Convincing Alex (16 page)

“It won't be much longer.”

“That's what they said an hour ago.”

They were standing in the waiting room. Alex refused to sit. After a yawn and a good stretch, Bess wrapped her arms around him.

“She's fully dilated, and the baby was crowning. The last glance I had of the fetal monitor showed a really strong heartbeat. A fast one. I think it's a girl.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Research.” She settled her head on his shoulder. “I was figuring earlier that I've delivered twelve babies, including one set of twins. In a matter of speaking.”

When her voice slurred, he tipped up her chin. “You're asleep on your feet, McNee. I should have sent you home.”

“You couldn't have pried me away.”

No, that was true, he realized. It was just one more aspect to her beauty. “I owe you.”

“Then pay up.” She lifted her mouth, sighing into the kiss.

“Mama.” Though he'd enjoyed watching his brother, Mikhail shot to his feet when he spotted his parents in the doorway.

“We have a new member of the family.” There were tears in
Nadia's eyes and in Yuri's as he stood with his arm tight around his wife.

“What is it?” Nick and Alex demanded together.

“You will come see. They bring the baby to the glass in a moment.”

“Rachel is resting.” Yuri dashed away a tear. “You will kiss her good-night soon.”

They trooped out together, to wait by the nursery window for the first glimpse.

“I'm an uncle,” Nick said to Freddie. The girl's cheeks turned pink as he gave her a hard hug. “Hey, there's Zack.” He kept his arm around her as his brother walked forward, holding a tiny bundle. The bundle was squalling, and Zack was grinning from ear to ear.

He held the baby up. Atop the curling black hair was a bright pink bow.

“It's a girl,” Alex murmured, and held Bess hard against him. “She's beautiful.”

“Man” was the best Nick could do. “Oh, man.” Overcome for a moment, he glanced down and found himself looking at Freddie, who was still tucked under his arm. He drew back, brushed a fingertip along her cheek and caught a tear on the tip. “What's this?”

“It's just so sweet.” Freddie's eyelashes were spiky and her eyes swam as she looked up at him. He thought for a moment—an uncomfortable moment—that it would be easy to drown in those eyes.

“Yeah, it's great.” He let out a careful breath. She was his cousin, he reminded himself. Well, a kind of cousin. And she was hardly more than a kid. “I, ah, don't have a handkerchief or anything.”

“It's all right.” Freddie felt a drop roll down her cheek, but she didn't mind. After all, these were the very best kind of tears. “Do
you
ever think about having babies?” she asked with disarming candor.

“Having—” Nick would have stepped back then, way back, but the family was crowding him in. “No,” he said firmly, and made himself look away from her damp, glowing face. “No way.”

“I do.” She sighed and let her head rest against his arm.

Mikhail was whispering something to Sydney that had her nodding and wiping away tears. Behind Freddie, Natasha shifted Katie in her arms and turned to her husband. He had one hand on Freddie's shoulder, and his sleeping son lay curved on his own.

“Every one is a miracle.”

He bent his head to kiss her damp cheeks. “Just say the word anytime you decide you'd like another miracle of our own.”

“I am a man blessed.” Yuri grabbed the closest body. It happened to be Bess's, and she found herself whirled in a circle. “Two grandsons. Now three granddaughters.” He tossed Bess up. She came down laughing, gripping his shoulders.

“Congratulations.” She pleased him enormously by kissing him firmly on the mouth. “Grandpapa.”

“It's a good day.” He reached in his pocket. “Have a cigar.”

R
osalie considered herself an excellent judge of people, and she had already decided Bess was one strange lady. But she kept coming back.

Sure, the money was good, Rosalie thought as she sat drinking a diet soda in Bess's basement office. And for a woman with a retirement plan, that had to be number one. Yet it was more than making an extra buck that kept her taking the trip up and across town several days each week. More, too, that kept her hanging around after they finished what Bess liked to call ‘consulting sessions.'

Rosalie was human enough to get a charge out of being connected, however remotely, to the entertainment world. She couldn't deny that she'd been excited, awed and impressed when she watched a couple of tapings.

But there was another factor, a much more basic one. Rosalie enjoyed Bess's company.

