Heart of Gold (5 page)

“Chicago,” she said on a stream of smoke.

“Strange coincidence, isn’t it?” Shane lit his own cigarette and took a long, deep pull on it. “That you were living in the same city as DataTech headquarters.”

“Life’s funny,” she said, but her tone held no laughter.

“What made you give up a lucrative practice and move out here?”

“I was burned out.”

She wasn’t telling him everything, but then he’d known she wouldn’t. Alaina was a woman who gave away only what was absolutely necessary, automatically holding facts in reserve. He didn’t envy anyone going up against her in a courtroom.

As she looked up at him, Shane recognized something in her direct, measuring gaze—cynicism, wariness; two of his own best friends.

“I didn’t ask you out here to discuss the vagaries of fate, Mr. Callan. I want to talk about Faith.”

“What about her?”

“I don’t want to see her hurt—either by William Gerrard or you.”

“Do you want to see her dead?” he asked point-blank. He could see the question confused her for only a split second; then her mind put together the same puzzle pieces his had.

She laughed, seemingly amused by his deduction. Almost admiringly she said, “My, you’re a bastard.”

“I’m a realist.” He picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue, his eyes never leaving Alaina’s. “You came here about the same time Faith did. You obviously ran with a flashy crowd. No reason you couldn’t have known the DataTech big shots.”

“What’s my motive for killing my best friend?” she asked, obviously intrigued by his theory.

“Money is always a nice neat one. Lord knows there’s a load of it to be had in the defense contracts game—honestly or otherwise. Greed is a great motivator.”

“Don’t I know it,” Alaina said, a hint of bitterness in her tone.

She was silent for a moment as she finished her cigarette and ground the butt out on the porch railing. She gave Shane a long, measuring look. “My friends and I moved here because we needed a change of scenery. We all came to a crossroads in our lives and decided to take the same new path. I wouldn’t hurt Faith or Jayne if you held a gun to my head. We’re friends; we care about one another.”

“And look out for one another?”

“Faith needs someone to look out for her. In spite of everything she went through with Gerrard, she’s too trusting.”

“And you’re not?”

“No. I don’t trust people, and I don’t romanticize their motives. If you hurt her, I’ll see that you pay for it.” She gave him a shrewd smile. “As you guessed, I have some very influential friends.”

“Why would I hurt her?” He dismissed her threat. A man who had nothing, had nothing to lose. “I’m here to see she doesn’t get hurt.”

Alaina’s gaze was steady and as cool as the fog that surrounded the house. “Then we won’t have a problem, will we?”

Shane tossed his cigarette off the porch as he watched her saunter toward the front door. More amused than angry, he asked, “Who appointed you watchdog?”

She tossed him a saucy look over her shoulder. “It’s a self-appointed role. I’m the only Doberman in the pack.”

“Somebody should call Clint Eastwood,” Jayne said as she carried plates into the kitchen, “to tell him this Callan guy has his voice.”

Faith’s smile was distracted and halfhearted at best. Jayne gave her a little nudge. “You do it, honey. I’ve been on Clint’s bad side since I told a few billion people his last movie wasn’t worth eating stale popcorn for.”

Faith stepped aside from the dishwasher and leaned back against the counter, hugging herself and fighting back tears that had been threatening for hours. She felt as if all her emotions were suddenly ganging up on her, and Jayne’s attempt to lighten the mood only made her feel worse.

“Hey,” Jayne teased gently, though her eyes were full of concern. “Don’t worry about Clint. He’ll bounce back.”

“I don’t think she’s upset about Clint,” Alaina said as she walked in. “It’s our own real-life version of Dirty Harry, isn’t it?”

The last subject Faith wanted to discuss was Shane Callan. Nor did she care to go into the strange emotions he drew out of her, charming her one minute and accusing her the next. She decided instead to focus on the reason Callan was there, which was equally unpleasant but easier to understand.

She gave her friends an apologetic look. “I didn’t want to involve the two of you in any of this trial business. I’m sorry.”

Jayne slid an arm around Faith’s shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Honey, what’s the use in having friends if you can’t depend on them in a crisis?”

Alaina crossed her arms in front of her and nodded decisively. “She’s right.”

“Thanks,” Faith murmured, wiping a tear from her lashes.

