Heart of Gold (4 page)

Nothing,
nothing
galled her more than being accused of something she hadn’t done. She was a decent, honorable person, a woman of integrity. When she had discovered William Gerrard was involved in a scam to profit from defense contracts, she had gone straight to the authorities and told them all she knew. She had done the patriotic thing, and now she was paying for it by having to put up with a cynical cop who seemed to think she had masterminded the entire evil plan.

While she hacked up a stalk of celery, she tried her best to dismiss the incident on the staircase. Unfortunately the memory of that incidental contact was a stubborn one. She thought she could still feel the tips of his fingers pressing into her breast. A traitorous flush washed over her, and Faith cursed herself and her breast and Shane Callan and all men everywhere.

With brown eyes narrowed and sparking with anger, she planted a huge onion on the chopping block and bisected it with one violent slice of the knife. Little flecks of white exploded off the wooden surface as she chopped with a vengeance.

“Mama, can I help?” Lindy asked, tugging at Faith’s pant leg.

“No, Lindy, this is Mama’s work,” she said, dismissing her daughter and letting her mind turn back to nasty speculation as to the species occupying space in Shane Callan’s family tree.

“But I’m a mama too,” Lindy protested crossly. “I put my baby to bed, and now I have to make supper.”

“Not tonight.”

Lindy stamped her foot in a rare show of temper. “Yes!”

“Lindy.” Faith heaved an impatient sigh, put her knife down, and lifted a hand to push her bangs back from her forehead. Burning, stinging tears rose immediately in her eyes from the strong onion scent that drenched her fingers.

Biting her tongue on a string of curses, she grabbed a towel and sank to the floor with her back to the cabinets, feeling frustrated and defeated and tired and just plain mad. Lindy stared at her with wide, worried brown eyes.

“Don’t cry,” she said, her bottom lip trembling threateningly. “I don’t like it when you cry, Mama.”

Faith held her arms out to her little daughter and was immediately engulfed in a warm hug, the smell of baby powder and little girl washing over her. “I’m sorry, sweetie. Mama’s not having a very good day.”

Lindy hugged her tighter and patted her back consolingly. “Poor Mama.”

Poor Mama, Faith agreed silently, as she took comfort from holding her child. She had foolishly believed all her troubles had been left behind. The width of a continent separated her from the man who had imprisoned her in an empty, miserable life. But her problems weren’t over. There was one big, disgustingly handsome one right down the hall, waiting for her to call him to dinner.

“A mansion in the mist,” the man said softly to himself as he lowered his binoculars and sat back against the plush leather seat of the rented Jag. An evil smile turned his lips upward as he ran a loving hand over the gun that lay on top of a folder full of illegally reproduced Justice Department reports. Briefly he wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed that one lowly secretary had never returned from her hastily requested vacation. Just as quickly the thought was dismissed, and he stared once again at the inn perched at the cliff’s edge. “A mansion in the mist. How very Gothic. How very apropos. The perfect setting for a murder.”

TWO

“I
S THAT
REALLY
NECESSARY,
Mr. Callan?” Faith asked as she passed him the salad bowl.

Shane followed the path of her startled dark eyes to the place where his tweed jacket opened just enough to give her a glimpse of the nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson strapped to his shoulder.

“It’s just part of the uniform,” he said blandly, his cool, level gaze drinking in her appearance. She had traded her sweatshirt for a soft, aquamarine V-neck sweater, but she still wore no makeup and no jewelry except for the simple heart necklace. Even so, he had all he could do to pull his gaze off her.

“It’s a fashion accessory I’d rather not see around my home,” Faith said weakly. Strange, contradictory thrills ran through her at the thought that Shane Callan would look good holding a gun.

Shane gave her a dangerous smile full of predatory promise. “Then stop staring at my chest. Please pass the pepper.”

