Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (209 page)

Worry about hunger was the last thing on her mind. Too much else had happened to disturb her. Being together alone in his house brought back in clarity what had passed between them earlier. Her in his arms. The sensual demand he’d stirred in her…then as easily had extinguished with his harsh attitude toward his ex-wife.

Tyler Leighton was a complex man, Keelin told herself. She’d best not get too close.

“Freshen up, if you want,” Tyler was saying. “I’ll have something on the table in fifteen minutes.”

After racing up the stairs to Cheryl’s rooms, Keelin was ready in five. Wondering if Skelly had tried to reach her, she thought to ease her cousin’s mind if he was worrying at her whereabouts. She called him at home, expecting his machine to answer. But when the ringing was cut off, it was Himself at the other end.

“Skelly, tis Keelin.”

“Hey, cous, I was about to send a posse after you. Where’d you disappear to?”

“North Bluff. Tyler Leighton’s home.” The pause at the other end telegraphed her cousin’s disapproval. “I thought it a good idea to get closer to his daughter.” She added, “I already had another contact with Cheryl.”

“How so?”

Keelin quickly brought Skelly up to date about the dream and the search, leaving out the more personal details between her and Tyler. Skipping over the surprise visit from the dead for the moment.

“And we’ll be out looking for the area again in the morning,” she finished.

“You’re staying in his house for the night?”

“I am.”

Skelly didn’t try to hide his sigh of disapproval. “You are a big girl, so I suppose you know what you’re doing. Just promise me you’ll be careful around Leighton.”

Her cue to fill in some details. “Skelly, there’s been a development.” She wasn’t certain if telling him would worry her cousin less…or more.

“What kind of development?”

“Helen Dunn is alive and well.”

“Helen as in Leighton’s supposedly dead wife?”

From his tone, Keelin realized she’d actually shocked him. “The same. Helen was here earlier. Skelly, Tyler’s been paying off his ex-wife to play dead.”

A low whistle at the other end alarmed her. Remembering what her cousin did for a living, Keelin hoped she hadn’t made a mistake in confiding in Skelly. But before she could caution him that she expected the news to stay strictly between them, she realized she wasn’t alone.

The hair at the back of her neck rose as she twisted around to see a glowering Tyler looming over her, his pale eyes as cold as frosted steel.

Chapter Seven

“KEEP THE INFORMATION TO YOURSELF, Skelly, please,” Keelin said, her expression revealing her guilt. “I must hang up now.”

Tyler didn’t wait until the receiver hit the cradle before saying, “I have to be the most stupid man on earth.”

“You aren’t stupid.”

“Then what do you call my believing you?” He closed the gap between them. She was sitting on his daughter’s bed, for Chrissakes. Betraying Cheryl. Betraying
him
. “You swore to me that you weren’t hand-in-glove with your sleazoid reporter cousin and I bought it.”

“Surely you don’t think I was giving Skelly information for another story on you?”

“Just stop this!” He grasped her arm and brought her to her feet. “Stop playing the innocent. I’ve had enough for one day!”

All the color drained from Keelin’s face and she stared up at him with wounded eyes as if she were the injured party. Her pulse jumped in her throat. Mesmerized, he moved his free hand to her neck, slid his thumb along the center of the slender column until he found the echo of her too-rapidly beating heart.

“The least you could do is be honest with me after I’ve caught you in your lie.”

Her lips trembled, and she forced out a response. “I have been honest.”

He could sense she was afraid of him. The same way Helen had been afraid when he’d caught his ex-wife in
her
lies…

But Keelin wasn’t Helen,
a small voice inside him insisted.

He snatched his hand away and tightly contained his anger. Not to mention his disappointment.

“Now you’re going to tell me I imagined the conversation you just had with your cousin, is that it?” Tyler mused in a much calmer tone. “You didn’t waste any time filling him in on my business.”

“I merely rang Skelly to reassure him…let him know where he could find me.”

Fool that he was, Tyler wanted to believe Keelin. He even half did. But he also knew what he’d overheard.

“And Helen’s name just happened to pop up in that conversation.”

