His Partner's Wife (12 page)

Determined not to let fear get the better of her, Natalie
walked through the house, looking in closets and under the bed. At last, she
stood in front of the study with her heart drumming. The yellow tape was gone.
Still, as she made herself push open the door she had a disquieting feeling of
déjà vu. She had stepped into her waking nightmare.

Thank heavens, the reality was different from her fears. The
fingerprint powder was smudged and tracked on the carpet. The bloodstain was
smaller than she'd anticipated. Otherwise, the study hadn't changed. If a
spirit lingered here, it was Stuart's, not faceless Ronald Floyd's.

Standing in the doorway, Natalie churned with uncomfortable
emotions. The truth was, she'd avoided this room ever since Stuart had died.
She hated it, the masculine beiges and heavy furniture, the labeled cartons
full of the residue of his life before her, separate from her. This study
symbolized for her an unhappy facet of her marriage: the realization that
Stuart had acquired her much as he had the big-screen TV. He wanted her, he
liked her, perhaps he even thought he loved her, but she belonged only in
certain parts of the house, in certain parts of his life. Her secret dreams of
someone who would let her inside as he would let no one else, who would want to
know
her
as no one else ever had, had been trampled by the Stuart who
would look at her with vague irritation if she intruded in here when he was
paying bills or talking to some buddy on the phone, cigar smoke drifting
upward. In the three years of their marriage, Natalie had learned that much of
what Stuart had been or would be was closed to her. He was still the sexy man
she'd married, who could exert enormous charm when he cared to. But, beneath
the charm and his occasional, careless cruelty, she didn't really know him.

Every widow had moments when she forgot her husband was
dead, she'd been told. For some, it was when waking in the morning and reaching
for him, or hearing a joke or an intriguing bit of news and thinking,
I'll tell Bill.
For Natalie,
those moments had invariably come when she was passing the study. She'd
feel
him
inside, a palpable presence. But when she turned her head, of course, his desk
chair was empty, the radio he liked to listen to silent and gathering dust.

This room was the secretive part of him. Unless she gutted
it, it would always be his, would always rebuff her, would haunt her with what
would never be.

The desk would definitely go, she decided defiantly. And the
oak office chair that went with it. She'd make it a study for herself, airy and
pretty. Maryke and her husband and children were coming for Christmas this
year, which gave her incentive to get started. With the room remodeled, a
roll-away could go in here for the kids, and Maryke and Reeve could have the guest
room downstairs. Work on the house would reassure Maryke that Natalie was
recovering from Stuart's death.

Her gaze stole to that unexpectedly small but dark stain on
the beige carpet. Perhaps she
would
have carpet cleaners come after all, since she'd have to
spend time in here as she decided what of Stuart's to keep and what to throw
out. Stepping around a man's lifeblood seemed unbearably macabre.

Downstairs again, she found that John had left a phone
message, too, telling her to call if she wanted to talk. He'd done the same a
couple of times a week since Stuart died. Often she did return his call. They
were the best friends then, his voice on the phone not the same as a living,
breathing, powerfully built man in person. Maybe he was relieved, too, to be
able to forget his buddy was a woman. Their phone relationship was like having
a pen pal, Natalie guessed. There was a kind of anonymity in a telephone or
e-mail friendship.

Every time John had been here a good deal, like when he was
rebuilding her fence or this summer when he painted her house, she'd begun to
feel uncomfortable in some way she had never wanted to analyze.

Natalie made a face.
Oh,
come on,
she jeered herself.
Why lie to me, myself and I?
Face it, his sheer physical presence was what unsettled her.
When he painted her house, he'd worn faded jeans and, in the heat of the sun,
stripped off his T-shirt, baring rippling muscles and sweat-slick tanned skin.
He was pure male, and she didn't want to think of him that way. She wanted him
to be genderless, unthreatening. She didn't want to feel…

Natalie swallowed, the telephone still in her hand. Slowly
she hung it on the cradle and finished her own sentence.

She didn't want to feel
aware.
Tingling,
warm, excited, alive. And she couldn't help it when she was with him.

Maybe he hadn't acted different after that night they'd
talked at his house. Maybe
she
was the one who'd frozen in panic after she'd sat there in
her bathrobe, conscious of the intimacy and her relative state of undress, of
the tiredness and discouragement that made him seem so approachable, of the
fact that they were the only people in the house awake. She'd sat close enough
to see his spiky eyelashes and the bristle on his unshaven jaw, the lines that
fanned from the corners of his eyes, the easing of his hard mouth as he smiled,
the bluntness of his fingers, the…

Humiliated, Natalie moaned and buried her face in her hands.
That night, she had not
once
consciously thought,
This
man arouses me,
but she had gone back to
bed aching and restless and thinking about him, if not in that way.

Wonderful. She was attracted to Det. John McLean and was
admitting that fact just when she needed him most and when he felt his honor
required that he take care of her. How horrible if he ever suspected, even for
a moment, how she felt!

Lifting her head, dry-eyed, Natalie thought,
We are friends. We can be just friends.

But not tonight. Tonight she wouldn't call him back.

