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Her fingers clutched around the necklace. “I’m not about to give up the only thing I’ve had since my childhood to a man I haven’t met. I don’t know this Loucan, and I don’t know you.”
Kevin grinned. “I can’t tell you much about Loucan, but I can tell you that I’m a good guy. I like children and animals and I only snore when sleeping on my back.”
He was pleased to see a hint of a smile tug at her lips. “I certainly can’t make a decision to take off for California based on whether you snore or not,” she replied.
He leaned forward. “But, you have to admit that you’re curious. I mean, maybe this Loucan is another brother, or a cousin. Can you really walk away from the opportunity to find out?”
He felt slightly guilty as he tried to decide if he wanted her to go to California to find her family, or if his sole reason for getting her there was the promise of an enormous payoff from Loucan.
“I don’t know.” She looked troubled. “I need some time to digest all this. I’m certainly not going to make a decision right now.”
“Fair enough,” he replied.
For the next few minutes they ate in silence. Despite the odors of cooking food that filled the café, Kevin could smell Phoebe’s perfume, a soft, floral scent he found incredibly attractive.
In fact, he found everything about Dr. Phoebe Jones attractive, from the shiny strands of her blond hair, to her intensely green eyes. She ate with a precision he found fascinating, all her bites of salad carefully cut with a fork and a knife. She then pushed her salad away and began eating her soup.
“You mentioned you left California when you were sixteen,” he said, breaking the silence that had grown to uncomfortable proportions between them.
She daintily dabbed her mouth with her napkin and nodded. “I graduated from high school when I was sixteen and petitioned the court for an order of emancipation. I had several scholarship offers for college and decided to come here and attend Kansas University, then transferred to KU med school and finished my residency at the hospital a little over a year ago.”
“Quite an accomplishment for somebody so young,” he observed.
She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I knew from the time I was young that I wanted to be a doctor. I just didn’t let anything or anyone distract me from my ultimate goal.”
“Any particular reason why you chose the medical field?” He wasn’t sure why, but he suddenly wanted to know everything about her, what made her tick, what things she liked, what experiences had made her who she was.
“I was very sickly as a child. It seemed that my body didn’t have the normal immunities to fight illness. All the childhood diseases hit me really hard and I spent much of my early years in hospitals for one reason or another.”
She looked down at her salad, but not before he thought he saw a whisper of pain in her eyes. When she looked back at him, whatever he thought he’d seen was gone. “But enough about me,” she said. “What about you? What made you decide to become a private investigator?”
“I heard it was a job that paid well for a small amount of work.” It was his stock answer to anyone who asked him about his career choice. He never told anyone that it was a job he had taken when his life had been shattered and all his dreams had been destroyed.
“Are you from California?” she asked.
“Not originally. I was born and raised in Chicago and lived there until about five years ago when I moved to Los Angeles.”
“What made you move?”
He grinned. “The promise of sun and surf and women in bikinis.”
She eyed him intently. “Are you always so flippant?”
“Always. Life is too short to take anything too seriously.”
“Life is too short not to take everything seriously,” she countered.
She was gorgeous, and something about her filled him with a tension, but they obviously had nothing in common, he realized. All she was to him was a case that he wanted to see through to the end.
“Is there some way I can get in touch with you,” she asked, breaking into his thoughts. “I really need some time to think about all this.” She touched her lips with her napkin and placed the napkin next to her salad bowl.
“I’m staying at the Allis Plaza Hotel,” he replied and motioned to the waitress. “But I’ll walk you home.”
“That’s not necessary,” she replied, again a touch of wariness in her eyes.
“Phoebe, if you’re worried about me walking you home and discovering where you live, I already know where you live. Remember, I’m a private investigator.”
“So, what else do you know about me?” she asked, but at that moment the waitress returned to their table.
Phoebe fought with him over the check, but relented and let him pay when he reminded her he had an expense account. Then, together they left the café and stepped out into the deepening shadows of falling night.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she reminded him as they walked leisurely along the deserted sidewalk. “What else have you managed to dig up about me besides my address?”
“You don’t socialize with any co-workers. You’re highly respected for your skills as a surgeon, but nobody seems to know much about you as a person. As far as your neighbors are concerned, you never have visitors in your home.”
“You spoke with my neighbors?” she asked, a touch of outrage in her voice.
“It’s what I do,” he said without apology. “I use whatever means necessary to find out things about people. I speak to neighbors, go through garbage, stake out places. You were exceptionally easy to find out about because you are such a creature of habit.”
“And that’s bad?”
“That’s terrible if somebody is going to plan to perpetrate a crime against you. It makes you predictable.”
“Well, I like my life just fine, thank you,” she exclaimed with a touch of self-righteous anger. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk to any more of my neighbors or co-workers and if you kept your nose out of my garbage. If you want or need to know something about me or my life, ask me.”
