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“It wasn’t any of us,” Rebecca said firmly.
“I hate to tell you this, but it’d be tough to prove that viewpoint in court. Some misguided folk might think you were coming from blind loyalty instead of from rational, objective thinking.”
“Well, they’d be wrong. That woman was a greedy, selfish, conniving shrew her whole life, Gabe. She could have had a thousand enemies besides us. And…oh God, I can’t just sit here…. I’m going to start looking.”
She shot toward the door and out before he could stop her. Not that Gabe would have tried. Reasoning with the woman was like trying to get through to a mule. He cast a longing glance at the bottle of whiskey.
He didn’t believe she would find any evidence clearing her brother, but there was a slim chance it existed. And if the thousand-to-one odds that Rebecca was right paid off, there was still a real murderer out there. A cold-blooded killer wouldn’t likely appreciate anyone poking and probing for the truth. Gabe had never mentioned that threat of danger to Rebecca, but the nasty, rotten thought crossed his mind that someone had better watch over her.
It wasn’t his problem. If worse came to worst, he could sic her mama on her. Kate Fortune could make a battalion of marines behave with a look.
It was just for this night that he was stuck with her. When he got home, there’d be ample time to dip into a consoling shot of whiskey. While he had to be around Rebecca, he definitely needed all the wits he could beg, borrow or steal.
Rebecca propped her fists on her hips. Monica Malone’s bedroom was about what she’d expected—a study in a vain, greedy, self-indulgent woman.
Monica’s world had definitely revolved around Monica. She had two oil portraits of herself on the wall, for Pete’s sake. Walk-in closets stuffed with plunging necklines and more shoes than Madame Marcos. The bed was heart-shaped—how corny could you get?—with satin sheets and a plump satin headboard. Probably had to kill a whole whale to get all the bones and wiring in her corsets; the aging Monica had definitely been into pushing up, shoving out and, above all else, displaying her boobs. The vanity was sardine-packed with more bottles and vials than a cosmetic company could produce—and since the Fortune family had founded a dynasty in cosmetics, Rebecca ought to know.
She’d already rifled the drawers and closets. While she was in the sybaritic malachite bathroom, she’d also yanked down her jeans—away from Gabe’s eagle eyes—to figure out why her fanny was hurting so much. There were certainly enough mirrors to display a nasty bruise already turning rainbow colors. Her forehead throbbed, her behind was killing her, and the long scrape on her chest and ribs refused to stop smarting.
Well, she could soak once she got home. Now wasn’t the time. She refused to admit to being exhausted, even though it had to be three in the morning. Thunder boomed outside. The frustrated scowl on her forehead was just as dark and gloomy as the pitchy, witchy night outside.
Gabe didn’t believe there was any evidence to find, she knew. He didn’t want her around. She knew that, too. The rancid slug of whiskey had finally warmed her from the inside, though, renewing her determination. For some idiotic reason, she’d actually hoped Gabe might believe in her brother’s innocence. It was obvious he didn’t—no different from everyone else.
It wasn’t the first time Rebecca had felt alone. As her gaze scanned the width of the room, she automatically rubbed the gold charm bracelet on her wrist. The symbol of family always sustained her. As diverse as the Fortune clan was, Rebecca had always felt different, not one to fit in or follow anyone else’s pattern or values. It didn’t matter. It had never mattered. Family meant loyalty. Love. The precious and unbreakable bonds of blood. She’d find a way to clear her brother’s name or die trying. There’d never been any question about it.
Looking around, she rubbed and rerubbed the gold chain, idly wondering if Gabe even had a family. He never spoke of siblings or family members. Neither a wife nor babies seemed anywhere on his priority list. He came across as a self-sufficient loner, but in some quiet corner of her mind, Rebecca sensed that he was a deeply lonely man.
He’d undoubtedly crack up if she dared suggest such a thing, she thought, and then, abruptly, she forgot Gabe. Her eyes shot to her bracelet, then swiftly around the room. Jewelry. That woman had to have a ton of it. Undoubtedly the expensive stuff was stored in safe-deposit boxes—or the lawyers had absconded with it through the whole estate probate thing. But Monica had never been photographed when she wasn’t decked out in trinkets and baubles of all kinds. Surely there had to be some jewelry boxes around here.
