Passion and Scandal (15 page)

She was just about to give up her haphazard search for clues into his life and personality and get back to work when she found his cache of condoms in the lower right-hand drawer.

She felt a rushing tide of heat spread through her body, starting with her face and working downward over the suddenly aching tips of her breasts, curling through her belly to lie coiled and hungry, between her legs.

She slammed the drawer shut and pressed both hands to her face, as if she could somehow hold back the emotions that flooded through her, and then reached down and opened the drawer again, cautiously, like a child irresistibly drawn to touch a tempting, forbidden treasure that she knew ahead of time was only going to get her into trouble.

There were three boxes of thirty-six condoms each, assorted colors and textures, reservoir-tipped. One box was open, the top neatly torn off to allow easy access to the contents. It was half-empty.

Back on the commune when she was growing up, her aunt Sharon had seen to it that each and every kid on the place got all the information he or she would ever need about sexual responsibility and the various methods of birth control, starting with a straightforward, no-nonsense talk about human reproduction the first time any one of them asked where babies came from.

Carefully, with the tips of two fingers, Willow reached into the open box and pulled out one of the individually wrapped foil packets, automatically putting one of those lessons to good use. The packet was soft and supple in her fingers, indicating that it hadn't been sitting in the desk drawer for any great length of time.

Not only was Steve Hart neat, careful, conscientious and a loving son and brother, he was also, judging by the evidence in her hands, a very busy boy when it came to the ladies.

Willow wondered if that fact made her feel better or worse about the overwhelming attraction she felt for him. On the one hand, she didn't like the idea of being one of a crowd. On the other, there was undoubtedly a great deal to be said for a man who knew what he was doing in bed. And she had no doubt—none at all—that Steve Hart knew exactly what he was doing. In bed or out.

The question was, did she?

This insane attraction she felt toward him was something entirely outside of her experience. Oh, she'd had lovers. Two, to be exact. But the feelings they had evoked in her—even in the throes of what she'd obviously mistakenly thought was passion—were lukewarm compared to what Steve Hart made her feel just by looking at her with that teasing sideways glance of his.

She had no idea where they were headed with this—except, it seemed, to bed—but she wanted to follow it to the end. The lure was as irresistible as it was unfathomable.

With a soft heartfelt sigh, Willow dropped the foil packet back in the box and closed the drawer, determined to buckle down and make some sense of his ledger. Immersing herself in debits and credits, income and outgo, profits and losses was the best way she knew to get her mind off of anything that was bothering her.

* * *

Willow surfaced nearly five hours later, having made half-a-dozen neat stacks of invoices and receipts, placing them according to her best guess as to what they were for. Steve seemed to use a basic, and vastly inadequate, single-entry accounting system. Income in one column, expenses in another, with no provisions at all for dividing anything out into any of the business categories the Internal Revenue Service would find acceptable should they ever decide to audit him.

Most of the invoices and receipts were fairly easy to categorize once she separated them out—office supplies and equipment, auto expenses, professional fees, taxes and the like. But there were dozens of slips of paper, torn from small lined notepads like the ones he had stacked in his desk drawer, marked with, at best, a name, a date and an amount. She suspected that, like the money he had tried to give Carl Mueller yesterday and the twenty dollars he had given Ethan Roberts' maid this morning, they were bribes for information.

There was nothing in any of the vast mountain of IRS material she had ever read that covered bribes as a deductible business expense.

In the end, she gave it up, relegating them to the pile marked Miscellaneous.

Then, having done all she could until she talked to Steve, she neatly relabeled each section of the cardboard file in accordance with the newly established categories, slipped the invoices and receipts into them, and closed the entire package with two wide blue rubber bands.

Placing a Post-it note on the top that said Do Not Touch! in case Steve came back to the office while she was gone, she slung the strap of her purse crosswise over her torso, closed up the office, and headed across the street to the Greek deli for a quick sugar fix and a cup of coffee.

* * *

By five-thirty, Steve had dug up more than he wanted to know about the life and character of Ethan Roberts. By all accounts from people who were in a position to know, the man was a coldhearted, calculating bastard who wasn't above using anybody he had to in order to get what he wanted, including his own children.

Steve had no trouble at all believing he could have casually impregnated Willow's mother, then abandoned her and their unborn child to whatever fate had in store for them. It wouldn't have been the last time he'd done it, nor, most likely, the first.

The only trouble was, there was no way to prove it, short of a blood test, and Steve had no illusions about the possibility of getting Ethan Roberts to voluntarily agree to something like that. Willow could take it to the newspapers, of course, or threaten to—assuming she was willing to take that route to try to force Roberts to admit to his paternity. But Steve doubted it would work.

Politics, power, and the electorate being what they were, Roberts could probably manage to sidestep any scandal her accusations might bring on his way to the Senate by simply denying them. Hell, Washington was full of men who'd managed to get themselves elected in spite of their unsavory private lives.

And maybe, if she was lucky, Ethan Roberts wasn't her father.

In which case, they probably
still
couldn't get him to take a blood test, because agreeing to do so would be looked at as an admission of the possibility that he might be her father.

No, any way you looked at it, Ethan Roberts' wisest course was continued denial, no matter what Willow did or said. That way, no one would ever know for sure. They might suspect and whisper, but no one would ever know for sure.

Including Willow.

Steve hated to think what that would do to her. After screwing up the courage to start looking after twenty-four years of wondering about it, to hit a dead end now would be a crushing blow. No, not crushing, he decided, instantly changing his mind. Even on the basis of two days' acquaintance, he knew Willow Ryan was too strong and too smart to let a thing like this crush her. But it would be a blow. It would hurt.

And he hated to think of her hurting.

