Secretive Stranger

Chapter 5

Amazing what a little wine and food could do. Granted, she was seeing streetlights in triplicate and her head felt a little woozy…but she wasn’t scared anymore.

She was mad.

“I never get mad,” she told Cord.

“So you’ve mentioned, several times.”

“It’s an amazing relief. Instead of feeling scared, to just let go and feel mad. I mean, what is this?” She waved her arms to illustrate. “I’ve had enough rotten stuff to deal with. Getting broken into is just ridiculously unfair. Finding your dead brother was even worse. I mean, maybe your brother wasn’t the most ethical knife in the drawer, but…” She frowned, not certain if she was making sense. Although that didn’t seem to stop her from talking. “I’m going to get regularly mad from now on. Loud mad. Mean mad. It’s so much better than being scared. When I was a little girl, I used to stand on the porch and sing at the top of my lungs, did you know that? I was a brat. A ham. An attention grabber. It took years, years, to turn me into the pissy, button-down fuddy-duddy I am today…Oh God, did I say pissy? I meant prissy. I would never say prissy…I mean pissy…oh, shoot, which one did I mean?”

“Sophie, let’s wait until the car stops before you get out, cookie.”

“And then there’s you,” she muttered. Fresh air slapped her in the face when she climbed out of the car. Good thing, since the whole street was revolving like a carousel. Suddenly, she wondered why she didn’t drink more often. This was so wonderful. The whole night looked magically sprinkled with stardust.

“Sophie?”

“No,” she said firmly, and abruptly danced down the street. Cord did that to her. Made her feel like dancing. Made her think about moonlight and stardust. It was…unsettling. Somewhere beneath the taste of all that wine was the taste of temptation. Not the temptation of stardust, but the temptation of plain old lust. No man had tempted her in years-not really tempted-the kind of temptation that made her want to strip off more than clothes. The kind of temptation to throw all her fears to the wind and just grab hold of him for the lust of it.

“Oh, no,” she muttered. “I learned a long time ago that monsters don’t hide under the bed. They’re everywhere. At least my monsters are. You can’t feel safe if you think someone’s going to disappear on you. And they all do. Everyone does. So, for darn sure, you don’t open the door to someone you’re not sure of. And for damn sure, I’m not sure of you.”

Abruptly, she found Cord standing directly in front of her. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Soph, but your apartment is that way.” He motioned behind her.

“Well, hell. Who moved my building?” she demanded.

If he answered her, she couldn’t hear him-possibly because her right ear was abruptly crushed against his chest. His long arm tucked her against his side as he turned her around, steering her toward the brownstone. She’d have protested, but the truth was that she’d have stumbled if he hadn’t helped hold her up.

Still, she felt the situation needed clarifying. “Look,” she said, “I don’t do this. Ever.”

“Don’t do what?”

“I don’t fall in love with men who aren’t honest with me. Cripes, it’s hard enough for me to loosen up with men who are honest with me. You’re too far off my radar, Cord. There’s no reason you’d normally be looking at me. So something isn’t kosher. I feel it. I know it. So that’s it. I’m not falling in love with you. It’d be like getting a love note from a pistachio.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know the pistachio song? You want me to sing it?”

“No. Please God, no. Sophie, just concentrate on walking, okay?”

“Or I could sing the other song, about walking on the safe side of the sidewalk. About how she’s afraid to trust anyone, even herself. That’s me. The untruster. The safe sidewalk walker.” She repeated that phrase, charmed with herself. All those S’s and W’s. And she said them brilliantly. Several times.

Out of the complete blue, Cord suddenly lifted her in his arms.

“What-”

“Shh. No more talking for you.”

Well, the truth was, she was pretty darned exhausted. So she closed her eyes for just a second, thinking she just needed a moment to catch her breath.

Just before opening her eyes, Sophie felt the snuggly security of a warm, breathing body next to her. A male body. And so typical of a male who’d gotten exactly what he wanted, he was purring loud enough to wake the neighborhood. “Caviar, you know you’re not allowed under the covers…” Her groggy voice trailed off abruptly. Caviar didn’t seem to be the only male in her bedroom.

