White Hot

15

They picked up sandwiches in a little shop that had Griffen’s stamp of approval and ate them on the deck above Leonardo’s lush backyard. Roasted vegetables on flatbread for Mollie, plain old roast beef for Jeremiah. She’d filched a bottle of pinot noir from her godfather’s wine closet, knowing he would not only have approved but insisted, and poured two glasses. Jeremiah held his in one hand, his fingers so rigid she thought he might shatter the glass. She understood. He wasn’t irritated or unnerved or anything that she might have been in a similar position.

It wasn’t his mood, she realized, fascinated, but his mind at work.

Jeremiah Tabak was doing what Jeremiah Tabak did, which was sort his way through facts, bits and pieces of information, scenes, comments, vignettes, anything and everything that came his way, then sit back and process them into a coherent whole.

Mollie suspected that the coherent whole wasn’t materializing. He could speculate, perhaps, and come up with a variety of possible wholes, but he would avoid getting too far ahead of his precious facts.

She also suspected-no, she thought, she knew-that he wasn’t really quite out on the deck with her. He couldn’t smell the greenery and flowers in the warm evening air, couldn’t hear the cry of the seagulls, the hum of traffic, the not-too-distant wash of the tide. He was in his story that he would never write. An occasional sip of wine was all that told her he hadn’t gone catatonic.

But this altered state, of course, was familiar to her. She’d grown up with people who would stare off into space-not over crime and corruption, perhaps, but over music. A difficult phrase, an elusive cadenza, a new interpretation of a favorite sonata. These were the things that would occupy her parents and sister, her godfather, and take them mentally out of the room. She’d had these experiences herself, particularly when she was playing flute, but also, although less often, when she was brainstorming on behalf of a client. Definitely, however, her mind didn’t have the same tendency to wander as her parents’ did.

And Jeremiah would disagree that his mind was wandering at all. He would say he was concentrating. Deliberately focusing. And maybe he was, but she didn’t believe it was strictly a matter of control or choice on his part. He was a reporter, she realized now, because of the way his mind worked, the way he took in the world around him, not the other way around.

She pictured Croc’s battered face, his skinny, beaten body, his father in tears at his bedside. Gut-wrenching. Appalling. Who would do that to a defenseless human being? And especially miss a diamond-and-ruby necklace in his back pocket in the process? She didn’t buy the theory that the attacker had been interrupted before he could find it, or before he could get Croc’s body to wash out to sea. He’d wanted Croc found with the necklace on him, if not necessarily found alive.

Which, she acknowledged and accepted, was getting herself way ahead of the facts.

Jeremiah shifted, his jaw set hard, and with an abruptness that made her jump, he polished off the rest of his wine in a gulp. Then the tension went out of his body, and he rolled up out of his chair and stalked into the kitchen. She heard him rinse his glass in the sink and set it on the drainboard.

He was back here in Leonardo’s guest quarters with her, tuned in to his surroundings.

Mollie followed him inside, her own wine half drunk. She slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar, the counter between them as he stood staring out the window. The crickets had started. She knew he would stay tonight. He’d arranged for the elderly men in his building to take care of his animals, and he’d need to stay close to Croc. He’d left her number with the police. But he’d said nothing about staying, and given his preoccupation, she hadn’t brought it up.

He pulled his gaze from the window and turned to her, his eyes a swirl of color, none of the grays and golds and blues distinct. “Your deep, dark secret’s out, sweet pea.”

“Yes, I know. We’re the subject of intense and lurid gossip.”

“Sorry?”

“Nope. I can get a lot of mileage from having had a mad, weeklong affair with a dark and dangerous Miami reporter. It’ll make me seem more mysterious.” She grinned at him, wondering if he thought she was serious. “I wouldn’t just want to be Leonardo Pascarelli’s goody-two-shoes goddaughter.”

“You think we’re having another mad, weeklong affair,” he said, a palpable seriousness descending over him.

She shrugged, refusing to let his dark mood affect her. “I left my crystal ball in Boston.”

“Mollie…”

“Don’t, Jeremiah. Being honest with me is honorable in and of itself. It allows me to make informed choices. You’re not in the frame of mind to make promises, and I’m not in one to receive them. You’ve taken a hit today.” She eased off the stool, her knees unsteady. “Absorb it first. Then we’ll figure out what next week will bring.”

“When you were twenty, you couldn’t wait to get to next week.”

