Hard to Handle (23 page)

“She has nothing to be jealous about,” Jodie said coldly. “You can tell her so, for me. Was that all you wanted?”

“Jodie, that’s not why I called!” Margie exclaimed. She hesitated. “Alexander wanted me to phone you and make sure you were coming to his birthday party.”

“There’s no chance of that,” Jodie replied firmly.

“But…but he’s expecting you,” Margie stammered. “He said you promised to come, but that I had to call you and make sure you showed up.”

“Kirry’s invited, of course?” Jodie asked.

“Well…well, yes, I assumed he’d want her to come so I invited her, too.”

“I’m invited to make her jealous, I suppose.”

There was a static pause. “Jodie, what’s going on? You won’t return my calls, you won’t meet me for lunch, you don’t answer notes. If you’re not mad at me, what’s wrong?”

Jodie looked down at the floor. It needed mopping, she thought absently. “Alexander told you that he was sick of tripping over me every time he came back to the ranch, and that you were especially not to ask me to his birthday party.”

There was a terrible stillness on the end of the line for several seconds. “Oh, my God,” Margie groaned. “You heard what he said that night!”

“I heard every single word, Margie,” Jodie said tightly. “He thinks I’m still crazy about him, and it…disgusts him. He said I’m not in your social set and you should make friends among your own
social circle.” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Maybe he’s right, Margie. The two of you took care of me when I had nobody else, but I’ve been taking advantage of it all these years, making believe that you were my family. In a way I’m grateful that Alexander opened my eyes. I’ve been an idiot.”

“Jodie, he didn’t mean it, I know he didn’t! Sometimes he just says things without thinking them through. I know he wouldn’t hurt you deliberately.”

“He didn’t know I could hear him,” she said. “I drank too much and behaved like an idiot. We both know how Alexander feels about women who get drunk. But I’ve come to my senses now. I’m not going to impose on your hospitality…”

“But Alexander wants you to come!” Margie argued. “He said so!”

“No, he doesn’t, Margie,” Jodie said wistfully. “You don’t understand what’s going on, but I’m helping Alexander with a case. He’s using me as a blind while he’s surveilling a suspect, and don’t you dare let on that you know it. It’s not personal between us. It couldn’t be. I’m not his sort of woman and we both know it.”

Margie’s intake of breath was audible. “What am I going to tell him when you don’t show up?”

“You won’t need to tell him anything,” Jodie said easily. “He isn’t expecting me. It was just for show. He’ll tell you all about it one day. Now I have to go, Margie. I’m working in the kitchen, and things are going to burn,” she added, lying through her teeth.

“We could have lunch next week,” the other woman offered.

“No. You need to find friends in your class, Margie. I’m not part of your family, and you don’t owe me anything. Now, goodbye!”

She hung up and unplugged the phone in case Margie tried to call back. She felt sick. But severing ties with Margie was the right thing to do. Once Alexander was through with her, once he’d
caught his criminal, he’d leave her strictly alone. She was going to get out of his life, and Margie’s, right now. It was the only sensible way to get over her feelings for Alexander.

The house was full of people when Alexander went inside, carrying his bag on a shoulder strap.

Margie met him at the door. “I’ll bet you’re tired, but at least you got here.” She chuckled, trying not to show her worry. “Leave your bag by the door and come on in. Everybody’s in the dining room with the cake.”

He walked beside her toward the spacious dining room, where about twenty people were waiting near a table set with china and crystal, punch and coffee and cake. He searched the crowd and began to scowl.

“I don’t see Jodie,” he said at once. “Where is she? Didn’t you phone her?”

“Yes,” she groaned, “but she wouldn’t come. Please, Lex, can’t we talk about it later? Look, Kirry’s here!”

“Damn Kirry,” he said through his teeth, glaring down at his sister. “Why didn’t she come?”

She drew in a miserable breath. “Because she heard us talking the last time she was here,” she replied slowly. “She said you were right about her not being in our social class, and that she heard you say that the last thing you wanted was to trip over her at your birthday party.” She winced, because the look on his face was so full of pain.

“She heard me,” he said, almost choking on the words. “Good God, no wonder she looked at me the way she did. No wonder she’s been acting so strangely!”

“She won’t go out to lunch with me, she won’t come here, she
doesn’t even want me to call her anymore,” Margie said sadly. “I feel as if I’ve lost my own sister.”

His own loss was much worse. He felt sick to his soul. He’d never meant for Jodie to hear those harsh, terrible words. He’d been reacting to his own helpless loss of control with her, not her hesitant ardor. It was himself he’d been angry at. Now he understood why Jodie was so reluctant to be around him lately. It was ironic that he found himself thinking about her around the clock, and she was as standoffish as a woman who found him bad company when they were alone. If only he could turn the clock back, make everything right. Jodie, so sweet and tender and loving, Jodie who had loved him once, hearing him tell Margie that Jodie disgusted him…!