Cord looked downright silly, sprawled in her white wicker rocker with the flowery cushion. He’d taken off his shoes. His right sock had a hole. His hair looked raked by a tornado and his chin had sprouted a weed patch of whiskers.

He was also awake. Glaring at her with those sexy dark eyes…although the shadows under his eyes were bigger than boats.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she said groggily.

“You scared the hell out of me.”

“I scared you?”

“You had a ton of food, you know. A ton. I thought the wine would help you calm down. When we first left, I could see how shaken up you were by the break-in. And you only had half the bottle. It was just wine. After all that food. I take it you don’t normally drink?”

“Is this your way of apologizing for getting me drunk?” She peeked under the covers. Caviar looked up at her with sleepy eyes. Nothing else under there but her in all her clothes-except for her shoes-and the cat.

“I didn’t get you drunk. I was trying to be helpful, for God’s sake.”

She leaned up on an elbow. He’d stayed there all night, just because he was worried about her?

But then the rest of life came back into focus. Daylight filtered through the north window, illuminating part of the devastation from the night before. Her tall, antique-white bookcase with the glass doors-hers, not part of the rental furniture that came with the place-was in shambles, glass panes broken, books spilled all over the polished plank floors. Her shoes and purses looked strewn from her closet by a drunk ogre on a binge. Drawers were askew, revealing bra straps and socks and an upended box of old letters. “You were helpful,” she said to Cord. “I don’t care if I had too much wine. I needed to get away from this for a little bit. But now…”

Now she had a monster mess-and a job-to attend to, and she assumed he’d leave. Instead, when she got out of the bathroom, fresh showered, still pulling a purple sweater over her pounding head, Cord was still there.

She found him in the kitchen, by following the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of crackling eggs, but he stopped messing with the spatula the instant she walked in. Talk about an inspection. She felt examined, from her gray flannel skirt to the bulky fit of her purple sweater to her fresh-washed hair. His gaze narrowed on her face, though. “You don’t feel sick?” he asked her.

“Sick at the mess from the break-in, yes. Sick because of the wine, no. What?”

He motioned her to sit at the table-where he’d miraculously cleared a spot for a plate and fork, as if he owned the place. Next to the napkin, though, was a thick manila envelope. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “I’m taking it to the police this morning. But I wanted you to see it first. It was in my brother’s mailbox this morning.”

She picked up the china cup of coffee at the same time she glanced at the envelope’s contents. And then slapped down the cup abruptly.

“Good grief,” she said.

“I didn’t count it. I grabbed a paper towel so I wouldn’t get my fingerprints on it. But as far as I can tell…”

“These are hundreds of hundred-dollar bills. Holy cow. Holy smokes. There must be thousands of dollars in there.”

“Yeah.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “No note, no nothing to identify the sender. Looks pretty obviously like blackmail money to me. I don’t know why else anyone would be sending Jon cash-not cash like this. And whoever the sender was, apparently he-or she-didn’t know Jon was dead.”

She stared at him in shock.

But Cord wasn’t through talking. “Sophie,” he said quietly, “I need your help. I know the police will do what they can, but I just don’t have total faith in their ability to figure this out-at least fast enough to prevent any more trouble. I have to find out what Jon was up to. I wish it weren’t your problem, but damn it, it is. Once they broke into your place, it became your problem, too. You’re not safe. I don’t know how to make you safe until we’ve got an answer for this.”

Two days could make an amazing difference. Her apartment was full of noise and laughter. Caviar had strategically located himself on top of the living room bookshelf, where he could regard the group of women with a slit-eyed, appalled expression. Down at coffee-table level, the remnants of a pizza, sodas and paper plates covered that space. The floor was more littered with cleaning supplies and trash bags than the cat could survive.

“You guys are being so wonderful,” Sophie said helplessly.

“Oh, shut up, Soph. You’d do the same for us.” Jan, looking like a moon goddess in a tie-dyed silver smock dress, had been the first to show up after work. She’d taken on the job of keeping everyone fed and watered-at least when she wasn’t nosing around Sophie’s bookshelves and drawers and all. “You know, if you’d just give me a budget and some permission, I could turn this place into something else. It’s got gorgeous architecture.”