There were.
She found two freestanding jewelry chests in the back of one closet—both packed to the gills. Crouching down, she pulled out all the little drawers and started pawing through yards of glittery bangles and cheap baubles.
Her mood picked up anticipation. No, she didn’t know what she was looking for, didn’t know where to look, didn’t even know if there was anything to find. But if there were secrets to find about Monica, Rebecca strongly intuited they were in this bedroom. Maybe a guy hid secrets in his truck or his desk, but a woman always stored her secrets in her bedroom. It was her cache, her stash, her private hideaway, in a way a man would never understand.
In the fourth drawer down, her fingertips hit a bump. She ran over it again. Definitely a bump. Hustling, she upturned the drawer of baubles on the white closet carpet, shook the drawer good and then peered into the bottom. The bump showed up as a ripple in the satin lining.
The satin lining ripped out as easily as a candy wrapper.
Several snips of paper drifted out with it. One was a telegram so old that the yellow paper looked like a wrinkled napkin—some poor misguided dude announcing he loved Monica. Rebecca tossed that, then reached for the next—a love letter from another guy, who’d signed himself “Your faithful hound.” She wondered dryly if the guy had been a dog as a lover, but then studied it more seriously. The love note was dated ten years before, too old to be of any relevance that she could imagine, but she tucked it near her knee anyway. If Monica valued the thing enough to hide it, it might mean something.
Most of the paper scraps were simply personal memorabilia, nothing that Rebecca could imagine having even a remote relationship to the woman’s murder. Rebecca grimaced as she found more evidence of Monica’s perfidy. She found proof that Monica had been behind the attempted theft of the secret youth formula, had encouraged Allie’s stalker, had people break in the lab and had even been behind the threats to deport Fortune scientist Nick Valkov—a threat that had prompted their marriage, the first of the rash of weddings in the Fortune family. At least Monica had done something right. But none of this was any use in clearing Jake’s name.
Until she came to the letter. Adrenaline pumped through her veins as she read, then reread, the last missive.
It was a carbon copy of a letter, written not to Monica, but by Monica. Although the message contained only a few short lines, it was dated ten days before her death, threatening a woman named Tammy Diller about “showing up for their meeting” or risking “more trouble than you ever dreamed of.”
Pay dirt.
Elation thrummed through Rebecca’s pulse. Something about the woman’s name struck a vague chord in her memory, but she couldn’t place it…and that didn’t immediately matter, anyway. The letter itself was enough. Maybe the missive was no proof that her brother was innocent. Maybe it wasn’t proof this Tammy woman had done anything, either. But it was sure proof that another person had been in the picture around the time of Monica’s death…and their relationship hardly sounded amicable.
Ignoring every ache and pain, Rebecca scrambled to her feet. Handling the letter as if it were precious china, she jogged out of the bedroom and into the hall, yelling loudly for Gabe.
Later it occurred to her that her screaming might have aroused his alarm and made him think she’d done something to half kill herself, because she saw him fly up the winding front stairs three at a time. Just then, the only things on her mind were elation and relief and excitement that she’d found something real and concrete that could link someone else to Monica’s murder besides her brother.
When Gabe flew toward her, she flew straight at him.
It was perfectly logical to throw her arms around him. Any woman would have understood the perfectly natural, emotional impulse.
Gabe, though, didn’t quite seem to see it that way.
Three
The way Rebecca was charging down that hall, Gabe naturally assumed demons or monsters were after her—or a killer. Maybe he’d been retired from the Special Forces for the past seven years, but certain responses were as well-honed as instincts for him. He was braced to yank her behind him, out of harm’s way, and protect her. He was braced to confront serious danger.
He was braced for just about anything but the damn fool woman throwing her arms around him. The exuberant hug was so sudden. And maybe she aimed that sassy smack for his cheek, but it collided an inch short. On his mouth. With the impact of a bullet.
Gabe had been shot. Twice. The experience was something a man never forgot, although it hadn’t hurt either time—not at the instant of impact. It had felt more like a sudden burn, a burst of stunning heat.
