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“You can have the casserole,” Ellie said. “Just bring me the ice cream and a spoon.”
THE EARLY MORNING BREEZE was brisk and wet with mist. David hadn’t been able to feel his feet for the past half hour. But as he continued to watch Susan through his binoculars, she remained dead still, lying on her stomach within the photographer’s blind, high in the tree, her telephoto camera lens trained steadfastly on the fox hole on the other side of the clearing.
How she could lie so still he didn’t know.
They had told him up at the lodge that she’d been at the site since before dawn. She wore thick, black sweatpants, a black parka and black hiking boots. But there were no gloves on her hands and no hat to cover her ears. She had to be freezing, and her still position had to be wreaking havoc on her circulation.
“A dedicated professional,” Greg Hall, her editor, had described her, when David had called, identifying himself as a fan of the magazine. In truth, the magazine had been a favorite of David’s for some time. But to make his call credible, he had spent time the day before carefully looking through the local library’s copies of back issues.
Weaving a believable yarn when he needed to was part of a good investigator’s tools. But David soon found he had no reason to stretch the truth. The wildlife photographs packing the greatest punch had Susan’s name prominently displayed in the photo credits.
He’d discovered quite a bit more about her over the past few days from his other sources. Everything he’d learned had been unexpected.
David prided himself on being ready for anything, but since the moment he’d met this woman, she had been giving him one uncomfortable surprise after another. He prided himself on not judging his clients, but he’d sat in judgment on her and had let his unwanted reactions get in the way of his work. He prided himself on not jumping to conclusions, but he’d jumped to a conclusion about her—the wrong one.
David tried to tell himself that he’d made an honest mistake. Young widows whose husbands had been dead nearly three years didn’t normally still wear their wedding rings. But the reality was that he hadn’t acted like the professional he knew himself to be. His behavior reflected badly on him and on his family’s highly regarded firm.
He had thought about leaving a message on Susan’s answering machine at home. He had considered calling her at work. He had ultimately decided against both.
He was not a man for whom apologies came easily, but he did know that the only decent way to deliver an apology was in person. Of course, taking her case wouldn’t be appropriate, even if she still wanted to employ him—which he seriously doubted.
But his brother Richard would be available soon. And he would give her Richard’s card so she could call him.
David would see that she got the help she needed. He knew that was what he had to do to make this right.
But he had to wonder how long she could lie on that flat board, wet and chilled to the bone.
Finally, after what he figured had to be nearly three motionless hours, she started to move. He watched her progress through his binoculars. She first placed her camera in a protective case, then put the case in her backpack. Using a thick rope slung around the tree branch, she slowly lowered the backpack to the ground. Once the backpack was safely there, she began to snake backward toward the sturdy trunk of the tree.
He watched as she wrapped her body around the trunk. He was glad to see there were steel stakes in the bark for hand- and footholds. Still, he found himself tensing as she wobbled from side-to-side during her shaky descent.
She moved slowly. The circulation obviously hadn’t returned to her arms and legs after her long hours of immobility. She was a fool to be coming down before massaging her limbs. She could hurt herself—
His worst fears suddenly took shape before his eyes as her foot missed the final metal stake, her hand slipped off another and she fell to the forest floor.
He dropped the binoculars and took off at a run. The branches whipped against his arms and legs and stung his face. He paid them no heed as he hurried through the thick underbrush. He wasn’t that many yards away but the vegetation slowed his movements.
He was breathing hard when he crashed into the clearing where he’d seen her fall. She was lying on her back, her eyes were closed, her face white. He dropped to his knee beside her, probing for the artery in her neck.
His own blood pounded. He had to concentrate hard to feel her pulse. Finally, a slow rhythmic beat registered against his fingertips. Relief spread through his chest. He watched her eyelashes flutter, then open. A line of puzzlement drew her eyebrows together as she focused on his face.