“I think the last thing Soph is worried about right now is color schemes.” Hillary had popped in after a shift at the hospital. She’d taken off her lab coat, revealing jeans and a white sweater. On her, the outfit looked runway-ready. She’d installed herself in front of Sophie’s computer, and was analyzing what damage the vandal had done to the files and records.

“Well, I want to hear about Jon’s brother.” Penelope, after spending a hard day doing the lobbyist thing-or so she claimed-was leaned over the couch from behind, rubbing Sophie’s neck. Sophie’s neck didn’t actually need rubbing, but it gave Penelope something to do besides work. “Is he as cute as Jon? How much time are you spending with him? What does he think Jon was up to? Is he single?”

“I want to hear what the cops are doing about this break-in.” Jan tried to close up an overfilled box of books. “Foggy Bottom’s supposed to be safe. The real thieves are supposed to be in DC-or on Capitol Hill-not here. It’s scary. You want me to stay here for a few nights, Soph?”

“No, no, I’m fine. But I do appreciate all the help putting it back together. It would have taken me night upon night upon night.” Sophie stood up, realizing all the knots in her neck were actually gone. “Thanks, Penelope. Man, are you great at that.”

“I am,” Penelope agreed with a frank laugh. “Men love a good back rub. It was a skill I acquired early. Anyway, you know what I heard?”

“What?” Jan’s head popped up from her box.

“You know Athena Simpson? The woman senator from Arizona? I heard she broke down when she heard Jon died, closed up the office, just disappeared for a few days.”

“But she’s married,” Sophie said.

Jan exchanged glances with Penelope.

“Cut it out,” Sophie said crossly. “I know married people have affairs. It’s just…she’s a senator.”

“Yeah, well, everyone says her husband’s gay. Not bi. Gay. So I’m not throwing stones if she was sleeping with Jon on the side.”

“I wasn’t throwing stones,” Sophie said. “I just…”

“You’re just going to be naive until the day you die,” Hillary said wryly, coming from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “You had your hard drive copied, Sophie. Completely. And you had two corrupted files on there-but I don’t think they were your work.”

“You could fix the corrupted stuff?”

“Yeah, no sweat. In another life, maybe I’ll do surgery on electronics instead of people. Although, really, Sophie, your backup procedures are first rate. You could have done this.”

“Maybe,” Sophie agreed. “But I thought it would help to have another set of eyes. When I went through it all my current work seemed to be there. And that’s just it, why would someone mess with my computer system if they didn’t take any of the work? For that matter, why would anyone look on here to begin with? Nothing I do is remotely top secret.”

“Yeah, well, in Washington, even the whisper of something wicked is enough to start an avalanche.”

“But not from me. No one could possibly think I was an avalanche starter-Cord!” All four women straightened at the sudden appearance of Cord in the doorway. “I thought you were teaching tonight,” Sophie said swiftly.

“Canceled. In fact, I arranged for a free week, so I could concentrate on my brother’s business. Ladies, I think I remember you all…Jan, Hillary, Penelope…”

Her heart seemed to hiccup. They’d shared kisses now. He’d slept in her room. They’d shared things, laughed together. She refused to be so preposterous as to believe it could be a love thing, but right at that instant, she knew she was in trouble. Heart trouble.

And before those idiotic allusions could seep under her defenses any deeper, she thought fate was helping her out. This was Cord’s second shot at meeting the three women. He’d see how gorgeous they were. How…bru nette. How women-of-the-world. And then he’d stop looking at her as if…well, as if he were interested.

That’s what she thought would happen. Yet, after a rapid round of hellos-and the women all inviting Cord to stay and share some pizza, as if this were their apartment-Cord put up a hand. “I don’t want to interrupt. Unless you specifically want some help, Soph, I’ll be next door. And I’ll catch up with you whenever you have a chance.”

