of it,” Ilene said.
“Just because they’re busy trying to hoodwink the public doesn’t mean they’re oblivious to everything else,” Janelle cautioned her. She glanced toward Clay as if to garner his support, but he was silent. “If you’ve already brought this to your boss’s attention, he knows that you know and it won’t take a rocket scientist to make the connection.”
Ilene deliberately pushed the thought to the conclusion she thought the woman was trying to reach. “And when he does, he’ll do what? Kill me?”
“Maybe,” Clay interjected.
Ilene swung around. “He wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “He coaches his son’s Little League.”
Clay laughed shortly. For all her worldly appearance, Ilene was apparently still naive. “Ever see how the parents can mix it up over an incorrect call?”
Ilene raised her chin in a way he was all too familiar with. It was part of her go-to-hell stance. He’d once found that adorable. Now he found it irritating.
“I’ll be fine,” she said tersely. “If I have police protection, then they might suspect something.”
“How will they know unless they’re staking out your place?” Clay posed.
The question stopped Ilene in her tracks for a second. She had no answer for that. No, they were trying to frighten her, she thought, trying to make sure she testified. Well, the files spoke for themselves, they didn’t need her.
Squaring her shoulders, she moved to open the door. Clay wrapped his hand around her wrist, gently holding her in place. She looked up, startled. But instead of detaining her, he turned her hand over and placed a small white card into her palm. She looked at him quizzically.
“We can’t force you to accept protection, but if anything goes wrong, call one of those numbers. The top one belongs to the precinct, the bottom one is my cell phone.”
She tried to give the card back to him. “I won’t be needing this.”
But Clay raised his hands before him, unwilling to take the business card back. “You never know.”
Her eyes met his for a long moment. “No,” she said significantly, “you never do.” And then she left the office.
Annoyed, frustrated and feeling a little as if a part of him had just been unceremoniously raked over hot coals, Clay shook his head.
“That has got to be the most stubborn woman I ever met. And considering present company,” he looked pointedly at Janelle, “that’s saying a hell of a lot. Do me a favor, Janelle, next time you have the urge to take out your bow and arrow and play Cupid—find another target.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I see is a woman who needs protecting. You’re the best man for the job, that’s all. You, too, Santini,” she added, looking at the other man.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m an afterthought here?” Santini looked at his partner. “You and the lady have a history I should know about?”
“No,” Clay said flatly. “If we’re done here, A.D.A, my partner here and I’d like to get back to work.”
Janelle spread her hands helplessly. “I’m afraid it looks like you’re done. For now.” She sat down behind her desk and began to go through the contents of the envelope again.
“Good. C’mon, Santini, let’s go.”
“You do have a history,” Santini insisted as he followed his partner through the door. “C’mon, Cavanaugh, you’re talking to a deprived man here. I’m withering on the vine. Give.”
Clay had absolutely no intentions of satisfying the man’s insatiable curiosity. “Shut up, Santini,” he grumbled as he lengthened his stride toward the elevator.
It took Ilene the entire drive home to calm down, to get her hands to remain steady on the steering wheel. After all this time, Clay still had an effect on her. Could still make her pulse dance just by being in the same room as her.
Except that this time she had no illusions about him. He wasn’t the Prince Charming she’d thought—that she’d hoped he’d be. Like the old song said, no man burning with a pure, radiant light in the night.
Besides, she argued with herself, she’d gotten swept away in the excitement of what she was proposing to do. It had clouded her thinking. Walken would never hurt her. The most he would do is fire her, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that. Not the way she blamed him for sweeping all those numbers under a proverbial rug, she thought grimly. She knew he was only thinking of saving the company, but she’d never believed that the end justified the means, not when the means involved fraud.
She was overthinking again.
God, but she needed some solace, a reprieve, if only for a little while, from the whole situation. She needed to do something fun, something carefree with Alex. There was a soul-renewing purity in her son’s innocence, in the echo of his laugh, that always helped her get back on course. Even when loneliness threatened to drag her down to unmeasurable depths.
Making an impulsive decision, she called her baby sitter and asked her not to pick up Alex today. Then she went and sprang her son from his nursery school.
“Hi, Mama.” He beamed at her. “Where are we going?”
“What makes you think we’re going somewhere, sport?”
His eyes danced as he looked at her. “Because we always go someplace when you come.”
