“That was your job.” Mae tried a small smile as an apology. “You were supposed to be stupid and go out and stir up trouble and make people believe he’d been killed. Problem was, you weren’t stupid.”
Mitch sighed and sat back. “The problem may be bigger than that. There’s a lot of money missing here. Even if Armand died naturally in his bed, with that much money in the picture, I’d bet there’s a crime somewhere. It would explain why someone’s so annoyed with my work.” He thought for a moment and then stood up and walked across the shed to her. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Whatever was here is gone.”
He held out his hand to her and she took it, letting herself enjoy its warmth and solid strength while he pulled her to her feet. She followed him to the door, relieved that she’d finally come clean, and saddened, too. She wasn’t sure why she was sad, but she was fairly sure it was watching his back move away from her.
Then he reached for the light switch, and checked back over his shoulder to make sure she was right behind him before he turned out the lights, and something in the way the line of his jaw eased into the muscle in his neck hit her in the solar plexus.
No, not him, she thought, but it was a feeble thought. She’d been attracted to him that first day in the office, the way his hands had been so broad and had moved across that writing pad with such confidence, and she’d been falling for him ever since, burying it under a barrage of wiseass comments, getting to know how stubborn and exasperating and endearing and honest he was.
Getting to want him more and more.
You met him less than a week ago, she tried to tell herself, but of course, that was plenty of time for wanting somebody. A minute was plenty for wanting somebody. Now, if she’d been thinking about anything but getting him into bed—
She had a sudden vivid picture of being in bed with Mitch, his body hard against hers, his hands moving—
“Mabel, you have the damnedest look on your face. Are you all right?”
Mae swallowed. “Fine. I’m fine.”
“Good.” Mitch switched off the light, and in the seconds before he opened the door, Mae thought about grabbing him and pulling him down onto the floor and making him make love to her.
She was fairly sure he’d do it. And then she’d be just another librarian.
He opened the door. Lightning flashed, and the wind blew, and she shivered more in reaction to the storm than to any chill in the air.
“Here.” He took off his windbreaker. “Put this on.”
She started to tell him that she wasn’t cold, and then she took the jacket. It was warm, and it smelled like him, and if she couldn’t have him wrapped around her, she could at least have his jacket. It was pathetic, but there it was.
She put on the jacket and followed him out into the stormy dusk.
Somebody shot at them.
Mae froze, not believing that anything like that could happen outside of the movies, and Mitch grabbed her and yanked her down into the dirt, and she clung to him while another bullet whined overhead and buried itself in the shed.
SHE HAD HIM in a death grip, and Mitch was torn between holding her tight against him to keep her safe and going to find the jerk with the gun. It wasn’t much of a choice, but if they just sat in the dirt beside the car until Albert noticed the shooting, they’d be dead in no time.
He had to go.
He didn’t ever want to let her go, but he had to go.
“Stay here and don’t move,” Mitch whispered, and Mae gripped him harder for a second. Then she released him and crouched in the shadows of the huge car, nodding. “I mean it,” Mitch warned her, fear for her making him stern. “Don’t do that dumb stuff that women always do in the movies. You stay put.”
Mae nodded again.
“Right,” Mitch said in disbelief under his breath and moved silently around the back of the shed to circle toward the direction of the shots. Why am I doing this? he asked himself as he crept through the dim light. He wasn’t even a real private detective. Possibly because Mae Belle is watching, he thought and then rejected the thought. Other men made fools of themselves over women, not Mitchell Peatwick Kincaid. This was stupid.
Then the shooting started again.
Mitch hit the ground and rolled into the cover of the shed on his left, only to see Mae totally exposed in her assigned place by the car. The shooter had moved. Run, you dummy, he screamed at her silently, and another bullet flew over her head and pinged on the car. There’s a gas tank there. He may start shooting lower. Move, damn it!
She stayed frozen in place, and Mitch mentally called her every name in the book. Practically speaking, there was nothing he could do. If he ran out there to drag her to safety like some dumb movie hero, he’d get picked off, and then she would be in a mess. She obviously couldn’t make it without him. She—
Then a bullet hit the dirt beside her, and his heart leapt up his throat, and he surged to his feet and ran past the car, yanking her to her feet and dragging her with him behind the shed.
“Why did you just sit there?” he snapped at her, shoving her behind him so she couldn’t see how much he was shaking. “You could have been killed, you dummy!”
“You told me not to move,” Mae snapped back around ragged breaths. “I thought you had a plan.”
“If they’re actually shooting directly at you,” Mitch whispered viciously, swallowing his heart back into his chest, “assume my plan has changed.”
“Now you tell me.” Mae peered around him into the dark lot and shuddered. “I could have been killed.”
“That’s your fault.” Mitch looked out into the darkness, too, worried at the sudden quiet. “If you had any sense…”
“And I knew that if I ran and got shot and was lying there, dying, bleeding into the dirt, that you would come and gather me up in your arms, and look deep into my eyes…”
“Shh,” Mitch hissed, trying to see what was going on around him and trying not to think about gathering her up into his arms.
“And then right before I breathed my last, you’d say, ‘Why did you move?’” Mae mimicked furiously. “You make me crazy.”