When he disappeared across the hall, the women spun around to examine Sophie as if she’d suddenly grown two heads. “What?” she demanded.

“I saw the way he looked at you,” Penelope said. “You’ve been holding out on us, girl. Let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?”

Hillary’s jaw dropped. “You got involved with him? I can’t believe it!”

“Wait, wait…” Sophie put her hands on her head. Only near Washington could the whisper of a rumor get out of control so fast. “Are you guys crazy? Why would someone like Cord look at anyone like me? The only reason we’ve talked is because of his brother. It’s nothing personal.”

Twenty minutes later the women left, carrying bags with leftover pizza and soda and anything else Sophie could force in their hands for a thank-you. In the sudden silence after their departure, she called for Caviar. The place looked almost like normal. The landlord would have to decide what he wanted to fix or replace, but her stuff was livable again. Almost every sign of the break-in had been whisked away

She felt safe again-life safe. Heart safe was a different story entirely, but she figured the only way to resolve that was to face it head-on.

Seconds later, Caviar next to her, she rapped on Cord’s door.

He opened it as if he’d been waiting just on the other side. “I was hoping you’d have a chance to pop in. Nice of your friends to come over and help. Do you still have stuff you need doing?” He looked at her, then at the cat streaking past his legs. “Where’s he going?”

“It’s in pretty good shape. The girls were whirlwinds. And you’ve got enough on your plate without adding my messes to it. As far as where Caviar’s going…my guess is, to the litter box.”

“Why mine instead of yours?” he asked mournfully, clearly hoping to elicit a chuckle, but right off the bat, she could see he was distracted. “I told you I was taking that money to the authorities, which I did. I just wanted to fill you in on how that went, but…”

“What?” Maybe she’d come over because she’d promised to help with his brother’s stuff. Maybe she just wanted to prove to herself that she could reduce the chemical pull around Cord by just behaving sisterlike with him. One millisecond, and that plan got jettisoned. Something was wrong. Not the wrongs of last week. A new wrong. She could see it in his face.

“I found some more stuff. In fact, I figured out-just in the last few minutes-exactly how my brother was making a living.”

“So spill.”

Sophie automatically pushed off her shoes at the door, but she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Forget risk. Forget what she shouldn’t be feeling. Cord had been fine when he stopped by, yet now he gave off tension, as if he’d been slapped with a live electric wire. She glanced around, trying to pick up clues about what he’d been doing.

Apparently, he’d been sitting on the carpet in the living room. A tall glass sat on the coffee table, still loaded with melted ice cubes, nothing but a leftover acrid aroma to tattletale the scotch he’d been drinking. She suspected he’d chugged it, or the cubes wouldn’t still be there. A dozen CDs were strewn in front of the flat-screen monitor, but just then, the screen was black.

Instinctively, she aimed for the mess on the floor and crouched down. “Okay, what are these CDs?” she asked.

He didn’t directly answer, just hustled to push the CDs into a box behind him before dropping to the carpet next to her. And then he started talking, but not totally making sense. Man, he was wiped, she thought. Heart wiped. Soul wiped.

“My parents,” he started, and then just heaved out a gruff sigh. “I can’t say enough about them. They were both so…decent. So totally good people. They believed in crappy old-fashioned ideals, like integrity and honor and loyalty. In their lives, certain things were automatic…like shoveling out their neighbor’s drive after a snowstorm, and church on Sunday, and taking a neighbor food when they were sick. Growing up, I never thought about any of that. It’s just how it was, how they were. We weren’t fancy people. Just good. All the way to the bone.”

She waited. He scrubbed his forehead like he was trying to erase strain lines etched in ink. “I left. I mean, for God’s sake, I was grown-up. It was time I made my own way. But I admit, I couldn’t wait to get out of town, make a life of my own. I did the military thing, then to the State Department-was overseas for long months at a time. I didn’t get home often. Just couldn’t. When you’re young and dumb and busy saving the world, you assume everything’ll be the same when you get back. They knew I loved them. I knew they loved me. All that crap.” He looked up suddenly. “Hell, I’m going on like a runaway train. Didn’t even offer you a dri…Oh. Well, maybe best not to offer you liquor, huh, Big Drinker?”