“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I, Alex?” He cocked his head, looking at her. She could almost see him pulling in the words, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes she just wanted to eat him all up, he was that dear to her. “We’re going to the park, Alex. That okay with you?”
Alex loved the park. If she let him, he’d be happy to live there. “Okay,” he echoed, dragging her by the hand to the car.
And they were off.
She was so busy enjoying Alex, enjoying the day, that she didn’t become aware of the feeling until sometime into the second hour. The feeling that someone was watching her.
At first she convinced herself that the A.D.A., aided and abetted by Clay, had spooked her and that she only imagined things. After all, the park was full of parents, mainly mothers, with their children. With all that movement around her, it was easy enough to mistake that for someone watching her. The main park in Aurora had rides galore and diversions for children of all ages. At any given time, a great many people populated the area.
Despite her arguments to the contrary, the gnawing feeling that there was someone shadowing her persisted. Drawing her courage together, Ilene pretended to go the ladies’ room with Alex. Once inside, the boy looked puzzled as they began to leave by the rear exit. “We playing a game, Mama?”
“Yes, a game, Alex. Kind of like hide-and-seek.” Holding his hand, she circled around until she was behind the front entrance again.
She was doing it to prove to herself that she was imagining things.
She wasn’t.
No wonder she felt as if she was being shadowed. She was. Clay was leaning against a tree, watching the entrance. Waiting for her to emerge again.
Angry, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face her. It was hard to keep from shouting at him, but she didn’t want to frighten Alex. “Why are you following me?”
Clay looked at her, not surprised that she had caught on, only that she had done it so quickly. But one of the things he’d always liked about her was that she was sharper than any woman he’d ever been with.
“Because Janelle and Captain Reynolds seem to think you’re in danger.”
“The only thing I seem to be in danger of is running into people from my past who I don’t want to see.”
Though tempted to make a flippant reply, Clay was more interested in the small boy whose hand she held. The one looking up at him with big blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile so like his mother’s.
He nodded at the boy. “Is this your son?”
Ilene placed her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. “Yes, this is Alex.”
Not standing on ceremony, Alex tugged on Clay’s shirt and said, “Hi.”
He spared the boy a smile in kind. “Hi.” Clay raised his eyes to Ilene. The boy’s existence raised a host of questions in his mind, questions he should have been able to bank down. “When did you get married?”
She felt her back stiffening. “That is none of your business and neither am I. Go away, Detective Cavanaugh. Before I call a cop.”
He couldn’t resist. “Half the force is related to me.”
“Then I’ll find someone who isn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away with her son.
This time Clay remained where he was.
Chapter 3
“Leaving already?”
On his way through the crowded bar where he and other members of the police department gathered at the end of a long, hard day, Clay stopped several feet short of his goal, the front door. Even with the din cranked up an extra decibel or two, he still recognized the familiar voice. He’d been hearing it for all of his twenty-seven years.
The bar was extra crowded tonight with retired as well as active police personnel taking up much of the available space. They’d come together to throw a party for one of their own. After several false starts at retirement, Detective Alvin “Willie-Boy” Jenkins was finally leaving the force. The older, florid-faced man had been a fixture with the department for as long as Clay could remember, having even gone six years partnered with his father until Andrew had been promoted to chief of police.
It was Andrew Cavanaugh who had cleared up the mystery behind Willie-Boy’s nickname. It derived not from a familiar form of a name given him at birth, but from the fact that the police detective had become enamored with the old Robert Redford movie, Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He had seen it more times than even he could remember and could spout off lines of dialogue at the drop of a hat. No one knew why he was so fascinated with that particular piece of celluloid and no one wanted to ask. Willie-Boy tended to be very long-winded once he got started.
Clay had toyed with the idea of saying good-night to the members of his family who were still in attendance, then decided that slipping out unnoticed was the better way to go. He’d underestimated his father’s eagle eye. At an age when most men were squinting to make out the written page or see beyond the reach of their hand, his father’s vision was still twenty-twenty.
“Keeping tabs on me, Dad?” Clay turned to face the older man.
Andrew raised a mug of dark brew and took a small sip before answering. “No, just wondering what’s up. You’re usually one of the last to go.”
Clay shrugged, looking away. “I’m starting a new trend.”
The hell he was, Andrew thought.
Andrew wasn’t one to pry into his children’s affairs. Or so he liked to claim. In reality, the complete opposite was true. He took his role as father to heart and it had only intensified ever since his wife had disappeared fifteen years ago.
