White Hot

12

Mollie knocked on Jeremiah’s door with a calm that surprised her. She had no intention of changing her mind. He opened up, tilted his head back, his eyes half-closed, his expression unreadable. She thought she saw a twitch of humor but couldn’t be sure. “Forget something?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve been talking to the guys downstairs.”

“Ah, the council of wise old men.”

She smiled, noticing that he hadn’t moved from the doorway. “They observed your abrupt departure with interest.”

“They observe everything I do with interest. I suppose they had opinions on my motives?”

“Of course. They believe you’re being honorable or you’re scared-or a mixture of both-except for the one old guy who thinks you just need to be jerked up short.”

“That would be Albert, and I’m sure he was more colorful in his choice of words. He thinks I have a one-track mind about my work and need a two-by-four upside the head every now and then to get my attention.” He shrugged, the amusement reaching his eyes now. “Which could be true.”

“What about the honor and fear factor?”

“I try to do what I think is right. I don’t know if that’s being honorable. As for fear-” He smiled, leaning in close to her. “I’m not afraid of you, Mollie.”

She folded her arms on her chest in an effort to be cool, collected. “Does that mean I’m invited in?”

He stepped back from the door, motioning her inside with a mock bow and a sweep of his arm. Mollie eased past him. His apartment was silent and still, no television or CD playing, no reptiles stirring in their cages. As stripped down as Jeremiah’s tastes were, she felt comfortable. She remembered waltzing around the pink bedroom in Leonardo’s house, picking out her dress for the ball, caught up in the luxury and temptation of diamonds and rubies and beautiful clothes, all fun, but, somehow, not as real as standing in Jeremiah’s apartment with his books, CDs, videos, newspapers, magazines, simple furnishings, lizard, turtle, and snake.

“As much as I hate to admit it,” he said behind her, “I understand where Bennie, Albert, and Sal were coming from tonight. We’ve gotten to know each other, sitting out whittling, eating bagels in the morning, smoking an occasional cigar. They don’t know about you and our week together, but they know about me. The work I do, my commitment to it-and my determination not to inflict myself on a relationship that can’t last.”

Mollie turned to him, emotion and desire knotting her insides. A seriousness seemed to have enveloped him, darkening his eyes, bringing out the harsh angles of his face. But she didn’t regret her decision to walk back up to his apartment. “Jeremiah, right now I’m not worried about what can last and what can’t last. I’m not here about anything except tonight.”

“I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“That’s the risk we take, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it is.” He moved to her, toe to toe, and curved an arm around her waist, his mouth finding hers as he whispered, “I’m awfully glad I didn’t have to follow you up to Palm Beach tonight.”

“Would you have spied on me?”

“Darlin’, I’d have found some way inside your gates.”

He slipped his hands under her shirt and opened his palms against her warm, bare skin, sending waves of sensation through her as their mouths came together again, and she said between kisses, “I brought a change of clothes, just in case. They’re down in the car.”

His eyes flashed, sending more tremors through her with their blatant desire. “What about my plan for us to steer clear of each other?”

She drew her arms around him, felt the strong muscles of his back. “Did you think even for a half-second that would work?”

“It seemed like a good idea.” Again, the seriousness descended. “Mollie, if I’ve brought trouble down on your head-”

“It’s okay, Jeremiah.” She kissed him softly, easing herself against his chest. “I’m not twenty anymore.”

“No,” he said, smoothing his hands up her back, triggering memories that she thought she’d suppressed forever, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if you still sit on a musical note towel and listen to opera on the beach. Mollie, Mollie…I’ve never known anyone like you.”

She laughed, the rest of her quaking with a yearning that reached her soul. “I haven’t had a lot of Jeremiah Tabaks walking around in my life.”

“We don’t have to figure out our lives tonight.”

And he swept her into his arms and down the short hall to his bedroom, where the blinds were pulled against the dark night and the furnishings just as utilitarian as the rest of his apartment. It was as if ten years of pent-up desire suddenly was released. His mouth found hers again and again, her mind numbing with the sensation that he was drinking in all of her with their kisses.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he said, “stay with me now. I don’t want you to pretend this is a memory. See me as I am now, Mollie. Love me as I am now.”

“And you’ll do the same?”

“I am. I have been.”

And he kissed her, slowly this time, savoring, tasting, easing any last tension from her body. Soon, every muscle was warm, loose, vibrating with a desire that had been a part of her for so long, dormant, waiting for the day it would explode again.

