Warm Hearts (7 page)

Was she ever sexy! The thin bits of cloth she wore in the heat hid everything essential while hiding nothing at all. She was slender without being skinny. He knew that her breasts were small but well rounded, that her waist was narrow, that her hips flared just enough to flaunt her femininity. She didn't flaunt it knowingly; he was convinced of that. She couldn't see the way the dim backlight of her loft passed through material to outline her curves. He sensed that she'd be embarrassed if she knew, or maybe that was what he wanted to believe. He wanted to believe many things. Hell, what man wouldn't, when a woman turned him on the way she did?

He wanted to believe, first off, that she was single. She lived alone, but that didn't mean that she wasn't separated from a husband or engaged to another man or biding her time until the object of her true love returned from a faraway place. He'd seen a man in her apartment several times, and though she'd kissed him goodbye when he'd left, she'd deliberately freed herself from his embrace before it had escalated. They'd certainly never made it to the bed.

With the march of those words through his mind, he grimaced. He wasn't really a Peeping Tom. But the French windows were huge in relation to the loft, and he was only human. At night, with the lights on, little was hidden. She hadn't covered the windows with drapes, apparently seeing the travesty of that, a woman of his own mind.

Actually, he'd been acutely aware of that loft since he'd moved into his own two years before. Its previous tenants had been a pair of coeds who had partied nonstop. Even in the dead of winter—though Washington's winters were far from frigid—they'd had no compunction about throwing the windows open wide to share their raucous gatherings with the world. The noise had been horrendous. He hadn't been the only tenant annoyed, but he'd been one of the few who'd dared speak up. Toward the end of their stay, the two girls had taken to tossing derogatory cracks across the courtyard at him. He'd been relieved when they'd moved out.

That had been six months ago. Naturally, he'd been curious about the new tenant. He'd assumed that the realty firm—the same one that owned the entire block of town houses—had been more careful this time, particularly since they'd been left with a monumental cleaning and painting job. The winter months had been quiet and he'd been busy, but when the first of the good weather had rolled around, he'd cast an occasional curious glance across the way.

He'd never forget the night he'd first seen her. He'd been scanning the front page of the
Journal
when the sudden illumination of her apartment had caught his eye. Unable to resist, he'd leaned back against the counter and watched over the top of the paper.

She'd just come in from work. At least, he'd assumed that was it, since she was dressed more smartly and seemed older—strike that, more mature—than a student. She'd shrugged out of her blazer and laid it on the bed, then transferred a frozen dinner from the freezer to the microwave.

He remembered feeling badly that she was eating alone, then wondering why he should. She was attractive. If she'd wanted a dinner partner, she could have found one.

So he'd thrust aside any feelings of guilt and gone back to his paper that night, but he hadn't been able to keep his eye from wandering on other nights.

You could learn a lot about a woman by spying, he mused. You could learn, for example, that she was dedicated to her work, if the long hours she kept and the homework she did were any indication. And that she was a creature of habit—entering her apartment each night, flipping on the light, placing the mail on the counter, opening the French windows, weather permitting, and turning on the answering machine, in that order. And that she was neat—unless she had a daily maid who cleaned up after her. He couldn't possibly know about that, since he was at work himself and, anyway, couldn't see into her loft in broad daylight. But when she came home at night, the place was always tidy. Of course, in contrast to his own place, anything would seem tidy.

Over the weeks, he'd come to think about her more and more. Somehow, returning to his apartment hadn't seemed quite as lonely when he could look forward to a glimpse of her. For the longest time she'd been unaware of him, and he'd had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, he'd wanted to be able to wave or smile or call across the courtyard to her. On the other hand, he'd been satisfied to set reality aside and simply dream.

He'd done a lot of that. He dreamed that she was his ideal, and though he'd never spent a great deal of time formulating ideals, she embodied them all. She had a career but wasn't an ardent feminist, never letting her job take precedence over the personal life she wanted. And she did want a personal life, he dreamed. She simply hadn't found the proper channel.