That was the way he saw it. Rose had disappeared. Which meant that someday she would reappear. He refused to accept the fact that she had walked out of his life with heated, hurtful words hanging in the air between them, and then died. Everyone else outside of the family had long since taken the scenario as a given. Rose Cavanaugh had died in the river where her car was discovered. But since neither her body nor her purse had ever been recovered, to Andrew the case was still open.
Rose was still his wife and she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.
And Clay was still his son, one of two, and always would be no matter what his age. Being a father meant being concerned. Rose would have wanted it that way.
He studied his younger son closely now. His instincts, rather than mellow, had only grown sharper with age. “Something eating at you, Clay?”
Yes, something was eating at him, Clay thought. And had been ever since he’d seen Ilene this morning. It had only increased while he’d watched her at the park with her son. Seeing her playing with the boy, laughing, had created an incredible ache in his chest, one he didn’t know how to handle.
But he wasn’t about to talk about it, at least not until he worked it through in his system. “You mean other than those spicy meatballs?”
Clay nodded toward the large tray of browned meatballs that were still waiting to be plucked up from their perch. The bartender’s wife, Greta, had made them. They smelled a great deal better than they tasted, at least to those who were accustomed to better fare.
“The woman tried her best,” Andrew said, then grinned. “Can’t hold a candle to mine, can they?”
“Nope.” Clay watched his father do further justice to the beer he was holding. “And might I add that your modesty is blinding.”
“No reason for modesty.” Finished, Andrew set down the mug on a nearby table already littered with empty mugs. “Just the facts.”
About to comment, Clay held his finger up, stopping his father from continuing. His cell phone was vibrating in his back pocket.
“Hold it, Dad, I’m getting a call, Dad.”
Andrew sighed, waving him away to take the call. “No getting away from technology these days, is there?”
“Price you pay for progress.” Clay made his way out of the bar to take the call.
“See you at breakfast,” Andrew called after him before turning back to the party and the very inebriated guest of honor.
While Callie and Shaw dropped by the house for breakfast with a fair amount of regularity, Clay, like his twin sister Teri and Rayne, had only to come down the stairs. He’d moved out of the family house with fanfare at twenty-one and grudgingly moved back in approximately six months ago. Circumstances had necessitated it.
The apartment he’d been subletting had been reclaimed by its owner who’d decided to come back to Aurora in order to pursue his career. That left Clay pursuing apartments, not an easy task for a police detective on call most of his days and nights. Especially when his funds were of the limited variety.
Clay was always being generous with his money, an easy touch for friends, or even acquaintances, who found themselves down on their luck. That left him with little money to spend on the things that were important to his own life. Like shelter.
But every weekend found him sitting down with the newspaper, determined to find an apartment that suited his purposes and his pocket, and every Monday found him still home, much to his father’s secret contentment.
Though he wouldn’t admit it, they all knew that Andrew missed the sound of another male voice in the house. And another male set of hands he could commandeer whenever the whim moved him to undertake yet another remodeling of the house or another much-needed repair project. Unwilling to accept any money from his son in exchange for food and shelter, Andrew took it out in trade. Clay called it slave labor. Both men seemed to be happy with the arrangement, knowing it was only temporary and would change all too soon.
Stepping outside the bar, Clay turned his collar up as the air swirled around him. In contrast to the almost hot atmosphere inside, it was downright cold out here. Standing under the streetlamp, he flipped open his phone. “Cavanaugh.”
“Clay?”
Even though the person on the other end had only uttered his name, he knew who it was. Her voice was never far from the recesses of his mind.
And right now he could hear fear echoing in it. “Ilene?”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Clay, I think someone’s trying to break in.”
The address she’d given him was less than fifteen minutes away by car.
He made it in seven.
The Ilene he remembered didn’t frighten easily. Which meant that this was serious and not just the figment of an overactive imagination.
He should have stuck with his instincts and kept up watch, he upbraided himself. If she hadn’t been so damn adamant about making him leave…
It wasn’t an excuse and he knew it.
As he drove, peeling through yellow lights and ones that had just turned red, Clay kept his siren on. With any luck, it would scare away whoever it was who was attempting to break into her house. He tried not to let his imagination run away with him.
It was the longest seven minutes he could ever remember spending.
Pulling up in front of Ilene’s fashionable, tidy two story tract house, Clay all but ripped the key out of the ignition. He was out of the car almost before it stopped moving.
Someone raced from the side of the house.
