Maggie Price - Protecting Peggy p.03

“Yes.” Rory sipped his coffee. “In college, whenever Blake talked about how you and your wife took him in for foster care, I always got the feeling he thought you walked on water.”

“Blake got a rough deal with Emmett jumping from one marriage to the next. Meredith and I happened to be there when Blake needed a stable home environment. We had the means to give him one, so we did.”

“According to Blake, you did that same thing for a lot of kids.”

Joe smiled. “Once Meredith and I got started, we didn’t want to stop.”

“Blake also mentioned that you and Mrs. Colton are paying the medical expenses for everyone who drank contaminated water.”

Joe raised a shoulder. “All those kids, the Hopechest staff are innocent victims. They deserve the best medical care available. It makes Meredith and myself feel good that we can give it to them.”

“I know Blake appreciates all you’re doing. And all you’ve done for him. I also know he’s wondering if someone purposely contaminated the water on Hopechest as an act of revenge against him.”

“Revenge?” Joe’s dark brows slid together. “What sort of revenge?”

“Emmett Fallon tried to kill you. He’s locked in San Quentin, so no one can get to him. Blake’s out in the open at Hopechest. A target, so to speak.”

“Good God.” Joe’s eyes widened in dawning dismay. “You think this whole thing is about revenge? That someone’s gone after Blake because of what Emmett did to me?”

“I think it’s possible. So does Blake.”

“Christ, that never occurred to me.”

“It’s a theory at this point. I just don’t think we should discount any scenario until we know for sure what contaminated the water and how it got there.”

“I agree.”

Rory didn’t want to mention the list of names Blake had compiled of people who would be in a position to benefit if he lost his job at Hopechest. Or those who might be inclined to seek revenge for Emmett Fallon’s attempts on the life of Prosperino’s favorite citizen.

Rory knew that a lot of Joe Colton’s friends and family were on that second list. So far, the background checks the FBI had run on those individuals had come back clear. He couldn’t find anyone who’d had chemical or biological training in the past and might know how to contaminate a water well. No former army medics. No one who had worked for a doctor, veterinarian or pharmaceutical company. No one who even looked suspicious.

Rory shifted his gaze back to Joe. “I’m telling you this because Blake is already dealing with a lot of guilt over what Emmett did to you. If it turns out someone contaminated the water on Hopechest to get back at Blake, and innocent kids have suffered because of that, he’ll take on even more guilt. I just thought you should know.”

“I appreciate that.” Joe’s mouth tightened. “I’ll talk to Blake tomorrow, make sure he understands that I don’t hold him accountable for what Emmett did.” His eyes darkened to a cobalt blue. “If it turns out someone used me as an excuse to contaminate that water, they’re going to have to deal with me. I’ll see to it personally they have hell to pay.”

“It will be a pleasure to watch.”

Joe paused, his gaze assessing. “Seems to me, you’re a lot better friend to Blake than you think you are.”

“I could have done better over the years. A lot better.”

“If you’re trying to make amends, you’ve started out on the right track.” Joe glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late. I’d better get home to Meredith. And you’re probably ready to get back to Honeywell House.”

As they climbed out of the booth, Rory thought about the hours he would spend there, lying in bed, thinking about Peggy. Wanting her.

He shook hands with Joe. “I think I’ll drive around awhile and see if I have any luck finding O’Connell. I can use the fresh air.”



After he left Ruby’s diner, Rory drove through the dark, rolling California countryside that bordered Prosperino. Five miles out of town, his cell phone rang. It was Blake, checking in to advise he had found no sign of O’Connell or of Peggy’s station wagon anywhere on Hopechest Ranch. On impulse, Rory steered his car north on the coastal highway. By then, the rain had moved out across the ocean; he rolled down his window and listened to the angry, churning surf beat against the cliffs while cool, salty air flowed around him.

The search for O’Connell was a dead end. Not a surprise. Rory knew, without his having any idea of the EPA inspector’s destination, that finding the man by chance would take a miracle.

At three o’clock in the morning, Rory pulled into the lot at the side of Honeywell House. O’Connell’s rental was the only other car there. In the distance, the greenhouse squatted in the inky shadows.

The deep-seated instinct Rory had always trusted told him that something had happened to the man. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have purposely disappeared. If O’Connell did have his own agenda concerning the water contamination, it made no sense for him to call attention to himself by keeping Peggy’s car past the agreed time. The man wasn’t stupid—he had to know that the cops would be looking for the station wagon by now. On the other hand, if O’Connell was on the up-and-up and got delayed by car trouble or something similar, he would have called and let Peggy know.

If he was able to call, that is.

Rory got out of his car and headed up the inn’s cobblestone walk. While he walked, his mind worked, step by meticulous step, to expand the theory he’d formulated over the past hours. Whatever trouble O’Connell had stumbled into, he’d gotten there in Peggy’s station wagon. That connected whatever was going on to Peggy…and Samantha. Rory didn’t feel like standing around, waiting to see if that trouble found its way to Honeywell House.

He unlocked the front door, stepped into the still, silent foyer. The same lamp that had been lit hours before glowed a weak, welcoming light. As always, the air held the inviting scents of lavender, cinnamon and vanilla. Peggy’s scent.

His gaze shifted toward the study, lit in silver light and shadows. The fire was out. Peggy no longer curled on the couch. He closed his eyes. Hours had passed since he’d held her, touched her, yet his desire for her had not lessened. With the inn huddled around him like a warm, soft blanket, he realized he felt a kind of wanting he had never before experienced.

“Get over it,” he muttered.

Just because he wanted her naked beneath him, shuddering and helpless didn’t mean that was ever going to happen. Especially now, after what he had told her about himself. He was a man with secrets, one who had allowed her to know him only on the surface, one who had no intention of staying after his job was done. He represented everything she didn’t want.

As if to rid himself of the thought, he moved his shoulders with a quick, restless jerk. It was late. He had one round of business to take care of before he went to bed.

He took the stairs up to his third-floor room, stripped off his leather jacket, tossed it on the bed, then opened his field kit. He retrieved his Polaroid camera and the small, FBI-issued Kel light.

Silently, he retraced his steps along the lighted hallway and down the staircase to the second floor. As he walked, he slung the Polaroid’s strap over his shoulder, then pulled a credit card from his billfold. The inn was old; the locks were the kind set into the doorknobs instead of more secure dead bolts. When he reached the door that displayed the brass 2, Rory slid the thin plastic card between the door and the jamb. In a matter of seconds, he was inside O’Connell’s dark room where the faint scent of lilacs hung in the air.

Kade Lummus and Peggy had already checked to make sure O’Connell’s personal property was still there. Rory knew that the cop would have conducted only a cursory search. Since he wasn’t privy to Blake’s suspicions about O’Connell, Lummus had no reason to suspect the man’s extended absence was due to anything other than his being a jerk.

Rory’s sixth sense told him different.

He swept the Kel light around the room, its beam throwing his shadow in every direction. His mouth curved when he saw that the room had the same layout as his, which made it easier to get around with only the Kel light’s narrow beam. He moved soundlessly to the window, unlocked it, then eased it up. The room looked out over the parking lot. If O’Connell—or anyone else—drove up, Rory would hear the car’s engine.

Turning, he crossed to the chest of drawers. Gas-station charge slips, cash-register receipts, a couple of paper clips and a few pennies were scattered across the top. Clamping the Kel light in his mouth like a cigar, he lined up the charge slips, aimed the Polaroid and snapped two pictures in quick succession. The camera’s flash was a sudden, blinding strobe of light in the dark room. He repeated the process with the receipts. Rory knew the locations on the receipts and charge slips would at least give him a starting point at which to backtrack O’Connell’s movements.

Rory returned the papers to their original disarray. That done, he quickly looked through the drawers, but found only clothing.

He moved to the closet, pulled open the door, patted down the shirts and jackets hanging inside, checked the pockets. Nothing. He crouched, scanned the bottom of the closet. He shook the pair of shoes sitting there, slid his fingers inside each shoe to make sure nothing was hidden inside.

He rose, closed the closet door with a soft snap, then crossed to the bed. A phone number with an area code Rory didn’t recognize had been scribbled in red ink on the pad of paper beside the telephone. He shot a photo of the number.

Leaning, he lifted one edge of the bedspread and pushed his arm between the mattress and box springs. Nothing hidden there. He straightened the spread, then walked into the bathroom. There, he poked through the shaving kit sitting beside the sink. Nothing unexpected.

Returning to the bedroom, Rory eased out a breath. Unless the phone number, receipts or gas-station charge slips led somewhere, he had just wasted his time. He moved to the window, lowered it, then secured the lock. One last sweep of the Kel light’s beam assured him he had left the room in the same condition as when he’d entered.

Back in the lighted hallway, Rory walked to the staircase, then hesitated. Instead of taking the stairs up to his room, he stashed the camera behind a potted palm and headed downstairs.

He walked through the foyer, checked the front door to make sure he had locked it behind him. From there, he strode into the study, then headed toward the rear of the inn.

The kitchen was dark. The refrigerator’s soft hum filled the air that held a vague, spicy scent. He tried the knob on the back door, found it locked and secure. Silently, he walked to the entrance of the dark hallway that led to Peggy and Samantha’s rooms, paused there.

Something inside his chest tightened and he felt a pull to both the woman and the child. To the inn. For the first time in his adult memory he didn’t know what he wanted himself. For himself.

Immediately, he quelled the feeling. Jaw set, he turned, walked away. Those thoughts were too new, too confusing to try to make sense of. Maybe after he finished the job he had come here to do, he would consider those feelings. Try to sort them out. Deal with them.

Now wasn’t the time.

Ten

“Momma, you’re sure you won’t forget to take my sleeping bag to Gracie’s while I’m at school? ’N’ my backpack, too?”

“I’m not likely to forget,” Peggy said as Samantha squirmed beside her on the couch in the sitting area just off their bedrooms. “You’ve already reminded me twenty times this morning that I need to drop off your things at Gracie’s house. Now hold still so I can finish braiding your hair.”

“Be sure ’n’ get my art kit, too. It’s in the car.”

“Yes, I know.”

If only Mr. O’Connell had brought back the car. Peggy frowned as she put the finishing touches on the neat French braid that subdued Samantha’s dark gypsy curls. She had hoped that when she got up this morning, her station wagon would be parked in the lot near the back door. It wasn’t. She had taken her passkey and checked Charlie O’Connell’s room, just to make sure he hadn’t gotten a ride back to the inn sometime during the night. He hadn’t. As much as she disliked the man, she couldn’t help but fear that something bad had happened to him. And to her station wagon.

Samantha fidgeted around to face her. “Be sure Bugs and Bugsy are still in my backpack.”

“Enough, Samantha. I promise you your things will get to Gracie’s house in time for tonight’s slumber party. Now, change the subject.”

Samantha’s lower lip poked out and she expelled a huff. “Soooorrry.” She gazed up through a fan of impossibly thick, dark lashes. “Are you mad at me, Momma?”

Peggy put a hand to her right temple where a drum was beginning to beat. Her missing station wagon wasn’t the only reason for her strained temper. With her system churning from last night’s encounter with Rory, she had gotten very little sleep. It was no wonder. First, she had thrown herself at him. He’d fended off her advances while outlining the reasons she shouldn’t want him. Then he’d shifted gears, telling her he wanted her, and had left the decision up to her of whether they would ever make love.

