Amnesia (37 page)

“Let’s leave discussions about my mother and my childhood
for another time,” he said. “Why ruin a perfectly beautiful afternoon?”

Annabelle wanted to ask him more about his mother and their relationship. Playing amateur psychiatrist, she could put together several scenarios to explain why apparently Quinn had never been in a long-lasting, committed relationship. He probably didn’t trust women in general because he’d never been able to trust and rely on his own mother. And since his only example of male/female partnering had been his mother’s promiscuous liaisons, becoming a ladies’ man must have seemed the most natural thing in the world to him.

“All women aren’t the same, you know,” Annabelle said as she cuddled once again in his arms.

“A man knows some things, here.” He tapped the side of his head. “And some things here.” After tightening one hand into a fist, he pressed it against his belly.

Annabelle grasped his hand, unfurled his fingers and placed his open palm over her heart. “And some things in here.” She kept her hand over his. “That’s where I want you to know how you feel about me and how I feel about you.”

“I’m not very experienced at using my heart,” he admitted. “I use my brains, my gut instincts and on occasion, my animal needs. Feelings are something I don’t think about much and I sure as hell don’t talk about them.” He flipped his hand over and grasped hers, then dragged it down her body until they reached the apex between her thighs. “I know more about what a woman feels down here than I do about what’s going on in her heart.” He pressed their joined hands against her mound.

At his touch, her body clenched and tingled, sending out sexual signals. “I want us to make love and if that’s all you can give me, then I’ll take it and be glad to be your lover,” Annabelle told him. “But I’ll warn you, Quinn Cortez, I want more. I’m one of those women who prefers that sex and love be combined in a relationship. And even if you think you aren’t capable of loving someone the way I want to
be loved, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve fallen in love with you.”

He hugged her fiercely, yet tenderly. Leaning forward and burying his face against her neck, he whispered, “That fact should scare me. It should make me want to run. But it doesn’t scare me and God knows I never want to run from you.” He lifted his head and rubbed his cheek against hers. “But Anna-belle, my darling Annabelle…you deserve so much better.”

She turned in his arms again and wrapped herself around him. “What you’re really thinking is that you don’t deserve me.”

“You’re right—I don’t deserve you. You’re much too good for the likes of me.”

“I don’t see it that way,” she told him as she caressed his cheek, the light beard stubble rough on her soft fingers. “I think you need me. I think I’m the woman you do deserve, a woman who can love you with all her heart. A woman who is capable of devotion and fidelity, a woman you can trust.”

Quinn closed his eyes as if her touch and her words combined were more than he could bear. “You deserve a man capable of giving back those same things to you.”

She cupped his face, then ran the tip of her thumb across his slightly parted lips. “I hear reformed bad boys make great husbands.”

Quinn grinned. “You heard that, did you?”

“Mmm-hmm. It’s like sinners who get religion and become religious fanatics. It’s a scenario as old as time—bad boy meets good girl and changes his ways. The beast learns that being loved by the right woman can turn him into prince charming.”

“Do you believe in fairy tales,
querida
?”

“Yes, I do.”

He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “I should have known you were a romantic.”

She sighed. “When I was twenty-two, I became engaged
to someone I thought was the love of my life. Christopher. He was everything I wanted in a man, in a husband, in a father for my children.”

Quinn tensed. “Why are you telling me about this man?”

“Only a short time before our wedding, Chris nearly died in a horrific car crash. His injuries left him paralyzed. I wanted us to marry, but he wouldn’t marry me because…” She swallowed. “Chris wasn’t able to have sex.”

Quinn said nothing.

“I loved Chris with all my heart and we remained engaged until the day he died, two years ago. During all those years, I remained faithful to Chris, except for…I had a one-night stand with an old friend over five years after Chris’s wreck and later I had a brief affair with a man I admired and respected, but there was never anyone in my heart, except Chris.” She shivered when Quinn kissed her fingers. “When I love, I love completely, with all that is in me. No half measures. If our relationship goes beyond a brief affair, I will be yours—heart, mind, body and soul.”

