Читать книгу One Good Man - Julie Miller - Страница 13

Casey clicked her stopwatch as the outstretched fingers touched the wall. A dark-haired nymph shot up out of the water and splashed Casey’s shoes as she turned and sat on the edge of the pool.

“How was that?” Frankie Reilly asked, her young chest heaving with the exertion of her efforts.

She tossed Ben and Judith’s twelve-year-old granddaughter a towel. “Not bad. But I was swimming an extra length in that same time when I was your age.”

This afternoon, she found it difficult to concentrate on the observations and advice a trainer should give her pupil. But then she didn’t usually have six feet two inches of disgruntled detective nosing around the pool deck and adjoining rooms, either. She glanced at Mitch running his hand along the seams where the exterior glass walls connected to the steel support beams that formed the building’s skeleton.

He prowled back and forth, his eyes on a continuous scan of both the building itself and the yard outside. Silhouetted against the waning sunlight like a dark sentinel, he created an ominous presence that should keep stalkers and murderers and madmen at bay.

But despite the heated interior of the pool house, Casey crossed her arms and hugged herself to contain a shiver of apprehension. She should feel safe having such an imposing protector on the premises. Instead, she felt more vulnerable than when she had learned of Emmett’s escape.

She’d felt safe with her bodyguard seven years ago. So safe that she never realized the perfection of Emmett Raines’s ability to disguise himself. Until it was too late.

Until she realized her bodyguard was Emmett Raines.

“Casey?” Frankie tugged on her arm, startling Casey from her silent study of Mitch. “Do you want me to swim it again?”

Fortunately, the girl had caught her staring instead of the detective. She wasn’t ready to explain her need to memorize identifying details about people, especially when the person in question seemed to delight in pointing out anything about her that seemed suspicious.

She apologized for her distraction. “Let’s pack it in for now. Building your endurance is important, but so is dinner.”

Frankie pulled on her nylon jacket, then leaned over to whisper to Casey. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”

The conspiratorial note in the budding adolescent’s observation about her interest in Mitch caught Casey in open-mouthed surprise.

“For an older guy, I mean,” the girl amended.

Casey pressed her lips together and formed an appropriate reply. “ Cute isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe him.”

Intimidating, maybe. Compelling.

“Oh, c’mon. I’ve seen you watching him. Almost as much as he watches you.”

“What?”

Frankie shrugged, as if the explanation was simple and Casey was a dingdong for not catching on. “Besides Grandpa, he’s the only guy I’ve ever seen you hang out with.”

“I am not hanging out with him.” She tried to defend herself against a twelve-year-old’s philosophy.

“That’s right.” Mitch’s keen radar picked up that he was the topic of their conversation. His deep voice didn’t alarm Casey half so much as being captured in the cross-hairs of those ever watchful eyes. He invited himself to join them. “I’m just the hired help.”

She heard the challenge in his voice and wondered at its cause. He’d certainly made it clear he wasn’t interested in being her bodyguard, but it wasn’t her choice. Jimmy had dismissed every argument she made. She hadn’t been able to convince either man that she’d be safer on her own.

So why did he keep on pushing the point? She’d be just as happy if he did take his big, brooding presence and leave.

“Isn’t that right, princess?” he prodded.

Casey breathed in deeply, curbing her tongue in front of their rapt preteen audience. “Somehow I don’t think you’re referring to me as the heroine of a fairy tale.”

He swept his arm out in a broad circle. “If I told you this Gothic house of horrors would be a nightmare to defend, with its locked-up rooms and see-through walls and blind drives, would you come with me to a safe house?”

“No.”

Frankie chose that moment to add her own observation. “Did you know there’s a hidden stairwell from the upstairs down to the back of the kitchen?”

Mitch made a face that earned a laugh from Frankie. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

The girl was on a roll. “There used to be a tunnel, too, that ran from the main house out to the pool house. But Grandpa boarded it up since no one lives out here anymore.”

“It just keeps getting better and better.” He shifted his gaze up to Casey. “And you feel safe here?”

“I did.” Casey emphasized the past tense, letting her expression tell Mitch that he was the reason she felt threatened in her own sanctuary.

“What is it with you and cops? The commissioner said I had to be here, so I’m here.” He crossed his arms and edged forward, the bulk of his shoulders closing in like the granite walls of her estate. Casey stood as straight as she could, holding her ground against him.

