To Die For (4 page)

He noticed my action, of course, and his mouth thinned. Whatever he thought about it, though, he was all business when he spoke. “Blair, are you in any trouble that we need to know about?”

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t exactly coplike, and totally unexpected. I blinked at him. “You mean, other than thinking I was being shot at and instead finding out I witnessed a murder? Isn’t that enough?”

“You said in your statement that you’d had an incident with the victim earlier this afternoon when you told her that her membership wouldn’t be renewed, and that she’d become violent—”

“That’s right. And there were witnesses. I’ve already given their names to Detective MacInnes.”

“Yes, I know,” he said patiently. “Did she threaten you?”

“No. Well, she said she was going to sic her lawyer on me, but I wasn’t sweating that.”

“She didn’t make any threats to harm you physically?”

“No. I’ve already told all this to the detectives.”

“I know. Just be patient. If she didn’t make any threats, why, when you saw her car parked in the back lot, did you assume you were in physical danger from her?”

“Because she’s—she
was
—a psycho. She copied everything I did. She colored her hair to match mine; she started wearing clothes like mine; she got the same hairstyle, the same style earrings. She even bought a white convertible because I have one. She gave me the creeps.”

“So she admired you?”

“I don’t think so. I think she hated my guts. Several of the other members thought so, too.”

“Then why did she imitate you?”

“Who knows? Maybe she wasn’t able to put together a look on her own, so she just copied someone else. She wasn’t very bright. Cunning, but not bright.”

“I see. Has anyone else threatened you?”

“Not since my divorce.” Impatiently I checked my wristwatch. “Lieutenant, I’m exhausted. How much longer do I have to stay here?” Until all the cops had left the building, that was for certain, so I could lock up. They would be stringing yellow crime-scene tape all over the back lot, but surely they’d let me get my car out first—

That’s when it hit me that they would probably cordon off the entire building and two parking lots. I wouldn’t be able to open tomorrow, and maybe not the next day either. Or maybe not for a lot longer than that.

“Not much longer,” he said, drawing my attention back to him. When was your divorce?”

“Five years ago. Why are you asking?”

“Does your ex-husband cause you any trouble?”

“Jason? Goodness, no. I haven’t even seen him since the divorce.”

“But he threatened you then?”

“It was a divorce. He threatened to trash my car. He never did, of course.” Actually, he’d threatened to trash my car if I ever made certain information public. I had then threatened to make certain information public if he didn’t shut up and give me everything I asked for—or at least, Siana had threatened it. I didn’t think Wyatt needed to hear all of that, though. That comes under the heading of Too Much Information.

“Do you have any reason to think he might hold a grudge?”

Oh, I hoped so. That was why I still drove a Mercedes convertible. But I shook my head. “I don’t see why. He remarried a few years ago, and from what I hear he’s very happy.”

“And no one else has threatened you in any way?”

“No. Why are you asking me all these questions?”

His expression was unreadable. “The victim is dressed almost identically to you. She was in a white convertible. It occurred to me, when I saw you and realized the similarities, that it was possible you were the intended victim after all.”

I gaped at him in astonishment. “No way. I mean, I
thought
I was being shot at, but only because I knew Nicole was bananas. She’s the only person I’ve had any trouble with.”

“You haven’t had any confrontations that maybe you passed off as minor but someone else could have taken more seriously?”

“No. Not even a snippet of an argument.” Because I live alone, my life tends to be fairly peaceful.

“Could any of your employees be angry with you about something?”

“Not that I know of, and anyway, they all know me personally—and they know Nicole. There’s no way any of them could mistake her for me. Plus, they all know where I park, and it isn’t at the back of the lot. I don’t think I’m involved in this at all, other than just being there by an accident of timing. I can’t help you by pointing a finger at someone who might have it in for me. Besides, Nicole was the type of person who regularly pissed people off.”

“Do you know any of those people?”

“She annoyed every woman who belongs to Great Bods, but men tended to like her because she had this syrupy sex-kitten act. It was definitely a man who shot her, though, which seems wrong, but brings up the question of jealousy. Nicole is—was—the type who’d play the jealousy game.”

“Did you know any of her boyfriends, or was there one in particular?”

“No, I don’t know anything about her private life. We weren’t best buds; we never chatted about personal things.”

He hadn’t once taken his gaze off my face, which was beginning to make me nervous. See, his eyes are kind of pale, that shade of green that leaps out at you if the person’s hair and brows are dark, which his were. On a blond you wouldn’t notice eyes like that so much, unless he wore black mascara—never mind. Wyatt wasn’t the mascara type. The point is, his gaze was piercing. When he stared at me, I felt sort of pinned.

