Mesmerizing Stranger

Chapter 10

When the jet bounced down onto the tarmac at Logan Airport, Harm was buzz-tired. Making sudden travel arrangements meant all of them had been on different flights, different times, and never, for damn sure, conveniently. He’d managed to keep Cate with him all the way, but they’d still been traveling for two nonstop days, with meals on the run, and layovers in airports that all looked alike.

He’d never been able to sleep on planes, partly because he was prone to insomnia and primarily because the seats were made for midgets. Cate, by contrast, had zoned out each time an engine started and slept like the dead, mostly sprawled on him. Now, she galloped down the aisle, all perky and bossy.

She started out with, “You and I are going to have a serious talk. About what I’m really doing here.”

“You know why you’re here.”

“Humph.”

She went along with those humphs until right before the baggage claim escalators, where she stopped all passenger flow by stopping dead and wagging a finger in his face. “I’ll help you if I can. That’s not even an issue. But you and I both know what’s really going on here. You want to be with me. I want to be with you. We’re having temporary delusions that we’ve something mystical and fantastic and rare and extraordinary going on together.”

“And this is criminal how?” he asked carefully.

She didn’t answer that. Someone bumped her, and she charged off toward baggage claim again. “This is just not planned out well. I don’t have any clothes, for one thing. For Pete’s sake, all I carried with me were the clothes I needed for a boat trip in Alaska.”

“Doesn’t seem that hard to use a credit card in a store, does it?”

“I hate shopping,” she informed him.

“I knew you would,” he said mildly. Somehow, even with no rest, his eyes gritty from dryness, and Armageddon waiting for him at the lab, he felt as relaxed as a sleepy lion. It was Cate. Everything she’d said was true. Everything about his feelings for her were suspect and not to be trusted and, well, odd. Odd for him, anyway.

No man felt sure of a woman. Certainly, no man after two divorces felt sure of a woman-much less one as capricious and unreadable as Cate.

But there it was. The feeling that anything was solvable when she was next to him. That nothing would ever be right again if she wasn’t.

She fell silent for a brief-very brief-stretch, while they picked up their gear and made the trek to the long-term parking lot. The weather was a mighty contrast to the damp greens of Alaska. The late-afternoon sky sun-bleached and summer heat baked into the pavement. In the car lot, once he’d given her the general location, he had to chuckle when she instinctively aimed for a black BMW 128i convertible.

“How on earth could you guess which was my car?”

“It’s obvious. Look at the rest of the cars in this row-the Taurus and Chevy and Mazdas. But don’t try telling me you bought it because it’s a precision driving machine.”

“It is.”

“It’s also the sexiest BMW they ever put out. How fast can you get that top down?”

“You’re a good woman, Cate. Forget all the insults I said before.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was getting it back-that irrepressible grin. “We’d better quit with the chitchat. Do we have a plan? Besides your needing to clock in some serious hours of sleep.”

“I don’t need sleep.”

“Harm. You’re going to crash, soon and big. You have to have some rest.”

Maybe he did, but Harm figured he’d have to manage. He knew the other men’s travel schedules. Come Monday morning, latest, everybody would be back to work at the lab. That left him the weekend, at most, for him and Cate to take that place apart from stem to stern.

It wasn’t likely to be enough time.

Even so, he had priorities before that. It felt good to slide behind the wheel, get the top off, put his baby in gear. There weren’t that many miles between Logan and Cambridge, but it was Friday, approaching rush hour, so naturally the roads were jammed. Rather than face Interstate 93, he ducked down the side roads around Harvard.

Truthfully, he could have found a better route than that, but he wanted Cate to get a glimpse of Harvard Square, the white-spired churches, the historical streets with the red brick and white trim and black lanterns. Big old shade trees cooled the side streets, showed off small, elegant gardens, history hiding in every side corner.

“You like?” he asked, but he could tell from the way she absorbed it all.

“Totally love,” she corrected him.

