Loved You First Read online

  “The—” Alex shut his eyes. “Oh, man.”

  “Hey, the press is always giving psychotics catchy little labels. Anyway, the Maniac’s going around strangling women with a pink silk scarf. It’s symbolic, but we won’t get into that right now, either.”

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  She offered him a forkful of cold pasta. After a moment, he gave in and leaned closer to take it. “Now, the press is going to start hounding Storm,” Bess continued. “And the brass will be on his case, too. His emotional life is a wreck. How does he separate it? How does he go about establishing a connection between the three—so far—victims? And when he realizes Jade may be in danger, how does he keep his personal feelings from clouding his professional judgement?”

  “That’s the kind of stuff you want?”

  “For a start.”

  “Okay.” He propped his feet beside hers. “First, you don’t separate, not like you mean. The minute you have to think like a cop, that’s what you are, that’s how you think, and you’ve got no personal life until you can stop thinking like a cop again.”

  “Wait.” Bess shoved the plate into his lap, then bounded up and hunted through a drawer until she came up with a notebook. She dropped onto the sofa again, curling up her legs this time, so that her knee lay against the side of his thigh. “Okay,” she said, scribbling. “You’re telling me that when you start on a case, or get a call or whatever, everything else just clicks off.”

  Since she seemed to be through eating, he set the plate on the coffee table. “It better click off.”

  “How?”

  He shook his head. “There is no how. It just is. Look, cop work is mostly monotonous. It’s routine, but it’s the kind of routine you have to keep focused on. Make a mistake in the paperwork, and some slime gets bounced on a technicality.”

  “What about when you’re on the street?”

  “That’s a routine, too, and you’d better keep your head on that routine, if you want to go home in one piece. You can’t start thinking about the fight you had with your woman, or the bills you can’t pay, or the fact that your mother’s sick. You think about now, right now, or you won’t be able to fix any of those things later. You’ll just be dead.”

  Her eyes flashed up to his. He said it so matter-of-factly. When she studied him, she saw that he thought of it that way. “What about fear?”

  “You usually have about ten seconds to be afraid. So you take them.”

  “But what if the fear’s for someone else? Someone you love?”

  “Then you’d better put it aside and do what you’ve been trained to do. If you don’t, you’re no good to yourself or your partner, and you’re a liability.”

  “So, it’s cut-and-dried?”

  He smiled a little. “Except on TV. You’re asking me for feelings, McNee, intangibles.”

  “A cop’s feelings,” she told him. “I’d think they would be very tangible. Maybe a cop wouldn’t be allowed to show his emotions on the job. An occasional flare-up, maybe, but then you’d have to suck it in and follow routine. And no matter how good you are, an arrest isn’t always going to stick. The bad guy isn’t always going to pay. That has to cause immeasurable frustration. And repressing that frustration…” Considering, she tapped her pencil against the pad. “See, I think of people as pressure cookers.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “No, really.” That quick smile, the flash of the single dimple. “Whatever’s inside, good or bad, has to have some means of release, or the lids blows.” She shifted again, and her fingers nearly brushed his neck. She talked with them, he’d noted. With her hands, her eyes, her whole body. The woman simply didn’t know how to be still. “What do you use to keep the lid on, Alexi?”

  “I make sure I kick a couple of small dogs every morning.”

  She smiled with entirely too much understanding. “Too personal? Okay, we’ll come back to it later.”

  “It’s not personal.” Damn it, she made him uncomfortable. As if he had an itch in the small of his back that he couldn’t quite scratch. “I use the gym. Beat the crap out of a punching bag a few days a week. Lift too many weights. Sweat it out.”

  “That’s great. Perfect.” Grinning now, she cupped a hand over his biceps and squeezed. “Not too shabby. I guess it works.” She flexed her own arm, inviting him to test the muscle. It was the gesture of a small boy on a playground, but Alex couldn’t quite think of her that way. “I work out myself,” she told him. “I’m addicted to it. But I can’t seem to develop any upper-body strength.”