“It’s a deal,” he agreed easily as they came to her apartment building.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said.
“No problem.” He followed her through the door and into the lobby that held nothing but two elevators. He punched the up button on one of them, then smiled at her. “I’ll see you up. I always see ladies to their front doors.”
The elevator door opened and the two of them stepped inside. The scent that he’d noticed coming from her in the café was more pronounced in the small confines of the elevator and again Kevin felt an energy well up inside him.
This time he recognized it for what it was…an intense physical attraction. Although he didn’t know her at all, made it a habit never to get involved with any of his cases, something about her made him think of tangled sheets and hot kisses.
“So, are you going to call this Loucan and tell him you found me?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I figured I’d wait to contact him until you’ve decided what to do.” The elevator doors whooshed open and together they stepped out into a narrow hallway.
They walked down the hall and stopped in front of apartment 505. She fumbled in her purse and pulled out her keys and quickly unlocked the door, then turned back to him. “If I did agree to go to California, it would take a couple of days for me to arrange for somebody else to take care of my current patients and for me to clear my schedule.”
“Loucan has waited three years for me to find you. I’m sure he can wait a little while longer.” He fought the impulse to reach out and touch the smooth skin of her cheek, stroke a silky strand of her hair.
Instead he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Call me when you’ve made a decision,” he said. “Good night, Phoebe.”
“Good night, Kevin.”
He’d just turned to walk away when he heard her gasp. It wasn’t the gasp of a woman happy to be home, but rather it was a gasp rife with surprise…with fear.
He whirled around and flew through her apartment door. Immediately he saw what had made her gasp. The place was wrecked and she didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who would live in such utter chaos.
“You creep!” Without warning she picked up a sofa cushion from the floor and flung it at him. “Was this your plan? You meet me at Myrtle’s and while you’re buying my dinner your accomplice comes in here and robs me blind?” Her eyes flashed with temper and her chest rose and fell rapidly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped as he pulled his gun from his ankle holster. “Call 911 and don’t leave this room.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, but moved deeper into the apartment, wanting to make certain no perpetrator was still inside.
He checked the cabinets and pantry in the kitchen, the closet and shower in the bathroom, then moved into the bedroom.
The room was a vision in blues and peaches, but the dresser drawers had been emptied on the floor and a jewelry box on the top of the dresser had been upended.
Confirming that there was nobody in any of the rooms, he returned to the living room, where Phoebe stood in the middle of the mess looking shell-shocked.
“Did you call the police?” he asked as he put his gun away.
She nodded. “They should be here any minute.”
“Phoebe, I swear I had absolutely nothing to do with this,” he said. He walked over to where she stood and placed his hands on her shoulders. He realized she was trembling. “You must believe me,” he said.
She stepped away from him and he dropped his hands to his sides. She sighed, her gaze darting around the room. “I’m not sure why, but I do believe you.”
Relief flooded through him. “While we wait for the police to arrive, you might want to look around and see if anything has been stolen. But try not to touch anything.”
He watched as she walked around the room, a frown marring her forehead. By the time the police arrived, she had discerned that nothing had been taken.
Kevin wasn’t surprised. His gut instinct told him this hadn’t been a random burglary. Instead, it looked as if a frantic search had been conducted.
While Phoebe spoke with the officers, making out a report, Kevin’s mind raced with possibilities. Was it merely a coincidence that he had found her today and her place had been searched this evening? Or, was it something more sinister? In finding Phoebe, had he also found her for somebody else?
It was after eleven when the police left and Phoebe shooed Kevin out the door. He’d offered several times to stay and help her straighten up the mess, but she’d declined. She needed time alone…time to assimilate the craziness of the day.
First there had been Kevin, with his amazing story of a man in California trying to find her, then the break-in. She felt as if she was in overdrive and what she needed more than anything was a good night’s sleep.
But, there was no way she could give into sleep until her apartment was put back into some sort of order. Chaos made her nuts.
As she worked, she thought of everything that Kevin had told her. The thought that someplace out there she had a brother and sisters, pulled forth old emotions of want and need that she had spent years trying to repress.
As a child she’d been hungry for family, but by the time she’d reached twelve and with no family coming forth to claim her, she’d shoved away her hunger and focused instead on getting where she wanted to be, alone.
The idea of returning to California evoked in her an enormous dread. Her years spent there had not been happy ones.
But could she forget about a man named Loucan who might have knowledge about her mother and father, about any siblings she might have?
It was after one in the morning when she finally fell into bed, exhausted but comforted by the fact that her apartment was relatively back to normal.
Still, sleep remained elusive, her thoughts haunted by the knowledge that somebody had been in her private space, somebody had violated her home.
What had they wanted? If it had been a simple burglary why hadn’t her television disappeared? Her stereo equipment or her computer? As far as she could tell, absolutely nothing had been stolen.