Heaven knew she wanted to. Just thinking about the feel of his hands on her flesh, the way his mouth fit so perfectly against hers sent heat surging into her belly. She just didn’t know if sleeping with him was the right thing to do. No matter what they shared, no matter what happened during their time together, he would leave. Walk away. She knew she couldn’t watch him go and feel nothing.

That cold realization had kept her awake most of the night. She hadn’t tossed and turned so much as lain, staring up at the ceiling. Logic told her she should pass on stepping into intimacy with him, reminded her that he wasn’t a man she could have for keeps. It was the stirring in her heart that pulled her to him.

“Momma?”

With the thin, slatted window blinds half-open, the first sunlight the region had seen in weeks flooded into the room, illuminating Samantha’s pixie face.

“No, sweetheart, I’m not mad at you.” Peggy dropped a kiss on her daughter’s pouty lips. “I just have a lot of things on my mind.” Smiling, she skimmed her knuckles against a baby-soft cheek. “One of those things is making sure you don’t miss the van to preschool.”

“But I never miss the van.”

“True.” Peggy snagged the traffic-stopping red bow that matched Samantha’s corduroy jumper off the coffee table in front of the couch. Without her station wagon, there was no way she could manage to get Samantha to preschool on time if she missed the van. “I don’t want today to be a first.” With the ease of experience, Peggy deftly secured the bow at the base of the braid.

Just then, a light rap sounded on the door that led to the hallway.

“I’ll get it!” Sliding off the couch, Samantha dashed to the door, pulled it open. She beamed a smile as sweet as the sunshine glowing outside the windows. “Mr. Rory!”

“Good morning, angel-face.” Smiling, he tweaked her nose, then shifted his killer-blue gaze to Peggy. “Morning, Ireland.”

“Good morning.” Just the sight of him tightened her throat. He was wearing a houndstooth-check shirt, khaki slacks and loafers. The neck of the shirt was unbuttoned. At the V below his throat, she saw the beginnings of dark chest hairs. She remembered the look of that hard-planed chest, the muscled shoulders. Her fingers curled against an itch to touch; the drumming in her heart matched the rhythm in her temple.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” His gaze flicked down to Samantha, then back up. “I checked the lot and wondered if you got a call during the night from anyone?”

“No, I haven’t heard a word. Nothing.”

“Mr. Rory, guess where I get to go tonight?” Samantha slipped her small hand into his and tugged him a few steps into the room. “Guess!”

He bent down, an expression of deep concentration on his face. “Hmm, let me think. To the carrot patch with Bugs and Bugsy?”

Samantha rolled her eyes. “No, to Gracie’s. It’s her birthday.” Excitement had her bouncing on her heels. “We’re gonna see a movie ’n’ eat pizza ’n’ stay up all night.”

“Wow, all night?”

“Yeah, Momma said I could. But I have to have Bugs and Bugsy in bed by eleven.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Momma’s gonna bring my sleeping bag ’n’ backpack to Gracie’s. ’N’ my art kit, too. It’s in the car.”

Rory flicked Peggy a look over Samantha’s shoulder. “Sounds like you’ll have everything you need for a night away from home.”

“Yeah. ’N’ when I have my birthday in May, I get to have a slumber party, too. Momma promised.”

“Then I guess you’ll have one.”

From outside came two short, sharp blasts of a horn.

Peggy laid Samantha’s hairbrush aside and rose off the couch. “That’s the van for preschool.”

“Bye, Mr. Rory!”

When Samantha lunged into Rory’s arms and hugged his neck, Peggy closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to be the only person dealing with disappointment when he left Prosperino.

“Bye, angel-face.”

Samantha raced down the hallway into the kitchen, Peggy following. Although Rory moved with his usual ghostlike silence, she sensed him trailing behind her. She glanced across her shoulder, saw she was right.

“Help yourself to some coffee,” she told him as she bundled Samantha into her powder-blue thermal jacket. “The mugs are by the coffeemaker.”

“Thanks.”

She ushered Samantha out the back door. “Have a good time tonight. I love you,” Peggy added as her daughter sprang down the porch steps with the easy grace of youth.

“Love you, too!”

Peggy waited until the van disappeared down the road, then walked back inside, closing the kitchen door behind her. Rory leaned one hip against the center island while he sipped from a mug of steaming coffee. He looked so at home, she thought. Like he belonged.

She shook her head. He didn’t belong, she reminded herself. Didn’t want to belong.

“Samantha is a ball of energy,” he observed. “Do you ever have trouble keeping up?”

“Sometimes it’s a challenge.” She smiled. “But never a hardship. Samantha is the best thing in my life.”

“She’s beautiful, Ireland,” he said, his voice quiet and soft. “Except for the eye color, she looks just like you.”

“Thanks.” Peggy slid her palms down the front of her black slacks. “I’m sorry I don’t have breakfast ready. This is the first time in days that you haven’t left the inn before dawn.”

“It’s my fault for not telling you I’d be here. I don’t need to go into the lab today. I have some things to check out around town this morning.” He sipped his coffee, his blue eyes tracking her over the mug’s rim as she moved to the side of the island opposite him. “Have you called Lummus yet to let him know O’Connell hasn’t made it back?”

“No, I wanted to get Samantha off first.”

“I’ll call him if you want me to.”

“Yes, please.” Her forehead creased. “I’ve been thinking about how Mr. O’Connell acted when he asked to borrow the station wagon.”

“And?”

“I saw nothing in his demeanor that made me think he wouldn’t have it back on time. I’m afraid something has happened to him. Something bad.”

“I think so, too. It’s just a feeling, but I can’t shake it.”

“How late did you stay out last night looking for him?”

“Make that this morning. I got back here around three.”

With the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows she saw the lines of fatigue at the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry you lost sleep on account of one of my other guests.”

“O’Connell wasn’t the only reason,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “I needed some fresh air, too.”

The muscles in her stomach tightened so quickly that she nearly winced. “I know.”

She didn’t need a reminder of what had happened between them last night. Or, to be more exact, what hadn’t happened. As it was, every nerve in her body was in a scrambling process that came from being in the same room with the man.

She turned to the refrigerator, its door awash with Samantha’s crayon drawings. “How does caramel apple French toast sound?” she asked over her shoulder. “With a side of bacon?”

“Like heaven.” He walked to the coffeemaker, refilled his mug. “Do you know how many men in this town rave about the desserts you bake?”

“Actually, they’re my grandmother’s desserts,” Peggy said across her shoulder as she pulled items out of the refrigerator. “Nearly all the recipes I use are Gran’s. I inherited them, along with the inn.” With her arms cradling a carton of eggs, milk, a package of bacon and the container that held her homemade caramel apple topping, Peggy used a hip to shove the door closed. “You might rave, too, if you ever let me keep my end of our bargain and make you dessert.”

“Speaking of that, I tested the inn’s water before I came down this morning. It’s still fine.”

“Good. That’s good to hear.”

“Do you have a straight-line number to the police station for Lummus?”

Peggy blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Yes.” She pulled a heavy mixing bowl from under the island. “It’s on a card in the drawer nearest the phone.”

While Rory placed the call, she put the topping on to heat and laid slices of bacon in a skillet. That done, she pulled a loaf of fresh-baked bread from the storage bin and began slicing off thick pieces. In minutes, the kitchen warmed with the scents of baking.

After ending his call, Rory slid onto one of the long-legged stools at the island. “Lummus will have dispatch broadcast your station wagon as stolen. That way, it’ll go into the nationwide computer. If a cop anywhere in the country stops the car and runs it, he’ll get a hit. You should call your insurance company and let them know what’s going on.”

“You’re right. I’ll do that as soon as I’m finished here.”

“Lummus is also upgrading O’Connell’s status to wanted-in-questioning-for-auto-theft. That way, if he gets stopped, the cops can do more than question him. They can hold him. The fact that he’s a missing person isn’t against the law.”

Peggy wrinkled her brow. “I hope he doesn’t get upgraded to anything worse.”

“Me, either. When he checked into the inn, you had O’Connell fill out a registration card, right?”

Nodding, she used a long fork to nudge the bacon strips around the skillet. “Yes. The same type of card you filled out.”

“Lummus asked me to call him back and give him the home address O’Connell listed. And the phone number for his office.”

“I’ll get the card for you.”

“You’re busy. If you’ll tell me where it is, I’ll get it.”

“In the registration desk. Top left-hand drawer.”

Instead of heading that way, Rory rested his forearms on the island and leaned in.

“Something else?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m wondering about Samantha’s things for the slumber party.”

“What about them?”

“How do you plan to get them to Gracie’s house?”

Peggy blew out a breath. “I have that all worked out. The town mechanic keeps a loaner car at his garage for when someone has to leave their car for repair and they don’t have access to another one. I’m going to call him as soon as he opens and see if I can rent the loaner.”

“You could hold off on doing that for a couple of days. Like I said, I have some places I need to go this morning, but I should be back early this afternoon. I plan to shut myself in my room and catch up on paperwork the rest of the day. While I’m doing that, you can use my rental car.”

“I appreciate that.” She paused. “I have other errands I have to run, too. And the marketing to do.”

Rory glanced at the bowl of batter in which she was whisking eggs and milk into a froth. A smile crept around his mouth. “I’m the last person who wants you to run out of food. If you can manage to get away from here for a while early in the morning, you can drive me to the airport and drop me off. That way you’ll have the car all day tomorrow, too. I can call and let you know when you need to be back at the airport to pick me up.”

“Thanks.” She moved the bacon from the skillet to a platter, then slid it into the warming drawer. “Your sharing your car with me is a lot of trouble for you.”

“O’Connell taking your station wagon has caused you trouble. I’m trying to even things out.” He slid off the stool. “I’ll get his registration card and give Lummus a call back.”

“Okay.” A lump formed in Peggy’s throat as she watched Rory walk out the door then disappear down the hallway. She could no longer deny that, in her entire life, she had never wanted a man so badly. Not even Jay.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. What, she wondered, was she going to do about Rory Sinclair?



It wasn’t a bad evening by coastal standards, Peggy thought as she stood four stories up on the inn’s narrow widow’s walk. Clouds had drifted in late that afternoon, blocking the sun, promising more rain later on. But the fog bank that had been so constant lately was nothing more than wisps as evening turned to night.

Minutes ago, the moon had started to rise, tinting the landscape in silver light. Leaning a hip against the sturdy wood rail, Peggy tucked her hands into the pockets of her trench coat and hunched her shoulders against the advancing chill.

With the inn snuggled high on the hillside, she had an unobstructed view of a section of stark, barren cliffs and, beyond them, the sea. As she watched, wave swallowed churning wave, frothing like champagne against the rugged rocks.

Her thoughts were just as restless.

All day she had continued to struggle with the question of what to do about Rory. She had mulled things over while she drove his car to drop Samantha’s things by Gracie’s house, swung by the cleaners and after that the market. Although she knew the spur-of-the-moment purchase she’d made at the upscale boutique wedged between two art galleries was her subconscious registering its vote, the logical part of her brain still had made no decision as to whether she wanted to take their relationship further.

At least she didn’t think so.

