The Baby Chase
“Yeah?” Gabe removed his hand, but he stayed hunched over her. “You’ve got a goose egg on your forehead, bloody scrapes all over the place, and you’re so damned wet you’re probably gonna catch pneumonia. The water’s turned on upstairs, so we can at least clean up the cuts, but there’s no telling if we’ll find anything for you to dry off and warm up in. How bad’s that forehead hurting? You dizzy? Seeing anything double?”
If the blasted man had any manners, he’d give her the chance to answer, but no. Obviously, Gabe wasn’t going to take her word on anything, because he reached over and cupped her jaw so he could examine that goose-egg bump again. Fingertips feathered her hair back so that he could get a better look. Once he was finished playing doctor, his eyes met hers.
Rebecca wasn’t sure what happened then. He couldn’t have held her gaze for more than a few seconds, but the scowl disappeared from his brow. There was something in his expression. Something she’d never have expected. Something more than exasperation, something beyond Gabe Devereax’s hopeless compulsion to take charge of anything in his path. She was so wet and bedraggled that road kill would have to look more appealing. Yet there was something in those deep, dark eyes that punched the accelerator in her pulse.
If Gabe had even noticed she was a woman, he hadn’t let on before. Suddenly she was having trouble breathing. Gabe was a vital, virile, potent masculine package—easy enough to enjoy sparring with, when there’d been absolutely no threat or thought of his noticing her in any personal way. She wasn’t…easy around Gabe. Not as a woman. On the other hand, likely the fall had addled her brain. There couldn’t have been a sillier time to feel a power surge of hormones, and common sense told her she was imagining that look in his eyes.
Still, her pulse engine was revving harder than a jalopy with no muffler when Gabe’s expression abruptly changed. The scowl that popped back between his brows was even darker and more critical than the one before. He rocked back on his heels and then sprang to his feet. “Maybe you don’t need a doctor. But let’s see how you do when you try to stand up.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m perfectly fine.” She ignored his hand and promptly scrambled to a standing position. A bad mistake. The lump on her forehead instantly throbbed; her breasts and wrist smarted like fire, and now she knew for sure her fanny was broken. If threatened at knifepoint, though, she wouldn’t have admitted feeling wobbly to Gabe. “How did you get in the house, anyway?”
“The way most people do. Legally.” His tone was dry. “Eventually the estate’s going on the market, but it’s been closed up until all the probate tangles are over with. I called Monica Malone’s lawyer. Gave him my credentials, told him I believed there had to be more evidence in the house connected to the lady’s murder, and asked if he’d mind if I looked around personally. He gave me the key.”
“That’s it? That’s all you had to do to get a key?” It seemed so unfair.
“Now, Rebecca, everyone can’t be gifted with a writer’s imagination and fondness for high drama. Some of us even tend to do things the simple, normal, boring way—you know, by using basic common sense and logic?”
“Amazing. I could swear we had this exact same conversation before.”
“Yeah, we did. It didn’t get through to you then, either.” He shifted past her to close the gaping basement window. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and then you’re going home.”
“Only in your dreams, cutie. I didn’t just risk life and limb to disappear on your orders.” She was pretty sure no one had ever dared to call Gabe Devereax “cutie” before. The epithet seemed to startle, then amuse, him. For all that he was a hopelessly overbearing macho type—and probably untrainable, from a woman’s standpoint—he’d always had a redeeming sense of humor.
“Speaking of orders—as I’m sure you know—I’m here on your family’s. As outlandish and outrageous as it sounds, they actually trust me to follow through with this investigation all by myself. Can you imagine? Just because it’s my job and I’ve got over ten years of experience and professional qualifications behind me?”
Rebecca reached down for her backpack of tools. God, he was sassy. She might have been tempted to laugh—if the subject wasn’t so serious. “I trust you, too, Sherlock,” she said honestly. “You’re wonderful at what you do. But it isn’t your brother who’s been charged with murder. It’s mine. And I love him. And until his name is cleared, I can’t just sit home and knit booties. Did you find anything in the house so far?”
“I haven’t had the chance to look around. I’d just turned the key when I heard all hell breaking loose down here. Now, of course, I don’t know why I didn’t immediately guess it was you.” His face was in shadow when he scrubbed a tired hand over it. “Rebecca, listen to me.”
