Amanda's Blue Marine (7 page)

He shook his head. “Nah. She preferred my situation. He’s married and seeing him would have meant sneaking around and lying and she wasn’t too keen on either one.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Nobody cares what I’m doing,” he said, half laughing, “so I guess I was the default choice.”

Mandy had noticed before that he naturally downplayed his assets and victories, as if embarrassed by them. The only areas of achievement he seemed confident about and comfortable with were his ability to do police work, handle himself physically, and attract women.

Not necessarily in that order.

“What did you say to him?” Mandy asked. “To make him go away.”

“I told him I would drag him outside and knock his ears off if he didn’t shut up and leave. And I would also tell his wife about his extracurricular adventures.” Kelly smiled. “I think he was more afraid of his wife than he was of me.”

“You look so much better,” he said abruptly, watching her. “I was worried this afternoon when I first got to you, Mandy. You looked like death on a dinner plate.”

Kelly rose as soon as he realized who was on the phone. He settled the bill promptly. Mandy made short work of the call but he was already standing in the aisle, waiting for her.

“Let’s get out of here before another member of my fan club shows up,” he said darkly. He stood back to let her precede him and she carried his jacket over her arm as they left.

The drive to her condo was conducted in almost total silence. Mandy realized that the call from Tom had disturbed him. It was as if they had both forgotten that Tom existed and the ringing cell phone had reminded them.

Mandy wished Tom hadn’t called. Kelly had been so unguarded and engaging, almost talkative, before the phone call. Now he was silent. He steered the cruiser through evening traffic efficiently, speaking only to ask directions. When they got to her complex Mandy introduced him to the security guard at the gate and Kelly followed her up to her apartment. When they reached her door she handed him his jacket.

“I want to apologize again for my behavior after that accident,” she said quickly as they stopped outside her door, working up the nerve to speak in the face of his detached silence.

He threw up his hands. “Will you stop already, Amanda? You don’t have to say anything else. I understand. That was post traumatic stress. You had a horrible experience five years ago and the incident today just brought it all back. That’s the way it works. The first trauma never really leaves you and anything similar happening afterward can trigger those memories.”

“You know about it?” Amanda asked, looking at him closely.

He met her gaze, then looked away. “Yes,” he said briefly, in a tone which indicated he didn’t wish to discuss it further.

Mandy studied him as he leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets, waiting for her to say goodbye. She wanted desperately to ask him inside, even if it was only to keep him with her for a few moments longer. But she was certain she would make a mistake if she did. She didn’t want to be added to his list of conquests, she didn’t want to ruin the partnership her father and Manning had taken such trouble to arrange.

And she didn’t want to die at the hands of a stalker if Kelly could prevent it.

Amanda unlocked her door and as it swung open they both heard a loud thud come from inside the apartment.

Kelly grabbed Amanda bodily and shoved her behind him, so forcefully that she rocked on her heels. He yanked his gun from his shoulder holster and put his finger to his lips, silencing her.

“Stay here,” he mouthed to her.

Amanda’s heart began to pound as she obeyed him and remained in the hall while he went inside and crept around the apartment, his gun drawn. She hadn’t realized that such a sizeable man could be so quiet as he moved around stealthily. The only sound she heard was the occasional protest of the floorboards under the carpeting. She was starting to sweat when his voice came from the direction of her bedroom.

He said in an amused tone, “Hey, Amanda? You can come in now.”

She ran inside to find him standing next to her bed and holding one of the framed pictures from her wall in one hand. As she watched he shoved his gun back into its holster with his other hand.

“Here’s our stalker,” he said dryly. “Think I should put him in cuffs?”

He was holding a photo of Amanda with one of the pandas from the Bronx Zoo, a picture taken when she was eight years old. Her mother had had it blown up, matted and framed to add a whimsical touch to her décor.

“Very cute,” Kelly added. “You, I mean, not the bear.”

Mandy closed her eyes in relief.

“It fell off the wall and hit the floor,” Kelly added. “That’s the noise we heard. I think the hanger on the back is broken. We must have shaken the picture loose when we opened the door.” He bent and leaned the picture against the wall, then moved to join her at the entrance to the hall.

Mandy looked at him and their eyes met. She was biting her lips trying not to laugh but she was losing the battle.

“Oh, go ahead,” he said, grinning. “Detective Kelly on the prowl, I know, very funny. If you have any dangerous panda pictures preparing to jump you, I’m your man.”

Mandy broke down and laughed openly as he joined her. She leaned her head against his shoulder weakly as they both chuckled at the absurdity of the situation and she thought, He’s back. Wherever he went when that phone call came, he’s back. She felt his hand cup the back of her head and press her face against his coat gently. When she moved away to look at him he was gazing down at her, his smile fading.