She laughed. “Nothing like turning thirty to change that. I’m not into hurrying time these days. I’m off to the shower. I still smell like chlorine. If you want, you can throw some darts. I find it relaxing.” She grinned over her shoulder at him as she started down the hall. “Although less so since I took down your picture. It’s tucked in the Yellow Pages if you want to throw a few darts between your own eyes and beat yourself up a little, at least metaphorically.”

He didn’t respond, and she could feel his eyes on her, their intensity making her shudder with awareness on every level, physical, emotional, mental. With Jeremiah, there was no hiding, no pretending, no eluding. From herself, from him.

She darted down the hall and into her bedroom, her body telling her in a thousand different ways that she’d made love to Jeremiah Tabak last night. Her nightmare. Her one dark and dangerous man. Except, after seeing him with his battered young friend, he’d seemed less dark, less dangerous, less volatile and remote and determined never to connect with another human being.

“You’re getting way ahead of the facts,” she warned herself sarcastically and flung open a drawer, staring at her nightgown selection. They came in degrees of utilitarian, some with feminine touches, none with sexy overtones. Well. There was no assurance Jeremiah would even see her in her nightgown. She chose one that was full-length, white cotton, and not too utilitarian, then slipped into the shower, welcoming the stream of hot water on her tensed muscles, the smell of citrus soap and chamomile shampoo. She shut her eyes, forgetting the past, postponing the future, just focusing on the present, her shower, her body.

She toweled off and decided to blow-dry her hair just enough to keep it from becoming a rat’s nest overnight. It was not, she told herself, a delaying tactic. When she returned to her bedroom, she slipped a terry-cloth robe over her nightgown before venturing back to the kitchen and the rest of her wine.

She could hear the rhythmic tossing of darts in the den. She sipped a bit more of her wine and stood in the semidark kitchen, listening. Throwing darts was an effective release, she thought, after a twenty-four-hour period in which you’d been to bed with a woman who’d once, fervently, wished you a long stay in hell and then found a friend in the hospital. Those were enough, without the added complications of a jewel thief, a missing heir, questions from the police, and a journalistic reputation on the line.

When she went into the den, she wasn’t really surprised to see that Jeremiah had pulled out the sofa bed.

“I’ll get sheets,” she said without preamble.

A dart thwacked home. A bull’s-eye. Others, she saw, had gone wide. “Mollie.” His eyes pinned her as surely as any dart. His dark mood hadn’t lifted; if anything, it had intensified. “I want you to know I don’t regret last night. And it wasn’t a fluke.”

“I understand.”

“But I don’t know if I can be what you need.”

“I don’t want you to be what I need.” She walked around the sofa bed and stood in front of him, close, seeing every tensed muscle, every line, every speck of gray in his cropped, dark hair. She imagined that straight line of a mouth on hers, sliding over her body, bringing her to a kind of ecstasy she’d never known with anyone else. “Just be honest with me, Jeremiah, and be who you are. That’s all anyone has a right to ask.”

The straight mouth twitched, almost imperceptibly. “That’s all?”

“Well, who you are is sexy and not exactly celibate and-” She smiled, raising her eyebrows at him. “Do I really need to get sheets?”

“I have amazing self-restraint, you know.”

“About some things, I’m sure.”

“But not about you.” His voice lowered, and he closed the small distance between them. “Not ten years ago, not now.”

He swept his arms around her and caught her with a kiss that rocked her back on her feet. She nearly fell onto the unmade sofa bed. His mouth and hands were suddenly all over her, hungrily devouring any self-restraint she might have had. She exulted in the feel of him, turned her body loose, boldly slipping a hand down his chest, past the waistband of his pants, testing his arousal, teasing him with delicate flicks of her fingertips. Playing with fire.

She wriggled out of her robe. It dropped to the floor. Her nipples were outlined against the translucent fabric of her nightgown. He gave a soft moan, opened his mouth to hers, already lifting her nightgown up to her hips, cupping her bottom with his palms.

And he stopped. It was her turn to moan. “Jeremiah…”

He eased her down onto the bed, and she fell back against the cool mattress, her nightgown up around her hips. Slowly, languorously, proving he could make this last as long as he wanted, he slid his fingers between her legs, found where she was wet and hot, and did a little delicate flicking of his own. Even when her breath was coming in gasps and she was grabbing at his back, he didn’t pull back. Instead, he followed with his tongue.

