The Honeymoon Assignment Page 4

  Great, Sam thought. Not only had she ignored his warning about staying out of the investigation, but she was acting as though Harold and Helen were also welcome to tag along whenever they wanted to. Maybe they should just issue invitations to the whole Windspray Community while they were at it.

  He knew he was being unreasonable, but he still hadn’t gotten over the bolt of fear that had gone through him when he’d realized, out on the sand dunes with Kelley in his arms, how easily this woman could make him forget everything except her own sweet presence. He needed to get his thoughts straight, and he knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

  He stayed silent while Harold and Helen walked with them to the beach road that led back to the Windspray cottages. Kelley was drawing Helen out on the subject of the property, which had apparently been in the Price family for several generations before Harold had decided to develop it.

  “You must love it here,” Kelley said, looking toward the cove where several tall sailboats bobbed on the water, their riggings clanking faintly in the breeze.

  “Oh, we do,” Helen said. “It’s always been such a wonderful escape from Houston. And the light is so marvelous here, of course.”

  “Helen’s a painter,” Harold added. “A damn good one. You’ll see her work in the Windspray restaurant.”

  There was obvious pride in his voice. Sam wondered again what it must be like to have someone in your corner for you, not just for the short term, but over a lifetime.

  It was as much of a mystery to him as the identity of the criminal he’d come here to catch. And the thought of it— the contrast between his own solitary life and Harold and Helen’s obviously vital partnership—made his voice rougher than usual when he and Kelley were finally alone on the sandy road back to their cottage.

  “Looks like I didn’t make my point clear enough,” he told her.

  She walked without looking at him, gazing out at the ocean view ahead of her. “Oh, you made it perfectly clear,” she said. “I just don’t buy it, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to spend the whole week arguing about this, Kelley.”

  “Good. Neither do I.” Her voice was as gentle as ever, but he could hear the determination in it. “Did it ever occur to you, Sam, that you cause as many problems as you solve by insisting on doing everything your own way?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about what happened just now with Harold and Helen. Those people are paying good money to hire Cotter Investigations, and they’re entitled to know what’s going on.”

  “And I’ll tell them—as soon as there’s anything to tell.”

  “No.” She shook her head firmly. Her strides had gotten longer, matching his own, and Sam found himself caught up in amazement at how she could look so graceful and so angry at the same time.

  “Do you have any idea how much time Wiley spends spreading oil on the waters whenever you’re assigned to a case?” she was asking. “You get results, Sam—nobody does it better—but you also tend to offend people along the way. Important people, like the Prices.”

  “Who says they’re so important? Just because they get into the Houston society pages—”

  “They’re important because they’re our clients.” She frowned at him, then reached out an open hand. “Come on. We’re almost back to the Windspray road.”

  He took her hand quickly this time, hoping that their angry words would be enough to cancel out the sweet sensation of her warm, smooth palm against his. He didn’t want her to see how it shook him to touch her even casually.

  “Wiley’s never said anything about this,” he muttered.

  “He’s tried. I’ve heard him. You just don’t listen. You’re like a bull in a ring sometimes, Sam. All you care about is tossing the rider off your back. And you don’t care who you happen to kick while you’re doing it.”

  He heard her voice waver slightly and looked hard at her. But her eyes were still looking straight ahead, and her face had settled into the expression—beautiful, serene but slightly masklike—that she’d worn whenever they’d encountered each other in the office over the past three years.

  “Maybe he tossed us together on this job so you could get used to my style again,” he told her. “In three more weeks I’m going to be taking over the company, in case you’d forgotten.”

  He felt her fingers tighten around his and heard her frustrated sigh. His own annoyance should have canceled out any gentle feelings he might have had toward Kelley, he told himself. But the pressure of her fingertips was connecting far too intimately with parts of himself that their earlier kiss had awakened, places that he’d almost forgotten about in the years since he’d last felt Kelley’s smooth, soft skin.

  Her words were anything but soft.

  “And maybe Wiley tossed us together because he thought it was time you figured out how to work with other people again,” she said. “Maybe he hoped I would tell you exactly what I’m telling you now. Did you ever think of that?”

  He hadn’t. It was so surprising that Sam suddenly stopped walking, tugging Kelley to a standstill along with him.

  “Wiley wouldn’t do that,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t he?”

  He didn’t like the edge to her tone, or the glint in her blue eyes. He didn’t like what she was suggesting, because somewhere, deep down inside, he had to wonder whether some of it might actually be true. Wiley had muttered things, over the years, about wishing Sam would check in with the office more often when he was working on a case.

  Sam had sloughed off the comments, the way he’d sloughed off all the bad report cards he’d gotten as a kid. Sam is bright with numbers, but needs to work at getting along better with others. That was just his way, he’d always told himself.

  And it was still his way. But somehow it was harder to defend when he was holding on to Kelley’s hand like this. It was as if something of her softness had managed to get inside his own tough skin, making him think all kinds of things he had no business thinking.

  He growled something inarticulate and let go of her. His free hand was halfway to his back pocket when her honeyed voice stopped him short a second time.

  “I thought you quit again,” she said.

