Secret Star (8 page)

Annoyed, she sat on the bench, found her sunglasses in her bag and slipped them on. “For?”

He sat beside her, removed the shielding glasses and looked into her eyes. “For not letting myself look beneath the surface. For not wanting to look. And for blaming you because I don't seem able to stop wanting to do this.”

He took her face in his hands and captured her mouth with his.

S
he didn't move into him. Not this time. Her emotions were simply too raw to risk. Though her mouth yielded beneath his, she lifted a hand and laid it on his chest, as if to keep him at a safe distance.

And still her heart stumbled.

This time she was holding back. He sensed it, felt it in the press of her hand against him. Not refusing, but resisting. And with a knowledge that came from somewhere too deep to measure, he gentled the kiss, seeking not only to seduce, but also to soothe.

And still his heart staggered.

“Don't.” It made her throat ache, her mind haze, her body yearn. And it was all too much. She pulled away from him and stood staring out across the little patch of grass until she thought she could breathe again.

“What is it with timing?” Seth wondered aloud. “That makes it so hard to get right?”

“I don't know.” She turned then to look at him. He was an attractive man, she decided. The dark hair and hard face, the odd tint of gold in his eyes. But she'd known many attractive men. What was it about this one that changed everything and made her world tilt? “You bother me, Lieutenant Buchanan.”

He gave her one of his rare smiles—slow and full and rich. “That's a mutual problem, Ms. Fontaine. You keep me up at night. Like a puzzle where the pieces are all there, but they change shape right before your eyes. And even when you put it all together—or think you have—it doesn't stay the same.”

“I'm not a mystery, Seth.”

“You are the most fascinating woman I've ever met.” His lips curved again when she lifted her brows. “That isn't entirely a compliment. Along with fascination comes frustration.” He stood, but didn't step toward her. “Why were you so upset that I found you here, saw you here?”

“It's private.” Her tone was stiff again, dismissive. “I go to considerable trouble to keep it private.”

“Why?”

“Because I prefer it that way.”

“Your family doesn't know about your involvement here?”

The fury that seared through her eyes was burning-cold. “My family has
nothing
to do with this. Nothing. This isn't a Fontaine project, one of their charitable sops for good press and a tax deduction. It's mine.”

“Yes, I can see that,” he said calmly. Her family had hurt her even more than he'd guessed. And more, he thought, than she had acknowledged. “Why children, Grace?”

“Because they're the innocents.” It was out before she realized she meant to say it. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. “Innocence is a precious and perishable commodity.”

“Yes, it is. Falling Star? Your foundation. Is that how you see them, stars that burn out and fall too quickly?”

It was her heart he was touching simply by understanding, by seeing what was inside. “It has nothing to do with the case. Why are you pushing me on this?”

“Because I'm interested in you.”

She sent him a smile—half inviting, half sarcastic. “Are you? You didn't seem to be when I asked you to bed. But you see me holding a sick baby and you change your tune.” She walked toward him slowly, trailed a fingertip down his shirt. “Well, if it's the maternal type that turns you on, Lieutenant—”

“Don't do that to yourself.” Again his voice was quiet, controlled. He took her hand, stopped her from backtracking the trail of her finger. “It's foolish. And it's irritating. You weren't playing games in there. You care.”

“Yes, I do. I care enormously. And that doesn't make me a hero, and it doesn't make me any different than I was last night.” She drew her hand away and stood her ground. “I want you. I want to go to bed with you. That irritates you, Seth. Not the sentiment, but the bluntness of the statement. Isn't it games you'd prefer? That I'd pretend reluctance and let you conquer?”

He only wished it was something just that ordinary. “Maybe I want to know who you are before we end up in bed. I spent a long time looking at your face—that portrait of you in your house. And, looking, I wondered about you. Now, I want you. But I also want all those pieces to fit.”

“You might not like the finished product.”

“No,” he agreed. “I might not.”

Then again, she thought… Considering, she angled her head. “I have a thing tonight. A cocktail party hosted by a major contributor to the hospital. I can't afford to skip it. Why don't you take me, then we'll see what happens next?”