Quinn kissed her fingers, her hand, rubbing his mouth over her flesh as he closed his eyes. “Somehow I knew— instinctively—the moment I first saw you that you were different, that you were special. The feeling hit me like a bolt out of the blue.” He opened his eyes, held their hands between their bodies and gazed adoringly at her. “Getting involved with me is wrong for you. You should kick me out of here, tell me to go away, leave you alone and never bother you again. If you were smart you’d—”

“I’m in love with you. Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe I’ll live to regret it. But I can’t change it. I don’t think I’d change it if I could. Loving you feels so…so incredible.”

He settled her back into his arms and held her. The quiet hush of the afternoon, alone together in Annabelle’s suite, enveloped them. They lay there on the sofa, savoring the delicious contentment of being wrapped up in each other, physically and emotionally. There was no place on earth Annabelle would rather be, no other man she wanted. Now or ever.

* * *

Marcy looked at her watch again. Eight-fifteen. Where the hell was Quinn? Why hadn’t he bothered to call her? Didn’t he realize that she worried about him? She glanced at the wall phone there in the kitchen, wishing it would ring.

“Why don’t you just call him?” Aaron said as he came into the room.

“What?” Marcy snapped around and glared at him.

“The boss man hasn’t checked in all day and you’re worried. Call him.”

“I shouldn’t bother him.”

Aaron slipped his arms around her waist and dragged her back against him, then kissed her on the nape of her neck. “If you’re worried about Quinn, you’ll fuss and fume all evening instead of mellowing out with me and a good bottle of wine.”

“What makes you think I’m going to mellow out with you?”

“Because you want more of what I’ve got to give. And don’t deny it.”

“I didn’t intend to deny anything,” she told him.

“So call Quinn, find out where he is and ask him if he’s coming home tonight. If he is, you’ll want to make sure he doesn’t catch us. After all, you’re still fantasizing that one of these days you’ll be the love of Quinn’s life.”

“Shut up.”

“Just call him, will you?” Aaron released her, went to the refrigerator and grabbed a canned cola.

“I do need to know whether or not he’ll be home for supper.”

“Good enough excuse.”

Marcy’s hand wavered over the wall phone.
Just dial his cell number. When he answers ask if he’ll be home for supper. Like Aaron said, it’s a good excuse to contact him
. She glanced over her shoulder at Aaron.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I know you want your privacy for when you talk to lover boy.”

The minute Aaron walked out of the kitchen, she lifted the receiver and dialed Quinn’s cell number. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, just when she thought voice mail would pick up, she heard Quinn’s voice and she also heard music in the background. And something that sounded like the drone of voices.

“Quinn, it’s Marcy.”

“Yeah? What do you want? Has something happened?” Quinn asked.

“No, no. Everything is okay. I—I just wondered—”

“Talk louder, will you, honey?”

She hadn’t realized that she’d been practically whispering. “Where are you?”

“At Chez Philippe, at the Peabody. Annabelle and I are having dinner.”

“Oh.” He was with her. Lulu’s cousin. How could he wine and dine his former lover’s cousin? What kind of woman was she to succumb so easily to Quinn’s advances? “I guess that answers my question.”

“What question?”

“I just wanted to know if you were coming home for supper.”

“Oh, Marcy, I’m sorry. I should have called you. I wasn’t thinking. Annabelle and I have spent the day together and I just forgot to phone.”

He’d spent the day with her. Had they been making love? Had Annabelle Vanderley become Quinn’s latest conquest? “Aaron told me that neither you nor he turned out to be the father of Lulu’s baby. That’s good. For both of you.”

“Yes, it was. But unfortunately it doesn’t let me off the hook,” Quinn told her. “Look, I’ll explain everything to y’all tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Marcy thought she heard a woman’s voice. Soft, wispy. Annabelle?

Quinn laughed quietly, a sensual tone in the sound. “Marcy, I won’t be home tonight.”

That’s what Annabelle had said to him, wasn’t it? Those were the words Marcy had thought she’d heard the woman say.
Tell her you won’t be home tonight
.

“Have a nice time,” Marcy finally managed to say.

“See you tomorrow, honey.” The line went dead. Marcy stood there in the kitchen, the phone clutched in her hand, and cried.
Idiot. You’re so stupid, Marcy. You knew there would be another woman. There always is. And you figured it would be Annabelle Vanderley
.

