His Perfect Family

“Intelligence.” She voiced her thought without thinking.

His thick brows rose. “Now and then.”

That initial spark of approachability was fading fast. It was back to name, rank and serial number, she thought, exasperated. She was trying to make polite conversation, for goodness’ sake, not pry state secrets out of him. She still had half her burger to go — they had to talk about something. “That must have been an exciting time,” she continued, “being in the service at the end of the cold war, knowing you played a part in tearing down the Berlin Wall —”

“Nobody needed to tear it down.” His fingers tightened on the napkin, wadding it into a ball. “It would have crumbled into ruins in a few more years anyway, just like the rest of the Soviet bloc.”

“But —”

“Failing factories and ancient farm equipment brought it down, not naval intelligence. All we had to do was wait for the rust.” He stood abruptly, stuffing his wrapper and napkin into the paper sack. “I better get to work. Thanks for lunch.”

Well! She stood, too, and took the sack he held out to her. Her fingers brushed his, and she started at the tiny current that sizzled the length of her arm. Completely unexpected. Completely unwanted.

Completely arousing.

Her gaze flew to his face, her fingers still touching the back of his as if pressed there by a magnetic field, unable to withdraw. She was aware first of his hand’s warmth, then of its thickness and strength, so large compared to hers, then of an excruciating embarrassment at the thought that he might sense her reaction to him. But he returned her startled look with no sign he was affected in the least.

She jerked the sack from him, breaking the contact that could be measured in milliseconds, yet had felt like aeons. “I think I’ll get some lasagna ready for supper and bake a cake for Lisa. She likes a sweet after school” She flashed her best polite smile, trying to keep the edges from cracking, a thank-you-for-stopping-by smile, but he simply nodded and turned toward the pantry.

Cutter flexed his fingers, massaging away the residual heat left by her soft touch. Big mistake, touching was. Big mistake. There’d be no more of that, he warned himself. Friendly didn’t mean stupid. And the feelings her touch had set off in him were the kind that led men to do stupid, stupid things.

He heard cupboards banging in the kitchen as Adrianne prepared Lisa’s “sweet.” The last thing that girl needed after school was a piece of cake, he thought caustically as he levered himself through the hole in the floor into the cool, dark crawl space. A couple of times around the block would do her a hell of a lot more good. Obviously Adrianne didn’t see the connection between meeting her daughter at the door with a full platter and the size of the girl’s thighs.

Not his problem, he reminded himself as he lay on his back in a fine layer of dirt and began to connect the bathtub to the existing drainpipe. None of his business. He flexed his fingers again. Definitely none of his business. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any answers. If he’d learned one thing in his twenty years in the service, it was that he was not one to fix things. He’d learned that the hard way.

He remembered how proud his parents had been when he’d enlisted that summer day the week after he’d graduated. His father had been in the navy and recollected his two-year stint with a hazy fondness. Cutter was going to follow in his footsteps. Change the world. Well, in twenty years, the world had changed, all right, he thought as he gave a fierce twist to a piece of pipe, but it had nothing to do with him. Communism had crumpled with barely a whimper, and he and all his cohorts had stood there in their wrinkled trench coats with their suddenly obsolete codes and just as obsolete lives.

He thought of Lowenstein and Rush and Cadenza, all the agents killed over the years in the name of freedom. Freedom! His teeth clenched. Communism imploded from its own weight, making a mockery of all their cloak-and-dagger operations. All they’d had to do was wait, kick back on the deck of a ship in the warm waters off Guam and wait. He’d seen the signs during those last years; he’d tried to tell his superiors that if the Russians couldn’t manage gas for their cars or bread for their bellies, how were they supposed to launch a nuclear war?

Cutter heard the sound of the oven door shut and then water being drawn into a bucket in the sink. He followed the thump of Adrianne’s determined tread up the stairs and knew she was about to attack another room. So much for their friendly little chat. He’d had in mind pumping her for information, not the other way around. He didn’t expect to have to talk about Berlin or a war the world referred to as cold, a war he knew was the exact temperature of freshly spilled blood.

