Past Sins (18 page)
Her heart jolted, sent anticipation soaring through her. Could that mean…? Did she want it to mean his decision depended on
her?
When she would have asked on what, Page stepped in. “I’ll need him back in London for a few days.” He clapped Landry on the back. “We have things to talk about.”
That certainly answered that question. Her heart dropped into her shoes, taking her ability to continue to stand and pretend it didn’t matter away in one fell swoop.
Olivia stuck out her hand. “Goodbye, Landry.”
He looked startled, which shocked her, but she refused to read anything into it. She was finished trying to read between the lines of the men in her life, past, present or future. She had to get out of here before she embarrassed herself.
He folded his big hand around hers, sending a charge up her arm. “Goodbye, Nessa.”
“Olivia,” she corrected, determined to make a show of strength.
“Olivia,” he acquiesced.
She pulled her hand free of his since he didn’t readily let go and turned back to Hamilton. “Get me to L.A., Hamilton. I’ve had enough of this coast.” And there was Jeffrey. She’d have to see that he got home, as well.
They moved toward the Mercedes belonging to Echols. The limo had already departed with its prisoner and his guards.
Page had ushered Landry to his car. He kept one eye on Olivia until she got into the Mercedes. She knew this because she’d kept an eye on him, as well.
The door closed behind her and the reality that whatever they’d resurrected during this unexpected mission wouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
It was over.
All of it.
No point in looking back.
But she did. She couldn’t help herself.
She watched the Jag carrying Landry disappear in the other direction as Hamilton pointed the Mercedes toward the city.
No way would she grieve losing Landry again.
She’d done that once.
Besides, she should be happy. The past was really behind her now. She didn’t have to fear being recognized. No more evacuation plans were necessary. Her life would finally be normal.
It just wouldn’t include the man she loved. But then that had never been the plan…until she’d foolishly let herself hope…again.
O
livia was dictating notes on her final patient for the day when she heard someone come into the reception area of her West Hollywood office.
She turned off the tape recorder and got up to greet the unexpected visitor. There were no more appointments on her calendar. New patients generally called before showing up at her door.
Jeffrey, sans his usual white lab coat, smiled as she stepped into the room. “I was just leaving your key. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
He placed the key to her house on the table between the two chairs that flanked her front window.
“Thanks. I appreciate your dropping it by.”
She’d only been back a week. She’d told Jeffrey not to hurry about moving out but he’d wanted to put this behind him, she supposed. He’d moved the last of his things from her place yesterday.
“You look well.”
She was back to being Dr. Olivia Mills. Her hair was arranged in her preferred French twist. The skirt and blouse were classic, as were the stilettos. Her patients paid well for her services. They expected a certain level of elegance in both her office and her attire. New curtains and a fresh paint job were next.
“So do you.” That sounded entirely lame, but she had to admit that Jeffrey looked good.
“Excellent.” He gestured to the door. “I should go.”
Olivia couldn’t do this, just stand there and pretend they hadn’t shared so much. She walked straight up to him and hugged him fiercely.
He hugged her back.
Eventually she saw him out the door and watched him drive away. They would run into each other from time to time. Despite its size, L.A. and its many communities could be a small world at times. People generally operated in their comfort zones. She’d see Jeffrey at the market or in one of their favored shopping areas. They would both smile and say hello. He would move on, find someone new and maybe get married and have children.
She, on the other hand, could do none of the above.
Her heart was not available.
After turning the sign to Closed and locking the door, she wandered back to her office and finished dictating her notes.
It wasn’t the end of the world.
She had her work.
She had her freedom.
Anything else was icing on the cake.
When she’d finished for the day, she grabbed her handbag and left by the side exit. She drew up short when her gaze landed on Landry leaning against her Audi.
“I would have been here sooner but Andrew insisted on formal ceremonies.”
She ordered her heart to stop its fluttering. “Ceremonies?”
He moved one broad shoulder up and down carelessly. “In some circles I’m actually considered a hero. Apparently when I abruptly resigned two years ago, I had several medals coming to me.”
She tried so hard not to conduct a visual inventory. She didn’t want him to pick up on how thrilled she was to see him.
Her efforts failed. Her gaze took in every detail, from his handsome face to his booted feet. The well-fitting jeans and snug Henley shirt emphasized every sexy feature.
Sweat beaded on her skin.
But the worst betrayal she suffered was the pounding in her chest. She couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t slow down the anticipation building with each passing second.
“Are you enjoying your vacation in our fair city?” She almost cringed at the too high-pitched tone of her voice. No one else had ever been able to do this to her.
“I live here.”
Had he told her that? She surely would have remembered. “Really?” She strong-armed her gaze to her Audi and walked over to the driver’s-side door and opened it. “I guess I forgot.”
