Just One Look

Just One Look

Joanne Rock

MILLS & BOON

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To Bernice Rock,

the best mother-in-law in the whole world.

Thank you for all the great dinners, the moral

support and the many times you’ve watched the

boys so I could attend writer conferences or go

out on a date with your son. I would have never

gotten my porch painted without you!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Prologue

RED TOOK GREAT PLEASURE from hiding in plain sight.

The assistant producer mingled with the B-movie star’s entourage, an invitation to another studio’s set never difficult to procure if you had connections.

God bless connections. In New York’s underground film industry, you could buy your way to the top faster with the right contacts than you could with a big schlong or double D boobs. And while Red might not have the kind of star power that dingbat John de Milo possessed in the industry, at least Red knew how to make friends and blend in on the bedroom set of a cable after-dark special that wasn’t quite porn but wouldn’t make the cut as an R-rated movie. In a business full of insecurity, appearing nonthreatening to all egomaniac parties concerned was critical to longevity. That fine art of flying under the radar helped when it came to treading the outside borders of what was legal in filmmaking. Plus, the anonymity allowed Red to lurk right underneath Tabitha Everhart’s nose.

“Quiet on the set,” the director called to calm the din of the crowd in a studio that had more of a party atmosphere than any Hollywood production.

Actor John de Milo was the last one to shut his trap, but then he looked like he was tripping on the sidelines of the set—not a good thing for a man who’d been privy to sensitive information once upon a time. Red would have to do something about that.

Tabitha Everhart hadn’t opened her mouth all day, her visit to the set where she’d been hired to act as a body double next week just a chance to observe the filming in action. But just because Tabitha was quiet today didn’t mean she would be forever. Tabitha was one of very few people who had all the necessary pieces to uncover Red’s secrets.

“Action!” The director’s call started the sex scene in motion and the bedroom backdrop became a playground for the three so-called actors intent on using the cable movie for a jump to more legitimate shows.

This was the upscale version of porn? Red’s producer’s eye took a jaundiced view of a piece that wouldn’t make nearly as much as something spicier.

If only Tabitha had consented to making that erotic film long ago. She would have been one of the industry’s stars and she’d never be hungry for work again. Her high-profile divorce wouldn’t have hurt the kind of career she could have had. As it was, Tabitha struggled financially.

A damn shame she had missed such an opportunity. And an even bigger shame that she knew too much. There was an old-school sweetness about Tabitha that everyone admired—even her egomaniac colleagues. In this business, that was saying something.

The actors moaned and sighed over one another as they bent over the bed without really taking off anything substantial yet, their bodies just needed for close ups of skin and lips, closed eyelids and scratching fingernails. But the sexual pantomime continued for an audience of at least twenty-five, with John de Milo acting out an exaggerated version of the male star’s hip-driving thrusts in the shadows of the set well behind the director.

Tabitha ignored the guy, studiously observing the scene in front of her rather than acknowledging the actor’s dry-humping technique. Red suspected she’d flee the set as soon as the director called cut.

Then Red would be back to following her more discreetly. No more hiding in plain sight.

Because no matter that Tabitha didn’t realize she’d walked away with a key piece of information about Red during her divorce, the body double would have to be silenced.

1

KEEPING A CLOSE REIN on his dog’s leash, Warren Vitalis rounded the corner of Bank Street and Greenwich Avenue with the same wary alertness of any cop who’d been on the job for at least a decade. Around every bend lurked the possibility of danger, even for an off-duty detective out taking his mutt for a run.

“Hi, Warren.” Two middle-aged men strolling down Bank Street arm in arm greeted Warren instead of any danger.

“You guys are done early,” Warren shouted back as he sped past the partners who shared ownership of a restaurant and an antique store on the route Warren and Buster ran every night. “Is business slow?”

“Bite your tongue, Detective,” the slighter man—Scott—called back. “We just hired help to close up at night so we can turn in early. We’re not the party boys we used to be.”

Warren flashed a thumbs-up before gaining speed through a construction zone where the street was covered by a temporary wooden tunnel. Notorious places for crime, the passageways provided plenty of nooks for thieves to hide, but Buster didn’t look worried. The Akida-German shepherd mix charged into the darkness with typical speed. Warren might not be on duty tonight and he wasn’t in his own precinct, but he still considered this section of the West Village to be his beat since he lived a couple of blocks over. If he could provide a little extra safety for Scott and DeShaun, the restaurateurs, or for the handful of people who were out for a walk at 11:00 p.m., he felt a little more worthy of his badge.

Either that, or maybe riding a desk at the precinct for half his shift hours lately simply made him itchy to be back on the streets. His ballistics expertise had made for a fast career rise after a rough start, but it had also tied him to cold case files more often than he cared to remember. As rewarding as it might be to catch a perp roaming free ten years after the guy committed his crime, Warren missed the adrenaline rush that came with working cases in progress.

