Читать книгу A Younger Woman - Wendy Rosnau - Страница 10

She had deliberately lied to him.

Oh, she hadn’t lied about everything, Ry reasoned. She’d been shot, all right. But how and where still had to be determined. It certainly hadn’t happened on her way home from the Toucan.

And the story she’d concocted about a mugger was no doubt a lie, as well. He’d seen plenty of gunshot wounds, and the bullet that had grazed Margo’s arm hadn’t come from a handgun a mugger would have pulled quickly and fired at point-blank range. No, Margo’s wound had come from a larger caliber weapon, fired from a distance; he’d say at least thirty yards, give or take a foot or two.

That ruled out a face-off near her apartment. And to confirm that, no one had reported a disturbance—he’d called and checked after she’d fallen asleep. Then there was the lie about work. She hadn’t been at the Toucan; he knew that to be true because he’d been there.

Ry’s gaze slowly drifted over Margo asleep in his bed, her pale face pillowed in navy-blue satin. Where had she been tonight? It had been fairly quiet in the city, as quiet as it could be for New Orleans. But it hadn’t been nearly as quiet across the river in Algiers.

The minute the thought entered his mind, Ry shook it off. No, Margo couldn’t be mixed up in the shooting on DuBay Pier. But even as he dismissed the idea, he remembered how he’d found the crime scene—the way DuBay Pier had been riddled into sawdust by a high-powered gun, and his gut twisted a little tighter. Was it a coincidence that the pier wasn’t far from the duFray Fish Market, owned and operated by Margo’s mother? Or that Blu’s fishing fleet was docked less then a mile away at River Bay?

Ry mulled over a dozen possibilities, then cursed out loud. So what if Mickey Burelly had stumbled onto the case of the century? And what if that case had involved Blu duFray?

Goddard had mentioned a turncoat, or someone possibly looking to make a fast buck. Everyone who knew Blu knew his financial situation. It wasn’t news that the duFray Devils were struggling, doomed to go under at any moment. The repair bills alone on the aging boats were staggering. Knowing the way Margo felt about her brother, all Blu needed to do was give her a sad song and dance and her damn duFray loyalty would rise to the occasion.

Ry honestly believed Margo would risk her life for her brother if she found it necessary.

Had it been necessary tonight?

“Dammit!” Ry focused on Margo’s proud, beautiful face. She had been a curious teenager when he’d first laid eyes on her, and so beautiful it had hurt just to look at her. They had met by accident. He’d come upon her and an overeager boyfriend one night behind her parents’ fish market—the boy testing his right to more than simply her company at the movies.

Ry had played the big bad cop that night. He’d chased the kid off, and promptly been swept away by the faultless beauty left standing in front of him all wide-eyed and obviously impressed by his white-knight antics. It had fed his ego—her admiration—and so it had begun, an older man’s obsession with a teenager twelve years his junior.

For the next three years Ry had kept his distance, though he did see Margo from time to time at the duFray Fish Market helping out her mother. It had all started out so innocently, so he had wanted to believe. Only he knew it had never been innocent—from day one, he’d wanted her.

The night her father died, Ry found her weeping in the alley behind the fish market. He’d wanted to console her. He didn’t even remember what he’d said, but suddenly she was in his arms, clinging to him as if he were her lifeline. And like a hungry old fox, he’d reveled in the fact that he had a legitimate reason to touch her and feel her body against his. She was jailbait; she’d just lost her father, dammit. What kind of bastard did that make him?

The guilt had driven him crazy, then it had driven him into the arms of another woman. He’d wanted Margo out of his head and out of his dreams; any woman would do as long as she made him forget his fantasy.

A year later he’d pulled over a carload of young people—the driver obviously intoxicated. He had motioned to the young man to get out of the car. When he did, Ry caught a glimpse of a shiny black head in the back seat. When he saw it was Margo something inside him snapped. He’d hauled her out of the car and into the squad so fast, the group of young people had fallen dead quiet.

