Maggie realized losing her job had made her angry, but there would be other jobs, other hospitals. What Beau had done to her hurt a lot more. He lied. And that cut her pride, because she’d believed him. Everything about Beau had promised he was a man of his word. He wore integrity like a second skin. When he said nothing would happen because of the barn fire, she had trusted him.
What a fool. The advertising had suckered her in again. Nothing was ever as good as the advertising. How many times did she have to learn that lesson?
Fool, fool, fool. Because she was hoping, even now, that Beau had an explanation. He had been quiet so long, she thought he might be considering whether or not to throw her out of his office. The easiest way to avoid questions you didn’t want to answer was to get rid of the person doing the asking. That particular philosophy had worked well for Bennett so far. Maybe Beau had taken notes from the doctor.
The silence was uncomfortable and orchestrated. He studied her the way once-a-year museum goers studied abstract art—not really understanding it but fascinated by the complexity. Maggie was about to break the unbearable stillness when he finally answered her question.
“I didn’t lie to you, Maggie, and I didn’t call Bennett. He called me.”
“Oh, right! He just called you up out of the blue and said, ‘Hi, how ya doin’ and has Maggie burned down anything else this week?’ And you felt compelled to share.”
“No,” Beau ground out. “This conversation’s going to take a long time with you taking potshots at everything I say. I don’t want to do this the hard way, but I guess we’re going to.”
He came around the desk, kicked a chair to an angle and stared at her until she got the message. When she sat down, his grim expression eased the tiniest bit, and he leaned back against the desk, positioning himself squarely in front of her.
“Pay attention, Maggie. I’m only going to say this once. Bennett called me before eight o’clock. I just happened to be here early because by the time I got home there wasn’t much sleep left in the night …”
He paused for an apology, insinuating she should feel guilty. She did feel guilty, but she’d be damned if she’d apologize for asking him to do his job. So she forced herself to return his expectant gaze and said nothing.
“Okay,” he continued. “At least you’re listening. When Bennett called, he asked only one question. If I hadn’t answered it for him, he would have found someone else. He wanted to know if the barn beside your house had burned last night.”
“What?” She was out of the chair instantly. “And you didn’t go arrest him? What more proof do you need that he set me up?”
He laughed at her suggestion. “Jesus, Maggie, I have less evidence to arrest Bennett than I have to arrest you.”
“Think about it! Bennett just happens to call you about the barn fire this morning. How’d he know about it? It happened too late to make the paper, probably wouldn’t have anyway. There were no news cameras there. It was just an old barn, for crying out loud.”
As she talked the logic seemed so inescapable; she couldn’t believe that she had to explain it to him. She moved closer so she could see his eyes, see if he was getting the point she was trying to make. “So how did he find out about the barn unless you told him or I told him? Huh? Either the person he hired to burn the barn told him or he set the fire himself. How else could he know?”
His expression didn’t change. She hadn’t convinced him of a thing. Maggie felt her excitement drain away, felt the awful certainty that nothing she could say or do would stop the tornado of damning coincidence that swirled around her. Beau was about to punch holes in her neat conclusions, and once he did, she’d be the prime suspect again—a disgruntled nurse out for revenge.
For the first time, Maggie began to be afraid of more than the memories. She began to fear the future, began to wonder how much evidence was enough. How much coincidence was too much? She began to wonder if she knew any good lawyers, and if she could afford them without a job.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Beau said softly. “I know you want this fire to be Bennett’s fault, but I can’t decide guilt based on one phone call. He could have found out a hundred ways.”
“How?” she shot back. “Give me a ‘how’ that makes more sense than my version.”
“Simple. One of the firefighters from last night could have seen the article in the newspaper this morning and called his favorite board member—Bennett.”
“How could they know Bennett?” she objected.
“Volunteer fire crews are a mixed bag of society, Maggie. Politicians, business owners, plant workers, accountants, the butcher, you name it. One of them could have been Bennett’s golf buddy for all we know.”
“No, I don’t think—”
“Shh. Don’t think. It’s my turn now. You asked.” Beau ticked off the other possibilities. “One of your neighbors could have read the newspaper, driven by, put two and two together, and called Bennett. Your last name’s on the mailbox. Or the man who owned the barn could have called Bennett. People know your doc’s on the Cloister board. He’s in the society and charity news all the time. Most people call the board member whose name they can remember. Anyone could have called him.”
