Protector With A Past Page 9

  Julia had crossed to the wardrobe, and now she was glad she had her back to him. Making a pretence of flipping through his selection of shirts—white, white and white with a faint off-white stripe—she felt a ridiculous prickle of tears behind her eyelids even as her mouth curved into a shaky smile.

  Damn Cord Hunter anyway, she thought, pulling the racy off-white striped number from its hanger and struggling into it awkwardly. He'd never been one for flowery speeches, but he'd always had a habit of coming at her out of left field with some devastatingly heart-melting observation like the one he'd just made. He would drop it into the conversation casually, as if he was just stating a simple fact that he figured she already knew, and every single time he did it she felt like her heart took a little skip in her chest, as if it thought it could fly.

  Stupid heart, she thought, blinking away the incipient tears. And stupid her, for letting her guard down, even for a minute.

  "Tascoe might profile as violent, but he treated that woman he was with as if she was fine china," she said, cinching the tails of Cord's shirt around her waist in a knot and rolling back the sleeves. It still billowed extravagantly around her. "As misguided and twisted as the man is, he sees women as something to protect, not to harm. He takes it way too far, but doesn't it prove that it's unlikely he would kill Sheila and then bust through the house for Lizbet?"

  "It's a theory, Julia. It's not proof. And we can't overlook Paul's conviction that whoever was watching his family had ties to the police department." Cord stood up. "Dean Tascoe might have been booted off the force, but a lot of the hard-liners in the department think he got shafted. He's still got contacts. Hell, Jackie's the chief's personal secretary."

  "Jackie? The woman he was with?"

  In the process of taking off his tie he paused, alerted by something in her tone. "Yeah. Jackie Redmond. Nice enough woman, and her life hasn't been easy. Why?"

  Facing the dresser mirror, he slowly unbuttoned his cuffs, but his attention was focused on her reflection in the mirror. She shook her head as if to clear it, her expression troubled.

  "Didn't you find her reaction at the funeral a little over the top? I mean—" she struggled to pinpoint her impressions "—she appeared so shaken."

  "Everybody there was shaken by what happened to Sheila and Paul, even if they didn't know them personally," he said with a touch of confusion. "What's your point?"

  "But her hands were actually trembling, Cord. And when she mentioned Lizbet, she seemed almost desperate."

  "Like I said, her life hasn't been easy." He glanced over his shoulder at her, one eyebrow raised. "You haven't lost your touch, Julia. I was so busy concentrating on Tascoe that her reactions went right by me. I heard her daughter left home a couple of years back—just took off without a word and vanished. That would explain a lot of what you saw."

  "She lost a child?" Julia remembered the haunted expression of the woman with Dean Tascoe, the impression she'd given of being so tightly wound she was about to snap. She felt a rush of compassion for Jackie Redmond. "Oh, Cord—the poor woman!"

  "Her daughter wasn't a child when she left. She was about nineteen or twenty," he informed her. Bending his head, he turned his attention to unfastening his cuffs. "Still, that's got to be rough. The woman's a widow and her daughter was everything to her. I guess no matter how old your kids get, some part of you still thinks of them as the children they once were."

  "Maybe." Julia sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly bone tired and uncomfortably aware that his words, as nonjudgmental as they'd been, could just as well be referring to her relationship with her father.

  Except Willard Stewart hadn't fallen apart over the fact that he barely ever saw his daughter anymore. As far as her father was concerned, he'd only ever lost one child, and the child he still grieved over had never been her, Julia knew, although in the past Cord had disagreed with her on this point. His theory was that father and daughter were too much alike for the relationship between them to ever have been an easy one—but that Willard Stewart, despite his reticence on the subject, loved her more than he'd ever been able to express.

  Beneath that rock-hard exterior beat the heart of a marshmallow, Julia thought wryly. Cord Hunter believed in happy endings. She was a little more pragmatic than that.

  "Maybe we should stick to topics we can agree on," she said without rancor. "Like the fact that I intend to see this investigation through with you." She lay back against the headboard of the bed and pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Oh, right—I don't need your agreement on that."