She scowled. It would probably help if she could figure out how she felt about the man. But her system was too unsettled. Too many emotions were battering inside her to allow her to see, as she wanted, the right direction to take. All she knew was that she wanted. Badly.

“Ireland?”

Jolting at the sound of Rory’s voice, she turned, thinking she would never get used to the silent way he moved. Since he had changed into a black sweater and gray slacks, she assumed he was planning on going somewhere. That, she thought, would take care of her having to make a decision about whether the rest of her evening would be spent in his company. Soaking in a hot tub while starting the paperback she’d picked up at the market would be a much safer route to take.

She slid her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Thanks for the use of your car. The keys are by the phone in the kitchen.”

“I was on my way downstairs when I noticed the door leading up here was open.” He angled his chin. “The inn is as still as a tomb tonight.”

“Things are quiet,” she agreed. “That’s to be expected. January and February are my slowest months. I don’t have any reservations on the book for another couple of weeks.” The wind gusted, picking up strands of her hair. She skimmed them back from her cheek. “Some friends who own one of the art galleries in town called and offered me the use of their house at Lake Tahoe. I think I’ll take Samantha there for a vacation after you check out.”

“That shouldn’t be much longer.” He shifted his gaze to the south where the lights of Prosperino glowed in the advancing twilight. “You’ve got quite a view.”

“Yes. Gran and I used to sit out here and count the stars. Samantha and I have carried on the family tradition.”

Rory glanced up. “Since there aren’t any stars out yet, I have to figure you’re standing here wondering what happened to O’Connell and your station wagon.”

“Among other things.”

Rory took a step forward, placed his hands on the rail. “I never used to take time to look at the scenery. Never cared about looking. Lately I’m finding myself doing a lot of that. I haven’t figured out why.”

“You miss a lot of beautiful things when you don’t bother to stand in one place and take in what’s around you.”

He turned toward her, his face nearly lost in the twilight shadows. “You’re right about that. What other things?”

She raised a brow. “What?”

“You said you’re thinking about O’Connell, among other things. What other things?”

She dragged in an uneven breath. It was now or never. “You. I was thinking about you.”

“What about me?”

“I was trying to decide if I should come downstairs and knock on the door to your room. Since you’re going out, you’ve saved me from having to make that decision.”

His eyes turned intense. “What if I wasn’t going out? What would your decision be?”

“I don’t have a clue. That’s why I’m still up here.”

“Think you’ll make up your mind anytime soon?”

“Hard to say.” She pulled her gaze from his and stared at the endless expanse of ocean. “I keep telling myself to be sensible. To remember what you said last night. That there are things about you that you can’t, won’t, tell me. That you’re leaving as soon as your job here is done. That you’re not the right man for me.”

“None of that has changed.”

“I know.” Inside her pockets, her hands clenched. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

He took a step toward her. “It should matter, Ireland. It does matter.”

“Maybe. Probably.” Shaking her head, she turned to face him. “I don’t know what to feel around you, Rory. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can handle knowing what I feel.”

The next step he took put him an inch from her. She could smell the mix of soap and spicy cologne that clung to his skin. He reached, ran his hands up the sleeves of her coat to her shoulders, then down to her elbows again. “If it helps, I don’t know what I feel around you, either.”

She gazed up, his blue eyes looking like smoke in the advancing darkness. “Then I guess we’re both confused on that point.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I don’t know how it’s possible to have been swept away so quickly. To want so desperately what I know I shouldn’t have.” As she spoke, she placed a palm against his chest, felt the heat from his body, the beat of his heart.

A wave of unspeakable need fired through her blood.

In that slash of time, the decision was made. She no longer had the will to fight whatever was growing inside of her. She didn’t want to spend her life regretting what might have been. Rory was here. In her life now. She didn’t care if she never saw him again. Didn’t want to wonder if there could be more between them if their lives were linked by more than just a physical need. She wanted the now. Him.

She reached up with her fingertips and traced the deep curve of his bottom lip while the muscles in her stomach clenched. “Last night you held me at arm’s length. If I tell you that I want you, that I want us, are you going to do the same thing tonight?”

“I wish to hell I could. I should. Problem is, I’m not strong enough to do that twice in one lifetime.” His voice had gone low and raw. “All I can manage right now is to ask if you’re sure.”

“Yes.” She rose on tiptoe, her body sliding up, pressing against his as she placed a soft kiss against the corner of his mouth. “I’m sure.”

In the next instant his arm wrapped around her waist, lashing her to him. His fingers shot into her hair, arching her head back as his mouth settled on hers. The kiss was hard, explosive, searing.

Desire flooded her veins like flame leaping along spilled gasoline.

Desperate to feel him, she shoved up his sweater, fumbled open the buttons of his shirt. Her fingers slid across the whipcord strength of his chest, the crisp mat of hair. She pulled her mouth from his, used her lips and tongue on his nipple. She felt the quick contraction of his muscles, the jump in his heartbeat.

He knotted his fingers in her hair and drew her face up. “You do that, and this isn’t going to take long at all.” His lips grazed her temple, her cheek, the curve of her jaw. “Slow down, Ireland.” When his teeth grazed her throat, her knees began to tremble. “I want slow. I want this to take all night.”

“Yes,” she breathed. Her pulse throbbed with a primitive beat. “All night.”

Just then, the floodlights set into the landscaping below switched on automatically. The face of the inn illuminated in a fan of bright light.

“Dammit, I don’t want the entire town for an audience,” Rory grated against her throat.

“Downstairs,” she urged breathlessly. One of her hands was locked on the back of his neck; the other was still beneath his sweater, inside his shirt, against his chest. “We have to go downstairs. Now.”

“We’re going.” His mouth continued to plunder her throat as he tugged her toward the door. Together, they stumbled down the short staircase, arms and legs banging against the banister, the wall, the doorjamb. When they surged into the dimly lit hallway, Rory shoved the door closed then pressed her back against it.

“Your place, or mine?” he asked while his deft fingers loosened the belt on her coat.

Lungs heaving, Peggy slid her gaze sideways. The door to his room was at the end of the hallway. Hers was down two flights of stairs, through the foyer, study and the kitchen. She wasn’t sure they could make it that far. In her hazy brain she confirmed that she had her cell phone clipped to her coat pocket in case Samantha needed her during the night.

“Your room. It’s closer. A lot.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Belt loosened, he shoved back the coat’s flaps. His eyes sparked; for an instant he went still as stone. “If I’d known sooner this was all you had on underneath this coat…”

Her pulse throbbed harder when his hungry gaze raked over the thin chemise of ivory silk. “I bought this today when I made an unscheduled stop at a boutique in town. Going there was out of my way. I wasted your gas.”

“You can borrow my car every day if you make stops like that.” He shoved the coat off her shoulders, nudged it down to her elbows while he replaced fabric with teeth. “Hell, you can have the damn car.”

“It’s a rental.”

“Yeah. Right.”

With their mouths locked together, they staggered down the hallway. Somehow, she wound up facing him, stumbling backward when the coat’s dangling belt wrapped around one of her ankles. Rory’s hands curved over her backside, lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and used her teeth on his throat.

At the door to his room, he muttered a curse when he jerked at the knob, found it locked. By the time he dug the key out of his pocket, managed to slide it into the lock and pull open the door, she had his sweater off.

He slammed the door behind them, locked it. She kicked off her slippers, fought the coat off of her arms while nipping at his bottom lip.

The room was dark, lit only by slashes of silver moonlight. With her clinging to him like a silken burr, he went down on his knees. One of his hands cupped her head as he laid her back onto the braided rug that pooled in the center of the bedroom. Shoving the chemise up to her waist, he knelt between her spread thighs, his shirt hanging open, his eyes glinting as he gazed down at her. “I was wrong.” His palms cupped her silk-covered breasts. “I want fast. This first time, I want fast.”

“Yes.” She didn’t want soft words or slow hands. Not now, not when her body ached so fiercely that she shook from it. She surged up, pushed the unbuttoned shirt down his arms, then off. Her greedy fingers went to his belt, fumbling, tugging. Seconds later, he was naked. In the moonlight, his body was beautiful, strong, with sinews that rippled and tightened as he moved.

When she reached for him again, wanting what her body so violently craved, he pushed her backward to the floor, then quickly stripped her of the thin silk. She felt a small thrill as she lay naked beneath his gaze while greed glinted in his eyes. This, then, was that dangerous man she had glimpsed the night she had looked up and found him in the foyer, watching her in silence. He knew exactly what he wanted to do to her, and all she could do was let him do it.

Leaning over her, he dipped his head, feasted on one nipple, then the other as if he were ravenous, using his teeth, his tongue, his lips. Heat saturated her, as though a furnace door had been thrown open, and the roaring blaze had enveloped her flesh.

Her hands raked along his back, her nails digging into his heated flesh. The air around them went as thick and heavy as velvet. An ache spread from deep in her center, her bones throbbing with it.

As he continued to suckle, she could hear his breath, ragged and strained against her skin.

One of his hands slid down her rib cage to her belly, along the flare of her hip, then eased lower, cupping where her flesh was hot and wet. When his fingers plunged into her, a hoarse, shuddering breath strangled in her throat.

His mouth fed at her breasts while his fingers thrust inside her with deep, grinding, glorious pleasure. She could feel every pulse beat, hundreds of them, pounding beneath her flesh. The muscles in her stomach jumped and quivered. His thumb circled the bud between her thighs, an erotic massage against her throbbing, swelling flesh.

Moaning his name, she slid her calf along his naked flank.

His fingers withdrew, entered her again, then again; the pleasure he released in her was like the rush of some wonderful drug. Sweat slicked her flesh as she felt herself going up, soaring in the fire, impaled on the wings of its heat. The climax exploded around her hard and fast. Tension drained out of her in a long shudder of ecstasy.

“Again,” he murmured. His fingers continued moving inside her, his thumb massaging her flesh, shooting her back up that slippery, heated path. The second climax ripped through her, more shattering than the first.

With no strength left in her body, her hands slid from his back. Her eyes fluttered shut while he shifted, mounted her, his weight crushing her breathlessly. She felt the sweat on his skin, his muscles tight with urgency.

“Look at me. Look at me, Ireland.”

With her remaining strength, she forced her eyes open. His face was intent, his eyes staring deep into hers as he thrust inside her, mating, possessing.

“I want to see your eyes while I take you.”

He moved inside her with increasing urgency, flooding her with a swelling pleasure that grew and spread. Her mind clouded, her vision dimmed as her hips moved like lightning, meeting him thrust for thrust, her body arching in surrender. She felt her inner muscles clench around him at the same time his arms tightened around her and his body convulsed. He buried his face against her throat and groaned her name.

Together, they slid into hot, sweet oblivion.



They made love twice more on the floor. Later Rory found the strength to carry her to his bed. Now, with moonlight slanting through the curtains, he leaned back against the headboard, watching Peggy sleep. She lay on her stomach, her head turned toward him, one arm thrown across his stomach, her hair spreading like a pool of ink against the white pillowcase. The dark fan of her lashes against her cheeks made her skin look almost translucent.

The scent of their passion hung in the cool, still air.

To please himself, he stroked a hand down her back, over the swell of her hip. She didn’t stir.

He had been drawn to other women, but never for the long haul. Certainly he had never felt such warmth and need as he did at this moment. Just for a heartbeat, he wondered what it would be like to spend the rest of his life with this one soft, sexy, beautiful woman.

