One Penny Surprise (Saved By Desire 1) (4 page)

Luke shook his head and glared at her. “How should I know?” he snapped. “You seem to be the one who attracts the criminal element around here. You tell me.”

“I have never seen him before in my life. I was just standing here waiting,” she retorted, but then quickly shut up when she realised she couldn’t explain to him why she had been waiting, or who for. It irked her to realise that she didn’t even have a name for the man she was supposed to meet; assuming it was even a man. That thought made her frown, and she quickly set it aside to think about later.

“For who?” Luke landed a glare on her that pinned her to the spot. He hoped that by startling her she would answer before she thought to caution her words. To his consternation, she hesitated for a fraction of a second before she replied far too carefully to be believed.

“For you to come back,” she lied. She mentally apologised for her untruth and struggled to keep guilt from her face as she stared at the handsome stranger as innocently as she could. “He floated down from there,” she added in a desperate attempt to turn the focus of his attention off herself. She mentally winced when she realised how dense she had just sounded. The river only flowed one way. Of course the body would float toward her. It couldn’t float upstream. The man must think her a total imbecile.

“I didn’t see him at first and was about to turn away when I saw the flash of his shirt in the water. He is dead, isn’t he?”

Of course he is.
She mentally winced as she watched him roll his eyes. Her annoyance at herself, at him, at this entire situation grew when she witnessed his patronising demeanour. All right, so the man in the river was clearly dead but the handsome stranger didn’t need to be rude about it. Still, she tried hard not to antagonise him right now because she needed his help to decide on the best course of action to take.

“I am sorry. I know I am babbling nonsense but this has just thrown me,” she whispered. “The last thing you expect on a trip to the park is to have a corpse on your hands.”

Rather than answer, Luke studied the riverbank. There was no sign of drag marks which led him to think she was being honest with him about this at least. Although he had questions for her, he set them aside for now so he could focus on getting the body onto dry land. The investigator in him was busy scouring the area for signs of a struggle, or any clues as to where the man came from, or where he entered the water. He was so engrossed in his work he practically ignored her for several long minutes.

“You used that to haul him toward you?” He asked with a nod toward the stick she still held.

She nodded hesitantly and looked cautiously at it.

“May I?” he asked holding his hand out.

“Pardon?” Poppy asked blankly; strangely unable to tear her gaze away from the body in the river.

“Give me that stick,” Luke demanded firmly. He knew she was scared by what she had just found. The distress was barely veiled in those emotion-filled eyes, but he needed her to stay calm for him. His morning had been bad enough as it was. The last thing he wanted was a weeping female on his hands as well as a corpse. “Just give me the stick, please.”

Poppy stared down at the stick in her hand as though she had no idea where it had come from. It took her a moment to gather her senses enough to register what he said. When she did, she gave a physical jerk and practically threw it in his direction.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, praying desperately that he didn’t intend to turn the man over. “You don’t intend to drag him out, do you?”

Luke swore beneath his breath and glared at her. “Well, I don’t think that leaving him where he is will do anyone any good, do you?”

She scowled at the impatience in his voice. “No, but shouldn’t we fetch a magistrate or something?”

“Not until we get him out,” Luke bit out. He didn’t say anything to her but wanted to search the body before the magistrate did.

Poppy wasn’t prepared to give up though. There was something disturbing about the fact that the stranger didn’t seem inclined to summon help. She studied him closely while she tried to decide whether she should trust him after all. Now that she came to think about it, he didn’t appear to be all that shocked to find a dead body in the park. She was a quivering wreck whereas he was calm and controlled as though it was an everyday run-of-the-mill discovery.

“What if we pull him out and someone comes along?” Did he realise just how bad it would look for both of them? If he did it didn’t seem to bother him.

Luke’s patience was starting to dwindle rapidly. “Well, they can go for the magistrate for us then, can’t they?”

He sighed. It wasn’t her he was really annoyed with. Well, not just her. It was more the attraction he felt toward her; attraction that he was struggling to ignore enough to be able to focus on the dead man she had allegedly just found. For some reason he daren’t consider too closely, the thought of her being involved in the dead man’s demise made him want to hit something.

Focus on the body,
a stern voice reminded him. He forced himself to turn away.

“I need to get him out of the river so we can find out who he is. The magistrate will need to notify the man’s relatives.”

“Why not leave it to the magistrate to get him out then?” Poppy demanded. She was panic stricken at the thought of having to touch the body. Unfortunately, it was evident from the disinterest on the stranger’s face that he was going to ignore her.

Luke sighed loudly and glared at her as he gestured toward the river. “The body is floating away already, isn’t it? By the time the magistrate gets here it could have been dragged into the lake around the corner.” He pointed to the trees behind him. “If it goes in there it could sink to the bottom and never be found again. For the sake of this man’s family, he needs to be hauled ashore, don’t you think? He can hardly climb out himself. Now, are you going to help or not?”

“It’s not my fault,” Poppy grumbled, wondering if he was always this forceful.  She hadn’t killed the man, or asked for his body to float toward her. There was no need for the stranger to be so put out at her. She hadn’t asked for his help either although secretly she was glad that he had given it anyway.

Yes you did,
a small voice challenged.
You screamed at the top of your lungs and he came to your rescue
.

It irked her to acknowledge it but, arrogant or not she was considerably better off with his help than without it. She watched him lean over the river as far as he could and use the stick with considerably more dexterity than she had to lever the body toward them. She watched the muscles bunch beneath his finely cut jacket and tried to ignore the tug of attraction she felt toward him. He was handsome; startlingly so. Even partly shrouded in a fine mist his auburn hair and deep grey eyes were a captivating mix which, when combined with a squarely chiselled jaw and somewhat lusciously curved lips gave him a tousled, almost wild look that hinted at unleased power she suspected she would be better to stay well away from.