“I have known cops and worked with them my whole life. I am not afraid of them.” She tipped her chin to meet the aggressive thrust of his jawline. “And despite what you’re implying, I am not some snob who looks down on them because I’m a judge’s daughter and you’re an officer who serves the court.”

“So why don’t you want me here?” he demanded, the tip of his nose nearly touching hers.

“Because I’m afraid of…”

Of what? Him? Men? What he reminded her of?

What he made her feel?

That he made her feel, period.

“What scares you, princess?” he demanded.

Casey clamped her mouth shut and tried to make sense of the emotions churning inside her.

This close, she could smell the faint spicy scent of his aftershave clinging to the shadowy stubble of his beard. With the fire of verbal battle still hot within her, that slightest of sensations sneaked past her defenses and awoke something that had lain dormant too long for her to immediately recognize it.

Casey zeroed in on the mouth that spoke such a challenge to her. Sexy. Firm and flat and as unerringly masculine as the breadth of his shoulders or the timbre of his voice.

An incredibly politically incorrect thought crossed her mind. He liked to argue. He seemed to bring out the worst in her red-haired temperament. Sparring with him made her feel strong. Opinionated.

What if he simply silenced her arguments with a kiss?

She hadn’t been kissed for so long.

“So you’re not going to answer me?”

Mitch eased back, tilting his head to the ceiling and releasing a deep breath that made her wonder if he’d been as caught up in the moment of fascination as she had.

Casey breathed again, too. The respite allowed her to clear her thoughts. But rational thinking gave way to an almost physical pain. She wanted to laugh at her absurd expectations. What could a man as vibrant and self-assured as Mitch Taylor see in a crippled recluse like herself?

The embarrassment that flooded through her scorched her cheeks and she turned away. Into Frankie’s told-you-so smile.

“Uh, excuse me.” Frankie pointed to the office. “The phone?”

Casey reprimanded her with a pointed glare and headed for the office, glad for the ringing reprieve from both Frankie’s idealistic romantic thoughts and her own self-condemning ones. But Mitch beat her to it. By the time she reached the desk, he already had his hand on the receiver.

“Mitch, it’s just—”

“No.” He jabbed his finger in the air to silence her. “Until I get surveillance equipment set up, no one answers the phone, door or intercom except me.”

In full protector mode, Mitch picked up the receiver and turned his back to her. “Taylor.”

Casey swallowed her offer to provide information with a smug smile. Frankie nudged her elbow and giggled.

“I see.” Mitch’s gruff voice maintained its crisp, professional tone, but the stiffness eased from his shoulders. “I’ll let them know.”

When he hung up, Frankie was ready with an explanation. “That’s Grandma’s private line from the house. There’s no outside connection here.”

Casey’s amusement turned into a full-blown smile. She felt Mitch’s gaze hone in on the change in her expression. The corners of his stern mouth relaxed, and some of the heat that had consumed her earlier returned. This time, though, a gentler, safer temperature warmed her.

Mitch relayed the message. “Judith says she’s got cookies hot from the oven waiting for us with a glass of milk.”

“Oatmeal Scotchies?” asked Frankie.

Casey’s own taste buds perked up at the prospect.

“Yes.”

“Cool! C’mon, let’s go.” Frankie snatched up her coat, bounded through the outside door and zoomed down the path to the main house.

Casey and Mitch followed at a slower pace, shrugging into their coats and locking the pool-house door behind them.

Mitch shortened his stride to match Casey’s measured steps. “You know, if you are in danger, it’d be nice if you people acted like it.”

Casey turned up her wool collar and shrugged at his comment, not knowing where to begin explaining her ordeal with Emmett Raines and how she’d learned to cope with it over the years. She settled for the simple advice Jimmy had given her so long ago. “I find a lot of comfort in the predictability of my lifestyle.”

He shook his head. “It makes you complacent. A variable routine makes it harder for anyone stalking you to catch you off guard.”

She couldn’t stem the sarcasm that slipped into her voice. “I’m very much on guard, Captain. I think your presence here has taken care of that.”

They had reached the garage, which opened into the kitchen and provided the rear entrance to the house. Casey grasped the knob, but Mitch stretched his arm across the doorway, blocking her path.

“You don’t have to like me, princess. Or even respect what I do. But know this. I’m good at my job. And I’m going to do it with or without your help. ‘With’ just makes it easier. For both of us.”