“I’m listening.” But she admitted it warily.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I assume you know I’ve been on the job from the day your brother was charged. I was here during the cops’ investigation, and after, when the yellow tape went down, I combed this place from stem to stern. This is my third run-through. So far, every shred of evidence points to Jake being guilty.”
“I know.” The knowledge was like a needle in her chest.
“Love and objectivity don’t mix. I know you want to help your brother. But I’m not putting you down when I say you’d be better off at home, knitting those booties. You could get hurt, messing around with this.”
Her gaze scanning the shadows, Rebecca vaguely noted a behemoth of a furnace, pipes, dampness seeping into the foundation walls—and the bottom edge of some wooden stairs, leading up. She heard Gabe, but what she heard in his voice only magnified her resolve. He would do his job. She’d never doubted that. But he didn’t believe in Jake’s innocence, any more than the police did.
She paused a second before aiming for the stairs, and pushed a fistful of tangled curls off her face. “You’re right about my not being objective. I have no interest whatsoever in being objective. If you’ll remember, Gabe, I’m the one who first tracked down your PI agency for the family, when my mother was in that plane crash.”
“I remember.”
She nodded. “No one believed that Kate was alive. No one believed she could be. And I wanted you hired, because you’re the best, and I always respected that you could do certain things that I can’t. But when you took on that job, you didn’t believe me about my mother being alive. You were no different than everyone else. Who was right that time, Devereax?”
“You were. But that was completely different—”
She shook her head, swiftly and violently, making the lump on her forehead ache like a bear—but she didn’t care. “It’s exactly the same thing. You trust your head, the same way I trust my heart. It’s because I love my brother that I know positively he never murdered anyone…and I don’t care how rotten Monica Malone was, or what she did to him.”
Gabe sighed. One of those exasperating masculine sighs that expressed centuries of archaic attitudes about women—and particularly her. “There are a few minor flaws in that logic, but we’ll forget those and move along. If you believe your brother’s innocent—and that all the physical evidence against him is just an inconvenient fantasy—that would mean that the real murderer is running around loose. A damn good reason to stay out of this. You could be in danger if you start poking your nose in fires you’re not qualified or prepared to put out.”
“For cripes’ sake, Gabe. That’s why I’m here. To find those fires.”
“God, it’s like talking to a marshmallow. Nothing gets through.” For the second time, he washed his face with an exhausted hand. “Somehow I have the feeling I’m not going to be able to talk you into going home.”
“Now, now.” She patted his shoulder consolingly—as she hiked past him toward the basement stairs. “I’m going to help you. Trust me.”
Two
Rebecca was as much help as a tornado. Given an option between the two evils, Gabe would have chosen the less chaotic.
That wasn’t the redhead.
For the second time, he dipped the washcloth under the faucet, wrung it out and aimed the cool cloth at the lump on her forehead. Rain was still battering the windows like bullets. March was early for a thunderstorm in Minnesota. No point in complaining; at least it was rain, instead of snow. Still, thunder shuddered through the house, and the lights winked and blinked at every flash of lightning. They’d be lucky if they didn’t lose the electricity altogether.
Losing the electricity wouldn’t bother him. Gabe was a resourceful man. He’d spent years in the Special Forces proving his ability to cope in even the most impossible of situations. Danger had never stopped him. Neither had adversity. He’d never counted on luck or God to solve a problem—in the past.
Conceivably, though, a few concentrated hours with Rebecca Fortune could turn even a hard-core heathen into a praying man.
“Yee-ouch. What, did you take lessons under Torquemada? Leave me alone, you bully.”
He didn’t stop working, didn’t look up. Right now, Rebecca was propped up on the kitchen counter, her face tilted toward the sink light.
He had a clear view of the gash on her forehead, but the chances of keeping her pinned and still for long wouldn’t make bookie odds. “It’s your own damn fault it hurts. There’s little specks of something in the cut. Maybe paint from that window frame. They have to come out. If you’d quit squirming, I’d get done a lot faster. I think you need a couple of stitches—”
Her response was swift. “No.”
“And since God knows what you connected with to get all those scrapes, you probably need a tetanus shot—”
Her response was even swifter. “I had one a couple of weeks ago.”
