Clay had absolutely no intentions of satisfying the man’s insatiable curiosity. “Shut up, Santini,” he grumbled as he lengthened his stride toward the elevator.
It took Ilene the entire drive home to calm down, to get her hands to remain steady on the steering wheel. After all this time, Clay still had an effect on her. Could still make her pulse dance just by being in the same room as her.
Except that this time she had no illusions about him. He wasn’t the Prince Charming she’d thought—that she’d hoped he’d be. Like the old song said, no man burning with a pure, radiant light in the night.
Besides, she argued with herself, she’d gotten swept away in the excitement of what she was proposing to do. It had clouded her thinking. Walken would never hurt her. The most he would do is fire her, and she certainly couldn’t blame him for that. Not the way she blamed him for sweeping all those numbers under a proverbial rug, she thought grimly. She knew he was only thinking of saving the company, but she’d never believed that the end justified the means, not when the means involved fraud.
She was overthinking again.
God, but she needed some solace, a reprieve, if only for a little while, from the whole situation. She needed to do something fun, something carefree with Alex. There was a soul-renewing purity in her son’s innocence, in the echo of his laugh, that always helped her get back on course. Even when loneliness threatened to drag her down to unmeasurable depths.
Making an impulsive decision, she called her baby sitter and asked her not to pick up Alex today. Then she went and sprang her son from his nursery school.
“Hi, Mama.” He beamed at her. “Where are we going?”
“What makes you think we’re going somewhere, sport?”
His eyes danced as he looked at her. “Because we always go someplace when you come.”
“Can’t pull the wool over your eyes, can I, Alex?” He cocked his head, looking at her. She could almost see him pulling in the words, trying to make sense of them. Sometimes she just wanted to eat him all up, he was that dear to her. “We’re going to the park, Alex. That okay with you?”
Alex loved the park. If she let him, he’d be happy to live there. “Okay,” he echoed, dragging her by the hand to the car.
And they were off.
She was so busy enjoying Alex, enjoying the day, that she didn’t become aware of the feeling until sometime into the second hour. The feeling that someone was watching her.
At first she convinced herself that the A.D.A., aided and abetted by Clay, had spooked her and that she only imagined things. After all, the park was full of parents, mainly mothers, with their children. With all that movement around her, it was easy enough to mistake that for someone watching her. The main park in Aurora had rides galore and diversions for children of all ages. At any given time, a great many people populated the area.
Despite her arguments to the contrary, the gnawing feeling that there was someone shadowing her persisted. Drawing her courage together, Ilene pretended to go the ladies’ room with Alex. Once inside, the boy looked puzzled as they began to leave by the rear exit. “We playing a game, Mama?”
“Yes, a game, Alex. Kind of like hide-and-seek.” Holding his hand, she circled around until she was behind the front entrance again.
She was doing it to prove to herself that she was imagining things.
She wasn’t.
No wonder she felt as if she was being shadowed. She was. Clay was leaning against a tree, watching the entrance. Waiting for her to emerge again.
Angry, she grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him around to face her. It was hard to keep from shouting at him, but she didn’t want to frighten Alex. “Why are you following me?”
Clay looked at her, not surprised that she had caught on, only that she had done it so quickly. But one of the things he’d always liked about her was that she was sharper than any woman he’d ever been with.
“Because Janelle and Captain Reynolds seem to think you’re in danger.”
“The only thing I seem to be in danger of is running into people from my past who I don’t want to see.”
Though tempted to make a flippant reply, Clay was more interested in the small boy whose hand she held. The one looking up at him with big blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile so like his mother’s.
He nodded at the boy. “Is this your son?”
Ilene placed her hands protectively on the boy’s shoulders as he stood in front of her. “Yes, this is Alex.”
Not standing on ceremony, Alex tugged on Clay’s shirt and said, “Hi.”
He spared the boy a smile in kind. “Hi.” Clay raised his eyes to Ilene. The boy’s existence raised a host of questions in his mind, questions he should have been able to bank down. “When did you get married?”