He snared her in the dark light of his eyes, and Casey read the clear warning etched there.

She retreated a step to put some much needed distance between them. “What kind of help do you want from me? I won’t leave here. I know every tree and corner like the back of my hand, and the people even better.”

“You could answer a few questions.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, making him appear less of a threat. But Casey’s guard went on full alert.

“Like what?”

“Tell me what makes Raines so different that you and the commissioner won’t handle his escape through standard procedure. You weren’t the only witness to testify at that trial. What makes him such a threat to you? I’d rather hear it from you instead of a police report.”

She huddled inside her coat, shaking with the aftershocks of fear as her false bravado shrank inside her.

“Try not to look like you’ve been damned, Ms. Maynard. I’m on your side. I’ll let you eat your oatmeal cookies first.”

He opened the door for her and followed her inside. He even helped her with her coat. But Casey wasn’t fooled by his gallantry for an instant. The detective wanted answers from her that she’d never fully shared with anyone besides Jimmy.

He might be nice to her now, she thought. He might charm the socks off Frankie, Ben and Judith as he joined them at the kitchen table. But Casey inhaled the sweet smells from the kitchen as though she were facing her last supper.

Because once the McDonalds left for the Thanksgiving holiday, she’d be alone in the house with Mitch Taylor.

And then—she tried to swallow a bite of delectable cookie past the lump of dread in her throat—let the inquisition begin.

“YOU’RE SURE you won’t change your mind and come to the house for the weekend?” Ben McDonald loosened his bear-hug grip on Casey and stood back. Fatherly concern creased his well-worn features.

Casey patted his arm and smiled. “I’m sure. You’ll be jam-packed with relatives and you won’t need me and my problems to put a damper on the celebration.”

“Honey, we raised you as much as your folks did. You know you’d be welcome.”

“I know.” Ben and Judith had been the ones who stayed with her at the hospital after the attack, when her parents had been whisked away for their own safety and couldn’t come.

Casey hated being the cause of any more worry for them. Back then she’d been in too much pain, she’d been too lost and confused to argue when they said they’d stay on with her at the house, even though both had earned their early retirement. But now she was as healthy as she would ever be. She was a responsible adult. And she owed them much more than a generous salary.

“I’ll be fine.” It might be a lie, but she said it with all the serenity she could muster to put their worries to rest.

Ben nodded. He clearly didn’t believe her as much as he wanted to, but he accepted her decision. He zipped his coat shut and turned to Mitch, who waited at the doorway to the library while Casey and the McDonalds traded goodbyes. “I put that new door on like you requested, and switched the entry codes so that the key alone can’t get you in here.”

“I appreciate it,” said Mitch.

“Let me show you what I worked out with the front gate.”

“I’ll walk you out and make sure everything’s locked up tight behind you.” Mitch might prefer giving orders, but as they exited down the hall, he listened to Ben’s instructions and chatted with the older man as though they were equal partners on the case.

She was grateful for the way he used his authority and mutual respect to lessen Ben’s and Judith’s concerns. Not for the first time, she wondered why she didn’t rate the same kind of attention from him. Did he resent Jimmy’s orders so much? Was she the symbol of a task he considered beneath his rank? Or was the antagonism between the two of them something more personal?

Judith’s hand on her shoulder stopped her musings. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come by tomorrow and fix you something to eat?”

“I could swim Friday instead of Monday if you want some company.” Frankie’s eager offer caught her from the other side.

Casey laughed and shook aside both propositions. “Have a happy Thanksgiving, both of you.”

She hugged each one in turn. “You prepared enough food to feed a whole clan. I think I can manage. Now go home and enjoy your family.”

“You’ll let us know if there’s anything we can do?” asked Judith.

“Of course I will.” Casey guided them toward the door.

Frankie gave another vote of confidence for her favorite detective. “Mitch is cool, you know. He’ll take care of you.”

“I’m sure he will.” Casey’s response lacked the girl’s enthusiasm. She didn’t doubt that Mitch would do his job. She only wished doing his job didn’t bear such a high emotional price for her.

Judith and Frankie left in another flurry of hugs and good wishes, leaving Casey to face the ominous silence of the house alone.