On the way home she’d pleaded with him to let her out of the car. She hadn’t been drinking, she promised, not at all—she wasn’t going to go to jail, was she? He knew she hadn’t been drinking, and he told her he was just taking her home. Relieved that he believed her, that she wasn’t going to end up in jail, she’d leaned over and kissed his cheek. It had happened so fast, but just as fast he had pulled to the side of the rode and dragged her across the seat and kissed her the way he had always dreamed of kissing her. The next thing he knew, she was in his lap wrapping her arms around his neck offering him her hungry little mouth.

He’d done the math quickly. She was nineteen, no longer jailbait—no longer off-limits. And she was kissing him like she knew what she was doing.

He’d lost control after that, and before he had taken her home, they had stopped off at his apartment.

It had been the beginning of the end for them. A short month of heaven, and then hell had arrived in town and ripped their lives to shreds.

Ry’s gaze locked on Margo’s jeans where he’d tossed them to the foot of the bed. Immediately his body reacted to the memory of undressing her, stripping her long legs bare, exposing her slender thighs. If he was a man who believed in fate and happy-ever-after, he’d say Margo’s sudden appearance in his bed after two long years meant something.

Swearing softly, Ry walked to the window that overlooked the backyard. It had stopped raining, the night air as heavy as a flannel blanket and twice as warm. He closed his eyes, tried to chase the sight of Margo’s lithe body out of his head, but it was no use. Content to simply suffer, he relived each agonizing minute of easing her jeans down her narrow hips, then moved on to his fingertips brushing her satin panties, grazing her tanned, flat belly. And like he’d been doing for the past two years, he relived his own body going through its tortured ritual each and every time he allowed himself the pleasure of remembering how unbelievable that one incredible month with her had been.

The sound of her mumbling the word cold jerked Ry back to the present. Feeling the effects of the weather as well as his own physical frustration, he couldn’t imagine how Margo could be cold. Nonetheless, a sheen of perspiration covering his bare chest, he left the room and found a blanket in the hall closet. On his return, he spread the covering gently over her, then left the room again.

While he paced the hall, he went over everything she’d told him. He played back phrases she’d used, dallied with the what-if game and ten minutes later he was back inside, shedding his boots and socks, prepared to spend a sleepless night in the stuffed chair he’d pulled close to the bed.

Halfway through the night she started to babble incoherent phrases. Ry reached out and felt her forehead, expecting to find her burning up with a fever. To his surprise and relief, she was cool. When the babbling continued, he pulled the nightstand drawer open and flipped the switch on a sophisticated three-inch recorder. When she began to thrash and fight the visions haunting her mind’s eye, he leaned forward and placed his hand on her cheek. “Easy, baby. You’re safe with me.”

Still caught up in whatever it was, torturing the dark recesses of her mind, she cried out Blu’s name. And there it was. Ry’s greatest fear had just been realized—whatever dirty business Margo had fallen into tonight had been prompted by her brother—and he figured that could involve damn near anything, knowing Blu the way he did.

Ry dozed off an hour later, something he had fought hard against. How long he was out, he didn’t know. The sound of water running in the bathroom jarred him awake, and he slammed himself upright, his gaze locking immediately on the bed. When he found it empty, he jumped to his feet and headed for the open door.

The sight of Margo weaving slowly back into the room hauled him up short. “You should have kicked me awake if you needed something,” he growled, then hurried toward her.

She didn’t say anything, just stood there with her right arm drawn close to her side, her face ghostly pale. Afraid she would fall, he lifted her into his arms and carried her back to bed. As he carefully laid her down on the soft mattress, he scolded, “No more getting up without my help. You could have fallen, dammit. If you break open those stitches, I’m taking you to the hospital whether you like it or not.”

“You can try,” she muttered, her voice half-strength.

He pulled the covers to her chin. “You still cold?”

“Cold?”

“You’ve been talking in your sleep.” Ry noticed his words gave her pause. “What’s the matter, Margo, you afraid you said something you shouldn’t have?”

“No,” she insisted.

Ry didn’t press the issue, though he damn well wanted to. He would get the truth out of her. That was his job, and he was damn good at it. “Go back to sleep, baby. You need to rest.”