“I should be shot,” he ground out. “Shot!”

“Don’t. It’s your birthday,” Margie reminded him. “Please. All these people came just to wish you well.”

He didn’t say another word. He simply walked into the room and let the congratulations flow over him. But he didn’t feel happy. He felt as if his heart had withered and died in his chest.

That night, he slipped into his office while Kirry was talking to Margie, and he phoned Jodie. He’d had two straight malt whiskeys with no water, and he wasn’t quite sober. It had taken that much to dull the sharp edge of pain.

“You didn’t come,” he said when she answered.

She hadn’t expected him to notice. She swallowed, hard. “The invitation was all for show,” she said, her voice husky. “You didn’t expect me.”

There was a pause. “Did you go out with Brody after all?” he drawled sarcastically. “Is that why you didn’t show up?”

“No, I didn’t,” she muttered. “I’m not spending another minute
of my life trying to fit into your exalted social class,” she added hotly. “Cheating wives, consciousless husbands, social climbing friends…that’s not my idea of a party!”

He sat back in his chair. “You might not believe it, but it’s not mine, either,” he said flatly. “I’d rather get a fast food hamburger and talk shop with the guys.”

That was surprising. But she didn’t quite trust him. “That isn’t Kirry’s style,” she pointed out.

He laughed coldly. “It would become her style in minutes if she thought it would make me propose. I’m rich. Haven’t you noticed?”

“It’s hard to miss,” she replied.

“Kirry likes life in the fast lane. She wants to be decked out in diamonds and taken to all the most expensive places four nights a week. Five on holidays.”

“I’m sure she wants you, too.”

“Are you?”

“I’m folding clothes, Alexander. Was there anything else?” she added formally, trying to get him to hang up. The conversation was getting painful.

“I never knew that you heard me the night of our last party, Jodie,” he said in a deep, husky, pained sort of voice. “I’m more sorry than I can say. You don’t know what it was like when my mother had parties. She drank like a fish…”

So Margie had told him. It wasn’t really a surprise. “I had some champagne,” she interrupted. “I don’t drink, so it overwhelmed me. I’m very sorry for the way I behaved.”

There was another pause. “I loved it,” he said gruffly.

Now she couldn’t even manage a reply. She just stared at the receiver, waiting for him to say something else.

“Talk to me!” he growled.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked unsteadily. “You were right. I don’t belong in your class. I never will. You said I was a nuisance, and you were ri—”

“Jodie!” Her name sounded as if it were torn from his throat. “Jodie, don’t! I didn’t mean what I said. You’ve never been a nuisance!”

“It’s too late,” she said heavily. “I won’t come back to the ranch again, ever, Alexander, not for you or even for Margie. I’m going to live my own life, make my own way in the world.”

“By pushing us out of it?” he queried.

She sighed. “I suppose so.”

“But not until I solve this case,” he added after a minute. “Right?”

She wanted to argue, but she kept seeing the little boys’ faces in that photograph he’d shown her. “Not until then,” she said.

There was a rough sound, as if he’d been holding his breath and suddenly let it out. “All right.”

“Alexander, where are you?!” That was Kirry’s voice, very loud.

“In a minute, Kirry! I’m on the phone!”

“We’re going to open the presents. Come on!”

Jodie heard the sound Alexander made, and she laughed softly in spite of herself. “I thought it was your birthday?” she mused.

“It started to be, but my best present is back in Houston folding clothes,” he said vehemently.

Her heart jumped. She had to fight not to react. “I’m nobody’s present, Alexander,” she informed him. “And now I really do have to go. Happy birthday.”

“I’m thirty-four,” he said. “Margie is the only family I have. Two of my colleagues just had babies,” he remarked, his voice just slightly slurred. “Their desks are full of photographs of the kids
and their wives. Know what I’ve got in a frame on my desk, Jodie? Kirry, in a ball gown.”

“I guess the married guys would switch places with you…”

“That’s not what I mean! I didn’t put it there, she did. Instead of a wife and kids, I’ve got a would-be debutante who wants to own Paris.”

“That was your choice,” she pointed out.

“That’s what you think. She gave me the framed picture.” There was a pause. “Why don’t you give me a photo?”

“Sure. Why not? Who would you like a photo of, and I’ll see if I can find one for you.”

“You, idiot!”

“I don’t have any photos of myself.”

“Why not?”

“Who’d take them?” she asked. “I don’t even own a camera.”

