His Partner's Wife (29 page)

Spots of color touched her elegant cheekbones, and he
realized he had—what?—embarrassed her? Angered her? As always, it was hard to
tell.

After a moment, she gave her head an acknowledging dip.
"Very well." She reached for her fork and uncharacteristically
fumbled before picking it up, looking at it as if she had no idea what it was,
and setting it back down. Still gazing down at the fork, she said stiffly,
"Affection, in the way you mean, doesn't come naturally to me."

John was startled and uneasy. They never talked about things
like this. Not once, either as a teenager or an adult, had he expressed his
quiet resentment, and not once in all these years had she attempted to explain
why she had been something closer to a boot camp sergeant than a mother.
Dipping even a toe in these waters made him shift in his seat.

"Your praise means a great deal to him. Physical
affection isn't really what I'm talking about."

His mother nodded. For a moment she said nothing, her
dignity intact, her carriage proud. But then she surprised him yet again.

"I've noticed how comfortable you are hugging your
children. I'm well aware I wasn't demonstrative. How is it that you can
be?"

Only long practice at taking the stand to be grilled by
defense attorneys allowed John not to show his discomfiture.

"I've made a conscious effort," he said quietly.
"And also…" He paused, briefly undecided, then gave a mental shrug.
She was the one who'd opened the door. "Unlike Connor and Hugh, I remember
the days before Dad died. He was … easier with touches than you were. But I
remember you hugging me and kissing owies to make them better and reading to
us, with all three of us squeezed up against you and draped over your shoulder.
It wasn't until after—" he didn't have to say after what "—that you
became more remote."

Now she did bow her head, and he was shocked to realize that
he'd seen a glint of tears.

Impulsively he reached across the table. "Damn. I'm
sorry, Mom."

A handclasp was beyond her, but she gave his hand a quick,
nervous pat, took a deep breath and looked up. "Those were hard
days." Explanation? Or apology?

"I'm well aware," he said. "I wasn't
criticizing."

Her expression was more troubled than he remembered seeing
in a woman of unshakable resolve. "I hardly knew I'd changed."

John mused, "I wonder what we'd all be like, if Dad was
still with us?"

Her back straightened and her mouth firmed. "Well, he's
not. Thanks to a madman who shouldn't have been in a position to hurt
anyone."

She'd found a familiar chord. Any weakness was behind her.
He knew what was coming next.

"You haven't arrested whoever murdered that man in
Natalie's house." His mother's tone said,
Why not?

Understanding that she was done discussing the past, John
said, "No, and we're pretty much stymied. If we don't get a break soon,
the case is going to end up on the back burner."

Officially, it might be in the inactive file. Unofficially
was another story. He, Hugh and Connor were going to move heaven and hell if
that was what it took to find out what cop had committed a brutal, drug-related
murder and then been willing to kill again to get his hands on his take. But
John wasn't about to tell his mother something he couldn't even tell his
partner.

She sniffed. "Can you really bring yourself to tell
that nice young woman she may have to live in fear from now on?"

"Live in fear?" John snorted.
"She
insisted
on moving home again yesterday. Insists
my
fears are unfounded."

"Then perhaps you'd best insure that they are.
Since—" her gaze was unexpectedly penetrating "—I have the feeling
you're fond of Natalie."

Fond. Oh, yeah. That was one way of putting it.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fond of her."

"As I'm sure she is of you."

"We're good friends."

His mother opened her mouth, then closed it.

"What?" he asked.

She gave a dry chuckle. "I was simply thinking better
of something I was tempted to say. Since I seem not to have been doing as well
as I thought I was with Maddie and Evan, I'm hardly the person to be dispensing
advice."

Intrigued, he leaned forward. "Mom, asking you to go
easy on Evan doesn't mean you—or your advice—aren't valuable. Spit it
out."

She raised her brows at the vulgarity but gave a small nod.
"Very well. It's just this—doing what you feel you must for Debbie does
not mean you're still married to her."

Surprised to realize she'd noticed more undercurrents than
he had guessed, John said after a moment, indirectly, "You never
remarried. Or even considered it, as far as I know."

"But then, your father and I were deeply in love. As I
doubt you and Debbie ever were." Apparently done with the subject, she
signaled the passing waiter. "I'd like some tea now. Please do see to it
that the boiling water is poured directly on the tea bag." She nodded,
dismissing him. "Thank you."

Glancing regretfully at his nearly untouched lunch, John put
out a hand to stop the waiter. "Coffee for me, please. Black is
fine."

He might not have had a chance to eat, but he'd seen some of
his mother's emotional walls crumble. No—too strong a word. Crack? Tremble, and
escape unscathed? Probably the latter, but interesting nonetheless. If he
wasn't imagining things, she'd expressed at least a hint of regret, a first as
far as he knew.

Did that mean something to him? He didn't know. He'd have to
think about it. If it turned out to mean something for Evan, that was what
counted.

As for her "advice," that was something he'd have
to think about, too. If his mother had taught him one thing, it was a sense of
duty. It was keeping his word.

Till death do us part.