She nodded, tried to get comfortable and winced in the process.

“I almost forgot, I’ve got some pills. I’ll get you a couple.” He started for the door, surprised that he had forgotten about the sleeping pill in the medicine cabinet.

“No pills.”

Her objection stopped him and he turned around. “They won’t hurt you. They’ll just take the edge off,” he promised, knowing that the prescription was potent as hell. A life saver when you needed to forget for a time and let sleep rescue you from your pain—pain of any kind; the pill didn’t discriminate.

“I don’t take pills.”

“More whiskey, then?”

“So I can do more talking in my sleep?” There was accusation in her tone, in her beautiful brown eyes.

He strolled back to the bed. “Afraid you’ll share your darkest secret with me? Afraid you’ll confess you still love me?” The comment was ridiculous of course, but Ry had always hoped she still cared for him, that even after he’d played the bad guy, he hadn’t destroyed everything they’d shared.

“I never loved you,” she insisted. “I only thought I did. I guess that’s what you get for robbing the cradle, Detective Archard—a girl too young to know her own mind.”

“Did a shrink convince you of that?”

“A shrink?” She frowned. “Why would I need to go to a shrink?”

Ry passed off her question with a shrug, then sat on the chair. “I thought it was the thing to do these days. Everyone has a shrink, right?”

“For what it’s worth, I think there are far too many shrinks out there advocating whining these days. They always say something stupid like, talk it out and you’ll feel better. What they should be saying is, you’re not the only one in misery’s boat, so shut up and paddle through it.”

Ry grinned, reminded of how refreshing he had always found Margo’s honest assessment about anything she had an opinion on. “Go back to sleep, and next time you need to use the bathroom, wake me up so I can help you.”

“So you can watch?”

Enjoying her sudden spunk, he teased, “A perk for rescuing you? I like the way you think, baby.”

She eyed him without saying a word.

“Come on, Margo, backing down so soon?”

“We both know the truth about you, Detective Archard.”

“And just what truth do you think we know?”

She hesitated only a few seconds before saying, “You taught me how to kiss dirty, old man? I was barely eighteen that first time.”

She knew she’d been legal. But Ry had to agree she’d still been too young for a jaded cop who kept a .38 Special in the bread saver in the kitchen. But just for the record, he said, “You know you were nineteen plus.”

She closed her eyes and muttered, “How long?”

“How long, what?”

“I met you when I was fifteen. How long had you wanted me?”

The question was unexpected. But she was right to imply it had been an on-going problem for years. He’d been crazy to have her, so crazy that when he had finally gotten her into his apartment that first time, he’d been a man on a single-minded mission. He wasn’t proud of the fact that he had ached to have her, that he’d made love to her virgin body three times the first night before he’d come up for air. Back then his ego had been the size of his libido, full-blown and hungry to be stroked. And when she had met him more than halfway, nothing could have stopped him from climbing inside her except her objection. But that hadn’t happened because she had confessed that night she had wanted him with the same crazy intensity.

But it hadn’t been just her body that had held him prisoner, though he knew that’s how it had looked at the time. Honestly, he’d fallen in love with the entire package; from her sexy smile to the way she combed her hair. He’d loved it all—her voice, her walk, the way she brushed her teeth.

And he had known from the beginning, and at the end, that his life had been made better by knowing her. That’s why walking away had damn near killed him.

“That long, huh.”

“Margo—” Ry paused “—maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this.”

“You’re probably right. I’m with Brodie now and you’re with…some blonde, I imagine. I read in Cosmopolitan that 75 percent of today’s men have a blonde in their bed, one at the office and keep a spare in the trunk of their car.”

“Margo—”

“Go away and let me sleep,” she insisted, turning her head away from him and closing her eyes.

The next time Margo opened her eyes, the sun was shining through the long narrow windows draped in sheer panels of pale yellow. She blinked out of her sound sleep, her gaze going straight to the occupied chair, a big, round, tufted half-circle in a yellow paisley on navy-blue.