He’d come home when he could manage it, and each time he’d been shocked by the new twist to his father’s fingers, the increased swelling, the number of pain pills. Bit by bit, he’d given up fighting the system, slowly, assignment by assignment — and visit by visit, he’d watched arthritis wrench his father’s big, strong hands into helpless, painful knots. Then one day he’d returned to Little Rock after a frustrating assignment teaching formerly despised enemies, now esteemed colleagues, how to upgrade their navigation system. And that night, he’d stood helplessly by while his mother cut his father’s food into bite-size pieces. The man who had once fixed Cutter’s world could no longer fix his own food — and Cutter decided he was through trying to fix things, as well.

The world could get along just fine without his help. He’d turned in his commission that day and had since spent his time forming raw slabs of wood into coffee tables, buffets and bookshelves. Oak could be shaped, planed, sanded, slowly guided in the direction he wanted it to go.

Nothing else could.

Adrianne heard the front door slam in that aggravating way Lisa had of announcing she was home from school. She took a last swipe at the top shelf of her closet, then stepped off the chair she balanced on and dropped her rag into the bucket of cooling water. Blanche’s voice was audible from below, a high little laugh followed by Cutter’s deep, rumbling answer.

She started down the stairs, bucket in hand, in time to hear Blanche saying, “Oh, yes, I stop by almost every evening. I feel it’s important to eat supper here with my family.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “I’m a widow, you know, and now that Adrianne’s lost her husband, we need to support each other. We’re all the family we have left.”

Here she goes again, Adrianne thought. Her mother wrote her revisionist history as fast as it happened. She couldn’t help the sardonic snort that escaped as she turned the corner into the kitchen. “Mother, you eat supper with us maybe twice a week, if we’re lucky,” she said. “The rest of the time you’re busy with your committees and meetings — and your gentlemen friends.”

Lisa had taken a tub of frosting from the cupboard and was slathering it on the cake that cooled on the counter. Blanche stood in the center of the kitchen, teetering on the four-inch heels she insisted on wearing. Cutter leaned against the doorjamb to the pantry, a cordless drill in one hand, sawdust caught in his dark hair, looking extremely masculine—and sexy as all get-out, she realized with a start He smiled at her, and her stomach did an odd little flip-flop.

Unnerved, she crossed to the sink and emptied the bucket of gray water. “Mother doesn’t sit here crocheting with us in the evenings like some grieving widow, believe me.”

“Don’t exaggerate, darling.” Blanche sounded testy. “Widowhood is an extremely difficult state for a woman, and well you know it. Are you married, Cutter?”

He shook his head. “Divorced.”

“Ah. That can be difficult, as well.” She picked up her handbag from the table. “I hate to let you be right, Adrianne, but I do have a dinner engagement with Samuel Wagner this evening. A business dinner, of course.”

“Of course.” She turned the bucket upside down in the sink and draped the frayed tea towel she was using for a cleaning rag across it. “But I wish you’d given a call. I’ve got an enormous pan of lasagna ready to go in the oven.”

“sorry, love, I promise I’ll eat leftovers three nights in a row. But don’t try to make me feel guilty. You know you adore cooking and baking, all that grating and mixing and measuring. You’d do it whether I ate a bite or not.”

“She’s got you there, Mom.” Lisa had more chocolate on her fingers than she did on the cake. Big chunks of the moist top had pulled loose to mix with the frosting, and she was trying to pat the crumbs into place with the back of a spoon.

“Okay, you’re right.” Adrianne went to the stove and turned the knob to preheat the oven, aware of Cutter’s eyes on her as she moved. “I’m guilty. I love to cook. You know, I remember when your father was alive, I’d make these big theme dinners and we’d all sit down and —”

“When was this?”

Adrianne turned her head to stare at her daughter, shocked by the cynical, too old tone of her voice. “Well, lots of times. We’d —”

“When was the last time we all sat down?”

“Why, it was —”

“Besides Christmas, I mean.” Lisa threw the sticky spoon into the sink. “Daddy was out of town so much the last couple of years we never ate together — maybe once a month.”

Adrianne could only blink in surprise. Had it really been that long since they’d been happy together? A family doing family things? Didn’t Lisa remember those early years, before Harvey had started taking so many out-of-town clients, before things had gotten so very, very bad?

