Silver Sparks (8 page)

Cal was half sitting, butt propped on the porch rail, arms folded. Smiling. It hit her with a punch low in her stomach, taking the breath from her lungs. Covering quickly, she squinted in confusion. Cal never looked at her this way. Maybe the rising sun was glaring off his scowl, making it look like a smile.

He shook his head when he saw her. The smile definitely grew wider. Her heart beat faster. “Good morning. Remind me never to get into a throw-down fight with you.”

Besides being breathtaking, his good humor made her suspicious. “Why?”

“You’re too good at it.” He reached for a folded paper on the rail, holding it up so she could see the bold headlines: RAFE WANTED A THREE-WAY, MAGGIE CLAIMS. Smaller print below it read, “Third Person Was a Man!”

She blinked in surprise. “Wow. I’m a one-name star, like Cher.”

“Congratulations.” He opened to the article, cleared his throat dramatically, and read aloud. “Maggie Larkin, the woman at the center of a torrid public brawl with actor and entertainment heir Rafe De Luca, is finally telling her side of the story. In a private interview with the
National Tattler
—”

She snorted. “Real private—talking at The Aerie bar.”

“—she claimed Rafe invited her to his suite, making clear he wanted to have sex, then asked another man to accompany them.” Cal looked up expectantly.

“Absolutely true.” She couldn’t hold back her smile. “He told his bodyguard to come with us and make sure we weren’t disturbed. That was before I turned him down, of course.”

“Of course.” He picked up another paper. “I thought this one was particularly inventive on your part,” he said, displaying the headlines for her appreciation: “Sex Shocker: Romeo Rafe Is Impotent!”

She bit her lip to keep from smiling. “I didn’t say that.” She reconsidered. “Not exactly.”

“Let me refresh your memory.” Cal opened to the article. “ ‘I saw him pop a couple pills shortly before he hit on me,’ Maggie claimed. When asked what they looked like, she said they were small and might have been blue.” He lifted one eyebrow, waiting for confirmation.

“He
did
pop a couple pills.”

“I know, he was doing it all night. They were Tic Tacs. White, not blue.”

She shrugged. “If you say so. I couldn’t recall.”

His mouth twitched. “Right.” He picked up the last paper and flipped to an article inside. “This one is my favorite. ‘Rafe De Luca Consults with Alien Ambassador.’ See the picture?” He held the paper up so she could see the grainy photo of Rafe with his arm around the shoulder of what looked like a small gray alien.

“Cool. I don’t remember him from the bar.”

“Apparently he and Rafe were trying to recruit you for their breeding program, and you objected. Not very sporting of you.”

She tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t. Laughing, she held her hand out. “I want to keep that one.”

“You can have them all,” he said, handing them over. “Start a scrapbook. I hope you live long enough to finish it.”

Maggie lost her smile. “You’re a real downer, Drummond, you know that?”

“Yeah.” He stood. “Invite me in, Maggie.”

Ignoring the way her nerve endings started tingling, she looked down at herself. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not dressed for company.”

“That’s okay, it’s not a social visit. You’ve just drawn a line in the sand, and Rafe’s not going to stay on his side. If you’re going to survive, I think we’d better consult on strategy.” Without waiting for an answer, he brushed past her into the house, taking a long look at the robe where it came together over her chest, then an equally long look into her eyes that made her heart trip as she held the robe together at the front. . . . “Maybe you better get dressed first. I’ll wait.”

Chapter
Five

H
e waited quite a while, killing time on her couch until she’d gotten dressed, fixed her hair, and made herself a cup of tea. Carrying the steaming mug into the living room, she settled in an adjacent chair.

He wasn’t sure her skirt and blouse were any better than the robe. They certainly weren’t less distracting. At least the long robe had covered those shapely legs, which were now crossed at the knee and angled toward him as her bare foot bounced an impatient rhythm. Some part of her always seemed to be moving. If she was ever completely still he’d have to check her pulse.

Maggie cradled the mug and sipped gingerly before speaking. “So what’s your strategy, other than making me practice saying ‘No comment’ to anything a reporter asks me?”

“I really wish you’d tried that,” he said sincerely. “But it’s nice to know you learn from your mistakes.”

She gave him a dark look. “And it’s even better when you point them out to me.”

He laughed out loud, and her mouth nearly slipped into a smile. That small victory warmed him. He was surprised to find how much he wanted to make her laugh, to create that sparkling, musical sound he’d heard when he first noticed her at The Aerie.

Unfortunately, what they had to discuss was not the least bit amusing. He lost the smile. “To start with, I don’t want you to be alone, Maggie. Ever. Rafe is going to start playing dirty, and I’m not sure how far he’ll go.”

