Wild Ride: A Changing Gears Novel Read online

  “Me?”

  “You dress casually to the point of sloppiness. Your hair’s not combed and I don’t believe you and your razor are on the most intimate terms. You play up the whole absentminded professor routine. You’ve got a sleepy sexiness that makes a woman wonder if you’d put any effort into an intimate situation.”

  He blinked at her. “That’s what you think?”

  “It’s one possibility. Or is the absentminded professor a front?”

  His eyes gleamed with quick humor as though the I’m such a babe magnet I don’t have to iron, shave, or even match my socks routine was a kind of private joke. Whatever. Some instinct warned her to stay away from this one, and she respected her instincts.

  “Well, I know one thing,” he said in that sleepy, sexy way.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve been thinking about me in the last twenty-four hours as much as I’ve been thinking about you. But I’m still not convinced you’re not a secret man-hater.”

  She determined to put him in his place and wipe that altogether-too-smug grin off his face. He wanted to play games? Fine.

  Shifting her body so their knees almost touched, she settled herself to her best viewing advantage. She knew her body had an irrational desire for his and that her nipples were broadcasting the fact, so she leaned back enough that her chest was prominently in his line of vision.

  “I’ll save you the research,” she said. “I love sex. I love everything about it.” She breathed deeply, pulling up random images and memories, letting her sensual nature off its leash. “I love the warm feel of a man’s body sleeping beside me in the night, the smell of his skin when it’s silky with arousal, kissing when you’re so hot and sweaty your lips slide around.”

  She stopped to lick her lips, stifling the urge to climb into his lap and show him exactly what she meant. She stared into those lapis lazuli eyes, already darkening and clouding with desire. Ha! “I love the hard driving, when you’re both so excited you can’t fill your lungs fast enough, and staring deep into a man’s eyes when we climax together and it feels as though we’ve swapped a little of our souls.”

  She had to pause a second to draw breath and remind herself not to squirm on the car seat. She pretended she’d gone for a dramatic pause, then finished with, “I love lying naked, afterward, still pulsing with pleasure. Waiting for my partner to recover for round two.”

  She leaned even closer and used the huskiness that had crept into her tone to taunt him further. “Because there’s always a round two, and three, and four. I–” she let her finger¬nail flick the top button on his shirt, “am,” flick went the second button, “insatiable.”

  Duncan’s temperature seemed to be rising. He appeared flushed and his breathing was rapid. She forced herself not to imagine him thrusting hard and deep inside her, him staring into her eyes while their bodies exploded with pleasure, him connecting with her in that deeply intimate way.

  After a long, long moment when she felt her blood pound and her body throb with wanting, she knew she’d made her point and she’d better get out of there before she proved beyond words how much she enjoyed sex.

  She glanced at her watch, pulling her librarian’s tone out like a theatrical prop. “Thanks for lunch. I need to get going.”

  “Have dinner with me tonight,” he said, his voice barely his own.

  She stifled a smirk of satisfaction. She’d made her point. She loved sex. But did he think she was going to fall into his bed because he had some basic animal appeal? She hoped she had more sense. “No, thank you.”

  “Are you busy tonight?”

  “No. Just not interested.”

  “You should reconsider. You’ll feel a lot less slutty if you go out with me before we have sex.”

  His arrogance had her blinking. “Believe me, that is never going—”

  She got no further. Strong arms pulled her forward and he kissed her. Hard.

  Her instincts had been right on, she realized, as the full impact of the kiss hit her. This man, with these firm, sensuous lips, was going to be trouble.

  “My cell phone’s on my business card,” he said when he pulled away. “Call me anytime.”

  “I wo—”

  She wondered why she bothered trying to talk to the man if every time she opened her mouth he was going to cut her off by slapping his lips on top of hers.

  Then she became overwhelmed by the sensation of his mouth moving on hers, of his tongue tricking her into a response she didn’t want to show. But how could she help herself? There was some powerful chemistry here.

