High Tide (19 page)

Passion did not describe what she felt. Had she been thinking about him all these days? Wanting him? Or was she just desperate for any human contact?

They rolled about on the bed, hands and mouths moving. Ace's mouth moved to her neck; her legs moved up to his hips. The top of his robe came open, and she could feel his chest against her skin, just the thin layer of cotton of her gown separating them.

In their rolling, they moved on top of the TV remote, and a body part hit the volume control. In an instant the television sound blared to a deafening level.

“Ace, my darling,” came from the TV. “If you hear me, I want you to know that I'm doing everything to help you.”

Ace, on the bottom, his arms around Fiona, his legs now around Fiona, took his mouth off Fiona to look at the screen to see his fiancée, Lisa Rene Honeycutt, staring back at him. He froze.

As the voice was unfamiliar to Fiona, she didn't react instantly, but she was aware that something had turned Ace off. Turned him off completely. “What?” she mumbled.

But in the next moment she, too, froze when she heard Jeremy's voice. “Fiona, dearest, please give yourself up to the police.”

Slowly, she turned her head to look at the TV. The screen was so large Jeremy's face was almost life-size, and the picture was so clear that he might have been standing at the foot of the bed.

“Fiona, please, I beg you, turn yourself in,” Jeremy was saying into the camera. “If you hear this, if you've ever cared anything for me, please call the police and let them bring you in. I know you couldn't have killed anyone, and I'm staking my career on that belief. I'm working night and day to find out the truth of this matter, but you aren't helping me by being a fugitive. Please call—”

“And there we have it,” the announcer said as his image replaced Jeremy's. “The betrotheds of both of the alleged Teddy Bear Killers have flown here to Florida to help in this statewide manhunt. And we must say that they have both been a great help to the news media and to the police. Miss
Honeycutt has undergone such extensive grilling that she's now under a doctor's care. And someone here said that Jeremy Winthrop hasn't slept in days.

“That's true love for you,” the announcer said, smirking. “Not even cold-blooded murder can stay the course of true love.”

Turning in his swivel chair, he looked back at the camera. “So now let's get an update on the whereabouts of the socalled Teddy Bear Killers. It's believed that they have left the state of Florida and are now in Louisiana. The police there have—”

Ace removed the remote control from under his hip and turned off the TV.

“Don't fall apart on me again!” Ace snapped when he saw Fiona's face.

She rolled away from him. “You
are
a bastard,” she said quietly but with great feeling.

“Look, I have personal commitments,” he said, nodding toward the bed where they had almost made love. “I can't do this kind of thing. I have—”

Turning, she glared at the back of him as he was sitting on the opposite side of the bed. “And what is that supposed to mean? That I don't?”

“I just mean that I'm a man and I'm susceptible to long legs being shaved in front of me and—”

Fiona was sure that never in her life before had she ever been so angry. “In front of you?” she said, and her voice was little more than a hiss. “In front of you?
You
were in the bathroom
with me,”
she said. “I was taking a bath and you came in, took your shirt off, and … and … what was that
all about? Were you trying to turn me on? Is that what you were doing? You think—”

“I don't think anything,” he said, standing and glaring at her across the bed. “So maybe I was in the bathroom with you, but I was afraid you might try to drown yourself. If you recall you were pretty much suicidal today.”

“And how would you know what I was? And what business is it of yours anyway?”

“You exit and I'll still be accused of something I didn't do. Remember that Hudson named me his heir too.”

At that Fiona sat down hard on the chair by the bed. “I see,” she said softly. “I see.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” he began. “I meant—”

“It's all right,” she said, interrupting him. “It's good to know where I stand. After all, I broke your alligator and—”

“You want to cut out the feel-sorry-for-Fiona crap?” he snapped. “From where I'm standing, we have a job to do together and that's the only way it can be done—together. We don't have to like each other.” He held up his hand before she could speak. “Or worse, if we do like each other, I think we should keep our hands to ourselves.”

“Oh, so I guess I was the one who pulled innocent
you
onto the bed. You should write that down on your pad and tell it to your attorney. ‘Fiona tried to seduce me.'”

Ace came around the bed and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Damn it! You didn't try to seduce me. You don't have to
try
anything! You're a beautiful woman; you're interesting; you're intelligent; you're … you're …” He let go of her, and Fiona fell back onto the chair.

Taking a breath, Ace took a moment to calm himself.
“Okay, so maybe I am cold. You can call me what you will, but what you and I are going through now isn't real. We're isolated; we have only each other; so of course we're attracted to each other. In a physical sense, that is. But in a greater sense, we couldn't be more mismatched.”

He was looking at her as though he meant for her to understand his thinking without his saying another word.

“Go on,” she said. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“You and I come from two different worlds. You're a city girl, and I'm country through and through. I'm …” As he looked at her, there was a tiny smile at the corners of his lips. “I'm this century's biggest male chauvinist.”

“Pig,” she finished for him. “MCP. Male chauvinist pig.”

“Right there. That's the attitude that sets us apart. Do you know why I'm marrying Lisa Rene?”

“No, but please tell me; I'm fascinated.” Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.

He gave her a tight-lipped look. “Because she wants the life I want. And because she's the most opposite of me that I could find. She is as outgoing as I am reclusive. She's as friendly as I am—”

“Taciturn?”