Slowing down at a shuffling noise between the scaffolding posts inside the construction tunnel, he spotted a homeless guy catching a few z’s on a length of cardboard. Buster circled back to stand by Warren’s legs, vigilant even when the threat level was low.

“Hey, Larry.” In his twelve years on the force, Warren had learned you couldn’t save every homeless guy on the street. That didn’t stop him from at least recognizing them, since one of the biggest threats to a vagrant’s already tenuous grip on their pride was fading from the public consciousness all together. If society refused to see these people, sooner or later they vanished.

There was a time in Warren’s life where he’d identified more than Larry would ever know.

“Larry?”

Warren started to lean down to make sure the guy was still breathing at the same time Buster’s ears straightened. A low growl started in the dog’s throat, but the warning wasn’t directed toward the drunk passed out with a bottle of Night Train still clutched in one hand. Buster’s sudden wariness was focused at the far end of the construction tunnel.

Straightening, Warren listened to the night noises outside the thin plywood walls that housed the laborers from cold winter winds whipping past. Cars rushing by, tires clunking over maintenance hole covers, and the music from a nearby bar were all the usual sounds of this block.

Until a shot fired.

Sprinting toward the echo the same time as his dog, Warren raced headlong through the tunnel, past endless scaffolding and walls that prevented a clear sight of the street. Tires squealed outside as a car took off, but by the time he emerged from the Gotham City passageway, the vehicle must have already turned up Hudson or a road farther down.

He would have followed his sense of hearing to chase a potential license plate, his pace as fast as any detective in the city thanks to numerous Ironman competitions over the years, but already he could hear a woman screaming from a building nearby.

Déjà vu.

It was the worst night of his life all over again.

LONG, FROZEN MINUTES passed before Tabitha Everhart could take a breath. In reality it had probably only been half a minute. The shriek of squealing tires had faded to the normal rush of late-night traffic outside her street-level living room window. The methodic thump of cars flying over a maintenance hole cover echoed the erratic beat of her heart in the aftermath of the shot that had pierced her window, shattering it in a vast network of cracks that radiated out from one perfectly round hole in the window.

Time seemed suspended, her gaze locked on the horrible glass spiderweb that meant her world wasn’t nearly as safe a she’d been hoping.

“Police. Open up!”

The pounding at the door rattled its way through her momentary daze, startling up full-blown panic. If the police were at her door, wouldn’t she have heard sirens? Seen a flashing light outside the broken glass?

Oh, God.

She scrambled toward her phone. Dialed. Fumbled. Dialed again.

The pounding continued. Harder. More ominous.

The man at her door broke through, half falling on the floor in a roll he leaped out of, his gun drawn.

“Has anyone been hit?” He asked the question with the weapon trained on her as his gaze spun around the room.

Words failed her. He was going to shoot her.

She clutched the phone in her hand, her body half sprawled across her coffee table in the race to dial 911.

“I—” Her throat closed. And then the strangest words came to mind despite her fear.

“Since when do the cops point guns at the victims?” Anger at long-ago police officers who’d once shown up at her door for a domestic dispute couldn’t help but influence her reaction to this man.

But oh, God, would he answer her stupid question by shooting her?

“Since we have no way of knowing who’s a victim and who’s a whacked-out killer, ma’am. Warren Vitalis, NYPD.” He dug in a back pocket and came up with a leather case that unfolded to show a badge and official-looking identification.

Some of the unreasonable anger fizzled away. Fear returned to weaken her knees.

“May I see?” She kept the phone to her ear and told herself she needed to put 911 on speed dial even though she prayed she’d never have to use it again after tonight.

Her heart still raced from the rush of adrenaline and mind-numbing fear that had robbed her of the ability to remember three simple digits. Nine. One. One.

“Look all you want.” He winged over the badge like a Frisbee while he glanced around her humble apartment and makeshift decorating before slowly lowering his gun. “You’re alone in the residence?”

She blinked and nodded quickly, a wealth of unexpected emotion suddenly clogging her throat. She ought to know by now that if you suppress your fears long enough they’ll come out to bite you in the butt even harder when you’re not looking.

Her brain still didn’t seem to be functioning as she stared at his identification labeling him as Detective Warren Vitalis of the New York Police Department, true to his word. If she’d only seen his headshot, she would think he looked like a cold, hard man despite the attractive features. He wore his hair so tightly cropped he could have been a marine, the shorn hint of dark hair making him appear dangerous.

A round diamond rested in one ear, moving him more in the category of gangster than military man. She looked up at him now to see the bright white stone wink in the muted streetlight filtering in through sheer curtains that fluttered in the wind now that a hole had been blown through the window.