He pushed her nightgown up with one hand while the other kneaded the warm, firm flesh of her bottom, while his mouth continued to plunder. She made short work of getting her nightgown off, tossing it aside.

She heard him unzip his pants. “Yes, now, now.”

In one swift movement, he was free, driving into her, lifting her hips up on him, her legs squeezing him as she responded wildly, everything fast now, furious, total delirium setting in.

Hours later, or seconds, she was clinging to him, limp, spent, aware of a cool breeze floating through the windows and her mind drifting.

A decade ago, they’d made love like that. No wonder she hadn’t forgotten.

“You’re cold,” he said, his voice ragged.

“That’s because you still have your shirt on and I don’t have anything on.”

He smiled. “I noticed.”

“So,” she said, still breathless, yet every muscle loose, warm, “do I fetch the sheets or do you think maybe we can dare sleep together? I mean, at twenty I could do this ten times in a night. But now…” She grinned at him, running one finger along his jaw. “I don’t know, once or twice more might not kill me.”

He popped up off the sofa bed, laughing. “Innocent flute player, my ass. You were a wanton woman ten years ago, and you’re one now. I’m going to take a shower and rebandage my poor cut thumb. Then, darlin’,” he said with a wink, “we’ll see who’s not twenty anymore.”

The night brought out the smell and the sounds of the south Florida coast, and as Jeremiah sat on Mollie’s deck, he breathed them all in. They were a part of his soul, he thought, the way they never could be of hers. He had his feet up on the rail, his mind focused, not wandering as he sipped a martini. He’d been surprised to find the makings in Mollie’s cupboard. Probably her godfather’s doing.

They’d made love again, slowly, tenderly, in her sprawling bed, and he’d had the feeling she was absorbing every nuance in case it would be another ten years before they had another chance.

Maybe it would be.

The breeze shifted, carrying a touch of the Everglades to the posh streets of Palm Beach. Jeremiah had another sip of his martini, and he had to accept there was no way he could pretend he was out on the dock at his father’s outpost, looking at the stars.

He was in freaking Palm Beach, as Helen Samuel would say.

Mollie had fashioned a nice life for herself here. He had wandered around her office and sensed that her relationship with her clients, while professional, had a personal quality that was uniquely hers. She would dive in headfirst and risk really understanding them as human beings, not simply chess pieces, means to an end. She wasn’t just an opportunist after money and success. There was a stark integrity to her that required courage, confidence, commitment.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and he could see his mother puttering around the yard while his father was out on the lake. He could feel the comfort of knowing they would be together forever, his mother and father. Even as a boy, he’d known that what Reuben and Jenny Tabak had was special and unusual.

When she was dying, she’d told her husband and son, “We need to learn to go on without each other, you without me, me without you.”

His father’s grief was quiet and complete. Yet, eventually, Jeremiah had come to see that Reuben Tabak had learned to go on without the love of his life. He was content, he said. He felt he was lucky to have had that kind of relationship at all. He had no regrets, no bitterness.

“I’ll never get over her, son. It’d scare me to death if I thought I would. That doesn’t mean I’m some pitiful old fool, it just means that nothing’s ever going to take away what your mother and I had, no matter what I do from here.”

But he never remarried. He wouldn’t. He’d had the one great love of his life, and that was all for him.

Jeremiah headed back inside, rinsed his glass, and walked down the short hall to Mollie’s room. He stood in the doorway, listening to her rhythmic breathing. His throat was tight, his body coiled with a tension that seemed to grip his soul, too. He didn’t know what the hell he was feeling, even what he was thinking. Had his father known what he’d had before he lost it?

Slowly, not making a sound, he peeled off his shorts and shirt and slipped under the light covers. Mollie rolled over, throwing one arm over him as naturally as if they’d been sleeping together for years. He kissed her hair, and he closed his eyes, not giving a damn if he slept again tonight.

Jeremiah rolled out of bed to the melodic sounds of a flute concerto and the smell of coffee. Mollie’s side of the bed was empty, cool to the touch, which meant she’d been up for a while. He found his shorts on the floor, slipped them on, and took a quick shower. Last night had settled things for him. He knew exactly where he stood. He would find the truth about Croc, the jewel thief, Mollie’s role in whatever was going on. And he’d find it, he thought, not because he was a reporter, but because he was involved. Croc was his friend, and Mollie was-

He flipped off the shower. Mollie was whatever she was.