  She felt his hands in her hair while his tongue teased and promised.

  In spite of what she’d told herself about staying clear of him, her body strained closer to his. Her hands reached for him as though they had their own agenda: his shoulders, muscular and broad; his chest, firm and wide; his back, long and sturdy. She gave up and leaned all the way in so her chest brushed his, making her moan softly as sharp pleasure ignited and spread.

  Her fingers found their way into his messy hair, which was thick and gorgeous to the touch. Her mouth opened greedily and she licked at his tongue, sucked it, wanted more. Dizziness began to invade her senses and there was some kind of humming in her ears when she finally managed to drag herself away.

  “The hell with tonight. Come in with me now.” His words were hoarse, his breathing ragged, and his lips wet from kissing her.

  Oh, she wanted to go in with him, and badly. He felt so warm and strong and dangerous she wanted to ignore her instincts for self-preservation and follow this powerful attraction to its logical conclusion; but she hung on grimly to enough sense to shake her head. Her to-do list was full and there was no room on it for a mindless affair with an obnoxious book scribbler she’d known for twenty-four hours.

  He ran a hand through the hair she’d already mussed, tangling it further so it looked as though he’d just crawled out of bed. “It’s inevitable. You know that as well as I do. One day very soon I’m going to be driving inside you until you cry out with pleasure.”

  She couldn’t speak, only stare into his mesmerizing eyes. He whispered, “And you will cry out. That I promise.”

  A hand on her knee, a gentle pat as though she were his aged great aunt, and he was gone. But the sight of that hand stayed with her. She noticed the long fingers, the elegant square of the palm.

  And as he’d pulled his arm away she’d seen the streak of red on his shirtsleeve and on his inner wrist, as though he’d washed blood off his hands and missed some.

  Cold and shaken, she put the car into gear and reversed. Probably he’d gotten blood on himself when he turned the corpse. But even as she tried to convince herself, she went heavy on the gas and kept glancing in her rear view mirror all the way home.

  She’d kissed a guy with a murdered man’s blood on him.

  5

  Her phone rang as Alex was swilling with mouthwash for the third time. She’d brushed her teeth, even brushed her tongue, and flossed as though it were a competitive sport.

  She’d kissed a man with blood on his hands. Oh, God. Right now, she wanted nothing more than a hot, hot bath to wash every bit of her that had been in any kind of contact with Duncan Forbes, or even thought about coming into contact with him.

  But it seemed bubbles and soothing aromatherapy would have to wait.

  She grabbed the phone before her recorded message kicked in, assuming it was the police. “Hello?” She hoped it was Tom. It would be easiest to tell him about the blood on Duncan Forbes’s hands.

  A deep, racking sob was her only answer.

  Oh, no. She wished with fierce desperation that she’d left the phone ringing. Not today. Not now.

  The sob ended on a series of hiccups, like a stone skipped across water.

  Knowing she couldn’t hang up, and that the call was going to be a long one, she headed for her bedroom to take off her clothes. “Gillian?” As though she had to ask. Who else ever phoned in mid-s
ob?

  “Eric wants to get back together.”

  Dead bodies could litter Swiftcurrent like fallen autumn leaves and they wouldn’t divert Gillian from her personal crisis—whatever that week’s crisis happened to be.

  With anyone else, an estranged husband wanting to get back together might be considered good news. But with her cousin, everything was disaster and heartache. Good news, bad news, it didn’t matter. Had the drugs done this to her or had her overwrought personality drawn her to the drugs?

  Alex realized a full minute had passed without anything but sobbing and hiccup noises passing across the phone line. Clearly, something was required from her. She ought to be more sympathetic; the woman’s husband had left her, but over the years, Alex’s stock of sympathy had worn thin. Gillian brought most of her problems on herself.

  “Oh, really?” was about all she could manage.

  For once, she’d like someone to lean on. Someone close enough she could call and say, I had a shitty day. Found a dead body and it went downhill from there. But there was no one. That’s why she’d made such an error in judgment and gone to lunch with a man who had another’s blood on his hands.