“I...I guess you’re right,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I must have been thinking about when you were little.”

Lisa shrugged. “Whatever.” She licked a blob of frosting from her thumb, then looked up, her green eyes, so like Harvey’s, ingenuous. “By the way, did they ever find that money?”

Adrianne froze. Even Cutter, who’d turned to go back to work, stopped short in the doorway. Blanche put a hand to her chest and gave an audible gasp. The moment lengthened, past the point of no return, but Adrianne did her best to pretend those sharp green eyes didn’t see right through her.

“What do you mean, dear?” She walked quickly to the refrigerator and bent to pull out the heavy dish of lasagna.

Lisa’s tone was casual, which made Adrianne even more worried. “A man came to see me at school. He said one of Dad’s clients was missing some money. He asked a lot of questions.”

Dear God. She’d had no idea.... “We’ll talk about this later, okay?” Adrianne flicked an eye toward Cutter, who’d crossed his arms over his chest and watched them all from under those hooded eyes, unnaturally still and tense. “Now, why don’t you —”

“No. I want to know what that man was getting at. He said —”

“Lisa!” Blanche’s voice was shrill, matriarch in outrage, center stage. “This is neither the time nor the place to be discussing such things.”

Lisa glared at her grandmother, mutinous. She started to protest, then snapped her mouth shut Her shoulders slumped. “No, it never is, is it?” She spun on her heel and stomped from the room.

Cutter saw the way the color had drained from Adrianne’s face at the mention of the money. She was still pale, standing with a pan of lasagna clutched in her hands.

“Adrianne. Darling.” Blanche reached for her. “I just meant —”

“Not now with the theatrics, Mother,” Adrianne said. She pulled away from the offered hand to open the oven door and slide the casserole onto a rack.

Blanche’s voice lowered to a barely discernible murmur, her head bowed close to her daughter’s, and Cutter slipped from the room, following Lisa upstairs.

He found her at the computer, strawberry blond hair swinging forward to block her face from view. He rapped at the open door with a knuckle.

“Lisa? I need to know what height you want the counter on the vanity.”

Her stubby fingers worked the mouse like a virtuoso, and brightly colored images flashed across the screen. She shrugged, not looking up. “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

“Look, this is your bathroom.” He stayed by the door, giving her space. “Some people like the counter a little higher so they don’t have to bend over so far — but it’s whatever you want.”

“Yeah, whatever I want. What a joke.” She swiveled her chair around to face him, flipping her hair back with an impatient motion. “You know what I want?”

“No.”

“Well, neither do I.”

Her smile was bitter; his was gentle. “That’s typical for your age.”

“Nothing about me is typical.”

He thought that was probably true.

“I mean, how many girls do you know who have an embezzler for a father?”

She glared at him defiantly, but he could see the hurt—and the fear. Her freckles stood out in blotchy spots, and her eyes were beginning to redden from held-in tears. He’d have to be very careful. She wasn’t the mark—she was a child. “What are you saying, Lisa?”

“Hey, that man wasn’t exactly subtle. He asked if I’d gotten any new clothes or expensive stuff lately. Asked me if I’d seen my father’s briefcase the day he died. Stuff like that.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “It didn’t take a genius to figure out he thought Dad had ripped off this client.”

Cutter didn’t have to ask for a description of the man who’d questioned her. Someday — soon — he was going to choke the very life out of Jonathon Round. He said, “And what do you think?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know. Daddy was gone so much....” Tears welled up and spilled over. “You know, sometimes I can’t even remember what he looked like. He’s only been dead six months, and sometimes it’s like he was never here at all.”

He didn’t go to her. He was a stranger. He had no comfort to give her. “I think I’ll make that counter a little higher.”

Lisa nodded. “Okay.” She twisted her chair back to face the computer screen, and her fingers began to move again, holding on to the mouse like a lifelike.

He paused on the way downstairs. The house was arranged so he could stand out of sight on the stairs yet still hear every word coming from the kitchen.

Blanche was saying, “This is going to be so hard—raising Lisa by yourself. At least you were out of high school before your father died. I don’t know what I would have done without him all those years when you were growing up.”

