Her Special Charm Page 15

  Was it so terrible, making love with her? Or was there something else tormenting his soul? Was he as afraid of risking his heart as she was? The moment she wondered, she knew.

  “You’re overthinking again,” she told him softly. “Just enjoy it. You’re allowed to feel pleasure, James. Allowed to feel happy, even if it’s just for a second. Really.”

  There she went with that soft, Southern lilt, arguing for possession of his soul. Somehow managing to fish it out of the black hole where it had gone to take up its residence.

  He could feel himself wanting her again.

  Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he drew her up to him, his eyes making love to her a moment before he brushed his lips against hers.

  “Now you’re learning,” she whispered against his lips just before she allowed herself to sink into the kiss. Back into his arms.

  This time, the lovemaking went slower. This time, the frantic urgency wove itself into a tapestry that settled on his shoulders, cloaking them both.

  When she matched him movement for movement, exploration for exploration, he felt he had crossed over into a new frontier. The lovemaking between them had taken on a balance he’d never experienced before. He wasn’t merely making love to her, merely pleasuring her, she was making love to him. Pleasuring him. Creating a balanced union.

  It would have scared the hell out of him had he been able to realize what was going on. But his mind had taken a hiatus, temporarily abdicating and allowing sensations to take over.

  They did with a passion.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sound penetrated his brain slowly.

  The ringing noise pulled apart the mists in his mind. By the third ring, James knew his life was calling him, putting an end to the fantasy he’d allowed himself to pretend was real.

  Swallowing a resigned sigh, he sat up.

  “That’s yours,” Constance told him in case he was wondering. “Mine plays ‘Dixie.’”

  He couldn’t help smiling. Of course, he thought. Getting off the sofa, it took him a moment to find his jeans and the cell phone that was still in his pocket. “Munro.”

  He was magnificently, unselfconsciously, naked. A feeling of intimacy seeped through Constance that had nothing to do with lovemaking and everything to do with loving. She was just going to have to find a way to deal with that, in case she was in this by herself.

  Constance watched as his shoulders grew rigid. Work, she thought. Probably his partner calling. Very quietly, she slipped off the sofa and began to gather together her things. By the time James turned around, snapping the cell phone shut, she was dressed.

  His eyes met hers. “I have to go.”

  “Yes, I know.” And then because he was probably wondering if she’d had some kind of premonition, she explained. “Intuition.”

  Having pulled on his underwear, he reached for his jeans again, hurrying into them. “I’ll drop you off,” he told her.

  Lifting a pile of laundry, she looked around for her purse. His apartment really could stand a cleaning. But volunteering would send him the wrong signals. And undoubtedly send him running for the hills.

  “I can get a cab if you’re in a hurry.”

  “I’ll drop you off,” he repeated more firmly.

  “Fine.” To show her compliance, she paused and lightly brushed a kiss against his lips. She caught him completely unprepared. “I never argue with the long arm of the law.”

  He didn’t believe that for a single moment. “You’d argue with God and probably have a fifty-fifty chance of winning.”

  As he walked out of the apartment with Constance just ahead of him, he noticed that she didn’t bother to dispute his words.

  Santini was already on the scene when James arrived. The latest restaurant to be hit was located downtown. His hair only a little less rumpled than his clothing, James’s partner came over to him with the stats on the latest robbery.

  The last of the sleepy look left Santini’s eyes as he paused and smiled at him. “Sorry to have to drag you away from her.”

  James glanced at him sharply. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Despite the nature of the situation that had called them both out of a warm bed, Santini seemed very amused as he regarded his partner. “I assume it’s the cameo lady.” Then, before James could make the proper indignant noises or tell him to go to hell, Santini delivered the defining blow. “I can still smell her perfume on you.”

  James set his jaw hard. The more he protested, the more entertained Santini would be. So he ignored the grin, the words and the assumption. “Give me the details,” he growled, nodding at the restaurant.

  Santini became all business. “The details are our thieves got a taste of blood last time and decided that they liked it. Or that at least they’re not afraid of it and won’t let the thought of killing someone else get in the way of their making money the easy way.” He nodded at the body bag on the ground. “This is Alice Kellerman, the owner’s wife. One bullet to the head,” he described grimly. “I guess they decided that it’s less complicated robbing the restaurant after closing hours instead of studying the comings and goings of each new place before going in for the kill.”

  The old M.O. had called for only a week between hits. This one had occurred a couple of days after the last robbery/homicide. Things were stepping up.

  James took a minute to look around the vast kitchen where the murder had obviously taken place. The robbers most likely had broken in, surprising the woman and taking her hostage. Maybe they’d needed her to open the safe and then had disposed of her once her usefulness was over.

  They were dealing with at least one cold-blooded bastard if not more.

  As James crossed to look at the late Mrs. Kellerman, he noticed the dark red smear right where the body had been before the M.E. had finished with it. James squatted down to examine the stain. The bottom of a shoe had made wavy lines right through the middle of the dark pool. One of the robbers had obviously slipped on the victim’s blood. Trying to approximate what he took to have happened, James figured the robber had grabbed something to steady himself. Or braced himself against something.