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
He was happy to note the strength in her voice, but ignored her question as he ran his hands up and down her arms, checking for broken bones.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, flinching beneath his touch.
Once again he ignored her. But when he moved to grasp her right thigh, intending to check her legs, she suddenly sat up and swatted his hands away.
“Watch it, buster.”
David sat back on his heels as he inspected the color flowing into her cheeks. He held back a smile.
“You appear to be all right,” he said, managing to keep all emotion out of his voice.
She rolled onto her side and began to pull herself toward the tree she had so recently dropped from. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Just a wild guess, but maybe because you fell out of a tree?”
“I didn’t fall. I deliberately let go. It was only a couple of feet, and I knew the soft moss between the Osmanthus would provide a soft landing.”
David didn’t know what Osmanthus was, although he suspected them to be the evergreen shrubs on either side of the mound they were on.
“Why did you let go?”
“Because I wanted to.” She latched onto the tree trunk and struggled to pull herself upright. Her wobbly extremities weren’t cooperating.
“Why didn’t you wait until you had some circulation back in your arms and legs before trying to get down?” he asked.
“Why is any of this your business?”
He was getting uncomfortable watching her determined but unsuccessful attempts to get to her feet. “If you rub your legs, you’ll be able to stand a lot sooner.”
“I know how to take care of myself, thank you. What are you even doing out here?”
“I’m an Eagle Scout trying to earn my merit badge,” he said in frustration. Hell, he was only trying to help.
She looked him straight in the eye in that arresting way of hers. “What, no little old ladies around to help across the street?”
“Only Boy Scouts get merit badges for helping little old ladies across streets. We Eagle Scouts have to contend with cantankerous photographers who insist on dropping out of trees.”
He hadn’t tried to keep the irritation out of his tone this time. He squatted beside her, grasped her legs, and proceeded to give her muscles a brisk massage, no longer caring whether she objected.
She didn’t bat his hands away this time. He could feel her eyes searching his averted face.
“When are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” she asked.
“When are you going to tell me why you didn’t prepare yourself properly to descend that tree?”
When she didn’t answer, he looked up to find that she was glaring at him. The flash of spirit looked good on her. He switched his attention back to her legs. They weren’t bad either, strong and supple beneath his hands. Rubbing them was something less than a chore. Still, he kept his mind strictly on the business of getting the circulation back into them. Well, almost strictly.
“That’s enough,” she said after a moment.
He released her legs and stood. But when he held out his hand to help her up, she ignored the offer and instead grabbed hold of the tree trunk. With what seemed like more will than strength, she pulled herself to her feet. But she wobbled and leaned heavily against the tree for support.
“You’re dizzy,” he said, suddenly understanding.
Her face had lost color, and she rested her head against the trunk. But she delivered her next words with strong, sweet sarcasm. “Such amazing insight.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast, did you,” he demanded more than asked. “I thought you were a professional. You should know better than to begin a long assignment without any food in your stomach.”
“First a private investigator, then an Eagle Scout, and now a mother hen,” she said. “Such versatility.”
“You’re probably dehydrated, as well,” he said, knowing there was no probably about it.
“Don’t you have a wife you could be annoying?”
Despite her continuing attempt to be tough, she looked absolutely terrible. “If I did have a wife, and she pulled some stupid stunt like this, I’d—”
He stopped his tirade as he watched her sink back to the forest floor. Closing the distance between them, he swept her collapsing body into his arms. Her head rolled onto his shoulder as a soft sigh escaped her lips. She had fainted.
Her face was as white as the delicate flowers spraying the front of her jacket. Her bangs were wet with morning mist, and a silky strand of golden-brown hair from her braid tickled his neck.
A full minute passed before David’s heart stopped skipping beats.
What a fool she was. And what a fool he was for giving a damn.
He twisted around and grabbed her backpack. The thing weighed a ton. How did this woman lug around such heavy stuff? He slung the backpack over his shoulder and started down the trail.