“Right here in the Hills. We’re practically neighbors.”
Well, he had said he’d watched her. Apparently more often than she’d suspected. How was it she’d never run into him?
What was she saying? The guy was a master spy. He wouldn’t be seen unless he wanted to be seen. She tossed her bag inside and produced a smile for the man she could feel staring at her. “Welcome back. But, as you can see, I was just on my way home.”
He faced her, rested his folded arms on her open door. “Actually, I was planning to take you to dinner.”
Hope sang through her veins and she wanted to kick herself. “I’ll have to check my schedule.” With him this close she couldn’t look at him, not without getting lost in those eyes. She knew herself too well.
“I already checked it.” He came around the door and trapped her against the car. “You’re free. So why don’t we stop playing games and say what we really mean?”
“Games?” She manufactured an expression of innocence. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Nes” He stopped himself, took a breath. “Olivia, you know how I feel. I am brutally aware of how you feel. Let’s not do this.”
Oh, now
this
she enjoyed. “You sound a little desperate, Landry. We really should take our time plotting our future together. We wouldn’t want to rush into anything, would we?”
His hand went to her waist and pulled her against him. He was hard. A thrilling sensation rushed along every nerve ending.
“I’ve waited three years to get you back. I’m not waiting a minute longer.”
She opened her mouth to protest his high-handed tactics but he silenced her with his lips.
Why fight it? She leaned into the kiss, let herself get lost in the taste, smell and feel of him.
Delayed gratification was overrated anyway.
Life was short. She knew firsthand.
Time to start really living.
The drive to his place didn’t take that long. He had her half undressed by the time they arrived. They stumbled out of the Audi, and on to his front door, his shirt landing on the sidewalk along the way.
He fumbled with his key…finally managed to get the door open and then she was in his arms again. She wanted to take in his home…to see if it matched the man, but she couldn’t think of anything right now but getting naked.
They didn’t make it up the stairs…clothes littered the first five or six steps and that was as far as they got.
Landry braced her against the wall, then hoisted her upward as she wrapped her legs around his lean hips.
No words were spoken…the feel of his skin meshed with hers. He completed the connection, stealing her breath and making speech impossible.
This was where she belonged…in his arms…it was the only place she’d ever really belonged.
Finally she was
home.
And this time, it was going to last.
Silhouette Bombshell keeps getting hotter! Look out for more fast-paced, romantic adventures coming your way, featuring women you’d love to know and the villains and men who challenge them.
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WHAT STELLA WANTS by Nancy Bartholomew
Available July 2006 wherever Silhouette Books are sold.
I
t was about time my luck changed. In the past month I’d been beaten up, shot at, lied to and seduced. In my opinion, other than the seduction, I’d been on the short end of the karma scale. At least this stakeout and surveillance, while in the middle of winter, was indoors. Okay, so there wasn’t any heat in the garage, but I wasn’t standing outside in a blizzard, either. And our target was slow-moving and not very dangerous. She was an old lady.
The bad news was, she was my aunt Lucy.
My partner, Jake Carpenter, also known as the man voted most likely to get under my skin and into my bed, was crouched next to me, peering out the grimy garage window and into Aunt Lucy’s kitchen.
“She let him in,” he said. “Why hasn’t she brought him back to the kitchen? She brings everybody to the kitchen.”
I looked at Jake. Tall, dark, handsome and sometimes completely clueless. Not much had changed about the man since high school, since he’d left me waiting at the altar in a failed elopement that still echoed like a bad dream in my memory.
“Oh, I don’t know, Jake. Do you think they just went straight down the hall to her bedroom, or what?”
I guess the sarcastic tone gave me away. Jake actually managed to look hurt. “You don’t have to be so sensitive about it. I was just asking.”
I arched an eyebrow and tried not to notice the way his eyes were traveling the length of my body, stopping at all the good parts, the parts that had so readily responded to his touch just hours before.
“Jake, it’s my aunt, for God’s sake! She’s been widowed what, six months, and some mysterious guy from her past surfaces and she doesn’t say one word about who it is or what he wants, and you think I shouldn’t be so sensitive? He could be a con man. He could be a killer. He could be”
I stopped, trying to come up with more possibilities, which gave Jake the window he was looking for. “He could be looking to get laid. Aunt Lucy’s old, but she isn’t dead!”
I punched him, and his responding grunt was loud enough to let me know I hadn’t lost my touch. Police training and conditioning is no joke and I wasn’t about to let it go by the wayside just because I was no longer a cop. Private investigators need muscles and endurance, too, maybe even more. They don’t have an entire police force ready to back them upthey just have a partner or two, if they’re lucky. Jake was solid muscle and ex–Special Forces, but he was only one guy. I was the other half of the team. I needed to retain my edge…even if we were tailing only my elderly aunt at this moment.
