Her Special Charm Read online

  “Lucky? You?”

  Santini covered his broad chest with his hand, feigning surprise. “Hey, the sphinx speaks.” He dropped his hand and his pretense. “Yeah, lucky. Don’t kid yourself. It’s harder for a married man with kids to get lucky than it is for a single guy.” He thought of the missed opportunity and how angry Rita had been when the chief had called. They had just made it out the door when his cell phone had gone off. “Less planning went into coordinating D-Day during the World War II invasion than in arranging tonight.”

  James blew out a long breath. “You’re not the only one who had plans tonight.”

  Santini’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Something good on TV tonight? C’mon, Munro, you don’t date.” God knew he had tried often enough to set his partner up. Rita had maybe a hundred cousins, all female. A few were sufficiently decent for James, but the latter never agreed to a setup.

  When there was no answer from James, Santini’s eyes widened as he stared at him. “You had a date.” His voice echoed with disbelief. “With a woman?”

  James debated not responding, then bit off, “Yeah, with a woman.”

  Feeling both relieved and incredibly let down at the same time, he had phoned Constance right after he’d received the call from the chief. She’d listened quietly, as if she’d been expecting his call all along, and then had told him that it was all right. She’d said she had papers to grade.

  She’d taken the news better than he’d thought.

  He wasn’t sure he liked that.

  Fumbling for words, he’d mumbled something about stopping by after he was done if it wasn’t too late. But even as he’d said it, he knew it would be too late. Investigations didn’t just neatly fold themselves up and fit into preordained slots. Depending on what they found, he and Santini could be there all night.

  He realized that Santini was still talking to him.

  “Who?” Santini demanded. And then, for what James saw as no earthly reason, his partner suddenly declared, “It’s that woman with the cameo, isn’t it?”

  “Put some of those astute deductive powers to work on the case, Santini,” James told him.

  Technically, since he’d pulled primary on this case, he could order all the detectives assigned to the case to remain until someone found something tangible they could finally use. The robber had to get sloppy sometime. James had to concentrate to keep his mind on the case. Or cases, as it were.

  As he took the corner and approached O Susannah’s, where the latest robbery had taken place, he saw the usual crowd. And more. There were several cars parked in a circle, like pioneer wagons bracing for a hostile attack. But what caught his eye wasn’t the ambulance or the M.E. truck. He recognized one of the cars. It belonged to another detective.

  Gritting his teeth together, he said to Santini, “They’ve called in Homicide.” Which meant interference and grappling for territorial rights. That always slowed things down considerably.

  As if they were galloping along now.

  He swore under his breath. It was their case and he and Santini were going to crack it. Without the help of any hotshot Johnny-come-latelies.

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” he muttered as he pulled his car up beside the M.E.’s black SUV.

  It promised to be a long night. But not as long as it was for the person inside the body bag being zipped up just as James was getting out of his vehicle.

  It was after eleven and he was drained.

  James knew he should just keep driving straight and head for home, drop into bed and hopefully acquire a few hours of sleep. But his brain was on overtime and he knew that sleep would elude him for hours.

  Besides, he had these two large containers of coffee in his car. If he went home, they’d go to waste.

  He’d found himself driving toward her part of town. Getting the coffee had been an afterthought. An excuse.

  Didn’t mean anything, he was just driving. The coffee was there to keep him awake. Both containers. And driving around sometimes helped work out the tension he was feeling.

  Or added to it.

  Looking down, he became aware that he was holding the steering wheel in a death grip with both hands. He willed himself to relax.

  It took a bit of doing.

  James continued driving, heading for her place even as he silently lectured himself that if he showed up on her doorstep at this hour, bearing two containers of coffee, not only might he be guilty of waking her up, but also of making her believe that there was something going on between them.

  Well, isn’t there?

  It was the same annoying voice, the one that saw no reason to give him any peace since the moment he’d first heard her voice on the telephone.

  Yeah, he grudgingly admitted, he supposed there was “something” going on between them, but not the something. Not the kind of thing that led to long-term commitments.

  As long as he kept that in mind, it would be okay to see her.

  He kept on driving.

  He found a parking spot less than a block away. Leaving the vehicle, he walked down the street, a container of coffee in each hand. The doorman he’d met the other day was still on duty. He greeted James with a warm look of recognition as he approached.

  “Good to see you again, Detective,” the man declared as he held open the door for him.

  James nodded at the man.

  “Here, let me get the elevator for you.” For a heavy-set man, the doorman moved with surprising agility. He jabbed the button, then touched the brim of his hat. “Have a nice night, sir.”

  Seeing as how he was putting himself out on a skinny limb, James didn’t see how a “nice night” was possible.

  The ride up was even faster than he remembered, pitching his stomach against his ribs. He got off, juggling the coffee containers so that he could ring her doorbell. Mentally, he began counting. If she wasn’t here by five he was leaving.

  She was there by three.

  The sleep that hovered around her eyes seemed to vanish instantly the second she realized who had rung her doorbell.