  The stainless-steel refrigerator door fit the bill.

  He looked at Santini. “I want CSI to dust the refrigerator for prints.”

  Santini frowned. “We’re going to get a hell of a lot of partials off that. The crime lab’s not going to be happy, Munro. Everyone in the place and their cousin had to have access to it.”

  Concentrating, James visualized what must have happened. The robber slipped and his hand automatically went flying out to grab something. That meant he had to have used the refrigerator to brace himself.

  “Here,” he said, drawing a circle in the air just around the area of interest. “I want them to dust right around here and see what they find. He might have been wearing gloves, but if he wasn’t, maybe we finally got lucky.”

  “In your case, that would make two for tonight, right?” Santini asked innocently as he beckoned over one of the crime-scene investigators.

  James glared at him, at a loss how to make the man shut up short of stuffing a sock into his mouth. “You talk too much,” he retorted over his shoulder as he went to investigate the small office.

  “That’s ’cause you don’t talk at all,” Santini called after him.

  They got lucky.

  Thorough, the robber had wiped down the refrigerator, but in his hurry, he’d missed a spot. Enough was left behind to provide them with a partial print. Now all that was left was to find another print in the system with sufficient matching points. Their computer people went to work.

  With only a few hours left before he was officially on Monday morning duty, James went back to his apartment to grab a quick shower and get a change of clothes. And to hopefully get the scent of Constance off his body. He knew Santini would continue making sly remarks until he did.

  That was the easy part. Getting her off his body. Getting her off
his mind was going to be the really tricky part and so far, he wasn’t succeeding. Even in the midst of the investigation, as he’d paused to look down at the face of the dead woman, he could only thing of Constance. Of the way she’d felt against him, the way her body had urged him on. The way he’d wanted to make love to her all night.

  Part of him had really hoped that once he’d made love to her, the novelty, the allure would be over. But he hadn’t made love to her, he’d made love with her and that made all the difference in the world. The allure, the need to make love with her again only intensified. And that only frustrated the hell out of him.

  He wanted her now more than ever.

  He hated dependency of any kind. He’d never taken up smoking for that very reason and although he did enjoy alcohol, he could walk away from a drink any time. Walking away from her would take concentrated effort. And he wasn’t all that sure he could pull it off.

  “What are you looking at?” he asked as he placed a bowl of fresh water before Stanley. As if to answer him, the German shepherd made a whining noise, leaving it up to him to interpret. “Sorry, I don’t speak dog, although she might,” he bit off, thoroughly disgruntled.

  Ignoring the water and the food dish, Stanley went over to the sofa and began to sniff around the area. The mournful whining increased.

  “Don’t you start, too.” It was bad enough that James missed her, that he was unsuccessfully wrestling with feelings about her, he didn’t need the dog underscoring the fact. “She’s not going to come back,” he told his pet. “Last night was just a one-time thing.”

  Stanley cocked his head and eyed him as if he didn’t believe what he was saying.

  That made two of them, James thought and he was far from happy about it.

  The case heated up. After much searching, the database had spit up a match. A small-time hood who’d already been sent away twice for B and E. That would explain his desperation not to be identified. One more conviction and the key would be thrown away.

  They had a suspect. And James had an excuse not to pick up the phone and call Constance. He was busy, very busy. He allowed the details of the case to consume his waking moments. If Constance made more than a few appearances in his mind during the course of the investigation, well, nobody needed to know that but him. He certainly wasn’t about to say anything to Santini, no matter how much the other man insisted on bombarding him with questions.

  The suspect wasn’t at his last known address. They put out an APB on him and combed through all his known haunts. Without any luck.

  Each day that passed without any contact with Constance, James counted as a success. But even so, in the back of his mind, he was rather surprised that she hadn’t called him.

  Maybe she wasn’t as pushy as he’d thought.

  Or maybe she wasn’t as interested as he’d thought.

  Or maybe…

  Maybe he’d better just enjoy the fact that he was free of her and stop driving himself crazy.

  It wasn’t possible.

  He broke down.

  Picking up the phone, James called her apartment the way he had five times before and got her answering machine. Again. And like the five other times, he listened to the soft voice tell him that she couldn’t come to the phone right now and for him to leave a message. His body tightened just at the sound of her voice. He felt himself responding in ways that disconcerted him.

  James all but threw the receiver back in the cradle before the beep and swore.

  That made six times he’d broken down. Six times he’d called in the last couple of days. And six times she hadn’t been there to answer the phone.

  So where the hell was she? he wondered angrily.

  As if in response to his silent question, he heard the sound of small, raised voices in the distance. Children’s voices. Coming closer.

  All right, he thought, it was official. He’d lost his mind. And then he saw them. And her. They were all being led into the squad room by one of the uniformed officers from downstairs.

  What the hell were they doing here?