SUSAN SLOWLY OPENED her eyes to find herself lying beneath a spectacular blue spruce. The hazy mist of the overcast morning curled through the heavy branches. She didn’t recognize the beautiful tree. She felt a soft, wool fabric beneath her fingertips. She didn’t recognize that, either.
“Don’t try to get up,” David’s voice commanded from behind her.
His voice she did recognize. Her memory came back with a bang. She’d gotten dizzy while descending from the blind. She’d let go of the steel stakes to drop onto the soft mound of moss beneath the tree. While lying there, trying to get her equilibrium back, David Knight had suddenly appeared to pester her.
Pushing herself to a sitting position, she fought the immediate dizziness brought on by her abrupt movement. When the earth and sky finally resumed their correct positions, she discovered that the red plaid blanket beneath her was next to a brown dirt road.
“I told you not to get up,” David said, scowling at her. He stood a few feet away, beside a silver Ford truck with an F250 logo on the side. He was pouring steaming, dark liquid from a thermos into a cup.
She glanced around her. This certainly wasn’t the clearing with the fox den. This place didn’t look familiar at all, and neither did that silver truck.
“How did I get here?” she asked.
He put the thermos down on the truckbed and walked toward her, carrying the cup. “You fainted.”
Had she? Odd. She’d never fainted before in her life. But maybe not so surprising. She had certainly been dizzy enough.
“You carried me here?”
He reached her, dropped to a squat and held out the cup. “Drink this.”
One whiff told her that he was offering her hot chocolate. She shook her head and leaned back. “No, thanks.”
He scowled at her. “If you don’t get something in your stomach soon, you’ll faint again.”
She scowled back. “The last thing I need is something in my stomach.”
He held out the cup again. “Trust me. You’ll feel better.”
“Trust me. I’ll puke.”
He pulled back the cup and regarded her closely. For a moment she could have sworn she saw something like discomfort flash across his face. But then his frown was back and she figured she was imagining things.
“Morning sickness?” he asked.
She nodded. “Nothing passes these lips until noon, and sometimes even then it has a round-trip ticket.”
He plopped down on the blanket beside her. “So that’s why you haven’t eaten.”
“And I had begun to think you’d lost all your detective skills.”
He sent her another scowl before turning his head away to stare at the line of trees along the dirt road. He was good at that scowling thing. Must have had a lot of practice.
As he sipped the hot chocolate he’d poured for her, she tested out her limbs and found them to be a little tender but otherwise okay. She looked around once again, trying to get her bearings. Where was east, west? Would have been a lot easier to determine if the sun were out. But then, it so rarely was.
“How far are we from where I was shooting?” she asked.
“About a mile and a half. If you’re worried about your camera, I put your backpack in the truck.”
A mile and a half. That was a long way to carry a one-hundred fifteen pound woman and forty pounds of her camera equipment. Looked as though his muscles weren’t just for show.
His concern for her welfare actually seemed genuine. He’d even been thoughtful enough to bring along her equipment. Maybe there was a heart hidden somewhere inside that hard chest, after all.
She studied the bold lines of his profile. Nice, straight, well-shaped nose. Full, well-defined lips. Not bad, actually. Maybe not a handsome face, but definitely not quite as forbidding as her first impression.
He turned his head and his eyes met hers.
“Feeling any better?”
“Some,” she admitted. “Thanks for being concerned about me.”
He looked quickly away. “Forget it.”
He was uncomfortable with her thanking him. What had she done to rub this man the wrong way?
“Time you answered my question,” she said, happy to hear herself sounding calm, reasonable. “What are you doing here?”
CHAPTER THREE
THERE WERE A LOT of things David knew he should say to Susan. Number one was the apology he owed her. But admitting he’d been wrong suddenly did not seem like such a good idea, not with her sitting so close to him, looking directly into his eyes in that bold way of hers.
This was not the time for him to be admitting to any kind of weakness.
