Holding the Dream (22 page)

“Now why was that?”

“Because I didn't want to take anything else from them. I wanted to go out on my own. They respected my decision.”

“And the door remained open,” Josh put in. “Anytime Kate wanted to walk through. Detective, I don't see what this line of questioning has to do with the matter at hand.”

“Just laying a foundation.” Despite the recorder, he continued to make little notations in his tattered notebook. “Ms.
Powell, what was your salary at Bittle at the time of your termination?”

“A base of fifty-two-five, plus bonus.”

“Fifty-two thousand.” Nodding, he flipped through his book as if checking facts. “That's quite a come-down for someone who had the run of a place like Templeton House.”

“I earned it, and it was enough for my needs.” She felt a line of cold sweat drip down her back. “I know how to make money from money. And in an average year, I would add twenty thousand to that base in bonuses.”

“Last year you opened a business.”

“With my sisters. With Margo and Laura Templeton,” Kate qualified.

“It's risky, starting a business.” Those bland eyes stayed on hers. “And expensive.”

“I can give you all the statistics, all the figures.”

“You like to gamble, Ms. Powell.”

“No, I don't. Not in the standard sense of Vegas or the track. The odds always favor the house. But I appreciate an intelligent, and cautious, investment risk. And I consider Pretenses to be just that.”

“Some businesses need to be fed a lot. Something like this shop of yours, keeping stock, all that overhead.”

“My books are clean. You can—”

“Kate.” Josh put a hand on her arm in warning.

“No.” Furious now, she shook it off. “He's implying that I would take the easy way, because my father did. That I embezzled from Bittle to keep Pretenses afloat, and I'm not having it. We've worked too hard to make the shop run. Especially Margo. I'm not having it, Josh. He's not going to say that the shop's involved.” She seared Kusack with one hot glare. “You pick up the books at the shop anytime. You go over them line by line.”

“I appreciate the offer, Ms. Powell,” Kusack said mildly. He opened a folder, slid papers out. “Do you recognize these forms?”

“Of course. That's the 1040 I completed for Sid Sun, and that other one is the altered duplicate.”

“That's your signature?”

“Yes, on both copies. And no, I can't explain it.”

“And these printouts for computer-generated withdrawals from Bittle's escrow accounts?”

“It's my name, my code.”

“Who had access to your office computer?”

“Everyone.”

“And to your security code?”

“No one but me, as far as I know.”

“You gave it to no one?”

“No.”

“You kept it in your head.”

“Of course.”

Kusack kept his eyes on hers as he leaned forward. “Must be some trick, keeping all kinds of numbers in your head.”

“I'm good at it. Most people keep numbers in their heads. Social security, PIN numbers, telephone numbers, dates.”

“Me, I have to write everything down. Otherwise I mix it all up. I guess you don't worry about that.”

“I don't—”

“Kate.” Josh interrupted again, met her impatient glance with a quiet look. “Where do you record the numbers?”

“In my head,” she said wearily. “I don't forget. I haven't had to look up the security code in years.”

Lips pursed, Kusack examined his ragged nails. “Where would you look it up, if you had to?”

“In my Filofax, but . . .” Her voice trailed off as the impact hit home. “In my Filofax,” she repeated. “I have everything in it.”

She grabbed her purse, fumbled through it, and took out the thick, leather-bound book. “For backup,” she said, opening the book. “Backup's the first rule. Here.” She located the page, nearly laughed. “My life in numbers.”

Kusack scratched his chin. “You keep that with you.”

“I just said it's my life. That's literally true. It's always in my bag.”

“Where do you keep your bag—say, during office hours?”

“In my office.”

“And you'd carry it around with you. I know my wife never takes two steps without her pocketbook.”

“Only if I was leaving the building. Josh.” She clutched his hand. “Only if I was leaving the building. Anybody in the firm could have taken the code. Christ, anybody at all.” She squeezed her eyes tight. “I should have thought of it before. I just wasn't thinking at all.”

“That's still your signature on the forms, Ms. Powell,” Kusack reminded her.

“It's a forgery,” she snapped and rose to her feet. “You listen to me. Do you think I'd risk everything I worked for, everything I was given, for a lousy seventy-five K? If money was what was important to me, I could have picked up the phone, called my aunt and uncle, called Josh, and they would have given me twice that without a single question. I'm not a thief, and if I were, I sure as hell would cover my tracks better than this. What idiot would use her own code, her own name, leave such a pathetically obvious paper trail?”