He studied the broken pattern of the glass for long moments before busting out a pocketsize plastic ruler with a hinge in the middle that allowed it to fold in half. But then she watched him angle the two sides near the bullet hole and realized the tool must have been a protractor since it seemed to measure angles, too.

Deep-set green eyes looked over at her suddenly, as if he just remembered her presence.

“Feel free to call my department, Miss—?”

“Everhart.” She stood, dropping the phone back into its cradle before returning his badge. “Tabitha Everhart.”

He took the leather case from her hand, their fingers brushing briefly. The current of awareness surprised her since it was something she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. Had he felt the jolt?

Yanking her hand back, she recalled her promise to herself when she first realized she needed to leave her ex. No more men for a while—sizzle or no sizzle.

“Warren Vitalis. I’m not on duty tonight. I just happened to be walking my dog when I heard a shot. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Just startled.” She felt as though she’d been living on too much sugar and caffeine—all spun up but shaky and empty. “You said you were walking a dog?”

“Buster’s outside. He’s not a police dog so he didn’t get to come in.” The detective packed up his protractor and shifted his attention to the back of her sofa. He frowned at a dark mark in the middle of the worn fabric. A bullet hole. “Got a plastic bag or some household gloves?”

Tabitha could only stare at the bullet lodged in her couch. The bullet that had invaded her privacy, her life, her safety.

“Ms. Everhart?” His voice softened on the syllables of her name, making her eyes burn with the realization that she could be in serious danger.

“Yes.” Grateful for a job that would pry her eyes away from the tiny bit of metal that could have been deadly, she raced into the kitchen before she lost control of her emotions. Ten seconds with her head under a faucet pouring cold water on her face and she’d be okay.

Please God, let her be okay.

It wasn’t until a bit of lace around her thighs snagged on a shelf in the pantry as she leaned in for the sand-wich-sized plastic bags that she remembered she’d been wearing a silky little nightgown around her apartment tonight. In an effort to ward off a dark mood she’d tried to pamper herself and feel beautiful, to soak her toes in a foot bath and luxuriate in her best silk nightie, instead of hanging out in a ten-year-old T-shirt and flannel pajamas with her hair in a ponytail.

No wonder Detective Vitalis had quickly busied himself with crime-scene investigation instead of asking her about what happened.

She’d been giving the man a free show he’d been too polite to point out.

WARREN THANKED JESUS, Mary and Joseph for the clothes Tabitha Everhart had decided to put on while she’d been retrieving a plastic bag and he’d called for backup. At least now, he could make eye contact with the sizzling redhead for more than two seconds. The inherent male need to check her out had eased since she’d ditched a mostly transparent swatch of lace and silk for the thorough coverage of flannel pajama bottoms and a bulky fisherman’s sweater that hid a truly stellar set of curves.

If only his memory hadn’t recalled the sight of her half-naked quite so well.

Petite and delicate-boned, she’d inherited the superfair skin that often goes with red hair, the bridge of her nose dusted with light freckles. Thin, arched eyebrows outlined wide brown eyes and her high cheekbones glowed a pink shade that hadn’t been there before she left the room.

He sat across from her now on a battered wooden rocker draped with a pink silk scarf, making a few notes while she scratched Buster’s head. He’d tried to tell her that Buster was a dog he’d rescued, a candidate for doggy death row because he’d bitten his former owner, even though Warren had never seen any evidence of viciousness. The dog was protective—sure. But what cop wouldn’t appreciate a canine that didn’t let anyone get the drop on him? And Buster had always liked women best anyway, the damn player. The animal lay with his head on Tabitha’s thigh, giving Warren surreptitious looks of superiority out of one contented brown eye.

“You can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt you or even just harass you? Since the curtains aren’t completely opaque, I have to think the shooter didn’t aim to hit you. Did you realize how visible you are from the street?”

He didn’t mean to censure her for her wardrobe choices, but damn. She needed heavier curtains if she was going to wander around in a street-level apartment dressed in that outfit she’d been wearing. Residual heat flared to life all over again at the memory.

“Oh. I guess not.” Her hand stilled on the dog’s head. “And no one I know would resort to such openly brutal actions. In my business, people tend to do more damage to one another at a social level. You know, slight someone at a party or start a rumor about an enemy.”

He wondered if people like her had any idea how privileged they were to live in that kind of world, a far cry from the open cruelty Warren had witnessed his whole life.

“A patrol car will be here soon to go over the scene more thoroughly, but as long as I’m here we could get a few of the questions out of the way.” When she didn’t protest, he followed up on her last comment. “Where do you work?”

“I’m a body double.” The answering lift of her chin was slight but noticeable.

He wondered why the job was cause to be defensive.