She reached for the front of his shirt in a reflexive gesture. She curled her fingers in the material, giving a little tug in frustration. “No. It wasn’t anyone. It was someone. You should have gotten the name. I can’t believe you didn’t ask for a name.”
“Maggie, a rookie knows enough to ask that question. I asked. I asked again. Bennett refused to budge from the story that the call came from a concerned citizen at the crack of dawn this morning.”
“Where does that leave me?”
“Where do you want to be left?”
“Alone.”
“No, you don’t,” he snapped as he grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away from his shirt. “You’ve been left alone all your life.”
She tried to drag her hands away from him, but Beau tightened his hold and wouldn’t let go. He held her hands between his, his grip like steel. She wasn’t getting away from him, not until he made his point.
“If you had really wanted out of this—to be left alone—you could have explained about the panic attacks and why you failed one of the polygraphs. While you were at it, you could have mentioned Sarah Alastair. You were there, weren’t you? The night Sarah died? That is the reason you failed the polygraph, isn’t it?”
Beau uttered a curse when she winced. He had deliberately exposed a nerve, but he hadn’t expected to cut so deeply. She tried to jerk angrily away from him again, but he held on. If she knocked over the chair—if anything went crashing to the floor—Russell and Jim would use the noise as an excuse to come running. The door wasn’t locked. They were probably already eyeing the blinds, and speculating.
She didn’t need witnesses for this. He didn’t need witnesses for this. Manhandling suspects was frowned upon.
“Maggie, don’t,” he whispered. Some of the tension went out of her, but she wouldn’t look at him. “We don’t need a scene or my men bursting in here.”
Her brow furrowed. Maybe she was trying to collect herself, to weigh her words before she spoke. Beau put her hands on his chest, holding them there until she stopped pulling away.
There were no tears slipping from the edges of her lids. He doubted Maggie cried easily. Regardless, he brushed his thumb across her cheek and let his fingers slide into the short mop of hair to cradle the side of her head. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I didn’t mean to open up an old wound. Not like that.”
Maggie stared at her fingers splayed out on Beau’s chest. She realized it was possible to hate someone and need their strength all at the same time.
She was so cold on the inside. Fear did that to her. It froze her and made her heartbeat thunder in her ears. None of this would be happening to her if Beau had just left everything alone. Left her alone. Believed her.
But he hadn’t.
Maggie hated Beau because he knew too much. She hated herself because she didn’t know enough, and she never got any closer to the truth. The flashbacks were only fragments of time with no continuity. They were slices of an invisible whole, a worthless kaleidoscope of that day.
Eventually she looked up; she had to. She found the same old Beau—eyes that got her right in her flimsy knees, a haircut that was sliding past “regulation cop” into “bad boy” territory. He’d missed several spots on his jaw with his razor. He was probably too rushed this morning to do a decent job of shaving.
But no, he hadn’t been rushed. He got to the office early. So why not take the time to do the job right? Beau Grayson was a man who tended to the details.
Why would you rush to get to the office, Beau? she wondered suddenly, the idea capturing her attention. Why be careless today? If you didn’t sleep, you had plenty of time to shower and shave.
“You okay?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts. That whisper of his was as raspy as the morning after and sent a twinge of quicksilver low in her belly. His big hands shifted and began to work magic on her back—an apology that kneaded her muscles and warmed her soul.
Maggie didn’t answer right away. Something important was trying to make its way through the disorganized labyrinth that pretended to be her brain. She didn’t have time to listen to her body. Why were you so hot to get to the office, Beau? The question hammered at her, demanding an answer.
While she puzzled it, her brain zigged and zagged, filtering the pieces. An easy explanation was that the barn fire made him want to dig around in her past. That he was rushing to get a head start on the investigation. But there was more to it. If she could just grab on to the thoughts as they zoomed past.
She kept coming back to his interest in the case. He hadn’t assigned it to someone else. Why would an Assistant Chief drive all the way to her house in a nasty storm just to look around? Why not send an underling? Same mission—to look around—but a lot less obvious. Why take his own personal time? And why drag himself out in the middle of the night because a woman calls?
He’d given her the answer himself. Taking her to bed wouldn’t even scratch the surface of what was between them. Beau wasn’t calling the shots any more than she was. And he got off on the risk of being attracted to a suspect. The only way he could get any measure of permanent control over his attraction to her was to prove her guilty. Then she’d truly be off-limits, but until then Beau was having himself a grand old time—playing with fire, dancing on the edge. Taking an impossible risk. Just like the risks he used to take before he gave up the ax and the hat. Beau wanted to see how much heat he could take without getting burned.