His brow knit. He cared for her more than he had cared for anyone before, he accepted that. But how he felt about her didn’t change who he was, what he was. He had spent years on his own, needing no one. What had happened between them didn’t change who he was.

Who he was. He skimmed a hand over the dark pool of her hair. He felt no guilt, not with her lying beside him, not while the memory of what they had shared was so new, so potent. Somehow tonight—this one night—a cloak of sensation had settled around them, allowing him to do as he wanted without hesitation or regret.

That would all change in the morning.

He scrubbed a hand across his face, then eased out of bed. Silently, he moved to the window, used the edge of his hand to slice back one side of the curtain, and looked out toward the sea. The moon was still high, cutting a distant swath of light across the black water.

His mind spun back to the night Peggy told him about Jay Honeywell’s line-of-duty death. The determination that had settled in her eyes, her voice when she vowed to never involve herself with another cop would live forever in Rory’s memory.

And his conscience.

His fingers clenched on the curtain. Knowing how she felt, he had made an effort to stay away, to avoid what had happened between them tonight. That wasn’t an excuse—there wasn’t one. In the end, he hadn’t been strong enough to be noble, hadn’t been good enough to do the right thing. He’d been a man caught in a web of desire and, for the first time in his life, he hadn’t walked away. He had stayed, and taken what he wanted.

He would have to deal with the consequences of his actions if Peggy found out he carried a badge.

He closed his eyes. There was no if. When. Limits existed to what he could and would give to her. To anyone. But he owed her the truth about himself. She deserved that. Just as he deserved to answer for what he’d done.

In the morning, he decided. He crossed back to the bed, slid in beside her, drew the covers over their naked bodies and took her in his arms. He would tell her the truth first thing in the morning.

Eleven

With a slow stretch, Peggy woke to the soft thrum of rain against the windows. It wasn’t the panes in her own bedroom that the first watery rays of dawn crept through. Her mouth curved in sleepy contentment at the realization. The windows were on the inn’s third floor. Rory’s bedroom.

Turning her head, she gazed at the man who immediately consumed her thoughts. He lay sprawled facedown beside her, one arm draped across her waist. His head was angled toward the windows so that in the dim light she could make out the slash of one cheekbone. Against the white sheet, his face was tanned, his jaw shadowed by dark stubble.

Twin surges of contentment and desire swam through her. With a fingertip, she nudged the raven hair off his forehead. The small movement brought the awareness of an ache, dull and sweet, through her entire body, a reminder of their long night of lovemaking. Lying beside him, with the sound of his steady breathing mixed with the patter of rain, she was filled with a swirling mix of emotion.

If he was so wrong for her as he claimed, how come he felt so right? Why had her heart reached out to this man, this one man, when it had lain dormant for so long?

He was so alone, she thought. Rory had no family to speak of, no real place that he belonged. He didn’t even know the simple pleasure of coming home to his own house, his own bed and the familiar view out his own window.

He didn’t want to know.

She closed her eyes on a soft sigh. That they had such differences in their basic needs didn’t matter. Nor did the sobering knowledge that he would soon walk away. What mattered was that they enjoy the remaining time they had together.

It was then, in the quiet, still light of dawn, that she realized what she had not known until that moment. She didn’t simply want him, need him. She loved him. Not just for the searing-hot kisses that had made her half-crazed, or the electric feel of his hands on her flesh. She had fallen in love with the man beneath. With his heart, the innate kindness, the nurturing side he refused to acknowledge. The man who went out of his way to bring a child a fuzzy, pink rabbit. The man who had swept her to safety and cared for her after she’d been attacked, then served her guests a cheese plate. The man concerned enough to offer his car so her daughter’s treasured belongings would arrive at a slumber party.

Rising on one elbow, Peggy shoved her tumbled hair out of her eyes. Her feelings were so new, so sudden, so jumbled. She needed time to think. To adjust. Accept that she was in love with a man who would soon leave and might never come back.

Rory had to go, she knew. Just as she had to stay.

She had no choice but to deal with his absence, she resolved. Live with it. He had told her up-front that was the way things would be. Yet, she’d willingly stepped into the fire. She had lost one man she loved, and she had survived. She would do so again.

She had Samantha and she had the inn. Raising her daughter and operating a business kept her steady, maintained her balance. Last night had changed nothing about those aspects of her life.

Slowly, Peggy slipped from beneath Rory’s arm. He muttered a few unintelligible words, then turned his head and buried his face in the pillow.

The rain had put a chill in the air, sending goose bumps prickling over her skin. A hard, quick throbbing of her pulse accompanied the goose bumps when she spied the pile of pale ivory silk in the center of the braided rug. She could still feel Rory’s hands stripping her of the cool fabric.

Blowing out a breath, Peggy gathered up the chemise, then walked soundlessly toward the door. There, she plucked her coat off the floor and slid it on. Closing the bedroom door behind her, she padded along the dim hallway, down the three flights of stairs, then into the foyer. She paused to turn off the light she left glowing each night. That done, she headed toward the kitchen.

While she readied the coffeemaker, she glanced out the window. Any hopes she had that Charlie O’Connell might have returned overnight with her station wagon faded when she saw through the drizzling rain that Rory’s car was the only one in the lot.

She opened the refrigerator, her mind formulating a breakfast menu of ham and egg blossoms with hollandaise, accented with fresh dill. The dill she would have to gather from her greenhouse. Fine, she told herself as she closed the refrigerator door with a snap. Since the attack she had avoided the greenhouse, had halted her daily routine of checking on her plants. The delicate buds she had planted in peat pots the previous week needed water and care, or she would lose them. Kade had put extra police patrols on the inn. The drifter who had probably attacked her was no longer in the area. She had to start back working in the greenhouse and today was as good a time as any.

With her emotions in such upheaval, she needed the comfort of her routine.

She turned the oven to preheat, made sure the coffeemaker had begun spewing out its heady brew, then moved down the hallway to her living quarters. She wasn’t sure what time Rory would leave for the lab in San Francisco, but she wanted to make sure he had a good breakfast before he went. Since he’d been asleep when she left his room only moments ago, she estimated she had just enough time to take a quick shower, dress and collect the dill before she started cooking.



Rory felt an instant flare of disappointment when he strode into the empty kitchen where the rich scent of coffee filled the air. Dammit, he had wanted Peggy to be there, wanted her to gaze across the center island at him with those beautiful green eyes. Eyes that had gone dark and smoky throughout the long night when he had made her his.

On his way to the coffeemaker, he nudged up the sleeve of his sweater, checked his watch and winced. He should be airborne by now, halfway to the lab in San Francisco. He hadn’t planned on oversleeping, hadn’t planned on having a reason to have overslept.

Hadn’t known he would need time to tell Peggy that she had spent the night making love with a man who carried a badge.

He shoved a hand through his hair, still damp from his hurried shower. Pouring coffee into a mug, he tried to ignore the sweaty fist of dread that lodged in his stomach. He’d had several casual affairs that had lasted over weeks, months sometimes. Never had he given thought to what he would do, how he would feel if any of the women he’d been involved with had ended the relationship before he was ready to move on. Now that prospect had panic sneaking up to scrape at the back of his throat.

He didn’t want to leave the woman, the child, the inn. Not now. Not yet.

The sound of heavy footsteps on the back porch had him swinging around. Kade Lummus pushed open the door and stepped in, his uniform neat and trim, his dark hair damp, his expression grim.

Rory set his coffee aside. He had checked the parking lot from a window before coming downstairs, so he knew O’Connell hadn’t returned during the night with Peggy’s station wagon. “Do you have some word on O’Connell?”

“More than just some word. We found him.”

“Where is he?”

Lummus stepped to the coffeemaker, filled a mug. His gaze swept the kitchen. “Where’s Peggy?”

“I just came downstairs, so I’m not sure.” Rory glanced across his shoulder toward the dim hallway that led off the rear of the kitchen. “Back in her room, maybe.”

Lummus leaned against the counter, sipped his coffee. “O’Connell’s dead. He went over a cliff in Peggy’s station wagon.”

“Christ.” Rory had not liked the man, but he hadn’t wished him dead, either. “Where?”

“North, about twenty miles from here. The road runs along the top of a cliff and is a nightmare of twists and turns. No guardrails. A county survey crew went out there this morning and saw the station wagon. Good thing, because it’s hidden from the road. If it weren’t for that crew, there’s no telling how long it would have been until someone stumbled across the wreck.”

“Any idea what happened?”

“The only thing we have right now are skid marks from two vehicles on the road at the same point the wagon went over the cliff. There’s no way to tell how long those skid marks have been there, or if they were made at the same time.”

“What about point of impact?”

Lummus narrowed his eyes. “There isn’t one on any of the rocks or trees, so it’s not like O’Connell hit a wet spot, then skidded into something and bounced over the cliff. It looks like he just headed toward the edge and went straight over.”

“That could mean a car came from behind and pushed the station wagon off the road. A heavier car or truck with more power.”

“Could.” Rory felt Lummus’s assessing scrutiny as the cop sipped his coffee. “No way to prove that.”

“What about damage to the station wagon, other than what was caused by the plunge off the cliff? Any paint on it that doesn’t belong?”

“There’s some white paint on the right rear bumper. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I need to find out from Peggy if the paint was there before.”

Rory set his jaw. “She gets attacked in her greenhouse, then it’s possible someone purposely runs her station wagon off the road. All that within a few days. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”

“I’m a cop, Sinclair. I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Neither do I. That means someone could have thought it was Peggy behind the wheel instead of O’Connell.”

“I agree.”

Rory paced toward the back door, turned and stalked back to the center island. That so many questions remained unanswered in his mind had his hands balling into fists of frustration. “Is there anyone in town with a reason to hurt her? Anyone who might even try to kill her?”

“Not that I know of. You can be sure I’m keeping my eyes open.” Lummus raised a dark brow. “What about O’Connell?”

“What about him?”

“Do you know of a reason someone might want to force him off that cliff?”

“Nothing solid. Did you find any of his work papers in the car with him?”

“No.”

Rory muttered an oath. “The more time that’s passed without his coming up with what contaminated the water at Hopechest, the more I suspect him of holding back. And for reasons other than his being a disgruntled government worker.” Rory thought about the gas-station charge slips and cash-register receipts he had photographed in O’Connell’s room. Yesterday he’d checked all the locations on the receipts, asking questions about the EPA inspector, trying to dig up something—anything. He’d hit a dead end.

“Problem is,” Rory added, “I have no proof that O’Connell was up to anything. I haven’t exactly come up with answers about the water, either.”

Lummus sat his mug on the counter, then crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not a scientist, so I’ll leave the water issue up to you.”

“Fine.” Rory paused. “Any idea how long O’Connell’s been dead?”

“The M.E.’s aide estimated at least a day. The body’s on the way to the morgue. The M.E. says he’ll finish the autopsy by late afternoon, so we’ll know more then.”

“Has the station wagon been moved?”

“Not yet. The only way to get to the base of the cliff is by a narrow footpath. A wrecker alone can’t handle the job of getting the wagon out. We’re bringing in a crane to lift it up onto the road. It’ll be a couple of hours at least before the crane gets there.”

“I want to take a look at the scene.”