Bullets had nothing on Rebecca.
He’d known she was trouble. Known at some gut-instinct level that keeping his hands off her could avert the core source of that trouble. But initially he grabbed her because his brain was responding to the threat of danger. Initially adrenaline was pumping through his veins at the speed of light. A millisecond later, that adrenaline rush was sabotaged by the flooding pump of straight testosterone.
The long hall was dim and dark, so empty that his heartbeat echoed loudly, bouncing off the silence. Whyever in hell she’d hugged him, her head suddenly reared back. Velvet green eyes connected with his. The huge smile curving her lips suddenly faded, softened. She didn’t drop her arms. She didn’t do anything any sane, normal, rational woman would do. She lifted up on tiptoe, not unlike a kitten hell-bent on being curious, and kissed him.
She tasted like spring winds and innocence. She tasted like nothing that had been in Gabe’s life for a long, long time…nothing he’d missed or even wanted, dammit. Until that moment. Her mouth was softer than a baby’s behind, the scent of her skin as wholesome as Ivory soap, and something was in one of the hands that scratched his neck. Paper? But her other hand suddenly clutched the dark hair at his nape, and her small breasts flattened against his chest, and suddenly Gabe couldn’t breathe.
All right, he tried telling himself. It’s all right. There was nothing happening here but a little overflow of testosterone. Just hormones. He’d been celibate for a while, and he damn well hated being celibate, and even if Rebecca drove him nuts, she was two-hundred-percent female. The sizzle of desire bolting through his system was natural. Simple biology.
Nothing seemed real simple at that moment, though. His fingers found their way into that messy tangle of red hair, so silky, so soft, and her mouth opened under the pressure of his. Her tongue was wet, as small as a secret, and if that woman had a repressive instinct in her, it didn’t show. She kissed with abandon. She kissed like pure, untouched emotion. She kissed like she’d never been on a roller-coaster ride before and was utterly captivated by the whole experience.
Rebecca could totally immerse a man in quicksand in three seconds flat—if he let her.
Gabe twisted his mouth free, and sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Then tried sucking in another lungful. Then tried a more intelligent move—like removing his hands from her body and swearing.
Swearing worked. She opened her eyes, staring at him as if her vision were submerged in a fog, but her hands slowly dropped from his shoulders. It seemed a year or two later before she got around to rocking back on her heels. “Well,” she murmured.
He didn’t like the way she said that “Well.” He didn’t trust the way her right eyebrow suddenly arched, either.
“If I’d known you kissed like that, cutie pie, I’d have pressed for a sample long before this,” she announced.
God give him strength. “It was an accident.”
“I know.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“The wonder was that it happened at all. Every time I’ve been around you before, I was pretty sure you were more tempted to kill me than kiss me.”
“I was. I am. And if you hadn’t been living a sheltered life hunched over a keyboard, you’d have known the chemistry was there. Where I come from, you don’t wake up a sleeping lion. Now I assume, five miles back, you must have had some reason for throwing your arms around me?”
“Reason?” She said the word like it was alien. With Rebecca, that was certainly possible. For one long, horrifying minute, her soft green eyes stayed glued to his face, studying him, making him feel aggravatingly…naked. But then she blinked, and abruptly lifted her hand, as if just then remembering she was holding a piece of paper. “Of course I had a reason. A superb reason. Gabe! You won’t believe what I found!”
Well, she was diverted from talking about all that touchy, tricky chemistry business, but calming Rebecca down when she was excited had a lot in common with containing a rumor in Washington.
Gabe saw the letter, read the letter, was dragged into Monica’s bedroom closet, where she’d found the letter, but even after they headed back downstairs, she was prancing with energy—and trying hard to make him eat crow.
“Did I tell you I’d find something? Did I?”
“Now listen, shorty, you’re getting your hopes sky-high. This really isn’t proof of anything—”
“It’s proof that there could have been another factor involved in Monica’s murder. It’s proof that someone besides my brother was butting heads with Monica in the same general time period around her death.”
Yeah, he saw it that way, too. And it burned his butt that an idealistic, altruistic hopeless dreamer of a mystery writer had managed to find the clue instead of him—especially since he’d turned the damn mansion upside down himself three times now, and come up with nada.