But he was grateful every time he saw Debbie that he wasn't
still married to her. So maybe what he really needed to find out was whether
Natalie understood that he couldn't turn his back on his ex-wife if she needed
him.

Shaking his head, he thought,
Whoa.
He was
making some mighty big assumptions there. Especially since Natalie had fled his
house the moment that damned security system was installed. So maybe what he
needed to find out first was, what did he mean to Natalie?

Trouble was, John knew that was one question he couldn't
come right out and ask.

Alarm flared in his belly. Here they'd always been able to
talk about anything and everything, and now when it counted, he could kiss her but
he couldn't ask a straight question. Did that mean all his qualms about what
would happen once he touched her had been dead-on?

Chapter
13

«
^
»

T
he commentator gazed
solemnly at the camera. "Tonight, the only three
survivors of the fatal sinking of the Greek ferry are all in critical condition
at Athens hospitals. A spokesman reports that one has described a scene of
utter horror…"

Click. An extremely young Alan Alda donned a surgical mask
as camouflage-clad MASH staff rushed a gurney with a thrashing, bloody patient
to him. "More incoming wounded," someone intoned.

Wasn't there anything
cheerful
on television anymore? Natalie wondered
irritably. Click.
Sesame Street,
with puppets singing about the letter
A.

One more click, and the TV screen went blank. So there. She
didn't like to watch television anyway.

Only, the bright, flickering images and the human voices
were company. She just wished they wouldn't go on and on about death and
destruction.

The clock on the VCR said 7:40. Nowhere near bedtime. The kitchen was clean, the laundry done. She could sew—she'd washed the fabric
Sasha had shed on, and she could cut it out. With only the pinafore finished,
she needed to get moving—the wedding was fast approaching and her sister was
counting on her to get her niece's dress done. But tonight she felt too restless
to be careful, to concentrate.

A book, then. Except that a perusal of her shelves didn't
turn up anything that interested her. She should have gone to the library on
the way home from work. Tomorrow, Natalie promised herself. She glanced
disinterestedly through some catalogs that had arrived in the mail, then,
caught by a photograph of a model in the kitchen, decided to bake. She could
make cookies, and drop them off tomorrow at John's. For Maddie and Evan, and in
thanks to him for his help.

Of course,
he
would say she was trying to even the score. Get herself out
of debt.

Well, this time he was wrong. Natalie made a face. This time
all she was trying to do was think of an excuse to see John.

Momentarily she paused with the cookbook in her hand. He
wouldn't have to
know
why she was stopping by. He might not even be there. And it
was only courteous, wasn't it, to take them something?

Why hadn't he called? He'd said he would. She sighed,
looking at the clock on the stove. He might yet—he often did phone later, after
the kids were in bed.

And what was wrong with her, anyway? She'd never minded
living alone, either before her marriage or after. Again she made a face at her
own pronouncements.

Obviously, before marrying Stuart, she hadn't been as
contented as she'd thought herself, or she wouldn't have fallen so fast, so
gullibly. She must have been desperate for a home, husband and children.

But she wasn't
bored.
Natalie knew that much. She could entertain herself. And
since Stuart's death she had actually come to enjoy the quiet in the house.
He'd almost always had the TV on when he was home, which had bugged her. He
liked the canned voices. She'd come to realize he wasn't a self-sufficient man.
He wanted stimulation, company, admiration. Silence drove him crazy.

Wherever he had intended to go once he ditched her, it
wouldn't have been alone. Maybe he'd planned to buy a dumb, buxom blonde to
gaze admiringly at him, Natalie thought spitefully, then was ashamed of
herself.

The telephone stayed stubbornly silent, so she took the
canisters from the cupboard and began mixing a recipe for snickerdoodles she'd
never tried. The dough cooling in the freezer—why not hurry it up?—Natalie
hummed quietly as she hunted for the cookie press. Above the refrigerator,
maybe? Standing on a chair, she found it along with a waffle iron she never
used. Maybe she should get it down and have waffles for breakfast.

The telephone shrilled and she jumped enough to almost
overbalance from her precarious perch. Mumbling bad words under her breath,
Natalie climbed down with the cookie press clutched in her hand and reached for
the phone.

Sounding breathless, she said, "Hello?"

"Get you from the shower?" John asked.

To her annoyance, her heart leaped. "No, digging
something out of a cupboard."

"Yeah? What are you up to?"

Baking cookies for you. To give me an excuse to see you.

Impossible to say.

"Oh, cleaning the kitchen," she lied. "I
couldn't find … a new sponge."

"Oh, I saw 'em under the sink in the…" He stopped
and was silent for a moment. "I guess you don't need me reminding you that
I've stuck my nose in every cupboard in your house."

He
could
have told her where the cookie press was.

"That's okay," she said. "I want you to find
out what Stuart did with the money, or who has it. And who killed that man
upstairs." More lightly, she added, "I just hope it wasn't too much
of a shock to find out that I'm not Miss Suzie Homemaker."

"Oh, I don't know. The number of times you've brought
me cookies, I might award you the title, cobwebs behind the bookcases or
not."