She liked the teasing. Maybe too much. “Shut up, Cord. And no, I don’t need anything, alcoholic or otherwise. But you want another?” She motioned to his glass.

“No.”

He couldn’t seem to get talking again, so she pushed. “What’s on the CDs?”

And that set him off again, although not directly answering her question. “My mom got cancer. I came home. Pretty sure I told you that before. All along, they hadn’t told me what trouble Jon had been, what trouble he was into. I mean, Jon was born a handful, but I didn’t know how bad things had gotten until I got home, and then I could see my parents were…gray. Gray with worry, gray with fear. Not drugs. That was one thing they didn’t seem to be afraid he was doing. But Jon…He was so good-looking, so full of charm that he always seemed to squeeze out of trouble. He never wanted to think he was like everyone else. He didn’t want to work. He didn’t want responsibility. Yet he wanted something all the time. As if some kind of hunger was eating him up from the inside. Nothing respectable ever seemed to ring his chimes.”

When Cord again fell silent, Sophie figured the elephant in the room had been ignored for long enough. “So it’s porn on the CDs?”

The way he looked at her was answer enough. And then he sprang to his feet as if he couldn’t sit still any longer. Caviar ambled in and crouched down by the fireplace, his eyes at a lazy half-mast, but Sophie thought the old tom had adopted Cord. Or maybe battered males just tended to stick together, who knew?

Cord prowled the room like a scarred-up old cougar, punching a button here, a switch there…a mistake to do in his brother’s living room, where out of nowhere firelight or sexy music or sexy dim lights could suddenly change the landscape.

He switched off whatever he switched on, but it was obvious he wasn’t paying attention. And though Sophie listened to his words, she paid the most attention to his body language and expressions. He hated it, she thought. Pride was the problem. He hated talking about issues that shamed him, that ripped open his sense of honor-at least as he saw it.

“You know, I wouldn’t give a damn if it were just porn. The first CD I came across, I just thought the film was, you know, lovers, playing games, filming each other. Lovers do such things. Not up to me to be their judge and jury. Only, damn it, this wasn’t about lovers. Because each CD has a different name or initial on it. There’s ‘HS’ and ‘Janella.’ ‘MM.’ ‘AFB,’ ‘Penny, Bel.’ I stopped counting, but there have to be twelve different names. None of the CDs are dated, so I don’t know how old these are, what year, any information like that. The first one I saw, though-I recognized her from the news, she’s one of the local anchors in the morning. Damn it, she’s got two young kids.”

She searched his face. “As upsetting as this is, Cord…none of this is your shame or your blame. It’s on your brother. And on the women he got involved with.”

“I just don’t get how he turned out so…crooked. Maybe if I’d been here more-”

“You were the younger brother, right?”

“Yeah, but I was always stronger than him. And when I left, I was thinking about myself, my life, not what my parents were left to cope with. He was out of control a long, long time ago.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Another face on a CD was someone in the Defense Department. Not high up, but still, hell, if he was blackmailing her, it could have been for more than money. The whole thing is-”

Slowly she stood up, not sure what she intended, but driven by some primal female instinct. It didn’t take brilliant intuition to know, positively, that Cord didn’t do emotional spills. He didn’t live the kind of life where he ever expected to find himself knee-deep in muck, at least this kind of unethical, ugly muck. It wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t his doing, but responsibility still showed in every forehead crease, every pinch around his eyes, every stiff-shouldered movement.

She knew about that.

She knew about feeling alone, about being alone, about trying to build a shell around herself so thick that hurt couldn’t get through.

She knew about wading through mud, trying to find a way that would make sense, willing to do anything, to be anything, to turn herself into someone else, if that’s what it took to survive.

Cord frowned and stopped prowling around the room when he noticed her silently walking toward him.

As if suddenly uneasy, his hand seemed to unconsciously jerk on a switch. Lights dimmed, although he didn’t seem aware of it. When she kept approaching him, he looked at her with a questioning expression.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

And then she kissed him.