“Sure you did. And cats swim. You’ve got a real talent for fiction—which is a good thing, since I don’t think you’re gonna make it as a career criminal. Breaking and entering doesn’t seem to be your thing at all.”
“Don’t you start again with me, Devereax. I did this for my brother, and it wouldn’t matter to me if I’d ended up with all four limbs in casts and traction—I’d do it again.”
Gabe believed her. That was what scared him.
Most people could be appealed to through reason. Most women had a concept of safety, personal limitations, how to protect themselves. Bring that stuff up with Rebecca and she went blank. Nobody home in those pretty green eyes. No synapse connections indicating any brain function at all.
He dropped the washcloth and angled her face toward the sink light to study the welt again. Finally, it looked clean, but the ugly gash marring that soft, cream white skin made him furious. At her.
The punch-in-the-gut response to touching that soft, cream white skin made him even more furious. At himself.
When a man was standing between a woman’s thighs, an arousal was a natural, unavoidable biological reaction. Gabe understood perfectly well why he was harder than a hammer. And one day out of 365, a guy was entitled to feel unreasonable for a couple of minutes.
But he was mad at her for that, too.
When he stepped back, Rebecca mistakenly seemed to assume she was free and promptly leaned forward. “If you get off that counter, you die,” he informed her. “You need a bandage on that.”
“Sheesh. It’s just a little lump. It can’t be worth all this trouble.”
“If it isn’t taped right, you’ll get a scar.”
“My brother’s in jail on a murder one charge. Who the patooties could care about a stupid little scar? We’ve wasted enough time on this thing.”
“One more minute and this’ll be done.” He stepped between her thighs again. He had to. He didn’t trust Rebecca not to fly off the counter and start playing sleuth. He’d found the makings of a butterfly bandage in the antiquated first aid box. Leaning this close to her, Geronimo naturally stood at attention again, as stiff as a warrior’s lance.
Like his namesake, Geronimo should have figured out by now that a guy couldn’t win every time. Gabe ignored that problem. He wished he could ignore her.
She was relatively cleaned up now. Technically, no one was supposed to remove anything from the estate until all the legal tangles surrounding Monica Malone’s death were settled. Those legal complications meant that the cupboards and drawers and closets in the house were still jammed with stuff. Gabe had had no trouble finding a towel, washcloth, the first aid supplies and some clothes. He’d also caught sight of some thirty-year-old Scotch in the top kitchen cupboard.
He was considering leveling it.
“You done?” she said hopefully.
“Yeah, I’m done.”
“Gabe…thanks. I really couldn’t see the cut myself, not at the angle it was. I didn’t mean to be a pistol. I appreciate the help.”
“No sweat.” A total lie, Gabe thought. Everything about her was a sweat.
Rebecca wasn’t vain or spoiled, he gave her that—and she sure as hell could have been both, given the enormous wealth and affluence of the Fortune family. It wasn’t her fault that she’d never been outside a protected environment. Her background just made her inescapable trouble. She was a hopeless idealist, plenty bright, but no street smarts, no practical life experience. She’d never run across the seamier, more realistic side of life. She’d never been near it. She was a believer in love, in white knights and honor, and as far as Gabe could tell, she didn’t have a clue that there were predators out there who could hurt her.
Worse yet, she fancied herself a Nancy Drew, just because she’d written a few mystery novels. The complications she could cause, “helping” with this investigation regarding her brother, were enough to give Gabe an ulcer.
So was she.
As she slid off the counter, his eyes homed on the view of a lace-trimmed bra and the shadow of cleavage. More shadow than cleavage. There’d been no way he could talk her into peeling off the muddy, soaking-wet sweatshirt until he found something else for her to put on—he’d yanked the V-necked black sweater from a drawer upstairs, and he assumed it had belonged to Monica Malone. The late Monica, like so many of the Hollywood glamour stars of her era, had been built like a battleship on the upstairs deck.
The V neck gaped on Rebecca as if she were an orphan waif playing dress-up. Her black jeans were finally dry, and snug enough to outline long, lean legs and a nonexistent tush. Since she couldn’t sit without squirming, he strongly suspected she’d bruised that bitsy tush, but for damn sure she’d never admit it to him. There was far more pride than sense in those soft green eyes, and that about summed up the rest of her appearance, too.
