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“Did you sleep okay?” she asked, turning to look at him.
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“You look great,” he said.
She glanced down at her maternity clothes and protruding belly and smiled wistfully. “Oh, yeah, I’m a real treat. That isn’t your shirt, is it? Or your jacket?”
“Dave brought me some of his brother’s stuff. Liz, what do you remember about your green scarf?”
She popped slices of bread in the toaster. “Move, Sinbad,” she scolded the cat who squeezed his eyes at her and stood his ground. She faced Alex with a troubled expression. “I don’t know. I thought about that last night after I went to bed. When had I worn it last, where had I last seen it? But I can’t remember. It just seems that I had it and then I didn’t have it.”
He picked up the cat and rubbed his sable ears. “What about at the party?”
“I don’t know. It’s been so long ago and so much has happened, I don’t remember what I was wearing that night. I do recall that we hadn’t changed clothes after work or dressed up or anything. It’s important, isn’t it?”
“Very. And you were wearing a greenish-blue dress.”
She looked thoughtful, then shook her head again. “I know the dress, I used to wear it with your scarf, but I don’t remember if I did that night or not. It’s no use.”
“It’ll come to you,” he said with confidence, desperate to ease the strain on her face. He put Sinbad down on an empty chair and added, “I notice you have a big old computer in the guest room now. You know how hopeless I am on those things. But maybe you can use it to help us figure out who really killed your uncle.”
She bit her lip. “I was thinking. Maybe you should go to Sheriff Kapp or the D.A. and explain this…misunderstanding.”
“No.”
She was dressed in a pale-blue cotton blouse and loose white sweater, clothes that did nothing to add color to her washed-out complexion. Was she beautiful? Of course, but her beauty was accidental now. With an incredulous tone to her voice, she said, “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Think about it. A brand-new story, a retraction of my confession, they’ll all just think I’m grasping at straws. Worse, the information that you were at your uncle’s house later that night to say nothing of the fact that a piece of your clothing was found in his hand will put you under scrutiny, and maybe not just for second degree murder like me. Your scarf might be interpreted as a would-be weapon that suggests premeditation, they might go after the death penalty. Absolutely no way we’re ever going to chance it.”
“But—”
“I’ve been thinking, too. I need to figure out who killed your uncle and how to prove it.”
“You’re not an investigator. We’ll hire a really good lawyer—”
“I don’t want your name coming into any of this until I know who’s responsible.”
She jerked open the refrigerator and emerged with the orange juice. He set out small glasses and watched as she poured the juice. “That’s very noble, but I repeat, you’re not an investigator.”
Taking the juice to the table, he called over his shoulder. “That baby you’re carrying is mine, Liz.” He moved to her side and gently touched her tummy, praying she wouldn’t flinch like she had the night before. When she didn’t, he left his hand where it was. “I want his or her name to be one he or she will be proud to own. Now that I know you’re innocent, I won’t rest until I clear that name. That’s a promise.”
She stared into his eyes and said, “Can you feel it?”
He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about. “Feel what?”
She put her hand over his and pressed down a little. “Right here. The baby. Kicking up a storm.”
And suddenly he felt a muffled thump against his palm. “Yes,” he said, grinning. “Yes.” He felt several more soft kicks and then it seemed as though Liz’s whole belly kind of shifted to the side.
“You just experienced a rollover,” Liz said. “Trust me, it’s quite a sensation from the inside.”
“I bet it is,” he said, longing to lift her blouse and lay his cheek against her stomach. Instead he reluctantly dropped his hand.
“You have to get over worrying about implicating me, Alex,” she said as she set their plates on the table. “We have to tell—”
“No,” he repeated, and sat down opposite her.
“You still don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“I trust you,” he said.
“But you didn’t trust me when it mattered. You didn’t give the law a chance. You still won’t.”
“You mean that idiot, Kapp.”
“Roger Kapp isn’t so bad.”
“He’s a dangerous fool. Maybe my poor opinion of him stems from the fact that he was out at my house a lot as I grew up, hassling my brothers. He was a deputy then and liked to throw his weight around. Or maybe it’s the way he used you to get to me.”