She’d been alone before. Since her attack, she’d become quite good at being alone. Weekends, holidays. With her parents gone on a well-deserved trip abroad and Jimmy occupied with the prized social functions required by his political career, she’d had little choice but to learn how to handle so much time to herself.

It was all a matter of outlook. She normally focused on the security and quiet of being on her own, the self-sufficiency it required of her.

And if she could just stay busy enough, she’d never see what might be missing from her life of solitude.

Broad-shouldered bodyguard aside, she expected this four-day holiday to be no different from all the others she’d learned to endure on her own. Now if she could just get Mitch to forgo the torturous questions he wanted to ask…

Cursing the distracting pattern of her thoughts, Casey sat at her desk, pulled out her stationery box and immersed herself in her work.

A stack of invitations lay at the bottom of her in-basket. They were mostly from old family friends, wishing her well or inviting her to join them for the holidays. She appreciated the effort and would thank them, but she would decline each one.

The only thing lonelier than spending a family holiday by herself was spending it as an outsider in someone else’s home.

Besides, by staying here she endangered no one else. Jimmy had taught her the wisdom of that. After failing so miserably at Emmett Raines’s trial, she took comfort in knowing she could do that one small thing to protect others.

She’d failed to identify him once. But no one else would pay the price for her mistake again.

Casey pulled the next envelope from her correspondence file and slit it open. She’d saved this one for last because of the impersonal printing on the envelope. She recognized the look of a bulk mailing after years of assisting her mother with charity functions, and suspected it was an invitation to some sort of seasonal fund-raiser. She’d decline attending it, as well, but she could do so with a simple check instead of writing out a “kind of you to think of me but sorry” letter.

She pulled out the gold-embossed notecard, which read The First Cattlemen’s Bank Of Kansas City, and opened it to see how much money they wanted. A folded-up piece of plain white paper fell out. “A personal note?”

It wasn’t her bank, so she wondered who would take the time to write. Curious, Casey set the card aside and unfolded the paper.

She read the single line printed there.

“The house that Jack built will come tumbling down.”

CASEY THREW THE NOTE onto the desk, snatching her fingers away as though a rattlesnake had come to life in her hands. She shoved the blotter, sending an avalanche of books, papers and the telephone across the floor on the opposite side.

Gasping for a breath that refused to come, Casey scrambled out of her chair and hobbled around the desk, ripping at the Velcroed anchor patches on her brace. She pushed the cumbersome support unit off her leg and collapsed to her knees. Righting the phone, she picked up the receiver and speed-dialed Jimmy’s number.

“Commissioner Reed’s office.”

“Iris?” Thank God it was someone she knew.

“Cassandra? Is that you? How are you?”

Casey sat back against the desk and tucked her left leg into her chest, curling her arms around it and pressing the phone to her ear. She ignored the polite greeting from Jimmy’s assistant. “Is Jimmy still there? I need to speak with him right away.”

“He’s at a dinner meeting right now. I shouldn’t interrupt him unless there’s an emergency.”

“It is. I just got a message from…” Casey stopped and swallowed, forcing the panic out of her voice. “It says, ‘The house that Jack built…”’

“Casey? I’m back.” Mitch’s call from the kitchen pierced the fog of incoherent fear that prevented Casey from thinking clearly.

“‘The house that Jack built…”’ Her words trailed off altogether as she listened to them out loud herself. She sounded so juvenile, so silly for a twenty-eight-year-old woman.

“That’s a nursery rhyme, isn’t it?” prompted Iris when the silence continued.

She heard the back door close and Mitch’s footsteps in the hallway.

Or so she thought.

A deeper wave of alarm swept through her, clouding her mind with memories. Mixing up the present with the past.

“Yes,” she answered automatically, dismissing Iris and bringing her focus back to the house. Back to the library.

Back to the footsteps closing in on her.

Casey hung up and scanned the room for something with which to defend herself. But there was nothing close at hand, and she wasn’t in a position to move quickly. So she simply leaned back and braced herself.

She’d be smarter this time.

She’d have to be smarter.

“You okay?”

The dark-haired gladiator appeared in the doorway. He halted there, taking in the scattered mess and her sitting in the middle of it. An invisible suit of armor slipped over his shoulders and he stepped inside, cutting the breathing space between them and blocking her only avenue of escape. “I told you not to answer the…”

Her strangled gasp echoed in the room. She flattened her back against the desk. The man who looked like Mitch froze midstride, towering above her.