The face was valentine-shaped, the skin too white, the eyes too dark, a mouth that looked dangerously butter-soft, and a nose with an impertinent tip. He guessed her height at around five-five. A respectable height—except next to him—but it was hard to resist calling her “shorty” when the least teasing got such a rise out of her.
Her hair was dark cinnamon, and at the moment layered to her shoulders in a snarled tangle of curls. She’d obviously had no chance or time to brush it, but he’d spent time with her before this, and he knew her hair always looked like she’d just climbed out of a man’s bed after a long, acrobatic night. Since she was a Fortune, there was no question that she had the money for a decent haircut, so apparently she just didn’t think about it. Maybe a haircut wouldn’t help. Give her a butch cut and drape her in iron—she was still going to look skinny, sexy, half put together and, dammit, vulnerable.
Gabe had never been attracted to vulnerable-looking females, so he had no idea why she so revved his engines—and he didn’t want to know. If and when a man was inclined to make a mistake, Gabe generally theorized, he might as well get his money’s worth and do it right. But, hell, not with her. He’d tangled with his share of women, and at thirty-eight he certainly knew when a risk was worth taking. He liked risk and he wasn’t short on guts—but no way was he a suicidal kamikaze pilot.
“Rebecca…” He swiped a hand over his face again. As fast as she’d sprung down from the counter—as he should have known—she was galloping toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I thought I’d check out the scene of the murder first—it was in the living room, wasn’t it? Then see what I could pry and poke up in Ms. Malone’s bedroom.”
“If you’re headed for the living room, better aim right instead of left. Unless you have some interest in the pantry and butler’s quarters. And listen, Nancy D. You leave stuff as you find it. You don’t take anything. I’d rather you didn’t even touch anything without telling me—”
“Sheesh, Gabe. I’ve read a dozen books on police procedure. If I find anything remotely related to evidence, I sure as Pete know enough not to mess it up.”
“Somehow your reading those books doesn’t reassure me too much.”
For a vulnerable woman, she had the unholiest grin. “I know, cutie. You really can’t seem to help being a take-charge, overbearing, overprotective pain. Especially with women. God, thinking about you being a father just boggles the mind. You’d drive a daughter nuts, sweetie pie.”
“Since I don’t plan to be a father, the problem is moot. Babies are the last thing on my mind.”
“Yet another core difference between us—no surprise. If it weren’t for this immediate problem with my brother, babies’d be front-line priority for me. You should see all the research material I’ve been collecting on sperm banks.”
“Sperm banks? You can’t be serious.”
“On the subject of babies, I couldn’t be more serious.” But she grinned again. “However, the only reason I mentioned sperm banks was because I couldn’t resist—I just knew you’d get that look on your face, darlin’. But right now, time’s wasting…and babies just have no place on this night’s agenda.”
No, Gabe thought darkly, murder was apparently front-line on the lady’s agenda now. And only Rebecca could bounce from sperm banks to murder in a single breath.
Well, he wasn’t going to follow her around. He had an investigative job he was being paid to do, and his salary didn’t extend to baby-sitting imaginative, recalcitrant redheads—even if she was kin to his boss.
He headed for the office—and yeah, he knew the mansion had one, because he’d been here before. The wallpaper was textured silk, the windows were hung with poofy, powder-puff-looking curtains, and the desk had a brocade chair. It was about the sissiest office he’d ever been in, and he doubted Monica Malone had ever paid a bill on her own, least of all in here. Either the cops or the lawyers had absconded with every record or financial statement in the file cabinets, as Gabe already knew. Still, he flicked on the fancy offset lighting and started yanking out drawers.
Someone could have missed something. Someone always did. As much evidence as had emerged in the case, there were still huge holes and gaps in information. He carefully, meticulously tore the place apart…for about twenty minutes.
About then he realized how silent it was in the rest of the house. Dead silent. Ideal for concentrating, except that it nagged at him like a bee sting that he couldn’t hear Rebecca. Her labeling him overbearing still rankled. He wasn’t remotely overbearing. He simply had ample previous experience with Rebecca—enough to know she was impulsively, unwittingly capable of causing no end of trouble. When a man was in the same house with a nuclear reactor, he was perfectly justified in worrying.