“We’ll have to do something about that,” he murmured. “Do you like parks? We could go jogging early Monday in that one near where you live. The one with the goofy sculpture.”

“It’s modern art. It isn’t goofy.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion. Do you jog?”

“Not really.”

“Do you have sweats and sneakers?”

She sighed irritably. “Well, yes, but…”

“No buts. I’ll see you bright and early Monday.” There was a pause. “I’ll even apologize.”

“That would be a media event.”

“I’m serious,” he added quietly. “I’ve never regretted anything in my life more than knowing you heard what I said to Margie that night.”

For an apology, it was fairly headlong. Alexander never made apologies. It was a red letter event.

“Okay,” she said after a few seconds.

He sighed, hard. “We can start over,” he said firmly.

“Alexander, are you coming out of there?” came Kirry’s petulant voice in the background.

“Better tell Kirry first,” she chided.

“I’ll tell her…get the hell out of my study!” he raged abruptly, and there was the sound of something heavy hitting the wall. Then there was the sound of a door closing with a quick snap.

“What did you do?” Jodie exclaimed.

“I threw a book in her general direction. Don’t worry. It wasn’t a book I liked. It was something on Colombian politics.”

“You could have hit her!”

“In pistol competition, I hit one hundred targets out of a hundred shots. The book hit ten feet from where she was standing.”

“You shouldn’t throw things at people.”

“But I’m uncivilized,” he reminded her. “I need someone to mellow me out.”

“Kirry’s already there.”

“Not for long, if she opens that damned door again. I’ll see you Monday. Okay?”

There was a long hesitation. But finally she said, “Okay.”

She put down the receiver and stared at it blankly. Her life had just shifted ten degrees and she had no idea why. At least, not right then.

J
odie had just changed into her sweats and was making breakfast in her sock feet when Alexander knocked on the door.

He was wearing gray sweats, like hers, with gray running shoes. He gave her a long, thorough appraisal. “I don’t like your hair in a bun,” he commented.

“I can’t run with it down,” she told him. “It tangles.”

He sniffed the air. “Breakfast?” he asked hopefully.

“Just bacon and eggs and biscuits.”

“Just! I had a granola bar,” he said with absolute disdain.

She laughed nervously. It was new to have him in her apartment, to have him wanting to be with her. She didn’t understand his change of attitude, and she didn’t really trust it. But she was too enchanted to question it too closely.

“If you’ll feed me,” he began, “I’ll let you keep up with me while we jog.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a bribe,” she teased, moving toward the table. “What
would
your bosses say?”

“You’re not a client,” he pointed out, seating himself at the table. “Or a perpetrator. So it doesn’t count.”

She poured him a mug of coffee and put it next to his plate, frowning as she noted the lack of matching dishes and even silverware. The table—a prize from a yard sale—had noticeable scratches and she didn’t even have a tablecloth.

“What a comedown this must be,” she muttered to herself as she fetched the blackberry jam and put it on the table, along with another teaspoon that didn’t match the forks.

He gave her an odd look. “I’m not making comparisons, Jodie,” he said softly, and his eyes were as soft as his deep voice. “You live within your means, and you do extremely well at it. You’d be surprised how many people are mortgaged right down to the fillings in their teeth trying to put on a show for their acquaintances. Which is, incidentally, why a lot of them end up in prison, trying to make a quick buck by selling drugs.”

She made a face. “I’d rather starve than live like that.”

“So would I,” he confessed. He bit into a biscuit and moaned softly. “If only Jessie could make these the way you do,” he said.

She smiled, pleased at the compliment, because Jessie was a wonderful cook. “They’re the only thing I do well.”

“No, they aren’t.” He tasted the jam and frowned. “I didn’t know they made blackberry jam,” he noted.

“You can buy it, but I like to make my own and put it up,” she said. “That came from blackberries I picked last summer, on the ranch. They’re actually your own blackberries,” she added sheepishly.

“You can have as many as you like, if you’ll keep me supplied with this jam,” he said, helping himself to more biscuits.

“I’m glad you like it.”

They ate in a companionable silence. When she poured their second cups of strong coffee, there weren’t any biscuits left.

“Now I need to jog,” he teased, “to work off the weight I’ve just put on. Coffee’s good, too, Jodie. Everything was good.”

“You were just hungry.”

He sat back holding his coffee and stared at her. “You’ve never learned how to take a compliment,” he said gently. “You do a lot of things better than other people, but you’re modest to the point of self-abasement.”

She moved a shoulder. “I like cooking.”