“Jeremiah…” She breathed, focused for a moment on the stillness around them. “I didn’t think I’d ever let myself want you again.” She smiled, kissing him. “And it had nothing to do with honor.”

“If I could undo…”

“Don’t go there. I had to figure me out before I could figure us out. But what I’ve realized-” She inhaled at a jolt of desire that rocked her to her very soul. “I’ve realized that the figuring out isn’t ever really finished. Change is inevitable. We just can’t leave behind the wrong things.”

“Mollie.”

“Hm.”

“We can talk now or we can make love now.”

She smiled. “It’s that one-track mind of yours, isn’t it?”

She lay back on his bed, and he came with her, peeling her shirt over her head and casting it off onto the floor. His eyes locked with hers as he skimmed his palms up over the curve of her hips, leaving hot pools of lava in their wake. She could feel his arousal pushing against his pants, against her, inhaled sharply just at the thought of him bursting free.

His palms suddenly slid over her breasts, and she dug her hands into his sides, eased them up over his sleek, hard muscles. He lowered his head, slowly, her breasts swelling even as she imagined his mouth on them, and then with excruciating care and patience, he took one nipple between his lips, tugged gently, followed with his tongue, and finally his teeth, until she was bubbling hot, molten, tearing her hands up and down his back. He didn’t speed up, she didn’t divert him from his task. He eased off her shorts and underpants, using mouth and tongue and teeth to make her delirious with wanting and take her to the very edge of exploding.

“Now,” she said, amazed at the urgency she was feeling, the strangled sound of her own voice, “please, don’t wait.”

He drew back, tugged off his clothes, threw them every which way, and fell on her, all restraint gone, his patience as exhausted as her own. She had no chance to explore him, to move across his body with hand and tongue. “Stay with me,” he murmured, settling heavily between her legs. “Don’t close your eyes, don’t lose me.” He plunged into her, moaning softly as he seemed to savor the feel of their bodies intertwined. “We’re here, together, now.”

There were no more words after that, no possibility of speech or thought. When the explosion came, it was more than Mollie could have imagined, not just erupting out of her, but into her, into him, its heat and ferocity fusing them together. She was aware of nothing beyond him, herself, the moment. Warm, her muscles liquid now, she felt him scooping her onto her pillows, holding her as he drew the covers up over them both.

She cuddled up against him, but even as she was drifting off, her body refusing to stay awake any longer, she knew that it would be a long time yet before he would sleep. At his core, she realized, Jeremiah was a man who needed-was compelled by the force of his nature-to think beyond the moment. He would have to ponder what they’d done and all its ramifications, and how and if and whether what they had together should last.

Jeremiah didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight, but he was up again at dawn, restless, prowling his apartment as if he were in a cage himself. He peeked in on Mollie, asleep in his bed, her pale hair spilling across his hunter green sheets, only her bare creamy shoulders exposed. He saw their clothes tossed all over the floor. He saw the cotton blanket she’d kicked off in the night.

Mollie Lavender, in his bed, in his apartment. In his life, he thought, once more.

And in trouble. For certain. He just couldn’t fit the pieces together yet and see the clear picture of what, how, who all was involved.

The memory of their lovemaking flooded over him as he stood in the doorway. It was a gully-wash of sensations, memories, emotions that rocked him back on his heels.

Yet he didn’t have it in him to regret a single second of their night together. If he was going to have regrets, he wouldn’t have opened his door to her in the first place.

“The woman deserves her sleep,” he muttered, chastising himself for the quick, inevitable urge to rouse her and make love to her again, over and over until the sun was high and hot in the sky. It was, he thought, that way between the two of them. It had been ten years ago, and it was again now.

Some things didn’t change.

With a strangled groan, he grabbed up a pair of shorts and a shirt and headed for the bathroom. After a torturous burst of ice-cold water in the shower, he went downstairs to whittle with Sal, who was always up at dawn. The ex-priest had his ubiquitous Thermos of coffee and a Miami mug with flamingoes on it. Without so much as a good morning, he filled the Thermos top and handed it over.

“I’ve got troubles, Sal,” Jeremiah said, sipping the hot, surprisingly good coffee.

“Only dead people don’t have troubles, Tabak.”

“Words of wisdom from a former priest?”

“Nah, from an old man. But I guess forty years in the clergy, a few things are bound to get through. Whittle awhile. Dawn’s a good time of day to reflect, not to make decisions.”

Jeremiah took out his jackknife and chose a hunk of wood, and he might have been nine, listening to his daddy’s careful instructions, his mother hovering in the background, fretting about him cutting off a finger. There was no hurrying the wood, his daddy would say. You just stay with it.