Clay lost no time giving chase.
With a decent lead, the darkly clad figure dashed straight for the entrance in the gray cinder-block wall that led onto the greenbelt beside the development.
He was only a few seconds behind the man, but by the time Clay reached the entrance, he couldn’t see anyone in either direction. Whoever had tried to get into Ilene’s house had melted into the shadows.
Clay bit off a scalding curse and hurried back to Ilene’s house. The lights were on in the front, but he couldn’t see any movement through the curtains. He rang the bell. There was no answer.
His heart froze in his chest. Had he caught the perpetrator breaking in or leaving the scene of a crime? Abandoning the bell, he knocked on the door. Pounded on it would have been a more apt description. He wasn’t a patient man when agitated.
“Ilene, damn it, it’s Clay, open the door.”
Taking out microtools that were not exactly smiled upon by the department, he was about to break into Ilene’s house himself when he heard the lock on the other side being flipped.
The next moment the door opened. Ilene stood there, her eyes wide with a fear she desperately tried to contain. A fear she was clearly unaccustomed to and hated.
She scanned the area right behind him. The street-light showed the street to be empty. Ilene held on to the door for support, her knees feeling horribly rubbery. “You came.”
Clay walked in, taking command of the situation the way he always did. His voice remained deceptively laid-back. “Protect and serve, that’s our motto.”
He could see that she was trying to hold herself together as she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Only when her breathing was steady did she ask, “Did you see him?”
He nodded. “I saw someone running from the side of the house into the greenbelt. But then I lost him.”
Ilene knew how he hated that, hated losing at anything, whether it was a card game or a sporting event. Clay was destined to be a winner and expected to be, no matter what the situation. He’d always equated losing with having a personality flaw. Being part of a large family had made him competitive at a very young age.
Just having him here made her feel better. Stronger. And maybe a little silly for overreacting. But that was partially his fault. He and his cousin had made her believe her life was in danger.
Embarrassed, annoyed at having to ask for help, she shrugged, moving toward the mantel and straightening photographs that were perfectly orderly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take you away from anything.” When he looked at her curiously, she explained, “I heard noise in the background when I called.”
Ilene felt herself fumbling for words as if they were covered with slippery soap and she was trying to grasp them with her hands. Damn it, what was happening to her? To her life? She’d always wanted to be in control and now it felt as if everything was spinning all around her.
He hadn’t realized that the noise in the bar had followed him out. “No, you didn’t take me away from anything. Just a retirement party I was leaving, anyway.” He could swear that she looked as if she was about to pass out. The color had suddenly drained from her face. She looked vulnerable, he thought. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said defiantly just before she felt herself crumbling inside. She shut her eyes to keep the tears from suddenly leaking out. Where had they come from? she thought accusingly. This wasn’t like her. She was strong, resourceful.
But he and his cousin had made her think that her baby was in danger, and that changed everything.
“No, I’m not,” she admitted. “Someone tried to get in here, Clay. Someone I didn’t know or want in my house was trying to break in. They could have scared my son. I—” Her voice cracked and she covered her mouth with her fingertips to keep the sob from breaking free.
“Shhh.”
Faced with the promise of tears, not knowing what else to do, Clay did what came naturally. He took Ilene into his arms and held her against him. She struggled for a second before giving in and letting him hold her.
A flood of feelings instantly rushed over him. Six years ago, he was holding her to him because they were wildly, unreasonably in love. Back then, at times like this, he’d find himself loving the moment he was in because she was in it, as well.
And being terrified of that same moment. Because Ilene represented everything that could make him weak, that could make him codependent. Everything that could take his manhood and cut him off at the knees.
She’d had that kind of power over him. Until he’d taken it away from her. But for now she needed comfort, and he needed to be able to give it to her, such as it was.
Stroking her hair, he whispered against it. “It’s going to be okay.”
Just for a moment Ilene allowed herself to cling to him, to cling to the moment and pretend that he could protect her. Pretend that nothing had changed and she could put her faith and trust in this man who would always be there for her.
But he hadn’t been.
And he couldn’t be. No one could. He’d proved that to her.
A cold resolve came over her. She couldn’t depend on anyone but herself. She was all that Alex had. Which meant she had to be brave for both of them. Being brave meant not falling to pieces.
With effort, she pulled herself together and drew away.