“Try to put the past behind you. Let’s just talk to him—”
“Look, it’s my hide we’re talking about. And I’m the one who fouled things up. Now, eat something. You need to keep your strength up.”
For the first time since she’d opened the door the night before, she really smiled. Alex drank in the sight—to him more breathtaking than any sunrise—and hoped he’d find a way to make it happen again.
“Tonight we share the same bed,” he said softly, admiring the lovely curve of her jaw. This new clarity of her features was one of the surprising bonuses of her shorter hair. He could see the long, graceful line of her neck, her sweet earlobes, her golden eyebrows. “I don’t know the rules about sex and pregnancy, but surely being held in a husband’s arms is on the approved list,” he added tenderly.
The smiled faded and she grew increasingly silent. He tried concentrating on the taste of fresh eggs and icy juice. He tried living in the moment, relishing the sounds of the soft rain on the roof, the hum of the refrigerator, the distant thunder of waves. The very fact that he was back in the middle of his own life, seated at his own table, looking at his own wife, was astounding and cause for profound thankfulness. He tried to ignore the black cloud he could feel hovering over them both.
Nothing worked. Liz fed Sinbad bits of egg which he seemed to demand with strident yowls. She folded and refolded her napkin, moved her juice glass from one side of the placemat to the other.
“Remember when you found out you were pregnant?” he asked.
That got her attention. She said, “Yes. Of course.”
“You put on that tight red dress with the low, sexy back and bought a bottle of sparkling apple cider. You even soaked off the cider label and replaced it with a champagne label, remember? You made sure we had the evening alone, made a platter of fancy little things to eat, sat me down, mumbled something I couldn’t understand and then started fidgeting. In fact, before you finally got the news out, you did everything but reline the kitchen shelves.”
She smiled at the memory. “Well, I was nervous.”
“I know. And now you’re at it again.”
She stopped folding her napkin into triangles and looked up at him.
“Besides everything, Liz, what’s troubling you?”
“Nothing.”
He put his hand over hers. “I’m not an idiot. Come on, fess up, what’s wrong?”
She cast him a wary glance and bit her top lip. “I just keep thinking about how you must have hated me.”
There was nothing in the world she could have said that would have astonished him more. “What are you talking about?”
Brushing wayward strands of pale hair from her forehead, she said, “You thought I killed Uncle Devon and then sat by while you took the blame for it.”
“No, no, honey. I thought you understood that I understood—”
“You thought I was more worried about myself than I was about you. It makes me feel terrible that you could have thought that of me.”
He shook his head, unsure what to say. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that his delicate wife would no more stand aside and let him take the blame for something she did than fly to the moon?
“I’m sorry.”
Laying her fork aside, gaze averted, she added, “You didn’t turn to me when it mattered most. You pushed me and our marriage aside and went it alone. I…I feel as though I can’t trust you anymore. I don’t want you behind bars for something you didn’t do, for trying to protect me, but beyond that I…I don’t know. About us, I mean. About our future. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
A single tear rolled down her cheek as she averted her gaze.
She meant it.
Chapter Three
Liz stared at the computer screen and tried to figure out how she was supposed to use it to help find a killer. Overhead, she could hear Alex’s footsteps as he moved around the attic looking in boxes. Sinbad must be up there with him, she thought, because every once in a while, she could hear him throw in his two cents via a throaty meow.
Silly as it might seem to non–cat lovers, Sinbad had been her lifeline while Alex was gone. He was someone to come home to, someone who needed her and never complained if she moped about all day in a robe. He ate pretty much anything she fed him, liked to sit for long periods in her lap—back when she had one—and punctuated her remarks with snappy sounds so it seemed he was really listening.
She moved from randomly surfing the Internet to checking her e-mail. She had one message and it was from her friend and co-worker, Ron Boxer. He’d sent it early that morning and a business question was followed by a personal one—did she want to meet him downtown for lunch? Hands poised over the keyboard to explain why she couldn’t, she paused.
