His Partner's Wife (27 page)

"They didn't think anything of your saying good
night." John stood just inside the room, feeling awkward. "I wanted to
make sure you didn't feel…"

"I didn't."

Her very poise frustrated him. Her gaze was now pleasantly
inquiring. He could have been a stranger instead of the man who had made
passionate love to her the night before.

He was driven to assume a businesslike tone. "I'm
wondering if Geoff and I can get into your safe-deposit box tomorrow."

Something flickered in her eyes, but she agreed without
hesitation. "Of course. I think I have to open it for you, unless you have
a court order. Do you want to go first thing in the morning, or at the lunch
hour?"

"Morning's fine. We don't expect to find
anything—"

"But you need to look, not just take my word for it. I
understand." She waited, eyebrows lifted, at last saying gently, "Is
there anything else?"

Talk to me, damn it.

"I was hoping to kiss you," he said gruffly.

"Oh." The exclamation came out breathlessly.
Natalie jumped to her feet and rushed to him. "A kiss would be nice,"
she admitted, lifting her face to his.

Yeah. Nice. With his two brothers in the living room, his
children in bed upstairs, and no hope of this going anywhere.

So he kept it tender, light, a promise instead of a demand.
Nice.

"Nice" was going to be a cold bedfellow tonight.

Chapter
12

«
^
»

I
n the surreal quiet
of the bank vault, the two men waited as Natalie unlocked
the safe-deposit box and pulled it out. She carried it to the table, then stood
back.

"Do you mind?" John asked politely.

"That's what we're here for."

She knew it wouldn't take them five minutes to look through
the papers Stuart had kept here. She had wondered why he bothered with a
safe-deposit box and thought of canceling it, but hadn't because of the same
inertia that had kept her from making other changes this past year.

Don't make decisions too soon,
everyone cautioned. They didn't know that she wasn't
grieving the way they thought she was, but the shock of Stuart's sudden death
had seemed to leave her with many of the traditional symptoms widows shared.
Too
many
decisions to be made, maybe, and it seemed easiest to put
them all off except those required for the funeral.

After all, it had been his last chance to have his name in
the newspaper. Feeling the irony and even some anger, she had carefully clipped
both obituary and the brief article and placed them in his album.
The End.

The two men were huddled over the box. Geoff raised his head
and said grumpily, "This is it?"

She made an apologetic gesture. "I told you there
wasn't much."

"Have you taken anything out of here?"

"No … yes," Natalie corrected herself,
remembering. "Foxfire's registration papers. They're in the filing cabinet
now, in the study. You must have seen them."

Looking irritated, Geoff repeated, "Foxfire?"

"My horse?"

Under his breath, he muttered something no doubt better
unheard, concluding with a growled, "Why the hell would anyone put an
animal's papers in a safe-deposit box?"

She didn't remind him that this particular animal was worth
thousands.

"Nothing else?" He sounded almost fierce.
"There wasn't a key in here? Any papers you didn't understand? Something
you've put out of your mind because it didn't seem important?"

John was unusually silent, letting his partner take the
lead. Perhaps, she thought, because of what had happened between them. It must
be terribly awkward to be investigating a woman you'd just slept with.

"Nothing," she said, holding out her hands palm
up, as if to show that they were empty. "The attorney who handled the
probate was with me. You can have his phone number and talk to him if you'd
like, but I'm sure he didn't remove anything. We glanced through the contents,
he made a few notes, and the only thing I took was Foxfire's papers. We put
everything back, and I haven't had any reason to open this safe-deposit box
since." Quietly she added, "I'm sorry."

Voice just as quiet, John said, "I didn't expect
anything else."

A frowning Geoff Baxter, she couldn't help noticing, didn't
agree.

Late the next afternoon
,
Natalie unlocked the front door of her house and stepped in, setting down the
cat carrier but leaving the door open for John, who was following her up the
walk with her suitcase. He, of course, had protested her decision to move home,
but she'd been more determined, not less, because of their one night of
lovemaking.

In the two days since, it had seemed impossible to snatch
even a few minutes alone together, never mind hours. John was working long days
on another murder investigation, as well as Ronald Floyd's. If he ever had time
during the day, she didn't. And either his mother dropped the kids off by five o'clock or John picked them up on his way home. He didn't sneak downstairs to her
bedroom or suggest she creep up to his, a decision she respected. She hated to
think of Evan having a nightmare and discovering her in bed with his daddy.

So the time had come to put her life back on track. What
would be, would be, with John. She was trying very hard to be a fatalist—or
even an optimist—to combat the hollow feeling in her chest.

Alone briefly in the entry, she looked around with curious
reluctance. The house, so familiar, felt alien. No wonder. It had, after all,
seen intruders twice this past month, a brutal murder upstairs, a top-to-bottom
search by the police, and finally the installation of a security system.