He weighed the pros and cons, knew it was a step that would have ramifications he might not be able to handle smoothly. She wasn't simply a woman, and he wasn't simply a man. Whatever was between them had a long reach and a hard grip.

“Do you always think everything through so carefully?” she asked as she watched him.

“Yes.” But in her case it didn't seem to matter, he realized. “I can't guarantee my evenings will be free until this case is closed.” He shifted times and meetings and paperwork in his head. “But if I can manage it, I'll pick you up.”

“Eight's soon enough. If you're not there by quarter after, I'll assume you were tied up.”

No complaints, he thought, no demands. Most of the women he'd known shifted to automatic sulk mode when his work took priority. “I'll call if I can't make it.”

“Whatever.” She sat again, relaxed now. “I don't imagine you came by to see my secret life, or to make a tentative date for a cocktail party.”
She slipped her sunglasses back on, sat back. “Why are you here?”

He reached inside his jacket for the photo. Grace caught a brief glimpse of his shoulder holster, and the weapon snug inside it. And wondered if he'd ever had occasion to use it.

“I imagine your time is taken up mainly with administration duties.” She took the picture from him, but continued to look at Seth's face. “You wouldn't participate in many, what—busts?”

She thought she caught a faint glint of humor in his eyes, but his mouth remained sober. “I like to keep my hand in.”

“Yes,” she murmured, easily able to imagine him whipping the weapon out. “I suppose you would.”

She shifted her gaze, scanned the face in the photo. This time the humor was in her eyes. “Ah, Joe Cool. Or more likely Juan or Jean-Paul Cool.”

“You know him?”

“Not personally, but certainly as a type. He likely speaks the right words in three languages, plays a steely game of baccarat, enjoys his brandy and wears black silk underwear. His Rolex, along with his monogrammed gold cufflinks and diamond pinkie ring, would have been gifts from admirers.”

Intrigued, Seth sat beside her again. “And what are the right words?”

“You're the most beautiful woman in the room. I adore you. My heart sings when I look into your eyes. Your husband is a fool, and darling, you must stop buying me gifts.”

“Been there?”

“With some variations. Only I've never been married and I don't buy trinkets for users. His eyes are cold,” she added, “but a lot of women, lonely women, would only see the polish. That's all they want to see,” She took a quick, short breath. “This is the man who killed Melissa, isn't it?”

He started to give her the standard response, but she looked up then, and he was close enough to read her eyes through the amber tint of her glasses. “I think it is. His prints were all over the house. Some of the surfaces were wiped, but he missed a lot, which leads me to think he panicked. Either because she fell or because he wasn't able to find what he'd come for.”

“And you're leaning toward the second choice, because this isn't the type of man to panic because he'd killed a woman.”

“No, he isn't.”

“She couldn't have given him what he'd come for. She wouldn't have known what he was talking about.”

“No. That doesn't make you responsible. If you indulge yourself by thinking it does, you'd have to blame Bailey, too.”

Grace opened her mouth, closed it again, breathed deep. “That's clever logic, Lieutenant,” she said after a moment. “So I shed my sackcloth and ashes and blame this man. Have you found him?”

“He's dead.” He took the photo back, tucked it away. “And my clever logic leads me to believe that whoever hired him decided to fire him, permanently.”

“I see.” She felt nothing, no satisfaction, no relief. “So, we're nowhere.”

“The Three Stars are under twenty-four-hour guard. You, M.J. and Bailey are safe, and the museum will have its property in a matter of days.”

“And a lot of people have died. Sacrifices to the god?”

“From what I've read about Mithra, it isn't blood he wants.”

“Love, knowledge and generosity,” she said quietly. “Powerful elements. The diamond I held, it has vitality. Maybe that's the same as power. Does he want them because they're beautiful, priceless, ancient, or because he truly believes in the legend? Does he believe that if he has all of
them in their triangle, he'll possess the power of the god, and immortality?”

“People believe what they choose to believe. Whatever reason he wants them, he's killed for them.” Staring out across the grass, he stepped over one of his own rules and shared his thoughts with her. “Money isn't the driving force. He's laid out more than a million already. He wants to own them, to hold them in his hands, whatever the cost. It's more than coveting,” he said quietly, as a murky scene swam into his mind.