As we watched, the back door flew open and my aunt Lucy came rushing down the steps, a white plastic trash bag in hand and a grim look on her face. She headed straight for the garage.
“Hide!” I yelped and dived behind a bunch of boxes.
Jake wasted no time joining me and together we crouched, waiting for my aunt to pull open the old wooden door and head for the trash cans that lined the far wall.
“Nothing good comes of spying on relatives,” I muttered.
“It was your idea,” Jake reminded me.
I wanted to smack him but didn’t dare with Aunt Lucy mere seconds from entering the ancient garage. So I pinched his earlobe, the only readily available, exposed flesh I could reach.
“Ouch!”
“Shh!”
The garage door creaked open and Aunt Lucy could be heard walking briskly across the concrete floor to the battered metal trash cans. She pulled a lid off, dumped her bag inside it, replaced the lid and started to stomp off. Without warning, she stopped parallel to our hiding place, and as we listened, she sniffed, loudly, cautiously, and I was certain she’d discovered us.
“Hmmph!” She snorted. “Nothing worse than the smell of dead fish!”
Then, without further comment, she left, slamming the garage door securely behind her and continuing on her way across the rectangular backyard. A moment late we heard the back-porch door slam and knew we were in the clear.
“Damn, I thought she was going to nail us,” Jake said. “The woman’s psychic, I swear she is.”
My cell phone rang, startling both of us.
“I thought I had it on vibrate.” I fished the offender out of my parka pocket and flipped it open. “Valocchi Investigations.”
Jake gave me his usual and customary hard look as I said the name. For some reason the man thought that because we were partners, his name should be on the door. I wasn’t sure the partnership was permanent, so why change things before I had a feel for the potential duration of it? Look what happened the last time we tried to form a partnership…I’d wound up hurt and alone, trying to explain running away to marry Jake to my disappointed aunt Lucy and uncle Benny. No, I needed to wait this relationship out before I made another foolish commitment.
“Stella, is that you?” The voice, female and anxious, sounded distinctly familiar.
“Yes?”
“Stella, it’s Bitsy Blankenshipwell, it’s Margou-lies now, but it was Blankenship. Margrace Llewellen said you’d moved back home and opened a private-investigation office. I need to see you. Right now!”
I closed my eyes. Elizabeth Blankenship. Blond, cheerleader, airhead and high-maintenance in high school. Sounded like nothing had changed, at least not in the maintenance department. I remembered hearing she’d married a junior diplomat and was now leading the high life of embassy parties and overseas assignments. Figured she’d land on her designer heels. But the demanding, “everything’s urgent and about me” tone to her voice brought out the rebellious adolescent in me.
“Uh, sorry, Bitsy,” I said. “My first available appointment won’t be for another…” I opened my eyes and stared up at the old garage rafters, aware of Jack’s confused expression because he knew we were next to unemployment in terms of busy. “I guess I could squeeze you in tomorrow, late morning.”
“No! I mean, please, Stella, this is an emergency! I need to see you now!”
I signed, pushed the sleeve up on my parka and looked at my watch. It was almost noon. “Okay, I suppose I could see you at two, but I might be a few minutes late. We’re in the middle of an important surveillance.”
“Two?” Bitsy’s anguished wail was almost satisfying, especially when I remembered that Jake had once dated Bitsy, shortly after he’d failed to show for our elopement to Maryland. “Really, Stella, you can’t see me any sooner?”
Damn, what did the woman want, blood? “I’m sorry, Bits, two is my absolute earliest time and I’ll be pushing it at that.”
I could hear the sound of a car’s engine in the background as Bitsy considered whether to take the appointment or not. She was driving and I wondered if she was in town yet or on her way from D.C.
“Oh, all right! I’ll do two. I suppose I can waste a couple of hours visiting my grandmother in the nursing home or something.”
Visiting her grandmother was a waste of time? Oh, I was so glad I was putting Mrs. High-and-Mighty on the back burner!
“Okay. You know where the office is? It’s across from the old newsstand, off Main.”
“I’ll find it. And, Stella, listen, it’s really important that you don’t tell anybody about this, okay? I don’t want anyone to know I’m in town or that we’re meeting. It could be a matter of life and death.”
I rolled my eyes at Jake. What had he ever seen in this dingbat? Jake frowned and mouthed the words “Who is it?” But I just smiled and shook my head.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. See you at two!”
I snapped the phone shut and smiled even bigger at Jake. “Guess what, partner? Your old girlfriend, Bitsy, is coming to town, and she wants to hire me.”
ISBN 1-55254-485-0
PAST SINS
Copyright © 2006 by Debra Webb
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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