Never Say Never Again

Clasping her rose-etched antique cup of Earl Grey between both hands, she took a long sip. She grimaced at the cool liquid, then glanced toward the unplugged microwave and the television tuned in to the local news next to it. She couldn’t run both the microwave and the TV at the same time in the old town house, a wiring challenge she hoped to remedy with her plans to renovate the place. Plans she could put into motion just as soon as she settled on a design.

She jerkily opened the first newspaper and carefully spread it out on the table in front of her. Just a kiss. Yeah, right, and the Concorde was just a plane. First kisses didn’t even remotely resemble what had passed between her and Connor in the park the other night. There had been something…explosive about the meeting of their lips. Something undeniably sexy. She’d felt the amazing urge to push her dress up and cradle him between her thighs with no thought about tomorrow. No qualms about how well she didn’t know him. Absolutely no thoughts of why they shouldn’t be indulging in such decadent behavior in the middle of a park in the heart of the nation’s capital.

She propped her head in her hand. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t so long ago that she had entertained ideas of indulging in such behavior solely because it was the nation’s capital. While she didn’t claim to be an exhibitionist, there was something decidedly erotic and intense about the idea of having sex a mere stone’s throw away from the White House.

The city itself had proved an incredible aphrodisiac when she’d first started attending G.W.U. Or could it perhaps have been that D.C. wasn’t the small town of Prospect, New Hampshire? She still couldn’t be sure. But leaving the place where she’d grown up as the youngest of three daughters of the high-school math teacher had been wonderfully freeing. Not once had she been taunted for her height. Nor had she felt hemmed in by her lack of career choices. The sky was the limit as far as her future was concerned. And when she discovered that men were attracted to her…well, she’d taken to them like chocolate, in some odd way trying to make up for every guy who had shunned her in high school, every kid who had teased her, made her feel like a towering tree with absolutely no grace. In essence, she’d become a serial dater.

She supposed the reasons were far more complicated than that. Still, while her personal life was littered with debris from failed relationships, she had excelled in her studies and career. Affirmative action may have made it easier for her to obtain certain positions, like clerking under an esteemed superior court judge, followed by a stint in the local prosecutor’s office, then a gratifying round with a citizens’ action group, but it was her unabashed ambition and singleminded purpose that had landed her in the U.S. attorney’s office four years ago.

Then came Thomas.

She shook the paper vigorously, hoping the action itself would snap her from her reverie. She didn’t want to think about him now. Didn’t want to think about Connor either. After Thomas…well, she’d vowed to spend uninterrupted quality time with herself. And that didn’t include one U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy. Especially given the cloud of suspicion now hanging over him.

The wall phone rang. Bronte slanted a look at the clock, then continued reading. Too early for her mother. Besides, she’d spoken to her the day before yesterday, so it would probably be next week before she spoke to her again, unless something important popped up. And if it was something important, she didn’t think she could deal with it right now. She turned the page and continued to pretend to read the story.

Her gaze was again drawn to the phone.

The caller could be someone from work. With this Robbins witness case, everything at the U.S. attorney’s office was in upheaval. While it might be good to let whoever it was think she was already on her way downtown, that call could be important, too.

She bit on her bottom lip and slowly lowered the newspaper to the table. Four rings.

She picked it up on the fifth. “Hello?”

“Bronte?”

She absently rubbed her forehead, thinking she should have let the answering machine pick it up.

“Bronte? Are you there?”

She closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. “Yes, Thomas, I’m here.” Though she wished for all the world that she wasn’t. Just five minutes later she would have been in the shower and would have missed the call. Just a half hour later, she would already have left the town house for work. But no, Thomas had to call now when he knew she would probably pick up.

“You haven’t returned my calls.”

She leaned against the wall. “No, I haven’t.”

“You mind telling me why?”

He sounded too calm, too rational, and far too familiar. “Maybe because I don’t have anything to say to you?”

There was a pregnant pause, then he said quietly, “I’ve left Jessica, Bronte.”

The words swirled in Bronte’s mind. “And that affects me…how, exactly?”

“I guess that’s for you to decide.”

“Funny, I thought I made my decision.”

“Things change, Bronte.”

Her gaze caught on a grainy black-and-white photo of Connor McCoy on the front page of one of the newspapers. She rubbed her forehead. “Yeah, and the more they do, the more they stay the same.” She sighed. “Look, Thomas, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me anymore.”

“Okay. I can respect that.”

She began to pull the receiver away from her ear, but his quiet voice stopped her, drawing her back like a dog who had either been kicked too much, or not enough. He said, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t call me. I’m at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, room 21104. And, of course, you still have my work number. Call me anytime, Bronte.”

“Goodbye, Thomas.”

She hung up the receiver with both hands, then stood staring it at for a long, long moment.