He’s going to kiss me, she thought. Her lips were parting in eager anticipation when he stepped back suddenly and said, “I should go. I just wanted to make sure your place was clean. You’ll be all right now.” He moved toward the hall in a surge of activity that seemed close to flight.

* * * * *

Kelly went back to the cruiser and tore off his jacket, balling it up in frustration and tossing it onto the back seat of the car. Amanda had worn it for several hours and it was now permeated with the scent of her perfume, reminding him of her constantly.

As if he needed something that perceptible to haunt him. She was on his mind all the time anyway. Now the thing smelled just like her and he would never be able to forget her. He would have to get rid of it. He marked the coat for donation in his mind as he turned out of Amanda’s complex and got on the highway, heading back to the station.

Her hair had felt like silk when he touched it, dark red silk slipping through his fingers. And she had stepped smoothly into the curve of his body, the top of her head coming to his bicep. She was just shoulder high. She fit him like a sheath.

That image brought up other ideas which he knew he shouldn’t consider, but which occupied his mind until he almost ran a stoplight. He screeched to a halt and closed his eyes briefly, then stared at the light, waiting for it to change.

He was losing control of this situation. Amanda was a wild card and he didn’t like variables. He was floundering, not sure how to handle her but unwilling to do what he knew he should: ask for a change of assignment and get the hell away from her.

Kelly sensed that he was out of his depth. To the outside world he appeared like a consummate womanizer who got all the ladies with a glance. But he ensured his success by never straying beyond his safety zone, sticking with the type of woman more impressed by crystalline blue eyes and sculpted muscles than intellectual prowess or financial success. The former he could provide, the latter not so much. Amanda Redfield definitely fell outside his self imposed limits. Under ordinary circumstances he would have avoided a woman like her as too much of a challenge, but she had been dumped on him by his boss and the experience had proven to be very different from what he’d expected.

She surprised him every day. She was open and honest and, this was the big shock, not a snob. He had expected a chilly, well financed socialite and instead he had gotten a real person, a flesh and blood woman who was whip smart and very pretty, true, but also frightened and uncertain. And the biggest surprise was that she liked him a lot and was very attracted to him.

He might not be Einstein, but he was never wrong about that.

The situation was a recipe for disaster. He had taken this assignment while trying to get ahead in his career, but that objective had gone out the window once he met her. She appealed to him way too much. And there was the additional element of wanting to protect her, which was becoming more and more important to him every day.

It didn’t help that she was so…kind. If she had apologized to him once more about her hissy snit in the car, perfectly understandable once he’d heard the backstory, he would have kissed her to silence her. Sophisticated young ladies like her had rarely cared much about hurting his feelings, and the fact that she did care touched him in a way that he knew was dangerous.

He had also told her way too much after her accident. Chattiness had never been his affliction, but he could still hear himself yammering away to her about his tactical class in the Marines and the waitress who was serving them. What the hell was wrong with him? He never talked about his past or his personal life, yet whenever he spent five minutes of free time with Amanda he ran off at the mouth like a pageant contestant at a press conference.

What he didn’t want to admit, even to himself, was that he talked to her because he could feel that she was actually interested in him. She was the audience no one could resist: genuine appreciation.

Kelly edged the car forward when the light changed. He knew he was trapped. Manning would blow sky high if Kelly did the slightest thing to upset the lieutenant’s carefully crafted plan, so he had no choice but to go through with it.

He would have to be very careful, though.

And he would have to ditch the perfumed coat.

* * * * *

Amanda sat on the sofa in her living room and remained there for a long time. It took a while for her hands to stop shaking after Kelly left, and even longer for the residue of his touch to fade from her consciousness. She had noticed that during their time together in his office he was always very careful to touch her as little as possible; he stepped around her gingerly as if she were encircled by a ring of fire. But today he had covered her hand with his at the cafe, and then clasped her to him, too briefly, when they were laughing. And he had touched her hair.

She knew that she was regressing badly when she kept replaying those moments in her mind, as if nursing a junior high crush.

She finally got up and went into the bedroom, moving past the panda picture on the floor. That episode had been pretty funny; she could still feel him shaking with silent laughter, feel the rough cloth of his jacket against her skin.

She sighed. Enough of that. Time to take a shower and put Detective Kelly out of her mind.

If she could.

3

The next week passed unproductively, leaving Mandy feeling guilty again for wasting everyone’s time and Kelly feeling frustrated at his inability to make any progress. They went through the motions of examining records but Mandy could sense a sea change in his attitude toward her. He was distant and preoccupied, still always polite and never impatient, but the personal connection she’d made with him on the day of the accident was gone.