Explosive (33 page)

“How do you know—”

“I doubt he and his wife make a point of vacationing in roadside dives. They were on the run.”

“But doesn’t that mean—”

The next thing she knew, Thomas had pushed her onto her back and leaned down over her.

“I think it means my brother and my nephew might have been murdered.”

A chill convulsed her as she stared up at his face.

“Rick told me about Cokey’s background,” Thomas said, his mouth grimacing as though he spoke of these matters reluctantly. “There’s little doubt Cokey knew inside information about the Outfit. He gave Rick loads of information—dozens more names—than just the lie he told about my dad. But even if it were true that the mob was targeting people who knew about Cokey feeding information to my brother, it’s a far leap to try to implicate my father.”

“Thomas,” she spoke softly. “Whoever this witness is that the FBI has, whoever this impeccable witness is, he must have had good reason for going to the FBI. Maybe they aren’t the traitor that you’re imagining—”

She paused when she noticed how his eyes gleamed at her between narrowed eyelids.

“Let’s not go there, Sophie,” he rasped. “Please,” he added, seeming to recognize his harshness too late.

“Okay,” she whispered.

He inhaled slowly before he rolled over on the bed and stood. He went to the window and stared out at the gray lake for a moment. Sophie could almost feel his mind churning. His muscles looked rigid and tight, as though they strained against the weight of his anxiety. She suddenly understood perfectly his overwhelming need to make love. It was only during the brief period of time afterwards that she’d felt his muscles relax.

“But maybe you’re right. We should leave here,” he said.

She came up on her elbows. “Does anyone know you’re here, Thomas?”

“The Dolans. And your friend Lancaster.”

“I doubt they pose a threat. And no one would associate us being together, would they? We were only together for the first time last week, and surely no one saw us that might plan to harm you. But you just mentioned Andy and the Dolans . . . I thought you’d called your family—”

“I never got around to it,” he said, his face still turned toward the window. “My cell phone is useless without a battery.”

She hesitated, wary of his volatile mood.

“Thomas . . . I told you that you could use my phone to contact them. Why haven’t you?”

He didn’t turn toward her, but she saw how he went utterly still.

“Thomas?” she whispered.

“I don’t want to speak with them,” he said after a moment.

“Why not?”

When he turned his chin toward the bed, his eyes looked flat and lifeless.

“I just don’t. Is the lake house property under your name, Sophie?”

She inhaled shakily, aware that a crucial moment had come and gone, but unsure as to whether she was relieved or regretful of its passing.

“No. As a matter of fact, it’s still listed under my father’s name—my father’s stage name. I don’t think we’re in any danger while we’re here. But, Thomas . . . if what you said about Bernard Cokey is true, we need to contact the FBI.”

“I’m not telling the Feds what that little weasel Cokey said about my father,” he said in a hollow voice.

Sophie rose from the bed and hastily grabbed her robe, flinging it over her shoulders and tying the sash.

“But if what you’re saying is true, then
you’re
in danger, Thomas. What about those agents you mentioned? Maybe we should try to call—”

She paused when he turned fully toward her, a nude, beautiful male animal poised to pounce. But Sophie didn’t retreat. Instead, she stepped toward him slowly, wishing like hell she knew what he was thinking behind those shuttered eyes. If she’d tried to guess his thoughts at the moment, however, it turned out she would have been dead wrong.

“Do you
really
think it’s possible?” he asked.

“For your father to be the head of a crime syndicate?”

“No,” he replied, his nostrils flaring, “for someone to fall for someone else so fast?”

Her lower lip dropped in surprise. Had he been referring to her telling him that she loved him? Or had he been referring to himself?

She stepped close and cupped his jaw in her palm.

“All I can do is go by personal experience,” she said softly.

He turned his chin and rubbed his whiskers against her skin, making her shiver.

“I wish I could trust my personal experience at the moment,” he said in such a low rumble that she drew closer to him in order to hear him. He gave her a brooding glance before he dropped his forehead to hers. “All I know is that I’ve never wanted another woman the way I want you. I can’t seem to make it stop.”

