Still Waters (5 page)

She grabbed the first thing her hand fell on and flung it at him as hard as she could. He fended off the plastic container of Cover Girl face powder with his hands, knocking it aside and sending a mushroom cloud of fine dust into the air.

“Jesus, Jolynn!”

He hauled himself naked from the bed, choking on the combination of smoke and powder, half tripping as the sheet tangled around his knees. Jo turned and made a dash for the bedroom door, but was caught just shy of getting her hand on the doorknob. A strong arm banded across her midsection, and she was pulled back into the curve of Rich's body as he bent over her. She struggled to get away—from Richard, from herself, from her dumpy little bedroom in her dumpy little house.

“Come on, Jolynn,” he cajoled, his mustache brushing the shell of her ear, scratchy and soft like the edge of an old shaving brush. He spewed out platitudes with the ease of long practice and little sincerity. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I just don't want you to leave, baby.”

“Tough shit. I'm going,” she snapped, sniffing back tears. She may have had no pride when it came to sleeping with him, but she damn well wouldn't cry in front of him. She shrugged him off and took another step toward the door.

“I'll be here when you get back,” he murmured.

She hesitated with her hand on the tarnished brass knob, dredging up the nerve she never seemed to find when he showed up on her doorstep. “Don't bother.”

FIVE

“
Y
OU
'
D BETTER WAIT IN THE SHERIFF
'
S OFFICE
.”

Lorraine Worth grasped Elizabeth firmly by the elbow and propelled her through the maze of gray metal desks toward the door of Dane Jantzen's private lair. Behind them and beyond the incessant ringing of the phone, Elizabeth could hear a commotion in the outer hall and guessed that some of the press had decided to stake out the courthouse, to lay in wait for the sheriff. Lorraine looked extremely peeved at the prospect of having to deal with them, her thin lips pressing into a grim white line, penciled brows slashing down above her cat-eye glasses like dark bolts of lightning. Without another word the dispatcher hustled Elizabeth into the office, thrust a cup of black coffee into her hand, and bolted back for her station, swinging the door shut behind her.

Elizabeth set the coffee aside and dug a cigarette out of her purse. A brass plaque on the desk shone up at her under the glare of the fluorescent light, the words
THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING
etched in bold black. She flipped it facedown and lit up. Jantzen could thank someone else for not smoking. After what she'd been through, she damn well deserved a cigarette at the very least.

The lighter she used was wafer-thin, twenty-four-carat gold, engraved on the flat side with the words “To B from E with Love”—one of the small prizes she had managed to get away with when Brock had told her to move out of their penthouse apartment in Stuart Tower. The Nikon now reposing in the visitor's chair with its hideously expensive Hasselblad lens pointing at the ceiling was another. Small victories.

It wasn't that she approved of stealing. She didn't. Beneath her veneer of practical cynicism she was basically a morally upstanding sort of person. What she believed in was justice. But sometimes a person had to make her own. Brock had screwed her eight ways to Sunday in the divorce. She'd come away from the marriage battered and bloodied emotionally. A lighter and a camera didn't seem like much in the way of compensation, but they helped a little.

Trying not to think about it, she prowled around Dane Jantzen's office, the Virginia Slim smoldering in her right hand. She paused in her pacing long enough to bring it to her lips and take a deep, calming drag. She would have sold her soul for a tumbler of the forty-two-year-old malt whiskey Brock had specially flown in from Scotland—of which she had a case in her kitchen cupboard—but the best the dispatcher had been able to manage was coffee. Lorraine Worth probably didn't approve of strong drink; she had that kind of tight-ass Baptist look about her.

Elizabeth eyed the coffee cup perched on the corner of the sturdy oak desk and frowned. Caffeine was the last thing she needed. She wanted nothing more than a long, hot bath, the comfort of her bed, and a few hours of blessed oblivion. But her desires lingered out on the far horizon, shimmering like a mirage. What had already been an endless night was only going to get longer. And when the end of it finally came, and she was allowed to go home, there would be little comfort to be had. She didn't have a bathtub; she had a tin shower stall that was as narrow as a coffin and just about as pleasant to be in. She might have hot water, but it would be tinted orange from rusty old pipes. She had her bed, her big brass whorehouse bed, as Brock had called it, but she wasn't counting on getting much in the way of sleep. She doubted she would be able to close her eyes without seeing Jarrold Jarvis spring out of his car like a broken jack-in-the-box.