“Yeah, that’s how I felt when I first got here. I don’t know the entire region that well yet. And traffic in Boston-there’s no swear word bad enough to describe it. But still…the whole area’s been growing on me.”

“New Orleans was like that for me. I first went because of the fantastic chefs located there. It’s impossible in the summer, not just hot, but sick-hot. Still, there’s so much character and flavor in the city that it was easy to fall in love with.” She turned to him. “You still haven’t told me the plan.”

“Because I don’t have anything that specific.” There was a lot on his mind, but for long minutes, he’d just been aware of the summer wind in their faces, tossing up her hair, her riding next to him, how nothing had felt this easy or right in a long time. Maybe never. “First plan. We need to drop our bags off at my place. Both of us probably want to catch a shower. Then-out for a decent dinner. Too late to get reservations at a place like the Barking Crab restaurant, but I know a good place locally. So…we’ll freshen up, eat, then drive over to the lab. I don’t know that we can get much of anything done tonight, but we can at least map out our time from there.”

“Good plan. One small exception.”

“What?”

“I need clothes. Seriously. Nothing fancy, but I just need some kind of generic store where I could pick up a few basics-specifically clothes that don’t smell like fish and rain.”

“No sweat.” He immediately right-turned, aimed a few blocks into a more commercial area. A man couldn’t have been married, much less twice, without knowing about women and clothes shopping, so…she was going to take forever. He really didn’t care. Actually, he figured he could swing into a shady spot and put his head back, catch a nap. Even a half hour would be better than none.

He pulled onto a commercial street with a half dozen decent shops, angled into a parking spot, then lifted up to pull out his wallet and a credit card.

She shot him a look that could have frozen fire. “Have I neglected to mention that I make damn good money and certainly don’t need yours?”

“But I said I’d pay for expenses. And you wouldn’t need these clothes if I didn’t push you into helping me.”

“Do not irritate me when I have jet lag, Connolly. Trust me. It’s a bad idea. It’s possible you’re right, because it sort of is an expense. But I don’t care. I buy my own clothes. That’s that.”

He wiped a hand over his face as she climbed out and clipped down the street, but then he just put his head back and closed his eyes with a grin. How-or why-a completely irrational woman should make him smile was impossible to analyze.

A second later-certainly no more-she was climbing back in the car with four packages. He blinked in shock. “You just left.” He glanced at his watch. “You haven’t even been fifteen minutes.”

“I easily fit in a size. And the first store was great, hit a sale. Home, Jerome.”

Abruptly, he remembered a few details. “It’s not actually home. It was my uncle’s place. I haven’t had time to sell it, or do much of anything for that matter. He died, I got here, and the whole crisis of the disappearing formula developed from there. So I-”

“So it’s dusty and messy. Got it, Harm. You’re talking to a woman who doesn’t claim anywhere as home. You don’t need to worry about stuff like that with me. Ever.”

“I’m not worried. I’m just trying to warn you what we’re getting into.” To himself, Harm admitted that he had an attachment to the place. Not that he wouldn’t sell it. Not that it didn’t need work to accommodate how he’d prefer to live. It was just…growing up, Dougal had been his favorite family person. He wasn’t just an uncle but a coconspirator, someone a cocky boy could talk to-about girls, about life, about building a windmill in the backyard, about sort of accidentally driving his mom’s car into the ditch a week after he got his license.

So. It wasn’t that the house was so much. It’s just that he wanted her to like it.

When they pulled up she looked it over, said “Really nice” in a tone that told him nothing at all, then started grabbing her packages and duffel. “Point me to a shower, okay?”

He unlocked, carried and then obediently pointed. “Wander anywhere you want. I’ll be in-” He pointed again, this time across a hall “-that shower. I’m going to make a few calls first, okay? Make yourself at home.”

