On The Way To A Wedding Page 6

  “Why should I believe you?”

  He took his boot from her grasp and tossed it to the bed behind him. Clasping both her hands in his, he pulled her closer still until her legs nudged the inside of his thighs. “I don’t have time to explain it any further. I hadn’t meant to stay here this long in the first place. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “It’s the other way around. As I see it, I’ve got a hell of a lot more to lose than you.”

  She was still hesitating, her thoughts unreadable behind her cool green gaze. Her hair was once more styled in a neat twist, so different from the lank strands that had dripped onto her shoulders last night. There was a faint bruise on her cheek, but otherwise she was as distant and composed as her TV image.

  Yet he could feel her pulse beating frantically beneath his fingers, and awareness of her proximity and her feminine warmth tingled through his aching body. He did his best to ignore it. This was just another natural reaction, the same thing that had happened last night when he’d looked at her breasts. It was a consequence of his anxiety, or his adrenaline, nothing more.

  He wouldn’t let it be anything more.

  “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll keep the truth to myself on one condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “That you give me an exclusive on the story once you finish your investigation.”

  He should have known there’d be a business angle, that a woman like Lauren wouldn’t let sentiment or trust rule her actions. “It’s a deal.”

  She pulled her hands from his and stepped back. “Fine. I’m going to want some more details.”

  “Later. Right now we’d better get moving.”

  “What?”

  “I intended to be out of here before it got light.” He glanced at the rain that smeared the bedroom window. “At least with this weather there won’t be many people out on the street.”

  “You’re in no shape to go anywhere. You can’t even walk on your own.”

  Taking a deep breath, he reached behind him for his boot. Spots danced in front of his eyes, but he managed to jam his foot inside and push himself upright. He gathered the notes that he’d left on the bedside table, stuffed them into a large envelope and slipped it inside his shirt. “I got what I came back for. And I’m not going to wait around here to see who else decides to drop in.”

  “But where will you go?”

  Good question. He limped across the room, pausing to pick up his wet clothes and roll them into a tight bundle. He needed a place to stay, to recover his strength and to let his knee have a chance to heal. But the more people who knew about his deception, the more risk there was that word might get back to Duxbury. Bracing his hand on the door frame for balance, he looked at Lauren.

  The solution was obvious. She wanted his story, he wanted somewhere to hide out where no one would think to look for him.

  “Nick?”

  “Did you bring a car?”

  “Yes. It’s parked out front.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Yes, but what does that have to do with—”

  “Have you seen my other boot?”

  “It’s in the kitchen.”

  He set his jaw against the pain and walked through his apartment, carefully gathering up any traces of his recent presence. He pulled on his second boot and tucked his knife safely into place beside his ankle, then put on a hooded sweatshirt.

  Lauren followed him. “Nick, what are you going to do?”

  “Can you bring your car around to the back of the building?” he asked, adjusting the hood so that it covered his forehead. “There’s a steel door at the bottom of the fire escape that can’t be seen from the street.”

  “I take it this is your way of asking me to drive you somewhere,” she said, picking up a bloodied tissue from the counter between her thumb and forefinger.

  He took the tissue from her and stuffed it into his pocket. “Right.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Your place.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not serious.”

  “Do you want my story or not?”

  “Of course, but I report the news, Nick. I’m not going to get personally involved in—”

  “Too late,” he said, slinging his arm across her shoulders. Using her to help him balance, he guided them both toward the front door. “You got involved the minute you sat beside me on that plane.”

  Lauren had never thought of her apartment as being small. It had only one bedroom, but it was large, bright and more than adequate for her needs. The white-tiled kitchen was a model of efficient design and was fully equipped with every labor-saving appliance. The teak dining table and chairs that occupied the space between the kitchen and the balcony window looked clean and uncluttered. And the rest of the main room, from the long, low couch to the teak-and-glass entertainment center and the grandfather clock in the corner, had always given an impression of spaciousness.

  Yet from the moment Nick limped through her door, the place seemed to shrink.

  It was because of that energy he had around him, that overwhelming presence she’d noticed from the first. Despite his weakened state, and the pain he was so obviously fighting, his vitality stirred a response in her, crowding her into awareness.

  Of course, his physical size alone was enough to crowd anyone. Even without his boots he was at least two inches over six feet. She’d already felt his weight, so she knew he had to be close to two hundred pounds of solid muscle. And it was solid, all right. She’d suspected as much last night, and she’d seen it and felt it for herself this morning.

  Oh, yes, she’d felt it. Touching his chest had been like running her fingers over living steel. Only his skin had been warm, and the black hair that had tickled her fingertips had been a silky, tempting swath that narrowed to a provocative line that disappeared invitingly beneath his waistband. He’d been swaying on his feet, unable to support his weight, so how could she have been thinking about where that line of silky hair might lead?