“Not exactly. Skelly had warned me about you because he couldn’t find any information about your late wife’s death. No obituary. So he thought…maybe…”

“That I did away with her?” The irony striking him, Tyler laughed. He couldn’t help himself. Anger tempered by black humor, he said, “So the whole time you’ve been helping me, you thought I was a murderer?”

“No, of course not. I never believed that, not even before I met your ex-wife.”

Her forehead furrowed in concern, Keelin moved closer and placed a placating hand on his chest. “I was only hoping to ease my cousin’s mind so that he would not worry about me,” she insisted. “That was all, Tyler. I swear you can trust me.”

“Can I?”

Could she feel the way his heart was beating unevenly beneath her fingers? Could she sense how much he wanted to believe her? Was it possible that even now, he might be fooling himself?

Just in case…he tested her. “Then prove it,” he said in a low voice, inching closer.

How far would she go to
prove
her innocence? Would she try to entice him with her lips? Her body?

When Keelin backed off, disappointment so clearly written on her features, chagrin filled him and he felt like an idiot.

“If you really do not
want
to believe me,” she said coolly, “then I shall leave your house now and never look back.”

Keelin decided she was finished with trying to convince Tyler Leighton of her good intentions. Unless he stopped her, she would find Cheryl with Skelly’s help and deliver the girl into the hands of the local constables rather than to her father, she vowed, even as she fought the frustration…and something that went far deeper.

Tyler’s expression changed, but he said nothing. Keelin crossed her arms over her chest. She would give him about two minutes to decide…and then she would leave.

Heartsick, she counted the seconds.

Only a few to spare when he finally said, “Perhaps I was mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” she echoed.

“All right. Maybe I was out of line.”

Figuring that she’d gotten more apology than Tyler would care to deliver, Keelin was satisfied. Taking a deep breath, she let her arms fall to her side.

“I am exhausted. If you’ll leave–”

“What about dinner?”

Anything that she put in her mouth now would turn to cardboard, Keelin was certain. “I find that my appetite has dulled.”

“In the morning, then.”

“I shall rise at daybreak,” she agreed.

Unless another visit with Cheryl woke her first.

BUT CHERYL MUST HAVE BEEN FAST ASLEEP HERSELF, for the only dream that came to Keelin in the wee hours of the morning was of Tyler. Rather of them together, she fumed, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

In the midst of her sleep, she’d envisioned him kissing her.

Arousing her.

Confusing her.

For, while made of flesh and blood, human emotions and passions, Keelin was not a woman to be driven by sheer lust. She believed in the kind of love found in high

romance – Romeo and Juliet, Guinevere and Launcelot, Heloïse and Abelard – the utopian state of passion her parents had never found together, sadly enough.

The kind she had only dreamed of finding…

Nevermind that all of those great epics of literature and/or history had ended in tragedy, Keelin was certain equally many real romances ended in happily-ever-after. For some reason, one just rarely heard about the good endings. Perhaps they weren’t dramatic enough. She believed that genuine and total love of mind, body and spirit existed. She was certain her grandparents Moira and Seamus had found such in each other, hence Moira’s last wish for her grandchildren.

For all of her adult life, Keelin had been waiting to meet the one man she couldn’t live without…and according to the McKenna Legacy, she was fast running out of time.

But that man simply could not be Tyler Leighton, she decided.

Not a man who could deny his child a mother.

But he was also a man who would do anything for his daughter, an inner voice argued. He was a man capable of loving another well, perhaps even more than himself.

Keelin had no doubts that Tyler loved Cheryl with his whole being, that he would do anything to rescue his daughter. He was even trying to trust
her
despite his cynicism and what must have seemed just cause. Tyler was not an unfeeling man, merely a misguided one.

So what was it about him that got to her on a very basic level? The men of Éire with whom she’d kept company had been quite different. Mostly charming and fun-filled. Uncomplicated. So why had she never fallen for one of them?

Why did she now obsess on a man of dark secrets and passions?

Keelin was still thinking on it when the first gray of dawn stole into the room. Resigned, she rose from the futon. Ten minutes later she was ready to get started.