She fell asleep with questions nagging at her and awakened at six the next morning, gasping for air and covered with a light veil of perspiration.
The dream. It had been a while since she’d had the recurrent nightmare that had plagued her all her life. But, the moment consciousness claimed her, she knew she’d just suffered it again.
She didn’t move from the bed for long moments, instead waited for the last vestiges of the dream to leave and her heartbeat to return to normal.
Eventually when she pulled herself from the tangle of sheets, she refused to dwell on the nightmare images and headed directly for the shower, hoping a cascade of hot water would effectively banish any lingering bad feeling the dream might have left behind.
Standing beneath the hot spray of water, her thoughts immediately turned to Kevin Cartwright. She wasn’t sure what she thought about him. Granted, she found him very attractive, but she was certain they couldn’t be less alike.
She was devoted to her work and he seemed rather irreverent about his. In fact, he’d seemed pretty irreverent about everything. Despite that, as crazy as it sounded, she trusted him.
And for just a moment when the police had left and the two of them had been standing in her living room, she’d desperately wished he would wrap his arms around her and pull her tight against his broad chest.
The wish had been nothing more than a crazy impulse brought on by the trauma of the home invasion. Definitely not likely to happen again, she thought moments later as she dressed in a pale-blue uniform.
She’d been taking care of herself since she’d been very young. As a foster child, she’d learned early on that she had nobody to depend on but herself. She learned to rock herself when she needed comforting, whisper to herself when she was lonely, and wrap her arms around herself when she desperately needed a hug. And the handsome Kevin Cartwright wasn’t about to change old habits.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon as she left her apartment. She stepped out on the sidewalk and drew in a deep, cleansing breath.
She loved early mornings, when the air smelled crisp and clean and the streets were just starting to fill with people hurrying to work.
She took only a few steps, then halted as she spied Kevin getting out of a small red car parked at the curb. He looked rumpled and stiff and the slight five-o’clock shadow she’d noticed at dinner the night before had grown to full scruffy whiskered proportions.
What was he doing here? With the memory of her wanting him to hold her still fresh in her mind, his appearance irritated her. She eyed him coolly as he approached.
“Morning,” he said, his voice slightly husky. He winced. “Is it always this bright in the mornings?”
“I gather you aren’t normally an early riser,” she replied dryly.
“Sure, I am. Early afternoon.” He grinned and with his hair tousled and his growth of beard, and a sleepy cast to his eyes, Phoebe instantly knew what he would look like in bed. And the mental image that appeared in her head of him naked and between crisp white sheets was heart-stoppingly appealing and it only served to increase her irritation.
“You look like you slept in your car,” she exclaimed.
He grinned, that half-crooked, devilish smile that set her on edge. “I did. It beats the price of a hotel room.”
She scowled. “I told you, Kevin, that I needed some time to think and that means I need time away from you.”
“No problem,” he said and raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. “If my presence bothers you, I won’t walk with you, I’ll just saunter along behind you,” he said, then grinned. “Besides, you’ve got a nice back view.”
She had no idea why he felt the need to be here at all. Rather than ask him, she whirled around and headed for the hospital, painfully conscious of him walking several paces behind her.
From the moment he’d appeared in her office the day before, she felt as if her life had spun crazily out of control, and she didn’t like it. She knew she had to make a decision about going to California, but she found rational thought next to impossible when Kevin was around.
She was a devoted doctor, in control of her surroundings. She was strong and independent, but when with Kevin, he somehow reminded her that she was a woman besides being a doctor.
She rounded a corner next to an abandoned building, her thoughts filled with Kevin. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of movement as somebody shot out of the shadows and grabbed her.
The attack was so swift, so unexpected, she didn’t have time to scream, she didn’t have time to do anything. She fell to the sidewalk. Pain. It shot through her as he followed her down to the ground, his weight crashing on top of her, forcing her breath from her lungs.
His breath was hot and fetid and his hands ripped and tore at the skin of her neck. She fought him, trying to scratch his face and knee him in the stomach.
His face was a contorted mask of rage as he grappled with her. Somewhere in the back of her terror-laden mind, she catalogued his features, knowing somehow it was important that she remember what he look like.
“Hey!”
Phoebe nearly sobbed in relief as she heard Kevin’s shout. The man on top of her jumped up and took off running as Kevin raced to her side.
“Phoebe, are you all right?” He knelt down beside her and helped her to a sitting position.
She shook her head. “He…he came out of the building and just jumped on me.” She rubbed her neck and felt the welts his fingernails had caused. Her hip ached where she had hit the ground with such force.
“You’re hurt,” he said, his blue eyes filled with anger. He started to scoop her up in his arms, but she stopped him.
“No, really, I’m fine. I’m just sore.” And scared beyond any fear she had ever experienced before.