Trying to ignore the rough sensuality of his low voice, Faith handed him the pepper mill. His hand closed around it, briefly trapping her fingers beneath his. Like metal filings to magnets, her gaze flew up to meet his as her heart vaulted into her throat. Shane’s expression gave away nothing, yet the message that passed between them was very clear on a basic, instinctive level. Faith shivered as he allowed her to draw her hand away.

Holy smoke, she thought, staring down at her plate. In twelve years of marriage she had never experienced such a powerful physical reaction as she had when this man touched her—and he didn’t even do it on purpose. What rotten luck that she would find that kind of attraction with a man who was a total creep. A handsome creep, but a creep just the same, she decided, trying to dredge up some of the anger she had wallowed in earlier.

Shane took note of the color that tinted Faith’s fair complexion, then forced his attention away again as he felt his body responding to subliminal messages. Dammit, she got him hot—and she wasn’t even trying! Lord help him if she ever decided it would be to her advantage to seduce him, Shane thought, disgusted with this unusual lack of self-control.

They were seated at one of several tables that occupied the inn’s large, elegant dining room. Apparently Captain Dugan had built this section of the house during the boom years of his shipping trade, he thought, as he took in the white marble fireplace and the heavy mahogany antiques that filled the room.

Surreptitiously he studied the other members of the dinner party. Across from him sat Jayne Jordan, petite and pretty with rather funky taste in clothes. She wore a man’s houndstooth jacket over a silk-and-lace camisole. Opposite Faith sat her other friend, Alaina Montgomery, all cool poise and designer labels.

The women made an interesting trio, Shane mused as he absently raised a forkful of salad to his mouth and began to chew. His eyes widened as his teeth stopped working in midchew. He glanced at the other two women seated at the table. They both wore similar looks and had frozen with their forks lifted halfway to their mouths.

At the other end of the table Alaina Montgomery swallowed first and delicately dabbed at her lush mouth with a rose-colored cloth napkin. “Onion salad,” she said with a hint of humor in her husky alto voice. “Is this a new recipe, Faith?”

Faith took in the expressions of the other adults at the table. What had she done to the salad? As everyone watched her expectantly, she took a bite of hers and choked.

Lord, she’d thrown the entire chopped onion into the bowl!

“Sorry,” she said, shooting Shane a look that mixed amusement with annoyance. “I guess I was a little distracted in the kitchen tonight.”

“Any other surprises we ought to know about?” he asked, one dark brow crooking upward as he took the bread basket she thrust at him.

“I laced your coffee with arsenic,” she said sweetly.

He barely managed to keep his laughter locked in his chest. His eyes sparkled with rare good humor. “How thoughtful of you.”

“What’s arsnip, Mama?” Lindy asked, pausing in her game of stir-the-peas-on-the-plate.

“That’s something we give to very special guests, like Mr. Callan,” Faith said, her expression deadpan.

Something about him just brought out the devil in her, she thought, as she leaned over to cut her daughter’s meat. She had never teased William that way. Of course, expending emotion on William Gerrard had been a wasted effort. She had learned that early on in their marriage.

What William had wanted from her had nothing to do with emotion. That had been a very unpleasant reality for a young woman who had a wealth of love inside her. For a long time she had waited and hoped and prayed he would change, that she could change him, but over and over her love had been tossed back in her face. Her husband hadn’t had the time or the capacity to love another human being. His hunger for power and money had overridden that.

“Gee, Mom, I think I’m grown-up enough to cut my own meat,” Shane said dryly.

Faith jerked her head up, her startled gaze colliding with his. Out of habit she had sliced Lindy’s roast, then her own, and had somehow ended up with her knife on Shane’s plate. Her breath stuck in her throat as she stared at him. Lord, he was good-looking, and he was definitely grown-up enough to cut his own meat.

Managing to scrape together some bravado, she sat back and gave him a sassy look. “Well, you didn’t tell me you were housebroken.”

“Heck, yes, ma’am.” He sent her a dazzling smile. “I’m potty trained and everything.”