“Good morning.”

Margo moaned and slowly pulled herself upward to lean against the headboard. Her head spun, her arm throbbed. She screwed up her face. “It feels like a dozen marbles are rolling around in my head.”

“And your arm?”

“Like you cut it off with a razor blade.”

“That’s what happens when you get yourself shot, then drink whiskey like a fish in a drought.”

“And this is something I volunteered for, right?” Margo leaned her head against the headboard and closed her eyes.

“I’m not going to apologize for the booze. It got you through the night.”

Margo opened her eyes, then her mouth, to offer a witty comeback. Thinking better of it, she fell silent and averted her eyes. She had already taken a quick inventory, noting that Ry was no longer bare above the waist. He looked refreshed and put together—no doubt he’d showered while she slept. He’d shaved, too. His clothes were a simple gray T-shirt and scruffy jeans. The rugged look suited him right down to his brown, street-scuffed Texas boots.

“I drank too much, too,” he admitted. “I need some head pills. You, too, by the sounds of it.”

Margo turned in time to see him grip the back of his neck and vigorously massage it. “I don’t want any of your pills, thank you.”

He stopped rubbing his neck and looked at her. “I’ve been shot before. The day after is the worst. Trust me, you need—”

“Trust you?” Margo sniffed and rolled her eyes heavenward. “I wouldn’t trust you with my library card.”

“What was that last night, then? I seem to remember you trusting me with a needle and thread. Drunk, no less.”

“You were the only cop that owed me a favor,” Margo reasoned. “I didn’t want to worry Mama. I told you that.”

He relaxed back in the chair and crossed his leg over his knee. “Still as stubborn as ever. Your mama always—”

“Complained about that flaw. Yes, I know. But where does she think I got it? She’s twice as stubborn as my father ever was. And Blu… Well, he isn’t exactly a docile kitten, now, is he?”

It had been a slip of the tongue to mention Blu. Margo saw Ry’s jaw jerk, and she decided that his opinion of her brother hadn’t changed. Ry still thought Blu was irresponsible and selfish. What he didn’t know was that Blu thought much the same thing about him.

“Speaking of the Blu Devil, have you seen him lately?”

Margo shook her head. “No, not for a few days.”

“He still docked at River Bay, living on the Nightwing?”

“You know he is, Ry. You were there a few weeks ago harassing him about some nonsense.”

“I was just doing my job, Margo.”

“I might be young, but I’m not stupid. You’re a homicide detective, remember? You don’t investigate assault charges.”

“Okay, so I volunteered for that one. Blu’s temper being what it is, most of the guys down at the precinct would prefer tangling with a copperbelly.”

Margo brushed the covers aside and slid her long, bare legs over the side of the bed. “I would really like to stay and chat about my brother’s faults with you, but I don’t have time. Would you mind getting my clothes for me?”

“You think you’re leaving?”

“I don’t think I’m leaving, I know I’m leaving.”

Last night Margo had made a decision to head back to the Nightwing if Blu hadn’t rescued her from Ry’s home first thing in the morning. Yes, this was the perfect place to hide—that is, if she could keep her mind off the past. But she’d been trying and it wasn’t working. Staying here would be emotional suicide.

She saw Ry’s stubborn jaw lock. “Well, you didn’t think I was going to stay, did you?”

“Actually, I did. Most people take a few days to recuperate after being shot.”

“And I will.”

He stood. “You’ve got nine stitches in your arm. You live alone. Who’s going to look out for you?”

“Brodie.”

“But you can’t reach him.”

“I haven’t tried yet today,” Margo argued. “Now, I’m grateful for your doctoring skills, Ry. If I forgot to mention that, it was an oversight. But now I have to go. I’ll call a cab, and—”

“Forget it. You’re not leaving.”

Margo inched her backside to the edge of the bed and stood. She didn’t feel the best, but well enough to make it out the door. She hoped. “You can’t keep me here against my will, Ry.”

“Can’t I? Look at you, you can hardly stand up straight. And since no one knows you’re here I control the situation. The way I see it, you’re a gunshot victim. A criminal is still at large. It’s my duty to protect you.”