She felt her back stiffening. “That is none of your business and neither am I. Go away, Detective Cavanaugh. Before I call a cop.”
He couldn’t resist. “Half the force is related to me.”
“Then I’ll find someone who isn’t,” she said over her shoulder as she hurried away with her son.
This time Clay remained where he was.
Chapter 3
“L
eaving already?”
On his way through the crowded bar where he and other members of the police department gathered at the end of a long, hard day, Clay stopped several feet short of his goal, the front door. Even with the din cranked up an extra decibel or two, he still recognized the familiar voice. He’d been hearing it for all of his twenty-seven years.
The bar was extra crowded tonight with retired as well as active police personnel taking up much of the available space. They’d come together to throw a party for one of their own. After several false starts at retirement, Detective Alvin “Willie-Boy” Jenkins was finally leaving the force. The older, florid-faced man had been a fixture with the department for as long as Clay could remember, having even gone six years partnered with his father until Andrew had been promoted to chief of police.
It was Andrew Cavanaugh who had cleared up the mystery behind Willie-Boy’s nickname. It derived not from a familiar form of a name given him at birth, but from the fact that the police detective had become enamored with the old Robert Redford movie,
Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here.
He had seen it more times than even he could remember and could spout off lines of dialogue at the drop of a hat. No one knew why he was so fascinated with that particular piece of celluloid and no one wanted to ask. Willie-Boy tended to be very long-winded once he got started.
Clay had toyed with the idea of saying good-night to the members of his family who were still in attendance, then decided that slipping out unnoticed was the better way to go. He’d underestimated his father’s eagle eye. At an age when most men were squinting to make out the written page or see beyond the reach of their hand, his father’s vision was still twenty-twenty.
“Keeping tabs on me, Dad?” Clay turned to face the older man.
Andrew raised a mug of dark brew and took a small sip before answering. “No, just wondering what’s up. You’re usually one of the last to go.”
Clay shrugged, looking away. “I’m starting a new trend.”
The hell he was, Andrew thought.
Andrew wasn’t one to pry into his children’s affairs. Or so he liked to claim. In reality, the complete opposite was true. He took his role as father to heart and it had only intensified ever since his wife had disappeared fifteen years ago.
That was the way he saw it. Rose had disappeared. Which meant that someday she would reappear. He refused to accept the fact that she had walked out of his life with heated, hurtful words hanging in the air between them, and then died. Everyone else outside of the family had long since taken the scenario as a given. Rose Cavanaugh had died in the river where her car was discovered. But since neither her body nor her purse had ever been recovered, to Andrew the case was still open.
Rose was still his wife and she was out there somewhere, waiting to be found.
And Clay was still his son, one of two, and always would be no matter what his age. Being a father meant being concerned. Rose would have wanted it that way.
He studied his younger son closely now. His instincts, rather than mellow, had only grown sharper with age. “Something eating at you, Clay?”
Yes, something was eating at him, Clay thought. And had been ever since he’d seen Ilene this morning. It had only increased while he’d watched her at the park with her son. Seeing her playing with the boy, laughing, had created an incredible ache in his chest, one he didn’t know how to handle.
But he wasn’t about to talk about it, at least not until he worked it through in his system. “You mean other than those spicy meatballs?”
Clay nodded toward the large tray of browned meatballs that were still waiting to be plucked up from their perch. The bartender’s wife, Greta, had made them. They smelled a great deal better than they tasted, at least to those who were accustomed to better fare.
“The woman tried her best,” Andrew said, then grinned. “Can’t hold a candle to mine, can they?”
“Nope.” Clay watched his father do further justice to the beer he was holding. “And might I add that your modesty is blinding.”
“No reason for modesty.” Finished, Andrew set down the mug on a nearby table already littered with empty mugs. “Just the facts.”
About to comment, Clay held his finger up, stopping his father from continuing. His cell phone was vibrating in his back pocket.
“Hold it, Dad, I’m getting a call, Dad.”