“What a pleasant surprise,” Faith commented, fighting to keep a straight face. She refused to be charmed by a man who thought she was a criminal.

“Don’t take it personally, Mr. Callan,” Jayne Jordan said, her eyes sparkling with laughter as she looked across the table at him. She tossed her mane of auburn hair over her shoulder as she shot a teasing grin at her friend. “Faith is hyper-maternal. She’ll probably try to button your coat up for you too.”

Shane couldn’t stop the fleeting image of Faith
un
buttoning his clothes. Stabbing a chunk of beef, he cursed his suddenly rebellious libido.

“I’ll try to stop myself short of spitting on my fingers and combing your hair,” Faith pledged.

“Gee, thanks.”

As everyone settled into the task of devouring the excellent meal, Shane focused his attention on work. This case was a far cry from what he was accustomed to, but he was determined to do the job right. He had already been on the phone chewing out Banks about the shoddy background work that had been done. If he had been a few days later in getting here, the place would have been crawling with suspects. Faith Kincaid and her DataScam testimony might have been lying at the bottom of a cliff, shoved off by a supposed guest of the Keepsake Inn.

“What will you tell your guests when you call to cancel their reservations?”

“Nothing,” Faith said with false calm as she buttered a dinner roll. “I’m not going to call them, because I’m not going to cancel.”

“Yes, you are,” Shane said, carefully enunciating each word for emphasis. He leaned toward her, trying to intimidate her with his size as well as his cool stare.

“No, I’m not,” Faith said just as clearly. She leaned forward as well, a dizzying rush of adrenaline surging through her as she met his challenge. It was a heady feeling, one that walked a fine line between anger and passion. As she looked up at him, she felt herself teetering on that line.

“Faith,” Alaina said cautiously, “if Mr. Callan thinks—”

“If Mr. Callan thinks, I’ll consider it a real bonus for my tax dollar.” She could see a muscle jerk in his strong jaw, but the warning didn’t stop the recklessness he inspired in her. “Canceling my grand opening isn’t any more necessary than Mr. Callan’s presence here is.”

Tension sang in the air like an overloaded power line as brown eyes warred with gray. Faith thought she could feel the heat of his rising temper rolling off him like steam.

Lindy, happily oblivious to what was going on between the adults at the table, picked up the oddly shaped bun on her plate and held it out toward Shane. “Lookit,” she said, giving him her shy smile. “I made it all by myself.”

The anger drained out of Shane as Faith Kincaid’s little daughter caught his attention. What a heart stealer. So sweet, so innocent. When was the last time anything that pure and good had come within ten feet of him, he wondered.

Giving the bun a serious look, he cleared his throat and said, “That’s very nice.”

Lindy beamed. “It’s a bun.”

Faith released a pent-up breath and ran a slightly unsteady hand over her daughter’s hair. Lindy to the rescue again, she thought with a tender smile. No telling where her reckless abandon would have landed her had she pushed Callan another step. He was obviously a man whose authority was seldom questioned. “Lindy likes to help me in the kitchen. Don’t you, sweetie?”

“Uh-huh.” To Shane she explained, “I’m gonna be a mama when I grow up.” She slid down off her chair and went around the table to present her doll to Shane. “This is my baby. Her name is Mary.”

Ordinarily Faith would have herded her daughter back to her chair with a gentle reprimand for disturbing a guest’s dinner, but she was too busy watching Callan handle the situation. Something in his expression changed drastically as he looked at Lindy. The icy quality melted from his gray eyes, all the hard edges of his face softened. He looked almost … vulnerable. He accepted Lindy’s doll a bit awkwardly, but with all the care he would have shown had Mary been a real baby rather than a hand-me-down doll with frizzy brown hair and one eye that liked to stick shut.

It hit Faith that she knew nothing about him. Perhaps he had a wife and children of his own someplace, and he was separated from them because he had to be here watching out for her. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe … maybe she was romanticizing the situation, as usual.