It had been years since she’d had the solid support of her friends. During her marriage to William she had had no one to depend upon except herself. Now Alaina and Jayne were offering her their shoulders to lean on, and she felt torn between the desire to accept and the ingrained habit of handling her troubles herself.

“I really wanted to believe I’d left everything associated with William behind when I left Washington,” she said, shaking her head in dismay. “Now I’ve got a federal agent skulking around.”

“Look on the bright side.” Jayne winked at her. “At least he’s not hard on the eyes.”

That was a fact, Faith thought. It was a fact that made her feel distinctly uneasy. There was something vitally, basically male in Shane Callan that all but reached out and touched the most feminine parts of her. Just the thought of his hard, aristocratic good looks was enough to send heat rushing under her skin. He was making her crazy. What was she doing feeling attracted to the man, knowing what he thought of her?

“He does a hell of a job of fraying nerves, though,” Alaina concluded.

Jayne gazed off into space. “He does seem rather hostile, doesn’t he? I wonder what motivates that feeling,” she said, trying to dissect Shane’s performance as if he were a character in a movie. Her brow knitted. “He could be out of touch with his aura.”

“Aura my Aunt Sadie.” Alaina sniffed. “He’s a cop. The attitude is a prerequisite for the job.” Dismissing the topic, she turned toward Faith. “Call it a night. Jayne and I can take care of the kitchen. Go read Lindy a bedtime story or something.”

Faith turned to dump her leftover onion salad into the trash. “She’s already asleep; she wasn’t feeling well. Besides, I can’t leave you two to handle Robo-Cop alone, when I’m the reason he’s here. Where is he anyway?” she asked, swearing to herself it was only idle curiosity that made her ask, not unbridled lust.

“On the porch.”

“Shane Callan,” Jayne mused dreamily. “With that name and that voice and those looks, it is a crime against humanity that he hasn’t found his way to Hollywood.”

“I only wish he hadn’t found his way here,” Faith complained, fanning herself with a pot holder as her hormones threatened to riot.

“Your safety is important,” Alaina said, shaking a serving spoon at her. “And not only to the Justice Department. If they think there’s some reason to assign you protection, then you ought to accept it.”

“They’re overreacting,” Faith insisted.

“Are they overreacting or are you
under
reacting?” Jayne questioned gently. “Honey, no one could blame you for not wanting to believe your life is in danger.”

Faith twisted the pot holder in her hands. “I don’t know anymore. The trial is a month away yet. I’d rather not think of it at all, but now I’ll be reminded of it every time I turn around and find Eliot Ness watching me as if I’m public enemy number one.”

“He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?” Jayne gave a half laugh, then made a stern face and propped her hands on her hips. “Shane Callan—he’s not just a man, he’s an adventure.”

Even Faith managed to laugh. Maybe Jayne was right in trying to find a lighter side to the situation. It was absurd for a federal agent to suspect her of wrongdoing. She was the most ordinary of women. Her needs were simple, she aspired to nothing beyond being a good mother. Yet this cynical, world-weary cop was watching her with an eagle eye. The joke was on Shane Callan.

But Shane Callan wasn’t laughing when he burst in the back door of the kitchen. His gun wasn’t laughing either. He pressed the nose of it to the head of the frazzled gray-haired man he shoved into the room ahead of him. Faith and Jayne both shrieked and jumped as Callan roughly spun the man around and slammed him back against the kitchen wall, causing three copper molds to clatter to the floor.

“Who the hell are you, and what the hell were you doing under that window?” Shane growled the words in the older man’s face.

The old man sputtered right back, though he was in no position to make demands. “Let me go, ye sly devil!” he ordered in an oddly lilting voice. “Who do ye think ye are, wavin’ a gun about!”

Shane’s fist wound tighter into the knot of fabric he clutched beneath the man’s bearded chin. “I’m the man who’s going to make you very unhappy if you don’t start answering questions.”

The control on Faith’s temper snapped like a toothpick when she realized whom Shane was holding at gunpoint. Furious, without a thought as to what Callan’s reaction would be, she stormed across the room.

“For Pete’s sake, put that gun down before you hurt someone! That’s my caretaker you’re assaulting, you overgrown bully.”