“No, it’s not. Nothing’s going to be all right, not yet. And nothing is ever going to be the same again.” She wiped the heel of her hand against the tears. Tossing her head, she tried to regain some of fragmented composure. For a second she tried to deny the obvious. “Maybe it was just a common burglar.”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes on her face. “But you don’t believe that.”
Another shaky breath left her. She’d never been much for lying, even to herself. “No, I don’t believe that.”
With a sigh she sank down on the sofa, then rose again, as if there were springs in her legs that wouldn’t allow her to relax. She couldn’t sit, couldn’t remain still. Someone had tried to break in, to harm her. To harm her son. And she was powerless to do anything about it except dial a phone.
Frustration chewed at her. Had Walken actually authorized this? Had the man who’d played Santa Claus at last year’s Christmas party, who’d had her son climb up on his knee, given the go-ahead to someone to attempt to break into her house? And do what? Threaten her? Or worse?
Unable to stay still, she began to pace the room again. But there was nowhere to go.
Clay watched her as she prowled about the space. “You want to tell me what happened?”
Talking. Talking about it was good, she thought. Talking about it brought it into the light and maybe would make it fade away. She ran her hands along her arms as she spoke. She was cold.
“I just came down from putting Alex to bed. He likes me to read to him until he falls asleep, and sometimes it takes a while,” she said, a hint of a smile playing along her lips as if she was seeking comfort from the familiar act. He could remember when that smile had been his exclusive property. Now it belonged to anyone but him. “I came downstairs to put away the dishes and thought I heard something at the back of the house. There’s a sliding glass door that leads out to the back patio,” she explained. “When I got there, I didn’t see anyone, but then I thought I heard someone walking along the side of the house.”
She knew she should have checked it out herself first, but all she could think of was that it would leave Alex alone in the house.
“I thought I heard him rattling the window. I guess I panicked and called you.” Her shrug was dismissive as she ran her hands along her arms again. “Maybe it was the wind,” she muttered.
“The wind was dressed in black and wore sneakers.”
Her last shred of hope tore away from her fingertips. Even so, she fell back on another attempt at denial. She didn’t want to believe the worst, not about someone she’d worked so closely with. “Then it was a burglar.”
“Or someone trying to blend into the night until he got in. Let me take a look outside, see what I can find. You stay here,” he told her sternly as she began to follow him. To his surprise, Ilene nodded her head and remained where she was.
He was back within a few minutes, holding something in his hand. A drawing of some sort. “I don’t think whoever it was was trying to break in. He was trying to warn you off.”
“Warn me off?” she repeated, puzzled.
In response, Clay held up what he’d found taped to the window she’d heard being rattled. It was a drawing of three monkeys sitting side by side. One covered his mouth, another his ears, the third his eyes. The message was clear.
“This is only the first step. It’ll escalate. The next time he’ll be inside the house.”
She looked at Clay accusingly. “You’re scaring me.”
“Good,” he retorted flatly. “I want to. I also want you to take Janelle’s suggestion seriously.”
She didn’t want to. Janelle’s suggestion meant going into hiding. She wanted to stand her ground, to stay in her own home. To continue with her life as if nothing had happened.
But she knew that something had happened, and just as she’d said to him when he first came in, nothing was ever going to be the same again.
She couldn’t hide her head in the sand. Not when she had Alex to think of. “So what do I do?”
“Well, you can’t stay here. We can place you in a hotel and—” Clay began to outline the familiar course of action in these cases. She was a witness and had to be kept alive.
But Ilene was already adamantly shaking her head. “No.”
He could feel his temper suddenly getting frayed. No one had that kind of effect on him—except for her. But then, she could always make him feel things no one else could.
“Ilene, this isn’t the time to be stubborn.”
“I’m not being stubborn. But I won’t disrupt Alex’s life.”
He stared at her. “And having people break into his house and possibly abduct his mother or worse isn’t going to disrupt it? Think, Ilene, use your head. This time he was asleep, maybe next time he won’t be—”
She wasn’t going to let him scare her, at least not any more than she already was. “There’s got to be another solution.”
Did she think this was some kind of game that if she didn’t like it, she could just pick up all the marbles and go home? She’d set something in motion by bringing the audit’s discrepancies to light, something that couldn’t be stopped. All he could do was get her out of the way of the rolling boulder that threatened to crush her.
“There is.”
“What?” she demanded.
He didn’t like her tone, didn’t like the situation they found themselves in. Didn’t like to think what could happen to her if he couldn’t convince her. “First you can start by trusting me.”