Oh, Faith, she sighed inwardly, haven’t you learned your lesson? There’s no such thing as happily ever after. You, of all people, should know that.

“See,” Lindy said to Shane, pointing at her doll. “She has real eyelashes.”

Shane bent his dark head down as he handed the doll back to the little girl. “She’s a very pretty baby,” he said gravely.

Lindy readily agreed. “Uh-huh. She used to be my mama’s baby when Mama was little like me.” She cradled the doll expertly in her arms and looked up at Shane. “Do you know where babies come from?”

All three women at the table stifled giggles as the super-cool Agent Callan blushed like a teenager. Even his ears turned red.

“Uh—umm—well,” Shane stammered.

Lindy gazed up at him, patiently waiting for an answer. He looked to Faith, his expression comically desperate. She offered nothing more helpful than a placid smile.

Jayne finally took pity on him and came around the table to take Lindy’s hand. “Let’s go get that pudding we made this afternoon, sugar plum.”

Her earthshaking question easily dismissed, Lindy gave Shane a look that was pure flirtation and said, “It’s chocolate.”

“Do you have children, Mr. Callan?” Faith asked nonchalantly, not willing to admit to herself that she was holding her breath in anticipation of his answer.

“No.” Shane stared at his plate, angry at feeling so unsettled. Dammit, Faith Kincaid had thrown him badly enough, he didn’t need her daughter knocking his feet out from under him as well. It was just that they seemed so …
normal
. And everything he had seen in the last few years had been a perversion of normal life.

“Are you—”

“I’d rather not discuss my personal life,” he said curtly.

Deep inside him was the hollow ring of derisive laughter. He didn’t have a personal life to discuss. His job was his life, because that was the way it had to be. He lived in a sort of vacuum, existing with no emotional entanglements, because emotional entanglements were dangerous to all parties involved. He had learned that lesson in the cruelest way possible.

“I’m sorry,” Faith said quietly, not sure where the words had come from. A sudden sense of emptiness ached in her chest as she looked at Shane. The pain was so sharp, it nearly took her breath away.

“Mr. Callan, how seriously are you taking these threats that have been made against Faith?” Alaina asked.

“Considering her value as a witness in the Data-Tech case, we have to take every precaution,” Shane said, glad to have something concrete to focus his attention on. “We have every reason to believe Gerrard and his accomplices will make good on the threats if given the chance.”

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Faith grumbled. “William isn’t violent; he was only out for the money.”

“Well, you would know more about that than I,” Shane remarked dryly, his face showing nothing of the unrest inside him. A part of him stubbornly insisted she was guilty. Another part of him wanted to believe in her innocence. And everything male in him simply ached looking at her.

Where had his concentration gone? What had happened to his ability to detach himself emotionally? Faith Kincaid was a job. It made no difference to him if she was guilty or not. So why did he suddenly have this war raging inside him?

He sat back in his chair with a frustrated sigh and reached inside his coat for a cigarette as Jayne and Lindy returned from the kitchen with the pudding.

“Unless you intend on eating your pudding with that cigarette, I’ll have to ask you to leave, Mr. Callan,” Faith said with as much haughty disdain as she could muster. “This dining room is a smoke-free environment.”

Shane stared at her, nonplussed. “You’re joking.”

“I’m afraid she’s not,” Alaina said, rising from her chair with a wry smile. “Come along, Mr. Callan. We’ll banish ourselves to the front porch.”

Outside the evening had turned a darker shade of gray. The lights that flanked the double doors created a small pool of warm light on the porch. Shane automatically shunned it in favor of a darker spot with a sweeping view of the grounds, where he could put his back to the wall and maintain a cautious vigil.

“Where were you practicing law before you came here?” He lit Alaina’s cigarette for her and waited for an answer he already knew. Banks had hurriedly scraped up facts on Alaina Montgomery and on Jayne Jordan, a film critic who had been based in LA until two months ago.