“I don’t remember him being a very involved parent,” Adrianne said dryly.

Blanche immediately protested. “Maybe not in the touchy-feely way men are supposed to behave today, but he always provided for us. He was a good man. A good father.”

A drawer was shoved in place, a sharp crack of wood slamming against wood. “He was a drunk.”

There was a long silence, and Cutter shifted uneasily on the stairs.

“Well, I’m going to be late for supper if I don’t get going.” Blanche’s voice was crisp and businesslike. “I don’t want to keep Samuel waiting. We do a lot of work with his title company.”

“All right, Mother.” Adrianne sounded resigned, as if she’d expected Blanche’s nonresponse. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Cutter made a show of coming down the remaining stairs, turning the corner into the kitchen just as Blanche headed toward the front door.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Munro.”

She nodded and smiled pleasantly, her heels clicking briskly across the vinyl entryway. Lord, that was one tough cookie, he thought as she let herself out. A drunken husband, an embezzling son-in-law, yet not a hair out of place. Reality wasn’t going to come along and mess up her plans. No sir.

Adrianne was another matter. She stood at the counter, a knife poised over the now frosted cake. Yet she made no move. Her back was stiff with tension, and as he came quietly up behind her, he could see her knuckles were white around the metal handle.

He reached out and laid a hand on the back of her neck. Little wisps trailed from the knot of hair on top of her head and curled over his fingers. Internal alarms rang a warning, told him to back off, hands to himself. But her skin was soft, smooth and warm, and he told himself this was all part of the job, gaining her trust, working the mark. “What is it?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, soothing.

For a moment, it seemed as if she pressed back, toward the contact, but then she shifted imperceptibly away, and he dropped his hand.

“It’s nothing, really.” She sliced into the cake. “It’s just Mother and I have such different memories of some things. It’s weird. I was there, she was there, yet it’s like we were in one of those Star Trek parallel universes or something....” She gave a little allover shake. “Anyway, why don’t you have a piece of cake with me? Comfort food.” She reached into the cupboard above her head and took down two plates. “We can spoil our appetites together.”

He took the plate she handed him with a huge piece of chocolate cake leaning in the center, and sat down at the table. If she knew anything about the money, he had to take advantage of these opportunities to talk with her. But if she was going to ply him with food every time, he’d be loosening his tool belt a notch by the time he found it. And he damn well better start thinking with what was above that belt, not below it.

Adrianne sat across from him and picked up her fork. She poked absently at the frosting with the tines, marring its smooth surface with four evenly spaced creases. “I guess you’re wondering what that was all about—with Lisa, I mean.”

“It’s really none of my business. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Tell ’em not to talk, and most people couldn’t wait to start. He tried to ignore the guilty twinge in his gut as she raised those fragile, golden brown eyes to his.

“It’s all blown over now, thank God,” she said. “It seems one of Harvey’s clients had some money siphoned from an account, twenty-five thousand dollars, actually, and naturally they questioned everybody they could think of. Since they couldn’t ask Harvey, they had to ask me, of course, but how could I help? Harvey was a one-man office — he didn’t even have a secretary. He kept his own books, made his own appointments, filed his own files....”

The frosting was crisscrossed with deep slashes by now. “Anyway, the police and this insurance man made my life hell for a while, but finally they went away. I haven’t heard any more about it, so that’s the end of it, I guess.”

“It must have been tough. All the questions —”

“How long had we been married? What kind of husband was he? Had I noticed any unusual behavior?” She dropped the fork and shoved her plate away, glaring at him as if he were the one asking the questions. “How dare they! Harvey was a brilliant accountant, I told them. A wonderful husband! We were married fifteen wonderful years. We were high-school sweethearts—I dropped out of college to marry him, for God’s sake. He was the love of my life. How dare they ask about...about the things they did! He was a good man. A good father.”

She used the same words her mother had used to describe her own father — and didn’t realize it, Cutter saw with amazement. And judging by the grim determination in her voice, he doubted they were any more true about Harvey Rhodes than they’d been about her father. Lisa certainly didn’t think so. Poor Lisa thought she was in her own Star Trek episode.

