One Lucky Lady (8 page)

Mac and Alex had spent the last four days in the house and the back yard. Alex read and Mac seemed to be keeping watch. He looked out the window so many times that Alex was sure he was going to wear a hole in the curtain.

She had looked up several times to see him watching her. She was pretty sure he caught her watching him a few times, too. He helped her cook. He kept his bed made. He kept his bathroom clean.
Surely he couldn’t be perfect
. Alex could hear her mom telling her that if she ever found a man who could cook and clean and didn’t complain about it, he was a man worth keeping. Mac was definitely worth keeping.

Alex thought back to Tom. It had been a week, but it seemed like a year. She missed him, but she wasn’t crying anymore. He had been worth keeping. He didn’t cook, didn’t clean, but he loved her. He was thoughtful and kind most of the time. He slept downstairs for over a month just to keep from waking her. She missed him in her bed, though. When she told him as much, he said that it wouldn’t be for much longer and kissed her on the forehead.
Why on the forehead?
She had actually been starting to worry. They had not been married long enough for him to be tired of her, had they?

Tom was respectful toward her. He seemed to take her opinions into consideration. Tom was patient with her…

Alex was in high school when she decided to wait to have sex. She watched as girls cried over what some immature boy had said about her. Her best friend throughout school was one of those girls. Julie had a boyfriend named Mike. They started dating their sophomore year. Alex thought they seemed perfect together. At least, that was, until the week after Julie had agreed to sleep with him. Mike was a football player. Apparently, guys talk about things in the locker room. Mike talked about Julie. After that, Julie was miserable. Guys would taunt and tease her. Julie’s parents noticed something was wrong and, after talking with Julie about it, moved her to the other high school in town. Alex and Julie could both drive by that time, so they stayed close friends, but Julie was a lot different after that.

Julie and Alex had always been opposites. Julie developed a lot faster than Alex. Julie had rounded hips and breasts by the time they were freshman. Alex, at thirty-three, still had a boyish figure. She barely filled an A cup, and her hips were narrow. She definitely did not have a womanly figure.

Alex would date, but she never let things get out of hand. She was always polite, but when it came to sex, she would not budge. She would not sleep with a man until she was married to him. Tom had been very understanding. He didn’t call her names, as some of the guys she had dated had. He never tried to get her into bed even after he had asked her to marry him.

Their wedding had been very quick, and they really never went on a honeymoon. Tom couldn’t leave his work. They purchased their house shortly after they got married. Until then, they lived in his apartment. Their wedding night, they had gone back to the apartment. Tom was very careful with her. She knew the first time would hurt, but it was over with quickly. Tom held her and apologized for hurting her. Alex turned to him and kissed him, but he shushed her and told her he had to go take care of some things at the office.

Tom made love to her rarely the first week they were married. He said he didn’t want to hurt her more. He wanted to give her time to heal. Alex told him she felt fine, but he just kissed her on the forehead and went to sleep. Alex remembered wanting to call her mom, wanting to know if this was the way married people acted, but her mom wasn’t here. Alex would not talk to her co-workers about it. The ER was a regular soap opera. Everybody talked about everybody else’s business. This was not something Alex wanted to get around work. Alex had not kept in touch with Julie after she left Texas. Julie had a family of her own now, and between work and kids, Julie was always busy.

Alex remembered the way Julie looked after she was married. Alex had never seen her so happy. Julie seemed to glow all the time. About a year later, she gave birth to the most beautiful little girl Alex had ever seen. After that, the time Julie and Alex spent together got shorter and shorter, until it was just too hard to find the time. They talked on the phone every now and then, but when Alex left town, they stopped talking all together.

Looking back, maybe she should have called someone. Alex realized, now, that she had always felt like there was more to it. She felt like she was missing something. She loved Tom and knew she had married a good man, but she felt like there was something that just was not right.

Mac had been watching her for a while, now. Alex had not turned a page in the last hour, but she was still looking at the book. She seemed lost in thought. She didn’t look sad, really, she just looked like she was pondering something. Mac was a little concerned, but did not want to interrupt whatever was going on in her mind. Maybe she would tell him eventually. He doubted it, but a man could hope, right?

Mac studied her face. He was sitting on the couch, a little behind her, but he could see her profile. She had a tiny face. Hell, everything about her was tiny, except those eyes. She had beautiful, jade green eyes surrounded by long, thick, dark lashes. He knew she wasn’t wearing any makeup, so those lashes had to be all her. Her light brown eyebrows were arched perfectly to frame her eyes. She could raise her left one, when she was questioning something, either out loud or silently, or when she was surprised by something. He didn’t even think she realized she did it. She had done it a couple of days ago when he told her she was hiding from her daddy because she was knocked up.

He knew Alex didn’t know she was turning him inside out. She would take a bath and he would sit in the living room half hard and feel guilty as hell. She didn’t seem to think a bit about her looks. Her hair was now cut in a short, boyish way. It framed her face perfectly. Her hair was a dark brown, but Pedro told him it was normally a dark blonde color. He would love to see that. Mac imagined her hair was probably just a few shades lighter than her eyebrows.

She wore baggy sweat shirts most of the time over those snug little T shirts and loose fitting jeans or sweats to cover her figure, but he knew she had a very fine figure under there. Pedro should have gotten her some pajamas that hid as much as the sweats. She never wore a bra that he could tell.
You keep dwelling on that bra and you’re not going to survive this, man.