Damn Annabelle. Damn her and all the other women Quinn had ever been with. She hated Annabelle. She hated them all. Every last one of them.

Sanders served Griffin coffee while he checked his e-mail. “Would you care for anything else, sir?”

“No, nothing.” Griffin opened the e-mail from Lieutenant Craig Stovall, Baytown PD. Stovall had been the lead detective on the Kelley Fleming murder case two years ago. Ben Sullivan would be in Baytown by morning, looking for a photo of Kelley and digging up all the information he could find.

Scanning the message quickly, Griffin hit
PRINT
, then turned to Sanders who was halfway across the room. “Wait up.”

Sanders pivoted quickly. “Yes, sir?”

“See if you can track down Jim Norton,” Griffin said. “If you can, ask him to drop by this evening if he will. I have several other phone calls to make.”

Sanders nodded.

Griffin telephoned Ben Sullivan, issued him some last minute orders, then phoned Judd Walker’s room.

“Walker here.”

“Judd, it’s Griffin. I just received an e-mail from Lieutenant Stovall from the Baytown PD. He’ll fax me a crime scene photo of Kelley Fleming tomorrow morning, but he went
ahead and gave me the basic info on her. The woman was forty, had lived in Baytown for only a couple of years. She worked as a waitress. Didn’t have any close friends. Lived in a duplex apartment. Kept to herself. The neighbors said a teenage boy lived with her, but the police didn’t have any luck tracking down the kid. He wasn’t enrolled in school and nobody even knew his name.”

“That’s interesting,” Judd said.

“Gets more interesting. Kelley Fleming was an alias. Her driver’s license, social security card—everything—was bogus. They ran an article about her and the only photo they had of her in the newspaper, asking anyone who had information to come forward, but got no response.”

“Do you think Quinn might have known this woman under a different name?”

“Possibly. We’ll show him the crime scene photo and see if he recognizes her.”

“Did the police think maybe the kid killed her?”

“That was one theory and a boyfriend was another, but they never found the kid or a boyfriend,” Griffin said.

“Could be the teenage boy was her boyfriend.”

“Could be. Another theory was that the murderer might have been a serial killer, but when they checked for similar murders, they came up with zero. But if she was the first…Quinn’s involved in this somehow, someway. He didn’t murder these five women, but someone is killing them because they were involved with Quinn.”

“That means Kelley Fleming or whoever the hell she was must have been one of Quinn’s girlfriends.”

“Why would someone want to kill Quinn’s girlfriends?”

“Jealousy,” Judd said. “A woman who wants Quinn all to herself and is killing off the competition.”

“Hmm…Or a man who hates Quinn and wants to pin these murders on him.”

“Quinn has probably made a lot of enemies over the years, broken quite a few female hearts and pissed off more than his share of men.”

“Looking for a possible murderer among Quinn’s enemies will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

Quinn held Annabelle in his arms as they danced slowly, languidly to the soft strains of a quiet-times, cool jazz number playing on the radio. The alto sax mourned low and sweet, while the bass strummed the lazy beat. With her head on his shoulder and her arms draped around his neck, Annabelle sighed. When, with very little interruption, one tune ended and another began, they barely noticed and stayed in each other’s arms, their bodies continuing to sway. As the next tune began, a moody, melancholy rendition of “Body and Soul,” Quinn brushed his lips across her temple and down her cheekbone.

Nothing had ever felt this right. Being with Annabelle, holding her, dancing with her, kissing her. Despite the horrors surrounding them—the unsolved murders in which he was a suspect—they had been able to separate themselves from the rest of the world this afternoon and evening. After tender, loving hours spent on the sofa in each other’s arms, Quinn had called Chez Philippe for dinner reservations. They had dined on one of Chef Jose’s specialties—filet de veau. After dinner, Quinn had ordered chilled champagne and an assortment of desserts to be delivered to their room.

For the past hour, they had been sipping champagne, nibbling on chocolates and dancing. Mostly dancing. Neither wanted to be out of touching distance. And the closer, the better.

Quinn had spent hours making love to a woman before and he’d also enjoyed his share of quickies. He had wined and dined plenty of lovely ladies. And on occasion he had forgone any preliminaries and just screwed a woman. But nothing in his past compared to what he was sharing with Annabelle.