Shane loosened his hold on the man’s dirty brown work jacket and half turned to glare at Faith, lowering his pistol as he did so.

“Give me that,” she snapped, snatching the gun from his slack hand. “You obnoxious jerk! You can’t just bust into my home with guns a-blazing like some kind of reincarnated John Wayne, scaring everybody half to death! You could have given poor Mr. Fitz a heart attack!”

Mr. Fitz stepped away from the wall and his captor, somehow managing to look down his hooked nose at Shane, who stood a head taller. He adjusted his jacket, which reeked of fish, like a king arranging his cloak, then stroked a smoothing hand over his shaggy gray beard.

Shane ignored the old geezer in favor of riveting Faith with a burning look. He was furious with himself for letting her take his gun. What the hell was wrong with him? Was he so off his game he could let a slip of a woman get the drop on him? Or was it just this particular woman, an annoying little voice asked him. He was acting like a green rookie, and it was all Faith Kincaid’s fault. He scowled at her.

Suddenly realizing she had his pistol in her hand, she grimaced at it as if it were a slimy dead fish and offered it back to him, holding it pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “Here. Take this awful thing and put it away,” she said in her sternest motherly tone. For added oomph she shook her finger at him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, pulling a gun on poor Mr. Fitz. He’s no killer.”

Shane holstered the pistol, an ominous frown pulling his black brows low over his eyes. Lord, she made him feel as if he were ten all over again, in trouble for throwing spit wads in school. “How was I supposed to know that? No one bothered to tell me there was a Mr. Fitz.”

Alaina stepped between them, defusing the situation with an introduction as the telephone rang in the background. “Mr. Callan, this is Faith’s caretaker, Jack Fitz. Mr. Fitz, this is Agent Callan. The government sent him to keep an eye on Faith because of that trial business.”

Mr. Fitz snorted like an infuriated billy goat, his whiskered chin set at a defiant angle. “That better be all ye keep on her, ye big rascal.”

Shane rolled his eyes and heaved a much-put-upon sigh. Half under his breath he said, “This place is unbelievable.”

“Feel free to go back to Washington to report that,” Faith said. She was still seething. She’d had it with him upsetting her household and her nervous system. A quiet life was all she wanted. “You’re not welcome here, Mr. Callan. You’re not wanted, and you’re not needed.”

“You’ve made that first part abundantly clear, Ms. Kincaid,” he said, his voice low and silky as he leaned over her.

Faith met his cool, intense stare with one of her own. Shane’s look was that of a man who could have stared down the devil himself. Perhaps he had. And underlying the anger that snapped between them like a live wire she could feel a pull, an attraction she neither wanted nor welcomed. A strange tingling raced over her skin as the moment stretched out between them.

“Faith,” Jayne called, breaking the tension. “Telephone.”

Almost weak with relief, Faith turned away from the confrontation. Her knees wobbled a bit as she crossed the room to take the receiver from Jayne.

“Hello, this is Faith Kincaid.”

“How would you like to be dead, Mrs. Gerrard?” a man’s voice questioned very softly.

Blinding, instantaneous fear lodged in Faith’s throat. She felt as if she had suddenly been encased in ice, and yet her palms were sweating as she clutched the receiver to her ear. The only thing she could think to say was ridiculous, but she said it anyway, her voice shot through with trembling threads of panic. “Who is this?”

“A friend,” the man answered, but there was nothing friendly in his voice; it held all the silky menace of a viper, dark and evil. “A friend who thinks it would be better if you didn’t testify, because I’d hate to have to kill you.”

For a long moment Faith listened to the silence after the soft click on the other end of the line. Finally she hung up and turned slowly to face the other people in the room. If she had felt weak before the call, she felt faint now, and she knew she had turned as white as the kitchen appliances. She was certain no one could feel as cold and terrified as she did and still have a red blood cell left in her body.

Everyone in the room stared at her, their faces grim with worry. They seemed miles away, even though they were in the same room.

She didn’t turn to her friends. Her gaze went directly, instinctively to Shane Callan and locked on him desperately, as if she could somehow draw strength from merely looking at him. Faith didn’t question her reaction; fear had stripped away the ability to question and reason.

Managing to draw a shaky breath into her lungs, she said, “It would seem I was a bit hasty in saying you aren’t needed here.”