Dangerous Attraction Page 16

  He lifted his head and eased back. Tenderly, he helped her slide her legs downward, separating their bodies, but continued to circle her with his arms. “Claire, are you all right? Did I hurt you?”

  “I’m fine,” she said hoarsely. “I’m not like one of them.” She angled her head toward the broken statuettes.

  No, she was definitely real, definitely all woman. Damn the fools of husbands who hadn’t treated her like one. Jealousy stabbed holes in him, but pride in being the man to give her pleasure plastered them over.

  “But,” she continued with a smile in her voice, “I don’t think I can stand alone just yet.”

  “That’s okay. I can hold you like this forev—for a long time.”

  He swallowed the word he’d bitten off, digested it, and absorbed the warmth from it. He’d never said that word to a woman before, but with Claire, forever didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Maybe that would be the only way to keep her safe. Fear twisted in his gut every time he thought about those bastards, Raoul and his gorillas, trying to kill her.

  He would do what was needed to protect her. He swore it. Whatever it took.

  She shook back her hair and smiled at him. He drank in the rosiness of her lips, swollen from his kisses, the delicacy of her jawline, the lush mink of her eyelashes, the sexiness of her gaze. Desire pulsed hot and wild through his veins. Impossibly, he wanted her again, so much he ached with the need. But this time…

  He lightly rubbed his lips on hers. “Damn, babe, I don’t know what happened. I lost it. I tore your clothes. I took you like some rutting—”

  “Bull?” she said sweetly. “It’s all right. Tights are replaceable. It was glorious. Magnifique.”

  When he stepped away from her, his boot crunched porcelain into the oak floor. “Hold it. You’ll cut your feet.” Sweeping her up in his arms, he carried her from the glaring brilliance of the ballroom and into the cozy warmth of her living room.

  Depositing her on the sofa, he snagged the quilt from its armrest. “Now we’ll do this the right way.”

  With a flick of his wrists, he snapped out the puffy quilt like a sheet and spread it on the carpet near the wood stove. Shuddering from the primitive need, he kicked off his boots and removed his shirt and still unfastened jeans.

  “What do you have in mind? A picnic?” Her lips quirked in amusement. Roving down his body to his rampant sex, her eyes clouded with renewed desire.

  “Sort of.”

  With the matches from the mantel, he lit the white candles she had scattered around. He flicked off all the electric lights before tugging Claire from her perch. Smiling her assent, she helped him dispense with her clothing.

  He jiggled his eyebrows at her. “More like a feast, but you’re the main course.”

  An hour later, Claire carefully placed two logs in the wood stove, then eased shut the glass-and-metal door. Still careful not to wake her sleeping companion, she slipped on his discarded T-shirt and sat cross-legged beside him on the quilt. Hugging the oversize garment around her, she inhaled his scent.

  In the candles’ gleam, he was beautiful. Supremely male, he sprawled naked on his back, the glow flickering amber on his bedrock features and bronze on his sinewy body.

  She found both solace and satisfaction in his arms. He worshipped her body, not as if she were an untouchable goddess, but with lusty passion and patience and tenderness.

  A feast, he called it.

  He’d kissed and licked and tasted every millimeter of her skin, adored and probed and speared her most sensitive places with his tongue and lips, until she’d writhed and moaned with wildly ignited urgency. And then he’d made love to her with his body, slowly stroking with maddening discipline until the two of them exploded into a single flame hotter than a thousand candles.

  Against her better judgment, she’d yielded to her needs, and his. She had no regrets, although hers was a doomed love.

  The losses of Michael’s sister and the little girl he’d been protecting had wounded him so deeply he didn’t dare put his heart on the line again. Just as well. It would only endanger his life if he fell in love with the Widow Spider.

  But oh, how she would miss him when the inevitable happened and he left. Pondering the long, lonely nights and days to come, she thought she might wither like the neglected poinsettia in the corner.

  “Thinking about Martine again?” A callused finger brushed her cheek.