And when she descended to the first floor, Tyler was already waiting. Rising from a chair in the living room that faced the stairs, he came toward her. If he harbored any anger from the night before, she couldn’t tell. He seemed calm enough. He even looked better rested than she until they drew closer. Then she noted the puffy flesh below his eyes that indicated he might not have slept so well, after all.

Had he lain awake thinking of his daughter half the night?

“Any dreams?” Tyler asked.

Pulse thrumming, Keelin lied. “None that would interest you.” And felt the heat rise along her neck and steal into her cheeks.

Tyler stared for a moment, and though Keelin was certain he noticed, he didn’t comment.

Instead, he said, “We’d better get going, then. I figured we could grab some coffee and whatever you want to eat at a fast food joint along the way.”

Though her stomach growled its disappointment, she said, “No hurry.”

Tyler took her at her word. They were into the city before picking up coffee for him and tea and an English muffin stuffed with bacon and scrambled egg for her. He

drove, she ate. Neither talked, yet for once Keelin didn’t sense any negative tension emanating from Tyler. He seemed to have put aside his suspicions and resentments for the moment and was concentrating on the music from a CD. Vivaldi’s
Four Seasons
.

Keelin was taking a last sip of tea by the time they arrived at the first of their six corner intersections in sight of an elevated structure.

“Here we are,” he announced, turning down the music. “Clybourn, Halsted and North Avenue.”

Keelin looked around. “Too upscale,” she pronounced.

And the next neighborhood was too poor, too near the city’s projects.

They kept on and soon crawled northwest on Milwaukee, one of the angled streets, trapped in the morning rush hour. Keelin’s mind wandered to Helen.

“Your ex-wife’s vehicle wasn’t in the drive this morning, either.” She wondered if it had been there at all during the night, or if Helen had found that male company Tyler had suggested. “Is Helen an early riser or did she give up on staying at your house?”

“Helen gives up on anything that takes work.”

Like their marriage?
she wanted to ask.

“Then you haven’t heard from her?” she queried instead.

“Not a word. And that worries me. She wouldn’t have stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong for nothing.”

“What do you think she hoped to get out of the situation?”

“Maybe she decided to sell her story to one of your cousin’s competitors.”

Keelin chose to ignore the reference to Skelly. “You don’t think she could simply be worried about her own daughter?”

“Helen?” Tyler laughed. “Now that would be a switch.”

She couldn’t believe his hard-nosed attitude. “You don’t think she loves Cheryl?”

“Helen loves Helen,” Tyler said bitterly. “She always managed to take good care of number one. She never burned to be a part of her daughter’s life before, and I seriously can’t imagine anything’s changed.”

“If she was so self-absorbed, why did you marry her?”

“I was young and foolish. Love can blind a person. Once.”

Keelin was about to argue the point when she glimpsed two free-standing telephones at the edge of the sidewalk to her right. Her pulse thrummed as she glanced around and noted the shop she should have remembered.

Just then, the Jaguar slid to a smooth stop at a major three street intersection.

“Anything familiar here?” Tyler asked, his voice neutral. He was obviously expecting another negative reply.

“The tatoo parlor,” she murmured.

“What?” He glanced back the way they’d come.

Then, breath caught in her throat, Keelin looked around transfixed. Her gaze flew from building to building, from the elevated structure to the newspaper stand. Her heart pounding, she nodded.

“Keelin?”

“This is it!” She peered behind her at the familiar landscape. “Cheryl rang you from those telephones we just passed.”

“You’re certain?”

“Positive! I didn’t remember the tatoo parlor until I actually saw it.”

The street light changed and they were forced to move ahead. Tyler wasted no time in finding a parking spot.

As he fed the meter several quarters, she asked, “So what do we do now?”

“Let’s backtrack. Maybe you’ll remember something else that’ll lead us to the building where she’s being held.”

Keelin knew that probably wouldn’t happen, but she didn’t want to argue. Didn’t want to see the hope in Tyler’s eyes die just yet.

So they started at the telephones and worked back the way Cheryl had run across the intersection. Thankfully, Tyler had thought to bring his daughter’s photograph. For the next hour, they went in and out of the few businesses that were open, and he flashed the picture in front of anyone who would look. But all he received for his trouble were blank expressions and heads shaking in the negative.