He did have calls to make. The airlines, to make sure what times Arthur, Yale and Purdue were expected home-which was not for another day. After that, he called Fiske’s daughter, then checked answering-machine messages and left callbacks for the firm’s attorney and the P.I. firm. He didn’t expect responses-not on Friday night-but he still wanted the host of players involved in his uncle’s firm to be aware that he was home and needed further updating.

His firm, Harm kept telling himself. All of it was his problem now, not his uncle’s.

By the time he hung up, he realized he hadn’t heard a sound from Cate. The bathroom door was closed where he’d directed her-which was the spare bath, had clean towels and no guy-messes that he could remember.

He headed for his own shower, and before he’d gotten the first layer of travel grime off, he was trying to imagine the house through her eyes.

It was just a basic brownstone type. Grown-in neighborhood, all ages. The yard backed up to woods and a ravine, but it wasn’t fancy, looked more like a professor’s digs than a millionaire’s dream house. Practically every room had bookshelves. The main living area had big, fat furniture, either old leather or corduroy, with splashes of dark red and blues in the Oriental carpets. Three bedrooms, a dining room no one had ever used to eat in, a den that was piled to the ceiling. There were no doodads, but dust coming off the books scented the air.

By the time he’d toweled off, nicked his chin twice shaving, and climbed into pants, he figured she’d hate it…but he couldn’t wait any longer before finding her. He pulled on a white shirt, thinking about dinner, but was still buttoning it as he started the search.

It was still hot-the house had been closed up, obviously-and he’d put on AC when he called the restaurant, but it was going to take a while to get the place cooled down. He padded barefoot into the living room. A window seat in the bay windows looked onto the two giant maples in the front yard. A black squirrel was perched on the windowsill, as if he owned the place. It was the one room that had some coolness to it, he thought, but that wasn’t where he found Cate.

She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a short silk wrap, a hairbrush in her hand. It didn’t appear as if she’d used it yet. Her hair glistened, still damp from a shower, and was standing up in spiky enthusiasm. Typical of Cate, when she concentrated, she forgot everything else.

He edged up behind her, folded his arms. “What exactly are we looking at?” he asked.

She jumped when she realized he was there, then grinned. She motioned to where he saw an old box of a kitchen, a broom closet, a sturdy but well-scarred oak table. Last time someone had given the room attention, they’d gone for blue. It was definitely the most neglected room in the house, yet Cate’s face radiated animation and delight.

“I love a kitchen with an east view. That long sill is just a natural for growing herbs. The broom closet’s kind of a silly waste, but if you look at the space inside, it wouldn’t take much work to create a really convenient pantry. And the sink. I love a serious double sink. And that’s a great work counter. Personally, I think it needs better lighting, and obviously a paint job, but the guts of a terrific kitchen is already here. You can’t imagine how rare that is. I-”

She didn’t stop talking until he pulled her into his arms.

“What?” she asked, on the cusp of a laugh.

“You. Orgasmic over a kitchen. An old, beat-up, ugly kitchen.”

“It’s a little beat-up, but that isn’t the point-”

“I know.” Her excitement was the point. Which was why he had to kiss her. It had been aeons. She’d slept half in his arms on the flights, but there’d been no privacy for days, for exhausting, long hours. Being next to her was good. Very good.

But it wasn’t the same as finally getting his hands on her.

He didn’t know he’d been holding back and behaving himself until he tasted her lips again. That silky small mouth was as sassy as her personality, teasing and tasting and then settling in for a long, lingering savor. Her tongue got into it, then her teeth.

Her arms slid around his neck, clung. She swayed against him, deliberately giving him a tease of pelvis, a brush of breast. All promises, no substance.

She was not a good woman. Not a fair one. But she let out a wicked, low chuckle when he brushed something off the table-paper? Mail? Whatever. He needed a mattress and the only bed-type was far too many yards away.

“We don’t have time,” she murmured. “Didn’t you say we were going to dinner-?”

“Reservations. In an hour. Don’t care.”

“I thought you were starving.”

“I am.”

