Dangerous Attraction Page 7

  That night, Claire stared at the computer screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard then dropped to her lap. Long past twelve, wakefulness had driven her to try working. Alley slept at her feet; the kitten, in his box in the kitchen.

  In frustration, she tunneled her fingers through her mass of hair and shook it back. Grégoire’s moose story would simply not cooperate. She couldn’t find the English words to match the rhythm and phrasing of the French-Canadian tale.

  Merde, it wasn’t the translation plaguing her. No, probing for evidence ripped open the barely stitched wounds of loss and guilt. The burden squeezed her chest like an ever-tightening vise. Sometimes she could hardly breathe.

  Then there were the anonymous phone calls. She hadn’t heard the voice again, but he’d called twice more since Quinn moved in. With no time pattern to them, she jumped every time the phone rang. When she did manage to fall asleep, she bolted awake, her anxiety fabricating its mocking jangle.

  For the rest of her sleep deprivation, she blamed Quinn. Her old uncles, who’d competed against the Irish immigrants for jobs at the mills, would call him maudit Irlandais. This cursed Irishman distracted her from her work and disturbed her sleep.

  She should never have permitted him to hold her. To kiss her.

  The curse of your beauty is to be alone.

  She’d sworn to herself never to become involved with a man again, but one embrace, one kiss had her panting for him—for an embittered man who didn’t want involvement any more than she did. For a cynical man who yelled accusations at her one minute and held her comfortingly the next. For a hard man whose kisses aroused her more than Jonathan’s ever had.

  But why? What was there about him that enticed her so? Sex had never preoccupied her like this.

  Making love with Jonathan had been sweet and satisfying, though not the fireworks she’d hoped for. With Paul, sex was less than satisfying. He treated her like a porcelain doll, a vessel that was supposed to lie there passively. With Alan, no intimacy at all. But no caresses before ever caused these erotic dreams or tingling nipples or aching need. Or nagging guilt.

  Dwelling on the kiss wouldn’t erase the emotions and distraction it engendered. It didn’t help to have Quinn living under the same roof.

  Except for showing an equal measure of distrust and desire for her, he masked his feelings well. Once or twice, like today at Pete Larson’s, she’d seen past the professional facade to something somber and sorrowful in his slate-gray eyes. She’d toyed with the idea of probing for more. Did his dammed-up emotions ever erupt in passion? Would he focus his fierce concentration on a woman when he made love to her?

  Mon Dieu, if she knew what was good for her, she’d never find out.

  Why couldn’t her private investigator have been someone effete like the fictional Belgian Hercule Poirot?

  She giggled.

  “So you do laugh.”

  “Quinn!” Pulse pounding, she spun around in her swivel chair. “What are you doing up?”

  Alley lifted her head, then collapsed again in gentle snores.

  Hair rumpled and shirtless, Quinn hovered in the doorway. He wore only a pair of faded, soft jeans that molded to his powerful thighs and the other obvious bulge between them.

  Once again he’d moved through the house with predatory quiet. That warrior aspect of the man—his restraint, with tightly coiled violence just beneath the surface fascinated Claire. So different from other men she’d known.

  She knew his large body was fit, but seeing the bands and layers of solid muscle sculpted by smooth skin made her forget to breathe. The angled light outlined every sinew and plane on his muscled chest and emphasized the hard angles of his jaw. A dusting of brown hairs curled in a wedge across thick pectorals and narrowed to a line that disappeared past the open top button of his jeans.

  It was all she could do not to go run her hands over his chest to see how soft those springy-looking hairs felt in contrast to his hard body, to trace the tan line at the base of his strong neck.

  “What am I doing up?” he muttered, in a low, rumbling tone that reverberated in her senses. “So I should ignore the hall light and your open door and snore away instead of doing my damn job?”

  His hard-hewn jaw and fierce, brooding eyes should intimidate but instead captivated her. Wrapping her fleece robe closer around her legs, she said, “I’m not used to having someone concerned for my safety. I didn’t want to wake you just because I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You’re not wearing black.”

