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“What about your parents?”
“I’m twenty-eight years old, Mr. Taylor. I don’t live with Mommy and Daddy anymore.”
Touché. So he wasn’t the only one who resorted to sarcasm under pressure.
“Where are they?” He took another step.
“Now that they’ve retired, they spend their winters in a warmer climate.” Not much of an answer, so he switched tactics.
“Why did you attack me?” He reached her desk.
“I thought you were an intruder.” She squared her shoulders. “Most visitors ring the buzzer at the gatehouse before I send them on their way.”
He ignored the obvious hint. He braced his hands on the desktop and leaned toward her. “I said I was a cop.”
She tilted her chin upward. “I don’t care if—”
Garbled voices from the front of the house interrupted their standoff. By the time he spun around, two uniformed patrolmen had entered the room, positioning themselves with guns drawn and pointed straight at him.
“Hold it right there,” one of the officers commanded.
Mitch calmly raised his hands. He heard a strangled gasp behind him, a soft, barely audible sound of despair. He glanced back at Casey. If possible, her fine porcelain skin had blanched even further.
Guns? Cops? Or men in general?
Something about the blue-suits, something about him, terrified her. Not because she thought he was breaking in. Not because she valued her privacy.
Him.
The discovery hit Mitch in the gut with all the force of her cane smacking his face. She was afraid of him. And fighting like a regal hellcat to prove she wasn’t.
Ungrateful though she might be for his help, the need to protect surged through him. Despite her proud and prickly demeanor, she looked too weak to deal with more unexpected visitors. And rule number one in his self-written code of ethics was to always defend the underdog.
So Mitch took up the banner for her. He pointed to his badge and identified his rank.
“Captain?” The officer who had spoken earlier couldn’t hide his embarrassment. Once they’d both holstered their weapons, Mitch dropped his hands and moved toward them. He had no desire to chew their butts for the honest mistake. They’d simply been doing their job. Answering a call with promptness and authority.
“I’ve got everything under control here. I’m guessing it was a false alarm.” The best way to salvage a man’s pride was to give him something worthwhile to do. “It wouldn’t hurt to check the grounds, though, see if anybody’s been snooping around. And find something to patch the front door with.”
“Yes, sir.”
With curt nods, they exited the room. Mitch turned around in the doorway and studied Casey. She’d closed her eyes and was breathing deeply. She seemed small and out of place in the huge dimensions of the room. He could see now it was a library, lined on three walls with recessed bookshelves. The row of windows on the fourth wall overlooked a dead garden. Her desk stood like an island in the center of the room, covered with neat stacks of paperwork, a computer system, a fax machine and a telephone.
He wondered if she lived in this lonely sanctuary by choice, or if someone had tucked her away and forgotten her there.
“What are you staring at?” Casey’s pointed question intruded on his thoughts. The prickly princess was back in place, and Mitch couldn’t help smiling.
“Quite possibly the prettiest waste of an evening I’ve ever spent.”
She arched one eyebrow, and Mitch imagined the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“I’m not sure. Do you take compliments?”
“Don’t let me keep you from any real police work, Captain.”
Oh, man, she was good. Mitch let the cutting edge of her tongue bounce off his well-worn hide. He’d been made this family’s scapegoat for the last time this evening. “Don’t worry. Your uncle has already seen to that.”
“He’s not really my uncle. Just an old family friend.”
Mitch’s retort about missing the point died on his lips.
She anchored her hands on either arm of her chair and stood, wavering for an instant until she found her balance. She breathed in deeply, turned on her exhale and limped toward the couch. She stepped gingerly on her right foot. The whole leg seemed to buckle each time she put her weight on it. Still, what impressed—and shamed—Mitch was the absolute determination on her face.
She might be every bit the condescending princess of the manor, but she was also a woman in pain, a woman in possible danger. And he’d been butting heads with her instead of remembering his duty.
He rushed to the couch to save her a few steps. He picked up the cane and held it out to her in both hands like a peace offering. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “The commissioner is expecting a report from me in the morning. What would you like me to say?”