Perhaps it was time she started dating. Maybe that was the
trouble. She'd been alone for a year now. Her emotions and body both had
thawed, and John was the nearest unmarried man. What she would do was let her
friends know she was ready to date. They were always suggesting somebody. Far
better to take that route than to turn her loneliness into a crush on John.

She went about her evening chores more absent-mindedly than
last night. Sasha decided to sleep with her again, and Natalie thought maybe
she'd leave the litter box up here for good rather than putting it back in the
garage when the police were done. Especially if she was going to keep the
bedroom door closed and locked at night.

She read for a few minutes, then turned out the light. She
hadn't lain there in the dark for more than a minute before, feeling silly, she
switched the light back on and got out of bed to brace the darned chair under
the bedroom doorknob.

"Who's to know?" she asked the cat, and went back
to bed.

When she awakened with a start hours later, her first,
grumbling thought was that Sasha had walked on her. Feeling disoriented, she
rolled over to see the digital clock. The glowing green numerals told her it
was 12:51.

Mind less foggy, eyes adjusting to the dark, Natalie saw
Sasha on the floor halfway to the door. She seemed to be frozen, staring at the
door.

Natalie was reaching for the lamp when she heard an audible
thump. Pure terror shivered over her skin and stopped her breath.

Not moving a muscle, she strained her ears. Her lungs were
ready to explode when another sound came. A bump. As if somebody in the next
room, in Stuart's study, had knocked against the closet door or the desk.

She was not alone in the house.

Chapter
6

«
^
»

J
ohn liked kicking back
with his brothers. Connor was his closest friend, Hugh next
best, maybe just because he was the youngest, but they were still close. Since
John was tied down by the kids, the brothers tended to hang out here, at his
place.

Tonight Hugh had cooked spaghetti, his specialty, with
Maddie's earnest help. She softened him up. As a cop and a man, he was too
hard-assed for John's taste—come to think of it, maybe
that
was why
he was John's second-favorite brother. Having listened too closely to his
mother, Hugh's mission in life was to get the scumbags off the street. Problem
was, Hugh was far too quick to decide someone was a scumbag. Excuses left him
unmoved, and the word
sympathy
was not in his vocabulary. If someone
didn't have his sense of morality, he didn't bother trying to understand why
not or see their viewpoint. John and Connor worried about shades of gray; Hugh
apparently wore glasses that made the world clear-cut black-and-white.

But with Maddie and Evan, Hugh laughed often, made
ridiculous jokes, and even seemed to feel occasional twinges of tenderness.
John had hopes that fatherhood would one day seriously change his outlook on
human nature.

The brothers didn't talk shop until John had tucked the kids
into bed. Hugh was the only one of them still in uniform; John was a detective
in Major Crimes, while Connor had gotten sucked into the child abuse unit,
where he saw some of the ugliest human behavior of all. John didn't envy him.
Hugh liked patrol work and scoffed at desk jockeys playing banker in their
suits and ties.

Tonight, Connor had been particularly quiet during dinner,
his gaze often resting on Maddie. John knew he was working a vicious
rape-beating case of a little girl. She'd been left in a coma.

With the kids upstairs and out of earshot, John asked him
about the investigation.

Silent for a moment, Connor shook his head at last,
bafflement written on his blunt face. "What the hell. There's no doubt
Mama's boyfriend did it. She's the only one who won't believe it. Says some
stranger broke in." He grunted. "Of course, he had to have locked the
door on his way out—oh, yeah, and put the chain on. The place was locked up
tight."

"Idiot," was John's comment.

Expression hard, Hugh said, "I hope you broke all his
fingers."

His big hand squeezing the beer can until it began to
crumple, Connor growled, "I'd like to do worse than that to him, but I was
civil." He paused. "I don't envy him once he's in the pen. Boys there
don't like child rapists."

Nobody commented; they didn't have to. At the Washington State
Penitentiaries in Walla Walla and Monroe, child abusers were often kept in
solitary for their own protection. The toughest drug lord had kids. You might
sell heroin to a thirteen-year-old, but you didn't rape a six-year-old girl.

"Another beer?" Connor asked and, after a round of
nods, went to the kitchen. The biggest and beefiest of the three brothers, he
was dressed down tonight in faded jeans with holes worn at the knees and a
T-shirt that might once have been green. On his return, he tossed them each a
cold one. "We should have cleaned up earlier," he announced.
"Now I don't want to."

"I cooked," Hugh said peaceably.

John shrugged. "I'll do it later."

His youngest brother peeled the tab and took a swallow.
Nodding at John, Hugh asked, "You getting anywhere on Natalie Reed's
body?"

"That could be taken two ways," Connor observed,
an undertone of humor in his voice.

"No," John snapped, giving his brother a sizzling
stare. "It couldn't."

Both paused with beer cans suspended halfway to their mouths
and studied him with raised brows. "Touchy," Connor said at last.

"She's a widow," John said between gritted teeth.

"Widows remarry."

"Or screw traveling salesmen," Hugh suggested.

John uttered an obscenity. "Stuart Reed was my partner.
I'm taking care of his widow. End of story."

"Uh-huh." Doubt from middle brother.

"Yeah. Sure." Mockery from baby brother.

John swore again. They laughed.

Connor had the grace to sober first. "We're just giving
you a hard time. She's a looker and a nice lady. It's time you noticed."