He dreamed that she was warm and giving, a dream abetted by the amount of time she spent on the phone. He knew that they weren't frivolous, chatty little calls, because she'd often rub her neck or hang her head. The calls frustrated her, but still she took them. She was a selfless sort.

And a loaner. More than once she'd answered her door to find one of the neighbors in search of something—butter, sugar, eggs. Usually it was Connie. He knew Connie. He bumped into her on and off by their cars in the courtyard and found her to be a little too aggressive for his tastes. And too old. He was thirty-eight. Though Connie was a looker, she was over forty if she was a day. Perhaps it was a hang-up of his, but he wanted a younger woman—not a teenybopper, simply one who hadn't been around quite so much.

Sweet-and-Sexy looked to be in her late twenties, which was just about right, as far as he was concerned. The nine- or ten-year advantage meant that he was well established at work and could provide for her as he saw fit.

If she was in her late twenties, she'd have completed her education and had time to put down roots in a career. Money wasn't the issue; it was more one of self-respect. Her self-respect. The stronger an image she had of herself as a person, the more comfortable she'd be with herself as a woman.

And she was comfortable. He could see it in the unself-conscious way she dressed and moved. Actually, sexy was the wrong word, because it implied that she was aware of the effect. Sensual was more apt, but Sweet-and-Sensual didn't roll as well off his tongue, and sexy was what she made him feel.

Particularly over these past few days of intense heat. When he was home he wore shorts and little else. It wasn't that his own bareness turned him on, but feeling half-naked as he watched her floating in whisper-thin shifts was phenomenally erotic. As was sweat.

He'd always known he had an earthy side, but it had never before emerged as strongly. He loved the way she looked when she was hot, when her skin was flushed and silky tendrils of hair clung to her neck. He didn't want a woman who perspired daintily. He wanted a woman who produced real, honest-to-goodness sweat, like he did. And he wanted a woman who reacted to it like she did—gracefully wiping her brow with the back of her hand, arching her spine in a catlike stretch, tipping her head to place a tall, cooling glass against her neck, slanting against the window in an unconsciously sultry pose.

Then, two nights ago, she'd looked up and seen him. Fantasy and reality had suddenly blurred, which was ridiculous, since he didn't really know anything more about her than he'd known before. But there had been something about the way she'd looked at him—as though she was a little shocked, a little fascinated, more than a little unsure of what to do about either—that focused things a bit more.

Was it time to act? He'd asked himself that question dozens of times in the past two days. He wanted to make that first verbal contact, but somehow that would bring reality even closer, and he wasn't sure if he was ready. His hesitance seemed silly, when he thought about it, because he'd never been diffident or shy. He attributed it to the fantasy, which was so lovely that he didn't want it to end.

Of course, if reality were to prove even better, he'd curse himself for the waste of time. She was so pretty, so sensual, so gentle looking. He could imagine himself relaxing with her, and he badly needed to relax. He could imagine the soft conversations they'd have and those times when they wouldn't even have to talk, feeling perfectly comfortable sharing the silence.

He could also imagine her in bed. Not just
in
bed. He'd caught glimpses of her there moments before she'd turned off her light. It was enchanting the way she'd stretched out, curved around, found a pleasant spot beneath the sheet. But that wasn't what he'd had in mind. He could imagine her in bed
with him
, offering the deepest softness and the sweetest fire.

“Hey, Brendan. We've got a problem.”

His head came up and he straightened in his chair, but only the long finger he used to brush sweat from above his lip suggested that his mind had been on anything but work.

His underling seemed not to have noticed, but then, Kevin Brauer had never been particularly observant. He wouldn't notice a man sweating in an air-conditioned room any more than he'd notice the black ink on a counterfeiter's thumb. He was a technician, good for researching, chasing down leads and setting up schedules—the last of which, Brendan assumed correctly, was what had brought him around with such an aggrieved expression on his face.