Because Gabe wasn’t born yesterday, he carefully sneaked the letter away from her and folded it neatly in his pocket. A Los Angeles address for this Tammy Diller had been on it, an address Rebecca had certainly seen—but hopefully wouldn’t remember. The back of his mind was already clicking with plans. As soon as he got home, he could probe the data bases on the computer for info on that name and address. If anything panned out, he’d need to make travel arrangements for a trip to L.A.
First, though, he had to get rid of Rebecca. How a woman could still be so fired up in the middle of the night was beyond him—especially a woman who looked like she’d tangled with a whole gang in a back alley. Her face was as white as a virgin’s wedding dress, and the gash on her forehead was clearly swelling under the bandage.
“You never believed I’d find anything, now did you? Just like you didn’t believe me about my mother months ago. Logic isn’t always more valuable than intuition, love bug. A woman and a man simply think differently. Even if I hadn’t read a ton of reference books on crime-solving, sometimes a woman can just sense things—”
When she had to stop to take a breath, he broke in.” I admit it. You did good. But it’s going on 4:00 a.m. I think it’s time we called this a night.”
“You mean go home?” From the look on her face, the idea was as appealing as a case of chicken pox.
“I’m beat. I’m ready to pack this in, and I’m sure not leaving you alone here. You got a good lead—” he hastened to get that in, before she could praise herself for another hour and a half on the subject “—and as soon as I catch a few hours’ rest, I’ll run with it.”
“Well, I agree, if you’re beat, you should go home. But I could stay and keep looking a little longer. Maybe Monica had some other hiding places—”
“Maybe she did. But that’s a needle-in-a-haystack possibility, considering all the people who’ve been over this place. And the letter is something concrete that can be pursued immediately. Besides which, we’ve been at this for hours—”
“I’m not tired,” she immediately assured him. He saw the mutinous thrust of her chin.
His chin was bigger, and his scowl had a long history of intimidating potential mutineers before. “The hell you aren’t. You look like the battered loser in a cat fight, and you’re not going to tell me that you aren’t starting to feel those bruises. That bump on your forehead alone has to hurt like a bitch. Now where’s your car?”
She didn’t look even nominally intimidated, but the question effectively distracted her. “About a mile past the main gate. There was a bunch of big old walnut trees that made for a perfect dark place to park. And if I parked that far away, I figured no one would see me when I climbed the fence—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about your breaking-and-entering debacle.” God, she was going to give him gray hair. Until meeting her, he’d considered himself a relatively young thirty-eight. There’d been nothing to turn his hair white but death, destruction, and a few terrorists from his Special Forces days. “Wherever your car is, it sounds too far to walk. Mine’s parked out front, so I’ll just drive you there. Now where’d you leave your wet sweatshirt?”
“In the kitchen.” She glanced down at the black V-neck sweater, and abruptly clutched the neck closed. Heaven knew why. He’d seen her bra, seen her cleavage, seen every inch of her long white throat more than once tonight. Geronimo persisted in responding to her, no matter what repression techniques Gabe tried.
“I’d better put my sweatshirt back on, but where should I put the sweater back?”
“Just keep the sweater. I can’t imagine anyone would know or care if you borrowed it. I’ll get it from you and return it sometime, but putting on a wet sweatshirt on a cold night doesn’t make any sense. Just grab it—and that packsack you carried in with you—so we can go.”
“I think I may have left a light on upstairs. And I have some stuff to clean up in the closet. And I’d better wash out that shot glass—”
There was a reason Gabe always worked alone. His employees were good at teamwork, and often enough his staff paired up for different projects. Not him. He just didn’t like depending on other people. He liked being able to move fast and streamlined.
By the time Rebecca was “done” with all her messing around, he could have finished a slowpoke sucker.
He ushered her outside, turned to lock up the front door, and motioned her toward the long, low antique Morgan.
She wolf-whistled. Almost as good as a man. “What a darling,” she murmured.
“Yeah, she is. ’55. But she was cosseted as a showpiece for most of those years, so she doesn’t have that many miles on her.”
“You can still get parts?”