Mitch swung around to glare at her. “I make you crazy? You almost got me killed. I—”
“Why isn’t he shooting anymore?”
Mitch listened to the darkness. “He’s probably as disgusted with you as I am.” He slid his back down the shed wall until he was sitting in the gloom, glad to give his trembling knees a break. “Here’s a better question. Why was he shooting at all?”
Mae slid down beside him and sagged a little against him. It took everything he had not to put his arm around her. Because then he’d kiss her. And then she’d point out that he was a cretin. And then—
Mae’s voice whispered back, “Because we were in Armand’s storage shed?”
“Which was empty.” Mitch looked down at her drooping head. “You look beat.” He craned his head back to look out into the darkness, but there was no movement anywhere.
“I am.” Mae’s voice sounded very far away. “Do you think he’s gone?”
“Yes,” Mitch said to comfort her, even though he didn’t have a clue. “We’ll wait a couple of minutes and go, too.” Suddenly, she seemed like a little kid. An orphan. He reached out and put his arm around her, closing his eyes as he pulled her against him. “Sorry I yelled.”
Mae rested her head on his shoulder. “That’s okay. Sorry I didn’t move.”
“My fault,” Mitch said, feeling magnanimous because he was so happy to be holding her. “I told you not to.”
“I know.” Mae’s voice was faint but grumpy in the gloom. “That’s why I didn’t.”
Mitch felt her shift softly against him, and suddenly she was Mae again, and the orphan image vanished. He squelched down the hot thoughts that swamped him and moved his arm away from her. “Are you okay?”
“No. Somebody just shot at me. I’m upset.”
“Right.” Mitch patted her shoulder and craned his neck
for another look around. “Stay here. I’ll go get the car and bring it back so you don’t have to go out in the open again, and then we’ll go home.”
“What if you get shot?” Mae’s voice was more worried than querulous.
“Then you’ll have to get the car on your own.” Mitch stood, losing her warmth and hating it. “Wait here. Do not move.” When Mae gave a mirthless laugh, he amended that to, “Unless somebody shoots at you. In that case, run like hell.”
“You bet,” Mae said.
SAFE IN THE DARKNESS of the car on the way home, Mae sorted through her thoughts, trying hard to find a coherent one. She’d been under a lot of stress lately, and then there was the disappointment of the storage shed, and then getting shot at—that was bad—and now here she was, alone in the dark with Mitch, and all she could think of was that if he didn’t touch her, she was going to go crazy.
And he wasn’t going to touch her.
She closed her eyes so she could imagine his hands moving over her body, feel his lips against her skin, and she breathed a little deeper trying not to moan. He was a librarian addict who couldn’t commit to one set of breasts. Okay, that she could deal with. What she couldn’t deal with was that he wasn’t interested. He’d never even made a pass. He’d never—
“You okay?”
“Yes.” She turned to see him in the faint light from the dashboard. His eyes were hooded and dark and his face was craggy, and only a woman in love would have called him handsome, and she could have looked at him forever.
“We should call the police.”
The police. If they got into it, Mitch would be through. The diary story would be out.
“Maybe.”
Mitch glanced at her. “You don’t want to tell them about the diary?”
“I don’t know.” Mae felt tears start. This was so dumb. She had people shooting at her and she was missing a fortune, and all she wanted to do was climb into bed with this man and make love until she lost her mind.
“Mae?”
“Can we decide in the morning? I’ll be thinking better in the morning.”
“Sure.” His voice was deep and comforting and it set up a humming inside her like a tuning fork, and the humming moved lower and lower until she let her head drop back on the seat and just concentrated on not screaming for him.
“Do you want me to come in?” he asked when he pulled up in front of her house, and she said, “No,” and all but fell out of the car in her scramble to get away from him and his heat and the promise of his hands. Then Harold was there to let her in, and she pushed past him and ran up the stairs.
ON THE DRIVE BACK to his place, Mitch decided that he was going to have to stay away from Mae.
It was a bleak thought. He’d come to count on seeing her smile. He even liked watching her frown when she was annoyed or glare when she was furious. Then there was the way the sun picked out mahogany highlights in her dark hair, the way her neck curved into her shoulder, the way her calves flexed when she strode across a room, the way her laugh lighted up the whole world.
And she wasn’t even a librarian.
She didn’t appeal to him the way the librarians had. She wasn’t shyly sexy, she was up-front, in-your-face, you-talkin’-to-me? sexy. She just stood there with her hands on her hips and dared him not to find her mind-bendingly desirable. And fascinating. And funny. And dear.
Dear? Sam Spade never found Brigid O’Shaughnessy dear.
His loss.
Mitch parked illegally in front of his apartment and trudged up the stairs, thinking about how impossible it was that he should be attracted to somebody like her, somebody who would never be a good little wife, who would nag and snipe and make caustic comments….
Somebody who would meet him toe-to-toe for the rest of his life, on her own terms.
It was when he was unlocking his door that he decided he’d have to marry her. Somebody had to take care of her. And no other man would be able to stand that mouth.