  She blinked, startled at his question and at the moisture his finger wiped away. Until that moment she hadn’t realized she was crying. “Uh, yes, I…” Ashamed that she was wallowing in self-pity instead of mourning her cousin’s death, she let the reply trail away in silence.

  Michael lounged, seemingly unconcerned with his nudity, propped on one elbow facing her. Heavy-lidded with sleep and satiety, his eyes focused on hers. Gently, he brought her hand to his lips.

  “Babe,” he said softly, “we might have a problem. I was so wild for you—”

  An ancient, secret warmth born of Eve began in her heart, spread through her and tilted her lips in a smile. “I liked you that way, so desperate for me that you lost it.”

  “But neither of us thought about protection.”

  Her stomach did a back flip, then settled again. It was unlikely that she had become pregnant. Her mind and heart spun the notion around, worrying, then savoring the possibilities.

  Would it be so bad to have Michael’s baby?

  Her practical side dismissed the idea. “It’s all right. After a year of trying to have a baby with Jonathan, I was about to go to a clinic when he died.”

  “That’s not proof. And Paul?”

  “Paul didn’t want children.” Once more the whirlwind of anger and tension was building inside her. She drew a deep, cleansing breath. “He didn’t tell me until after the wedding, the salaud. He kept that and many other things to himself, it appears.”

  “Are you referring to what Martine told you?”

  She nodded. It infuriated her so much that she wondered if she could get the words out. “There was more than one reason my cousin thought we might know about her affair with Jonathan.”

  “Oh?”

  “Paul was blackmailing her.”

  “Paul?” He shot upright. “How did he…? Jonathan?”

  “Probably. Martine didn’t say how he knew. But the blackmailing began right after Jonathan’s death and continued until Paul drowned. He had some kind of proof, maybe a letter or a note. She was frightened enough to cooperate with Paul for over two years.”

  “How much was she paying him?”

  “That’s just it. It wasn’t money. He wanted favors.”

  “What kind of favors?”

  “Social-climbing favors. Introductions to the right people to get him into the country club, invitations to parties, things like that.” The way Paul had used his best friend and Martine sickened her, and she swallowed down the nausea that feathered her throat. “Now I understand why she continually sang his praises before I finally married him. He also forced her to promote him with me as if he were a product and she the TV commercial.”

  “He forced her to pimp for him, the sleazebag.” His brow knitted and his jaw worked in thought. “Once you said Martine might do whatever it took to protect her children.”

  Her heart seemed to skip a beat. “You don’t mean…kill Paul?”

  “She had ample motive for removing both Jonathan and Paul. One word to her husband about an affair with his son, and who knows?”

  Claire’s mind reeled with the suggestion that her cousin could have murdered two men. Not Martine, no, she couldn’t imagine it. “But how could she have managed? There’s no evidence against anyone for either death. Where would she have gotten a— Oh, mon Dieu, non!”

  “What is it, Claire?”

  Dread forged a molten knot in her belly. “A boat…a boat. Martine and Newcomb have a powerboat. She could have taken that out to meet Paul. And Jonathan, could she have sabotaged his car?” Tears burned
her eyes at the monstrous, impossible suggestions. “I can’t believe it. I won’t.”

  Hating his devil’s advocate role, Michael brushed the disheveled curls from her shoulder. Then he clasped both her hands in his. All the grief and mystery swirling around her were wearing her down, eroding her strength, like water dripping on stone. He wanted to hold her, to make love to her again, but they needed to talk this out.

  “There’s one more possibility,” he said. “Suppose Newcomb knew all about it—the affair, the blackmail. Suppose he’s the killer, and it’s fear of discovery rather than hatred you see in him.”

  “Kill his own son? That’s even more far-fetched than Martine being the murderer.” Dark eyes liquid with sorrow, she shook her head.

  “Stranger things have happened.” He cupped her cheek. “Babe, a good detective examines all possibilities. We still have no explanation for why the other bad guys are after you. And there’s one more front to cover.”