  He watched her eyes as he curled a hand over her arm and found a tough little muscle. “Your upper body looks fine.”

  “A compliment.” Surprised that a reaction had leapt straight into her gut at the casual touch, she started to move her arm. He held on. It took some work to keep her smile from faltering. “What? You want to arm-wrestle, Detective?”

  Her skin was like rose petals—smooth, fragrant. Experimenting, he skimmed his hand down to the curve of her elbow. She was smiling, he noted, and her eyes were lit with humor, but her pulse was racing. “A few years back I arm-wrestled my brother for his wife. I lost.”

  The idea was just absurd enough to catch her imagination. “Really? Is that how the Stanislaskis win their women?”

  “Whatever works.” Because he was tempted to explore more of that silky, exposed skin, he rose. He reminded himself that the uncomplicated Bonnie was more his style than the overinquisitive, oddly packaged Bess McNee. “I have to go.”

  Whatever had been humming between them was fading now. As Bess walked him to the door, she debated with herself whether she wanted to let those echoes fade or pump up the volume until she recognized the tune. “Stanislaski. Is that Polish, Russian, what?”

  “We’re Ukrainian.”

  “Ukrainian?” Intrigued, she watched him pull his jacket on. “From the southwest of the European Soviet Union, with the Carpathian Mountains in the west.”

  “Yeah.” And through those mountains his family had escaped when he was no more than a baby. He felt a tug, a small one, as he often did when he thought of the country of his blood. “You’ve been there?”

  “Only in spirit.” Smiling, she straightened his jacket for him. “I minored in geography in college. I like reading about exotic places.” She kept her hands on the front of his jacket, enjoying the feel of leather, the scent of it, and of him. Their bodies were close, more casual than intimate, but close. Looking into his eyes, those dark, uncannily focused eyes, she discovered she wanted to hear that tune again after all.

  “Are you going to talk to me again?” she asked him.

  His fingers itched to roam along that tantalizingly bare skin on her back. For reasons he couldn’t have named, he kept his hands at his sides. “You know where to find me. If I’ve got the time and the answers, we’ll talk.”

  “Thanks.” Her lips curved as she rose on her toes so that their eyes and mouths were level. She leaned in slowly, an inch, then two, to touch her mouth to his. The kiss was soft and breezy. Either of his sisters might have said goodbye to him in precisely the same manner. But that cool and fleeting taste of her didn’t make him feel brotherly.

  She heard the humming in her head. A nice, quiet sound of easy pleasure. He tasted faintly of wine and spices, and his firm lips seemed to accept the gesture as it was meant—as one of affection and curiosity. Her lips were still curved when she dropped back on her heels.

  “Good night, Alexi.”

  He nodded. He was fairly sure he could speak, but there was no point in taking the chance. Turning, he walked into the foyer and punched the elevator button. When he glanced back, she was still standing in the doorway. Smiling, she waved another goodbye and started to close the door.

  It surprised them both when he whirled around and slapped a hand on it to keep it open. The fact that she took an automatic step in retreat surprised her further. But it was the look in his eyes, she thought, that made h
er feel like a rabbit caught in a rifle’s cross hairs.

  “Did you forget something?”

  “Yeah.” Very slowly, very deliberately, he slid his arms around her waist, ran his hand up her back, so that her eyes widened and her skin shivered. “I forgot I like to make my own moves.”

  Bess braced for the kind of wild assault that was in his eyes, and was surprised for the third time in as many minutes. He didn’t swoop or crush, but eased her closer, degree by degree, until she was molded to him. His fingers cruised lazily up her back until they reached the nape of her neck, where they cupped and held. Still his mouth hovered above her.

  His hand moved low, intimately, where skin gave way to silk. “Stand on your toes,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  “Stand on your toes.” This time, it was his lips that curved.

  Dazed, she obeyed, then gave a strangled gasp when he increased the pressure on her back and pressed them center to center. His eyes stayed open as he moved his mouth to hers, brushing, nipping, then taking, in a dreamy kind of possession that had her own vision blurring.