He sipped coffee, still watching her. She was pretty early in the morning, he mused, with her face blooming like a rose, her skin clean and free of makeup. Her lips had a natural blush, and they had a shape that was arousing. He remembered how it felt to kiss her, and he ached to do it again. But this was new territory for her. He had to take his time. If he rushed her, he was going to lose her. That thought, once indifferent, took on supreme importance now. He was only beginning to see how much a part of him Jodie already was. He could have kicked himself for what he’d said to her at the ill-fated party.

“The party was a bust,” he said abruptly.

Her eyes widened. “Pardon?”

“Kirry opened the presents and commented on their value and usefulness until the guests turned to strong drink,” he said with a twinkle in his green eyes. “Then she took offense when a former friend of hers turned up with her ex-boyfriend and made a scene. She left in a trail of flames by cab before we even got to the live band.”

She was trying not to smile. It was hard not to be amused at Kirry’s situation. The woman was trying, even to people like Margie, who wanted to be friends with her.

“I guess there went Margie’s shot at fashion fame,” she said sadly.

“Kirry would never have helped her,” he said carelessly, and finished his coffee. “She never had any intention of risking her job on a new designer’s reputation. She was stringing Margie along so that she could hang out with us. She was wearing thin even before Saturday night.”

“Sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

“We weren’t lovers,” he offered blatantly.

She blushed and then caught her breath. “Alexander…!”

“I wanted you to know that, in case anything is ever said about my relationship with her,” he added, very seriously. “It was never more than a surface attraction. I can’t abide a woman who wears makeup to bed.”

She wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t…! “How do you know she does?” she blurted out.

He grinned at her. “Margie told me. She asked Kirry why, and Kirry said you never knew when a gentleman might knock on your door after midnight.” He leaned forward. “I never did.”

“I wasn’t going to ask!”

“Sure you were.” His eyes slid over her pretty breasts, nicely but not blatantly outlined under the gray jersey top she was wearing. “You’re possessive about me. You don’t want to be, but you are.”

She was losing ground. She got to her feet and made a big thing of checking to see that her shoelaces were tied. “Shouldn’t we go?”

He got up, stretched lazily, and started to clear the table. She was shocked to watch him.

“You’ve never done that,” she remarked.

He glanced at her. “If I get married, and I might, I think marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. There’s nothing romantic about a man lying around the apartment in a dirty T-shirt watching
football while his wife slaves in the kitchen.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I don’t like football.”

“You don’t wear dirty T-shirts, either,” she replied, feeling sad because he’d mentioned marrying. Maybe there was another woman in his life, besides Kirry.

He chuckled. “Not unless I’m working in the garage.” He came around the table after he’d put the dishes in the sink and took her gently by the shoulders, his expression somber. “We’ve never discussed personal issues. I know less about you than a stranger does. Do you like children? Do you want to have them? Or is a career primary in your life right now?”

The questions were vaguely terrifying. He was going from total indifference to intent scrutiny, and it was too soon. Her face took on a hunted look.

“Never mind,” he said quickly, when he saw that. “Don’t worry about the question. It isn’t important.”

She relaxed, but only a little. “I…love children,” she faltered. “I like working, or I would if I had a challenging job. But that doesn’t mean I’d want to put off having a family if I got married. My mother worked while I was growing up, but she was always there when I needed her, and she never put her job before her family. Neither would I.” She searched his eyes, thinking how beautiful a shade of green they were, and about little children with them. Her expression went dreamy. “Fame and fortune may sound enticing, but they wouldn’t make up for having people love you.” She shrugged. “I guess that sounds corny.”

“Actually, it sounds very mature.” He bent and drew his mouth gently over her lips, a whisper of contact that didn’t demand anything. “I feel the same way.”

“You do?” She was unconsciously reaching up to him, trying to prolong the contact. It was unsettling that his lightest touch could
send her reeling like this. She wanted more. She wanted him to crush her in his arms and kiss her blind.

He nibbled her upper lip slowly. “It isn’t enough, is it?”

“Well…no…”

His arms drew her up, against the steely length of his body, and his mouth opened her lips to a kiss that was consuming with its heat. She moaned helplessly, clinging to him.

He lifted his mouth a breath away. His voice was strained when he spoke. “Do you have any idea what those little noises do to me?” he groaned.

“Noises?” she asked, oblivious, as she stared at his mouth.

“Never mind.” He kissed her again, devouring her soft lips. The sounds she made drugged him. He was measuring the distance from the kitchen to her bedroom when he realized how fast things were progressing.

He drew back, and held her away from him, his jaw taut with an attempt at control.

“Alexander,” she whispered, her voice pleading as she looked up at him with misty soft eyes.

“I almost never get women pregnant on Monday, but this could be an exception,” he said in a choked tone.