The air was still, the light had a lavender cast to it, and the two men whittled awhile, saying nothing. Jeremiah felt his demons push back to the edges of his consciousness, at bay if not less threatening.

The blade of his knife slipped, nicked him between the knuckles of his left thumb. He saw the cut before he felt the pain.

“Cut yourself?” Sal asked, calm.

“Yes, dammit.” Blood spurted from the clean slit. “Hell.”

“That’s the world you’re swearing at, not that little old piece of wood.”

“I’m not swearing at the goddamned wood, I’m swearing at the cut.”

“You want me to get Bennie up? He’s got a first aid kit you wouldn’t believe. Let me tell you, that man-he’s ready for the apocalypse.”

Jeremiah put pressure on his thumb. “Sal, I’m bleeding here.”

“I can see that. Here, take my handkerchief.”

It was stark white, pressed, neatly folded, immaculate. Jeremiah shook it open with his uninjured hand and wrapped it around his bleeding thumb. He pulled it tight, knotted it. “I owe you a handkerchief.”

“The question is, what do you owe yourself?”

Jeremiah stared at him. “Sal.”

The old man smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry, it’s habit. I try to find lessons where sometimes there’s no lesson to be found.”

“Or a simple one, like you shouldn’t whittle before you’ve had your morning coffee.” Or, he thought darkly, when you’d rather be up with the pale-haired woman asleep in your bed.

“Think it needs stitches?” Sal asked.

“No.”

It was pounding now. Jeremiah applied pressure, cursing himself and Mollie both. If she’d just gone home, he wouldn’t have had to whittle at dawn. He could be asleep, not tortured by the contradictions, desires, miseries, joys, and fears of falling for her all over again.

Then again, if he hadn’t made love to her last night, he could have been down here anyway and cut off his whole damned hand. Whether upstairs or behind Leonardo Pascarelli’s gates, Mollie was in his life, and the frustrations of that abounded.

And also, he thought, the possibilities.

Sal handed him his coffee; Jeremiah sipped, grimacing at the pulsing pain. The cut wasn’t that deep. It would hurt and bleed like hell for a while, but it’d be fine.

“You ever think about getting married, Sal?” Jeremiah asked.

“When I was in the priesthood?”

“Whenever.”

Sal sat back, hands folded serenely on his middle. Jeremiah suspected Salvatore Ramie had academic degrees going up one arm and down the other. Bennie and Albert said his apartment was overflowing with books; they worried about them being a fire hazard. But now that he was a civilian, Sal liked to pretend he was just one of the guys, not a man who’d studied esoteric theological and philosophical subjects. He breathed in and out slowly, contemplating Jeremiah’s question.

Finally, he said, “I thought about marriage all the time.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I know it isn’t. I thought about marriage in terms of an institution. As for myself and marriage…” He paused again, as if Jeremiah had asked him to define the meaning of life. “There was never any one woman, either before I became a priest or after I was unceremoniously booted out of the priesthood. But sometimes I’d imagine if there was a woman, if I did get married, and of course, it was all hypothetical because there wasn’t and I wouldn’t. So what did it mean? It meant I could fantasize about perfection. About everything I would want in a woman, a marriage. I could set the highest standards.”

“Because it wasn’t real.”

“Mm. And I kept it from ever becoming real.”

“Well, you were a priest.”

“It was more than that,” Sal said. “I performed hundreds of weddings over forty years. And there’s one thing I think I learned.” He shifted to Jeremiah, his old eyes pinched but clear. “The one who gets you is the one who makes you forget you ever had standards, who makes you forget you ever desired anything as dull and ridiculous as perfection.”

Jeremiah frowned, trying to figure out if Sal was making any sense or just pontificating.

The old man sat back. “You see? A time of day for reflection.”

“I’m going to go up and find a Band-Aid.”

“You do that.”

First he went out to Mollie’s car and found the tote bag of clothes she’d insisted she’d brought along. He felt no pang of guilt whatsoever at having had the passing thought that the clothes-in-the-car line could have been a strategic lie on her part, a way to convince him that returning to his apartment last night hadn’t simply been an impulsive act.

Which, of course, it had been, change of clothes in Leonardo’s Jaguar or not.

He managed not to run into any other elderly gentlemen with theories on romance before reaching his apartment, where he washed off his cut in the kitchen sink and bandaged it up as best he could. The throbbing had stopped. The bleeding hadn’t. Now he just felt like a damned klutz. He fixed a pot of coffee and sat at the table with his critters, all of whom had the sense to be asleep at six o’clock in the morning.