  The humming in her brain increased until it was a wall of sound, unrecognizable. She was deaf to everything else, even her own throaty moan as he dipped his tongue between her lips to seduce hers.

  It was all slow-motion and soft-focus, but that didn’t stop the heat from building. She could feel the little flames start to flare where she was pressed most intimately against him, then spread long, patient fingers of fire outward. Everywhere.

  He never pushed, he never pressured, he savored, as a man might who had enjoyed a satisfying meal and was content to linger over a tasty dessert. Even knowing she was being sampled, tested, lazily consumed, she couldn’t protest. For the first time in her life, Bess understood what it was to be helplessly seduced.

  He hadn’t meant to do this. He’d been thinking about doing just this for hours. However much pleasure it gave him to feel her curvy body melt against his, to hear those small, vulnerable sounds vibrating in her throat, to taste that dizzy passion on her lips, he knew he’d made a mistake.

  She wasn’t his type. And he was going to want more.

  The instinct he’d been born with and then honed during his years on the force helped him to hold back that part of himself that, if let loose, could turn the evening into a disaster for both of them. Still, he lingered another moment, taking himself to the edge. When his system was churning with her, and his mind was clouded with visions of peeling her out of that swatch of a dress, he stepped back. He supported her by the elbows until her eyes fluttered open.

  They were big and dazed. He clenched his teeth to fight back the urge to pull her to him again and finish what he’d started. But, however stunned and fragile she looked at the moment, Alex recognized a dangerous woman. He’d been a cop long enough to know when to face danger, and when to avoid it.

  “You, ah…” Where was all her glib repartee? Bess wondered. It was a little difficult to think when she wasn’t sure her head was still on her shoulders. “Well,” she managed, and settled for that.

  “Well.” He let her go and added a cocky grin before he walked back to the elevator. Though his stance was relaxed, he was praying the elevator would come quickly, before he lost it and crawled back to her door. She was still there when the elevator rumbled open. Alex let out a quiet, relieved breath as he stepped inside and leaned against the back wall. “See you around, McNee,” he said as the doors slid shut.

  “Yeah.” She stared at the mural-covered walls. “See you around.”

  “Holly hasn’t been able to stop talking about that party.” Judd was scarfing down a blueberry muffin as Alex cruised Broadway. “It made her queen of the teachers’ lounge.”

  “I bet.” Alex didn’t want to think about Bess’s party. He especially didn’t want to think about what would be after the party. Work was what he needed to concentrate on, and right now work meant following up on the few slim leads they’d hassled out of Domingo.

  “If Domingo’s given it to us straight, Angie Horowitz was excited about a new john.” Alex tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “He’d hired her two Wednesdays running, dressed good, tipped big.”

  Judd nodded as he brushed muffin crumbs from his shirt. “And she was killed on a Wednesday. So was Rita Shaw. It’s still pretty thin, Alex.”

  “So we make it thick.” It continued to frustrate him that they’d wasted time interrogating the desk clerks at the two fleabag hotels where the bodies had been found. Like most in their profession, the clerks had seen nothing. Heard nothing. Knew nothing.

  As for the ladies who worked the streets, however nervous they were, they weren’t ready to trust a badge.

  “Tomorrow’s Wednesday,” Judd said helpfully.

  “I know what the hell tomorrow is. Do you do anything but eat?”

  Judd unwrapped another muffin. “I got low blood sugar. If we’re going to go back and look at the crime scene again, I need energy.”

  “What you need is—” Alex broke off as he glanced past Judd’s profile and into the glaring lights of an all-night diner. He knew only one person with hair that shade of red. He began to swear, slowly, steadily, as he searched for a parking place.

  “You really write for TV?” Rosalie asked.

  Bess finished emptying a third container of nondairy product into her coffee. “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t think you were a sister.” Interested as much in Bess as in the fifty dollars she’d been paid, Rosalie blew out smoke rings. “And you want to know what it’s like to turn tricks.”

  “I want to know whatever you’re comfortable telling me.” Bess shoved her untouched coffee aside and leaned forward. “I’m not sitting in judgment or asking for confidences, Rosalie. I’d like your story, if you want to tell it. Or we can stick with generalities.”