  “James, you did come.” She threw the door open wider. “I’d given up hope.”

  Hoping. She’d been hoping he would come. This wasn’t good. He made no move to enter, frozen there by her declaration.

  “Look, if it’s too late—”

  “It’s Friday night. That means it’s not really a school night.” She winked as she took his arm and coaxed him into the apartment like a newborn colt who was unsteady on his legs and wasn’t quite sure what to do with them yet. “I can stay up.”

  The second he was inside the penthouse, he heard the sound of tiny nails pounding against the tile in a quick, staccato motion. The next moment, Felicia was there, barking, leaping and looking as if she were going to take him and his containers of coffee down.

  “I think you’d better give me those.” Constance laughed as she took the coffee containers.

  His hands free, James stooped down and picked up the eager animal. Felicia appeared as if she were in seventh heaven, trying to lick every part of his face at once. It took effort not to laugh. The dog was a furry bundle of pure love.

  He looked at Constance over Felicia’s head. “How’s the dog coming along?”

  Constance gestured around the apartment with one container. “She has complete run of the place, so she’s thrilled.”

  That wasn’t what he meant. But a sniff of the air told him there’d been no telltale accidents. Either that, or Constance had a staff of maids who took care of that kind of thing instantly. “How’s the training going?”

  “Fine.” She paused to grin at her pet. The dog seemed oblivious to her now that James was here. I know where you’re coming from, honey, Constance thought. “She has me eating out of her paw.”

  Felicia was still licking his face a mile a minute, like a long-lost friend who had given up all hope of ever being reunited with him. The little pink tongue felt rough. He shifted the dog to his other side
as he looked at Constance. “I don’t exactly see you as being a pushover.”

  She liked the compliment. A good many people equated her soft Southern lilt to her being fairly brainless and easily manipulated. She was anything but. If she had a fault, though, it was that she was too ready to trust. To believe the best of everyone. She’d gotten a little wiser since Josh, but then, she hadn’t truly been tested up to this point.

  It made her a little uneasy.

  “I’m afraid I am.” Her eyes held his for a moment. “When it comes to a great many things. But I did manage to housebreak her before she broke the house,” she added with a smile.

  Walking into the spacious living room, she placed the two containers on the coffee table and sat down on the light blue sofa. The Manhattan skyline, available directly behind her thanks to the bay window, completed the picture. A complement of stars shone above her.

  After a beat, he took the other end of the sofa, releasing Felicia to fend for herself. She raced around the sofa once, then sank down at his feet.

  “You surprised me, showing up at this hour,” Constance told him.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I kind of surprised myself, too,” he admitted and shrugged. “I get too wound up in a case, I can’t sleep. I took a chance that you might still be up.”

  She held the container with both hands and drank deeply before answering. “Grading papers always takes a lot of time. Especially compositions.”

  “Always hated compositions,” he remarked.

  Her eyes crinkled into a grin. “These are about you. Career Day,” she reminded him. “You made a very good impression on the class. We now have ten potential police detectives.”

  “Only ten?”

  “Hey, it’s early yet. Some of them might change their minds.”

  He took a long sip of his coffee, enjoying the banter. Unable to look anywhere but at her. She was wearing those white shorts again. The ones that had been produced by a manufacturer who obviously believed in economizing by husbanding his material.

  He felt warm just looking at them. It was the last thing he needed. Shifting farther into his end of the sofa, he finally asked, “You got any other shorts you can wear?”

  She looked down at the ones she had on. “Is there something wrong with these?”

  “Yeah.” He took another sip before adding, “There’s not enough material.”

  He didn’t like the way her laugh wrapped itself around him.

  With a nod of her head, Constance stood up. “I see.” Leaning over, she placed her container of coffee back on the table and looked as if she were about to go into the bedroom.

  He was a grown man, James chided himself. He should be able to rein himself in no matter what kind of thoughts were going on in his head. Shaking his head, he stopped her before she could leave the room. “No, never mind. You don’t have to change. I’ll just have to deal with it.”

  She wondered if he realized that he’d complimented her. “You find this distracting?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Her grin was huge. “Good, I was hoping you would.” Tucking one leg under her, she sank back down onto the sofa and reached for her coffee. James obviously needed to talk. She decided to prod him a little. “So, how’s the case coming along? Or am I not supposed to ask?”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “In other words, you’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  He considered her carefully. “I don’t figure you’re going to leak anything to the press.”

  She pretended to zip her lips. “Anything you say here isn’t going anywhere. Unless Felicia has a byline at the Daily News I don’t know about.” She cocked her head. “Might do you good to use me as a sounding board, bounce off any theories you might have.” When he looked at her in surprise, she added, “Sometimes I’d stand outside the room and listen when Uncle Bob talked to Mama about a case.”

  Humor curved his mouth for the first time that day. “You might have gotten more than you bargained for, doing that.”

  She shook her head. “Wouldn’t happen. Mama was completely dedicated to Daddy’s memory. Which was too bad in a way. I really thought Uncle Bob would have made a great father. But the women in my mother’s family are very steadfast. One-man women to the grave.”