“Sorry, it’s a possible crime scene. No civilians allowed.”

“Dammit, Lummus, I’m not a civilian. I think you’ve pretty well figured that out by the questions I’m asking.”

“Maybe.” Lummus angled his chin. “Got some ID?”

As he walked across the kitchen, Rory glanced down the dim hallway that led to Peggy’s room. It was empty. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his badge case, flipped it open. “FBI special agent. I work out of the lab in D.C. That good enough to get me onto the scene?”

“I’d say so.”

“FBI?”

Rory’s heart stopped at the sound of Peggy’s voice coming from behind him. With the air clogging in his lungs, he slowly turned.

She stood in the open doorway between the wind and the warmth, dressed in an emerald sweater and slacks. Her dark hair was pulled back from her deathly pale face, her eyes wide and dark with hurt. In the crook of one arm, she cradled a cardboard box. On top of the box lay a cutting from a plant Rory couldn’t identify. She had been outside, he realized, had opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen without his hearing.

“Ireland—”

“You’re an FBI agent? A cop?”

He drew a careful breath at her cool tone. “Yes.”

“In that case, Agent Sinclair, I suppose this box should go to you.”

Rory’s gut knotted at her use of his rank. “Peggy—”

“I found it in the greenhouse, hidden behind a bag of peat moss.” She rapped a finger on the shoe box. “It has Mr. O’Connell’s name on it and glass vials inside. I can’t imagine why he hid this in my greenhouse.”

Walking stiffly to the nearest counter, she sat the box on top, then turned, the plant’s cutting clenched in one fist. “Hello, Kade. Are you here about Mr. O’Connell?”

“Yes.” Lummus’s gaze darted between her and Rory. “Peggy, you’re as pale as ice. I think you should sit—”

“I’m fine. What about Mr. O’Connell?”

“He went off a cliff in your station wagon, about twenty miles north of here. He’s dead. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, God.” Her hand went to her throat. “I’m sorry, too.”

“There’s some white paint on the wagon’s right rear bumper,” Kade continued. “Do you know if it was there when O’Connell borrowed it?”

“I don’t know.” A crease formed between her dark brows. “I didn’t notice the paint, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.”

Her eyes were cool, very cool when they flicked back to Rory. “So, that’s the scene you were insisting on going to when I walked in. Don’t let me keep you.”

An ache punched into his stomach and up toward his heart. He couldn’t leave her like this, not without explaining. Dammit, he needed to explain. He looked at Lummus. “Give us a minute. I want to talk to Peggy alone.”

The cop shifted his gaze across the kitchen. “Is that okay with you, Peggy?”

“Mr. Sinclair and I don’t have anything to talk about.”

Rory took a step toward her. “You need to understand something. I’m not leaving until you and I talk. Alone.”

“Wrong,” Lummus countered evenly. “You’ll leave when Peggy says. Otherwise, I’ll advise her to sign a trespassing complaint against you.”

Rory flashed him a feral smile. “Good try, pal, but that won’t work. I’m a paying guest. Legally, I’ve done nothing that gives my landlady the right to force me to leave.”

“You might be right.” Lummus rested a hand on the butt of his holstered automatic. “But if Peggy does sign a complaint, you and I will have to go to the courthouse and let a judge settle things.”

Without comment, Rory walked to the counter, lifted the top of the shoe box. Inside were numerous vials containing a clear liquid. Each vial bore a dated label marked “Hopechest” and the initials “CO.”

Rory turned, met Lummus’s gaze. The Prosperino cop wasn’t the only one who could play hardball. “Mrs. Honeywell has discovered evidence significant to an FBI investigation.” That was a stretch, Rory conceded. After all, he had come to Prosperino on personal time, as a favor to Blake. “My investigation is classified. That means information is on a need-to-know basis. If I think you need to know what this witness has to say, Sergeant Lummus, I’ll let you know after I take her statement. I intend to do that right now. I doubt I have to tell you what problems my agency can cause for yours if you knowingly impede a federal investigation.”

A muscle worked in Lummus’s jaw as he turned to Peggy. “If you have a problem being alone with this guy, I’ll stay here until he goes.”

She closed her eyes, opened them. “I’m sorry to involve you in this, Kade. To cause you problems.” She flicked Rory an icy look. “To have you threatened in my home. You don’t need to stay, Kade. I can handle this.”

“If you decide you need some help, I’ll be right outside.” Lummus walked to the door, pulled it open, then turned. “I’ll wait in my car, Sinclair. You can follow me to the scene. I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I’m impeding your investigation.”

“Fine.” Rory knew he had some fences to mend with the cop.

Peggy walked to the center island, laid the sprig on a cutting board, then looked at him. Despite the fists her hands were clenched in, they were shaking.

Knowing it was probably unwise to try to get closer, he moved to the opposite side of the island. “I’m sorry—”

“I’m sure you are, Agent Sinclair,” she interrupted, very cool, very calm. “It’s obvious you never intended for me to find out that you’re a cop.”

“I was planning on telling you this morning.”

“What was wrong with telling me last night?”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Look, I know I’ve made a mistake. I should have told you. I just wanted… I just didn’t.”

Her eyes sparked, shot green fire. “You had no right not to tell me. No right!”

“I know that. I know.”

Cursing himself for a fool, he turned, looked out the window at the gray drizzle. “Blake called me at the lab in D.C.,” he said quietly. “He told me about the water contamination, and said he was fed up with O’Connell’s lack of results. And suspicious of him, too. Blake had spotted O’Connell having a clandestine meeting at a hay shed on Hopechest, so Blake figured the guy was up to no good. He asked me to come to Prosperino, represent myself as a private chemist so I could test the water and watch O’Connell. Blake figured the best place I could do that was to check in where O’Connell was staying.”

“I don’t care how you wound up here.” Her voice didn’t waver, but her hands were now clenched so hard on the edge of the island that her knuckles showed white. “All I care about is that you leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere until we settle this.”

“It’s settled.”

“Like hell.” He walked around the island toward her. He couldn’t not go to her. “Nothing’s settled until you let me explain—”

“You knew. You knew how I felt about cops, but that didn’t matter.”

“It did matter. I was crazy to get my hands on you. The minute you told me how your husband died, about how you’d sworn off cops, I backed away. Dammit, I spent three days avoiding you while going slowly out of my mind.”

“I trusted you.”

“I told you everything I could,” he shot back, his hands fisting against his thighs. “I even considered telling you I was a cop, but I couldn’t take that chance.” Digging deep, he found his control again, softened his voice. Every word he spoke hurt his throat. “I had to assume that if I told you, your behavior toward me would change. I didn’t know—don’t know—what O’Connell was up to. If you suddenly started acting different toward me for no apparent reason, it might have made him suspicious. He could have started thinking you knew something about me that he needed to know. He could have hurt you trying to find out.”

“Oh, so, by lying you were protecting me.” With a sudden angry gesture she jerked off the band tying back her hair. Dark waves tumbled over her shoulders. “How noble of you.”

“Dammit, I didn’t have a choice!” Her frigid anger helped justify his own. “Has it for once crossed your mind that O’Connell might be the man who attacked you in the greenhouse?”

Surprise dulled the anger in her eyes. “Why? Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he was already inside the greenhouse that day, hiding the shoe box of water samples when you came in. No way could he come up with a believable explanation for being there, so he hid under one of the potting benches. If that’s the case, he probably panicked when he heard my car pull in—he might have thought I would come to the greenhouse, too. The fog was as thick as soup that day. He would have known if he made it to the door he could get away without my seeing him, even if I was in the parking lot. His one chance to do that was to put you out of commission for a few minutes so he could get out of there.”

“Maybe it was him.” The quiet resignation in her voice reached Rory. “That’s not the issue here. You didn’t respect me enough to tell me the truth about yourself.”

“Respect has nothing to do with it. I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t risk O’Connell coming after you. If it was him who attacked you in the greenhouse, that gives you an idea of what he was capable of. And that’s not all,” Rory continued, jerking his head in the direction of the shoe box. “You think O’Connell hid those water samples because he didn’t know what was in them? It’s my guess he knew early on what contaminated Hopechest’s water, but he had a reason to keep that to himself. If that’s the case, he could have clued in Jason Colton, given the doc facts about what those pregnant teens from Hopechest consumed. Instead, those girls are still terrified over what might happen to their babies. If I’m right, O’Connell purposely let everyone in this town suffer because he had some sort of personal agenda. You think he’d have had any qualms where you’re concerned?”

“Like you?” she countered. “You knew the truth about how I felt, but you had your own personal agenda where I’m concerned.”

“Stop twisting this around,” he said through his teeth. “I did what I thought was right.”

“Deceiving me was right for you.” Her bottom lip trembled. “Jay worked undercover. Do you know what he told me the unwritten cop rule is about undercover work?”

With an oath, Rory grabbed her arms. “I don’t—”

“He said you lie. And you use. And you take advantage of anything that’s offered. Well, I offered you plenty, but I won’t be doing that anymore.”

“What happened between us isn’t like that.” He gave her a light shake. For the first time in years, he felt alone on the inside. Hollow. “I care about you. I feel more for you than I have for anyone else. Anyone. Last night was about a lot more than just sex, and you know it.”

She jerked out of his hold, took a step back. Then another. “Do you honestly believe there would have been a last night if I had known you were a cop? Do you?”

“No.” She was slipping away from him. He was standing only a few feet from her, watching the distance grow by leaps and bounds. “No.”

“I didn’t just give you my body, Rory. I gave you everything. Everything,” she repeated with stinging emphasis. “This morning, it dawned on me…”

“What?” he prompted quietly when her voice hitched. “What dawned on you?”

“That I’m a fool.” Her eyes remained dry, but hurt welled in them. “Now that you’ve lied and used and taken advantage of everything that was offered you, I want you to go. Maybe Blake can put you up at Hopechest—I really don’t care. All I care about is that you get out of my life and my home.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Ireland—”

“Now!”



Upstairs, Rory threw his clothes into his leather duffel that sat open on the bed, still rumpled from the hours he had spent with Peggy. Packing was a skill he knew well; he could do it on automatic pilot.

He’d been rejected before, he reminded himself as he grabbed his socks out of the bureau and lobbed them into the bag. His father had sent him away, time and again. After a while, it had no longer hurt. After a while, he had stopped begging to stay where he wasn’t wanted. He wouldn’t beg now. He’d be damned if he begged.

Even if the events of the morning hadn’t taken place, he would have walked away soon. Left for the lab in D.C., or wherever the hell the twists and turns of his job sent him next. No ties, no regrets.

No looking back.

The zipper rasped harshly as he closed the duffel while anger and guilt welled inside him. Placing his unsteady hands on the bed’s brass footboard, he tried to stop the pain that stabbed in his gut. He had the sick feeling he had just been shut out of the best thing that had ever happened in his life.

“No.” His jaw hardened with the word. He didn’t want to stay. Wasn’t the kind of man who stayed. He would leave the inn and its landlady, just as he had left dozens of other spots, hundreds of other people.

Hoisting his bag and evidence kit, he turned and stalked out of the room without a look back.



Forty-five minutes later, Rory followed Lummus’s black-and-white patrol car around a steep curve, and saw flashing red and blue lights. Cars and vans loomed up ahead, solemnly gathered at the scene of Charlie O’Connell’s death.

