Hot Contact

Arianna extended her hand. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

He took her hand then didn’t let go until she met his gaze. Sympathy brought out specks of gold in his green eyes, but he didn’t try to stop her. She was grateful for that.

She kept her emotions in check as she pulled away from the curb. Now what? Where could she go? Not back to her mother’s house. Not to her own apartment, either. Too quiet. To the office, then, where she spent most of her life, anyway.

She had to come up with plan B.

An hour later Joe tossed his inventory log onto the dining room table and headed to the backyard, in need of fresh air. He stalked the grounds, hunting for nonexistent weeds, then sat next to an orange tree and rested his back against the trunk. He plucked a blade of grass, then another. One more.

He didn’t know why he’d expected anything different. Of course Arianna wasn’t interested. He was a cop, LAPD at that—just like her father, a man who had died in the line of duty. And his own father hadn’t found the killer.

That was just the beginning. Her income was probably three times his—or more. She had fit in at Scott’s party, as sophisticated as the rest of his guests. Joe hadn’t, which is why he’d discovered the waterfall in the first place. He had decided he’d made a mistake by going to the party and so had looked for a place to hang out until he could politely leave.

Then Arianna had appeared in the misty, mysterious place like a wish fulfilled, her spicy perfume alerting him to her presence, her sexy body jolting him back to life after a long sleep, her dark eyes entreating him to trust and hope. Was it all a game? She said it wasn’t, that the attraction was real and unplanned and complicated. He would’ve believed her, believed she was honest, if she hadn’t misled him last night. What was the truth?

He’d been lied to before, most recently by his own fiancée. He hadn’t learned to play those games and didn’t know how to spot the players.

Arianna hadn’t shown herself to be any different. She’d walked out as soon as she learned he couldn’t be of any use to her.

So much for trying to get back his life. And a date. It was too bad his interest had been piqued to the degree it had.

“Joe?”

He swung around. Arianna stepped through the side gate and into the yard.

“I didn’t mean to just barge in, but I rang the bell several times. Your car was still out front, so I took a chance you were out here.”

Damn, she was one sexy woman. Curvy, fluid, graceful and…competent.

“No problem,” he said, standing to greet her. Stay this time….

“I apologize for walking out on you,” she said.

He liked her directness and that she looked him in the eye. He even liked that she didn’t offer an excuse. She was in search of the truth. He couldn’t fault her for using whatever method it took to find that truth.

“Forget it,” he said. “Are you hungry? I seem to have some extra food on hand.”

After a moment she smiled. “I’m starving.”

Keep it light, he told himself. “That’s the real reason you came back.”

“Absolutely. The only reason.”

As they moved toward the house, he resisted resting his hand on her lower back as he had the night before, but her perfume whispered to him, urging him closer. He’d already danced with her. Kissed her. Held her against his body. He wanted to sweep her into his arms right now, but she wasn’t a woman who could be rushed. He already knew that about her.

He also knew if he played his cards right, she might stay for dinner.

Arianna appreciated attractive men as much as the next woman—she just didn’t trust them. There were exceptions. Her partners in her firm, Nate Caldwell and Sam Remington, were both attractive and trustworthy. And she sensed that Joe Vicente was a man she could trust. Maybe too much.

She let her gaze wander over him as he stored the leftovers in the otherwise empty refrigerator. He had the body type people called rangy—lean and loose-limbed. He moved slowly and spoke thoughtfully. A deliberate man, she decided. Someone who didn’t make mistakes often, either in words or action. Important qualities in a detective. She wondered if his father was the same way.

She also wondered why Joe was protecting him.

Arianna hadn’t realized her gaze was lingering on Joe’s rear end until he turned around and caught her staring. In truth, although it was a very nice feature of his anatomy, she’d been lost in her own thoughts, not drooling. He couldn’t have known that, however, and the last thing she wanted was to get involved, even just physically, with a man as wounded as he seemed to be.

Surprisingly, he didn’t tease her. Instead he sat across from her at the kitchen table and said nothing, apparently letting her decide what would happen next.

She should probably go. She was keeping him from his task.