After twenty years, he could tell a truth from a lie any day of the week. Her ardent defense of her husband rang so false it set his teeth on edge. He’d bet his life something had been wrong with her marriage, but as for the money? Did she have it or know where it was? Of that, he couldn’t be so sure. Not yet.

Adrianne watched Cutter take the last bite of cake. Her stomach twisted in on itself, too sick with nerves to eat. She’d had no idea Lisa knew anything about Harvey and the money. Why in God’s name had Lisa chosen now, in front of Cutter, to ask about it? She focused on Cutter’s strong, broad fingers holding his fork, remembered the comforting feel of them on the back of her neck. Maybe Lisa had felt it was safer to bring up the subject with him there as a buffer. Something about Cutter seemed safe and secure — maybe it was the military posture or those steady eyes that told you he knew all about secrets.

For that matter, why had she talked to him about Harvey? She’d told no one except Blanche about the money, the police, the questions.... “You want to stay for supper?” she asked, suddenly dreading the conversation she’d have to have with Lisa. Sometimes it was a good idea to have a stranger around after all. “I’ve got enough lasagna to feed an army.”

“No, thank you,” he said politely. “In fact, I’d better call it a day.”

After Cutter left, rolling his cords and neatly stacking his tools, Adrianne wandered around the kitchen, stomach churning. Lately, whenever her mother insisted on recalling some wonderful memory of her childhood, she felt this mixture of sadness and anger, of rage too close to the surface. She’d thought she’d dealt with all the baggage of an alcoholic father years ago. She’d thought she’d come to terms with the past and the way her mother chose to handle it.

Blanche conveniently managed to forget the fights, the broken promises, the disappointment when her father had chosen the bottle over them. In Blanche’s southern-to-the-core world, the only appropriate response to How are you? was Fine, just fine.

Depression dragged her down while anxiety wound her up, a double-edged feeling that had been her constant companion these past months. Longer than that, she corrected herself, staring unseeing out the window over the sink. Ever since that first phone call with its soft breathing that never answered her hello. She’d asked Harvey about that one, and the next and the next. But after that, she’d just smiled and said everything was fine, just fine.

She turned from the sink and walked with quick determination up the stairs — the whole time wishing she wouldn’t. But it was like picking at a scab. It hurt, but you couldn’t leave it alone. She passed Lisa’s door and went quietly into the spare bedroom. Bending down, she opened the lid of the cedar chest pushed against the wall and took out a plastic bag, Little Rock. Police Department stamped across it in smudged blue ink.

She carried the bag into her bedroom, shut the door behind her and sank down on the bed. She really didn’t want to look again. Unzipping the plastic seal, she reached inside, ignoring the wallet, the comb, the tie clip, and pulled out an airline ticket folder. She didn’t want to see it again, neatly typed in the destination line. Dallas — Fort Worth International Airport.

One-way.

Unable to stop, she reached into the bag again and took out the sandal. Red. Siren red. Slender, very high, spiked heel. Wispy straps across the toes, one around the heel. She kicked off her loafer and, careful to keep her sock on, slipped her foot into the shoe. She lifted her leg and examined it hanging from her toes.

It was two sizes too small.

Chapter Three

She’d be slim. Great legs. Short, tight skirts. Anyone who wore heels like that had to have great legs. She’d wear low-cut sweaters, and her implants would bubble up, on the verge of spilling over. A blonde? Redhead? That she didn’t know. Adrianne let the sandal slip off and fall to the floor. She stared at it as it lay on its side on the beige carpet — slinky, sly, as seductively dangerous as a serpent.

She knew the woman’s voice. Once she’d actually had the nerve to ask for Harvey instead of hanging up in Adrianne’s ear. It had been a husky, breathy voice, one that matched the shoe perfectly. She knew the woman’s scent, could almost smell it now, rising from the shoe, seeping from the plastic bag. That dark, musky perfume had come home with Harvey from every business trip, no matter if it was to Wichita or Oklahoma City or Memphis.

Idly, Adrianne wondered if Harvey had ever really gone to any of those cities, or if every supposed business trip was actually a quickie in Dallas. Or maybe she met him in all those cities, all those hotels, all those king-size, floral-print-covered beds, Gideon Bibles tucked away in the nightstand.