  “You figure you can find out what’s going on on the streets by putting on spandex and a wig, like you did the other night?”

  “I found out a lot,” Bess said with a smile. “I found out it’s tough to stand in heels on concrete for hours at a time. That a woman has to lose her sense of self in order to do business. That you don’t look at the faces. The faces don’t matter—the money does. And what you do isn’t a matter of intimacy, not even a matter of sex—for you—but a matter of control.” She scooted her coffee back and took a sip. “Am I close?”

  For a moment, Rosalie said nothing. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

  “Thanks. I’m always surprising people that way. Especially men.”

  “Yeah.” For the first time, Rosalie smiled. Beneath the hard-edged cosmetics and the lines life had etched in her face, she was a striking woman, not yet thirty. “I’ll tell you this, girlfriend, the men who pay me see a body. They don’t see a mind. But I got a mind, and I got a plan. I’ve been on the streets five years. I ain’t going to be on them five more.”

  “What are you going to do? What do you want to do?”

  “When I get enough saved up, I’m going South. Going to get me a trailer in Florida, and a straight job. Maybe selling clothes. I look real fine in good clothes.” She crushed out her cigarette and lit another. “Lots of us have plans, but don’t make it. I will. I’m clean,” she said, and lifted her arms, turning them over. It took Bess a minute to realize Rosalie was saying she wasn’t a user. “One more year, I’m gone. Less than that, if I hook onto a regular john with money. Angie did.”

  “Angie?” Bess flipped through her mental file. “Angie Horowitz? Isn’t that the woman who was murdered?”

  “Yeah.” Rosalie moistened her lips before sucking in smoke. “She wasn’t careful. I’m always careful.”

  “How can you be careful?”

  “You keep yourself ready,” Rosalie told her. “Angie, she liked to drink. She’d talk a john into buying a bottle. That’s not being careful. And this guy, the rich one? He—”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

&nbs
p; Both Rosalie and Bess looked up. Standing beside the scarred table was a tall man with thin shoulders. There was a cheroot clamped between his teeth, and a diamond winked on his finger. His face was moon-pale, with furious blue eyes. His hair was nearly as white, and slicked back, ending in a short ponytail.

  “I’m having me a cup of coffee and a smoke, Bobby,” Rosalie told him. But beneath the defiance, Bess recognized the trickle of fear.

  “You get back on the street where you belong.”

  “Excuse me.” Bess offered her best smile. “Bobby, is it?”

  He cast his icy blue eyes on her. “You looking for work, sweetheart? I’ll tell you right now, I don’t tolerate any loafing.”

  “Thank you, but no, I’m not looking. Rosalie was just helping me with a small problem.”

  “She doesn’t solve anyone’s problems but mine.” He jerked his head toward the street. “Move it.”

  Bess slid out of the booth but held her ground. “This is a public place, and we’re having a conversation.”

  “You don’t talk to anybody I don’t tell you to talk to.” Bobby gave Rosalie a hard shove toward the door.

  Bess didn’t think, simply reacted. If she detested anything, it was a bully. “Now just a damn minute.” She grabbed his sleeve. He rounded on her. Other patrons put on their blinders when he pushed her into the table. Bess came up, fists clenched, just as Alex slammed through the door.

  “One move, Bobby,” he said tightly. “Just one move toward her.”

  Bobby brushed at his sleeve and shrugged. “I just came in for a cup of coffee. Isn’t that right, Rosalie?”

  “Yeah.” Rosalie closed her hand over the business card Bess had slipped her. “We were just having some coffee.”

  But Alex’s eyes were all for Bess. She didn’t look pale and frightened. Her eyes were snapping, and her cheeks were flushed with fury. “Tell me you want to press charges.”

  “I’m sorry.” With an effort, Bess relaxed her hands. “We were just having a conversation. Nice talking to you, Rosalie.”

  “Sure.” She swaggered out, blowing smoke in Alex’s face for effect.