Her eyes widened like saucers as she realized what he was saying.

He burst out laughing at her expression. He moved back even more. “I only carry identification and twenty dollars on me when I jog,” he confessed. “The other things I keep in my wallet are still in it, at my apartment,” he added, his tone blatantly expressive.

She divined what he was intimating and she flushed. She pushed back straggly hair from her face as she searched for her composure.

“Of course, a lot of modern women keep their own supply,” he drawled. “I expect you have a box full in your medicine cabinet.”

She flushed even more, and now she was glaring at him.

He chuckled, amused. “Your parents were very strict,” he recalled. “And deeply religious. You still have those old attitudes about premarital sex, don’t you?”

She nodded, grimacing.

“Don’t apologize,” he said wistfully. “In ten minutes or so, the ache will ease and I can actually stand up straight…God, Jodie!” he burst out laughing at her horrified expression. “I’m kidding!”

“You’re a terrible man,” she moaned.

“No, I’m just normal,” he replied. “I’d love nothing better than a few hours in bed with you, but I’m not enough of a scoundrel to seduce you. Besides all that—” he sighed “—your conscience would kill both of us.”

“Rub it in.”

He shrugged. “You’d be surprised how many women at my office abstain, and make no bones about it to eligible bachelors who want to take them out,” he said, and he smiled tenderly at her. “We tend to think of them as rugged individualists with the good sense not to take chances.” He leaned forward. “And there are actually a couple of the younger male agents who feel the same way!”

“You’re kidding!”

He shook his head, smiling. “Maybe it’s a trend. You know, back in the early twentieth century, most women and men went to their weddings chaste. A man with a bad reputation was as untouchable as a woman with one.”

“I’ll bet you never told a woman in your life that you were going to abstain,” she murmured wickedly.

He didn’t smile back. He studied her for a long moment. “I’m telling you that I am. For the foreseeable future.”

She didn’t know how to take that, and it showed.

“I’m not in your class as a novice,” he confessed, “but I’m no rake, either. I don’t find other women desirable lately. Just you.” He shrugged. “Careful, it may be contagious.”

She laughed. Her whole face lit up. She was beautiful.

He drew her against him and kissed her, very briefly, before he moved away again. “We should go,” he said. “I have a meeting at the office at ten. Then we could have lunch.”

“Okay,” she said. She felt lighthearted. Overwhelmed. She started toward the door and then stopped. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Are you staking out my company because you’re investigating Brody for drug smuggling?”

He gave her an old, wise look. “You’re sharp, Jodie. I’ll have to watch what I say around you.”

“That means you’re not going to tell me. Right?”

He chuckled. “Right.” He led the way into the hall and then waited for her to lock her door behind them.

She slipped the key into her pocket.

“No ID?” he mused as they went downstairs and started jogging down the sparsely occupied sidewalk.

“Just the key and five dollars, in case I need money for a bottle of water or something,” she confessed.

He sighed, not even showing the strain as they moved quickly along. “One of our forensic reconstruction artists is always lecturing us on carrying identification. She says that it’s easier to have something on you that will identify you, so that she doesn’t have to take your skull and model clay to do a reconstruction of your face. She helps solve a lot of murder victims’ identities, but she has plenty that she can’t identify. The faces haunt her, she says.”

“I watched a program about forensic reconstruction on educational television two weeks ago.”

“I know the one you mean. I saw it, too. That was our artist,” he said with traces of pride in his deep voice. “She’s a wonder.”

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to carry my driver’s license around with me,” she murmured.

He didn’t say another word, but he grinned to himself.

The meeting was a drug task force formed of a special agent from the Houston FBI office, a Houston police detective who specialized in local gangs, a Texas Ranger from Company A, an agent from the U.S. Customs Service and a sheriff’s deputy from Harris County who headed her department’s drug unit.

They sat down in a conference room in the nearest Houston police station to discuss intelligence.

“We’ve got a good lead on the new division chief of the Culebra cartel in Mexico,” Alexander announced when it was his turn to speak. “We know that he has somebody on his payroll from Ritter Oil Corporation, and that he’s funneling drugs through a warehouse where oil regulators and drilling equipment are kept before they’re shipped out all over the southwest. Since the parking lot of that warehouse is locked by a key code, the division chief has to have someone on the inside.”

“Do we know how it’s being moved and when?” the FBI agent asked.

Alexander had suspicions, but no concrete evidence. “Waiting for final word on when. But we do have an informant, a young man who got cold feet and came to U.S. Customs with information about the drug smuggling. I interviewed the young man, with help from Customs,” he added, nodding with a smile at the petite brunette customs official at the table with them.