The thought of marriage led to thoughts of weddings and wedding nights, and although he tried hard not to think about Mae in his bed, Mae naked in his arms, he did, anyway. The notion made him dizzy. Maybe it’s just the sex, he told himself. Maybe it’s just more pipeline. Then he thought about her smile and her laugh, and thought, This isn’t good.
He went into the bathroom to take a cold shower so he could get the blood back to his brain so he could figure out how to convince Mae to marry him.
Oh, and that guy who’d been shooting at them. He had to think of something to do about him, too.
He stripped off his clothes, turned the cold water on full blast and stepped under it.
MAE CRANKED OPEN the casement window in her bedroom and stuck her head out into the night. Her hair was still wet from her shower and the chill made her shiver. The air lay heavy with the recent storm, and the night wind blew cool against her white satin robe, making it move over her skin as lightning crackled a warning in the distance. Mae closed her eyes and breathed deep. She loved storms.
She loved Mitch.
She turned back into the darkened room, trying not to think about Mitch, and stepped on the polar bear rug that separated her bed from the window, scrunching her toes into the thick polyester pelt.
Armand had hated the rug. He’d wanted to get her a real polar bear pelt, and he hadn’t understood when she’d said she couldn’t sleep with a corpse in her room. Of course, Armand hadn’t understood her room, hadn’t understood why over the years she’d had the furniture taken out, the rugs removed, until now all that remained was white walls and hardwood floors, her carved pine vanity with the huge mirror that reflected back the sunlight from the windows, her oversize pine bed piled high with white down pillows and comforters, her pine worktable and bentwood chair and the polyester polar bear rug. It was all she wanted: space and light and texture. She’d thought she was going to have a home like it someday, but now it looked as if Armand had cheated her—and June and Harold—out of that, too.
She turned on the big lamp on her worktable and sat on the edge of the bed, drawing the satin sash tighter on her robe.
They weren’t going to find the money. Mitch had looked everywhere, and it wasn’t going to turn up. Whatever Armand had done with it, she’d never see it. It didn’t matter for her. It really didn’t. She’d never wanted the money, anyway. She just didn’t know how she was going to take care of Harold and June on fifteen thousand a year from her job at the art institute. She wasn’t sure she could feed Bob on fifteen thousand a year.
Maybe Mitch could invest it for her.
Mitch.
She let herself fall back into the downy thickness of the comforters and tried to distract herself with thoughts of Harold and June and Bob and the house they’d never have, but all she could think about was Mitch.
It wasn’t just physical. It was the way he took care of her by not taking care of her, the way he trusted her to take care of herself. The way he made her laugh. The way she felt good just looking at him. The way she trusted him. Everybody lied, he said. She didn’t believe it. In less than a week, he’d become the one person she’d trust with her life.
She thought again of the shooting, and how terrified she’d been, and how he’d been there then, and how much she’d wanted him to hold her, and how he hadn’t.
I can’t do this anymore.
She was dizzy with wanting him, and it was torture to spend time with him and not touch him. It had to end. The money was gone, and it was over, and she was never going to get what she wanted. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, but she knew what she wasn’t going to do.
She wasn’t going to torment herself by seeing Mitch again.
She sat up and pulled the phone over to the edge of the table and dialed his number.
The phone rang forever, and then, just as she was about to hang up, he answered it with “What?”
“Mitch, this is Mae.” Her voice quavered, and she swallowed to try to steady it.
“What’s wrong?” He didn’t sound angry anymore. “Sorry, I was in the shower. What happened? Are you all right?”
Mae took a deep breath. “You’re fired.”
“No, I’m not.” He sounded perplexed. “What’s wrong with you?”
“We’re never going to find the money, and I can’t afford to pay you anymore, and your week’s up soon—”
“I’ll work for free. I’ll pick you up tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.”
“No!”
“Mabel, tell me what’s wrong right now, or I’m coming over there.”
“No!”
“Mabel—”
“All right.” Mae blinked. “All right, then. But listen. Just listen.” She stopped and there was nothing but silence on the other end. “All right.” She swallowed. “I can’t see you anymore. I’m…attracted to you.”
Mitch’s snort came over the wire like an explosion. “Well, I’m attracted to you, too, but—”
“Just listen!” Mae swallowed again in the silence. “I’m not just attracted to you. I want you.” Once the first words were out, the others followed, uncontrollably. “I want you everywhere, every way possible. I want to touch you everywhere, I want to taste every inch of you, I want to wrap myself around you forever. I want your hands everywhere on me, and your mouth, and—” The words tumbled out of her, her voice rising, and she said things she’d never dreamed she could say to anyone, things she’d never said to herself, swinging in wilder and wilder arcs of erotic fantasy, and she said them all to him, chanted them as she got dizzier and dizzier thinking of him, until she shrieked, “And most of all, I want you hard inside me, and I can’t stand it anymore.” Then she stopped, surprised to find herself standing, leaning against the wall by her bed, shaking from the emotion and the release and the need for him that still pounded inside her.
After a few seconds, he said, “Mae?”
She closed her eyes, feeling like a complete fool. “Yes?”
“Are you done?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
“Are you all right?”