He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She forced a smile. “I’m a doctor, I’d know if I was really hurt.”
He stood and carefully helped her to her feet and when he pulled her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her, she didn’t fight him. Instead, she leaned into his strength and closed her eyes for just a moment.
“I was afraid something like this might happen,” he murmured, as if speaking more to himself than to her.
She stepped away from him and looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I was hoping that last night’s break-in at your place was just a coincidence.”
“But now you don’t think it was?” A new fear iced the blood in her veins as she saw the worry that darkened his eyes.
“No, I don’t think it was,” he said. His gaze held hers intently. “I think maybe I wasn’t the only one looking for you, and in finding you, I’ve brought danger into your life.”
Chapter Three
Kevin sat on a stone bench just outside the hospital’s main entrance, waiting for Phoebe to exit the building. Dusk was falling and she’d called him on his cell phone moments before to let him know she was on her way out.
After the attack on her that morning, he’d tried to talk her into going back to her apartment and not working that day, but she’d insisted otherwise.
However, she had agreed to call the police, and she and Kevin and one of Kansas City’s finest had sat in her office as she’d given an account of the attack and a description of her attacker. They had agreed not to tell the police what had brought Kevin to Phoebe in the first place. Kevin was afraid it would only complicate matters.
Kevin had given a description of the car the attacker had jumped into at the end of the block, a car that had apparently been waiting for him.
After the officer had left, Phoebe had shooed Kevin away, insisting that what she needed more than anything was to get back to work.
Reluctantly he’d left her, assuming she would be safe surrounded by co-workers, then he had spent much of the day trying to get answers. Unfortunately, he’d managed to gain very few.
Even though he’d been relatively certain that Phoebe would be safe that day at work, when she walked out of the building he was glad to see her, although she looked stressed and exhausted.
“Bad day?” he asked.
“No worse than usual,” she said as he guided her toward where his car was parked in the lot.
He frowned as he noted the red marks that still marred the creamy skin of her throat. “Did you put something on those?” he asked.
“Yes, I used half a bottle of antiseptic and I used heat and ice on my hip, which is now sporting a bruise the size of a large grapefruit.”
Kevin frowned, momentarily feeling like a heel as he was gifted with a mental flash of a long shapely leg. He opened the passenger door for her and she slid in, wincing slightly.
Frustration, along with a healthy dose of anger swept through him as he thought of the attack on her. If only he’d been following her more closely, if only he hadn’t allowed her to get out of his sight for a single moment.
After he’d left her apartment the night before, he’d had a bad feeling in his gut, a feeling that had prompted him to sleep in the car outside of her building.
“Other than the obvious, are you feeling all right?”
She nodded. “A little jumpy, but okay.” She glanced at him curiously. “You didn’t sleep in your car last night because you wanted to save money on a hotel bill, did you? You thought something might happen, didn’t you?”
“My instincts told me it was possible, but I was hoping my instincts were wrong.”
He got into the driver seat and put the key into the ignition, then turned to face her once again. “I’ve spent the day trying to figure out what in the heck is going on.”
She looked at him, her expression vulnerable, her gaze intent. “And what have you figured out?”
He started the engine, then gazed at her once again. “I wish I could tell you exactly what is happening and why, but I can’t.”
“That man this morning…I think he was after my necklace.” She fumbled with the chain inside her smock and grasped the charm in her palm.
“That’s the conclusion I reached the minute I saw the scratches on your neck,” he said. “And I think it’s possible whoever broke into your apartment last night was also looking for the necklace.” He pulled out of the parking space and headed toward her apartment building.
“But, why? What does the necklace mean? It’s been with me for as long as I can remember. Why would somebody be after it now?”
Kevin tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Like I told you this morning right after the attack, I think maybe I brought this to your doorstep. When I found you, I found the necklace for somebody else.”
“Who is this Loucan who hired you?” she asked as she tucked the necklace once again into her smock. “How do we know he isn’t the one behind all this?”
Kevin didn’t answer until he’d parked his car at the curb in front of her building. He shut off the engine, then turned to face her. “I don’t think Loucan had anything to do with the attacks on you. I hadn’t contacted him to let him know I’d found you when these attacks occurred.” He gestured toward the building. “Can we finish this conversation inside your place?”
She hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “Of course.”
Kevin had a feeling she was a person who didn’t particularly like to share her personal space. He knew from her neighbors that she didn’t have visitors and even though she’d agreed to allow him in, the agreement had been given with a bit of reluctance.
As they rode up in the elevator, she released a deep sigh. “Why is it I get the feeling that what happened last night and what happened this morning is just the beginning?”
He wished he could tell her she was overreacting, but he couldn’t, nor was he going to give her any false assurances that her life would now return to normal. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that your feeling is wrong.”