Andrew sighed, waving him away to take the call. “No getting away from technology these days, is there?”
“Price you pay for progress.” Clay made his way out of the bar to take the call.
“See you at breakfast,” Andrew called after him before turning back to the party and the very inebriated guest of honor.
While Callie and Shaw dropped by the house for breakfast with a fair amount of regularity, Clay, like his twin sister Teri and Rayne, had only to come down the stairs. He’d moved out of the family house with fanfare at twenty-one and grudgingly moved back in approximately six months ago. Circumstances had necessitated it.
The apartment he’d been subletting had been reclaimed by its owner who’d decided to come back to Aurora in order to pursue his career. That left Clay pursuing apartments, not an easy task for a police detective on call most of his days and nights. Especially when his funds were of the limited variety.
Clay was always being generous with his money, an easy touch for friends, or even acquaintances, who found themselves down on their luck. That left him with little money to spend on the things that were important to his own life. Like shelter.
But every weekend found him sitting down with the newspaper, determined to find an apartment that suited his purposes and his pocket, and every Monday found him still home, much to his father’s secret contentment.
Though he wouldn’t admit it, they all knew that Andrew missed the sound of another male voice in the house. And another male set of hands he could commandeer whenever the whim moved him to undertake yet another remodeling of the house or another much-needed repair project. Unwilling to accept any money from his son in exchange for food and shelter, Andrew took it out in trade. Clay called it slave labor. Both men seemed to be happy with the arrangement, knowing it was only temporary and would change all too soon.
Stepping outside the bar, Clay turned his collar up as the air swirled around him. In contrast to the almost hot atmosphere inside, it was downright cold out here. Standing under the streetlamp, he flipped open his phone. “Cavanaugh.”
“Clay?”
Even though the person on the other end had only uttered his name, he knew who it was. Her voice was never far from the recesses of his mind.
And right now he could hear fear echoing in it. “Ilene?”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Clay, I think someone’s trying to break in.”
The address she’d given him was less than fifteen minutes away by car.
He made it in seven.
The Ilene he remembered didn’t frighten easily. Which meant that this was serious and not just the figment of an overactive imagination.
He should have stuck with his instincts and kept up watch, he upbraided himself. If she hadn’t been so damn adamant about making him leave…
It wasn’t an excuse and he knew it.
As he drove, peeling through yellow lights and ones that had just turned red, Clay kept his siren on. With any luck, it would scare away whoever it was who was attempting to break into her house. He tried not to let his imagination run away with him.
It was the longest seven minutes he could ever remember spending.
Pulling up in front of Ilene’s fashionable, tidy two story tract house, Clay all but ripped the key out of the ignition. He was out of the car almost before it stopped moving.
Someone raced from the side of the house.
Clay lost no time giving chase.
With a decent lead, the darkly clad figure dashed straight for the entrance in the gray cinder-block wall that led onto the greenbelt beside the development.
He was only a few seconds behind the man, but by the time Clay reached the entrance, he couldn’t see anyone in either direction. Whoever had tried to get into Ilene’s house had melted into the shadows.
Clay bit off a scalding curse and hurried back to Ilene’s house. The lights were on in the front, but he couldn’t see any movement through the curtains. He rang the bell. There was no answer.
His heart froze in his chest. Had he caught the perpetrator breaking in or leaving the scene of a crime? Abandoning the bell, he knocked on the door. Pounded on it would have been a more apt description. He wasn’t a patient man when agitated.
“Ilene, damn it, it’s Clay, open the door.”
Taking out microtools that were not exactly smiled upon by the department, he was about to break into Ilene’s house himself when he heard the lock on the other side being flipped.
The next moment the door opened. Ilene stood there, her eyes wide with a fear she desperately tried to contain. A fear she was clearly unaccustomed to and hated.
She scanned the area right behind him. The street-light showed the street to be empty. Ilene held on to the door for support, her knees feeling horribly rubbery. “You came.”
Clay walked in, taking command of the situation the way he always did. His voice remained deceptively laid-back. “Protect and serve, that’s our motto.”