Chapter 4
Ilene looked at the man standing before her for a long moment. How could he ask her to trust him after the history they had?
“If I remember correctly, that was where I made my mistake.”
The next moment she forced herself away from the emotional vortex that was sucking her into its midst. The past was over. She had to leave it behind her. She hadn’t called him because they had a history, she’d called him because she needed a policeman and he was familiar with what was going on. She hadn’t wanted to go into long explanations, she’d just wanted to have someone come quickly.
“Sorry, that was uncalled for.” Her voice was crisp, devoid of feeling. Ilene told herself that the only way she was going to get through this was to keep a very tight rein on her emotions. “After all, you’re just trying to do your job.”
Clay couldn’t shake the feeling he was out in the middle of nowhere, trying to find his way through a minefield. “Right, and my job is to keep you and your son safe even if you don’t want to be.”
Her temper erupted. “I never said I didn’t want to be safe. I just don’t want to have complete chaos.” She thought of her own childhood, of how she’d never felt as if she could count on anything. “A child needs stability in his life, otherwise there’s no foundation, nothing to build on.”
She could see by the expression on his face that Clay thought she was blowing this all out of proportion.
“And going to a hotel would cause chaos?” He wasn’t mocking her, but he might as well have been.
Ilene didn’t expect him to understand. He didn’t have children. And from what she gathered, his own life had been cushioned by a family that cared about him.
“He has a routine,” she insisted. “Kindergarten, friends. If I give up our liberty to a tag-team of policemen, how is that going to make Alex feel? I would be taking him away from everything that’s familiar to him.”
“Except for the most important ingredient. You,” Clay pointed out quietly. “And maybe your son’s more resilient than you think.” She just continued to look at him, not saying a word. She didn’t have to. Her eyes did it for her. Clay sighed, dragging his hand through his hair. He went back to the thought he’d had when she made her initial protest. “Okay, maybe I have an idea.”
Here came the trust part, she thought, her eyes never leaving his face. “Like what?”
Even though he was pretty sure his father would go along with this, he knew he couldn’t just take it for granted. “Give me a second.”
Turning from her, Clay took out his cell phone and pressed a preprogrammed number. It belonged to his father’s new cell phone. The cell phone had been an impromptu gift that hadn’t been all that warmly received. Andrew maintained that he didn’t need a cell phone. That the old-fashioned method of using a stationary telephone was just fine with him.
But Callie and Teri had insisted that he needed to get “with the times” and that this allowed them to always reach him if necessary. The deciding argument that he could also reach them whenever he wanted had finally turned the tide.
Now if his father had only remembered to leave it on, Clay thought, they’d be home free.
The cell phone on the other end rang a total of ten times before the annoying automatic message finally came on. Not bothering to listen to the theory that “the party you are trying to reach is either not answering or currently out of the calling area” Clay closed the phone and then opened it again. He hit redial immediately.
This time he got a response.
“Hello?”
“Dad, it’s Clay.” There was some kind of din accompanying his father’s voice. He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like singing. Very bad singing. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
“Was that you? I thought I heard something ringing, but it’s so damn noisy in here, I thought maybe it was just me.”
“You’re still at the party?” Clay had difficulty picturing his father in that kind of social situation. Ever since his mother had disappeared, his father had become the very core of the family unit. Because he’d become such a fixture, there were times Clay had to remind himself that his father needed to get out among his own kind.
He heard his father chuckle. In the background the noise level picked up. “You’re missing a hell of a time. By the way, Adrienne Ballard is asking after you.”
Patrol Officer Adrienne Ballard was just one of the scores of women he’d gone out with since his breakup with Ilene. Blond, vibrant and nicely endowed, Adrienne was a woman who knew how to enjoy herself and how not to complicate things by trying to bring up the matter of strings. In short, his kind of woman.
Still, the notion of seeing Adrienne right now did nothing for him. He tried to tell himself it was because he was on duty but the truth of it was after a handful of dates with the woman, he’d found himself getting bored, wanting to move on. She hadn’t kept his mind occupied—the way Ilene had.
“That’s nice,” he said dismissively. “Listen, Dad, I need a favor.”
“Ask.”
That he was one of the lucky ones was once again brought home to him. His father was always there, always willing to help. Clay knew by experience that not too many people could say that about either of their parents.
“How do you feel about having a houseguest? Two,” he amended, remembering the boy sleeping upstairs.
