On Thin Ice (12 page)

No familiar thrill of triumph accompanied the discovery. No sense of accomplishment, no swell of excitement that here lay the key to winning another case, the key to her career. Instead she felt sickened that she would be instrumental in making certain that, once more, Franco Sabatino escaped paying for his crimes. With this development she knew they would get him off. And she realized with stomach-churning dread and despair that there was nothing on this earth she wanted less than to see Franco Sabatino go free.

“Nothing here to get Sabatino off,” Devlin muttered, flipping another page. Though he never counted on police error, it sure made his cases easier when it occurred. “Not even a hint of a glitch.” He snapped the last file shut and tossed it on the table in disgust. “How about you?” he asked Gabrielle. “Find anything?”

She looked at him for a moment, blinked, then looked away. “Nothing,” she said, gathering her stack of reports together and closing the files.

“Damn!” Frustrated, he slapped his hand on the table. “This isn’t looking good.”

“Something—” She hesitated and cleared her throat. “Something’s bound to turn up.”

Was it his imagination or did she look paler than she had a few minutes ago? “What enthusiasm. You sound like you’d just as soon it didn’t.”

“Don’t be absurd,” she snapped, fiddling with the files. “You’re not the only one who wants to win.”

Considering her, he said slowly, “I hadn’t thought so.” Definitely paler, he thought. Something was up with her. From what he’d seen that morning, Gabrielle hadn’t been able to concentrate worth jack on anything. Tense and distracted didn’t begin to describe her. He felt an unwanted flash of guilt, knowing that last night was bound to be at least part of her problem.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. The words snapped out, and her head had come up belligerently. She met his gaze dead-on.

Touchy, he thought, and shrugged off her sharp question. “Nothing. Come on, let’s go. We’ve done all we can for now.”

He gathered the reports together and tucked them under his arm to give back to the sergeant. “Ready?” he asked, holding the door open and looking at her.

Their glances met again, his faintly questioning, hers revealing nothing.

“Yes,” she said, and walked out ahead of him.

Devlin knew he should have told her the truth, at least before they’d left for the station. The moment he kissed her that morning he’d been certain she didn’t remember what had happened the night before. If he knew women at all, and he did, Gabrielle was driving herself crazy trying to figure out whether they’d actually slept together.

A decent man would have told her, but Devlin never claimed to be decent. Which was why his nobility the evening before hadn’t set well with him. It smacked of weakness and that made him uneasy. No, uneasy wasn’t the word. It irritated the hell out of him. He had wanted to get to her, because
she’d
gotten to him, so he’d let the charade play on. But it was beginning to leave a bad taste in his mouth.

As they walked down the narrow third-floor hallway he glanced at her. Her face was still pale and her lips were stretched into a tight, thin line, as though she were in pain. Hell, she probably was, he thought. Her hangover must be a doozy.

He watched her hand come up and clutch spasmodically at her chest. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she grew even paler. A doozy, all right. Low blow, Sinclair, he told himself, ashamed for taking advantage of her when she was down. To steady her, he put his hand beneath her arm. “Where’s the rest room? Can you make it there?”

Her eyes were opened wide, the pure panic in them sending off palpable waves of anxiety. “Yes—no—I’m—” Gasping, she tried again. “I’m—fine.”

Her chest rose and fell rapidly. No way would she make it far, he thought. He looked around for options, but before he could decide what to do, she solved the problem by dashing into the stairwell. Devlin figured there were worse places and followed her.

She was crouched down against the wall of the stairwell. After another look of horror and a desperate, “Go away!” which he ignored, she started ripping through her purse, frantically searching for something. Devlin couldn’t imagine what she wanted, but it occurred to him that if she’d been about to throw up, she’d already held off longer than he’d have thought possible. Pills? he wondered. Was she looking for medicine of some sort?

He squatted and grabbed the purse from her, dumping the contents out and spreading them over the floor. Junk. Keys, mints, lipstick, a novel, notes. Pens, a checkbook, a wallet. And there it was, bright as a beacon even before she snatched it up. A plain brown paper bag, carefully folded.

You could’ve blown him over with a gentle breeze.
A panic attack?
he wondered, staring as she fit the open end of the bag over her mouth. Damn straight, and a monster one, at that. She huddled against the wall, breathing in and out of the paper bag. Devlin helped her sit, then sat beside her. Gently, he pushed her head down, unconsciously stroking her hair, patting her back, murmuring soothing sounds.

As he waited for her to regain control, his emotions reeled in total chaos. He had seen one or two people hyperventilate before, but he’d never seen the equal of Gabrielle’s attack. Gabrielle Rousseau, subject to blowout panic attacks? Of all people he would never have suspected to have such a problem, Gabrielle topped the list. Yet he was seeing it with his own eyes.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally dropped her hands to her lap and leaned her head back against the wall. From above, Devlin heard a door open, and a few seconds later a policeman clattered down the stairs.

“Everything all right here?” he asked, giving them a sharp-eyed look as he paused at the landing.

“Fine,” Devlin said. “My associate just had a dizzy spell. Touch of flu, I guess.” With a nod, the officer continued on his way.

“Thanks.”