“Stop trying then,” she whispered against his lips. “Please. I’m not your enemy, Thomas.”

He abruptly opened her robe and pressed her naked body to his. He wrapped his arms around her, shielding her in his encompassing embrace. Sophie held him tightly, giving him her warmth when he shivered in the chilly room.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

Sophie tried the Dolans’ phone again after they ate lunch, expressing her frustration to Thomas over the fact that their phone line was still dead.

“I hadn’t realized,” Thomas said after he closed the dishwasher. “Their electricity never went out, so we didn’t notice. The phone lines are separate from the electric though. It’d be easy for a tree or a branch to fall on the lines in this weather.”

According to the news, the incessant rain was nearing an end, but severe damage had been done throughout central Illinois and Indiana. Roads were flooded, and several major interstates were closed as crews worked overtime to clear the huge amount of debris that clogged the drainage routes, exacerbating the flooding. Sophie was relieved that Haven Lake, although bloated with water, was being well controlled by the dam and drainage into the spillway, and then the Little Wabash River.

They watched the weather channel together, Thomas lying on his back on the couch and Sophie curled up on her side next to him, her knees bent on his thighs and her head on his chest. He seemed to crave her nearness. He couldn’t stop touching her.

Sophie didn’t mind, because she felt the exact same way about him.

Still, the thought that his singular attraction toward her was made exponentially more potent by his emotional turmoil hovered in the back of her mind like a dark cloud. Anguish and anxiety as acute as Thomas’s couldn’t last indefinitely.

His need for her, his desperate craving, would diminish once his memories returned and he began to deal with his grief. The constant pressure, the internal emotional friction that he alleviated—at least in part—through making love to her with such focus and intensity would inevitably come to an end.

Later that afternoon, Thomas volunteered to venture out into the soggy yard to bring Guy some food and milk. Sophie was in the kitchen preparing a chicken casserole for their dinner later when her cell phone rang. Her brows furrowed quizzically when she saw the Chicago area code, but didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Sophie?”

She set down the wooden spoon she was holding. “Sherm? Is everything okay?” she asked, alarmed by the edge of panic in her neighbor’s voice.

“It’s Daisy,” he gasped. “She insisted on going down into the basement to check on the flooding, and on the way back up the stairs, she got winded. She started having chest pains, and our damn phone line is dead. I didn’t have any idea until I tried to call you.”

Sophie’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
How was Sherm calling her if the lines were dead?
she thought fleetingly, but then her mind raced to the far more critical matter of Daisy.

“Is Daisy conscious? Have you had to do CPR?”

“No, she’s awake and lying on the sofa. We’re both scared to death.”

“Has she taken her nitroglycerin?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, listen to me, Sherm. I want you to hang up and call nine-one-one.”

“But the roads—”

“The roads are improving. It may take some doing, but they’ll be able to get an ambulance to your house. And in the meantime, I’m on my way this very second. Just try to keep Daisy comfortable, okay? Everything is going to be fine, Sherm,” she ended with firm assurance, attempting to steady him.

Sophie shoved her cell phone into a sealable plastic bag and rifled quickly through her spare bathroom cabinet, stashing a small bottle of aspirin in her jean pockets—just in case Daisy was running low on her nitroglycerin tablets. She hurried into an old rubber pair of boots that used to belong to her mother that were shoved into the back of a closet. Thomas was returning from the boathouse when she ran around the corner of the house, her feet sinking into the muddy ground. Miraculously, the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle.

Thomas pulled up short some thirty feet away when he saw her.

“It’s Daisy’s heart. Sherm just called. I need to get over there right away,” she shouted through the rain and mist.

“Okay. Let’s go,” Thomas called out tersely as he jogged toward her.

Sophie noticed when Thomas left the nurse’s station and came to join them in the waiting room. He gave her a small smile of reassurance and she smiled back, thankful for his presence in these difficult circumstances.

“The nurse says the bed next to Daisy’s is free, Sherm. It’s yours for the night, if you want to stay,” Thomas said.