A marble altar, a golden triangle with three brilliantly blue points. A dark man with pale eyes and a bloody sword.

“And you don't think he'll stop now. You think he'll try again.”

Baffled and uneasy with the image, he shook it off, turned back to logic and instinct. “Oh, yeah.” Seth's eyes narrowed, went flat. “He'll try again.”

 

Seth made it to Cade's at 8:14. His final meeting of the day, with the chief of police, had gone past seven, and that had barely given him time to get home, change and drive out again. He'd told himself half a dozen times that he'd be better off staying at home, putting the reports and files away and having a quiet evening to relax his mind.

The press conference set for nine sharp the next
morning would be a trial by fire, and he needed to be sharp. Yet here he was, sitting in his car feeling ridiculously nervous and unsettled.

He'd tracked a homicidal junkie through a condemned tenement without breaking a sweat, with a steady pulse he'd interrogated cold, vicious killers—but now, as the white ball of the sun dipped low in the sky, he was as jittery as a schoolboy.

He hated cocktail parties. The inane conversations, the silly food, the buffed faces, all feigning enthusiasm or ennui, depending on their style.

But it wasn't the prospect of a few hours socializing with strangers that unnerved him. It was spending time with Grace without the buffer of the job between them.

He'd never had a woman affect him as she did. And he couldn't deny—at least to himself—that he had been deeply, uniquely affected, from the moment he saw her portrait.

It didn't help to tell himself she was shallow, spoiled, a woman used to men falling at her feet. It hadn't helped before he discovered she was much more than that, and it was certainly no good now.

He couldn't claim to understand her, but he was beginning to uncover all those layers and contrasts that made her who and what she was.

And he knew they would be lovers before the night was over.

He saw her step out of the house, a charge of electric blue from the short strapless dress molded to her body, the long, luxurious fall of ebony hair, the endless and perfect legs.

Did she shock every man's system, Seth wondered, just the look of her? Or was he particularly, specifically vulnerable? He decided either answer would be hard to live with, and got out of his car.

Her head turned at the sound of his door, and that heart-stopping face bloomed with a smile. “I didn't think you were going to make it.” She crossed to him, unhurried, and touched her mouth to his. “I'm glad you did.”

“I'd said I'd call if I wouldn't be here.”

“So you did.” But she hadn't counted on it. She'd left the address of the party inside, just in case, but she'd resigned herself to spending the evening without him. She smiled again, smoothed a hand down the lapel of his suit. “I never wait by the phone. We're going to Georgetown. Shall we take my car, or yours?”

“I'll drive.” Knowing she expected him to make some comment on her looks, he deliberately kept silent as he walked around the car to open her door.

She slipped in, her legs sliding silkily inside. He
wanted his hands there, right there where the abbreviated hem of her dress kissed her thighs. Where the skin would be tender as a ripened peach and smooth as white satin.

He closed the door, walked back around the car and got behind the wheel. “Where in Georgetown?” was all he said.

 

It was a beautiful old house, with soaring ceilings, heavy antiques and deep, warm colors. The lights blazed down on important people, people of influence and wealth, who carried the scent of power under their perfumes and colognes.

She belonged, Seth thought. She'd melded with the whole from the moment she stepped through the door to exchange sophisticated cheek brushes with the hostess.

Yet she stood apart. In the midst of all the sleek black, the fussy pastels, she was a bright blue flame daring anyone to touch and be burned.

Like the diamonds, he thought. Unique, potent…irresistible.

“Lieutenant Buchanan, isn't it?”

Seth shifted his gaze from Grace and looked at the short, balding man who was built like a boxer and dressed in Savile Row. “Yes. Mr. Rossi, counsel for the defense. If the defense has deep enough pockets.”

Unoffended, Rossi chuckled. “I thought I recognized you. I've crossed you on the stand a few times. You're a tough nut. I've always believed I'd have gotten Tremaine off, or at least hung the jury, if I'd have been able to shake your testimony.”