“Casey?” Her name crackled in the air.

She looked hard into his eyes, seeking something familiar, fighting through the fog of panic that threatened to shut down her ability to think.

The tension in the room vibrated through Casey. Her breath deepened in short, punctuated gasps. A golden light flared in his eyes, a predator sensing danger.

But was she the prey? Or the protected mate?

She inched her way up the desk, carefully balancing herself so she wouldn’t crumple to the floor. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his. To look away would mean giving him an advantage she wouldn’t surrender. Better that he be distracted first. “Would you hand me my cane? It’s in the stand by the door there.”

He hesitated an instant, then turned away, his movements slow and controlled, as if he expected her to bolt. He held out her cane, keeping as much distance between them as possible. When she wrapped her fingers around the handle, he held on, connecting an electric current between them.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” His voice, low and commanding, skittered along her nerve endings.

Casey looked harder. She saw warmth in his eyes and something that comforted her more than any other emotion could have. Suspicion.

Emboldened by the inexplicable reassurance, she reached up and cupped the left side of his face. He jerked at the unexpected touch, then held himself still beneath her hand. She felt the rasp of beard stubble in her palm, the forceful jut of his jaw. She dragged her fingertips over his skin, then held them to her own face, identifying the spicy scent of him and noting the absence of any makeup.

“Mitch?” Her fear seeped out in one long breath. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

Without questioning her need to do it, Casey reached out with her left arm and slipped it around Mitch’s waist beneath his open coat. She didn’t care whether he responded out of duty or real concern; she only recognized a sense of profound relief when his sheltering arms folded around her and pulled her close.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head at the gentle question. She grabbed a fistful of his jacket in her hand and burrowed even closer. Even the omnipresent bulk of the gun and holster beneath his arm reassured her. His hand spanned her back between her shoulder blades, rubbing light, consoling circles there.

“You have to talk to me, princess.”

“Not yet,” she murmured. “Just hold me so I know that it’s you.”

“I am holding you.”

Casey shook her head.

“More,” she begged on the barest breath of a whisper.

His arms tightened imperceptibly, and she felt his chin settle against the crown of her hair. His chest filled with a sigh beneath her cheek, and she allowed herself to relax along with him. She had never doubted Mitch’s strength and determination. Now, surrounded by his warmth and gentleness, she reveled in the full experience of being held and protected by this man.

For the first time in days, in years perhaps, she felt truly safe.

And as she drew her own strength from the respite he offered, she became aware of other things. Other sensations.

The dampness of the evening air clung to his clothes, bringing out the comforting smell of fine wool and the inviting scent of the man underneath. The nubby texture of his tweed jacket brushed her cheek in a rough caress. And she could hear the steady staccato of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

Gradually, she became aware of her own body’s reaction to the embrace. Her cheek, breasts, arm and thighs tingled wherever they touched him. Her own heartbeat jumped in a quicker rhythm.

Suddenly, Mitch wasn’t comforting to her. He wasn’t her bodyguard or even a kind officer doing his duty. He was a man. And she was a woman. She was…

She wasn’t ready for this.

Casey pushed away. The abrupt motion stirred the papers at her feet and reminded her with merciless speed of the reason she had sought safety in Mitch’s arms.

“Who was on the phone? I called from the back door. Did you think I was him?”

His quick return to the questioning detective gave her an odd feeling of normalcy. It was less complicated to think of him in this role than as a man who made her want and feel things she had no right to. If he could dismiss the heat that had sizzled between them so easily, then she could, too. If he wanted to be the cop, then she would be his cool and proper princess.

She answered the easiest question first.

“I tried to call Jimmy. But all I got was his assistant.” With the tip of her cane, she pushed aside the papers on the floor and pointed to the cruelly skewed nursery rhyme. “That came in the mail this afternoon.”

He knelt down in front of her, studying the creased white paper and its computer-generated type without touching it. “From Raines?”

“I think. It was in with a card from a local bank.”

Mitch read the phrase to himself. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and placed the letter inside before standing. “That’s not how the rhyme goes, is it?”

“No. But my father’s name is Jack.” She looked at the paper herself again, and wondered if he could see the same stain of hatred on it she did. “Don’t you think that could be a threat?”

“Anything’s possible. I’ll run it through the crime lab. See if they can pick up any prints. Do you still have the envelope it came in?”