MIND READER (23 page)

“None of the above.” Her stomach rolled. “Just coffee, thanks.”

“Caron, you can’t exist on coffee and Butterfingers.” He
wiped his hands on his makeshift apron—a dishcloth
tucked into the waist of his jeans. “You’ll be hypoglyce
mic.”

“Hypo-whatever, I can’t eat that stuff.” She pointed a disgusted finger at the bowls.

He tugged the dishcloth free from his pants. “What can
you eat, then?”

“There’s pizza in the fridge. I’ll have a slice.”

Frowning his displeasure at that disclosure, Parker got
the pizza out and lit the oven.

“I like it cold.”

“Good grief, Caron.” He gave her a look of sheer horror. “Cold?”

“Cold.” She drank again from her cup. “Would you hand me the phone and dial Sandy?”

Parker got the phone, dialed the number, then sat down across from her and started doctoring his oatmeal with
honey.

While listening to Sandy, Caron ran her fingertip around
the honey jar, then licked her finger. When she hung up, she
relayed the conversation to Parker. “There’s still been no
missing-persons filed, and he doesn’t have anything new on
Forrester or Cheramie.” Caron
knew
they were connected
somehow; she felt it.

“It really irks you that he won’t believe you without the
report, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. We’ve worked together since I was seven years old.
If the man doesn’t know me by now, he never will.”

Parker agreed with a grunt, then added another dollop
of honey to his oatmeal. “So why is he holding back?”

“Because I screwed up last year.”

“We all make mistakes, Caron.” And as the hours passed
with them being together, he wondered if he hadn’t made the biggest, most unforgivable mistake of all.

“I know.”

She was sinking again; her shoulders were slumped.
“Then accept it and get on with your life.” She hadn’t
touched the pizza. Hoping to sidetrack her, he lifted the
slice and pressed it against her lips. “But first, eat.”

“You’re always shoving food in my face.” Caron glared at him, sighed and sank her teeth through the cheese and
into the crust.

When she licked at a drop of tomato sauce on her lower lip, he figured she’d realized she was hungry. And if he could keep her mind off Sarah, Caron might actually eat a decent—more or less decent—meal. “Do you feel up to
checking out Cheramie this morning?”

Still chewing, she grunted her opposition. “Forrester’s
our man, Parker. I feel it.”

“No, it’s Cheramie.” Parker slathered butter onto his
toast. The light scraping sound filled the kitchen. “Did you
see the rock on his finger?”

“It’s a zircon.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was flaunting it.” Seeing Parker’s perplexed look, she explained. “A man who owns a rock doesn’t flash it.
Wearing the ring is second nature. He forgets he has it on.”
She dipped her chin. “Another bite, please.”

Parker put down his knife and lifted the pizza. “Okay, you have a point about the ring. But I still think—”

Parker suddenly noticed that the top button on her nightgown had come undone, exposing the soft hollow at
her throat.

“So what were you thinking…
what
?”

“Cheramie,” Parker said, staring at that soft hollow and
grasping for cohesive thoughts. “We should start with him.”

Caron drank from her cup before answering. “We’ll
compromise.”

Anything would be fine with him. Her eyes looked dull.
Beautiful, but dull without their normal sparkle. Did she
have any vitamins around here?

“Parker, quit staring. You’re making me self-conscious.”

He grabbed for his spoon, then noticed she was smiling.
The tips of his ears burned.

“You’re blushing.”

“What?” he asked. “Real men can’t blush?” She pulled a face, and he slid her his best dastardly look.

She laughed in his face.

“Knock it off, Snow White. You’ve had your fun.”

“Okay.” Threads of laughter lingered in her voice.
“How about we check out Cheramie this morning, then
switch to Forrester this afternoon?”

“Sounds reasonable.” Gracious, she’d let it drop. And, for the umpteenth time, he wondered how her Mike and
Greg could have willingly hurt her.

The phone rang.

Chewing a bite of toast, Parker lifted the receiver and
tucked it against Caron’s ear. “Hello.”

She lifted her chin. “It’s for you.”

Parker took the phone. “Simms.”

“Fred here, Mr. Simms. Millie just called from your of
fice. She says she has the owners’ names on those two
trucks at the Decker residence you asked about.”

“Yes?”

“Butch Decker owns the seventy-nine Ford. The other one be
longs to a Keith Forrester.”

“Thanks.” Parker dropped the receiver onto its cradle.

“Did that phone call have anything to do with the case?”

He nodded and folded his arms across his chest.

“What? Misty?”

“No. About the trucks.”

She stepped to his side. “Who owns them?”

He looked up at her looking down at him. Her hair
swung forward, caressing her cheeks. “Eat another slice of
pizza and I’ll tell you.”

“That’s blackmail.”

He grinned. “It sure is.”

“I’ve been blackmailed before, Parker Simms. I didn’t
care for the feeling.”

“Who’s the culprit? I could use a good fight.”

“My father, for one.”

“Fathers are exempt,” he replied to suit his own purposes, telling himself that it didn’t matter. “We’re talking
loves or lovers here.”

“I didn’t get good at spotting a Judas until college.” She
rubbed her wrist over Parker’s shoulder. “That’s when I clashed with Greg Cain.”