I didn’t like him this close. I functioned much better when he was at a distance. If we had been in a relationship, it would have been different, but we weren’t, and after my last experience with him I wasn’t willing to put myself on the emotional line with someone who blew so hot and cold. But he was so close I could feel the heat coming from his legs, so I moved back another inch or so. Better. Not perfect, but better.

Damn him, why couldn’t he have stayed outside in the rain? Detective MacInnes had things handled in here. If Wyatt had just stayed outside, I wouldn’t be having these very acute memories of how his skin smelled, how he tasted, the sounds he made when he was so turned on—

Nope. Don’t go down that path. Because when he’d been turned on,
I
had been turned on, too.

“Blair!” he said, a little forcefully.

I jumped and refocused, and hoped he hadn’t been able to tell where my thoughts had wandered. “What?”

“I asked if you got a good look at the man’s face.”

“No. I’ve already told all this to Detective MacInnes,” I repeated. How long was he going to keep asking me questions I’d already answered? “It was dark, it was raining. I could tell he was a man, but that was it. The car was a dark four-door, but I can’t tell you the make or the model. I’m sorry, but if he walked into this office right now, I wouldn’t be able to identify him.”

He watched me for a minute longer, then stood and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

“Why?” I asked in obvious bewilderment. He was a lieutenant. The detectives would be handling the case; he’d just be overseeing the big picture, distribution of manpower, okaying stuff, things like that.

His mouth thinned again as he stood looking down at me. No doubt about it, I was irritating the hell out of him tonight, which gave me a great deal of satisfaction.

“Just don’t go out of town,” he finally said, though he actually
growled
the sentence instead of
saying
it.

“So I
am
a suspect!” I glared at him, then reached for the phone. “I’m calling my lawyer.”

His hand slammed down on mine before I could lift the phone. “You aren’t a suspect.” He was still growling, and now he was way too close, bent over me the way he was, his green eyes fairly snapping with temper as he glared back at me.

Ask me if I know how to leave well enough alone.

“Then I’ll damn well go out of town if I want to,” I said, pulling my hand out from under his and crossing my arms.

Chapter
Four

So that’s how I wound up at the police station at midnight, in the custody of a very irate police lieutenant.

He hauled me into his office, plunked me into a chair, barked, “Now, stay there!” and stalked out.

I was fairly bouncing with temper myself. I’d given him what-for all the way down to the station—without using swear words or threatening him, of course, which would probably have given him a reason to arrest me for real, which I’m sure he would have done because he was that mad—but now I’d run out of things to say without getting into personal territory and I didn’t want to do that, so I was frustrated on top of being mad.

I surged to my feet as soon as he closed the door behind him, and just to show him what’s what I went behind the desk and sat in
his
chair. Hah!

I know. It was childish. And I knew that, childish or not, it would get his goat. Getting his goat was turning out to be almost as much fun as making out with him.

The chair was a big one. It needed to be, because he was a big man. It was leather, too, which I liked. I swiveled all the way around in it. I looked through the files on his desk, but I did it fast, because that was probably a misdemeanor or something. I didn’t see anything interesting about anyone I knew.

I opened the middle drawer of his desk and got out a pen, then searched the other drawers for a notepad. I finally found one, plopped it on top of the files, and began writing a list of his transgressions. Not all of them, of course; just the ones he’d committed that night.

He came in with a Diet Coke in his hand, stopped dead when he saw me sitting at his desk, then very carefully and deliberately closed the door and in a low voice of doom said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Writing down all the things you did so I won’t forget any of them when I talk to my lawyer.”

He plunked the Diet Coke down on the desk and jerked the pad away from me. Turning it around, he looked at the first item and his dark brows snapped together. “ ‘Manhandled the witness and caused bruises to her arm,’ ” he quoted. “That’s a load of bullsh—”

I lifted my left arm and showed him the bruises on the underside where he’d gripped my arm while he was bodily forcing me into his car, and he stopped in midword. “Ah, hell,” he said softly, temper fading. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Yeah, sure; that’s why he’d dropped me like a hot potato two years ago. He had definitely hurt me, no denying that. And then he hadn’t even had the decency to tell me
why,
which was what had really made me mad.

He hitched one hip on the edge of the desk and continued reading. “ ‘Unlawful detainment. Kidnapping’—
kidnapping
?”

“You forcibly took me away from my place of business and drove me to another location where I didn’t want to be. Sounds like kidnapping to me.”

He snorted and continued reading my list of grievances, which included bad language, a snotty attitude, and poor manners. He hadn’t even thanked me for the coffee. Oh, there were other legal terms in there, too, like
coercion, badgering,
and
harassment,
refusing to let me contact my lawyer, but I hadn’t let any detail slide.

Damn his hide, he was smiling by the time he got to the end of the list. I didn’t want him to smile. I wanted him to realize what an asshole he’d been.