  “What now?” She sagged, appearing more small and delicate than he knew she was.

  “Alan Worcester. How do Martine and Newcomb connect to Alan’s death?”

  “We haven’t discussed Alan’s skiing accident much.”

  “No, we haven’t,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t ask now for an explanation. He leaned against the chair and drew her into his arms. “You look cute as hell in my shirt. It breaks my concentration. Now, tell me about Alan.”

  Once she’d settled between his legs, her back against his chest, she replied, “As I told you, he’d asked me to marry him and insisted I wear his ring for the weekend at Caribou Peak even though I’d given him no answer yet.

  “At Caribou, the trails are named for North American wildlife. The main trail is Caribou, the beginner’s is Otter, and so on. The steepest, most treacherous, a double-diamond trail, is called Cougar. That Saturday, in spite of the danger signs, he was determined to try the Cougar, just across from the cabin.”

  “Why did he insist on that slope?”

  “Like the will, it was part of proving himself worthy or some testosterone-driven need, I suppose.”

  “Me Tarzan?” He winced, hoping he wasn’t doing the same thing by trying to protect her alone. Please let me keep her safe.

  “But I refused to be Jane,” she said, waving one hand in a gesture of futility. “Anyway, I went off on the cross-country trails alone. I hoped that if he didn’t have me as an audience, he’d give it up and ski the usual trails.”

  “But he didn’t.” There was more, he remembered from the files. “Witnesses reported hearing what might have been gunshots just before the avalanche that buried Alan. That’s why the police were called in.”

  She nodded, her soft curls brushing his chest, winding waves of heat downward to his loins. A mistake to think the thin shirt would shield him from desiring her. Against her back, she had to feel his growing arousal.

  “When they asked me about a gun, I told them about Paul’s pistol. The kitchen drawer I always kept locked wasn’t, and the gun was gone.”

  “His gun license was for a Beretta 92F. It’s standard military issue, a heavy-duty automatic pistol and the glamour weapon in shoot-’em-up movies. Not your average Joe Homeowner protection, but given Paul’s extracurricular activities, he might have thought he needed something that held fifteen rounds. Did he know how to use it?”

  She nodded again and adjusted her position against him. He nearly groaned at the sensual abrasion.

  “He practiced frequently at a gun range.”

  “The missing gun. That’s what triggered—pardon the expression—the authorities’ interest in you.” He kissed the top of her head. “Were the Farnsworths at Caribou Peak that weekend?”

  “That weekend and nearly every other weekend. They’re avid skiers.”

  “Good?”

  “Expert. That’s how they met. Martine was teaching skiing and doing ski patrol at Sugarloaf. That’s a resort a little northwest of Caribou. As a kid, she’d been on the school ski team, a natural athlete.”

  “Ski patrol, huh.” Something from his wilderness training jogged into his brain. “Then she’d know about avalanches—how to watch for danger, and how to start one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s the ski patrol who check the mountains every day for dangerous spots. If the snow’s unstable, they shut off slopes or set off explosions to cause avalanches before the paying skiers come out.”

  “The Cougar trail…there had been warnings the day before that they might have to shut it down. The notice at the lodge had said something about the early season snows being light and fluffy, but recent ones deposited heavy layers of wet snow on top, and that made for very unstable snow. Especially on the steeper slopes. Like this winter.”

  “So anyone who’d been at the lodge could have known that trail was dangerous.”

  “But would just any skier know how to get an avalanche started?” Claire asked, sounding as if she knew the answer.

  “No, but a former ski patrol would.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why they would kill Alan. Martine and Newcomb knew him only casually through me. And how could either one of them have stolen Paul’s gun without breaking the locks?”

  “The gun’s a hell of a mystery. I’d have to see the cabin. But for the rest, consider two scenarios. Martine hated you so much for taking Jonathan away from her that she didn’t want you to have any man.”

  “Jonathan had broken off with her long before he met me.”