Her voice was so low and strained, Devlin barely heard the word. “Better now?” he asked, smoothing her hair back from her face. The tender gesture surprised him as much as it apparently did Gabrielle. Good God, what was happening here? What he felt went beyond mere compassion. He wanted to . . . protect her, he realized. Shield her. And he wasn’t at all sure he could deal with that feeling.

Her eyes wide, the pupils dilated, she stared at him and slowly nodded. “They don’t last long.”

“Do you have these often?”

“No.” She spoke quickly, too quickly. Closing her eyes, she was silent for a few moments. “I’m all right,” she said, taking another deep breath. “Let’s go.”

Devlin rose and helped her up. If she had the attacks so rarely, why did she carry a paper bag in her purse? He waited until they were in the parking lot before he said, “Have you seen a doctor about this?”

Her back stiffened; her chin lifted. He watched the transformation from shaky and weak to strong and in control with admiration and not a little awe. But it only reinforced his certainty that Gabrielle was no stranger to these attacks.

“No. I told you, this doesn’t happen often.” She glared a challenge at him while waiting for him to unlock the car door.

He met her gaze with a look of patent disbelief. “Right. If you say so.”

“It’s just an aberration,” she snapped. “Like what happened between us last night.”

“No,”
she said between gritted teeth. “I won’t.”

“And you won’t be clawing my back with your nails at the same time you’re making those sounds.”

“I didn’t—” she started to protest. Glaring at him, she continued, “Not that either.”

“What about all those things you were whispering in my ear? The things you were promising to do to me and the things you wanted me to do to you? You won’t be doing that again either?”

Anger rolled off her in waves, raising the temperature in the car by several degrees. She started to speak, but Devlin continued, lowering his voice to a seductive murmur. “And what about how you screamed when you ca—”

“None of it!” she shouted. “We’re not doing any of it again!”

“Well, that’s certainly clear,” he said. “But,” he added with an indulgent smile, “I’m afraid you’re the one who doesn’t get it. There’s a little detail you don’t seem to be aware of.” He pulled her closer until his lips were just a few inches from hers and said softly, “None of it ever happened.”

Shock widened her eyes, deepening their color to a murky green. He was a prime bastard for treating her so badly, but it was better she find that out about him now instead of later when it would only hurt her more.

“Wh–what?”

“Well, that’s not quite true,” he said, considering. “Some of it happened. But the main event didn’t. You see, sweetheart, we didn’t make love last night.”

“We d–didn’t?” she whispered.

“Afraid not.” His gaze flickered over her as he allowed silence to dominate. With one hand, he tilted up her chin. “I like my lovers conscious.”

Cruel but necessary, he told himself, seeing the hurt dawn in her eyes. He wanted her, but he didn’t intend for her to harbor any illusions. His ambitions didn’t include being destroyed the way his father had been or being made a fool of again like Celine had done. Gabrielle deserved to know what she’d be getting if she chose to go to bed with him.

At the moment she looked much more interested in strangling him than sleeping with him. She’d lost the hurt look completely. Her face reddened, her eyes narrowed, and she jerked her wrist out of his grasp with a furious twist. Her wrathful gaze locked with his and held for a long, turbulent minute.

Then she slugged him.

No gentle tap, but a right to his jaw that snapped his head back, made his eyes water, and had him worrying she’d loosened a couple of his teeth. A slap would have been expected, but the punch shocked the hell out of him. But then, Gabrielle never did what he expected. Gingerly, he put his hand on his jaw and wiggled it before deciding it wasn’t broken.

“So much for chivalry,” he said. “You slugged me for not taking advantage of you when you were drunk?”

“No, I slugged you because you strung me along when you knew I didn’t remember what had happened. And you’re damned lucky that’s all I did.” She got out of the car, then leaned down to speak to him. “Thanks for a forgettable evening,
darling,”
she said, and slammed the door shut with window-rattling force.

Devlin watched her drive off, wondering if he’d finally outsmarted himself. Not exactly his usual smooth handling of a woman. He seemed to act like a SOB a lot around Gabrielle, and he liked it less each time it happened.

Gabrielle stirred up unwanted feelings, unacknowledged dreams that he hadn’t felt or been in touch with in a decade. His response to her scared the hell out of him. No other woman—with the exception of a select few of his clients—had ever roused his protective instincts to the degree Gabrielle did. No other woman had roused any of the feelings that had bombarded him last night and today. Oh hell, admit it, he thought. She’d been stirring him up since the day he met her. Making him feel, making him want, making him hunger for things he knew didn’t exist. Making him . . . weak.

A bad sign in a man who didn’t believe he had a heart or a conscience.

Music supposedly soothed
the savage beast, but right now it wasn’t doing that for Gabrielle. She’d reached home in such turmoil that she could barely think. Instead of rehashing an impossible situation, she’d turned to her major solace of the last fifteen years. Her piano.

Beginning with a particularly violent piece by Saint-Saëns, she ripped through, in rapid succession, selections of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart suited to her present vindictive mood. With each passionate, haunting note she vented her anger, her humiliation, and finally, a very small portion of her despair. As the last direful, lingering notes of Beethoven’s “Pathétique Sonata” echoed in the air, her fingers faltered at the keyboard. No matter how much she focused her anger on Devlin, and on herself for her stupidity in falling for him in the first place, she knew she was avoiding the worst problem.