  "No, I guess you don't." He slanted a sardonic glance at her in the mirror and resumed unbuttoning his shirt. "It's not like the time Davey and I went rock climbing at Maiden's Leap and made you stay at home, is it?"

  "I followed you until I couldn't see you anymore." She smiled reminiscently. "Since you were on your bicycles and I was a pudgy little five-year-old, I lost sight of you pretty fast."

  "If I tried that today I suppose you'd just get your own bicycle." A corner of his mouth quirked up as she nodded, but his eyes were serious. "Okay. We work together—but I want you staying here with me. We should get you something to wear before the stores close, and then if you're lucky I'll buy you dinner."

  Removing his shirt as he spoke, he brought his face closer to the dresser mirror and rubbed his jawline appraisingly. He opened a drawer, pulled out a pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt and tossed them on the bed beside her.

  "Stay here with—" Julia broke off in the middle of her sentence, her eyes widening. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  "You've seen me with less on hundreds of times—a lot less, as I recall." He gave her a blandly innocent look, the dark lashes dipping down briefly to touch his cheekbones as he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. "It isn't an option, Julia—while we're on this investigation we're joined at the hip. We eat together, interview suspects together and sleep together. You can have the left side of the bed," he added generously, stepping out of his pants. "I was here first and I like the side nearest the door."

  Now he was the one standing close enough to the bed for her to reach out and touch him, but she kept her hands rigidly at her sides.

  He was wearing white boxer shorts, of course. She'd bought him a pair of red bikini briefs one Christmas, more to see the look on his face when he unwrapped them than in any real conviction that she could effect a change in his hopelessly conservative sense of style. It had been the year King was still teething. A day later they'd found the bikinis shredded into festive ribbons between the puppy's paws, though Cord had sworn up and down that he had put them away out of the dog's reach.

  And the only reason she was dwelling on that long-ago memory, Julia told herself in frustration, was to keep her mind occupied with something other than the sight of those perfectly muscled long legs, that hard, flat stomach and that broadly massive chest. Against the tan of his skin the boxers looked as crisp and white as a flag of surrender.

  But if anyone was surrendering here, it wasn't going to be her, she thought.

  "I can't stay with you, Cord." She forced her gaze away from him with what she hoped looked like casual disinterest, praying that the faint heat she could feel in her face wasn't visible. "It just wouldn't work."

  "You're blushing." He studied her, his brows raised in mild surprise. He bent toward her, and her eyes flew to his face nervously. Slowly he picked his jeans up off the bed and gave a sigh of sharp exasperation.

  "For crying out loud, let's just get this over with. Having you jump out of your skin every time I so much as brush against you is making me nervous. Is this what we're supposed to be so afraid of?"

  Tossing his jeans aside, he bent over her again, this time so swiftly that she didn't have time to react. One knee was suddenly warm and tense beside her thigh and one arm braced on the bed behind her, and his mouth was on hers even as her lips parted in surprise. His other arm was around her, cradling her securely as she sunk backward onto the
bed, and then a white heat tore through her as the borrowed shirt she was wearing fell lightly open and she felt the intimate touch of his chest as he kept on going, lowering himself lightly against her.

  When he'd kissed her two days ago at the lake there had been an edge of desperation in their embrace. Now the overwhelming impression was one of frustration, of impulses kept too long in check that couldn't be held back any longer.

  Except she wasn't just getting that impression from the signals he was sending out, Julia thought breathlessly, feeling his tongue searching her mouth, and meeting it with her own. It was all too evident from the way her nails pressed into the tough, tanned hide of his shoulders, the way she was arching her neck as if to present the vulnerable line of her throat to him, and the way every nerve ending in her body felt like it was sizzling—all too evident that the suddenly unleashed frustration she was sensing came just as much from her as from him.

  If this was a crime scene, she thought dazedly, both of them would be cuffed and charged. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she found herself fumbling awkwardly at the buttons on the shift she was wearing. She couldn't stand having anything between them, she thought—she needed him against the skin of her stomach, the curve of her breasts.