“Is there much call for that kind of work in New York?” He pictured that as a Hollywood profession, but he could certainly see this woman fulfilling that kind of role.

And thanks for the reminder of the high, full breasts and sweetly puckered nipples that he’d glimpsed beneath her negligee. He’d be lucky to get through this interview without breaking into a sweat.

“I keep busy enough. A lot of the soap operas are shot in New York and now that they allow more skin on daytime television, the actresses are put in more compromising positions than ever before. If they don’t feel comfortable with a shower scene or a love scene, I stand in for the most brazen moments.”

“Any resentment among your peers for how much work you get or jealousy from the women you stand in for?”

She looked down at Buster and cupped his ear as she stroked his fur. Was she thinking or stalling?

“My ex-husband had affairs with a few of the women on daytime TV, but I don’t see why any of them would resent me these days. My husband and I parted ways nearly a year ago and the divorce has been final for months.”

That sounded like a recipe for disaster. And what kind of scumbag landed a wife like this woman and then turned around and sabotaged it by screwing around behind her back?

Even Buster lifted his head long enough to look incensed.

“Was the divorce contentious?” He tried to maintain an open mind about the woman. She might be hot, but for all Warren knew she could be possessive or high maintenance. Women in film had a certain reputation, after all.

“He cheated on me with multiple women, Detective. It was definitely difficult.” Her lips pursed tight. Held.

“But you don’t think he’d want to hurt you?”

“Not with violence.”

“Ms. Everhart, I’m going to be honest with you and say I think there’s a decent chance your window was pierced by stray gunfire from a dispute that didn’t involve you. But you can’t be too careful when there was only one bullet fired in a neighborhood that doesn’t see a lot of random criminal mischief.” He asked her for the names of the women her husband slept with as well as the ex himself before scribbling them down on a pilfered piece of paper from a stray notebook on her overloaded coffee table. “So let the police help you decide who might be violent and who isn’t before you withhold information about a recent divorce. Are you sure there’s no one else in your life that might want to make trouble for you?”

“No one that I’m aware of.” She clutched a bright yellow satin throw pillow to her chest, the movement jerky. Uneasy.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right alone tonight?” He hated it that this had happened on his block, the same route he jogged every night and considered his backyard. “You definitely don’t want to stay in your apartment with the window compromised and the lock broken on your door.”

He regretted the need to bust in here, but she could have been hurt…or worse.

Tonight’s incident with Tabitha hadn’t exactly mirrored the hellish night of his sixteenth birthday, but the scream and the gunshot had freaked him out for a few minutes, had him busting into her apartment like a SWAT guy. But the mental trip down memory lane never failed to bring out his inner vigilante—the need to protect that went beyond his badge.

“I’ll be fine. I’m sure the shot wasn’t meant for my window and I’ll call tomorrow to have the glass replaced.”

“But you won’t try to stay here.” He didn’t want her anywhere near the apartment until they’d had the chance to go over everything in detail.

He’d seen the shell casing embedded in the back of her couch earlier and he’d toyed with the idea of removing it but it had been lodged tightly in a hardwood interior and he didn’t want to compromise the scene without the proper tools. Besides, seeing a bullet pried out of their possessions tended to freak some people out and he hadn’t had enough time to accomplish the task while she’d been out of the room. As a longtime ballistics expert, Warren already knew the shell belonged to a .38, a weapon that wasn’t exactly the firearm of choice of today’s bigger-is-better street thugs.

“I can stay at a hotel tonight. I’ll be okay.”

Something about her tone made him think she was trying hard to convince herself more than him. But then, Warren would bet his badge this woman was an expert in talking herself through hardship. Her whole apartment spoke of hard times covered over with brightly decorated facades, optimism in the face of anguish. He had to admire that kind of grit.

“Fine. There’s just one more thing. I’ll run a few tests on the bullet just to see if anything unusual comes up, but is there any chance you know anyone who carries a .38?”

She stilled. Buster nudged his snout back under her hand to restart her attentions.

“Ms. Everhart?”

“Call me Tabitha.” She scratched the dog idly but didn’t meet Warren’s gaze. “I don’t know any sane person who would carry a gun around the streets of New York, Detective.”

That answer begged a follow-up question, but she stood abruptly and strode toward the kitchen, her bare feet falling with the smallest of sounds on the hardwood floors covered with thin throw rugs.

“Can I get you some water? You said you were out running.” She came back with a bottle for him and then hastened to the sink to fill a bowl for Buster. “You both must be thirsty.”

When she had run out of activity and stood awkwardly beside her dining room table some twelve feet away from him, Warren asked the question she so obviously didn’t want to answer. The lights of an approaching squad car reflected blue and red through the window, broadcasting the arrival of his backup.