“This is ridiculous. Do you think I won’t be missed? If I don’t show up for work tonight, or at least call, Tony will send someone out to look for me. I have friends and family who really care about me, you know. You can’t just lock me up and think no one will notice.” Margo circled back to the crux of the matter. “Keeping someone against their will is called kidnapping, Detective Archard, and that’s illegal.”

He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. “Right now the best thing for you is plenty of bedrest.”

Margo’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare chain me to this bed like a dog, Ry. You wouldn’t dare!”

“If you don’t think so, then you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

Margo eyed the portable phone on the nightstand. “I have a job. If I don’t show up for work, Tony will fire me. He’s already…” She snapped her mouth shut, aware she was about to mention how unhappy he had been when she’d called and asked him for last night off.

“Tony’s already what?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re Tony’s meal ticket. He’s not going to fire you, not after the increase in business you’ve given him over the past year. You’re the best thing that’s happened to the Toucan, and everyone knows it. I’ll have someone call and explain you’re sick.”

Margo wanted to scream. Instead, she said, “There is no reason I can’t work tonight.”

“I’ve seen you perform, baby. Your act includes playing the piano. Damn hard one-handed. Not impossible but…” He rattled the cuffs. “Back in bed, or be prepared for what happens next.”

He couldn’t do this to her. Furious, Margo shook her head. “No!”

“The cuffs or a promise to stay inside my house until I get back. That’s the deal, Margo. Choose.”

Again Margo eyed the phone, considering her options. Fine, she’d do as he said, and then once he left she would be on her way one way or another. She eased down on the bed and swung her legs back on the mattress. “I hate you.”

“Say it. Swear to me you won’t leave.”

“You’re a jerk, a creep and a sadistic—”

“Swear on your father’s grave.” He rattled the cuffs.

“I swear, okay!”

Satisfied, he stuffed the cuffs back in his pocket. “Hungry?”

“For a piece of your liver,” Margo spat.

“Seriously, you need to eat something. What can I fix you?”

“You’re going to cook for me? You can’t cook, remember?”

“I’ve learned. At least I can get by until you can cook for me,” he taunted. “How does that sound?”

Margo didn’t bother to remind him she wasn’t going to be around long enough for that. She simply sneered back with a honey-coated grin and said, “Do you have arsenic in the house?”

He chuckled. “No, but I have eggs and shrimp. Still like shrimp for breakfast?”

The question and the memory it manifested had Margo biting the inside of her cheek. The pain reminded her of how dangerous it was to reminisce, as well as how vulnerable it made her feel.

“With shallots and chives?” He added, twisting the knife a little deeper.

“Cook what you want,” she snapped. “Start the kitchen on fire for all I care. Better yet, how about yourself?” Margo squeezed her eyes shut and pretended to tune him out. Suddenly she caught the scent of him, felt his hand on her forehead. Her eyes popped open. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t have a fever.”

When his hand left her forehead, he shoved it into his back pocket and pulled out a key. A twinge of panic knotted Margo’s stomach. My God, she’d forgotten all about Blu’s key.

“Recognize this?”

Margo clamped her mouth shut.

“Of course you do, it came from your pocket.” He was no longer grinning, his blue eyes razor sharp as he held Blu’s key up so she could see it clearly. “After breakfast we’ll discuss what it unlocks.”

He slipped the key back into his pocket, then reached for the portable phone on the nightstand and pocketed that, too. On his way out the door, he said, “I almost forgot. There’s a tape recorder in the drawer next to you. While you’re waiting for breakfast why don’t you listen to it?”

“I don’t feel much like listening to music,” Margo sniffed.

“It’s not music, but it’s just as entertaining. You don’t sound like yourself, but you were in a lot of pain last night. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much the pain as the whiskey talking, you think?”

He walked out of the room then, leaving Margo to wonder if the liquor he’d poured down her throat, had, in fact, done the dirty deed and loosened her tongue. And if that was the case, just what had she told Detective Archard that she shouldn’t have?