Her purse slid from her shoulder and plopped onto the
carrier, startling her—and probably poor Sasha—briefly. Waiting, hesitating
about stepping farther inside, Natalie had a sharp flashback to the day she had
moved into this house, immediately after she and Stuart flew into SeaTac from
their honeymoon in Maui. They had come straight here. All her belongings had
gone into storage while they were away, and now this was home.

Stuart hadn't carried her across the threshold. After the
euphoria of the honeymoon, she had felt absurdly hurt by the absence of the
traditional, if silly, gesture.

"You know where everything is," he'd said over his
shoulder as he went straight to the big-screen television and turned it on. He
was channel surfing, one football game to another, his new wife apparently
forgotten, when she quietly took her own suitcase upstairs to the master
bedroom.

She'd slept here before, helped make dinner, but as a guest.
Now this house was home. But it felt … not like a place she would have chosen.
The sound of the commentators' voices raised in excited argument floated from
the downstairs. Clearly Stuart wasn't following her up. She bit her lip, sat
down on the edge of the king-size bed, and cried a few quiet tears.

Now Natalie shook her head hard to disperse the unwelcome
memory. Today was different. This was just a house, and she owned it. The floor
plan was identical to that of a dozen other houses in this development alone.
Atmosphere, if any, came from paint and paper and wood, things that could be
changed, and from the lives lived within the walls.

She
had
to come home. She couldn't afford to make mortgage payments
on this house and rent an apartment, too. Besides, if she was to sell this
place, it was time she got to work weeding through Stuart's things. She'd
procrastinated for a year. Enough was enough.

A footstep sounded behind her. John set down her suitcase
and closed the door with his shoulder. A frown drew his brows together as he
watched her release Sasha from the carrier.

The cat took a wild look around and bolted for the stairs.

"She'll be okay," Natalie said aloud. As much for
herself, she added, "We'll be okay."

The brief silence was thick.

"I don't like leaving you here."

"I'll be safe with the security system. Besides…"
Natalie turned with a smile that cost her. "We have no reason to think
whoever broke in was interested in me. You've obviously searched this place top
to bottom. Why would anybody bother to break in again?"

His jaw tightened. "You were welcome at my house."

"I know I was," Natalie said quietly. "But I
couldn't just stay forever." She swallowed. Oh, dear. That was exactly
what she wanted to do. "It was time," she concluded with another
faint smile.

"I'm going to miss you," John said in an odd
voice.

"Call me."
Please.

"Yeah. I'll do that." He reached for her suitcase.
"Let me take this upstairs." Natalie wandered into the kitchen rather
than follow him. The first thing she had to do was grocery shop, she realized,
after opening the refrigerator. She was glad to seize on something so practical
to do.

The crime scene tape no longer barred the door to the
garage. She opened it and peered in. If anything, the piles of boxes and the
hulk of an MG that Stuart had thought he would restore but never got to looked
more daunting. The car first, she thought. Tomorrow, she'd call around and find
somebody who would haul it away for parts—assuming it had any usable ones. If
not—the junkyard. That would give her room to work out there. She'd spend a
whole weekend sorting the salable from stuff to go to the dump. It was still
early enough in the fall that she could have a garage sale.

Last night, when she'd said there might be things she would
want to keep, John had grimaced.

"Trust me. There won't be."

Closing the door firmly and locking the new dead bolt,
Natalie pushed away the cloud of depression that wanted to descend.

The more of Stuart's possessions out of her hair the better.
Her feelings about him were still tangled, but she knew she didn't want to keep
much to remember him by.

"What are you thinking?" John had come up behind
her so silently she hadn't heard his approach.

She turned with another of those determined smiles.
"That I need groceries."

"You could come home with me for dinner."

Home. Oh, so easily, his house could be just that, enfolding
her with a welcome she'd never found here.

But then, John hadn't asked her to stay on any basis but as
a guest, a nervous Nellie who was afraid to live in her own house alone.

"Don't be silly. I've just gotten here."

She followed him to the front door. There, he opened his
arms and she went into them, for a moment gratefully resting her cheek against
his chest.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He swallowed an oath and kissed her, hard and quick. An
instant later, her front door opened and closed and he was gone.

Fiercely she refused to let herself cry.

Natalie waited just long enough for him to be well on his
way home before following him out. She did a thorough grocery shop, then filled
her evening with putting away what she'd bought, cooking dinner and returning
the phone calls that had built up on her answering machine.

Only then did she go upstairs, pausing just briefly at the
open door to the study, not letting herself turn her head to look for a now
nonexistent stain, before continuing to her bedroom.

Sleep was slow coming, even after a plop announced Sasha's
arrival. She declined to come up for a cuddle, but did deign to curl up behind
Natalie's knees, a warm, comforting lump.

At John's house, Natalie had been able to avoid thinking
about Stuart and her own stupidity. Now, in the bed they'd shared during almost
three years of marriage, she couldn't.

How could she have deceived herself so completely?

That was what bothered her most—the idea that she could have
imagined herself in love with a man who could offer one face to the world and
be something so different behind it. Did she misjudge people as badly every
day?