What was it with men? Months pass without a word, time in which you learn to pull yourself together. Then bam. One phone call and they expect you to come running. Forget that he had virtually ripped her heart out. This, after steadily dating for three months. Long after she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.

She leaned against the wall again, burying her face in her hands. Weren’t women supposed to have a sixth sense about married, lying, cheating, heart-stealing creeps? Some sort of alarm that went off, saying “warning, warning, pond scum at twelve o’clock”? She’d never figured herself to be the gullible type. The exact opposite, if truth be known. On the rare occasion when she took a sick day and spent it listing around in bed knocking back Chinese chicken soup and ogling day-time television that featured shows with themes like, “She slept with my brother, emptied my bank account, killed my dog, but I still want her back,” she’d harshly judged the other women as no-good home wreckers who’d known the men they were seeing were married and continued the relationship anyway.

It was shocking to have to aim her biting judgment of them at herself.

She dropped her hands to her sides. To this day, she still couldn’t figure out the logistics of how Thomas had managed to keep his wife a secret from her. Or her a secret from his wife. After she’d found out, he’d explained his wife was a surgeon who chose second shift hours because she felt she worked better then. But what about the apartment he’d taken her to? The nights he’d slept over at her place?

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

The plain truth of it was that once she’d found out, there was no going back. She’d quickly called a halt to whatever…strange relationship they’d had. Thrown away the clippings of wedding dresses she’d begun to collect. Burned the few belongings he’d left at her place. Mangled his engagement ring in the trash compactor. And sworn off men until an unspecified time in the future when she could think about what happened with Thomas and not feel…dirty. Could look at herself in the mirror and like herself again.

That certainly wasn’t going to happen if she took up with him again, wife or no wife.

And indulging in heated thoughts of Connor McCoy wasn’t going to make that happen either. Moving from a man who was too committed to women, to a man who wanted no commitment and was a suspected murderer, was not progress.

Gathering up the newspapers, she used her foot to open the cupboard under the sink, then stuffed them inside the wastebasket. The recycling patrol would have to forgive her this once. She kicked the door closed with her bare foot, brushed her hands together, then kicked the door again for good measure.

Of course it was only par for the course that she stubbed her big toe and had to hobble around to get ready for work. She couldn’t wait to find out what else this wonderful day had in store for her.

3

THERE WERE BLASTED story-twisting, scandal-hungry reporters hiding out everywhere. When Connor went home to his D.C. apartment, they sprung from behind the bushes, camera lights blinding him, microphones hitting him in the chin. When he checked in at work, they were in the hall outside his office; he’d even found one hiding in one of the men’s room stalls. He grimaced. Not that there was much reason for him to go to work nowadays. He’d been suspended with pay the instant Melissa Robbins’s body had been found…and he’d been named as suspect number one.

Two days and it hadn’t sunk in yet. He was good at his job. Damn good. He’d never done one single thing in his entire career to cast him in a suspicious light. He prided himself on being the one they called in for special ops, and carefully cultivated his reputation for getting the job done. He’d never lost a witness. It was only natural then that he’d fully expected his boss to stand behind him.

Not exactly the way things had gone down. Before he could get two words in, old Newton had asked for his badge and his firearm and told him he was on indefinite suspension until the outcome of the case was decided.

Politics. He knew the drill. The higher-ups in the department had to distance themselves, or at least appear like they were distancing themselves, from him in order to cover their asses. Not merely because of potential lawsuits from the victim’s family. But because Washington bigwigs loved to throw their weight around when it came to high-profile cases like this one. The perfect PR opportunity to make it look like they were doing something for the constituents back home. Unfortunately, their power plays ultimately hurt the ones least responsible for the trouble. Men like his boss, Newton.

Men like him.

He hadn’t been able to get a full accounting of exactly what implausible evidence linked him to Robbins’s murder. But sources did tell him that an arrest was probably imminent. It was his job to make sure that arrest never took place.

Tightening his hands on the steering wheel of his silver SUV, Connor pulled up into the gravel drive of the McCoy place in Manchester, Virginia. Pops’s car wasn’t there. Good. And at this time of the morning, Liz and Mitch would be busy in the ranch office. Even better. His mind had been so busy whizzing through all the details of his predicament in the past two days, he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. It wasn’t until he’d accidentally poured salt into his coffee instead of sugar at a D.C. diner that morning that he realized he needed a few hours to himself to get some major shut-eye. And the old McCoy house was just the place to do that.

He distractedly eyed the pen that paralleled the parking area. Kelli’s mutt, Kojak, was sitting inside with Mitch’s behemoth Goliath.

Clutching the keys to the McCoy place, and to his car, he climbed out then crossed over to the pen and crouched down. Kojak ignored him, but Goliath ambled over and stuck his wet nose through the fence. He absently stroked him. “What is it, boy? Feeling a little put out?”