“Thank you for arranging that, Thomas,” Sherm murmured. He looked pale and shaken. Sophie patted his hand where it rested on the armrest of his chair. Both Daisy and he had known about the weakness of Daisy’s heart, but it was the first time Daisy had ever actually had an emergency situation because of it. Sherm’s safe little world had been punctured, and Sophie knew the Dolans had some difficult choices to make. She adored having them as neighbors on Haven Lake, but as a physician, she knew it was advisable for them to move somewhere where emergency service was always easily accessible.

“Dr. Hanlon says Daisy is going to be fine, Sherm. It was a relatively minor heart attack. You decide if you want to stay here or if you want Thomas and me to drop you off at home. Either way, I want you to try to get some sleep. You’re exhausted.”

“I’ll stay here with Daisy,” Sherm said. “I can’t thank you two enough for all you’ve done.” He glanced up at Thomas. “And
you
. . . that’s twice you put your neck on the line for me in twenty-four hours.”

Thomas shrugged. “I didn’t do much of anything but take a dip a time or two,” he said wryly, glancing down at his damp clothing. He and Sophie had had to wade through several feet of standing water to get to the Dolans’ house that afternoon.

“Well, I surely do appreciate all you did,” Sherm said in a reedy voice. He grabbed Sophie’s hand and squeezed it.

“It was nothing, Sherm. That’s what neighbors are for. And friends,” she added.

“It made all the difference in the world having you there while we waited for the ambulance, Sophie. You calmed Daisy, and you calmed me just with your presence, and Lord knows that’s what we most needed at the moment. Now you two go home, and get yourselves warm and dry. You’ve been here for hours, soaked through the whole time. Michelle will be coming as soon as I-57 opens, along with Tad, so don’t you two worry about us anymore,” Sherm said, referring to his daughter and son-in-law, who still lived in Beverly, on the South Side of Chicago.

Despite Sherm’s protests to the contrary, Sophie insisted she’d be back the next morning with some clothing and other supplies.

The flooding had receded minimally on the country roads on the way back to her house, but Sophie was infinitely glad it was Thomas driving through the water and not her. He never flinched and never hesitated as he plowed into the miniature ponds, seeming to have an instinctive understanding of what his car could withstand. When they reached the standing water between the Dolans’ house and Sophie’s, however, Thomas came to a stop thirty feet away. Sophie glanced at him, and he just shook his head. The water was still too high for them to drive through.

So he parked his car in the Dolans’ driveway and he and Sophie resignedly waded through the deep water once again.

Sophie was showing signs of exhaustion by the time they stripped out of their wet clothing on the side porch. Thomas immediately guided her into the bathroom for a hot shower, ignoring her protests that she wanted to finish her interrupted preparations for the chicken casserole.

When she came into the cheerily lit kitchen a half hour later, Thomas was reading the instructions on the back of a frozen pizza box. He’d already showered, she realized as she stared, a little dumbfounded by the sight of him leaning against her counter wearing a pair of low-riding jeans and an unbuttoned cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled back to his elbows. His hair hung damp on his forehead, creating a parenthesis around his eyes.

“What about my chicken casserole?” she asked lamely, her gaze glued to the appealing sight of his forearm dusted in brown hair. Several veins popped from the surface, highlighting his strength. He lowered the pizza box and Sophie found herself staring at his tanned, ridged abdomen instead.

“I’m cooking,” he said resolutely. “And since I can’t cook, we’re having pizza. You just sit right up there at the counter, and I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and you can watch the chef at work.”

Sophie laughed and sunk onto one of the counter stools. She’d rather have eaten chicken casserole, but it was too much of a temptation to resist watching a beautiful man cook for her.

Thomas made a salad to go with the frozen pizza. The meal tasted wonderful, maybe because she wasn’t used to having someone else prepare a meal for her, or maybe because she was starved.

Or maybe because she was submersed in the first, heady rushes of falling in love.

After they’d cleaned up the dishes, they watched television while lying on the couch, embracing each other as they had that afternoon. It occurred to her, as it had done countless times since Thomas had come to her lake house, that she needed to confront him, encourage him to talk about what was troubling him . . . haunting him.