“I brought you a Diet Coke,” he said, sliding the can toward me. “You’ve probably had enough coffee.”

“Thank you,” I said, to underscore the difference between his manners and mine. I didn’t open the can, though. My stomach was already jittery from too much caffeine. Also, as a peace offering, the Diet Coke didn’t make the grade, especially since I was well aware he’d left the room more to give himself some breathing space before he snapped and tried to strangle me. The Diet Coke was a last-minute thought, to make it look as if he was being considerate when in fact it was his own skin he’d been protecting, because I’m sure it would be hell on his career if he strangled a witness. Not that I was much of a witness, but in this case I was all they had.

“Now get out of my chair.”

I blew my hair out of my eyes. “I’m not finished with my list. Let me have the pad back.”

“Blair. Get out of my chair.”

I wish I could say I behaved like an adult, but I was already way past the point where I could do that. I clamped my hands on the arms of the chair, glared at him, and said, “Make me.”

Damn, I wish I hadn’t said that.

A very short and humiliating struggle later, I was back in the chair where he’d originally put me, and he was in his chair, looking angry again.

“Damn it.” He scrubbed his hand over his whiskery jaw, where his five o’clock shadow had long ago become darker than that. “If you don’t behave— Do you know how close you came to being in my lap instead of that chair?”

Whoa. Where had that come from? I pulled back in alarm.
“What?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. And I don’t buy your earlier act, either. You remember me, all right. I’ve had you naked.”

“You have not!” I said, shocked. Did he have me confused with someone else? I was pretty sure I’d have remembered
that.
Yes, clothing had been shed, but I definitely had not been naked.

He gave a grim smile. “Honey, trust me: when all you have on is a skimpy little skirt pulled up around your waist, that’s naked.”

I trembled a little, because this was indeed familiar. I remembered the occasion well. It was the second date. He’d been on the couch; I’d been astride him, his fingers had been inside me, and I’d been an inch away from saying to hell with the concept of birth control, and taking my chances.

I blushed, not in embarrassment, but because the office was becoming uncomfortably warm. The thermostat for the air-conditioning in the building needed to be bumped down just a notch. Just because I felt all squirmy inside, however, didn’t mean I was giving up the fight. “Naked means totally without clothes, so therefore by your own description I definitely wasn’t naked.”

“So you do remember,” he said with satisfaction. “And don’t split hairs. You were as good as naked.”

“There’s still a difference,” I insisted stubbornly. “And, yeah, I remember that we made out. So what?”

“You mean you get naked with a man so often it doesn’t mean anything anymore?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

I was tired of pretending. He wasn’t buying it, anyway. I looked him in the eye and said, “Evidently it didn’t mean anything that time, either.”

He grimaced. “Ouch. I know I owe you an explanation. I’m sorry—”

“Save your breath. The time for explanations passed a long time ago.”

“Did it?”

“I moved on. Haven’t you?”

“I thought I had,” he said, scowling. “But when I got the call that there’d been a murder at Great Bods and the victim was a blond female, I—” He broke off, then said, “Shit.”

I blinked at him, honestly surprised. Come to think of it, his first words to me
had
been
Are you all right?
And he’d gone out in the rain to the crime scene to see Nicole’s body before coming inside. Surely by then her name had been broadcast, but maybe not, until her family could be notified. I had no idea who or where her family was, but there was probably a next-of-kin listed in her paperwork at Great Bods, which Detective MacInnes had taken.

Poor Nicole. She’d been a psycho-bitch copycat, but it bothered me that her body had been lying out in the rain for such a long time while the cops worked the crime scene. I knew crime scene investigations took a while, and the rain had hindered the cops as well, but still, she’d lain there for a good three hours before they let her be moved.

He snapped his fingers in my face. “You keep wandering off.”

Man, I wanted to bite those fingers. I hate it when people do things like that, when a little wave will suffice to get my attention. “Well, excuse me. I’m exhausted and I witnessed a murder tonight, but it’s terribly rude of me not to stay focused on personal matters. You were saying?”

He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “Never mind. You
are
exhausted, and I have a murder investigation to oversee. I wish you weren’t involved in it, but you are, so you’ll be seeing more of me whether you want to or not. Just stop pushing, will you? Let me do my job. I admit it, I can’t concentrate when you’re in my face making me crazy.”

“I don’t make you crazy,” I snapped, incensed. “You were evidently crazy before I ever met you.
May I go home now?
”

He rubbed his eyes and visibly reined in his temper. “In a few minutes. I’ll take you home.”

“Someone can give me a ride back to Great Bods. I need my car.”

“I said I’ll take you home.”

“And I said I need my car.”

“I’ll have it brought to you tomorrow. I don’t want you messing around the crime scene.”