“Two?” The long pause on the other end surprised Clay. “Look, Clay, this is just as much your house as it is mine, you know that, but, call me old-fashioned, I draw the line at something kinky—”
The seriousness of the situation eroded for a moment as Clay struggled not to laugh. Obviously, his father thought of him as a wild stud. “Dad, Dad, hold it. It’s not like that. I need a safe place for a friend and her little boy.”
There was relief in the sigh Clay heard. “Oh, sure. When?”
“Now.” Clay kept his fingers mentally crossed.
His father didn’t disappoint him. “Right. I can be home in about fifteen minutes.”
Clay grinned. The man was a rock. He should have known there was nothing to worry about.
“Thanks, Dad.” Time to launch into the second phase of his plan. “Do you know if Shaw and Callie are still at the party?”
“Callie left with Brent, but Shaw’s still here.” Andrew made no effort to disguise his curiosity. “Why?”
Clay glanced toward Ilene and wasn’t surprised to see that she appeared to be listening to every word. Why shouldn’t she? It was her future that was being bandied about here. “I’m going to need decoys.”
This time the pause was pregnant, as if Andrew was entertaining various scenarios. “Is it that serious?”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t.”
“Well, I don’t know where Rayne is, I never do with that girl, but I did see Teri a few minutes ago, will she do?”
All three of his sisters had basically the same height and coloring. Their hair was lighter than Ilene’s, but their builds were similar and they just needed the suggestion of Ilene, not an exact duplicate. “Just as good. I’ll give them each a call. See you in a little while.”
Clay rang off. But before he could start punching in his brother’s cell phone number, Ilene placed her hand on his wrist. “Why do you need decoys?”
He saw the heightened state of alert in her eyes. Despite her protest, maybe she was finally beginning to see how really serious the situation was.
“Because if I’m right, they might still be watching the house, waiting for me to leave. If I leave with you, they’re going to follow.” He saw her brow furrow. “But not if they think we’ve already left.”
“I don’t understand.”
He didn’t have time to go over the particulars. There were things left to do. “Just leave it all to me.” He flashed her a smile. “Think of it as your tax dollars at work.”
She dropped her hand from his wrist. Like an arrow with a homing device, the smile he’d flashed at her had gone right through her. She doubted that he knew the effect he still had on her, and there was no way in hell she was ever going to let him even guess. But having him in charge of the situation did make her feel better.
“Why don’t you go and throw a few things together for you and the boy? Take some of his favorite toys so he doesn’t feel so uprooted,” he added.
“I’m whisking him out of his bed in the middle of the night. How can’t he feel uprooted?” she challenged. She stared at the drawing he’d taken down from her window. Clay was right, even if this was just a warning, it had spooked her. And it could only escalate from here.
“Because you’re whisking him away to another home. Trust me, he won’t be traumatized. My father’s very good with kids.”
“Your father?”
“I thought you and the boy could stay with him. Dad’s good with kids,” he repeated before he turned away to call his brother.
Within a few minutes he had everything arranged.
“Is this really necessary?”
Ilene left the question open to anyone who wanted to answer it. Clay had just admitted two people into her house via the patio door. From what she could ascertain, the man and woman had entered via the backyard. Which meant that they had to climb over the fence, coming from one of her neighbor’s yards. How could they have done that without being detected?
The same way whoever had left that warning had, she told herself. He’d been in her backyard before she’d heard him.
Nothing seemed safe anymore.
“This is all so cloak-and-dagger,” she protested when no one answered her question.
The woman was the first to speak. Her eyes were kind and her smile looked as if it had been lifted directly from Clay’s face.
“A lot more cloak, a lot less dagger,” she laughed. Extending her hand, she took Ilene’s in hers. “Hi, I’m Teri. Clay and I are twins,” she said in response to the quizzical look creasing Ilene’s brow. Then winked. “But I’m the pretty one.”
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Marie Ferrarella
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: No sooner did number-crunching dynamo Ilene O′Hara uncover fraud in her company than she needed protection for herself and the son she′d been hiding from detective Clay Cavanaugh, a man she still loved. When Clay appeared as their protector, she wondered if the truth would destroy their fiery connection–or bind them forever?Clay had the reputation of being a ruthless law enforcer–and a Casanova. After Ilene, he ensured that love never entered the equation again. But now, years later, she needed his help. As the forbidden attraction between witness and protector raged out of control, Clay could tell she was keeping a secret from him. But would it stop him from taking the ultimate risk?