“I came to talk to you,” he said simply. He stared at the bushes that lined the road, although he couldn’t have described them if he tried.
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I’m a private investigator, remember?”
She was quiet for a moment, but he could feel her studying his face. He wondered what she saw, then reminded himself not knowing was a lot safer.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.
He dug into his pocket. But he didn’t retrieve his brother’s business card. Instead he pulled out the ad from the personal column he’d clipped out of the paper. “This isn’t going to flush out Todd.”
She gave the clipping of the ad he handed her a brief glance before stuffing it in the pocket of her parka and getting to her feet.
“What I do or don’t do to contact Todd is my business, Mr. Knight. Now that we’ve closed that subject, what direction do I take to get to the lodge from here?”
He squinted up at her. She had delivered those last two sentences with enough frost to freeze a man, and she still had the guts to look him directly in the eye. She had a backbone.
He pointed. “The lodge is a mile that way.” He raised his other hand and pointed in the opposite direction. “Your SUV is a mile that way. Makes more sense to head for your SUV.”
“Aren’t you just full of helpful suggestions this morning.”
Her sarcasm was delivered so sweetly he almost smiled. “I thought you were a sensible woman,” he said with a shrug. “My mistake.”
She stared down at him. “Do you know what a nature photographer’s most valuable asset is?”
He didn’t see the connection to his comment but he gave the answer a try. “A good eye?”
“An obliging bladder.”
He blinked at her in surprise.
“Unfortunately, there’s something about being pregnant that can transform the most obliging bladder into a most unobliging one,” she said.
He knew his flippant comment about her being a sensible woman had goaded her into explaining. She smiled down on him with ill-concealed satisfaction, confident that her explanation was going to make him feel sheepish.
She wasn’t wrong.
He gulped down the last of the hot chocolate. “I’ll drive you over.”
THE CAMP LONG LODGE had a rustic, airy feel with its high ceilings, tall windows, a stone fireplace and hardwood floors.
As David waited for Susan, he stood on the outskirts of a large group gathered around a naturalist who was pointing to a map that showed the route they would take on their upcoming hike.
The naturalist was a knockout—a big, bosomy brunette who was making several of the men in the crowd openly drool. The effect was calculated. She had on thick eye makeup and painted lips the same deep red that adorned her long nails. She wore blue jeans and a red sweater, both a size too small.
David took the scene in like the clinician he had been once and the man of indifference he had become.
Then he saw Susan emerge from the lodge’s rest room. No painted lips and no painted nails. She carried her parka over her arm. The turtleneck she had worn underneath was faded cotton, quite loose, and in a pale shade of natural pink.
He watched her approach. There was a sweet grace to the sway of her shoulders and hips, as though she walked to music she alone could hear. The mid-morning light fell through the tall windows, turning her long, braided hair into a rainbow of shimmering browns and gold.
There was nothing calculated about her. Just a natural sensuality that took his breath away.
Still, only an idiot in his position would do anything about an attraction to a woman in her position. He was no idiot.
She stopped in front of him. “You didn’t have to wait.”
The naturalist was raising her voice to get the attention of the group. David took Susan’s arm to move them out of earshot. The worn cotton of her top proved to be soft and yielding.
But there was a muscled arm beneath, which quickly pulled away. She did not like to be touched. At least, not by him.
“Thought you might like a ride to your SUV,” he offered.
“The walk will do me good.”
He shrugged, careful to convey nothing but nonchalance. “Suit yourself. But if you faint again, you could break an arm. Might even land on your camera.”
The way she had so carefully tended to her camera before attempting to descend from the tree told him that hurting her camera would rank right up there with hurting an arm. Her quick change of mind didn’t surprise him.
“On second thought, Mr. Knight, I would appreciate that ride.”
They stepped out of the lodge to find the mist had lifted. The air was still chilly. When she swung the parka around her shoulders, he grabbed the sleeves to help her put her arms through. But he was careful to touch only her jacket this time.
