Secrets and Seduction: 5 Romance Novels (38 page)

But he’d said he was clean, so it couldn’t be AIDS. Transplant recipients and people with rheumatoid arthritis took lots of meds, but she’d seen him naked and there hadn’t been any scars and his bones and joints looked fine. In fact, Christian appeared to be in great physical health. What could be wrong with him?

Whatever it was, it was his secret. Unless it affected the case … or her health.

Her hand itched to touch the bottles to learn the truth. But Christian was no longer the focus of her investigation. She didn’t have the right to pry where he didn’t want her to go. If they’d been in a relationship, she could ask him. But Christian was wary of her now.

A few minutes later, Christian came out of his bedroom carrying his muddy clothes. He’d put on clean blue jeans and a baby blue Oxford shirt that deepened the blue of his eyes. When he passed her on his way to the laundry room, she couldn’t help noticing how well the jeans hugged his firm buttocks, how long his slender legs looked in them. As he strode back toward her, she noted how his pants cupped his cock … and she was jealous. She knew what his clothes hid, and wanted to tear them off to get to the goods beneath. To hell with her stomach’s hunger, she had other hungers that needed to be sated.

His blue eyes heated, noting the way she watched him approach. Was there anything sexier than an aroused man, one still damp from the shower? She wished she’d been there to lick the stray drops of water from his body.

Was it hot in here? She tore her gaze from his and stared at the island countertop. It was stupid to lust after his body when he’d made it clear he couldn’t accept her completely.

Christian suggested in a thickened voice, “We could delay lunch.”

Gabrielle looked into the darkened depths of his eyes. “I’d have to touch you.”

He swallowed. “You’ve touched me before.”

“You’d be completely open to me. I could learn anything you might not want me to know. I could learn what those pills in the cupboard are for.”

His gaze snapped to the cupboard in question, now closed. He swallowed again. The flushed arousal in his cheeks faded. His gaze returned to her. “Did you … touch them?”

“I thought about it, but you said you weren’t a risk to my health.”

“I’m not.”

“Are you a risk to me in any way because of those pills?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Do they have anything to do with the Densmore?”

Pain and then guilt darkened his eyes. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. What had he done?

When he spoke, his voice was strained. “I’m bipolar.”

She couldn’t have heard right. “What?”

“Bipolar. The medicine controls my mood swings, takes the tops off the highs, cuts the bottoms out of the lows.”

Mood swings. He was a freakin’ creative genius, of course he had them. A number of extremely creative people did. But there were some famous cases of those whose lows got too low, and when that happened …

Christian had disappeared after the Densmore collapsed. He had new medicine to control his moods. How severe had his low gotten? Had he overdosed or something? She’d seen the pain and desolation in his eyes when he looked at the Densmore. His pain ran deep. He felt too much.

She had to know. Was he a danger to himself and others? Had the car accident really been an accident or something darker?

She dragged the words through her tight throat, wanting to know the truth but afraid to ask. “Did you try to kill yourself?”

His tormented gaze jerked to hers. “No!”

“Where did you go after the Densmore collapsed?”

He looked away, but not before she saw the flash of guilt and the wasteland of hopelessness. It frightened her. “I committed myself to the Crittenden facility.”

“Isn’t that the rehab center where Detroit’s rich and famous go to dry out?”

He nodded. “It also has a psychiatric wing. The staff is very discreet.”

Discreet, right. “Sean Bergman is your psychiatrist?”

He nodded again.

“If you didn’t try to kill yourself, why did you need Crittenden?”

“I … forgot … to take my medicine. Then I went too many days without it. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t deal with the disaster. Paul took me to Crittenden and I signed myself in.”

With every word, he appeared to be crumbling inside. Gabrielle feared a relapse. Her voice was sharp when she demanded, “Have you had your medication today?”

“Yes, damn it. I know better now than to skip a day. I’m not going to fall apart. I wish everyone would stop doubting me. I’m not going to let it happen again, ever.”

God, the hurt rolled off him in waves. She needed so badly to touch him, to make him stop hurting.