“We have serious stuff to do. We really don’t have time-”

This from the woman who was helping him swoosh mail and newspapers and keys to the floor, who’d already perched up on the table, who was sliding her hands inside his white shirt.

She was totally right. They didn’t have time.

For anything but this.

The chaos of the last two days disappeared. The wild sail back to Juneau, the jumbled flight and transfer arrangements, the chaotic connections with authorities at home and in Juneau-it had all been never ending, nonstop. Until now. With her.

Those small white hands handled the zipper on his dress pants so fast, he was ready to go, and there she was, laughing, coaxing him with more kisses, more speed. Her legs wrapped around him, bringing him closer, at the same time her tongue whisked damp, soft enticements down his throat, his chest, lower.

He put a stop to it.

She’d seduced him once, but the darned woman needed to learn to take turns. When she heard him laugh, she lifted her head, smiled up at him. “See, Harm?” she whispered. “That’s the thing. To steal moments of feeling good and being happy and just…being. With someone else. Just…”

Oh, yeah, now she wanted to talk? He hooked her legs under his arms, lifted them up and over his shoulders. He took his turn-and he made it a slow, long, lazy turn-whisking his tongue down, down, starting with the hollow in her ivory-soft throat. Then celebrating the shape and vulnerability and exquisite texture of each small, perfect breast. Then down, over her flat tummy, into her navel.

“Harm…” There, he saw her head drop back. She wasn’t laughing anymore. There was still a smile, but it was fragile, stark, intimate. “I don’t think I can…”

Yeah, he thought. That was the thing. She wasn’t a truster-which he understood, because he trusted no one, either. But that was exactly how he knew what to do, why, how. For her to believe that she could give her trust to him, he had to come through for her.

A man dreamed of work this good. His tongue dipped lower, lower, until he cupped his hands under her bottom, lifted her to him and sipped. She let out a cry of a sigh, a moan of longing and need. He tasted, savored, sank in.

She arched under his hands, then tensed until he felt the first vibrant tremors take her over, take her under. Before she’d recovered, he rewound her legs, this time around his waist, and plunged into her, hard and slow.

She called his name again, but this time on a hiss. The sound inspired him to dive deeper, slower, harder. They both seemed to crest on a roar of speed, a thrill of letting free…everything. For her. With her.

Moments later, they were both gasping for breath. “What you do to me,” she whispered, half laughing, half scolding, her tone so loving he almost lost it all over again. Unfortunately, they had to separate-the table was impossibly uncomfortable; both had to shift. And reality, of course, returned. They still had miles to travel in the coming hours.

Harm, though, figured he’d get more recovery time, because when she disappeared in the bedroom, he figured she’d take a lot longer than he would to get dressed and fixed up. Instead, he’d barely caught a fast reshower and changed and had a chance to sit in a living-room chair before she walked out of the spare bedroom.

At first, he thought a stranger had broken into the house and done something with his Cate.

It was just a black dress, he could see. But she’d done something with a scarf, added a little vanilla and dark chocolate in a low scoop under her neck. The heels were so high she almost reached his chin, not counting how long and sexy they made her legs look. Her hair was still a wreck, thank God, so at least he could recognize her. But the eyes looked smoky and dangerous, something tiny and expensive dangling from her ears.

“Who are you and what have you done with my Cate?”

She walked by him, chucked up his chin. “Didn’t you think I could clean up? But don’t start thinking I’d be any kind of corporate wife. I don’t do country clubs. Or private schools. Or being on boards.”

“But I’ll bet you do expensive restaurants.”

She brightened immediately. “I can be bought. That’s my price. Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere around men if you’re going to wear those heels and look like that. Hell, I need oxygen before I can find the strength to drive the car.”

“Damn it, Harm. You go straight to my head. Cut it out.”

He didn’t want to cut it out. He strongly suspected she wasn’t normally into blushing, and his ego thrived on flustering her.