  This wasn’t like her, to fantasize about touching anyone. She wasn’t a person normally comfortable with touching. Her concept of personal space tended to encompass a zone around her that kept most people at a safe distance. She wasn’t at ease with casual contact like a pat on the shoulder, or a touch on the arm, or a passing kiss on the cheek. Under normal circumstances, she avoided anything other than a handshake.

  Of course, these circumstances weren’t anywhere near normal. And Nick Strada wasn’t only intruding into her personal space, he had barged into her life.

  He looked so out of place here in her cool beige-and-ivory living room, with his blue jeans and chambray shirt and the rough black stubble on his taut, square jaw. Even though he had barely had enough strength to pull off his hooded sweatshirt, cross the room and stretch out on the couch, he somehow still managed to dominate this once-sedate, familiar environment. He was exhausted and half conscious, but the masculine aura that surrounded him hadn’t dimmed.

  If anything, it had grown more intense the longer he’d been with her.

  “All done?”

  She jerked her hand away, and the tape she had been smoothing into place on Nick’s forehead stuck to her thumb. “Sorry. I’ll be through in a minute.”

  Nick shifted on the couch, leaning his head back against the pillows she had propped behind him. “Just slap a Band-Aid on and forget it.”

  Lauren pulled her chair closer. Carefully repositioning the makeshift suture, she squeezed together the edges of the gash. “It’ll heal better if it’s closed.”

  “I thought you said you don’t know much about first aid.”

  “I don’t. This is common sense.” She rubbed the ends of the tape gently to anchor them in place. “Even with this tape, the wound will probably scar, you know.”

  He lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “It’ll match the other one.”

 
Her gaze moved to the small crescent of white beside his left eye. “How did you get that?”

  “I stepped into the middle of a turf war.”

  “What was it? Drug dealers? Gang members?”

  “My sisters.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dispute over a tree house when they were kids. I fell out.” The lines beside his mouth deepened as he tightened his jaw. “God, I hope they’re all right.”

  She thought of the photograph with the bevy of smiling women, and the connection clicked in her brain. “How many sisters do you have, Nick?”

  “Four.”

  There had been five women in the photo. The eldest must have been his mother. “Do they all live in Chicago?”

  “Yeah. Rose and Juanita share an apartment, but Barb and Tina still live at home with our mother.”

  “And your father?”

  “He died. Are you almost finished?”

  She recognized the distant tone in his voice. It was the same one she used herself when she didn’t want anyone to get too personal.

  A lock of dark brown hair fell across the bandage she’d placed on his forehead. Lauren felt an urge to stroke it back, to learn its texture and warmth, to rub it between her fingers. She drew in a shaky breath and dipped the glass wand back into the bottle of disinfectant. “Better take off your shirt.”

  “What?”

  “If you have any scratches, they should be disinfected, too. The water you were supposedly drowning in last night isn’t exactly sterile.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Better let me take a look.”

  “Now you’re sounding like my mother.”

  “I assure you, Nick, I don’t have a maternal bone in my body.”

  His gaze flicked down and then up. A distinctly male gleam came into his eyes for a moment, like the glimpse of sunrise through a tightly drawn curtain. But then he set his jaw, braced his elbows against the couch and levered himself into a sitting position. He blinked and breathed in deeply a few times before he was able to start unfastening the buttons of his shirt.

  She itched to help him, to brush his hands aside and ease those buttons through the washed-soft chambray herself. Instead, she went on with her questioning, as if this were a normal interview, as if she always spoke calmly to men who were undressing on her couch. “Are the police providing your mother and sisters with any protection?”

  He grunted. “Not really. I told my family to stay out of sight until I finish the case I’m working on, but they won’t be hiding now that they think I’m dead.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t know all the details, but they do know the purpose of the contract was to get me off the case. My death supposedly did that, so my family should be safe.”

  “What kind of case is it that you’re working on, Nick?”

  “Homicide,” he said curtly. “Hit and run.”

  “And you think you know who did it?”

  “Absolutely. I was there. I looked the bastard right in the eye as he drove past.”

  “Sounds as if the case is solved.”

  “He reported his car was stolen and arranged for an alibi. His lawyers claim I was too...distraught. Yeah, that’s the word they used. Too distraught to see clearly.”

  “Why would they say that?”

  “Because it was my partner that he ran down.”

  “Your partner?”

  He peeled off his shirt and dropped it to the floor. He held himself stiffly, as if combating the pain of movement as much as the pain of memory. “His name was Joey McMillan. We’d worked together for almost three years. He was a good man, saved my butt more than once. After some of the situations we’d been in, I never thought he’d go that way, getting hit by some suit in an eighty-thousand-dollar car.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.”

  “Yeah, well, I intend to get the bastard. I know Joey would have done the same for me.”

  She lowered her gaze, and her next question escaped her. She knew she should be focusing on his injuries, keeping her distance, treating him with professional indifference, but, God, his chest was magnificent. From his broad shoulders to his washboard stomach, he was all leanly sculpted muscle. Taut skin over living steel. A strip of tempting, silky black hair leading to...