“Not easily. Parts are not only hard to find, they cost an arm and a leg. Damn few antique dealers even know this breed of car anymore.”
“But you don’t care, do you? She’s worth all the trouble.”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t expected Rebecca to understand. He opened the passenger door and watched her long, slim legs disappear under the long, slim console. The aggravating thought crossed his mind that she was made for the car.
Lack of sleep was obviously the reason he wasn’t thinking clearly. He closed her in, locked her door and hiked around to the other side. The engine purred as soon as he turned the key.
“What a beautiful baby,” she murmured.
Her comment about babies inevitably reminded him of the comment she’d made earlier about sperm banks. He told himself to keep quiet, that it was none of his business…but the comment had nagged at the back of his mind all night.
For a few minutes, he stayed silent. The storm had died, but a fine silver mist was still drizzling down. Grass and trees glistened in the ghostly night as he tooled down the driveway, stopping to unlock the gate with a set of keys. No one seemed to be awake or alive for miles. There were no lights, and no sounds but the rustling trees and the whisper of that diamond-studded mist.
Locating her car was easy; there were no other vehicles on the road. He pulled up behind the cherry red Ciera and glanced at her. She’d raved pretty enthusiastically about his car, and coming from the Fortune family, she could probably have owned a fleet of Morgans if she chose. Instead, she’d picked solid, reliable wheels. A wholesome four-door, yet. A capital F family car—for a lady who made no secret of her desire and love for family—and somehow he just couldn’t let it go.
“You aren’t serious about looking into sperm banks.”
“Sure I am.” While the engine idled, she ducked her head to gather up her things.
“The last I knew, a husband was sort of the usual way to get a baby. Or at least some guy in the direct picture.”
“Usually,” she agreed wryly. “Believe me, I haven’t quit looking. But being a Fortune has a few disadvantages—a lot of guys were more interested in courting the family money than me. And sitting home writing books doesn’t make for meeting a lot of new men, either. It just isn’t that easy to find a white knight—or it hasn’t been for me—and I’ve got a biological clock ticking loud and strong.”
“I’ll bet you have been prey to a lot of fortune hunters…but you’re hardly ancient.”
“Old enough. Thirty-three is a good, healthy age to have a child. And, thankfully, this is the nineties. No one’s going to look sideways if I choose to be a single mom. This is an ideal time for me to have a baby—I’m ready, I’m healthy, I’m financially prepared to be a parent, and I’m dying for a baby. Or six.”
Six? Gabe swallowed hard. “You don’t think sperm banks are a little…drastic?”
“I think marrying the wrong man just because I’m hungry for a family would be ‘drastic.’ I’m sold on true love, cutie, and have absolutely no interest in settling for less. But I also want a family. Children to love and care for. For sure it’d be better if there was a loving dad in the picture, but if that’s not in the cards, there’s no reason I can’t deal from another deck.”
“Have you talked this out with your mama?”
“Kate?” Rebecca’s grin was amused. “You think my mom would talk me out of this?”
Damn straight he did. Sperm banks, for God’s sake!
“Well, I hate to disillusion you, darlin’, but my mom would back me up all the way. She always has. From the day I was born, Kate encouraged me to take my own roads. I know on the surface no one sees us as alike—she’s a hardheaded, practical businesswoman, a high-profile achiever. No accident that she’s the head of a financial empire. I’m not like that, Gabe, never will be. But she pushed me toward writing, pushed me toward living my life on my own terms, my own way, and taught me never to back down from what I wanted and believed in. Believe me, my mom wouldn’t give me any argument over this.”
Somehow Gabe thought otherwise. Somehow he was damn sure Kate would like her youngest married off, preferably to a guy who could keep her impulsive baby safe and under control. Sperm banks didn’t fit in that scenario, no way and nohow.
Rebecca’s gaze roamed his face. Something in the way she probingly studied him aroused an uneasy feeling. “You don’t have a male biological clock ticking of your own? No desire to have a son, a daughter, family to come home to at night? A new generation of Devereax?”
“The past generation of Devereax wasn’t anything worth repeating,” he said shortly. “I don’t have your idealistic view about families. They only read great in storybooks.”
“That’s an awfully cynical view, cutie.”