  “Black? No, I…” The non sequitur confused her. Her gaze veered from the narrow strip of hair arrowing into his jeans to her pale blue robe.

  “I didn’t think modern women went in for mourning colors. But you wear nothing but black. Why?”

  Swiveling away from him, she found the words with difficulty. “After so much tragedy, it was…respectful and necessary. To set myself apart.”

  “For how long?” He came one step closer.

  “I hadn’t thought about it.” That was a lie. She thought about it all the time. She punched a button to save her file, then stood. “At least until…things are resolved.” Maybe forever.

  “Until you find another husband?” Another step closer. Too close. His incredible body heat beckoned her.

  “No, not that. I’ll never marry again.” She struggled to face him. “I can’t go through that again, and I can’t ask anyone else to take the chance.”

  “You sound like you believe what your aunts said. A curse. A test from God.”

  Deep in her heart, she did. Nevertheless, the grief was beginning to wane, replaced by a kind of bleak acceptance. And finally she was taking action. But nothing dulled the guilt.

  She couldn’t answer Quinn. He stood so close she could count the individual dark hairs shadowing his chin, could breathe in the mingled scents of shampoo and soap and man. So close her skin tingled when he swept a skein of hair from her shoulder.

  “A beautiful, intelligent woman like you, alone? Jonathan bought you this house. Paul refurbished it. Still you needed more. Is that why you kept trying?”

  The abrupt question broke the spell.

  “Kept trying?” she snapped. “You don’t understand, Quinn. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Then explain it to me, Claire.” When she tried to brush past him, he clasped her wrist in an unbreakable but painless grip. “We’re obviously both awake. I need to understand your relationship with these three men if I’m to help you.”

  Electric excitement streaked through her at his searing touch. “Over the last few days, we’ve talked to several people. That’s our investigation. Isn’t that enough?”

  With a glide of his wide palm up her thinly clad arm, he released her. A shiver rippled through her. She was beyond questioning her reactions to Quinn.

  “No, it’s not enough.” He folded his powerful arms. Determination glittered in his eyes. “You’ve gone with me to talk to different men who used to sell Paul their catch. One-handed or not, Larson could have cheerfully drowned him, but he wasn’t alone in his hatred. One way or another, Paul screwed over three men for his own gain. But none of them have any connection to Jonathan Farnsworth or Alan Worcester.”

  “Maybe…maybe one of those men killed Paul, but the other deaths were accidents.”

  “You don’t really believe that, though, do you?” he said.

  Thoughts of the ominous phone calls prodded at her and wouldn’t be shoved away. “He’s next.”

  “No.” Her voice sounded remote, hollow with fear.

  “It’s possible the three deaths were accidental or unconnected, but I don’t think so. I don’t believe in curses, but the connection has to be you. One way or another. What are you hiding, Claire?”

  “Perhaps I killed them.”

  One brow sketched upward. “There is that.”

  Chapter 5

  Moments later, when Claire entered the living room for their continued talk, Michael looked up from the fi
re he was stoking and his gaze instinctively fixed on the gently rounded tops of her full breasts, which were revealed in the gaping overlap of her blue bathrobe. Does she have anything at all on under it?

  In her little office, the view had damn near sucked out his eyeballs and split his jeans. Seemingly unaware of his agony, she carried a decanter and two bulbous stemmed glasses on a silver tray.

  Fortification or seduction?

  “Don’t say it, Quinn.” Claire deposited the tray on a wheeled cart. “The Widow Spider isn’t trying to snare you in her web. If I’m to bare my innermost feelings and secrets, I need some false courage. And I thought you wouldn’t refuse sharing a glass.” She flicked on the tree lights.

  Humor mixed with the tension in her words, but he’d yet to see a smile on her kissable lips. He rose from stoking the fire and wiped his hands on the old T-shirt he’d pulled on.

  How the hell did she know what he’d been thinking?

  Her dog trailed in, stretching and yawning. Alley’s gaze moved from one to the other as if to ask what the devil they were doing up so late. With a noisy sigh, she collapsed on the hearth rug.