  Clearing her throat, she concentrated on the mottled purple swelling on the side of his ribs. A jagged red scrape mark oozed across the center. “This is going to sting,” she warned.

  He didn’t flinch as she tended to him. “It was a silver Jag,” he went on. “Ran a red light, swerved onto the sidewalk to miss a truck and knocked Joey through a plate-glass window.”

  “Who was driving the car, Nick?”

  He lifted his head to look at her, his jaw working for a moment. “Adam Duxbury.”

  The name shocked her back to complete alertness. “Adam Duxbury? Of Duxbury Enterprises?”

  “I see you’ve heard of him.”

  “Heard of him? I did an item on him two months ago when he donated that building to the city for a homeless shelter. My God, are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But if the car was traveling fast and you’d just seen your partner—”

  “I’m sure, Lauren. As sure as I can see that your eyes are green, and that your hair is starting to slide out of that clip it’s twisted into, I saw Adam Duxbury kill my partner.”

  “But...” She sat back, struck by the complete certainty of Nick’s expression. “He’s on half the boards of directors in this city. There’s talk of him running for Congress.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that he’s guilty of murder.”

  “That’s... unbelievable.”

  “That’s what he’s counting on.”

  “But—”

  “Duxbury arranged an alibi even before Joey got to the hospital. One of his vice presidents, some guy named Kohl, swore they were having a business meeting right up until the time they drove together to a charity fund-raiser.”

  Frowning, she placed a folded strip of gauze over the wound beneath his ribs and taped it into place. “It’s your word against theirs.”

  “It is now. I’d been putting pressure on Kohl, trying to shake his story, and it was starting to pay off. He was getting nervous, called me up, said he wanted to change his statement, but he never showed up for the meeting we arranged.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I found out that Duxbury had sent him to some emergency meeting in New York, so I followed him there.”

  “So that’s why you were in New York,” she said. “What happened?”

  “I was too late. Within hours, Duxbury gave him a promotion, made him president of one of his subsidiary companies and transferred him to Buenos Aires.”

  “And I assume Kohl is no longer willing to testify?”

  “Right. The promotion came with a sudden case of amnesia.”

  “But what if you’re wrong, if the man really had been confused and if he was about to be promoted, anyway? And how could someone as well-respected as Duxbury have the connections to... to put out a contract on you and your family?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out.”

  “It’s simply... incredible. I didn’t find even a hint of anything shady when I researched Duxbury’s background.”

  “Maybe you didn’t dig deep enough.”

  “I know my job, Nick.”

  “And I know mine. You don’t have to believe me. All I really need from you is your silence.” He looked at her, his jaw flexing, his gaze hard with determination. “I can find somewhere else to stay.”

  “No,” she said quickly, reaching out to grasp his hand. “Don’t leave. I...” She hesitated, disturbed by the strength of her desire to keep him here. “I still want your story. Whether or not you’re right about Duxbury doesn’t change that. You’re Gord’s dead hero, and I want to be the one to break the news about your return.”

  “And getting the story is all t
hat matters, right?”

  “Yes. Just like bringing your partner’s killer to justice is all that matters to you.”

  Beneath her fingers, his hand hardened into a fist. “That about sums it up, doesn’t it?”

  “We’ll both get what we want more easily if you stay here.”

  “For how long, Lauren?”

  “Until you’re ready to end the hoax.”

  “You didn’t sound too pleased with the idea an hour ago.”

  “I’ve had a chance to think since then. It doesn’t make any sense for you to risk—” She broke off, looking over her shoulder.

  There was a quiet knock on the front door.

  Nick sat forward, his body tensing. “Are you expecting someone?” he whispered.

  She opened her mouth to reply just as there was a second knock, this one followed by a soft voice calling her name. She tightened her grip on Nick’s hand and rose to her feet. “It’s my sister.”

  “Will she go away?”

  “Probably not. She has a key.”

  “Aw, hell,” he muttered, using the coffee table and Lauren’s help to haul himself upright. “This is already complicated enough. I can’t let her see me.”

  Pulling his arm over her shoulders, she fitted herself against his side in a way that was becoming oddly familiar. She staggered as he leaned into her. “Can you make it to the bedroom?”

  He limped forward slowly, his face draining of color. “I’ll make it. Just point me the right way.”

  “Lauren?” Angela’s voice was louder, more urgent. She knocked harder. “Lauren, are you all right?”

  “I’m coming,” she called. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of Nick’s jeans and kept moving. “Just a minute.”

  They reached the bedroom doorway and stumbled through. Nick started to pull away from her, but Lauren hung on until she’d guided him as far as the bed.

  “My shirt,” Nick said, glancing behind them. “I left it on the floor.”

  “I’ll get it later.”

  He took another step forward, but his foot caught the edge of the bedspread. Off balance, he fell across the mattress. Unable to release her hold on him fast enough, Lauren was dragged along with him.