Rory counted over a dozen vehicles parked along the side of the narrow road that Lummus had accurately described as a nightmare of twists and turns. Towering redwoods crowded one side; the other was lined by a steep face of rough rock that plunged toward the ocean.

The scene looked no different from the hundreds of others Rory had worked. Cops, both uniformed and plain-clothed went about their duties. Just past the spot where Lummus parked, a jump-suited tech used a measuring wheel with a telescoping handle to take the dimensions of a set of skid marks that veered toward the cliff. Another tech crouched over a second set of marks, snapping photographs. Rory knew that, despite the skid marks left by the station wagon, it might be impossible to determine which direction the vehicle had been headed seconds before it plunged toward the sea.

He eased his car in behind Lummus’s, then climbed out. He took a minute to pull on his leather jacket against the cool bite of wind that carried the salty tang of the sea. During the drive, the rain had stopped, leaving the sky a bitter blue. Matched his mood, he decided as he retrieved his evidence kit out of the trunk, then strode toward a grim-faced Lummus. Bitter or not, Rory knew he needed to clear the air between himself and the cop so they could do their jobs.

“Look, I apologize for forcing the issue of agency cooperation with you at the inn.” As he spoke, Rory sat the kit on the blacktop, pulled out his badge case, flipped it open and anchored it into his jacket pocket. “Nothing personal.”

Lummus’s brown eyes were flat and cool. “It’s pretty obvious what’s going on between you and Peggy.”

“That’s our business.”

“I agree. You just need to know that after I’m done here, I’m heading back to Honeywell House. I plan to tell Peggy to give me a call if you show up and she doesn’t want you there. That happens, I won’t give a damn about agency cooperation. Whatever goes on between you and me will be personal.”

“I’m not going back to Honeywell House.” Rory forced away the urge to slam his fist into the nearest redwood. He had to compartmentalize his roiling emotions, focus on the job. “After I’m done here, I’m flying those water samples O’Connell had stashed in the greenhouse to the FBI’s lab in San Francisco. I want to know what the hell he was up to.”

“That’s something we agree on.” Lummus gestured toward the narrow footpath that led down to the base of the cliff. “After you, Agent Sinclair.”

Rory identified himself and gave the name of his agency to the uniformed officer compiling the crime scene log. That done, he and Lummus started down the zigzagging path.

As they edged their way along the sloping cliff, Rory became aware of the heartbeat of the sea. It hit him then how much he would miss driving daily along the coast road to the airport, listening to the thunderous crash of water slapping against rock. His jaw tightened. He would miss a hell of a lot more than just the ocean.

“There it is,” Lummus said as he cleared the path’s final zigzag.

The black station wagon lay on its side on the small spit of sand, looking like a beached whale. Its front was caved in, the hood crumpled. Rory theorized the wagon had smashed into the beach front-end first, then rolled. He glanced up. He could see only the cliff’s jagged face, then the brooding sky. Lummus had been right—if the survey crew hadn’t come along, it might have been a while before the wreck was discovered.

Rory noted the lab tech snapping photos of the wagon. He turned, looked at Lummus who had just stepped off the path onto the wet sand. “Are your lab people going to wait to go over the wagon until you get it to your impound lot?”

“That’s the plan. One of the techs sealed it after they got O’Connell’s body out. The lab guys can do a better job of dusting for prints and vacuuming in their evidence bay.”

Rory nodded as they walked. “I’ll call you from San Francisco to get an update on what they find. Right now I’m interested in the white paint on the rear bumper.” His thoughts went to the white car that Blake had spied parked beside O’Connell’s at the hay shed. “A couple of times, I pulled into the inn’s lot and parked behind the station wagon,” he continued. “I don’t remember seeing white paint on its bumper. I could be wrong—it might have been there. But I don’t think so.”

Lummus slid him a sideways look. “My guess is, if you didn’t notice it, it wasn’t there.”

Rory settled his evidence kit on one of the craggy rocks that humped out of the sand like an arthritic knuckle. He retrieved his Polaroid and walked to the rear of the station wagon. The wisps of white paint were minimal. Still, he knew they were enough for the lab’s sophisticated instruments to establish the exact color, year and make of the vehicle that had left them.

After snapping several photos, he turned to Lummus. “There’s not enough paint for me to take samples here. What lab does your department submit its forensic evidence to?”

“The state’s crime lab in Sacramento. We usually have to wait a hell of a long time for results.”

“Not this time. After your lab techs get the wagon into impound, have them remove the entire bumper and submit it to me.”

Lummus gave him a long look. “Submit it where? The FBI lab in San Francisco or in D.C.?”

Rory needed to stay on the west coast. It had nothing to do with the fact that Prosperino had come to mean something to him. Had nothing to do with his feelings for Peggy. He needed to believe that. He had a job to do, had promised Blake answers. That was all.

“San Francisco,” he answered. “I’ll be there until I get an ID on the contaminant in Hopechest’s water.” He glanced back at the wagon. “Make sure your lab people pull one of the headlights.”

Lummus raised a brow. “Why?”

“In older cars like this where the headlights don’t come on automatically and stay on all the time, checking the condition of a headlight can help establish time of an accident.”

“That’s a new one on me.”

“If the filament is stretched and broken, that means the headlights were on. If it’s in a tight coil, the lights were off. It’s a good bet no one would try to drive this road at night without light. You said the M.E.’s aide estimates O’Connell has been dead at least a day.”

“That’s right.”

“If the wagon’s lights were on at the time of impact, that probably means O’Connell died a couple of hours after he left the inn.”

Turning, Rory walked toward the front of the station wagon, peered through the shattered windshield. A foam cup, map and a small, thin box with “Art Kit” scrawled across its side had been tossed against the dash. Samantha’s art kit. He thought of the possibility of Peggy and Samantha having been in the wagon when it plunged off the cliff. Just the thought shattered his heart.

Fists clenched, he rose, walked back to Lummus. “Peggy shouldn’t be alone, not until we know for sure who attacked her. Not until I can prove that her station wagon isn’t here because someone thought she was behind the wheel.”

“You don’t need to worry about Peggy,” Lummus said. “I’ll take care of her.”

“Yeah.” Rory’s stomach twisted at the thought. “I figured you’d say that.”

Twelve

Two days later Rory carried a cup of steaming, bottom-of-the-pot coffee and two computer printouts to his borrowed desk in the FBI’s San Francisco headquarters. The desk was squeezed into an office that was a little more than an alcove between the trace and drug analysis labs. The alcove was windowless, dimly lit and reeked of the cigarette smoke left by a former occupant. The desk was government-issue decrepit, with flaking gray paint and handles missing from two of its drawers.

Rory didn’t care about the size, brightness or scent of the office, the condition of the desk, or that he had forgotten to eat the plastic-wrapped sandwich and bag of chips he’d bought five hours ago from a vending machine. His total concentration was centered on the printouts he had just retrieved from the lab’s gas chromatograph, a supermachine that overheats a substance to vapor and then computer-analyzes the gasses to determine chemical composition.

Over the past two days he had introduced separate samples into the chromatograph from each of the vials found in the shoe box Charlie O’Connell had hidden in the greenhouse. Each sample had flowed through various columns and chambers, undergoing a finite series of separation processes, molecular weighing, filtering and amplification. The final detection stage sent information to the chromatograph’s computer, which acted as a clearing house that recorded all data produced, and converted electrical impulses into both visual displays and hard copies.

The computer also contained a library of several thousand compounds, which enabled searches that assisted in the identification of unknown compounds.

One of the printouts Rory had settled on the desk in front of him was the final hard copy analysis on all of O’Connell’s samples. The second printout showed the results of the computer’s comparison of that final analysis to its library of known-compounds.

The second printout drew Rory’s immediate attention. He read slowly through the pages showing numerous graphs of compounds that had characteristics similar to the contaminate in Hopechest Ranch’s water. When he flipped to the last page, his heart picked up speed. The analysis had come up with an exact match.

After a moment he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his gritty eyes. He now knew the identity of the substance that had contaminated the water on Hopechest Ranch. Knew, too, that the EPA inspector had to have known what it was within days of his arrival in Prosperino.

“Bastard,” Rory said through his gritted teeth. He checked his watch, saw it was just after noon. He snatched up the phone, hoping to catch Blake before he left his office for lunch.

After six rings someone picked up on the other end. Rory winced when he heard a hard clatter, then a muffled curse.

“Yeah, what?” Blake’s voice came across the line, thick and slurred with sleep. “Hello?”

“What the hell you doing, Fallon?” Rory asked as he reached for his coffee. “Sleeping on the job?”

“Sinclair?”

“Right the first time.” Rory took a sip of coffee, then grimaced. If he fed the thick brew through the chromatograph he would probably get a hit in the nuclear range.

“This is important, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be rousting me out of bed at midnight.”

“Midnight?” Rory narrowed his eyes. “Hell, I thought it was noon.”

“How long since you’ve gotten out of that lab?”

“I haven’t left since I got here two days ago. When I need sleep, I bunk on a couch in a vacant office.” Rory glanced around at the small, dim alcove. “It doesn’t have a window, either.”

“Trust me, it’s dark out. My office phone is programmed to ring here after hours.”

“I’ll take your word for things.” As he spoke, Rory raked a palm over his jaw. He had grabbed a couple of quick showers while he’d worked at the lab, but hadn’t wanted to waste the time it took to shave. Now the stubble on his face felt like sandpaper.

“I hired you to figure out what’s in the water,” Blake said, his voice clearing of sleep. “Killing yourself while you’re doing that isn’t part of the deal.”

“The deal’s about to close. I’ve got you an answer.”

Blake remained still for a moment, then said, “You found out what the contaminant is?”

“Yes, by using the samples from the box O’Connell stashed. I got an ID about two minutes ago. I haven’t had time yet to research the stuff—that’ll take me a couple of hours—so I can’t answer a lot of questions about it yet.”

“What is it, Rory? What the hell is it in Hopechest’s water?”

“It’s an organic compound. The chemical fingerprint shows it’s made up of dimethyl-butyl ether, DMBE for short.”

“English, Sinclair.”

“Sorry.” Rory switched his thoughts out of scientific mode. “DMBE’s some sort of gasoline additive. This stuff is new, distinctive. Most of the time when we get a hit on something like this, the computer will give us the name of the company that manufactures it. That didn’t happen with DMBE.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Could be DMBE is still in the testing phases. Maybe more than one company is involved with the stuff. I do know that the petroleum industry is as secretive about their patents as people are about their affairs. If you aren’t forced to let out information, you don’t.”

“Joe Colton owns an oil company,” Blake said. “He can probably contact some of his connections and get the ball rolling on finding out what company is behind DMBE.”

“If he can, that’ll save a hell of a lot of time.” Rory paused. “As soon as I wind up things here, I’ll fly to Prosperino. Why don’t you set up a meeting for this afternoon with Colton and the mayor? Hopefully, I’ll know more by then. After that, Longstreet can inform his city council and whoever else he needs to.”

“I’ll get the meeting set.”

“It’ll save time if you go ahead and tell Colton and Longstreet that I’m with the FBI. Give them a rundown on your suspicions about O’Connell and why I posed as a private chemist.”

“Will do.” Blake let out a breath. “You said you got the ID from running the samples O’Connell hid in Peggy’s greenhouse?”