The drive wasn’t far, and he put the car on zoom, because both of them really were hungry and needed a decent meal. He admitted wanting to impress her, and he knew she’d like the restaurant. He’d been there twice. He couldn’t pronounce a thing on the menu, but everything went down easy. It was in an old house, each room uniquely decorated, but all had subtle lighting and long, graceful drapes and restful chairs.

The waiter offered them a wine list, then the menu-which Cate, with a glance at Harm, suggested they didn’t really need. “How about if you just bring us whatever the chef thinks is his favorite tonight?”

The older man smiled. “He’ll love that. And I think you will, too.”

This might be the only peaceful meal they’d have for days, Harm thought, and it was going to be perfect.

That illusion lasted maybe three minutes.

“Okay,” she said, after the first sip of wine, “maybe it’s time you told me about those first two wives.”

“Now you want to hear? I’ve offered a half dozen times.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just figured we’d have a more restful dinner if we didn’t talk about murder and larceny and all that for a little while.”

He was more than willing to tell her. “The first one was Zoe. We got married the day after my eighteenth birthday. She was pregnant. Neither of us had a brain, crossed state lines, found a justice of the peace, figured we’d somehow work it all out and conquer the world. We were 100 percent in love. Never doubted for a minute our love could endure anything-including her parents’ disapproval and mine.”

“So what tore it apart?”

“Not parents. Not poverty. Not idiocy. But…she miscarried in her sixth month. It tore us both up. I guess that has to sound pretty nuts for an eighteen-year-old kid to want a baby that bad. But I did. Anyway, neither of us had the maturity to survive the loss, at least not together, because we both caved after that. Nothing I’m proud to admit.”

“Cripes, Harm. That’s a sad story. What a thing to go through…” She suddenly shook her head. “What?”

By then the waiter had served dinner with a flourish of sterling and bone china. Cate hadn’t eaten two bites before she started in.

“The chef wouldn’t know fresh cilantro if it knocked at his front door,” she murmured. “And the wine’s all right, although there are certainly better choices. So do you ever still see her? Zoe?”

“No. We stayed in touch for a while. Then that disappeared except for an e-mail at Christmas. She’s been married for a while, on her third kid-I don’t believe her husband even knows there was a marriage before him.”

She had several more comments to make about dinner, but he wasn’t deluded that she was finished grilling him. “Well, you might as well tell me about wife number two, since we started this. And I certainly hope that story is a lot more scandalous than the first one.”

“Okay.” He’d devoured his dinner by then. “I went to school after that. Liked engineering, but didn’t like going to classes, that whole school environment. So I enlisted in the army. My dad thought that was crazy-I never owned a weapon, never wanted to, don’t like anything about wars-but I seriously believed that career army was going to work for me. I didn’t want to be an engineer who sat at a desk. I wanted to be one of those people who built bridges and roads and dams across the planet.”

“And did you?”

“Oh, yeah. For years. Now what’s wrong?” He saw the slight shake of her head.

“Nothing. I was just inclined for a second to go back to the kitchen and give the chef some friendly advice.” She waved a fork. “Forget I said anything. You still haven’t gotten into wife number two. Hard to imagine how a woman could have fit into that life program.”

“Well, this wasn’t exactly a typical marriage. In fact, what I’m about to tell you has a little tinge of not exactly kosher.”

She shivered all over. “Good. Let’s hear it.” The dessert menu came and went. Some kind of fancy coffee was served, along with… Well, whatever it was tasted richer than Croesus.

“Kayla was Muslim. I met her in a hospital where I was getting stitches-not for anything interesting, just a minor accident, long cut on my side. Anyway. She was eighteen. A baby. So beat-up the doctors weren’t sure she could survive it. I didn’t see her initially-being a Muslim woman, she was treated only by females, and only behind closed curtains. But after I heard the story…I couldn’t let it go. She was supposed to marry this man that she’d met, and strongly disliked. He was much older than she was. He told her up front what he expected in a wife. Her own father beat her when she claimed she couldn’t marry him.”