  She shuddered.

  She slipped off her skirt. Tom would most likely agree with her that the obvious cause of Forbes getting blood on him was from flipping the body. She was pretty sure there was a test that showed if a person had fired a gun. Had they done it on Duncan Forbes? Or did they need a reason to test him for gunpowder residue? She’d seen that on many a crime show. It was amazing how much evidence a killer left behind. Surely, she hadn’t kissed a murderer.

  Had she?

  “So what do you think I should do?”

  Alex forced her concentration back to the phone call. “About Eric wanting to get back together?”

  “Ye-e-es,” Gillian wailed.

  Hope flickered, but not brightly, at the thought that her ditzy cousin might be reunited with the man who’d kept her more or less stable for almost a decade. It wasn’t a beacon of hope, more like a twenty-five-watt bulb on its way out. Eric had surprisingly turned out to be the one strong influence in Gill’s messed-up life. It was only once he’d left, after seven years of marriage, that Gillian had taken to calling Alex. Prior to that, their relationship had been rocky at best. They were cousins, but classic good girl/bad girl opposites.

  She jammed the phone between her ear and shoulder while she freed her hands to pull off her pantyhose. “Did he tell you he wants to get back together?” Or was it a cocaine mirage. The irony of Gill and Eric’s relationship was that drugs had brought them together and, when Eric cleaned up and Gill didn’t, had driven them apart.

  She pulled on the stretchy black pants she used for yoga,spread the toes of her bare feet in relief after having had them squished in dress shoes all day, and peeled the blouse over her head.

  “I’m so confused,” her cousin sniffled on the other end of the phone. “I’m not good on my own. I’m not strong like you.”

  Yeah, well, she was tired of being strong. Tired of being leaned on. “Take him back, then.”

  “I can’t. Look—do you think we could go to a movie or something one night?”

  All of a sudden, Alex saw Gill as she’d been before she ran away to L.A. in her senior year. She’d been so pretty and carefree. She could have any guy she wanted with her luscious body and wild-child ways, and mostly she’d had them. She’d developed a crush on Tom Perkins, Alex remembered now. One of those violent teenage crushes, but he hadn’t been interested. He was probably the only man who ever said no to Gill.

  It must have been seeing him today, and now hearing from her cousin, that brought that memory back. She bet Gill didn’t even remember that intense teenage crush.

  Then Gillian left home. She left a note saying she was going to L.A. to find work as an actress.

  What she’d found was drugs.

  And Eric.

  “Look, Gill. Make yourself some tea or something. Of course we can go to a movie. I’m pretty tied up this week. How about one night next week?” Tomorrow, her cousin would probably forget they’d ever had this conversation.

  Poor Gillian—when she wasn’t driving Alex insane, she was pathetic. When they’d been younger, Alex had actually been sort of jealous of her gorgeous, sexually confident, utterly wild cousin. Now that she’d outgrown her own insecurities and come into the woman she was meant to be, she no longer felt intimidated by the easy sexuality of her cousin. Her lack of discipline and her chemical dependencies had messed up her life so badly that now Alex felt sorry for her.

  “Can I come over tonight? I need to talk to you about something.”

  Right. They had decisions to make about the estate and she’d cry some more about Eric. But not tonight. Alex wasn’t up to it. “I’m really beat. I had a rough day. Can we make it tomorrow?”

  There was a pause, and a soft, “Sure.” The one word contained a touch of hurt, and guilt mixed with the frustration that gushed from deep inside.

  When they ended the call, she picked up the phone again and called the non-emergency police line. It wasn’t quite five and Raeanne was still at her desk. “Can you get Tom to call me when he gets a minute?”

  “Oh, my gosh. He’s pretty busy with the murder investigation right now.”

  Raeanne was as excited as a gossip columnist in the middle of a juicy scandal. “You poor thing. I couldn’t believe it was you who found the dead body!”