To distract herself from the disturbing images, she continued her tour of Jantzen's office, studying, looking for clues about the man. Not that she cared on a personal level. From what she'd seen, Dane Jantzen was a grade A bastard. It was just good sense to know your adversary, that was all. She'd learned that lesson the hard way. Besides, she was going to want every detail she could get for her story. She was a journalist now, albeit at a two-bit weekly newspaper in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, but a journalist nevertheless, and she was determined to do the job right.

The office was unremarkable. Flat white paint on the walls. One large window that would have given a panoramic view of the outer office had the blinds been raised. Industrial-grade gray carpet. A row of black file cabinets. The usual office paraphernalia, including a personal computer. Diplomas and citations hung in simple black frames on one wall. There was nothing here of Dane Jantzen the man, no mounted deer heads or bowling trophies or souvenirs from his football days.

He was neat. Not a good sign. Men who were neat liked to be in control of everything and everyone around them. Brock was fanatically fastidious and he wanted to control the whole blessed world. Dane Jantzen's desk shouted control. Files were labeled, stacked and lined up just so. His blotter was spotless. His pens were all in their little ceramic holder, tips down, arranged left to right by ink color, no doubt.

Beside the telephone was the one personal item in the room—a small wooden picture frame. Dangling her cigarette from her lip, Elizabeth lifted the frame and turned it for a look. The photograph was of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven, just showing signs of growing into a gangly youth. Brown hair sprouted out the sides of her head in pigtails that hung past her shoulders. She was smiling shyly, crinkling her nose, emphasizing the freckles on her cheeks. Dressed in baggy shorts and a blazing orange T-shirt, she stood on a lawn somewhere holding up a sign done in multicolored Magic Markers that read
I LOVE YOU
,
DADDY
.

Elizabeth felt a jolt of surprise and something else.
Daddy
. “Holy Mike,” she muttered. “Somebody actually married the son of a bitch.”

“She has since seen the error of her ways, I assure you.”

Elizabeth whirled toward the sound of that sardonic voice, managing to look guilty and knock her coffee to the floor all at once.

“Shit! I'm sorry.”

Dane stuck his head out into the hall and calmly called to Lorraine for a towel.

“I was looking for an ashtray,” Elizabeth lied, not quite able to meet his steady gaze as he turned back toward her. She stooped down and grabbed the cup, dabbing ineffectually at the stain on the rug with a wadded-up tissue she'd fished out of the pocket of her jeans.

“I don't smoke.” He hitched at his slacks and hunkered down in front of her, his mouth twitching at one corner with cynical amusement. “It's not good for you.”

She forced a wry laugh, dousing the stub of her cigarette in what coffee was left in the cup. “What is these days besides oat bran and abstinence?”

“Telling the truth, for starters,” he said placidly.

She raised her head and sucked in a breath of air, startled by his nearness. He made no move to touch her, but she could feel him just the same, as if he'd reached out and caressed her.

Instinctively she leaned back, but her fanny hit the front of his desk and she realized he had her trapped. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.

“Telling the truth is my business, Sheriff,” she said, struggling to sound prim instead of breathless.

“Really? I thought you were a reporter.”

“Your towel, Sheriff.”

At Lorraine's stern, disapproving voice, Dane pushed himself to his feet and took the towel the dispatcher thrust at him.

“Thank you, Lorraine.”

“I've told those people out there you have nothing further to say, but they aren't leaving. Apparently they're waiting for
her
,” she said, stabbing Elizabeth with pointed look.

She rose on shaky legs, setting aside the coffee cup. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dane answered for her.

“She won't have anything to say to them.”

Eyes narrowed in annoyance, Elizabeth propped a hand on her hip. “I can speak for myself, thank you very much.”

“Not to the press you can't.”

“You're not a judge, you can't impose a gag order.”

He smiled slightly, wolfishly. “No, but if you push me far enough, I might be tempted to use one of these towels to accomplish the same job.” He turned to Lorraine, all the blatant sexuality tamed into a look of authority no sane person would have questioned. “Have Ellstrom roust them out of here. I'll be holding a press conference in the morning.”

The secretary nodded smartly and went to do his bidding. Dane dropped the towel to the wet spot on the floor and stepped on it with the toe of his shoe.

“For your information,” Elizabeth said defensively, “I had no intention of talking to them tonight.”

She wrapped her left arm across her stomach and rubbed at her bottom lip with her right thumb—nervously. No question about that. He wondered what she had to be so skittish about. What she had seen? What she had done? The electricity that sizzled in the air between them every time he got a little too close? No, he doubted that last one. She was far too experienced at wrapping men around her pinky to be shy of him. Unless it was his title that frightened her off.