He found her in the long, sweeping living room, huddled in a chair, staring at the marble fireplace. Damn woman. She looked up at him with huge dark eyes. “I’m just trying to picture it. I know she was killed here….”
“Yes.”
“We know Jake was here. And that he was drunk. We know they argued, physically argued. Jake said Monica scratched him and came at him with a letter opener, and he had a stab wound in the shoulder to prove it. He admitted that he pushed her, that she fell against that marble fireplace and hit her head.”
“Monica and your brother’s fingerprints were all over the scene.” Gabe didn’t add that no one else’s identifiable fingerprints had surfaced. Rebecca already seemed to have a pretty good picture of the compelling evidence against her brother. She couldn’t seem to stop wringing those slim white hands.
“But he said Monica was alive when he left her. Natalie, his daughter, saw him later. We talked to him. It wasn’t like a fight, not on his part. He only pushed her because she was attacking him with that letter opener, and he had no reason to lie about her still being alive. He could have claimed self-defense if she’d died accidentally in a struggle like that. I’m telling you, someone else was either already in the house or came in after Jake left. My brother did not kill her, Gabe.”
Gabe crossed the room to the art deco bar. Nothing back there was quite as good as the thirty-year-old Scotch he’d found in the kitchen, but at the moment he’d have settled for Kentucky moonshine. Not for him. Being around Rebecca predictably inspired him to drink, but the immediate problem was the damn heartsick look in her eyes.
He splashed some whiskey in a cut-crystal shot glass and carried it over to her.
She took the glass and sniffed it. “Yuck,” she said.
“Shut up and level it, shorty.”
“If you call me ‘shorty’ one more time…” she began, but then her voice trailed off. It was truly a landmark occasion—she actually didn’t bristle up and argue with him. Instead, she lifted the shot glass and chugged the brew in an impressive three gulps. Once she finished coughing, she wiped her eyes with a shudder. “Personally, I’m with Mary Poppins. If you have to take medicine, you should be able to add a spoonful of sugar to it.”
Imagining the taste of whiskey and sugar was enough to make him shudder, but he could see that the liquid courage did its job. Color shot back into her cheeks. She quit trying to knit those hands into a sweater. Gabe figured if there was ever going to be a two-second window when she could handle a dose of realism, it had to be now. “No other suspects have surfaced, Rebecca—not a single name, much less a clear fingerprint. All the physical evidence points to Jake…and he had motive.”
“Monica was blackmailing him. I know. Milking him for shares of the Fortune company, from the time she found out Jake was born on the wrong side of the blanket. If she exposed him, he was afraid he’d lose everything. I know all the family dirty linen, Gabe, and I know the mistakes my brother made. I know he’d been drinking a lot and had been screwing up at work. That the pressure split up his marriage, and set him against Nate. It still doesn’t mean he killed her.”
It was pretty rare that two and two didn’t add up to four, Gabe thought, but it was hard to argue with such blind loyalty. “I just thought you might need to recognize how bad it looks,” he said gently.
She surged out of the chair, suddenly as restless as a wet cat. “You know what I recognize? That Monica Malone has somehow managed to hurt my family for two generations—she’s dead now, and it still isn’t over. The old witch was guilty of kidnapping, sabotage, infidelity, stalking, theft, blackmail—you name it, she did it against the Fortune family, starting way back when she had an affair with my father. I swear she’s hurt us for the last time. It’s got to stop.”
“Rebecca,” he said patiently, “go home.”
“No.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe someone did come in this house after your brother left, and murdered her. But if there’s a shred of proof in this house pointing in that direction, I promise I’ll find it.”
“I know you would try. And I know you’re good. But you don’t have a woman’s eye, Gabe. There’s every chance I could see things that you couldn’t.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. No point in continuing in that direction, so he tried another. “There’s a tiny element you may not have considered, Red. Finding evidence that someone else murdered Monica doesn’t mean you’re going to be any happier. I know the whole story of how she preyed on your family. But that’s the point. If there is another suspect, it could well be another member of your clan. There’s no shortage of motives all through the Fortune family.”