Mac remembered that first night when she came out of the bedroom. She didn’t attempt to cover herself. He knew she was about an A cup and had a tone little body. He could feel the definition of the muscles in her arms when he moved her to the chair. His stomach had done flip-flops when he touched her. At the time, he thought it was just the pain medicine and loss of blood. Now, since his shoulder healed and he felt great, he knew it was just her. His stomach had not improved much. Every time he looked at her, it did the same thing. He felt guilty for wanting her so much. He had no right. She just lost a man who Pedro said she loved very much. He was jealous as hell of a dead guy. He was screwed.

Alex, though she had been lost in thought, felt Mac watching her. A few days ago, it made her a little uneasy, but now she was getting used to it. She was also getting used to the heat that seemed to spread from low in her stomach. At first, it had been a weird feeling that she wasn’t familiar with. Now, four romance novels later, she was starting to think maybe this was how a woman was supposed to feel. She had read books like these before, but her mom always told her to remember they were fiction. Sex in real life just was not the same as in the books. How did so many different authors make that kind of stuff up? Logically, Alex believed that maybe the reason she was never satisfied in her marriage was because of those books. Her expectations were just too high.

She stopped reading them shortly after her wedding. Her mom had been right. But if that was the case, then where were these feelings coming from? And why did it happen every time Mac looked at her?

Alex looked toward Mac. His eyes were a dark bluish-grey normally, but somehow they seemed darker. Mac didn’t look away this time, like he did all the times before when she caught him watching her. He held her gaze for a long time then asked, “What were you thinking about?”

Alex’s face was on fire. There was no way in the world she could tell him what she was thinking. She would rather die first. “Nothing.”
Liar.

Mac gave her a look that said he didn’t believe her for a second. There was no way she was thinking about nothing. Damn, she looked guilty as hell. He could tell by the high level of color from her collar all the way to her ears, that she was full of shit. Alex was thinking about something, and with the way she plowed through those damn books she was reading, he had a pretty good idea he knew what it was. His body felt way to warm all the sudden.

The weather had cooled down yesterday. There was a cold front that was supposed to keep the temperatures in the mid to low seventies for about a week. Mac just nodded and headed for the back door praying that Pedro would hurry up.
Arsenic is way too slow. At this rate, he wasn’t going to need it. He was going to internally combust!

Alex started laughing as soon as she heard the back door close behind him. If he pushed her for answers, she would have told him. She sucked at lying and she knew it. She silently prayed Pedro had some good news.
She was going crazy. When was the last time she had laughed like that?

He sat in his office with his head back and his eyes closed wondering what he was going to do. Senator Lange contacted him and asked for the name of the lawyer on the Portman domestic violence case. He probably should have asked questions.
Well hindsight, and all that.

When he got the second phone call at his house, he knew something wasn’t right, but he had aspirations toward politics and you didn’t just tell a Senator no. He met Senator Lange at a charity dinner last year. He told him if he ever needed anything to give him a ring.

Now, the Senator needed the lawyer out of the way and he needed any information that the lawyer had on him. Lange said he tried to get the information he needed from the lawyer himself, but the lawyer had become suspicious and was starting to mettle in affairs that didn’t concern him.

He knew Monroe personally. If he smelled something fishy, he would get to the bottom of it. Wherever Monroe was looking, it hit way too close to home for the Senator’s comfort. He should have just sent that PI of his after the information. Rodriguez had ways of finding stuff that couldn’t be found and nobody ever knew he was looking.

He also should not have sent that Portman guy after Monroe, but it was way too easy. The man was already making threats against him. Now, however, he seemed like a loose cannon. He did take care of Monroe, but it appears he got the wrong PDA. The one he did get has stuff for medications and medical terms in it, obviously the wife’s. Monroe’s office computer had been confiscated by the police, but he knew that was not a problem. Everything Monroe wanted to keep to himself he had on his PDA. At least Portman was keeping up with Rodriguez.
I hope
.

Pedro showed up about an hour later. Mac was sitting on the front porch. He decided the back of the house was pretty safe. It would be hard for anyone to get into the yard, and he wanted to watch the street for anyone who might be watching them.

Mac stood and walked around to meet Pedro as he was getting out of his car. Pedro looked worried and walked to the corner of the house. He was looking to see if anyone looked like they didn’t belong. Mac had done it enough times to know what he was doing. Pedro turned back to Mac.

Mac could see something was definitely wrong. He hadn’t seen Pedro look like this since he first met him and Pedro was trying to tell him what had happened to his father.

Pedro nodded to Mac’s shoulder. “How is that feeling, son.”

Mac rolled his shoulder back and said, “Feels fine. Alex took the stitches out this morning. I had to beg her, but they were really starting to itch.” He figured he would leave out the part where he was aroused to the point of pain with her strong little hands on his bare flesh. “What’s wrong?”

Pedro took a deep breath and motioned for Mac to sit on the side porch. “Has she said anything to you about Lucy?”

“No. Who is Lucy?”

Pedro took a seat beside Mac. “It’s kind of a long story, but the short of it is that she was one of Tom’s clients. Probably the only one Alex knew. She took care of her in the ER the last time Lucy’s husband beat her up.”

Mac felt sick. He knew if Pedro was asking, something was wrong, and this sounded like it involved Alex.
So much for hoping she wasn’t in any danger
. Of course, Mac knew if Pedro was concerned enough to move Alex here, most likely she was in a lot of danger.
Damn it
.

“Lucy is missing and so is her husband, but I have a feeling he is the one following me.”

“Why would he want Alex?”

“Alex is the only witness scheduled to testify against him. Lucy’s chart at the hospital is missing, the lawyer who saw her at the hospital is dead, and the police report has disappeared.”