Why couldn’t she? Getting away from everything suddenly sounded like a fantastic idea. She typed a positive response and suggested Ron invite his sister, Emily, to join them. Talking to friends would be good therapy.
An hour later she was still at the computer, finishing the outline for a marketing blitz for the mall. Hiller Properties was a vast and complicated conglomerate, woven together by her uncle and his lawyers. Since her uncle’s death, his properties had been tied up, but she was still the one in charge and would be even more invested and involved once the dust settled.
However, after the upcoming office Christmas party, which she felt duty-bound to host, she was off on maternity leave for an indefinite time. Lately, she’d felt herself entertaining ideas of bailing out. To counteract these treasonous thoughts, she’d been working harder than ever.
Of course, there was always the possibility that once the sheriff started digging, someone else would come forward with the news that they’d seen her visiting her uncle late that night. Maybe someone else had seen her car or maybe the maid heard her voice and never mentioned it because what was the point, Alex was guilty? Maybe, despite Alex’s best intentions, she’d still wind up in jail!
“Find anything?”
She whirled around in her office chair as Sinbad bounded across the room and landed on the desktop. Papers and pencils went flying as the big cat settled on top of a stack of books and immediately began washing his face with a silky brown paw.
Alex stood in the doorway. He’d put on gray sweats; she almost expected to hear him say he was on the way to the gym. In the background, she heard the tumbling growl of the drier.
“You startled me!”
“Find anything interesting on the computer?”
“I’m not sure where to look. I can’t find the Murderers Anonymous site.”
Smiling, he said, “I have a few ideas we’ll talk about later. Meanwhile, you made a nursery out of my old den.”
It was a three bedroom house and she’d chosen the bedroom across the hall for the nursery because of the light. “Yes.”
Looking guarded, he said, “If you really won’t let me share our bed, then I’d like to throw the sleeping bag in that room.”
She gestured at the wall. “But the futon—”
“I don’t want to sleep in here. I’ll take the futon mattress across the hall and move the crib.”
“But this is all set up and ready to go,” she protested. She didn’t want him changing things. She’d created a nest across the hall and she wanted it to stay the way she’d made it. Why she felt so strongly about it was unclear to her. “It doesn’t make sense to drag things around,” she mumbled.
“I can’t sleep in this room,” he said, advancing. He stopped when he was right in front of her, forcing her to look up at him.
“Why?”
He seemed to consider her question as though trying to decide how honest to be. With his free hand, he fondled her hair, one of his fingers drifting down her cheek, across her chin. Every place he touched tingled with awareness. His voice very soft, he said, “Because I can hear you in our old bedroom. I can hear you move. I swear I can hear you breathe. I can picture you in bed and it drives me wild.”
It was more of an answer than she had expected, but that shouldn’t have surprised her. Alex was not only an arousing man to look at with his smoldering blue eyes, strong athletic body and dark good looks, he also exuded sexual energy, always had, and as long as she’d known him, that focus had been directed at her.
She saw desire on his face now, she felt it emanating from his body, and pregnant or not, it made her ache for his touch, reawakening parts of her that had been dormant for months.
“Whatever you want,” she said.
“That way you can work when you want to.”
“Good thinking.”
“Also, until we have an idea of who really killed your uncle, we need to be cautious. The murderer might very well be someone we know.”
Liz felt a tremor move through her body. “I can’t believe it’s anyone we know,” she insisted.
He ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll go out to lunch and get a head start on a plan but first I want to stop by the firehouse and return Dave’s brother’s clothes plus check out the mood there.”
“It sounds like a good idea, but I can’t go with you.”
Alex narrowed his eyes for an instant. “Why not?”
“I already have lunch plans,” she said, uncertain why she felt so awkward. She straightened the papers the cat had disturbed. “I made them a long time ago,” she lied and mentally slapped herself for doing so. “Anyway—”
“Plans with whom?” Alex asked, backing away a little.
“Business plans,” she mumbled.
“Can’t you change them?”
“No.”