  Sam glowered at her. “I did, damn it,” he said. “But you’re enough to drive a man back into any number of bad habits.”

  “If you try to smoke in the cottage, you’re going to have another fight on your hands.” Her voice sounded more confident now, as if she knew she’d scored a point. It didn’t do anything to improve Sam’s temper.

  “Don’t worry,” he growled. “I’m not completely uncivilized, no matter what you and Wiley may think.”

  There was a leftover pack of cigarettes in the cab of his truck. Sam headed that way now, leaving Kelley at the edge of the gravel road that looped around the Windspray Community.

  At the moment he didn’t care if it looked as though the supposedly happy honeymoon couple had just had an unhoneymoonlike tiff. He needed a break, a chance to air out his own thoughts and untangle himself from the slow, seductive magic of Kelley’s voice, her eyes, her presence.

  “Five hours,” he muttered to himself as he stalked toward the parking lot. “Five hours with her and you’re already a basket case.”

  It was beginning to occur to him that he was already in far deeper with this woman than he’d ever wanted to be again.

  “What does your husband do?” Susan Gustaffson asked.

  Kelley took a sip from the water bottle next to the step machine and glanced at the petite blond woman beside her. Susan and her husband owned one of the Windspray cottages, and their names were on Harold’s list of people who’d been at the community when the phony bills were passed. Meeting Susan at the community’s health club was a piece of good luck that Kelley was determined to make the most of.

  “Sam’s a free-lance financial analyst,” she said, using the cover story she and Sam had worked out.

  “When did you get m
arried?”

  Kelley glanced down at the small gold band on the fourth finger of her left hand. Sam wore a matching one, provided by Wiley. It had felt strange, slipping the rings on in Sam’s truck yesterday afternoon. The quick, meaningless gesture was so very different from the joyful ceremony they’d planned three years before.

  She managed a quick smile at Susan Gustaffson, though, before the other woman could wonder why a new bride was looking so pensively at her wedding ring. “Last weekend,” she said.

  “And what kind of work do you do, Kelley?”

  “I’m a loan officer, in a bank up in Austin.”

  And that was enough answers, Kelley thought. “How about you?” she asked. “And your husband?”

  “I’m a stockbroker, with a firm in Houston. And Jon is a commercial artist.”

  “Really? Does he work with computers?”

  “Oh, sure. Everybody in the design field has them now.”

  Kelley made a mental note next to Jon Gustaffson’s name. Computer technology was taking over counterfeiting, too, making it much easier for anybody with the right equipment to turn out a passable forged bill.

  “I always think of artists as struggling,” she said. “Or is that only when they don’t have the sense to marry stockbrokers?”

  Susan smiled. “There’s good money in Jon’s business,” she said. “He works for some pretty fancy companies. He’s got a real state-of-the-art setup, so he can do whatever anybody is looking for.”

  Including creating a phony greenback? The combination of Susan’s financial savvy and Jon’s design skill definitely made the couple worth looking into. She hoped Sam would agree, and that this case wasn’t going to turn into one argument after another.

  Her lingering resentment at Sam made her move a little faster on the stair machine, outpacing Susan’s slower gait. By the time the two women had finished their workout, Kelley was breathing hard but feeling purged of some of the troublesome longings that had been shooting around inside her all afternoon.

  She still couldn’t seem to stop picturing Sam’s steely blue eyes and rich dark hair. But at least her whole body wasn’t aching for him the way it had been when he’d suddenly walked off and left her after their visit to Harold and Helen. It’s just leftover lust, she told herself as she headed for the shower. Nothing a good workout can’t cure.

  “Do you sail?” Susan Gustaffson asked as they were getting dressed in the locker room.

  “I’ve sailed a few times. Why?”

  “Harold and Helen have this gorgeous boat. We’ve been out on it a few times. They’ll probably invite you, too, while you’re here. Other than that, there’s not a whole lot to do except put your feet up and relax.”

  “What about in town?”

  “Cairo?” Susan laughed. “It’s a cute little place, but it’s the original one-horse town. Not even a movie theater. The local gun club has a target range on the other side of the peninsula, if you’re into shooting guns.”

  “Sounds like you two spend a fair bit of time down here,” Kelley commented.

  “Well, we try to. It’s just an hour from Houston, and we always feel so relaxed when we’ve been out of the city. Actually—” she smiled suddenly, a satisfied and very private smile that made Kelley look sharply at her “—we’ve been trying to get pregnant, and we just found out this week that we’ve succeeded. We decided to take the week off and come down here to celebrate.”

  Kelley’s mouth suddenly felt dry as she offered her congratulations. She had to work hard to keep her hand from straying to her own belly in an immediate, sympathetic response.

  I don’t want one of our prime suspects to be pregnant, she thought. I don’t want one single thing to remind me of that brief time when I was pregnant myself.

  She pulled her comb through her fine blond hair, tugging impatiently on the tangles in it as though it might be a way to pull all those useless, painful thoughts out of her head.

  There was no way to avoid thinking about the child she’d lost. She thought about it every day of her life, even after three years. And Sam’s quick glance, flickering toward her stomach out on the beach this afternoon, told her he hadn’t forgotten about the baby, either.