“You know, Ms. Powell”—Kusack folded his hands on the table again—“I asked myself that same question. I'll tell you what my take is. The person had to be one of three things: stupid, desperate, or very, very smart.”

“I'm very smart.”

“That you are, Ms. Powell,” Kusack said with a slow nod. “That you are. You're smart enough to know that seventy-five large isn't peanuts. Smart enough to be able to hide it where it couldn't easily be found.”

“Detective, my client denies any knowledge of the money in question. The evidence is not just circumstantial but highly questionable. We both know you can't make a case with this, and you've taken up enough of our time.”

“I appreciate your cooperation.” Kusack tidied the papers and put them back in his file. “Ms. Powell,” he continued, as
Josh led her to the door, “one more thing. How'd you break your nose?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your nose,” he said with an easy smile. “How'd you break it?”

Baffled, she lifted a hand and rubbed it, felt the familiar angle. “Bottom of the ninth, stretching a double into a three-bagger in a bad imitation of Pete Rose. I cracked it against the fielder's knee.”

His teeth flashed. “Safe or out?”

“Safe.”

He watched her go, then flipped the file open again and studied the signatures on the forms. Stupid, desperate, or very, very smart, he thought.

“He doesn't believe me.” Reaction set in the minute the door closed behind her. All the anger and righteousness jittered away into fear.

“I'm not so sure of that,” Josh murmured and navigated her out of the interviewing area. He could feel her body vibrate through the hand he held to her back. “But what matters is they don't have a case. There isn't enough to take to the DA, and Kusack knows it.”

“It does matter.” She pressed a hand to her churning stomach. Not the ulcer this time, she hoped. But that was little comfort when the alternative diagnosis was shame and fear. “It matters what he thinks, what Bittle thinks, what everyone thinks. However much I don't want it to, it matters.”

“Listen to me.” He turned her in the corridor to face him, kept his hands on her shoulders. “You did fine in there. Better than fine. It might not have been the exact route I would have recommended as your attorney, but it was effective. The
records in your Filofax open up a whole new area of investigation. Now consider who led you to that.”

“You did.” When he shook his head, she drew her brows together. Because Josh expected it, she ordered herself to think clearly. “He did. Kusack did. He wanted me to tell him I had the code written down somewhere.”

“Somewhere where it could be accessed.” Josh's hands gentled on her shoulders. “Now I want you to put this aside. I mean it, Kate,” he continued even as she opened her mouth to protest. “Let Kusack do his job, let me do mine. You have people behind you. That's something I don't want you to forget again.”

“I'm scared.” She pressed her lips together, wanting her voice to be level even in the admission. “The only time I wasn't scared was when he made me mad. Now I'm scared all over again. Why did he bring up my father, Josh? How did he know about it? What reason would he have for looking that far into my background?”

“I don't know. I'm going to find out.”

“They have to know at Bittle.” Despair was a stone sinking in her gut. “If Kusack knows, so do the partners. Maybe they knew about it before, and that's why—”

“Kate, stop.”

“But what if they never find out who did it? If they don't find out, then I'm always going to—”

“I said stop. We will find out. That's a promise—not from your lawyer but from your big brother.” He drew her close, kissed the top of her head, then spotted Byron striding down the hall. He recognized barely controlled fury when he saw it and decided it was just what Kate needed to take her mind off the interview.

“By, good timing. You'll run Kate home, won't you?”

She spun around, confused and embarrassed. “What are you doing here?”

“Laura tracked me down.” He shot a look at Josh that clearly stated they would talk later and began to usher Kate down the hall. “Let's get out of here.”

“I need to go back to the shop. Margo's alone.”

“Margo can handle herself.” He towed her down the steps, past the desk, and outside, where the sun was blinding bright. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. A little turned around inside, but okay.”

He'd driven his 'Vette, the sleek, streamlined two-seater in muscle-car black. Settling inside a thirty-year-old car only made the entire day all the more surreal.

“You didn't have to come all the way down here.”

“Obviously.” Despising the impotency, he gunned the engine viciously. “You'd have called if you'd wanted my help. Now you're stuck with it.”

“There wasn't anything you could do,” she began and winced at the molten look he shot her before he cruised out of the parking lot. “They didn't charge me with anything.”