“Is this hard for you?” she asked instead. “Emptying your parents’ house?”

“I grew up here. It’s home.”

“Do you have to sell it?”

“Yeah. Why’d you come back, Arianna?”

She’d been waiting for that question. He was a detective. He would want motive. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I started to drive to my office, but I got stuck in traffic, and I realized I didn’t want to go there. I thought about how abrupt and rude I’d been, leaving like I did.”

“You were disappointed.”

“Greatly. But that’s my problem, not yours. My mother didn’t want me to pursue it. Maybe I shouldn’t.” Making and keeping eye contact was ingrained in her. He matched her skill. She wasn’t sure what he saw when he looked at her, but she couldn’t shake how worn-out he looked. Protective instincts she’d never acknowledged before slammed into her, throwing her off balance. “Look, do you need help?”

His brows went up. “Help? With what?”

“With doing your inventory. Are you getting things ready for a garage sale?”

“I’m taking what I want to keep and deciding what to donate and what to toss.”

She couldn’t figure him out. Last night he’d taken charge, his good-night kiss even more memorable because of his complete command of the moment. Today he seemed to be holding back, waiting for her to make a move.

Fine. Good. She didn’t want him to pursue her, anyway, right? She didn’t need that kind of complication. She’d been careful not to become involved with a cop, not even once. She could resist him.

“Are you offering to help?” Joe asked.

“I’d be happy to.” The words spilled out unchecked. To cover her astonishment, she pushed away from the table and glanced at her watch. “I have to be home by six o’clock.”

“Four hours is more than enough time,” he said, also standing.

“I have a date,” she added, almost wincing at the defensive tone in her voice.

“I see.”

She heard the smile in his voice. She hadn’t been this rattled since…she couldn’t remember when. A woman in her profession couldn’t afford to be.

But then, this wasn’t business.

In the attic, Joe watched Arianna wrap a framed photograph in newspaper and pack it carefully in a box, as if it were her treasure, not his. What he’d heard about her when he’d inquired around the department last year was that she was tough, smart and unsentimental, facts he’d observed for himself when she’d provided him with information on the Wells case last year. Their involvement had been brief and businesslike, with a hint of male/female awareness making the meeting interesting. But he’d also been engaged to Jane. In all the complications of his life since then he’d forgotten about Arianna.

He wondered now how he could have. Anyone who thought her unsentimental hadn’t seen her expression when she ordered him to go do something else so she could pack his mother’s clothes. She’d even shut the closet door before he returned so he wouldn’t see the empty space. He would remember her kindness.

Joe glanced at his watch. She would have to leave soon. For her date. He didn’t know why he’d assumed she wasn’t involved with anyone. Maybe because last night she’d come to the party alone, and danced with him, and kissed him back.

But last night she’d come to the party for a purpose—to meet him. She wouldn’t have brought a boyfriend along. It would’ve been business to her.

She was a damned challenging woman. And he liked predictable.

“What’s in those boxes?” she asked, pointing to the last ones, tucked under the eaves.

He closed the lid on the trunk he’d been rummaging through, deciding he needed to keep everything in it. Relics of past generations.

Joe dragged the four unmarked boxes into the center of the room and opened one. His heart began to pound. He opened the second box, then he looked at Arianna. “Files,” he said. “My father’s old case files.”

Her eyes widened. She sat up straight but said nothing. Was she waiting for him to offer her the files? Of course she was.

“You’re welcome to stay and look through them,” he said.

“Don’t you need to ask your father’s permission?”

He hesitated, then shook his head.

She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and dialed. “Jordan, hi, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry to do this but I need to cancel our plans for tonight…. No, not work, but something important. Can I call you tomorrow?… Terrific. Thanks. Bye.”

Joe could measure her excitement not by her voice or her face, both of which she controlled remarkably, but by her hands, which shook. He shoved one box toward her.

She said nothing. She didn’t have to.

He worried they were opening a Pandora’s box.