“My heavens,” Cate murmured.

“She was suicidal. It wasn’t just that she said it. I believed it. I think she would have killed herself if she had to go back to her family, to that ‘fiancé.’ So…”

“So you married her?”

“I know. That’s the part that wasn’t exactly kosher. Complicated as hell to pull off besides. There are too many people trying to immigrate to America, any way they can, so for a marriage to be ‘valid’, the pair has to stay together for a serious amount of time. She didn’t have anyone here, didn’t have any idea what to do with herself, her time, her life. All she wanted was to come to America, to get away from the situation she was in.”

“How long did you stay married?”

Harm frowned, trying to remember. “First off, I got her in school-she was smart, just not educated in a system like ours. Thankfully, my family took to her, helped get her set up in a job after that, close enough they could be part of her world. I was still army then, still working projects around the world, so I couldn’t be that close. But she thrived, almost from the start. It just took time to make it right, to make it work.”

“Did you love her, Harm?”

“From the moment I first met her, I liked her. I cared about her. So, sure, I loved her.”

“I mean, did you love love her?”

He answered the questions he figured she hadn’t gotten around to asking yet. “I wasn’t in love with anyone else. She was and is a terrific person. I honestly never regretted the marriage. I don’t believe she did, either.”

“But you did divorce.”

He nodded. “She finally fell in love. But not with me. And to be honest-it was a relief, because I think she would have stayed with me out of loyalty and respect, and yeah, out of love. But not the right kind of love. Anyway, I still see her. She still sees my family. If I get you out to the left coast one of these days, you’ll meet her, too. I guarantee you’ll like her.”

“Harm.”

“What?”

“That was really a heroic thing to do!”

He frowned. “No, it wasn’t. I wasn’t with anyone else. I couldn’t just walk away. I don’t think anyone could have. I’m not exaggerating her situation. She would have died, and she had no possible way to help herself. Not in that culture.” He cupped his chin in a hand. “You know, I was trying to treat you to a really nice dinner. You know. Like a date, even.”

“This is a nice dinner! Thank you very much.” Her voice radiated sincerity, although she did plunk down her spoon with a little distracted thunk. “Anyone can have a problem with cream. I’ll bet he had an under chef handling the desserts, and he doesn’t realize it’s been overwhipped.”

Harm shook his head. “Just so you know. If I ever want to seduce you or stage a romantic setting, I’m never taking you to a restaurant again. Maybe ever. It’s a little too much like taking a cop to a robbery on his off day.”

“What’d I do? What’d I say?” she asked bewilderedly.

“Nothing, Cookie. Now…you’ve got the story about my marriages out of me. Don’t you think it’s your turn to tell me about your guys?”

She blotted the corners of her mouth with a white linen napkin. “There’ve been millions. I can’t remember them all.”

“Ah. I believe that.”

She glowered at him. “No, you don’t.”

Since they were putting a few straight cards on the table, he ventured a few more. “My guess is that there’ve been very few men…and none who you really loved. None who you really trusted. And since casual friends don’t count, I’d guess the number is right around, well…one.”

She blinked. “One?”

“Yeah. One. Me. You trust me, Cate.”

She sucked in a breath. As he could have expected, she got that fight-or-flight look in her eyes again. Given a puff of wind, the scent of roses, the wrong kind of smile, she’d have bolted for the exit so fast it’d make his head spin.

But this time…she didn’t bolt. She only looked as if she wanted to. “Don’t flatter yourself, Connolly. But don’t feel insulted, either. I don’t trust anyone, not at a certain level. That’s the way it is for me and always will be. I’m not the girl you take home. Trust me.”

He’d already managed to take her home, Harm thought.

But not to win her. And for a man who had a full-scale trauma about to catch up with him, no time to even sleep, no way to keep her beyond a few more days…Harm was beginning to doubt there was any way he could force her to see what they were together.

What they could be.