  But the news of Susan Gustaffson’s pregnancy wasn’t going to make things any easier. Kelley forced herself to ask all the expected questions about the due date and maternity leave, but as soon as she could do it tactfully, she turned the conversation back to Windspray business.

  “How well do you know the other residents?” she asked.

  “Pretty well. They’re a nice bunch of people. You’ll meet more of them this weekend. Some of them are just renting, of course, while Harold tries to sell the rest of the units. Did you say you knew Harold and Helen?”

  “They’re friends of friends.”

  Susan nodded. “And Wayland?” she asked.

  “Who’s Wayland?”

  “Harold and Helen’s son.”

  Wiley hadn’t mentioned anything about a son. Neither had Harold and Helen when they’d met with Sam and Kelley earlier.

  “Actually, I’m a little surprised he wasn’t around when you arrived,” Susan went on. “He likes to check out the new guests and residents.” She snorted. “Somebody probably should have told him that a community for couples isn’t exactly the best place to go looking for romance, butwell, that’s Wayland. He thinks he’s irresistible to women.”

  “Does he live here?”

  “He does now. He moved in at the end of the summer. I think his most recent wife got tired of him freeloading and kicked him out.”

  The first counterfeit bill had shown up just after Labor Day weekend. Kelley could feel the familiar little buzz of excitement that happened whenever two unconnected facts in an inquiry suddenly came together.

  “Does he live at Harold and Helen’s place?” she asked.

  Susan shook her head. “Living with Mom and Dad isn’t nearly hip enough for Wayland,” she said. “No, he talked his way into one of the cottages that hasn’t sold yet. He lives in the one closest to the pier. I’m sure you’ll meet him before long. Just don’t encourage him and you’ll be all right.”

  In fact, Wayland Price put in an appearance before Kelley and Susan Gustaffson had left the health club. As they reached the front door, a man with slick black hair and dark sunglasses was on his way in.

  “Right on schedule,” Susan murmured. “We can avoid him if you like.”

  “That’s okay,” Kelley said. “I’m interested in meeting all the neighbors.”

  She was particularly interested in a freeloading son who had shown up at about the same time as the first phony bill. Putting up with a man who believed he was irresistible seemed like a small price to pay for getting acquainted with Wayland Price.

  An hour later she was seriously reconsidering that thought.

  Chapter 3

  Sam had found only one cigarette in his truck, so he’d driven into town to buy more. The trip to Cairo hadn’t taken long. The town hadn’t exactly been a metropolis to begin with, and now half its downtown buildings were either boarded up or had given way to grassy vacant lots.

  Here and there Sam had seen signs that people were hoping Harold Price’s resort development would jumpstart the local economy. There was a fancy little restaurant a block up from the beach, and a sign in an empty storefront announced the opening of a craft boutique in time for Christmas.

  In general, though, Cairo seemed like a place down on its luck, waiting for somebody to work a magic trick that would restore the little seaside town to some kind of prosperity. No wonder the local bank manager had given Harold a week’s grace with the counterfeiting problem, Sam thought. Harold was clearly a potential savior for the place, and it was in the town’s best interests to make sure that the Windspray development was a success.

  With a single pack of cigarettes in his back pocket—he was supposed to be quitting, after all—Sam headed back to the Windspray Community. Maybe, with the help of
some nicotine in his bloodstream, he’d be able to face Kelley Landis a little more calmly than he’d managed to do so far.

  But she wasn’t at the cottage when he got there.

  “Kelley?”

  It was unsettling to be calling her name this way, almost as unsettling as his sense that she wasn’t anywhere near the airy three-room cottage. Sam slid open the doors that led to the screened porch on the west side of the building and to the open deck on the east. But Kelley wasn’t around.

  “Damn.”

  Sam shook his head and swore again as he went back inside. He changed his city boots for sneakers and his longsleeved shirt for a weathered red T-shirt, then sat himself on the porch swing just off the kitchen and smoked and tried to sort out his thoughts.

  Sam had worked out his own philosophy about life at a very early age. It had to do with keeping one step ahead of everybody around you and not being left in the dark. It was what had made him a very good investigator once he’d joined up with his brother Wiley about eight years ago.

  The trouble was that his philosophy wasn’t just an intellectual exercise. Sam hated being left behind. The fear of it was his own personal demon, one that had driven him hard for a long time now.

  It didn’t matter that he knew perfectly well where that fear had come from. Understanding it hadn’t done anything to calm it down. Having Kelley disappear on him like this made him crazy, just as crazy as he’d been all those years ago when he’d watched his father trying to walk away from the Cotter family home.

  He’d gone after his dad, and it had shaped the way his whole life had turned out, for better and worse. And in spite of his own worry about all the things Kelley Landis could do to him with a single look, a single touch, he knew he needed to go after her now.

  He finally found her in the restaurant, with another man.

  The restaurant and health club occupied a big low building near the entrance to the Windspray Community. The dining area looked out toward the Gulf, and Sam’s eyes were too dazzled by the afternoon sun on the water to make out the faces of the few people sitting at tables near the big plate-glass windows.