“That’s right. The samples of water I took two weeks later are what’s known as ‘weathered.’ Over time, the DMBE dissipated so those later samples contain only a finite amount compared to what O’Connell took. I would have gotten the same results on my samples, but my guess is it would have taken a couple more days.”

“That means O’Connell must have known about the DMBE weeks ago.”

“I’d say so.” Suddenly weary, Rory rubbed his fingers between his brows. Two nights with a total of five hours’ sleep had left him feeling punchy with fatigue. “While I’ve been here, I’ve found out a few more things about the esteemed EPA inspector.”

“Anything to make you think that, if the station wagon was forced off the cliff, O’Connell was the intended victim, and not Peggy?”

At the mention of her name, Rory felt his chest tighten. Since she had tossed him out of the inn, he had rigidly controlled his thoughts, kept his mind on business. He had not wanted to deal with the pain that he knew would come if he allowed Peggy to creep into his head.

That she did now had Rory tightening his fingers on the phone. “Yeah, I think O’Connell was the target. I’ll give you all the details when I get to Prosperino.”

“You still think he’s the one who attacked Peggy?”

“Yes. He’s the only one who could have hidden those samples in the greenhouse. He was probably checking on them when she came in. Putting her out of commission was the only way he could get out without her seeing him.”

“Sounds like we’ll have a lot to talk about.”

“You’re right about that.” Rory glanced again at his watch. “I’ve got to get some sleep before I climb into Longstreet’s plane. After that, I’ll do some research on DMBE. I’ll call you before I leave here so you can let me know where and when we’re going to meet.”

“Okay. Rory, thanks. I know we have a lot more answers to dig up, like how DMBE got into the ranch’s water, but this is a start. I appreciate you losing sleep over this.”

Rory smiled. “Yeah, well, Fallon, wait until you get my bill.”

Blake chuckled. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

Rory replaced the receiver, rose and strode down the dim hallway and into the small office where a couch lined one wall. Before, he’d been so engrossed in his work that he hadn’t noticed the dark offices, the lack of noise and activity around him. Now he was conscious of the building’s eerie stillness.

When he closed the door of the office, a lonely quality permeated the darkness around him. Slowly, he made his way past the desk, sidestepping the two visitors’ chairs, finally reaching the upholstered couch against the far wall. He slid off his shoes and stretched out on the soft cushions. With the contaminant identified, the tight leash on which he’d kept his mind slipped away.

Free to wander, his thoughts went straight to Peggy.

He pictured again the anger that had sparked in her green eyes, the betrayal that had welled there.

Rory closed his eyes. He hadn’t known how much it would hurt to have her look at him with such pain and fury.

Again, he tasted the panic that had raced through him at the finality in her voice when she’d told him to leave Honeywell House and never come back. Those words should mean little to someone like him. A wanderer. A nomad. A man who had never had a real home. Had never wanted one.

Slowly, he sat up, put his feet on the floor and rested his elbows on his knees. He had never wanted a home, yet Peggy had provided him one. In a few short days she had given him back what had been taken away from him after his mother died. He thought of how many hotels he had slept in alone, of all the people he had walked away from. First, he added grimly. He had shunned emotional entanglements, made sure he was always the one who walked away first. Leaving had always worked because no one had held on to him before. Held on to his heart.

Until now.

Sitting there in the cool, still darkness, Rory felt the truth drop on him like a stone. For the first time in his adult life, his future stretched before him, a barren gray plain. He could travel to hell and back, and never find what he needed. He had already found it, about three hundred miles to the north. In a cozy, charming inn nestled on a hillside in Prosperino, California.

On a low groan, he buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t avoid it any longer, he thought. He couldn’t keep denying that he had fallen in love with Peggy. It had probably happened the moment he’d stood in the inn’s foyer, watching her green eyes shoot fire while she threatened to toss the lech O’Connell out the door.

Rory scrubbed his hands over his face. Okay, so he was in love with Peggy Honeywell. Not only her, he amended when his heart clenched, but her elfin-faced daughter with dark gypsy curls. He loved them both. Wanted them. Problem was, he’d gotten himself tossed out of their lives, which was the one place—the only place—he wanted to be.

Well, Peggy could just forget it, because he wasn’t going anywhere. And he wouldn’t—by God, he wouldn’t—let her walk away from him.

Muttering an oath, he switched on the lamp on the table beside the couch, rose and stalked to the desk. He jerked up the phone, stabbed in the inn’s number. After a few rings, the answering machine picked up.

“This is Peggy Honeywell at Honeywell House.” The smooth, silky drift of her voice had Rory fisting his frustrated hand at his side. “We’re taking a break for a couple of weeks, but are accepting reservations for the middle of February and beyond. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you.”

When the beep sounded, Rory hung up, scowling at the phone. A couple of weeks? He would be stark-raving crazy in a couple of weeks if he had to go that long without seeing her.

He was a man who had some serious crawling to do, and he didn’t feel like waiting. His mouth settled in a firm line. He didn’t have to wait, not since he knew where she’d gone. She had mentioned closing the inn when he left and taking Samantha to Tahoe where friends had offered the use of their lake house.

Tahoe, he thought.



Late that afternoon Rory sat on the green leather sofa in Blake’s office on Hopechest Ranch. Blake sat at the opposite end of the couch. Joe Colton and Mayor Michael Longstreet had each settled into one of the wing chairs that faced the couch across the span of the small coffee table. Blake’s secretary, Holly Lamb, had brought in the tray of coffee that sat on the table.

The mayor leaned forward, his face grim. “So, Rory, you’re saying there’s no way the DMBE could have gotten into Hopechest’s water supply naturally?”

“Not in the way you’re asking. It’s man-made, a gasoline additive, so it didn’t fall from the sky when it rained or anything like that. As for whether the DMBE is in the water due to an act of sabotage, I can’t answer that until we know if there are underground petroleum pipelines near the aquifer that supplies water to Hopechest. If there are, it’s possible the DMBE could have leaked from one of those pipelines.”

“There are no pipelines.”

Rory met Joe Colton’s gaze across the table and decided he had never seen anger so cold, so controlled. “You’re sure?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” Joe’s hands clenched on his thighs. “The minute we knew there was a problem with the water, I had a couple of people from my oil company start researching records. There aren’t any underground oil or gas pipelines on Hopechest property. That means someone dumped the DMBE intentionally.”

“Now we have to find out who.” Rory shifted his gaze to Blake. “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll notify the Bureau and the EPA. They should have teams here by morning to start investigating.”

Blake’s mouth tightened. “Hopechest is under attack, and it could be because of me. Because my dad tried to kill you, Joe. I’m turning in my letter of resignation to the Hopechest Foundation before the close of business today.”

“Absolutely not.” Joe surged out of the chair. The man might be sixty-one, Rory thought, but he was still a formidable figure with that whipcord build and linebacker shoulders. “You and I have talked about this, Blake. What Emmett did isn’t your fault. If some misguided moron dumped the DMBE into the ranch’s water to get back at you for that, we’ll deal with him when we find him. For whatever reason Hopechest Ranch is suffering, it needs you at its helm. You hear me, Blake?”

“I hear you, Joe. I’m just not sure you’re right.”

Joe’s mouth curved. “Well, son, you can have Holly go to all the trouble of typing your letter of resignation and submitting it to the foundation. The problem with that is Meredith and I sit on the foundation’s board of directors. My nephew, Jackson, is the foundation’s legal advisor. I imagine he’ll find some flaw in your letter so he’ll have to recommend to the board that we reject your resignation.”

Rory slid Blake a sideways glance. “Looks like you’re staying.”

“Yeah.”

Settling his hands on the back of the chair he had vacated, Joe met Rory’s gaze. “Let’s get back to O’Connell. You said he should have identified the DMBE a few days after he took the first water samples.”

“That’s right. The samples I found in Peggy Honeywell’s greenhouse are dated the day O’Connell arrived in Prosperino. Because the DMBE is so concentrated in those samples, it took me only two days to ID it.”

“So, he had a reason to keep that information to himself.”

“Yes. While I waited for the results on the samples, I ran a background check on O’Connell. When he arrived in Prosperino, he was in debt up to his eyeballs. Last week he paid off half the money he owed. He’s divorced, has no kids, no immediate family. I can’t find any record of a sudden inheritance or anything like that to explain where the money came from.” Rory raised a shoulder. “It’s possible he took a trip to Vegas and won big there. My instincts tell me that’s not what happened.”

His dark eyes intent, Michael crossed his arms over his chest. “So, at least on the surface, it appears O’Connell somehow figured out who dumped the DMBE in the water. He confronted that person and told them to pay up or else.”

“Yes. I found out O’Connell made a call to the state water commission.” Rory didn’t add he discovered that by running a check on the phone number he found during his search of O’Connell’s room at Honeywell House. “A clerk at the commission said O’Connell asked if there was a schematic of one of the water aquifers near Hopechest. The aquifer was mapped twelve years ago, so the schematic is no longer reprinted, though it’s available in the archives. O’Connell showed up there the next day and took a look at that schematic.”

Joe rubbed his chin. “Which maybe led him to whoever dumped the DMBE.”

“Possibly,” Rory agreed. “Because of O’Connell’s unexplained windfall, it looks like that person paid part of the money O’Connell demanded. I say that because it doesn’t make sense for him to ask for only half of what it would take to cover his debts. My guess is, he demanded a hell of a lot more and agreed to take the blackmail payments in installments. The meeting he mentioned to Peggy when he borrowed her station wagon was probably to collect more money from the blackmailer. Whoever he or she is made sure O’Connell wasn’t going to be around to talk, or to collect more.”

“If your theory pans out, that makes the dumper a murderer,” Michael said quietly.

“If I’m right about all of this, it does.”

The mayor narrowed his eyes. “You’ve already told us that a group of ten petroleum companies originally banded together to test DMBE. That means workers in ten different companies have access to DMBE. It’s going to take the feds time to look at the records of all those companies, run backgrounds on all of their employees, then check them all out.”

“True,” Rory agreed. “And since we can’t come up with a solid motive for why that person dumped the DMBE in the first place, no one can automatically be eliminated from the suspect list.”

Michael rose, hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out how to tell the city council and the rest of the town that the dumping was a criminal act. As long as the possibility existed that the contaminant got into the water through an act of nature, people were willing to stand back and wait for results. When they find out we know for sure someone dumped the contaminant—and could hit Prosperino’s water supply next—I might have a full-scale panic on my hands.”

Joe laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”

Michael gave the older man a wry look. “Have the citizens of Prosperino burned a mayor in effigy anytime in your memory, Joe?”

“No comment.”

Shrugging, Michael leaned across the table, offered Rory his hand. “I appreciate the advance notice on this.”

Rory rose, returned the mayor’s handshake. “And I appreciate the use of your Bonanza.” Rory dug into the pocket of his slacks, retrieved the plane’s key and handed it to Michael. “You saved me a lot of time and a lot of driving.”

“Glad to have been of help. I’m going back to city hall. I need to phone and advise each of the council members of your findings. I’m scheduling an emergency council meeting for tonight. Can you be there to answer whatever questions come up?”