She was abruptly snapped out of her musings when he threw her a warning glance. It was then that she realised he was waiting for her to answer him. With no idea what he had just said, so nodded absently. Thankfully, it appeared to be the reply he expected because he turned his attention to hauling the body onto the riverbank beside them.

“Give me a hand,” Luke grunted as he stepped down the bank as far as he dared go without getting his boots wet. The body bobbed and dipped beneath the end of the stick and threatened to float further downstream, but he continued to prod at it until it began to float toward them. It soon became evident that this was not going to be as easy as he had first thought. If he had any chance of getting the dead man ashore, the mysterious lady had to help.

Glaring at her bag, he nodded toward it. “Put that damned thing down and give me a hand,” he ordered in his sternest voice.

Without bothering to wait to see if she was going to comply, he began to hook the stick into the shirt collar like she had done. He had no idea how she had used the stick at all with one hand still on her bag but if she could do it then he could too.

“I’ll haul him closer. As soon as he reaches the bank, grab his shirt and hold on. We can then haul him out and get a better look at him.”

While prodding the body, Luke began to wonder whether this was the work of the older gang of pick-pockets. Since moving into the area they had certainly built a reputation for being ruthless, but were they cold-blooded murderers? Luke threw a glance in the direction he had chased the youngsters earlier. From the age of that group it was highly unlikely they were the culprits. That left Luke with more questions than answers. The first and most important question he needed answers to was how the dead man had met his end – whether he had been murdered, or had just fallen into the river and drowned while drunk, or something.

Eventually, the woman snapped out of her daze and deigned to help him. They worked together for several long moments to get the body closer to the riverbank. It was evident from her hesitation that she was reluctant but at least she did assist him, even if she didn’t put her bag down to do it.

“What on earth is in that bloody thing anyway?” he grunted when he was finally able to drop the body at his feet. He took a moment to catch his breath and glared at the offending carpet bag. He nodded toward her precious cargo and wondered whether he should just wrestle the damned thing off her and take a look inside it himself.

“It’s personal and private to me,” she replied cautiously, clutching it protectively against her middle as though she had just read his thoughts.

He mentally swore. Everything about her entire behaviour rang alarm bells with thundering certainty. He knew, deep in his gut, that she was up to her eyes and ears in mischief. He just hoped it wasn’t anything to do with the corpse at his feet. It would be a crying shame indeed if someone so beautiful had resorted to such desperate acts of criminality. Still, his time within the Star Elite had taught him that women could be just as treacherous as men and, for the majority of criminals, the prettier the woman the more dangerous they tended to be.

“Do you know who it is?” She asked, desperate to get the man’s curiosity off her bag. She nodded toward the corpse and had to fight the urge to take a worried step backward. “Don’t do that,” she whispered when Luke bent down to turn the man over.

“I have to,” he snapped impatiently then sighed when he glanced up and noted just how pale her cheeks had gone. He sternly reminded himself that if he wanted her continued co-operation he had to soften his stance toward her or else she would be apt to walk off in a huff. 

“Can’t the magistrate do that?”

“What? Take a look at him?” Luke shook his head at the weakness of females and promptly heaved the body over before she could raise further objection. He stepped back when it flopped over lifelessly and tipped his head around so he could study the face in more detail. “I don’t know him,” he declared abruptly with a sigh.

Poppy didn’t want to look at the face she really didn’t and shook her head while keeping her gaze locked firmly on the dead man’s feet. Unfortunately, the longer she stood there the more curiosity stirred her to do what she least wanted to do, and she found herself taking a cautious peep at the face in spite of her best efforts not to. It was everything she had feared because the man was now no longer faceless. He had a face; an image that turned him into a person, and she rather suspected it was a face that was going to haunt her for a very long time to come.

Was this the man she was supposed to meet?

Luke frowned as suspicions began to unfurl in the back of his mind as to who it was. A dull hint of recognition did eventually begin to spring to life, but he couldn’t quite remember the name of the person who hovered in the dim recesses of his memory. It was there, somewhere. The longer he studied the face the more he became certain that he had met this man before. If only he could remember where he would have some idea of how to find out how he came to be in the river. He tried to think carefully over his social engagements over the last several weeks but failed miserably to summon a name. Mainly because it was a struggle to focus on anything other than the mysterious bundle of femininity beside him who had brought him so much trouble this morning.

Curiosity was alive and thriving within him as he surreptitiously studied the carpet bag she was holding while pretending to run a cursory glance over the deceased. He knew he would have a fight getting anywhere near that bag and he had to wonder why. There were no embellishments or distinguishing features on it that made it any different from any run-of-the-mill travelling bag the majority of middle-class people used. However, he rather suspected that it wasn’t the bag she was protecting but rather its contents. That made him positively bristle with curiosity about what it contained. From its dilapidated appearance she was certainly no aristocrat. From the once fine material of her clothing, he was fairly certain that she was no servant either. So who was she? Why was she so protective of her bag? More importantly, just what the hell was she up to in the park like this?

His investigator’s nose was twitching, and warning him that something was decidedly fishy about that all too pretty, far too innocent look she was giving him. Was it a mere coincidence that she happened to be in the park at the same time that a body was ‘found’ floating in the river? Was it mere coincidence that the pick-pockets had chosen to target her so early in the morning – at a time when most pick-pockets were not even out working?