But when she reached for him, he recoiled. “Trying to see if I’m telling the truth?”

She jerked back as though he’d struck her. “No. I sensed your pain … ”

His eyes widened. “But you didn’t even touch me.”

“Even non-psychics can read body language and facial expressions.”

“Oh.” Some of the rigidity went out of his spine.

“How long have you been bipolar?”

“The doctors said probably since puberty. A lot of … mental illnesses … show up at puberty and in the teen years.”

“But you aren’t sure when yours started?”

Christian looked away. “I didn’t have trouble until my parents died.”

Gabrielle put two and two together and came up with a scene similar to or worse than after the Densmore incident. “Were you hospitalized then?”

He nodded. “I was a minor so Paul committed me.”

And because of his illness he’d stayed by Paul ever since. His much older brother had built for him a safe haven surrounded by friends loyal to Paul. In this cocoon, Paul could be sure Christian would not have a relapse.

But Paul couldn’t have foreseen the Densmore.

“Why don’t you eat your lunch so we can see Cranston’s partner and then the Republic Steel employee?” she said.

Lunch was a silent, stilted affair. She felt Christian’s glances, questioning, accusing, disturbed. He should be more accepting in light of his own condition.

She drove to the offices of Hoepflmeier, Dortmouth and Cranston Architects in Warren, where Christian agreed to wait in the lobby. They felt fairly certain no one would attempt anything here since the wall of glass that separated the lobby from the outer corridor prevented anyone from sneaking up on the lobby occupants.

Ted Hoepflmeier, the gray-haired man she’d seen in her vision with Bob Cranston, rose from behind his cherry wood desk when she entered his office.

Gabrielle held out her hand and introduced herself.

When the sixty-something Hoepflmeier clasped it, the vision burst into her brain.

“Barrett and Ziko won the Rothberger bid, Al.” Hoepflmeier slid a letter in front of another man close to his age, who must be the other partner, Allen Dortmouth.

“Damn it, not another one.” Al pounded a fist onto the letter. “We’ve got to do something about them.”

Hoepflmeier waved to the letter. “Him, not them. It’s Ziko’s designs that are winning, not Barrett’s.”

Al shifted his gaze from the letter to his partner. “Have you tried hiring him?”

Al shook his head. “He’s tied too closely to Barrett through his brother. He won’t leave the firm.”

“We can’t just let him continue to snap up all the projects in town.”

“No, we can’t.”

The vision dissolved. Gabrielle could scream at the bait being dangled in front of her and then being yanked away. She needed the rest of that discussion. What had the senior partners decided to do about Christian?

Hoepflmeier waved her to a cherry wood and leather chair in front of his desk. “My partner, Bob Cranston, told me about your meeting yesterday. I didn’t expect you to come here. What do you want, Ms. Healey?”

Gabrielle explained about investigating the disaster, then added, “Do you know anyone at Barrett and Ziko?”

“I know both principals. I make it a point to know my competition.” His eyes showed the crafty businessman inside.

“Anyone else there?”

“No, why?”

“I wondered how familiar you were with your competition. Do any of your employees socialize with any of Barrett and Ziko’s?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t pry into my employees’ social lives.”

Gabrielle decided to use a more direct approach. “How would you benefit if something happened to Barrett and Ziko?”

His gray eyes narrowed. “Are you making accusations, Ms. Healey?”

“No, just trying to determine how the Densmore accident affected your firm.”

“It didn’t. We didn’t design it or build it. We’re not culpable in any way.”

“How closely do you work with DesignCorp?”

Hoepflmeier’s expression wiped from his face. “As closely as every other architectural firm in this city.” He rose. “I think we’re done here.”

“Thanks for your time. I know my way out.” Gabrielle left his office and returned to the lobby. She placed a finger over her lips and signaled Christian outside.

Beyond the competition’s hearing, she filled him in on what little she’d found out. “They wanted to stop you, but I couldn’t find out what they’d done, if anything.”

Christian pushed the button for the elevator. “That doesn’t do us any good. Why didn’t you find out the rest?”