  James noticed that she was fingering the cameo as she said that.

  Chapter Ten

  The clock on the fireplace mantel chimed the half hour. Twelve-thirty. In the morning.

  He’d stayed a lot longer than he had intended, held hostage by her soft voice, the tilt of her body as she listened intently to every syllable he uttered. Seductively pulling words out of him when he’d had no real intention of talking.

  It was getting late, really late, and he had no business staying. No business being here in the first place.

  Sure, he was attracted to her, but it couldn’t lead anywhere. He didn’t want it to lead anywhere. The fact that he was attracted to her, well, his parents must have been attracted to each other at one point or they wouldn’t have gotten married. But they had wound up at each other’s throats almost constantly and the attraction had eventually vanished.

  Fighting and bitterness was all he’d seen when he was growing up. He hadn’t fared much better when he’d married Janice. It wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to risk inflicting on Constance. But since he’d never experienced anything else, there was little doubt in his mind that he was capable of sustaining any positive relationship.

  Which meant that he had no right to be taking up space here, space that could be used by someone else. Someone who would matter in her life.

  The pinprick of jealousy unsettled him. He didn’t like it. Uncertain how to deal with the emotion, he did the only thing he could. He squelched it.

  “Look,” he said suddenly, without preamble, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  Her smile held him in place, even as he wanted to gain his feet and leave. “Sitting. Talking. Being human.” She cocked her head a little, her hair spilling down her bare shoulder. “Want me to go on?”

  It was too easy to get lost in her rhetoric. In her eyes. He stayed strong. “No, you know what I mean. I don’t do this kind of thing.”

  “Which?” she asked guilelessly. “Sitting? Talking? Or being human?”

  This truth-telling was hard on him. He wasn’t accustomed to explaining himself and he didn’t much like it. Ordinarily, he’d just walk out. But she deserved more. Why she deserved more was not something he was willing to delve into right now. “I don’t do relationships.”

  She nodded, accepting his explanation. And finding a way around it. “Fine. Do one day at a time. One hour at a time. Better yet, one word at a time.” She wasn’t after anything beyond the moment. And helping him to connect to the world. “Not everyone has a long-range plan—”

  He glanced at her and silently resisted what she was trying to do. To give him an excuse to be with her. “I do.”

  She raised her brow. “Oh?”

  “It’s to do my job and go home at the end of the day, preferably without a gunshot wound.”

  “And do you always want that home to be empty?”

  His reply rose to his lips before he could prevent it. “It wasn’t always empty.” He wasn’t sure what he expected or wanted to find in her eyes. Pity would have made him instantly shut down. He wasn’t all that certain about his reaction to sympathy or compassion, either. “I was married once.”

  The revelation surprised her. Not that he had been married, but that he’d told her without being restlessly prodded. She took that as an encouraging sign that perhaps he was willing to join the real world after all. “Go on.”

  He didn’t want to. He wanted to close the door on the subject. But he had been the one to open it in the first place, so he gave her a little more, tearing it from his soul.

  “I thought I could make a go of it. I was wrong.” It hurt his pride to say that, but he told the truth. “It was wrong from the sta
rt.”

  A host of questions filled her head, but this wasn’t the time to ask anything deep. “How long have you been divorced?”

  “Five years.” It seemed longer than that. So long that at times, it was as if that portion of his life hadn’t happened at all. But it had, because he had Dana. In spirit if not in fact. “I have a daughter. Dana. She’s seven, no, eight,” he corrected himself. God, had it really been that long since he’d held her, barely two years old and squirming in his arms?

  There was something distant in his voice. “Do you get to see her?”

  He shook his head, a little surprised that he was letting Constance in this far, telling her things he didn’t ordinarily talk to Santini about and the man could be relentless in his questions. “Just a couple of times a year. Janice moved to the West Coast. She says too much contact confuses Dana.”

  Janice. That had to be his ex-wife. “And you miss her?”

  Caught up in the web of feelings the subject evoked, he didn’t immediately follow her. “Janice?” It had been a while now since he even missed the idea of Janice, of a home and family. “No.”

  “Dana.”

  “Yeah. I miss her.” Which surprised him because he’d never seen himself bonding with someone a generation removed. Until he’d held his daughter for the first time.

  As she’d begun to grow up, she’d reminded him a great deal of the way Tommy had been when he was her age. Open, laughing. Tommy had been sensitive. He was the one who’d suffered every time their parents had fought. As a little boy, he’d hidden in the closet, putting his hands over his ears and crying.

  Unable to stand the yelling and screaming as he’d grow older, Tommy had always searched for a path to peace. He’d thought he’d found it by using drugs. Eventually they did bring him peace. Everlasting peace.

  “But she’s better off over there,” he added before Constance could offer any sympathy. “I can’t take care of a kid.” An almost wistful expression passed over his face. “I hear her stepfather’s a stand-up guy.”