She was dressed for business, hair shining and pulled back, coffee mug and a bright yellow file folder on the table in front of her. “You’ve got ten minutes before Griffen and Deegan get here.”

“I should make the sofa bed look slept in?”

“You should get dressed. They won’t know what to do finding a half-clothed man in my apartment.” She smiled over the rim of her mug. “Not that you’d be easy to hide. And as you pointed out last night, my deep, dark secret’s out anyway.”

“Regrets?”

“None.”

She watched him pour coffee. He didn’t hurry. It wasn’t as if he was indecent. He sipped the hot, strong coffee, then set his mug on the counter. “You’re sure? Two nights in a row, Mollie.”

“I’m aware of that.” She grinned at him. “You’re no dream, Tabak, but I suppose you’re no nightmare, either. You’re just…here.”

“So I am.”

“Trust me, okay? Even if you prove to be an utter snake in the grass and slither off after we’ve settled who’s behind what regarding Croc and the jewel thief, I will not for one single, solitary second regret the past two nights.”

“Will you wish me time in a fiery hell?”

Her bottomless eyes sparked with sudden, irreverent humor. “An eternity.”

By the time Griffen and Deegan arrived to pull together the cocktail party that evening, Jeremiah was fully dressed and at the table, drinking his second cup of coffee. Mollie didn’t explain his presence. Her friend and intern took their raised eyebrows into her living room office.

“You see, Jeremiah,” Mollie whispered in his ear, “I’m not what most people would regard as your type. Publicist, flutist, goddaughter of a world-famous tenor. You’re a reporter who keeps reptiles on his kitchen table.”

“You have your oddities, sweet pea.”

She winked, enjoying herself. “You’re one of them. Off to the hospital?”

He nodded. “And I’ll check in at the paper. Helen Samuel’s going to want a full report.”

“You’re invited tonight, of course.”

“Ah. I’ll check my calendar.”

“I’ve seen your desk, Jeremiah. You don’t keep a calendar.”

He shrugged, finished off the last of his coffee, and got to his feet. “My life’s not that complicated.”

“It’s not planned. It’s plenty complicated.”

Before he left, he popped into the living room, already a whir of activity. Deegan glanced at Jeremiah and seemed to read his mind. “I checked in on my brother this morning. He’s doing well, all considered. His doctors think he can be released today.”

“Isn’t that soon?”

He shrugged. He was dressed casually, expensively, a contrast to his older brother’s ragged, threadbare clothes and general scraggliness. “Hospitals don’t like to keep you hanging around these days. He doesn’t need surgery, and he’s off intravenous.”

“Where will he go?”

Deegan’s expression was unreadable. “My parents were still arguing that question this morning. My father wants him home. Mother doesn’t. She’s suggesting they put him up in an apartment and hire a home nurse until he’s back on his feet.”

“Then what?”

“Up to him. She’s not a monster-she’s just trying to establish proper boundaries.”

“And your father?”

He swallowed, cutting his eyes around at Griffen, who was listening to every word even though her ear was stuck to a telephone. He said, “He doesn’t think this is the time to worry about boundaries. First, get him well, then find out what happened to him, then, if necessary, kick him back out into the streets.”

“What about his Atwood trust fund?” Jeremiah asked. “Doesn’t he have money of his own?”

The blue eyes leveled on Jeremiah, steady, just a tad surly. “I wouldn’t know. And if you’re wondering, I want my brother home, too.”

Jeremiah grinned at him. “I was.”

“But my father’s concerned with appearances-how this will affect his reputation-and I’m not.”

Griffen hung up the phone before he could clear out. “That was George Marcotte,” she said with a twinge of amazement. “Granny Atwood and Momma Tiernay have hired him for us for tonight. Under the circumstances, they think we should have a private security guard or two, and Marcotte’s firm will provide them or he’ll be here himself.”

“Then they don’t believe the police have their man?” Jeremiah asked sharply.

“Beats me.” She lifted her thin shoulders in an exaggerated shrug, her dark curls framing her face, lessening the tugs of tension at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “I just figure they’re worried about Mollie’s bad luck and their boy Deegan.”

“Well, it can’t hurt to take extra precautions.”

She smiled, rallying. “Guess not.”

“Then Gran and Mother are coming tonight?” Deegan asked.

“They say they are. But I would think it will depend on your brother and his condition, if the police learn any more today. He’ll probably be able to talk to the police today.”