  And didn’t she own any loose-fitting clothing? he wondered, staring at the strawberry-colored dress she had on. Why did everything she wear look as if it were making love to her body?

  “And this is where the detectives are,” Officer Harrelson was saying as the last of Constance’s class crossed the threshold.

  Heads began to peer over the cubicle walls like jack-in-the-boxes set in slow motion.

  “Don’t look now, but we’re being invaded,” Harry Kyle, the oldest member of the squad, announced. Harry had five kids and twelve grandchildren. Pint-sized invasions were nothing new to him. But the incoming class had their sights set on another target.

  “Hey, there’s Detective Munro,” one of the children cried, pointing in James’s direction.

  The next moment, as if they were one being with thirty-five sets of legs, Constance’s fourth graders suddenly converged around his cubicle. The ones who were in the very front managed to pour into the space around his desk while the others lined up behind them, blocking any possible route of escape that might have existed.

  “Class, he has work to do,” Constance reminded them softly as she worked her way to the front of the group, weaving in and out between the students. Once she made it to the front, she turned and started to move the three invaders back. “What did I say about being quiet and keeping out of everyone’s way?”

  “That we should do it,” Evangeline Hernandez answered importantly.

  “Right.” Constance swept an expectant look over each and every one of them.

  The patrolman assigned to giving her class the tour looked at her with gratitude. It was obvious that Officer Harrelson knew his way around the office better than he did around children.

  James thought the man’s smile was a shade too friendly and experienced a sharp prick of annoyance. He’d given up assigning different names to the feeling. He felt jealousy and he was just going to deal with it.

  As he rose to his feet, he saw Santini approaching. Behind him were several of the other detectives. Suddenly, James’s cubicle had become the focal point of the room.

  Great, just what I need, he thought in mute disgust.

  Santini dug out his Italian charm. “Nice to see you again.” He took Constance’s hand, holding it rather than actually shaking it. “Nick Santini, Munro’s partner,” he added in case she didn’t remember him from her last visit here.

  “Yes, I know who you are, Detective,” she assured him, her voice wrapping itself around every word like warm hot chocolate on a cold morning. “I’m very good with faces.”

  “She looks like she’d be very good with everything else, too,” James heard one of the detectives behind him murmur under his breath. He turned his head, scanning the space for the guilty party, but he couldn’t zero in on anyone in particular. Not that he was short of suspects. To a man, the hard-nosed detectives all looked pretty taken with Constance.

  “All these yours?” Santini asked her, indicating the class.

  She smiled and nodded. “Every one of them. Finest fourth graders in the city.”

  There was a fond look in her all-inclusive glance. James could see pride blossoming on each and every one of the small, upturned faces. He would bet each one of them would have gone to hell and back for her.

  How did she do it? It was hard enough to keep order in a class this size, much less gain their respect and admiration. She really was a miracle worker in every sense of the word.

  Hadn’t she worked a miracle on him? Made him remember he had a soul?

  The other detectives looked as if they were going to start fawning on her. James took the lead before that happened. “What are you doing here?”

  The expression on her face was genial and polite. The same look she’d given Santini. The same one the patrolman had received. Except that Santini and the patrolman hadn’t slept with her less than a week ago. He had. Didn’t that entitle him to something a little
different? To something a little more?

  What the hell was wrong with him? He’d purposely stayed away to avoid this very thing. And now he felt slighted because he hadn’t received it? He really was losing his mind.

  Damn it, she made him feel so restless inside, he didn’t know if he was coming or going.

  “Uncle Bob arranged a field trip for my class,” she told him.

  “Uncle Bob?” Santini echoed incredulously. “That would be Bob Walker?”

  “One and the same,” she answered cheerfully. Her warm smile washed over the men one by one, coming to settle on James.

  Her smile was enigmatic. He had no idea what she was thinking, what to make of it. Other than acknowledging that she drove him crazy.

  “Let’s go, class, follow Officer Harrelson,” she told them. “There’s still a lot to see.”

  “Can Detective Munro come with us?” one of the girls pleaded.

  “Maybe some other time,” Constance replied before he could come up with an excuse himself. “Police work takes up a lot of his time.”

  That stung, he thought, then tried to figure out if she’d meant it to hurt him. Nothing in her manner gave him the slightest clue.

  “Where are the bad guys?” one of the students at the front of the line asked as they were being herded away from the detectives.

  “In the holding cell,” Officer Harrelson told him. “That’s downstairs.”

  Some of the boys turned toward Constance eagerly. “Can we go see that next?”

  “Maybe a little later,” Constance promised, shepherding the last of them out of the room.

  James curbed the desire to follow them. To follow her. To take her aside and ask her where she’d been the last few times he’d called. But that would crack the facade he was trying so hard to maintain.

  Still standing by his desk, Santini sighed audibly as the other detectives disbanded and returned to their cubicles.

  “That, my friend, is one very fine-looking woman. I swear she gets easier on the eyes every time I see her.”

  James shot him a warning glance. “You’re drooling on my desk.”