“Well, it's our lucky day, isn't it?” He wanted to drive. He wanted to drive fast to dissipate some of the bubbling anger before it boiled over and burned them both. To cancel any possibility of conversation, he flicked up the volume on the car stereo, and Eric Clapton's angry guitar licks scorched the air.

Perfect, Kate thought, and shut her eyes. Mean music, a muscle car and southern-fried temper. She told herself the migraine brewing and the highly possible visit by her old pal Mr. Ulcer were enough to worry about.

She found her sunglasses in her purse and put them on before dry-swallowing medication. Through the tinted lenses, the light seemed calmer, kinder. The wind whipped, cooling her hot cheeks. She had only to lay her head back, raise her face, to see the sky.

Byron said nothing, but sent the car slashing up Highway 1 like a bright black sword cleaving through sea and rock. It tore through a low-lying cloud, burst out of the thin vapor, and roared back into the flash of sun.

He'd been battling feelings of impotence and hot fury since Laura's call.
The police took Kate in for questioning. We don't
know what they're going to do. A detective came to the shop, and he took her.

The jingle of fear in Laura's usually calm voice had set off a violent chain reaction in him. The fear had been fueled by hurt. Kate hadn't called him.

He'd imagined her alone—it hadn't mattered that Laura had assured him Josh was with her. He'd envisioned her alone, frightened, at the mercy of accusations. His overworked imagination had pictured her handcuffed and led off in chains.

And there was nothing he could do but wait.

Now she was sitting beside him, her eyes shielded by dark glasses that made her skin all the more pale in contrast. Her hands were clasped in her lap, deceptively still until you noted the knuckles were white. And she had told him there was no need for him.

He didn't question the impulse, but swung to the side of the road. At the Templeton House cliffs where she had once wept on his shoulder.

She opened her eyes. It didn't surprise her in the least that he had stopped there, there at a spot of both peace and drama. Before she could reach for the door handle, he was leaning across her to jerk open the door himself.

An old habit, she decided. With all that temper swirling around in him, the gesture couldn't be considered courtly.

In silence they walked to the cliffs.

“Why didn't you call me?” He hadn't meant to ask that first, but it popped out of his mouth.

“I didn't think of it.”

He whirled on her so quickly, so unexpectedly, that she stumbled back a step, crushed a scattering of tiny white wildflowers underfoot. “No, you wouldn't. Just where the hell am I on that agenda of yours, Katherine?”

“I don't know what you mean. I didn't think of it because—”

“Because you don't need anyone but Kate,” he shot back. “Because you don't want to need anyone who might upset
that profit-and-loss ledger in your head. I wouldn't have been of any practical use, so why bother?”

“That's not true.”

How could she deal with an argument now? she wondered. How could she handle that brilliant fury in his eyes? She had a terrible urge to simply press her hands to her ears, squeeze her eyes shut so that she could neither see nor hear. So she could just be alone in the dark.

“I don't understand why you're so angry with me, but I just don't have the energy to fight with you now.”

He gripped her arm before she could turn away. “Good. Then you can just listen. Try to imagine what it was like to be told by someone else that the police had taken you in. To visualize what might be happening to you, what you were going through, and to be powerless to change it.”

“That's just it. There wasn't anything you could do.”

“I could have been there.” He shouted over the wind that raked through his hair like wild fingers. “I could have been there for you. You could have known there was someone who cared there for you. But you didn't even think of it.”

“Damn it, Byron, I couldn't think at all.” She jerked away, walked along the cliff path. Even a few steps would distance her from the upheaval of emotion, the avalanche, the flood of it, before she broke into pieces. “It was like being shut down, or frozen up. I was too scared to think. It wasn't personal.”

“I take it very personally. We have a relationship, Kate.” He waited while she slowly turned around, watching him through eyes guarded by dark glasses. With some effort, he drew in his temper and spoke with measured calm. “I thought I made it clear what that entails for me. If you can't accept the basic terms of a relationship with me, then we're wasting our time.”

She hadn't thought anything could squeeze past the pain in her head, the ache in her stomach, the sizzle of shame in her blood. But she hadn't counted on despair. Somehow despair always made room for itself.

Her eyes burned as she looked at him, standing in the sun
and wind. “Well, you dumping me certainly puts a cap on the day.”

She started past him with some idea of running up to Templeton House, getting inside and shutting everything else out.