Deegan grinned at her. “Griffen, Griffen, it’ll depend on what else is on their calendar and whether making a show of support of me is in their best interests. They’ll want to be seen in public and still the wagging tongues.” He shrugged. “That’s reality, not criticism. They have their survival techniques, just as a kid on the streets does.”

“Come on,” she said, “it’s not as if you’re in any danger of following in big brother’s footsteps. I don’t know how you can stand to be so cynical.”

“Okay, I’m wrong. They don’t care about their reputation and the gossip. They’ll show tonight because they want to see Leonardo Pascarelli’s house.”

Griffen laughed in mock horror. “Deegan.”

Mollie entered the room, her presence enough to end the conversation. Griffen started dialing a number, and Deegan sat at the computer. Jeremiah, thinking that he wouldn’t like to be a fly on the wall when these two were alone, blew Mollie a clandestine kiss, just to see her fume and blush at the same time, and departed.

Croc was being visited by Frank Sunderland, a lawyer, and his father when Jeremiah arrived at the hospital. He didn’t hang around. He headed back to Miami in the sleek black Jaguar, appreciating its maneuvering ability on the road even if it didn’t intimidate people as much as his truck did. In a beat-up, rusted old truck, you found that drivers in fancy cars gave way. Not so in a Jaguar.

He checked in with Helen Samuel, back at her desk, cigarette smoking on her ashtray, another smoking on her lower lip. “Christ,” she croaked. “I’m in the goddamned boiling pot with you. The brass told me to get them on the horn the minute I saw you. They’re probably getting a million calls right now. Half the building’s on the lookout. Spies everywhere, Tabak.”

He was unconcerned. “Anything more on the Tiernays?”

She eyed him through half-closed eyes. “About once or twice every five years or so I regret not having kids. This isn’t one of those times. I’d have no doubts I’d have screwed mine up as badly as the Tiernays have screwed up theirs. Kermit, at least. The younger one-Deegan-seems okay, except he’s got a girlfriend ten years older than he is and he’s interning for your blonde instead of for his father.”

“That’s not in the same league as what Croc’s alleged to have done.”

“Alleged? I love you hard-news types.”

“Helen…”

“Well, it’s not as if it’s easy to get anyone to talk about the Tiernays, parents or kids. Most think Kermit needed his ass kicked, if not tossed into the gutter. After two years on the streets, they figure, yeah, he could go the cat burglar route, have a little fun, stick it to his old pals up on the Gold Coast.”

“Not to mention his parents.”

“Yeah. Not to mention. The grandmother-Diantha Atwood-always had a soft spot for Kerm, but she’s not saying a word, not interfering. Momma’s a cold-fish socialite, but that could be style, not substance. And Dad’s a respected, hard-nosed businessman who spent a lot of time on the road and in the office when his kids were little. There are,” she said, blowing smoke out her mouth and nose, “no innocents here.”

“But no secret lives, nothing we can latch onto to explain why a twenty-two-year-old kid had the shit beaten out of him the night before last?”

“If you want that explained,” Helen said, peering at him with a gravity he seldom witnessed in her, “you’re probably going to have to look at his world, not his parents’ world. Their world provided the victims, Jeremiah. Marcie Amerson, Lucy Baldwin, even Mollie Lavender. His world, I suspect, provided the goons.”

Jeremiah frowned at her. “You see why you’re a society columnist, Helen? You deal in gossip and supposition. If you deal in facts, you’ll see that I have to look wherever I’ll find the answers. His world, their world, the goddamned moon. Right now, it makes no difference to me.”

He was halfway to the door before she’d blown enough air out of her lungs to answer his insult. “Kiss my ass, Tabak,” she yelled. “I hope they seal off the building before you slither out of here.”

He winked at her, which further incensed her, and was down the corridor and out to the parking garage before his bosses could grab him by the short hairs and ask him what in hell he thought he was doing, up to his ears in a big story and not one word of it on the pages of the Miami Tribune.

Spies everywhere, indeed. After she cooled off, Jeremiah would tell Helen he appreciated her warning.

There was something to be said for driving a vehicle not his own at such times. He waved to the guard at the garage, who recognized him too late, leaped out of his little cubicle of a building, and chased after him, on the alert for an errant reporter.

But by then, Leonardo Pascarelli’s little black Jaguar was well on its way to the on-ramp of 95 North.