“Right. And I like the life I'll have with her. She has no ambitions past wanting to be a wife and mother. I like the idea of having a wife and kids to go home to.”

“You
are
a throwback! No career woman for you, right? No woman who spends her day at corporate headquarters and leaves the kids with a nanny, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds like you've planned yourself a
very
boring life.”

“And I guess you and Jeremy have your life perfected.”

“I am not engaged to him, but—”

“But you'd say yes if he asked.”

“Of course,” she snapped. “He likes a woman to be more than a pair of long legs.”

Ace sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at her for a moment, and when he spoke, he was calm. “We have just established that, outside of a basic physical attraction that would happen between any two normal people, we don't like anything that the other stands for. You can't abide men like me, and I still think women should stay in the kitchen. Are we agreed on this one point?”

“You know, through all of these last days I've wanted to know more about you, but when I do get to know you, I find that there's very little there to like.”

“Exactly.” He took a breath. “So now that we're agreed on some basic issues, I suggest that we do our job as quickly as possible and separate. You will return to your life, and I will—”

“Return to your cave. Or is it your eyrie above the real world?”

“Wherever it is, it works for me. So, are we agreed? No more of this.” He motioned toward the bed. “I want to be able to face Lisa when I get out of this mess.”

“Suits me,” she said, “but what about tonight? There's only one bed.”

“I'll have a bed sent up and put in the living room. Now, I think we should get some sleep, and in the morning I want you to make a clearheaded decision about what you want to do. Maybe you should think of all this as a business deal with nothing personal in it.”

“Great with me,” she said. “So maybe we should start by getting some sleep. You want to leave
my
bedroom?”

“Of course,” he said, then got up and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

And once he was in the living room, he leaned against the door and closed his eyes for a moment. She'd swallowed it, he thought. He couldn't believe it, but she'd swallowed it.

Twelve
 

Ace walked away from the door and went to a cabinet, opened a door, and looked at the selection of liquor there. He poured himself a triple shot of bourbon, then took the glass to the window to look out.

She had believed him, he thought. And her anger had put the steel back into her spine.

Ace had let her see the newspapers, but what he hadn't let her see were the reports that Michael had sent to him while she was in the shower. It was one thing to see the situation from the point of view of smirking newscasters but another to see it from the lawyers' point.

So far nothing had been found as a reason for Roy Hudson to leave his worldly goods to Fiona and Ace. The detectives could find nothing. His brothers and cousins had men working
around the clock. Records were being checked, people were being questioned, but nothing, absolutely nothing, could be found.

And Ace knew that if he and Fiona turned themselves in, they didn't stand a chance of going free. Because of Eric's statements and the fact that they'd been in the same hotels at the same time, on three separate occasions, it was assumed that they had planned Roy's death. And they both stood to inherit what could be millions.

The only chance that either of them had of going free was to find out what was hidden inside Fiona's memories, for Ace had a firm belief that it was something about her father that was behind everything.

But how did he ask her to risk so much? How did he keep her from collapsing as she had today when she heard that that bastard Garrett had tried, judged, and condemned her without so much as hearing the facts?

The only answer Ace could come up with was anger. If he could keep Fiona angry, she wouldn't feel defeated. Hadn't he seen that when she was angry, she had the willpower of half a dozen men? It was anger that had made her able to run across razor-sharp plants to escape the gunman. Fear made her freeze up. Bad news frightened her and made her withdraw into herself. But anger made her
move
. Anger gave her courage.

So anger it was, he thought, then took a deep drink of his whiskey.

Too bad the anger had to be at
him,
because, truth was, she was beginning to grow on him.

At that he looked down at his glass and smiled. Well, maybe she was getting to him more than he wanted to
admit. She did have an ability to make him laugh, and that was unusual in most females. In fact, she could make jokes under some pretty rotten circumstances.

And she was courageous too, he thought. Maybe she was a little slow at realizing certain things, like the fact that someone was shooting at her, but she had faced the bullets with bravery. Sort of.

He smiled. And then there was her innocence. The thought of that made him chuckle aloud, then he looked toward the closed door and listened. He wouldn't want her to hear him laughing.

For all that Fiona liked to think that she was a big city hardnose, she was about as innocent as they came. For one thing, it was as though she had no idea how beautiful she was. To her, making herself up to look like an old movie star was a joke. But when he'd first seen her, with those dark eyes, dark hair, that red mouth above a cleft chin, he …

He broke off his thought and looked out the window.

“You wanted her,” he whispered aloud, then took another drink. But then “wanted” didn't quite cover it, did it? What man wouldn't want a six-foot-tall sultry goddess?

But there was more involved than just lust, he thought, and remembered how much she'd hated that cabin of his uncle's. Ace hadn't been there in years, and he'd been shocked at how badly the place had deteriorated. If they'd tried to live inside the mound of a dung beetle, they would have had a cleaner time of it than in that shack.

But Fiona had pitched in and cleaned, and after her initial shock, she'd made jokes. In the end, she'd made it a pleasant evening for both of them. How many women could have
done that? he thought. Lisa would have been complaining about her nail polish being chipped.

At that thought Ace finished his whiskey. He had been intending to marry Lisa Rene in just a couple of weeks. If he didn't go to jail for murder, that is.