The telephone rang, jolting him out of his self-absorption. Sal with more revelations on the mysteries of romantic love? His father, perhaps, with an invitation to go fishing?

He snatched up the kitchen extension. “Tabak.”

“Tabak, it’s Frank Sunderland. You awake?”

Jeremiah ran a hand through his short hair. Frank Sunderland was his cop friend up in Palm Beach, and he wouldn’t call this early-or any time-without reason. “Yeah, I’m awake. What’s up?”

“I’m at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm. They’ve got a kid here-says his name’s Blake Wilder. He had the hell beat out of him last night.”

“Jesus, Frank, he’s a friend of mine.” Saying Croc was a friend was simpler than trying to explain the complexities of what he was to a cop or even, Jeremiah thought, to himself. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’ll live, but he’s not okay. Busted ribs, broken nose, broken jaw, cuts, bruises. Doctors are working on him. You’d have to talk to them to get the details. A couple of beachcombers happened to spot him. Another hour, he’d have drowned in the tide, maybe even been swept out to sea. We figure the guys who beat him up got spooked before they could finish the job.”

“Kill him, you mean?”

“Yeah, Tabak. Kill him.”

His stomach lurched. He got shakily to his feet. Mollie, he noticed, had stumbled into the kitchen. She was wearing one of his shirts, her hair tangled, the color drained out of her face. He said, “I’m on my way.”

“Listen, Tabak, this kid-he gave your name and his name and that’s it. You know anyone else I should contact?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s too bad, because it gets worse.”

Jeremiah went still. “Tell me, Frank.”

“We found the diamond-and-ruby necklace that got yanked off Mollie Lavender the other night in his back pocket. Way I look at it, we’ve got three choices. One, the guys who beat him up didn’t know it was there. Two, they didn’t have time to steal it. Or, three, they planted it on him. None of which I like, I have to say.” Frank inhaled, reining in his own irritation. “If I find out you haven’t been straight with me, we’re going to have a reckoning, Tabak. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

Jeremiah hung up and turned to Mollie, and his stomach ached and burned and his head spun. She inhaled, staying calm, at least on the surface. “What happened?”

He told her. Succinctly, accurately, his word-for-word reporter’s memory for conversations, his professionalism, clicking into gear. He left out nothing, not even the part about her necklace in Croc’s back pocket.

“We’ll take the Jaguar,” she said without preamble, digging the clothes out of her tote bag and pulling them on. Underwear, pants, shirt. She started back to his bedroom, presumably for her shoes. “It’ll be faster.”

Jeremiah shook his head and followed her back. “No. I’ll take my truck, and you can stay here.”

She snorted. “Forget it. I’d just end up passing you on the highway and beating you to the hospital, which would drive you crazy.” She sat on the edge of the tousled bed to slip on her sandals, but stopped suddenly, blue eyes on him, suspicious. “Or are you going to steal my keys?”

“I’m not a Neanderthal, Mollie.”

“Good.” She grinned, but her color didn’t improve. “Then let’s roll.” She shot to her feet, and as she passed him in the doorway, her expression softened. “At least they got to him in time, Jeremiah. He’s not dead.”

He inhaled sharply. “I haven’t gotten hold of him yet.”

They took the stairs fast and bolted outside, sunlight spilling out across the city. Sal had gone in, leaving the wood he was carving on his chair. Jeremiah felt as if his chest were being squeezed. He could no longer feel the pain of his cut.

Traffic on I-95 North was light. Mollie, steady behind the wheel, hit the left lane and drove fast. One after another the questions and doubts pounded, crowded Jeremiah’s thinking. One after another, he shoved them aside. Answers would come later. Now, he had to see to Croc.

“There’s a first aid kit in the glove compartment,” Mollie said. “You can change the bandage on your thumb. You cut it whittling?”

He gave a curt nod.

Her quick smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Your concentration must be off.”

By the time they arrived at the hospital, Croc had been admitted to a regular room. They went on up, running into Frank Sunderland in the corridor. He was a tall, stringy, serious officer of the law, and he didn’t look happy. “Whoa, you two,” he said. “Tabak, I want everything you have on this kid.”

The door to Croc’s room was shut. Jeremiah stiffened, refused to let his impatience get the better of him. He told Frank, “I’ve known Croc about two years. He brings me the occasional tip. Half the time it’s nothing. The other half, maybe. He does odd jobs, nothing steady. I don’t know where he’s working now. I’ve never known where he lives. I don’t know anything about his past.” He gave out the facts shotgun style, and kept his opinions to himself. Mollie, he noticed, was staying close, listening to every word. “He says his name is Blake Wilder.”