“Is your refusal to talk to them just professional discourtesy, or are you more concerned about incriminating yourself?”

“Why should I be worried about that?” she challenged him. “You haven't charged me with anything. Or is that your cute little way of telling me you've decided I killed Jarvis, then obligingly called 911?” She crossed both arms in front of her. “Please, Sheriff, I hope I don't look that stupid.”

“Naw . . . stupid isn't how you look at all, Mrs. Stuart,” he drawled, sliding into the upholstered chair behind his desk.

Because he knew it would rattle her, he let his gaze glide down her from the top of her head to the wet spot on the knee of her tight jeans where the coffee had gotten her on its way to the floor. He was being an asshole and he knew it, but he couldn't seem to help himself. Elizabeth Stuart was just the kind of woman who brought out the bastard in him—beautiful, ambitious, greedy, willing to use herself to get what she wanted, willing to use anyone she knew. His gaze drifted back up and lingered on the swells of her breasts.

“You ought to about have it all memorized by now, hadn't you?” Elizabeth snapped, dropping her hands to her hips.

He didn't apologize for his rudeness. Elizabeth doubted he ever apologized for anything. He nodded toward the visitor's chair in a silent order for her to sit. He sat behind his desk with a kind of negligent grace, elbows braced on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled, brooding eyes staring at her.

“Have a seat, Mrs. Stuart.”

“Miss,” she corrected him, moving her camera from the chair to the top of a stack of files on the desk. She settled herself and pulled her purse into her lap to hunt for another cigarette.

“You dropped the Mrs. but kept the last name. Is that proper?”

“I don't really care.”

“I suppose by that point in time you'd probably lost track of what name to go back to anyway.”

That wasn't true, but Elizabeth didn't tell Dane Jantzen. Her roots went back to a cowboy named J. C. Sheldon and a mother who had died before Elizabeth could store up any memories of her. Victoria Collins Sheldon, a beautiful face on a photograph, one framed sepia-toned photograph J.C. had kept with him as they had moved from ranch to ranch. A photograph he had kept beside his bed, wherever his bed happened to be, and gazed at with heart-wrenching longing as Elizabeth stood out in the hall and peeked in at him, wondering why he didn't love her the way he loved that picture. A photograph J.C. had cried over when he'd had too much to drink. A photograph Elizabeth had studied for hours as a skinny, lonely little girl, wondering if she would ever be as pretty, wondering if her mama was an angel, wondering why she'd had to go and die.

But that was all too personal to reveal to this man. Under the cynical hide she had grown over the years lay a wellspring of vulnerability. She seldom acknowledged it, but she knew it was there. She would have had to be a fool to reveal it to Jantzen, and she had ceased being a fool some time ago. So she let Dane Jantzen think what he wanted, and told herself his sarcasm couldn't hurt her.

“I can see how you might have felt you didn't get anything out of him in the divorce so you might as well try to wring a few bucks out of his name,” he said bluntly. “That's just business as usual for you, right?”

“I kept the name because my son didn't need another change in his life,” she snapped, her cool cracking like a dry twig beneath the weight of his taunt, making a mockery of the platitudes she had calmed herself with just seconds before. She lunged forward on her chair, poised for battle, cigarette clutched in her hand like a stick to hit him with. “He didn't need another reminder that Brock Stuart didn't want him.”

And neither did I.

The words hung between them, unspoken but adding to the emotional tension that thickened the air like humidity. Dane sat back, a little ashamed of himself, not at all pleased that his poking had stripped away a layer of armor and given him a glimpse of the woman behind it. Not at all pleased that that kind of rejection gave them a common bond. He didn't want bonds. The truth was he didn't want Elizabeth Stuart to be anything other than what he had imagined her to be—a cold, calculating, manipulative gold digger, his ex-wife in spades. He didn't want to know that she had a son she cared about, didn't want to know she could be hurt.

Elizabeth forced her stiff shoulders back against the chair, a little shaken, a lot afraid that she had just revealed a weakness. What had happened to her restraint? The stress of the evening was wearing on her, wearing through that hard-earned thick skin in big raw patches. To cover her blunder she turned the cigarette in her hand, planted it between her lips, and lit it as quickly as she could so as not to let Jantzen see her hands shake.

“I'd rather you didn't smoke,” he said.

“And I'd rather you weren't a jerk.” She took a deliberately deep pull on the cigarette, presented him with her profile, and fired a stream of exhaust into the air, flashing a razor-sharp glance askance at him. “Looks like neither one of us is going to get our wish.”