  “A killer’s reasons aren’t always logical to anyone else.” Damn, he wished this case wasn’t so complicated. The usual DEA cases were straightforward. They already knew who the bad guys were. It was more a matter of catching them and having proof. This situation was like trying to find your way through a maze with false exits at every turn.

  “And the second scenario?”

  “This one works whether it’s Newcomb or Martine. The other started to become suspicious, or the killer thought the cops were, so he or she needed some way to throw suspicion on someone else—you.”

  “I know you’re the detective, Michael, but I still find it hard to believe that either my cousin or her husband has murdered three people in cold blood. There are just too many problems with the theory.”

  “I agree the theory has more holes than cheese,” he said.

  “And there’s one more thing you’re forgetting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The stalker. He telephoned again after Martine’s death.”

  “We’re left with Newcomb, then, in any case.”

  “And the drug gang,” she concluded.

  And the freakin’ DEA, Michael thought.

  Claire gave a long, luxurious stretch, like a cat. “I’m dizzy from all these crazy theories, and this floor’s hard. About as hard as what’s jabbing me in the back.”

  So she did notice his reaction to her wriggling against him. Turning her in his arms, he savored the sweetness of her lips. He never tired of her taste and the enthusiasm with which she returned his ardor. “Maybe we could try one of those condoms upstairs. On a soft bed this time.”

  Claire stretched again and rose gracefully. He caught a quick glimpse of a triangle of dark curls and a sweetly curved butt. The stove’s fire died down again, but his built to hotter flames.

  “Paul always made sure he had an ample supply,” she said acidly. “To avoid contamination.” With efficient motions, she swept up the quilt and folded it.

  Uneasy, Michael contemplated her words as he gathered his clothing and doused the candles. “Contamination? What do you mean? You or him?”

  “He insisted it was to protect me.” Her laugh was bitter. “But now I’m not so sure.”

  Michael hoped the son of a bitch was paying in hell for his crimes. In addition to all his overt chicanery, he’d robbed a warm, loving woman of the future family she desperately wanted and needed. “A complicated, troubled man,” he said. “With all his duplicity, don’t f
eel guilty about hating him.”

  She snuggled close in the curve of his arm as they headed for the stairs. “The more I learn about him, the more it consoles me not to have had his child.”

  Relief swamped Michael that she had no child to bind her to her dead husband. For a child’s sake, she would have had to put on a brave front and pretend he was a good man, no matter how he had used and deceived her.

  Like Michael was deceiving her now, a little voice inside him complained. No, not like Paul. It wasn’t the same damn thing at all. He’d had no choice. She’d accept his reasons, and after she was cleared and the bad guys caught, then they’d see where their feelings for each other led them.

  If only he could tell her about the DEA now. Tomorrow he’d go to the DEA offices in Portland and insist flat-out on that authorization. He’d demand to know what the hell was going on, why he was in the dark. Even his damn, thickheaded supervisor had to see that Claire’s life was in danger.

  That was it. Once he got the go-ahead, he’d explain to Claire all about his undercover gig. It was part of his job.

  She’d understand.

  Chapter 11

  Claire rose early the next morning to clean. Leaving Michael asleep, she hesitated at the closet, then donned black wool slacks and a charcoal turtleneck. After brewing coffee and downing a few sips, she let Alley out and lifted Spook from his box.

  The kitten dashed off to explore in the living room. Claire knew he missed boxing at the Christmas tree decorations. She missed the tree, too. For a holiday that had promised to be lonely and bleak, this one had brought her dramatic changes and danger…and love, if only one-sided.

  Today was New Year’s Eve. What would the new year bring? Not love. She knew that would end, but she hoped at least for an end to the danger and mystery.

  Her first chore was to clear away the broken porcelain from the ballroom hearth. Breaking the figurines in the first place—valuable and beautiful things—went against the grain, and leaving the mess only added to her guilt. Besides, Alley or Spook could cut a paw on the sharp fragments.