  Claire handed him a glass. The lamplight through the amber spirits cast a golden glow on her graceful hand. A hand he imagined dancing over his skin…clutching at his back as he slipped— Hell!

  Shunting aside that train wreck of thought, he asked, “Do you ever use the fancy room across the hall?” It was twice the size of this room, and he’d never seen her in it.

  “The ballroom, you mean?” Irony twisted her lips. Swirling the brandy in her balloon glass, she stared at the vortex. “I dust and vacuum in there occasionally. That’s all.”

  The sooty thickness of her lowered lashes shuttered her eyes but didn’t conceal the violet smudges beneath them. As he’d predicted, the investigation was wearing her down.

  “More of Paul’s extravagance?”

  “So you’re beginning to understand. He had a wall removed between two rooms to create that.” She curled up among the throw pillows at one end of the camel-backed sofa. Still unaware of its effect on him, she pulled the damn robe together.

  He’d thought her a calculating mantrap. She was nothing like that.

  Relief and disappointment hitting him at the loss of his view, he eased down at the other end of the sofa. “I get the picture of a guy hell-bent on parading his raging success before all. Aggressive enough to demand everything his way.”

  “Everything.” She continued to avoid his gaze.

  Her reticence to discuss the son of a bitch might stem from the illegal activities, or something else more personal. Ice-edged unease speared into his gut. “Claire, was he ever abusive to you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Abusive? Physically? Never! Nearly the opposite.” She hesitated, and her gaze slid away. “But controlling, demanding, as you said.”

  He tipped his head toward the Christmas tree. “I bet Paul’s idea of decorations had a hell of a lot more glitz.”

  She rolled her eyes. “He hired decorators. A Portland magazine featured the house. We married in November, but he started the renovations six months before so the house would be ready. By October, he nearly drove the carpenters mad, he was such a foot-breaker.”

  “Foot-breaker?”

  “Zut, another idiom.” Her full lips pursed in thought. “Casse-pieds, a pain in the foot, I think.”

  He bit his cheek to suppress a laugh. “In English the pain’s in other parts of the anatomy.” He longed to skim a finger along her lower lip, to feel its softness.

  She didn’t smile, but at least she seemed more relaxed with him. More at ease, but no less sorrowful. Grief clung to her as an ever-present shadow. And guilt, but for what?

  Tell me the whole truth, Claire.

  When he’d decided, he didn’t know, but he was going to help her to catch a murderer and a stalker. God help him, he didn’t want to fail again. Anxiety crawled around in his gut like a scorpion preparing to sting him.

  Seamlessly, he’d segued from total noninvolvement to full combat. He could authorize himself to broaden his mission without getting personally involved. He could do that. Solving the murders—for damn sure they were murders—seemed as important as tracing the drug smugglers.

  For sure the answers were linked.

  “I know how ambitious Paul was. Paul’s various suppliers back up what you said.” He had to frame his next words carefully or risk blowing the game. If only he could level with her. “Did you ever wonder how he was able to hit the big time so quickly? If he’d gone outside the law?”

  She gaped at him as though he’d stuffed a pillow in his mouth and danced on the table. “You mean bribes or threats or something? I can’t imagine. We were married only six months, and he didn’t talk to me about his business.”

  She tugged at her mass of hair and flung it across one shoulder to drape across her breast like a fan. A fan he’d like to replace with his hand.

  Frowning, she added, “Though it wouldn’t surprise me if he cut a few corners. Some fishermen sell under the table to avoid reporting income. But Paul worked so hard. No, his earnings didn’t surprise me.” She tilted her head, slightly forward at an angle, in the French way that simmered his blood. “Nor did his lavish spending.”

  “All for ostentatious display,” he said. “The Rêve, the cabin, renovating this mansion, and you—the trophy wife.”

  “As I said the other night, his reasons for marrying me were more complex than that, but, yes.”

  “Having Jonathan’s wife. You and Jonathan loved each other. And it’s clear why Paul married you.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “But why did you marry Paul?”