“Goddamn it.” He spun her around, crushing his mouth to hers in a kiss that tasted of bitter frustration. “How can you be so hardheaded?” He shook her, then kissed her again until she wondered why her overtaxed brain didn't simply implode. “Can't you see anything unless it's in a straight line?”

“I'm tired.” She hated, resented, the shakiness of her voice. “I'm humiliated. I'm scared. Just leave me alone.”

“I'd like nothing better than to be able to leave you alone. Just walk away and chalk it up to a bad bet.”

He pulled off her sunglasses, stuck them in his pocket. He'd wanted to see her eyes, and now he recognized swirling in them the same anger and hurt that twisted in him. “Do you think I need the turmoil and complications you've brought into my life? Do you actually think I'd tolerate all that because we're good in bed?”

“You don't have to tolerate it.” She fisted her hands on his chest. “You don't have to tolerate any of it.”

“Damn right I don't. But I am tolerating it because I think I'm in love with you.”

She'd have been less surprised if he'd simply hauled her up and tossed her over the cliff. In an attempt to keep her reeling head in place, she pressed a hand to her temple.

“Hard to come up with a response?” His voice was as sharp and smooth as a newly oiled sword. “That's not surprising. Emotions don't add up in neat columns, do they?”

“I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you. This isn't fair.”

“It's not about fair. And at the moment I don't like the situation any more than you do. You're a far cry from the girl of my dreams, Katherine.”

That had her eyes clearing. “Now I know what to say. Go to hell.”

“Unimaginative,” he decided. “Now get this into that
computer-chip brain of yours.” He pulled her up onto her toes until their eyes were level. “I don't like to make mistakes any more than you do, so I'm going to take the time to figure out exactly how I feel about you. If I decide you're what I want, then you're what I'll have.”

Her eyes narrowed, glinting with dangerous lights. “How incredibly romantic.”

His lips curved in quick and genuine humor. “I'll give you romance, Kate, and plenty of it.”

“You can take your warped concept of romance and—”

He cut her off with a soft, quiet kiss. “I was worried about you,” he murmured. “I was afraid for you. And you hurt me because you didn't turn to me.”

“I didn't mean to—” She snapped back before her bones could melt. “You're twisting this around. You're trying to confuse me.” Surrendering to pain, she shut her eyes. “Oh, God, my head aches.”

“I know. I can see it.” As a parent might soothe a child, he touched his lips to her left temple, then her right. “Let's sit down.” He eased her down onto a rock, then stood behind her to massage the tense muscles of her neck and shoulders. “I want to take care of you, Kate.”

“I don't want to be taken care of.”

“I know.” Over her head he watched the sea gleam as the sun burned through a cloud and streamed down. She couldn't help that, he supposed, any more than he could help his own need to protect and defend. “We'll have to find an area of compromise there. You matter to me.”

“I know. You matter to me, too, but—”

“That's a nice place to stop,” he told her. “I'm asking you to think of me. And to accept that you can turn to me. For the little things—and for the big ones. Can you handle that much?”

“I can try.” She wanted to believe it was the medication finally kicking in that was making the pain slide away. But a part of her, the part she'd long considered foolish, thought it was the sea and the cliffs. And him. “Byron, I didn't mean
to hurt you. I hate hurting people I care about. It's the worst thing for me.”

“I know.” He pressed his thumbs to the base of her neck, searching out stubborn knots of tension. And smiled when she leaned back against him.

“When I saw you in the police station, I was embarrassed.”

“I know that too.”

“Well, it's nice to be so transparent.”

“I know where to look in you. It seems to be some kind of innate skill. It's one of the reasons I think I may be in love with you.” He felt the tension leap back into her muscles. “Relax,” he suggested. “We may both learn to live with it.”

“My life is, to put it mildly, in upheaval.”

She stared straight ahead to the horizon. The sky always met the sea, she mused, no matter how distant. But people didn't always, couldn't always find that joining point.

“I also know my own limitations,” she continued. “I'm not ready for that kind of leap.”

“I'm not sure I am myself. But if I take it, I'm pulling you with me.” He came around the rock to sit beside her. “I'm very good at handling complications, Kate. I'll handle you.” When she opened her mouth, he pressed his fingers to it. “No you don't. You'll tense up again. You're just going to say you won't be handled, then I'll have to say something about how if you let someone take part of the control now and again you wouldn't have so many headaches. Then we'd just go around until one of us gets pissed off again.”