“Fine. I’ll take a cab home. No need to put yourself out.” I stood and grabbed my bag, ready to head out the door. I’d stand on the sidewalk, even though it was still pouring down rain, while I waited for the cab.

“Blair.
Sit down.
”

That was the bad thing about him being a cop. I didn’t know exactly where his official authority ended and the personal stuff began. I didn’t know exactly what legal ground I was standing on. I was pretty sure I could walk out and there wouldn’t be a thing he could do about it—legally—but there was always the tiny possibility I was wrong, and the big possibility that he’d force me to stay whether it was legal or not, and I didn’t want to have another tussle with him. Tussling was bad for my self-control.

I sat down, and contented myself with glaring mulishly. I had a niggling suspicion he intended to get back on a personal footing with me, and I didn’t want to go down that road again. With that in mind, the less contact I had with him, the better.

I have a rule: Walk out, crawl back. If a man does the first, then he has to do the second to get back on good terms with me. I can handle an argument, because at least then you’re communicating, but to just walk out and not give me a chance to work things out—that’s a big no-no.

I know that sounds as if I need to get over myself, but the truth is—and I know I blew it off as the divorce being the best thing for both of us—it hurt like hell when I caught Jason kissing my sister Jenni. Not just because Jenni had betrayed me, but because I had truly loved Jason. Our first couple of years together had been very happy. At least, I’d been happy, and I think he was, too. We did grow apart and I fell out of love with him, but that didn’t mean I had given up on our marriage. I was willing to work on it, to try to get close to him again. When I saw him kissing Jenni, it was like a punch in the stomach, and I realized he must have been cheating on me for some time. Not with Jenni; I pretty much thought that was the first time he’d touched her. But he wasn’t in love with her, so that meant he’d done it just because she was pretty and available, and
that
meant he’d very likely done it with other women, too.

He hadn’t even tried to make our marriage work. He’d dumped me emotionally a long time before, and I hadn’t realized it. Once I did realize it, though, I cut my losses. I didn’t go crying on everyone’s shoulders; instead I built myself a very satisfying new life, but that doesn’t mean I’d escaped without some very deep emotional bruises.

Bruises heal, and I wasn’t the type to mope around anyway. I learned from the experience, and set new guidelines and standards for myself. One of those guidelines was that if a man walked out without even trying to work things out, then he wasn’t worth my effort unless he proved he was serious about getting another chance.

Wyatt hadn’t proved a thing yet. And he wasn’t the crawling type. So that meant the idea of us getting together again was pretty much a nonstarter.

He pushed the Diet Coke toward me. “Drink it. Maybe it’ll cool you down.”

What the hell. No way would I be able to sleep tonight anyway. I popped the top on the can and took a sip, then steered my thoughts to a more practical subject. “I assume there’s no way I can be open for business tomorrow.”

“Good assumption.”

“How long will it be before I
can
open? One day? Two?”

“The time varies. I’ll try to move things as fast as possible, but I won’t cut corners. A couple of days, probably. I’m sorry for your financial loss, but—”

“Oh, I won’t lose any money. The vast majority of the membership pays by the year because it’s cheaper than paying by the month. I don’t offer any memberships shorter than a month. It’s the inconvenience to the members that I don’t like, and I know that’s minor in comparison to a murder, but as the owner of a business it’s a hard fact that I have to take care of my customers or the business will suffer.”

He eyed me consideringly, as if he hadn’t expected me to be that practical. That irritated me, because he’d spent three dates in my company and if he’d been paying any attention at all to anything other than my body, he’d have realized I’m no airhead.

Maybe I should have been surprised he’d recognized
me,
because two years ago he evidently hadn’t looked any higher than my breasts.

Bad thought, because he’d definitely looked at my breasts. And touched them. And sucked them. Now, I’m not much on breasts—they’re more of an irritant to me than a source of pleasure—but there was no getting away from the intimacy of the memory, and that was what had me blushing again.

“My God,” he said, “what are you thinking this time?”

“Why? What do you mean?” Like I was going to tell him what I was thinking.

“You’re blushing again.”

“I am? Oh. Sorry. I’m going through premature menopause, and I have hot flashes.” Anything to regain lost ground.

He grinned, a quick flash of white teeth. “Hot flashes, huh?”

“Premature menopause isn’t for sissies.”

He laughed out loud, and leaned back in his big leather chair to watch me for a moment. The longer he watched, the more uneasy I became. Remember what I said about how his eyes looked? I felt like a mouse being stared down by a cat . . . a mean, hungry cat. In all this time I hadn’t given two thoughts about what I was wearing, but I was abruptly conscious of my pink halter top that bared my midriff, and the formfitting yoga pants. The way he was looking at me made me feel as if way too much of my skin was exposed, and that he was remembering seeing even more of it than he was seeing right now. Even worse, that he was planning on seeing more of me again.