“It doesn’t work that way. It’s not like a TV remote where I can tune in any channel I want. Did you give their names to your lawyer?”

“Yeah. I gave him a list of our major competitors. But we can’t go into court with a list of competitors as suspects.”

The elevator opened and they stepped inside, just them and their hostility. Gabrielle explained what happened. “I did what I could. We might have had more luck if we hadn’t run into Cranston yesterday. He told his partner and Hoepflmeier was ready with his answers.”

“You should have thought of that yesterday.”

Gabrielle had had enough. She didn’t have to defend herself. “If you don’t like the way I’m investigating, you can call a cab and go home.”

Outside the gray overcast sky was as depressing as their conversation.

“I’m not giving up until I clear my name,” Christian said.

As they approached the car in the visitor’s lot, she saw the flat tire.

“Damn, the tire’s flat.” She hoped the rental was equipped with a spare.

“Gabrielle.”

The odd note in Christian’s voice pulled her gaze toward the front of the car. That tire was flat too.

“What the hell?”

Christian crouched by the back tire, wincing as he did so. “This has been slashed.”

Striding around the other side of the car, she found those tires slashed as well. “This side too.”

The back of her neck prickled. She whirled, sure she was being watched. But she saw no one in the parking lot. Scanning the glass walls of the building that housed Cranston and his partners, she didn’t see anyone standing at the window looking down on them from the sixth floor. But someone had targeted Christian twice already.

“Christian, get down!”

As he spun a startled face toward her, she bounded around the tail of the car and blocked him with her body from where she thought someone might be hiding.

“What is it?” He tried to get around her.

“I feel like someone’s watching. Don’t you?”

“We’re in a parking lot. There are plenty of people coming and going.”

“Christian, wake up. Somebody doesn’t want you poking your nose into this investigation. We’re standing here in the open in front of a competitor who’d rather see you out of business. You couldn’t be a bigger target right now. Let’s go back inside.”

“To the competitor?”

“No, to the lobby.”

Gabrielle took hold of his arm, ignoring his slight flinch. The vision was harder to ignore.

Christian lay on what looked like a floor. He’d slashed his wrist open. The scarlet that flowed over his tanned skin was frightening.

Christian tore his hand from Gabrielle’s. He’d paled and his jaw bunched with some dark emotion. Had he seen the vision too?

He kept his distance from her as they entered the lobby. The vision had been foresight, which was becoming the norm instead of the exception around him. He’d said he wasn’t suicidal, but the vision indicated otherwise.

As he whipped out his cell phone, she stared at his unscarred wrist. Would this investigation drive him to kill himself? And how could she prevent it from happening? In the vision she hadn’t been there, which was odd, since she and Christian had spent the past two days together.

“You’ve sure stirred up a hornet’s nest,” Bryce Gannon said when Christian finished telling him about the car tires being slashed. “It’s a clear message somebody wants you to stop.”

“But I’m not going to.”

“Why slash the tires, though? If they want you out of commission, why not use a car bomb?”

“Geez, Bryce, that’s a cheerful thought.”

“It makes no sense. Why the car and not you?”

“I don’t know. If it’s someone at Hoepflmeier, Dortmouth and Cranston, why do something in their own parking lot?”

“Maybe they’re stupid. Hell, I don’t know. I’ll call the Warren PD again and ask for the same detective.”

After he hung up, Christian found Gabrielle waiting near the outer door.

“Enterprise is sending a tow truck and another car,” she said.

“Bryce is calling the cops.”

She held up a hand. “Wait here. I want to check something out before the cops arrive.” She pushed the door open.

“Where are you going?”

“To investigate. I’ll be right back. I don’t think they’re after me.”

Christian hated having to be careful while Gabrielle pursued the truth.

Only a few minutes passed before she returned. “Brittany slashed the tires. She was dressed in coveralls and a ball cap, but I could tell by her figure.”

Christian shook his head. “But she drives a red Mazda. It was a dark SUV that ran me into the barrier yesterday.”

“I think she’s working with somebody else. She had no reason to alter the drawing herself. Someone must have asked her to do it, or bribed her, or coerced her in some way.”