“
Start
playing dirty?” She gestured at the tabloids on the coffee table. “You don’t consider the other day’s pack of lies dirty? And that’s only half of it—Sophie said reporters have already contacted her grad advisor and her landlord, among others.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

“That was crossing the line. I know the De Lucas put them on that trail, and it’s already enough to hurt her. Image counts if you want to get hired to teach at a major university, you know. Trashing my name is one thing, but messing with my sister is a whole new ball game.”

He waited for her anger to subside, but it didn’t look like that would happen anytime soon. He couldn’t blame her—this shouldn’t have anything to do with her family. But escalating the fight was a dangerous tactic. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

“I’m only giving him back what he gave me.”

“But he can do much worse than imply that you sleep with half the men you meet.”

She glowered at her cup of tea for several seconds before flicking a glance at him. “I don’t, you know.”

“You already told me.”

She raised her chin. “I just want to make sure you believe it.”

“I do.”

“Thanks.” She relaxed a little. “At least someone does.”

Tight lines lingered beside her mouth. He hadn’t realized how battered she must have been by her past, and by those years of slander about the Larkin girls. Even though her back had lost its stiffness, her eyes remained shadowed by memories. It was that look that touched him, that made him recognize a similar pain in himself. Reaching out, he laid his hand on her knee.

“I understand,” he began. That was all he got out. He lost the rest of his thoughts as his hand met her warm skin and her eyes lifted to his. It was like being hit with a double whammy, the intensity of her gaze, and the sizzling awareness of her body as it radiated up from his fingers and shot through his chest. He’d touched her before, but never when she looked so vulnerable and . . . desirable.

Her leg stopped its impatient bouncing. For a few seconds everything stopped, as if his fingers on her knee had completed some connection between them. She stared, and he swore he heard an electric buzzing in his ears.

He drew his hand back. The buzzing faded. A tiny pucker creased her brow.

Cal struggled to find his train of thought. And his voice. It would be easier if she weren’t watching him so closely. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I understand about regretting your past, Maggie. About living with the results of bad choices you made and can’t take back. I’ve been there.”

Her soft chuckle was full of disbelief. “You have a promiscuous past to live down? You’d be the first guy I ever heard of with that problem.”

“There are other bad choices. Worse ones.”

She studied him for a long moment. “Like what?”

“I walked away from my sisters when they needed me most.” He made himself say the rest; he needed to admit it as much as she needed to hear it. “I wasn’t there for Julie, and she died because of it.”

Sudden sympathy touched her eyes. But, with the same full-on, honest approach she used in her own life, she didn’t let him gloss over the details. “Why do you think you should have been there? What could you have done?”

He leaned back. It was easier to talk when he wasn’t so close to her bare legs, thinking about touching more than her knee.

“I wasn’t there because I don’t get along with my mother.” He blew out a heavy breath, the same exasperation he felt every time he was forced to talk about her. “Sherrie June Drummond. She also has a couple more last names from subsequent marriages. She goes through men faster than I can keep track. Fast enough that I never knew from one day to the next if the guy who’d driven me to Little League the day before would be the same guy eating supper with us that night.

“When I was eleven she married a guy named John Ellis. By the time I was thirteen, Ellis was gone and Julie had been born. My mother needed to work, but she couldn’t afford a sitter, so she decided I should stay home from school to watch the baby.”

Maggie blinked. “Every day?”

“She said keeping her job was more important than me going to school.”

She shook her head in disgust. “She can’t do that. The school must have told social services.”

“They didn’t know. She told the school I went to live with my father.”

Her mouth fell open, but it took several seconds before she found words. “So you took care of your baby sister and missed school for—what? A few months? A year?”

“Unfortunately for my mother, I wasn’t that complacent about giving up my future. I knew I needed school if I didn’t want to be stuck in her world forever.” He hesitated, braced for criticism. “I called the cops and turned her in.”

Maggie brightened. “Good for you!”

He could have kissed her for that. No shock or pity for the boy who’d chosen to tear his family apart. He should have known that fighting spirit would color every aspect of her life.

“Social services put me in foster care. Julie, too. My mom ended up getting Julie back about nine months later, after she hooked up with some new guy and convinced the county that she could provide a stable home. She never tried to get me back.”

“You wouldn’t have gone, anyway,” she guessed, staunchly taking his side.

Cal smiled. “You’re right. And I got lucky—my foster families were pretty nice.”

“Ahh,” she breathed, realization lighting her face like a sunbeam. His chest tightened in response. He rubbed his breastbone, wondering how her smile could make his muscles spasm. “You were a foster kid,” she said. “That’s why you understood when I said I liked going to The Aerie because no one knew my background, and I fit in.”

He nodded, surprised that she’d remembered. Maybe because she was interested in him. Or maybe she was just observant.