The sounds of manila folders and paper being shuffled replaced conversation. Tension filled the air like smoke from a smoldering fire, thick and acrid, making it hard to breathe. Joe admitted to himself that he was as anxious as Arianna to find the file, to know what happened. How she had become that important to him that fast wasn’t something he wanted to examine very closely, but he felt her anticipation—and her dread—as strongly as if it were coming from inside him.

“They’re not in any order,” she said after flipping through the first few files. “They should be in order, either alphabetically or by date, wouldn’t you think?”

“Yeah.” The neatly typed labels mocked them. They should have represented organization, the ability to put your hands on the right folder any time. Instead, twenty years of files were tossed haphazardly into boxes as if one had no more relevance than another.

Or as if someone had searched through them, not returning them to their proper order.

“I found it,” Arianna said, but without excitement or urgency. Silence roared through the tiny attic space. She held up a file, opened it. “Empty.”

Empty—worse than the potential Pandora’s box. No truths revealed. No illusions shattered. No answers for a daughter who desperately needed them—and maybe a son, too, who wanted to know how a cop killing could go unsolved.

Five

Arianna resisted the urge to scream. Instead she drew on her martial arts and yoga training by controlling her breathing and visualizing the sun setting into the ocean.

“The files are jumbled,” Joe said into her growing calm. “Maybe the papers got mixed with another file.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s take the boxes to the dining room.” He scooped up one box and hauled it down the pull-down attic stairs then shouted back up to her. “Pass me the others, okay?”

That got her moving. Fifteen minutes later they were settled in the dining room, the old maple table stacked with folders.

She examined her father’s file. The tag was typed with his name, Mateo Alvarado, the date of his murder and another series of numbers. She thumbed through some other folders. “Look at this,” she said, pointing. “My father’s tag has an extra set of numbers typed on it. As far as I can tell, it’s the only one.”

Joe made a quick check of the stack nearest him. “None of these, either. Just name and date.”

Arianna puzzled over it for a few seconds then opened the empty folder again. Closed it. Opened it. “Wouldn’t a homicide investigation produce a lot of paperwork?”

“Sure. Crime-scene analyses, witness reports, forensics. In the case of a cop within his own department? There would be extra interviews and copies of media coverage. Why?”

“Look at the folder. The crease is still sharp-edged, as if nothing was ever placed in there at all.”

He met her gaze. “I don’t know what that could mean.”

“It’s odd, though, right?”

“Yeah. Even for an open-and-shut-case, it would be odd.” He turned his attention back to the folders in front of him. “So we’ll go through all the files page by page. If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

“Why wouldn’t it be there?” she asked, dragging a file closer.

“I don’t know. Maybe my dad started as the primary but the case was given to someone else and he turned over his notes.”

“Can you call and ask him?”

“No.”

His casual tone irritated her, but she knew she couldn’t push him. She did wonder what the big deal was.

“I heard a rumor you were in the army,” he said.

Arianna allowed the change of subject. “For eight years.”

“You must’ve joined right out of high school.”

“A week after graduation.”

“Why?”

Why? She wondered how to explain it so that he understood. “Do you know who my stepfather is?”

“No idea.”

“Estebán Clemente.”

That got his attention. “The movie guy?” He frowned. “You weren’t…escaping him, were you?”

His reaction took her by surprise. “Not in the way you mean. He is a loving man, although strict. Very strict.”

She saw his shoulders loosen. “How did your mother meet him?”

“After my father died, she started taking me to auditions for television commercials, something I’d wanted to do forever but which my father had forbidden. I landed a few spots and some print ads, as well, enough to keep me busy.”

“Weren’t you only eight years old?”

She nodded.

“Was it something you wanted or your mother wanted?”

“I wanted it. I did well, too. Then when I had just turned twelve I auditioned for a movie that Estebán was producing. I was cast in a small part. Maria Sanchez, rebel teenager,” she said, remembering the role fondly. “Estebán came to the set on a day I was working. He met my mother, and it was instant fireworks.” She put a file aside and grabbed another. “A couple of months later they were married, and the first thing he did was lay down the law. No more auditions. He said it was a bad business for children and he wouldn’t allow it. My mother supported him, of course. I was angry for years. Years.”

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