  "It's my shift. I get to rip it," Cord said huskily, lifting his mouth from hers the barest fraction of an inch. His breath was warm on the corners of her lips, like an echo of his kiss. With one effortless movement, he grasped the edges of the shirt and tore it open. Like tiny flat pearls flying through the air, buttons scattered, falling to the floor beside them.

  "It's my bra. I get to remove it," Julia managed to say. Was that really her voice? she wondered light-headedly. It had sounded more like a purr.

  "Too late, honey. I was always better at undressing you than you were yourself."

  Through thick lashes his eyes glinted like chips of onyx his hand reached around to her back, unclasping the garment and slipping it from her arms. His voice had the same velvet quality as hers, deepened and hoarsened into a growl, but as he looked down at her the growl caught in his throat.

  "Sometimes I used to tell myself that I was remembering everything all wrong, that no one woman could have been so flawless, so completely desirable. But it wasn't a fantasy." He bent his head to her. "You're real. This is real."

  It was reality. It felt like a dream, an erotic dream that she could move through languidly, receiving the touch of his sure, hard hands on every inch of her body, finding with her own hands the places that she knew could drive him over the edge and taking no responsibility for anything that might happen because it was a dream, and dreams had a life of their own.

  But it wasn't a dream. It was real—and reality had consequences like pain and regret.

  "I can't do this, Cord." She forced the words out past lips that felt like they had been turned to ice and felt him tense immediately. "It's—it's wrong."

  He raised his head, his eyes on hers. "It's not wrong, Julia—how could it be? I'm not some stranger you met on the street that you're passing an hour or two with, for God's sake. This is the way it's supposed to be between us. The last two years were wrong—we're just making it right again."

  "There's no future for us."

  She delivered the pronouncement flatly, meeting his gaze directly so that he would see the certainty in hers. She needed to convince him, she thought desperately, and she needed to convince him now. Every minute she spent with him she could feel herself weakening, and if she let this go on any longer, sooner or later she would give in.

  And you'd be giving in to yourself not to him. You'd like to tell yourself that the two of you could work everything out, even get married like you once planned to, wouldn't you? You'd have what you always wanted—him. But he'd have to put the rest of his hopes and dreams away forever.

  That stern little voice inside her head was her conscience, she thought drearily. As hateful as it could seem, it was right, and she knew it.

  "Why don't we have a future? What's stopping us?" His face was a mask, his eyes unreadable. "Or is it just that you don't want it?"

  "I don't want a future with you." She sat up abruptly. "Is that what you need to hear?" Her voice rose and she pulled the torn edges of her shirt together defensively. "I don't have to explain myself to you—we went through this two years ago, settled everything, and the situation we're in today has nothing to do with what went before."

  She pushed her hair from her face. "I've got to go—I have to find a place to stay tonight. I'll meet you back here early tomorrow morning and we can decide where we're going to go on this investigation."

  "No." He stood, his posture rigid and his mouth a grim line. "I crossed the line. It won't happen again."

  He turned his back to her and stepped into his jeans. Turning to face her again, he stood there, his hands on his hips. "Look—this wasn't some devious ploy of mine to lure you back into my life. I've been up-front with you, Julia. I never stopped wanting you, I never stopped loving you and, yeah—I'll admit it—I never stopped hoping that one day I'd get a second chance at making this work. Some adolescent part of me might have had the crazy notion that as soon as I saw you again, a miracle would happen and you'd run into my arms. That first night at the lake house I realized that miracles weren't in the cards. You looked at me like I was the last person in the world you wanted to see."

  There was a thread of pain in his voice that she couldn't bear to hear.

  "You startled me, Cord. For a minute I—I thought you were a ghost."

  She attempted a smile but she knew it wasn't reaching her eyes. He looked at her, and suddenly she saw the changes the last two years had wrought in him—the sharper line of his jaw, the slight deepening of the lines bracketing his mouth, the tenseness in his posture. He hesitated a moment, and then sat down on the bed beside her.