“Smith doesn't want to testify.”

Brendan flexed his sore racquetball shoulder. “That's nothing new. He's said so before.”

“But he's refusing to show for the hearing. He says that he has to fly to Dallas on business and won't be back until next Wednesday. If the hearing's set for Tuesday—”

“He'll have to change his plans. We've already postponed things twice to accommodate him. Accommodating time's over.”

“What should I tell him?”

The set of Brendan's jaw hinted at impatience directed more toward Kevin than Harold Smith. “Just what I said. Accommodating time's over.”

“And if he balks?”

“Subpoena him.”

“Subpoena,” Kevin echoed with a vigorous nod as he withdrew his head from the door. “Right.”

Brendan let out a mocking snort and wondered about the Kevins of the world. They were, by and large, bright and had graduated law school with honors. But the regurgitation of book facts was one thing; creative thinking was another. Lawyers like Kevin were misplaced in the criminal division, where instincts were crucial. They'd do far better in antitrust or civil or tax.

But the Kevins of the world specifically wanted criminal. They envisioned high intrigue and action. Little did they know that the highest intrigue at this level of law enforcement was strictly intellectual and that the heart of the action was a war of wills.

Kevin Brauer did not have the personality to win a war of wills. Brendan did. A patient man, he spent a lot of time thinking, just thinking, mulling over the scores of documents he read each month, trying to identify patterns and anticipate moves. It was puzzle solving at its best, a battle of wits. Given his natural curiosity, the ability to project himself into other worlds and minds, an intricate knowledge of the law, an uncanny sense of timing and staunch determination, he had the edge.

The Smith case was a perfect example. Harold Smith owned a chemical plant similar in size and structure to two others that had been threatened with sabotage in the past year. Brendan's instinct, aided by voluminous research and an unconfirmed source, told him that Smith's plant was next in line. Though they all knew that the threat of chemical contamination of food sources or water supplies was a lethal weapon in the hands of terrorists, Harold Smith was resisting. He downplayed the vulnerability of his plant and the possibility that one of his employees was on the take. He didn't want adverse publicity to result from an investigation that he believed would go nowhere.

Brendan's job now was to quietly but firmly convince him that the publicity would be that much more adverse if he failed to cooperate.

His intercom beeped, jarring him from his thoughts. He jabbed at the button on the speaker phone. “Yes, Marge?”

“Miss Wills on line four. Are you in?”

He wished he weren't, but he'd already put off the persistent Miss Wills twice today. “I'm in,” he said with a sigh, then switched off the speaker, pressed line four and lifted the receiver. “Hi, Jocelyn.”

“Does Marge hate me?” came the soft female voice.

Brendan had to smile. “Of course not.”

“I think I annoy her when I call.”

“Only because when I'm not here she has to make excuses, and too often I'm not here.”

“I keep missing you,” Jocelyn said with such genuine sadness that Brendan felt more than a twinge of guilt. Jocelyn Wills was a very lovely woman whom he'd dated on and off in the past few months. He liked her, but that was all, and when he'd sensed that her feelings had grown deeper than his, he'd tried to cool it.

Jocelyn wasn't taking the hint. With the license granted the modern woman, she called him often. She even showed up at his apartment, “just to say hello.” He wouldn't have minded the impromptu visits if it wasn't for the fact that, when she put him on the spot that way, he felt like a heel if he didn't ask her out. Inevitably he did. Inevitably he felt worse afterward. He knew that he should be more honest about his feelings, but he couldn't hurt her. She was sweet and innocuous. She'd been living in the capital less than a year. Her circle of friends was small. She was lonely.

But when she said things like “I keep missing you,” the best he could do was play dumb to the double entendre.

“Things have been hectic here. We're trying to tie up all sorts of loose ends before people start taking off for summer vacations.”

“Have you made your own plans yet?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and made a good-going-Brendan-you-jerk face. “Not yet, Jocelyn. I'm still waiting to see what the others plan to do.”