If he gave in to temptation, she won. If he resisted, he won.
Her fingers curled into his shirt again, but this time she knew exactly what she was doing as she raised up on her toes and pulled him closer. One good bombshell deserved another. With her mouth close to his ear, she whispered, “Who do you think you’re fooling? The guys out there? Carolyn? Me?”
“What are you talking about?” Beau took her shoulders and shoved her away so he could see her face.
She stared back at him, one eyebrow raised and with a confidence in her smile that he hadn’t seen in a while. The transformation was nothing short of miraculous.
“I got news for you, Beau,” she told him. “You’re not fooling me. Not anymore. You can pretend that you’re some long-suffering investigator who’s stuck with me, but you’re the one who doesn’t want out of the middle of this investigation. You could have tossed this baby in someone else’s lap first thing this morning and gotten rid of me. But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not in the habit of farming out my cases just because I can. It’s bad for morale.”
“Oh, yeah. Especially bad for your morale. You’ve got a dangerous self-destructive streak, Beau. I see a pattern here. First, you try to kill yourself by fire, but you had to give that up because the other guys were going to get killed right along with you.”
She let go of his shirt and smoothed his tie. Then she stepped away from him, the backs of her knees coming up against the chair seat. “So now you’re getting your kicks from trying to kill your career. You think I’m safer than the fire? You think you can handle me? Handle how ‘tense’ we are together? That it’s not going to explode in your face? You think again. Maybe you could walk into the heart of a fire and come out unscathed, but that’s not going to happen here.”
“What is going to happen?”
“I haven’t decided. But hell hath no fury like a woman framed. So go ahead and waste your time investigating eighteen-year-old accidental grease fires if you think that will scratch that itch you’ve got and keep you from doing something stupid like kissing me again. In the meantime I’ll be doing the job you’d be doing if you weren’t trying so hard to make me guilty.”
Beau didn’t bother asking her what she meant. He knew exactly what was percolating behind those blue eyes, so he gave her an order. “Stay away from Bennett.”
“All I want from him is a name.”
“You go near him, Maggie, and I’ll have you thrown in jail for harassment.”
“If I don’t harass him, he’s going to have me thrown in jail for arson. I don’t see that I have much to lose.”
“Russell!” Beau crossed his arms over his chest as he yelled, but he never took his eyes off Maggie. “Get in here.”
“Poor Beau. Do you need reinforcements now that I’ve found your Achilles’ heel? Afraid to be alone with me, now that I know you can be had with very little effort?”
He didn’t bother to disabuse her of that notion because the door rattled open. Russell stuck his head in. “Yeah, Beau, whatcha got?”
“I want you to drive Ms. St. John home. She’s had some kind of attack. She says her blood sugar’s low, and she’s still a little shaky. I want to make sure she gets home safely. I don’t want her on the streets.”
Or anywhere near Bennett until she cools down. Beau figured the drive home would give her a chance to re-think her impulse. Maggie wasn’t stupid. Just mad, but even that was a frightening thought.
Beau smiled at the flare of anger in Maggie’s eyes. The beauty of his plan was that if she protested the blood sugar attack, she’d leave him no choice but to inform Russell of the real reason she was being escorted home. And that opened up another can of worms entirely. She mouthed what he thought was a travel direction and picked up her purse.
Still smiling, he added, “Russell, have Jim follow you and bring you back.”
“Yes, sir.” He disappeared from the door, but left it open.
As Maggie turned, she said, “We’re not done.”
“No, we’re not. Someone’s going to be watching you, so don’t step one foot out of place, Maggie. I’ll have you back in here so fast, your head will spin.”
She didn’t argue that. Instead she asked, “Why was Carolyn here?”
“Just like she told you. She came down here to chew me out for being mean to you.”
When they were gone, Beau exhaled the leftover tension and hoped Maggie believed him about having someone watch her. The truth was he didn’t have the man power or the authority to watch her. She lived in a different parish.
Purposely he pulled out his directory and started making phone calls. He’d already made three when he remembered their new toy—an upgraded fax machine complete with broadcast fax capability. All he had to do was write out one fax and code in the numbers. He’d still have to call the stations without faxes, but this would save a lot of time.
And Beau had a feeling that he was running out of time. If Maggie was guilty, he had to prove it before someone got hurt. If Maggie was innocent, he had to prove it before she did something she’d regret.