  "I never played games with you, honey. I wouldn't know how," he said softly. "I want you with me because every second you're out of my sight I'll be imagining that you're in danger. I respect what you say about Tascoe, but we can't know for sure that he'd balk at hurting a woman. And if I'm wrong and he didn't kill Paul and Sheila at all, then we have no idea who the real murderer is or what his agenda might be. I need to know you're safe."

  He was such a good man, Julia thought, meeting his gaze. He was good and honorable and loving, and she had never wanted to hurt him. All she'd ever wanted for Cord Hunter was the whole world—happiness, love, the children that he longed for. But the only thing he was asking of her now was peace of mind.

  She could give him that, at least.

  "I'll stay here with you." She saw the relief in his eyes and felt ridiculously like crying. "I—I'll even let you have the left side of the bed," she added with feigned reluctance. One corner of his mouth rose in as failed an attempt at a smile as hers had been. His hand reached out and, so lightly that she might have thought she was imagining it, he stroked her hair from her face.

  "We were something, once, weren't we?" That soft, husky voice that she'd heard all her life—had heard in her dreams even when he'd been three thousand miles away—was barely above a murmur. "I know that time's behind us, but weren't we something great together, you and me?"

  The tears that had been threatening for the last few minutes spilled slowly over as she rested her cheek against his palm and felt his other arm slip around her shoulders, snugging her closely against him. She could feel his heartbeat, Julia thought, looking at him, her vision glazed and shimmering.

  "That time's gone, Cord," she whispered painfully. "But … you're right. We really were something. Once upon a time—" Her voice broke, and it felt like her own heart was cracking in two. "Once upon a time we had it all," she said softly.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  «^»

  "Tascoe's disappeared." Cord rejoined Julia at the table and then fell frustratedly silent as their waitress approached.

  The small Vietnamese eatery was a far cry from the prohibitively
expensive French restaurants that her father favored, Julia thought as the petite and dark-haired woman poured a steaming stream of delicately tinted green tea into first her cup and then Cord's. Then again, it had been ages since she had done more than grab a burger and bolt it down during her visits to town to pick up supplies. The leisurely and surprisingly pleasant meal they'd just shared had been a welcome plateau in the events of the day—and judging from Cord's interrupted announcement just now, that day was far from over.

  At the mall she'd made her necessary purchases as swiftly as possible—a couple of T-shirts, some jeans and the pair of khaki pants she was wearing right now, among other things—and then had tried to beg off when he'd looked at her wan face and drooping shoulders and had insisted that she needed to eat something. Now she was glad he'd overridden her halfhearted protests.

  He was one of those rarest of men—a true protector, she thought wistfully. The few times she'd seen him with Lizbet and the Whitefield twins he'd been in his element. The day they'd brought the silent child to Mary and Frank Whitefield she'd watched him pushing each child in turn on the back yard swing. Terry and Tessa, the twins, had shrieked with excitement and urged him to push them as high as they could go. But when Lizbet's turn came Cord had stood in front of her, letting the swing, with her in it clutching the ropes, arc slowly away from him. Every time it came back, he held it still for a moment, as if to emphasize to the little girl that she was never completely on her own, and that he would always be there, watching her and waiting for her.

  He was a born father, Julia thought. He needed children of his own. However hard it became over the next few days to remember that, she couldn't allow herself to forget it.

  "Tascoe's disappeared." Repeating his earlier pronouncement as their waitress walked away, Cord kept his voice low, but he couldn't hide the edge of anger in his tone. "DiMarco apparently couldn't stop talking when they hauled him down to the station—waived the phone call to his lawyer, asked for a pair of pants and spilled the beans about everything he could think of. Lopez said she wouldn't have been surprised if he'd come up with the identity of the man on the grassy knoll in Dallas back in sixty-three." His mouth tightened. "He gave them the same story he gave us about Tascoe, and although I got the impression Lopez still prefers DiMarco himself as a suspect, she sent a car out to pick Tascoe up for questioning. They can't find him."