“Uh-huh.” He watched closely for signs of distrust, but
saw none.

She cocked her head. “I should’ve known about him.
Cain and Abel—remember?”

“I remember.” The similarity between himself and Cain
stung. “So what did the traitors do?”

The shadows came back to her eyes. “Pretty much the
same thing my father did. They made me care about them. And
when I did, they used it against me to get what they
wanted.”

Her forearm stilled against his shoulder. He gave it a gentle pat. “We all make mistakes, Caron. I’ve been hus
tled into bed a time or two—”

“Not my body, Parker.” She gave him a frown that could
have felled a tree. “My gift. They used me to get to it.”

There was a question in her eyes; she was asking if he was
using her, too. He was, but not the way they had. He didn’t
want material gain. He wanted peace.

Because he couldn’t be totally honest, he said nothing.

Caron realized he wasn’t going to answer, and she sighed.
“I guess I’m still a slow learner, after all. I’ve got to risk it.”
She stepped closer, bent at the waist and pecked a chaste
kiss on his cheek.

The man in him was elated that she thought he was worth
the risk. When she would have pulled back, he looped an
arm around her hips and tugged her closer. She fell across
his chest. “Now, do it right, sweetheart,” he growled out in a sorry imitation of Bogey, “and I’ll spill the works.”

Smiling, Caron kissed him. She was getting too used to
this, to sharing meals and spending time with Parker. He was getting too close, learning more about her than she’d ever exposed to any man. He was a good man. A slick
charmer with a convenient code of ethics, but a good man.
And if she wasn’t careful, she warned herself, she could
find herself falling in love with him.

He broke their kiss and nuzzled her neck. How she’d ended up in his lap, she hadn’t a clue. But the hardness at his hips, pressing against her bottom, told her that he was
equally glad she had.

Parker breathed against the hollow of her throat. “One
of the trucks belongs to—”

“Forrester.” She smiled and tweaked Parker’s nose. “I
told you so.” Then she motioned for another slice of pizza.

* * *

“Twenty-four hours of intense research, and we still don’t know
how
they’re connected.” Parker ran his hands through his hair, pushed back from Caron’s kitchen table,
stood and stretched.

“It’s got to be easier than we’re making it. We’ve missed
something simple, something basic.” She rubbed her temples
. Her eyes felt as if someone wearing sandpaper-soled
shoes had spent the night hiking across them. “Toss me
Forrester’s dossier again.”

“You’ve checked it a dozen times.”

“Thirteen’s a baker’s dozen.” When Parker reached over
several stacks and started looking through the wrong one,
she added, “No, the one on the end.”

He opened the file and spread it out before Caron. “You’re hung up on Forrester’s not listing a wife on his
dossier. But that doesn’t make him guilty of abduction.”

“No, it doesn’t. And, yes, I am hung up on that. A man
shouldn’t deny he has a wife.”

“Maybe when he completed the dossier he hadn’t mar
ried. Maybe he’s still not married.”

“And maybe dead pigs fly. How many singles do you know who wear wedding bands?” Caron tossed back at
him
.
“Would you?”

“What?”

“Deny having a wife on a dossier.”

“I might.” Parker drank from his cup. “If I thought admitting it would hurt her.”

Caron cocked her head. “Have you ever come close to
getting married?”

“Once.” That tilt curled his lip. “Peggy Shores.”

“She dumped you!” How could he almost marry a woman who’d dumped him?

“Yeah, she did. But I later inherited a trust fund from
my maternal grandparents. Peggy tried coming back.”

“Really?” That explained two things. One, how Par
ker’s family lived on an estate on a cop’s pay—it
was
Par
ker’s house; he’d said that he only lived there, but it was
his—and why Parker was skittish when it came to trusting.
Between Charley pushing Parker away to keep him from
becoming too dependent and Peggy Shores coming back for
the money, Parker had almost as much reason not to trust
others as Caron did. “Did you let Peggy come back?” He’d
said he’d almost married her.

“Almost. But right before the invitations went out I
came to my senses. I figured if she’d run out on me once,
at the first sign of trouble she’d run again.”

“Do you ever wish you had married her?” Why had she
asked that? Did she really want to hear a man she was dopey about say he wished he’d married another woman?

“No.” He blinked, then blinked again. “Maybe once in
a while, when the nights get long, I wish I’d married some
one.”

“Me, too.” Caron rested her arms on the table. The refrigerator’s condenser kicked on. The wall clock near the
stove hummed. “Trust is a fragile thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He stood up. “I’ve got to check in at my office.” Parker took his cup to the sink, drained it, then
tossed a used tea bag into the trash. “Come with me.”

The intimacy was gone, but his nonchalance wasn’t fooling her. Nor was his asking her to his office. He was
afraid to leave her here alone. Feeling tender, she shook her head. “I’ve told you before, Parker, I don’t need a keeper.”
She smiled to soften her refusal. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you forgetting—”

“I’m not forgetting,” she said quickly, interrupting him, hoping he wouldn’t mention the message left on her door
.
Somehow thinking about it wasn’t as bad as hearing about
it. When they spoke about it out loud, the incident became
too real, too frightening.