He flexed his hands against the steering wheel, thinking with distinct pleasure of beating the truth out of Ethan Roberts. He imagined smashing his fist into that aristocratic nose, landing a couple of solid jabs in that pampered midsection, meting out some tiny measure of punishment for all the pain Roberts had caused to the vulnerable women and children who had been sacrificed to his career.

Of course, he thought with a grin, Willow probably wouldn't think it was such a good idea. Woman tended to prefer a more nonviolent approach to solving problems.

But, hell, maybe he was just borrowing trouble, anyway. Maybe they'd find something in Jack Shannon's box of memories that would prove Eric Shannon was her father. Maybe Zeke—
Ezekiel,
he reminded himself—maybe Ezekiel Blackstone would turn out to be the one. Maybe the operative he'd put on the trail of Donna's old roommate, Christine Loudon, would turn up something. At this point, anything was possible.

That was the tack he would take with Willow, he decided, as he maneuvered his Mustang into an empty parking space just two doors down from his office. He'd play up the positive aspects of the case and ignore the negatives.

And hope like hell they found some answers before a very important and cherished part of his anatomy exploded under the force of constant, unrelieved arousal. He'd always thought anticipation was one of the many delicious pleasures of sex but since meeting Willow he was beginning to change his mind.

The anticipation was killing him.

Even now, he realized, as he climbed out of the Mustang and pocketed his keys, just the simple anticipation of seeing her again had his lips turning up in an idiot's grin and his heart racing uncomfortably fast. His unprecedented reaction to her was something he was going to have to take some time to think about soon, he promised himself.

And then he caught sight of her, coming out of the Greek deli across the street from his office, and he experienced that same savage twist in his chest that had taken him by surprise that morning. And he realized he didn't have to think about it, after all.

It wasn't lust. It was love.

He, Steve Hart, tough-guy private investigator, a man who'd been making love to women for a lot of years, without ever finding one he could love for a lifetime, had fallen head over heels in love at first sight. With a client. And wasn't that a kick in the pants.

"Willow," he hollered, raising his arm to get her attention from across the street.

She looked around at the sound of his voice, her face lighting up with the same happy glow that had caused him to nearly lose his balance that morning in the hotel lobby. She lifted her arm in return, waving back, and started across the street toward him.

"I can't
believe
what a mess your books are in," she shouted, beginning to scold him before she was even halfway across the street. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

Steve just raised his hands, palms up, and smiled.

She laughed out loud and shook her head, watching him as she moved forward, neglecting to check traffic as she crossed the yellow centerline.

She was less than halfway across the lane when Steve caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye; a dark blue car, moving too fast; a driver in a brimmed hat. He rushed forward, squeezing between two parked cars, shouting at Willow to get out of the way.

She stopped, puzzled by his actions, then turned, seeing the car bearing down on her, and tried desperately to reverse direction and scramble out of the way.

Steve hit her, waist high, in a bruising tackle, bearing her back over the median line. He felt something graze his calf, nearly jerking him around, and then they hit the ground and rolled. There was a screech of tires. Horns honked. Someone screamed. They came to an abrupt stop, thudding up against the rear wheel of a parked car on the other side of the street, with his body curved over hers and his arms tight around her, desperately trying to shelter her from further harm.

It took a second for him to realize he wasn't seriously hurt, and then another to realize she might be.

He loosened his arms a little, very gently, and pulled back so he could see down into her face. "Willow?" he murmured in an agonized whisper. "Willow, sweetheart, are you all right?"

She stirred against him, pushing at his chest to get some air. "Aside from being crushed to death, I think so."

He was too far-gone to appreciate the attempt at humor. "Do you hurt anywhere?" He lifted himself farther away from her as he spoke, levering himself up onto his knees beside her. "Are you bleeding?"

"Good God!" someone said before Willow could answer him. "Are you people all right? Do you need an ambulance?"

"Yes. Call an ambulance," Steve said. "She's hurt."

"No," Willow said, struggling to sit up under his restraining hands. "I'm all right. Really. I don't need an ambulance."

Steve helped her to sit up, gently, lifting her so that she sat with her back to the wheel of the car. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"My elbows sting like the dickens but everything seems to be where it belongs." She lifted her hand and touched the side of his face. "How about you? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said, brushing away her concern, along with the throbbing in his right calf. "Can you stand up?"

She nodded gingerly and they helped each other, holding on to each other's arms as they got to their feet.

"Okay?" Steve asked when they were both upright. He untangled the strap of her purse, gently pulling it down from around her neck. "Everything in working order?"

"Fine," she said. "How about you?"

"I'll live." His heart would never be the same, but he'd definitely live. Keeping one hand on her arm to steady her in case she felt faint, he turned toward the small crowd that had gathered around them.

"Which one of you is the driver of that goddamn car?" he demanded angrily, ready to lay into someone—anyone—for the injuries done to Willow.

"It didn't stop, man," said a kid dressed in baggy knee-length shorts and an oversize T-shirt. "Just kept right on goin'."

"Did anyone get the license number?"

"I didn't get no numbers, man. But it was a dark blue Honda Accord. And it sure was comin' fast, like a bat outta hell. Looked like the driver was
tryin'
to hit your lady."

"Are you sure about that?" Steve demanded. His gaze scanned the crowd. "Did anyone else get that impression?"

"It could have been, I guess," said an older woman who was standing on the sidewalk with a bright green shopping bag dangling from the crook of her arm. "It looked like he might have swerved toward you instead of away like someone would normally do."

"He?" Steve said. "The driver was a man?"

The woman hesitated. "Yes," she said. "I think so."

"Naw, it was a woman," the kid said. "She had blond hair and was wearin' a hat. And she was aimin' the car right at you," he added, warming to the story.

"What kind of hat?" Steve asked.

The woman walked away then, along with everyone else except the kid. There was nothing to see. No blood; no guts; nobody maimed or dying.