They didn’t talk on the drive. Once they reached her vehicle, he circled around his truck to open the door for her. He held out his hand. She didn’t take it or attempt to get out.
“You didn’t come here just to tell me my personal ad wasn’t going to work, did you?” she asked.
“No,” he admitted, dropping his hand.
She held onto the door frame as she slipped off the seat. She stood before him and raised her eyes to his expectantly.
David knew the time had come to apologize for rejecting her case without explanation and to hand her his brother’s business card. But he also knew that he wasn’t going to do either of those things.
“I’ll find out about Todd for you.”
He turned around and headed toward her dark-green SUV. He opened the passenger door, slipped her backpack off his shoulders and laid it on the seat. By the time he’d closed the passenger door, she’d walked to the driver’s side.
But the question still hadn’t left her eyes. “Why?”
“You do want me to find out about him, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I meant why did you change your mind?”
“I have a case to finish up today, but after that, my schedule will be free. What time will you be home tonight?”
“Around six, I guess, but—”
“I’ll be by at seven.”
He whirled away from her then and quickly closed the distance to his truck. He purposely did not give her a chance to respond. He slipped behind the wheel and drove off, not once looking back.
On the long drive around Puget Sound to Silver Valley, David congratulated himself on the solid logic behind his decision. Handing Susan’s case off to Richard made no sense.
Today he and his brother, Jared, a detective in the Sheriff’s Department, would see that the bastard who seduced, videotaped and then dumped his underage teenage victims was arrested.
But after he wrapped up that last loose end, he had a clear schedule. Richard would still be tied up on his current case for another week. David already had knowledge of Susan and her request.
Handling Susan’s case was the professional thing for David to do.
Besides, his dad was right. His attraction to Susan was simply a sign that he was ready to get off his self-imposed celibacy bench and back into the game. Of course, playing any games with her still remained out of the question.
She was a vulnerable, pregnant woman in need of his help. He would never take advantage of a woman in such a situation. Besides, now she was his client. The number one rule for a private investigator was never to get personally involved with a client.
David was a man who knew how to follow the rules.
SUSAN WAS RELIEVED that David had agreed to find Todd for her. He was obviously a very good investigator. But she also couldn’t help feeling annoyed.
David was coming to her home tonight. She did not invite men to her home, and she had not invited him. He had invited himself.
This was a business arrangement she had entered into with him. She didn’t want him invading her private space. But her subsequent call to his office that day had not been successful in changing the arrangement.
A male clerk had informed her—in cordial if clipped tones—that David was not in, was not expected to come in and could not be reached.
Her mood hadn’t improved when she’d discovered that she’d only gotten two marginally good shots out of the long morning shoot. On top of that, heavy traffic caused her to be late getting home. She was irritated and frustrated when she pulled her car into the garage just after six-thirty.
She stomped out of the garage and sprinted up the few steps to the entrance to her town house. She worked long hours and looked forward to unwinding in the evenings.
Only tonight, David was coming by at seven, less than half an hour away. That was the time when she and Honey were normally having their dinner. Surely, David didn’t expect her to fix him something? He might. There was no telling with that man. He was so damn hard to figure out. She opened the door and stepped inside.
“Hi, Honey, I’m home.”
He barked happily, his white fur a whirl of moving light in the dark entry. He flew into her outstretched arms with all the unbridled love that only a cherished pet could put into a homecoming. All Susan’s irritation fled the instant she hugged his exuberant little body, and he washed her cheeks with his warm tongue.
Without Honey, these past few years would have been unbearably bleak. She would always be grateful for that day he came into her life, and her heart.
As she stood and switched on the light, she saw with sudden dismay that Honey’s paws and nose were thick with mud. He was up to his old tricks, digging holes in the backyard. He’d gotten the mud all over her, as well. A thick glob was hanging from her bangs.