Rory felt a slash of guilt, quelled it. “Sorry, I’m leaving right after I make those calls to the Bureau and the EPA.” He caught Blake’s knowing look before turning back to Michael. “The three of you know as much about this as I do so far. The fact sheets the EPA sent me cover the short-and long-term effects of DMBE consumption. That’s probably going to cover most of the questions you’ll get tonight.”

Michael angled his head. “What about the pregnant girls?”

Blake rose, stepped around the coffee table. “Just before you got here, I sent Suzanne Jorgenson over to the hospital to outline everything to Doc Colton. You should have seen her face light up when she read on the fact sheet that it takes years of continued exposure to DMBE to cause birth defects.”

“Sorry I missed seeing her,” Michael murmured, disappointment flashing in his eyes. “She’s worried herself sick over the pregnant teens.”

Joe offered Rory his hand and a smile. “Glad to have made your acquaintance, Agent Sinclair. Hope you’ll make it back to Prosperino someday.”

“I’m counting on being back soon.” If he could convince Peggy to open her heart to him. He had to convince her.

When Joe and Michael strode out the door, Rory headed for Blake’s neat-as-a-pin desk. After placing calls to the FBI and EPA to advise both agencies of his findings, he turned to Blake. “Did you find out where the house is at Tahoe?”

“Yes.” Blake pulled a piece of folded paper out of his shirt pocket. “The house belongs to Colt and Thea Newman—they own the art gallery just to the west of the movie theater. Peggy caters receptions at their gallery sometimes. Every year they offer Peggy and Samantha the use of their lake house, but Peggy hasn’t taken them up on it before. Thea said Peggy called two days ago and asked if their offer was still open.”

The day he left. Rory fisted his hands, flexed them. “Do you know what she’s driving?”

“No. When I talked to Colt, he mentioned Peggy had rented a car, but he didn’t say what kind. He also said the house is out of the way and hard to find.” As he spoke, Blake handed the paper to Rory. “Don’t lose this.”

“You can bet I won’t.” Rory pulled his leather jacket off one of the visitors’ chairs, shrugged it on, then slid the paper into his inside pocket.

Blake angled his chin. “Since you’re heading to Tahoe, I guess whatever’s between you and Peggy is serious.”

“As far as she’s concerned, there’s nothing between us. I’m hoping to change her mind.” He would beg, promise, fight, do whatever it took to put her back into his life.

Turning, Rory strode toward the door, then paused. “Wish me luck,” he said over his shoulder.

Blake grinned. “You’ve got it, pal.”

Thirteen

Peggy closed the door on the small, cozy bedroom Samantha had claimed on the lake house’s second floor. It had taken at least thirty minutes to steer her daughter’s questions away from the topic of “Mr. Rory” and on to the storybook adventures of Barbie.

Pressing her palm against the tightness that had settled around her heart, Peggy walked soundlessly down the staircase into the large living room that was topped by a loft and skylights. The only light in the room came from the flickering flames in the fieldstone fireplace that dominated one wall. Opposite the fireplace was a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out on Lake Tahoe. Tonight the moon was full, its silver light shimmering like a fall of diamonds across the dark water.

A coldness more gray than the dawn seeped into her body, into her very bones, and she heard herself make an anguished little sound. Moving to the fireplace where wood crackled and sparked, she lowered onto the hearth and waited for the fire’s heat to sneak through the heavy knit of her sweater.

Over the past two days her anger had died away to misery. Gut-wrenching misery. Here, now, she could admit that what Rory had done had been for her own good. He hadn’t kept the fact he was a cop to himself in order to get her into bed. He had remained quiet to protect her from whatever threat Charlie O’Connell presented.

Her thoughts scrolled back to the morning the EPA inspector tripped over Bugs and tumbled down the inn’s staircase. The man had stood tight-lipped at the bottom of the stairs, as she’d knelt to comfort a sobbing Samantha. In retrospect, Peggy realized that, for an instant, O’Connell’s expression had been almost frightening in its coldness.

Even then, Rory had stepped between them, a protector. If O’Connell was the man who attacked her, Peggy knew without doubt he was capable of much more than cold, killing glares. Rory had sensed that, too.

Rising from the hearth, Peggy skirted around the sofa and armchairs scattered near the fireplace. She roamed past the wall of built-in bookcases, stopping when she reached the expansive window. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she stared unseeingly out at the dark lake.

Would she have acted the same way toward Rory—pursued him—if she had known he wore a badge, just as Jay had? Would she have been strong enough to turn away from that compelling, intense face and those killer-blue eyes that held a hint of danger? Could she have truly resisted the desire that had clawed at her since the first moment she had laid eyes on him?

It didn’t matter, she told herself. She hadn’t resisted. Sure hadn’t been forced. She’d gone after what she wanted, taken it. Now she had to deal with the consequences of her actions.

Which was the real reason she’d closed the inn and brought Samantha to Tahoe. Here, away from the place where memories of Rory assaulted her at every turn, she would heal. Get her balance back.

And get over the infatuation she’d mistaken for love. She didn’t love Rory Sinclair, she told herself, stiffening her shoulders. Wouldn’t let herself love a man who had probably already wiped all images of her from his mind. A man who excelled at leaving.

She, too, was determined to set her sights on the future, not the past.

A sudden, sharp knock on the front door shot her heart into her throat. Only a few people knew she and Samantha were staying at the cabin. Peggy was expecting none of them.

Veering toward the fireplace, she grabbed the brass poker from its holder. Clenching its thick handle, she willed her legs to stop shaking as she edged cautiously toward the door.

When she peered out the window and saw Rory standing in the pool of the porch light, her already unsteady legs almost gave out. He was wearing his leather bomber jacket over an ice-blue sweater and dark slacks. His dark hair was mussed; his face stubbled by several days growth of beard.

He looked exhausted and grim-faced.

Slowly, she pulled the door open. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said without expression.

“I know.” His gaze flicked to her hand. “Garden shears, fireplace poker. You always choose interesting weapons, Ireland.”

“How…did you find me?”

His mouth lifted at the corners. “I don’t think I need to remind you that I’m a cop.”

“No.” Her throat felt rusty; she braced a hand on the door for balance. “I came here to spend time with my daughter. I don’t want you here.”

“Too bad.” In one smooth move he pulled the poker from her grasp, leaned it against the wall, then locked his hands on her shoulders and nudged her back. “Right now I don’t give a damn if you want me here or not,” he added as he used one foot to swing the door shut behind him. “I need to talk to you.”

“We’ve already said all there is to say to each other.” She had to clamp her hands on his upper arms to keep from stumbling while he steered her backward.

“Like hell. I just drove like a maniac across this entire state so I can have my say.” He forced her downward onto the couch that faced the fireplace. “You’re going to listen.”

Emotion tightened her throat; air clogged her lungs. She couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it.

He yanked off his jacket, lobbed it into the nearest chair, then stared down at her, his face grim. “Do you know how many people can’t make a home? How many don’t have a clue how to nurture their own children?”

Peggy puffed out a surprised breath. She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but that wasn’t it. “Millions of people make homes and nurture their children.”

“The people I knew didn’t,” he said fiercely. “My father sent me away after my mother died. After a while, I stopped hurting over that. I wouldn’t let myself hurt. And I wouldn’t let myself want what had been taken away from me.” She saw the raw emotion in his eyes as he took a step toward her. “The night I walked into the inn, you gave that back to me. You gave me a home.”

“Which you don’t want.”

He held up a hand. “I need to get through this. Let me get through this. Please.”

“All right.”

“Not only did I not want a home, I didn’t want to feel anything for you.” He stood facing her, his eyes smoldering with the same intensity as the flames in the fireplace. “I kept telling myself you were like every other woman whose path I had crossed over the years. The harder I worked to convince myself of that, the more obvious the truth became. Still, I didn’t want to think you made a difference. Didn’t want to believe I couldn’t leave you as easily as I have everyone else. When you kicked me out of the inn, I found out I was wrong. For the first time in my life I left a part of myself behind.”

In her heart, she thought, feeling something move inside her. That part of him had stayed behind in her heart. Tears welled as her mind accepted what she’d fought so hard over the past days to deny. She loved him.

“I never meant to hurt you.” He shoved a hand through his dark hair. “I kept the fact I’m a cop secret to protect you. Someday I hope you’ll be able to trust that. I hope you’ll believe that I did what I did because I love you.”

She jolted. “You—” She rose slowly. “What did you say?”

Before she could gather her wits, he moved to her, took one of her hands in his own. “I love you and I love Samantha.”

She had to take a step back, had to press a hand against the pressure in her chest. “Why did you have to tell me that? Damn you, why?”

His grip tightened, along with his voice. “Okay, I guess the feeling isn’t mutual. Tough luck for me. But that’s how I feel.”

She jerked from his hold, clenched her hands into fists. “So, you drove like a maniac across the state to tell me you love me?”

His eyes narrowed. “That, and a couple of other things. I thought they were important. Maybe you’ve got a different spin on that.”

“Do you think it makes it easier for me, knowing how you feel? Knowing the man I’ve fallen in love with loves me back? That somewhere roaming around the globe is some idiot with rocks in his head who loves me, but doesn’t want a life with me?”

“Hold on.” He stepped forward. “You love me? Did I hear you right? You mean it?”

“Yes, and a hell of a lot of good that does me.” She crammed her hands on her hips. “You’ve made sure I understand who you are, what you are. ‘I’m a nomad,’” she tossed out, lowering her voice to imitate his. “‘I don’t stay in one place. Leaving is what I do, what I’m good at. I can throw everything I own into my plane and take off without looking back. Ever.’” She dragged in a breath. “It would have been a lot easier for me to get over you if I thought you didn’t care.”

“I don’t want you to get over me.” Closing the space between them, he brought a hand to her face, skimming back her hair with his fingers, molding her jawline with his palm. “For the last six months I’ve felt this…restless discontent, like my life had gotten off track. I couldn’t put my finger on what had happened. I think it’s because I was ready to find a place I belong, one place that means something to me. Someone who means something to me.” His eyes eloquent, he slid his palm around to cup the back of her neck. “Even if you tell me to leave again, I won’t. I’m staying in Prosperino. I have to stay. I need to stay. I need to convince you to let me back into your life.”

Her breath hitched with joy; tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry.” He thumbed away her tears. “For God’s sake, Ireland, don’t cry. My job isn’t like Jay’s was. I do most of my work in a lab. I visit crime scenes after the fact.” He shook his head. “But, if you want me to give it up, I will. I’m crazy about you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to spend my life with. I’ll do whatever it takes to have you and Samantha back in my life, for the rest of my life.”

Her heart overflowed. He loved her and Samantha. Wanted them. He would stay.

She settled her palm against his chest, felt the reassuring beat of his heart. “When you left, I felt the same kind of emptiness I did when Jay died.” Tears burned her throat, thickening her voice. “I would have felt that way, no matter what you did for a living. I didn’t fall in love with the badge. I fell in love with the man. I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to stop being a cop.”

He gathered her close, dipped his head and skimmed his mouth across hers. “The lab in San Francisco has an opening. I have my plane. I can commute there every day and come home every night. Let me come home to you, Ireland.”

“Yes.” She couldn’t get enough of him as she tasted, touched as if she had never known a man before. In that moment she could remember no others. Only him.

Smiling up at him, she lifted a hand to his cheek. “Welcome home.”

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Maggie Price for her contribution to THE COLTONS series.