“ ‘Says’ being the operative word,” Frank said. “As far as we can tell, it’s a phony name. We’re running his prints.”

“I’m not surprised. I always had the feeling Blake Wilder was something he’d pulled off a tombstone or out of a Hardy Boys book. Croc lives in a fantasy world half the time, Frank. Spies, fairies, elves, conspiracies. He listens at keyholes. He’s not a man of action. I don’t see him as a jewel thief.”

Frank sighed irritably, his dark, smart eyes flashing. “Yeah, well, maybe if you’d told me about him sooner-”

“There was nothing to tell. Still isn’t.”

“Damned reporters. What about this jewel thief story? It’s not your thing, Tabak. What’re you doing sniffing around in it?”

Jeremiah debated a moment, his instincts on alert anytime a cop was asking the questions and he wasn’t. “Croc put me onto it.”

“How?”

“Asked me to look into it.” In Jeremiah’s opinion, there was no need to bring up Croc’s Mollie-Lavender-as-common-denominator theory. “He believed there was a single thief at work even before the police did.”

Frank frowned, suspicious. “How come?”

“He refused to say. I’ve been at his throat about holding back on me right from the beginning. Frank, I don’t have anything. If I did-” He tightened his hands into his fists. “Damn it, maybe that kid wouldn’t be in there-”

“All right, all right. Go see him. You want to hire him a lawyer?”

“Give me a minute. By the way,” he said, touching Mollie’s arm, “this is Mollie Lavender.”

Frank looked grim. “I figured. Go ahead, Miss Lavender. We can talk after.”

Jeremiah pushed open the door to the double room. The first bed was unoccupied. The second bed, along the window, held a bandaged, bruised, miserable-looking Croc. He barely made a rumple in the bed covers. Most of his head was bandaged-his neck, his right arm, both hands. His eyes and nose had swelled up, his mouth was cut and stitched, his jaw was wired shut. He was hooked up to an IV.

An attractive, fiftyish nurse was fiddling with his IV line. “How is he?” Jeremiah asked.

“He’s dozing at the moment. He’s been very restless, agitated, and he’s in a great deal of pain. His medication is helping.”

“Will he need surgery?”

“I don’t believe so, but you’d have to speak to his doctor. Right now the best thing we can do is to let him rest.”

“He’s been worked over pretty good,” Jeremiah said, more to himself than to either Mollie or the nurse. Rage clouded his eyes. Croc, he thought. Jesus. But he needed to stay focused, think, make the right moves now, before it was too late.

“Yes, I’m afraid whoever did this to him-” The nurse shuddered. “I don’t want to think about it.”

Mollie, pale and breathing shallowly, said nothing.

“If there’s a change, you can let me know? I’ll leave numbers where I can be reached. I’ll be back later.” He walked to Croc’s bed, leaned over his battered, bruised, skinny body. His chest ached from tension. Who the hell could do this to another human being? But it was the same question he’d been asking since he’d reported on his first mugging eighteen years ago, just a kid himself. He touched Croc’s bony wrist. “You hang in there, buddy.”

Outside in the corridor, he gave Frank his various numbers: the paper, his apartment, his cell phone. Mollie supplied her work and home numbers, and Frank said to her, “I wonder if you can come down to the station and ID this necklace.” She knew that compliance with his request wasn’t as optional as he tried to make it sound.

“I’d be glad to,” she said politely, “but I’m driving Jeremiah-”

Frank interrupted. “I can drive you over and then drop you back at your place.”

“Sure, okay.” She fished out the keys to the Jaguar and handed them to Jeremiah; she was staying calm, doing what had to be done in the thick of a crisis. “Leonardo also has a Jeep. I’ll use it, and you can bring his car back later.”

Frank, Jeremiah noticed, resisted comment. “You’ll be okay?” Jeremiah asked Mollie.

She smiled weakly, the sight of Croc, who’d had her pissed off to the point of speechlessness less than twenty-four hours ago, taking its toll. “I’ll be fine. Once I’m done with the police, I’ll go back to Leonardo’s and try to get some work done.” In other words, Jeremiah would know where to find her. “You’ll be in touch?”

He nodded, even as he felt himself pulling back, fighting for distance, not because he regretted last night but because he owed Croc, aka whoever. “I’ll be in touch.”

“So will I, Tabak,” Frank growled, and he escorted Mollie out.