He couldn’t tell if the resentment that flared in her eyes was because she needed the cane or because he’d gotten it for her. Her gaze locked on his chest, and he wondered if she was staring at his badge or merely glaring daggers through his heart.
“Tell him to call me himself next time.”
She curved her long, elegant fingers around the polished wood. Mitch tightened his grip. She stumbled half a step and might have fallen if their hands hadn’t been locked together around the cane. “What does it take for me to prove to you I’m one of the good guys?”
She tilted her chin to an arrogant angle and taunted him with her stormy gaze. “You can’t.”
A silent battle of wills heated the air between them, leaving Mitch with no clear answers except the discomforting realization that he wanted to blot that sensuous smirk off her bottom lip. His pulse raced at the challenge of softening those lips with his own, and loosing the tightly controlled fire that cooked inside the proper Ms. Maynard.
Appalled at the pattern of his thoughts, Mitch jerked away from her. He raked his fingers through his short hair, angry at her for making him feel those things, and remorseful at seeing her use the cane to maintain her balance.
Jackie had turned him inside out like that. She claimed to like his rough ways, his guard-dog devotion to her. But in the end, she’d chosen class and money over the love he could give her.
He was a smarter man now. It had taken him years to see through all of his wife’s games and learn to let her go. The notion that this cool, haughty princess could conjure up the same desires after only one meeting irritated the hell out of him.
“I’m assuming you can find your own way out, Captain. Since you so easily found your way in.”
He fisted his hands to squelch the urge to swat her retreating royal backside. Instead, he used her dismissal to spur him out the door to do some real police work and supervise the two uniformed officers.
What a hell of a day, he thought, thinking up and tossing aside ways to tell the commissioner to stuff this Maynard family lackey job without losing his promotion.
What a hell of a day.
Chapter Two
“Cassandra, dear, you know I have only your best interests at heart.”
Casey switched the telephone receiver to her left ear to mask her frustrated sigh, and wondered why Jimmy’s reassurance made her feel silly instead of safe. “But, Jimmy, why did you send the police here out of the blue last night? You know how I feel about—” she paused to find a word to emphasize just how frightened she’d been “—strangers.”
James Reed made an exasperated sound, and she could envision him checking his watch on the other end of the line. “Mitch isn’t just any cop. He’s one of the three finalists I’m looking at to name as my assistant next year. He’s a good man.”
He’s a force to be reckoned with, thought Casey.
She rested her forehead in her hand and massaged the tension in her scalp. She hadn’t slept well at all, and it wasn’t just because of the pain radiating through her right hip and up into her back from the exertion of wrestling with the man. His broad shoulders and stocky chest beneath that tailored wool coat, and his stubborn attitude, made her think of a gladiator in a suit and tie.
A fearsome opponent. A formidable ally. But last night she hadn’t been able to decide whose side of the ring he fought for.
“I don’t care if he’s Eliot Ness. Why did you send him here?”
A double dose of aspirin and a hot pad had dulled the physical ache to a tolerable level. But her mind had raced through to the early hours of the morning trying to pinpoint why Mitch Taylor’s unexpected visit had left her feeling so edgy.
Perhaps it was his voice. That deep, masculine sound had held too much challenge, too many taunts. His eyes, maybe. She remembered a gentle brown color like the expensive bourbon her father used to sip at night in front of the fireplace.
But there’d been little gentleness in the way he’d looked at her. As if she were guilty of something more unforgivable than assaulting a police officer.
Hearing Jimmy talk around the answers she sought didn’t help.
“Have you seen the paper this morning?” he asked.
Casey wrapped her chenille robe around the high collar of her flannel nightgown. The winter air didn’t worry her so much as the chill in Jimmy’s voice.
“No. Judith’s not in yet. I don’t feel like venturing out to the gate myself.”
“I didn’t want to panic you. It could be nothing.”
Her heart beat a quicker tempo at his particular choice of words. “Sending a detective busting through my doorway when you know I’m here by myself is your idea of not panicking me?”
“I just wanted to double-check that you were all right.”
“Stop treating me like I’m a little girl. Tell me—”
“You’re still my god daughter. I promised Jack and Margaret I’d always take care of you.”