  “Yes. It was me.” And she really didn’t want to gossip about her discovery. “Ask Tom to call my cell number when he gets time.”

  Having done her duty, she pulled out her mat and did an hour of yoga stretches to bring peace and serenity. It was an abject failure, but she couldn’t blame the yoga. She didn’t think much short of temporary amnesia could bring peace and serenity tonight.

  The walls of her apartment were closing in on her. She needed to do something to take her mind off her troubles. If she lived in a big city, she’d have more friends her own age and a whole lot more things to do and places to go. Instead, for fun and excitement, she called Myrna, the circulation clerk, to tell her not to come in tomorrow and spent fifteen minutes talking about the murder.

  That done, she couldn’t relax enough for that hot bath she’d promised herself. She was too jumpy yet. She pulled up Jack Johnson and Adele on her iPod and decided to rearrange the linen closet. But she discovered, on opening the door, that it was perfectly ordered. She’d cleaned it out only a couple of weeks ago.

  Her next stop was the kitchen. She was still full from lunch, so she poured herself a glass of milk and washed an apple, then peeled it in one long, tidy swirl and sliced the fruit into four precise quadrants which she placed on a plate. It wasn’t really enough for a balanced meal, so she cut four slices of cheese and buttered a slice of whole wheat bread.

  A meal didn’t have to be large, but she liked to think it contained all the required food groups.

  While she ate at her kitchen table, using a pretty blue linen napkin and a matching place mat—because she was also a big believer that a single woman needn’t live like a slob—she flicked on the TV to catch the news.

  The murder was, predictably, the top story. Tom was interviewed, looking solid and impassive and giving out no information but that an unidentified man had been found dead in the library. An investigation was under way.

  He didn’t comment on anything, right down to who had discovered the body, for which she was thankful. There was the usual plea for anyone with information to come forward. The camera crew had caught the body being hauled away. A dark lump tied to a stretcher.

  Tidying her dinner dishes took all of a minute and a half. She wiped down all her cabinets and the counters. Managed to impose a tiny measure of order in a world of chaos by swapping the cinnamon and the cardamom in her spice rack, which had somehow got switched out of their normal alphabetical order. Then she brewed a pot of chamomile tea, which was supposed to be calming.

  S
he had a couple of children’s books she wanted to read so she could classify them properly, but her mind wouldn’t settle. And the tea didn’t calm or soothe her tonight. Her mind dashed in a disorganized fashion from the dead man to Gillian’s call and, most often of all, to the kiss Forbes planted on her.

  It had been steamy and erotic and she’d responded with all the passion of a woman starved for steamy and erotic. Worse. She’d kissed a man with blood on his hands.

  She rose so fast the calming, soothing chamomile tea splashed

  everywhere. She had to get out of here.

  Before she’d finished gathering her keys and purse, she knew where she was going. To her grandparents’ house. Foolish it might be, but her instinct was to run home—or, as she’d told Duncan Forbes, to the only home she’d ever really known.

  She’d been helping her grandfather with his memoirs when he died. Fortunately, he’d preferred talking to writing, and he’d completed the telling of his life story on tape up to his official retirement five years earlier.

  The book wouldn’t get written if she didn’t carry on. It was her monument to him. Of course, the memoirs of an ordinary man who’d lived an ordinary life weren’t going to be the stuff of bestseller lists, but his passion for art meant he’d actually known and supported some of the better known artists of the 20th century. He had stories and anecdotes that were worth preserving and sharing.

  She’d already decided to donate a copy to the city’s archives whether they wanted the book or not. She’d also have one copy bound and indexed in the library system. Franklin Forrest would have gotten such a kick out of that.

  She could have brought all his papers and the tapes to her own home, but she’d left them at his house. She convinced herself it was because he had a bigger desk and a larger study than she did, but in truth, she still felt his presence in the house where he’d lived since returning to the States after the war and marrying.

  Her mother and her aunt had grown up in that house. Her cousin had grown up there, and, in many ways, Alex had also grown up in the old Victorian.