He could see that she was trying to hold herself together as she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Only when her breathing was steady did she ask, “Did you see him?”
He nodded. “I saw someone running from the side of the house into the greenbelt. But then I lost him.”
Ilene knew how he hated that, hated losing at anything, whether it was a card game or a sporting event. Clay was destined to be a winner and expected to be, no matter what the situation. He’d always equated losing with having a personality flaw. Being part of a large family had made him competitive at a very young age.
Just having him here made her feel better. Stronger. And maybe a little silly for overreacting. But that was partially his fault. He and his cousin had made her believe her life was in danger.
Embarrassed, annoyed at having to ask for help, she shrugged, moving toward the mantel and straightening photographs that were perfectly orderly.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take you away from anything.” When he looked at her curiously, she explained, “I heard noise in the background when I called.”
Ilene felt herself fumbling for words as if they were covered with slippery soap and she was trying to grasp them with her hands. Damn it, what was happening to her? To her life? She’d always wanted to be in control and now it felt as if everything was spinning all around her.
He hadn’t realized that the noise in the bar had followed him out. “No, you didn’t take me away from anything. Just a retirement party I was leaving, anyway.” He could swear that she looked as if she was about to pass out. The color had suddenly drained from her face. She looked vulnerable, he thought. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said defiantly just before she felt herself crumbling inside. She shut her eyes to keep the tears from suddenly leaking out. Where had
they
come from? she thought accusingly. This wasn’t like her. She was strong, resourceful.
But he and his cousin had made her think that her baby was in danger, and that changed everything.
“No, I’m not,” she admitted. “Someone tried to get in here, Clay. Someone I didn’t know or want in my house was trying to break in. They could have scared my son. I—” Her voice cracked and she covered her mouth with her fingertips to keep the sob from breaking free.
“Shhh.”
Faced with the promise of tears, not knowing what else to do, Clay did what came naturally. He took Ilene into his arms and held her against him. She struggled for a second before giving in and letting him hold her.
A flood of feelings instantly rushed over him. Six years ago, he was holding her to him because they were wildly, unreasonably in love. Back then, at times like this, he’d find himself loving the moment he was in because she was in it, as well.
And being terrified of that same moment. Because Ilene represented everything that could make him weak, that could make him codependent. Everything that could take his manhood and cut him off at the knees.
She’d had that kind of power over him. Until he’d taken it away from her. But for now she needed comfort, and he needed to be able to give it to her, such as it was.
Stroking her hair, he whispered against it. “It’s going to be okay.”
Just for a moment Ilene allowed herself to cling to him, to cling to the moment and pretend that he could protect her. Pretend that nothing had changed and she could put her faith and trust in this man who would always be there for her.
But he hadn’t been.
And he couldn’t be. No one could. He’d proved that to her.
A cold resolve came over her. She couldn’t depend on anyone but herself. She was all that Alex had. Which meant she had to be brave for both of them. Being brave meant not falling to pieces.
With effort, she pulled herself together and drew away.
“No, it’s not. Nothing’s going to be all right, not yet. And nothing is ever going to be the same again.” She wiped the heel of her hand against the tears. Tossing her head, she tried to regain some of fragmented composure. For a second she tried to deny the obvious. “Maybe it was just a common burglar.”
“Maybe,” he said, his eyes on her face. “But you don’t believe that.”
Another shaky breath left her. She’d never been much for lying, even to herself. “No, I don’t believe that.”
With a sigh she sank down on the sofa, then rose again, as if there were springs in her legs that wouldn’t allow her to relax. She couldn’t sit, couldn’t remain still. Someone had tried to break in, to harm her. To harm her son. And she was powerless to do anything about it except dial a phone.
Frustration chewed at her. Had Walken actually authorized this? Had the man who’d played Santa Claus at last year’s Christmas party, who’d had her son climb up on his knee, given the go-ahead to someone to attempt to break into her house? And do what? Threaten her? Or worse?