“Mom and Dad would have given me a straight answer by now! I’ve half a mind to call them and ask them to come home.” The silence at the other end of the line made her regret her flash of temper. “I’m sorry, Jimmy. I know you mean well…”
“You can’t call them,” he interrupted her apology.
Casey tried again. “I know they’re not due to return from Europe for another three months, but I can track them down.”
“No, you can’t.”
As a child, she’d been reprimanded in that very same voice. But she was no longer a child. “Dammit, Jimmy, you can’t dictate—”
“Emmett Raines.”
If he wanted to punish her for her outburst, he couldn’t have said a crueler thing.
She thought of the framed Olympic silver medal in the hallway, and how she could have had a gold one from four years later beside it. She thought of her parents, once pretending to be dead and hiding away in a place unknown even to her so they could stay alive. She thought of tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday and how she’d be spending it alone. Again.
Because of Emmett Raines.
“What about him?”
A door off the kitchen slammed, startling her before she slipped deeper into a mind-numbing depression.
“Casey! Casey?” a shrill voice called from the hallway.
The Maynards’ housekeeper huffed around the corner into the library. The older woman’s watery blue eyes glistened with fear.
“Just a minute, Jimmy,” said Casey into the phone. “Judith’s here. The boarded-up door must have spooked her. Give me a minute to explain what happened.”
She covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and set it down. She needed both hands to stand and try to look composed. Judith McDonald might be a hired servant by contract, but she’d been with the family long enough that Casey considered her a friend.
“Are you all right?” Judith paused long enough to ask the question, but moved before Casey could answer her.
The housekeeper crossed the room, holding out the Kansas City Star newspaper in one hand and clutching her ample bosom to steady her breathing in the other.
“He escaped from prison.”
The unadorned statement struck Casey like a gunshot. She needed no other explanation to piece together the evasive truth. Suddenly Mitch Taylor’s visit made sense. The blood in her head rushed down to her toes. She sank into her chair and cradled her head in her hands. Finally understanding the situation brought her none of the comfort she had hoped for.
Judith spread the paper across the desktop and pointed to a short article on the second page. Casey scanned the words, and like a well-mannered schoolgirl, she picked up the phone.
“Why didn’t you tell me Emmett Raines was out of prison?”
Jimmy’s deep sigh matched her own. “State troopers are out in force looking for him. He has no family here anymore. Statistics say he’ll try to get as far away from Missouri as he can. I didn’t want to alarm you unnecessarily.”
Statistics? Her devoted Dutch uncle had gambled her safety on statistics? And backed it up with nothing more than an overbearing, overwhelming gladiator sent to check the premises?
A touch of something fiery licked through her veins, thawing the fear that tried to take root inside her. “I testified against the man in court! The newspaper says he killed a laundry-truck driver and drove away from Jefferson City. How unalarmed do you want me to be?”
Judith reached across the desk and squeezed her hand. Casey squeezed back, tapping into her own strength by sharing it.
“Don’t do anything, Cassandra. Stay in the house and lock the doors and windows.” For the first time that morning, she appreciated the clipped authority in Jimmy’s voice. “I’ll have Iris rearrange my schedule and I’ll get there as soon as I can. I’ll take care of you, dear. I promise.”
She hung up the phone and relayed the message to Judith. While Judith left to do a visual check of the entrances to the house, Casey turned on her computer and accessed the security system to verify that it was up and running.
She was glad she rated high enough on Jimmy’s list of priorities for him to postpone a meeting. But she felt no relief. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
No one understood Emmett Raines the way she did. No one could unless they’d been his victim, too.
She’d given up trying to explain why she’d secluded herself in the home where she’d grown up. After Emmett’s trial, she let the press make up stories to explain her withdrawal from society. Fear of more criminal repercussions. Shame over losing her career. Sorrow over losing her parents.
She couldn’t tell them about her unique phobia.
And she couldn’t risk more uninvited guests busting their way into her sanctuary.
Casey logged on-line and found the site she was looking for.
No more strangers.