  Claire’s pulse stumbled with the question. Needing another bracing sip, she tipped up her brandy glass. She must have a trapped look, like a cornered mouse. How could she make him understand what she barely understood herself?

  “Quinn, you have a family. You said the other night that family meant a great deal to you. Parents, brothers and sisters, perhaps? Where, Boston?” Her eyes snapped wide at a new thought. “Even a wife?” she said, adjusting the three small cushions so their edges overlapped.

  “Changing the subject, Claire? Hiding something?”

  “No. Bear with me. It all ties in.”

  “Yes, my folks are in Boston,” he said slowly, biting off each word. Clearly he didn’t want to discuss them. “No wife.”

  “Kids? Have you ever been married?”

  He shook his head in that characteristic bull-like way. “No and no. My job never left much time for anything serious enough to lead to marriage.”

  “Tell me about your family, then.”

  “Claire, do we have to—”

  Her scowl and folded arms stopped him.

  He sighed. “My dad’s a Boston uniform cop, desk sergeant now, and my mom does temp work. Roark’s the oldest, then me, then Sandro—Alessandro.”

  “No sisters?”

  “None.” He ground the word from between his teeth.

  “Alessandro Quinn.” Liking the sound of it, she tasted it with the tip of her tongue along the seam of her lips. “Interesting ethnic combination.”

  “My mother’s Italian.”

  “Are you close? Christmas is only days away, Quinn. You must have presents to buy. Don’t you want to spend time with them?” She scooted closer. An Italian mother and an Irish father. What a wonderful, rowdy family it must be.

  “They aren’t expecting me this year.”

  From the steel in his eyes and the taut muscle in his jaw, she read pain behind his terse statement. But this wasn’t the time. “I’ll bet your mom’s a good cook—special holiday meals, pasta, pastries. Family dinners with laughter and joking and music. Any grandchildren?”

  “My brothers have produced a slew of rug rats.” Features contorted with emotions she couldn’t name, he surged to his feet and yanked her up to face him. “Cut this crap! What the hell are you getting at, Claire?”

  The pa
in of loneliness dimmed her vision. “The only family I’m close to, my aunts, drain what life I have with their talk of tests and curses from God and bearing up. Quinn, I have no one. No one.”

  He released her, and she stumbled away to hunch miserably beside the twinkling Christmas tree. She continued, “Even before suspicion alienated Martine, we weren’t close. I was distant family she tolerated for her children’s sake. A constant reminder of the backwoods she’d escaped.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell with a shaky sigh. “First my parents. Then Jonathan. You said family meant a lot to you, so can’t you understand? I was so very alone. I needed someone.”

  “And Paul was there.” Coming to stand behind her, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “You married him, but you didn’t love him.”

  She turned around. The tendon in his jaw easing, he looked oddly relieved.

  When both his hands cupped her shoulders, she didn’t object. His warmth, his clean scent, the tiny white lights glowing softly soothed the gripping ache within her, and his nearness made her pulse race.

  “I’ve never admitted that before. Mon Dieu, I couldn’t.”

  “Too incriminating. The grieving widow,” he said without sarcasm.

  A fist of blame squeezed her throat. “I did grieve for him. I do. He could be difficult, I know, but I wasn’t unhappy. In spite of most of what you’ve heard about Paul, he could be very charming and persuasive. A born salesman. That’s another reason he did so well with his seafood business.”

  “And Alan? You waited five years before chancing marriage again. Was it love? Did you fall hard?”

  “Alan was my friend more than anything. And my attorney. After Paul’s death, he helped me settle the seafood business.”

  “Again, there when you needed someone.”

  She turned toward him, gazing into his calm gray eyes. Rather than harsh and unyielding, his features looked dependable and solid.

  “I suppose that’s it,” she said. “He was about ten years older than me, but he was kind and gentle and wise. I can’t expect you to understand. You’ve had a loving family, but I’ve been on the fringes all my life. I wanted a family of my own.”