“I was better off that way,” he told her, “but you’re right, I didn’t always fit in. That’s part of why I joined the army right out of high school—it gave me a place to belong. Police academy after that. My mother and sisters were in L.A. I tried to reconnect once, but it didn’t work. Visited the girls once more, but never really got to know them. I gave them my phone number.” His smile was bitter. “A lot of good that did when I lived in Oklahoma, right? I didn’t know how to connect with them and it made me feel less guilty.”

“You have a right to a life of your own, Cal.”

“That’s what I told myself, right up until Julie disappeared. But I had an obligation to look out for my sisters when I knew no one else was doing it. When my mother finally figured out Julie was in over her head and took a moment from her life to be concerned, she didn’t know how to contact me.”

“Didn’t your other sister know?”

“That would be Amber Howard. She believed Julie when she told her everything was fine. She’s not quite seventeen, for Christ’s sake. She thinks she can handle anything, so naturally she thought her twenty-year-old sister could, too.”

He must have looked as disgusted with himself as he felt. A weary smile tugged at Maggie’s mouth and she shook her head. “You’re being too hard on yourself. No one blames you for your sister’s death.”

“They should. I think Amber does.” He’d heard the strain and accusation in her voice when she’d surprised him with a phone call last night, asking where he’d disappeared to after the funeral. “I’m not looking for sympathy, Maggie. I’m saying I made some questionable choices, the same as you. All either of us can do is learn from them and be the best people we can be today.” He winced. “Hell, I sound like a self-help book.”

She looked more amused than annoyed. “Maybe you should write one.”

He sat up straighter, energized by her words. “That reminds me, I met someone who might want to do just that, a sort of true-crime exposé on Rafe. I talked with one of the reporters following him around yesterday, Rick Grady. He actually sounds like a respectable journalist. He happened to catch Rafe in an abusive situation last year, and he’s worried Rafe’s the type who will eventually take it further. He’s determined to catch him at it again and stop him, so I told him about Julie.”

She put her mug down. “What did he say?”

“Totally believed me. He’s the only person I’ve met who has seen Rafe for what he really is. It looks like I might have an ally in connecting Rafe to those disappearances. We’re going to meet again today.”

She smiled. “I like it. Let’s turn the tables and put a little pressure on Rafe.”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have sounded so excited; he already knew Maggie wasn’t big on taking a cautious approach. “Eventually. Right now I don’t want him to get suspicious that anyone is looking into his connections to the missing women.”

She leaned forward, pressing her point, and he struggled to keep his eyes on hers and not the cleavage he glimpsed beneath her V-neck blouse. “But it would take some of the heat off me if he had something else to worry about.”

“You can accomplish that yourself,” he reminded her. “Stop antagonizing him.”

Maggie’s stubborn look came back. Her golden-brown eyes turned stormy and her lips pursed, as if she were contemplating how best to rip his head off. “You mean I should stop fighting back? Is that the strategy you wanted to consult on? I don’t think so.” She stood, snatching the mug off the coffee table. “I’m not going to let Rafe destroy me and my family without lifting a finger in defense. I can’t believe you’d ask me to do that.” She stalked to the kitchen.

Cal followed on her heels. “I didn’t ask you to not defend yourself—you’re going off half-cocked again.”

She turned, her eyes cool and dangerous. “Just what did you mean, then?”

He chose his words carefully to avoid making it sound like he was trying to control her. Even if he was. “We have to make this a team effort. You don’t go planting stories in the tabloids without at least talking to me first. And for God’s sake, learn to be objective.”

“About what?” she scoffed. “Blaming him? We both know he’s the one who sicced the tabloids on me.”

“I’m talking about how you react to it. I’d like to smash him in the nose and embarrass him in the press, too, but it won’t help me prove he’s a murderer, and that’s more important. Besides, De Luca’s dangerous. Rick’s experience confirms my suspicions that Rafe is not the kind of man you want to rile up, especially not for something as trivial as your own pride.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left his mouth. She slammed the mug on the counter and whirled to face him, eyes snapping golden darts of fire. “
Trivial?
My pride is trivial?”

“Compared to your life.”

“You think I shouldn’t have enough self-respect to care what lies Rafe spreads about me and my sisters?” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “What would you say if he were attacking Julie’s reputation? How would you like that?”

He scowled, but she didn’t give him a chance to answer.

“Not so nice, huh? But I’m supposed to let him trash my reputation and ruin my sister’s life while I stand by quietly, playing the helpless victim? Didn’t you just tell me you should have done more for
your
sisters? I thought you were on my side!”

Cal shook his head, annoyed with himself as much as with her. “I
am
on your side, damn it! I’m trying to keep you from pushing Rafe into a violent reaction when no one’s there to help you.” It was the thing he feared most, but it didn’t seem to faze her.

“Bullshit. All you care about is your own agenda.” She poked his chest again. “
Your
quest for revenge.” Another poke. “
Your
search for evidence that might be compromised by my trivial concerns. But don’t worry, it’s only my personal and financial life he’s trying to ruin. While
you
—”