Besides being a strange lady, Bess had class. Rosalie didn't figure a person had to possess class to recognize it in another. Class wasn't just a matter of pedigree—though she'd discovered Bess had one. It was more than having an old lady in the DAR, or an old man in
Who's Who.
It was hazier than that. Though Rosalie couldn't quite come up
with the terms she wanted, she had recognized in Bess those rare and often nebulous qualities, grace and compassion.

She was procrastinating over taking the trip back downtown by dawdling over her drink. Bess didn't seem to mind if Rosalie hung around while she worked. In the few weeks since they'd hooked up, Rosalie had noted that Bess worked hard and long. Harder, in Rosalie's opinion, than she herself, or any of the other ladies in her profession. Certainly Bess's hours were longer.

It amused Rosalie to compare the two. In fact, she and Bess had gotten into a very interesting discussion on the similarities and differences between Bess's selling her mind and Rosalie her body.

What a kick that had been, Rosalie thought now, while Bess typed and mumbled. Philosophical discussions weren't the norm in Rosalie's world.

The simple term she had not quite grasped for their relationship was
friendship.
They had become friends.

“How late you gonna work?” Rosalie asked, and Bess glanced up absently from the computer screen.

“Oh…not much longer.” Her eyes were still slightly unfocused when she blew her hair away from them. Brock was on the verge of seducing Jessica. “I just had this idea for a little twist on a scene for tomorrow.” She smiled then. It was quick, and a little wicked. “Of course, several members of the cast are going to want to murder me when I toss this at them in the morning. But that's show biz.”

Rosalie took a drag on her cigarette. “What time did you get in here this morning?”

“Today? About nine-thirty. I was…” She thought of Alex. “Running a little late.”

Lips pursed, Rosalie looked at the fake designer watch on her
wrist. “And it's after seven now.” Her grin flashed. “Girlfriend, you'd only put in half that many hours in my line of work.”

“Yeah, but I get to sit down.” Bess rubbed at the dull ache in the back of her neck. She really was going to have to work on her posture. “Hungry?” she asked. “Want to order something in?”

With a little tug of regret, Rosalie stabbed out the cigarette. “No. I gotta get to work, too.”

“You could take the night off.” Casually Bess ran a finger lightly over the keyboard. “Maybe we could catch a movie.”

Chuckling, Rosalie dug in her purse for a mirror to check her makeup. “You said you weren't going to try to reform me.”

“I lied.” Bess sat back in her chair while Rosalie painted her mouth bloodred. She'd tried very hard not to pontificate, not to pressure, not to preach. And thought she had succeeded. But she hadn't tried not to care. That would have been useless. “I really worry about you. Especially since the last murder.”

The odd twisting in Rosalie's stomach had her shifting her eyes from her compact mirror to Bess. She couldn't remember if anyone had ever worried about her before. Certainly not in years. “Didn't I tell you I could take care of myself?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts about it, honey.” With a second dip into her purse, Rosalie pulled out a stiletto. One flick of the wrist, and the long, razor-sharp blade zipped out. “What I can't handle, this can.”

Bess managed to close her mouth, but her eyes stayed riveted to the knife. In the overhead lights, it gleamed silver, bright as sudden death. She couldn't say it was elegant. But it was fascinating, deathly fascinating. “Can I?”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Rosalie passed the weapon to
her. “Don't mess with the blade,” she warned. “It's as sharp as it looks.”

Bess took a good grip on the handle, twisting her wrist this way and that, like a fencer. She wondered if Jade/Josie might carry one. She was already imagining a scene where the tormented Jade found the knife—maybe with the blade smeared with blood—in one of her practical handbags. No, her briefcase. Better.

“Have you ever—”

“Not yet.” Rosalie held out a hand to take it back. “But there's always a first time.” She pressed the button, and the blade whisked away again. “So don't loose any sleep over me.” After dropping the weapon back into her bag, she took out an atomizer and sprayed scent generously on her skin. The air bloomed with roses. “Couple more months, I'll have enough put away. I'm going to be spending the winter in the Florida sunshine while you slog through dirty snow.” She rose, tugging her tight off-the-shoulder top provocatively down, so that the rise of her breasts swelled invitingly over it. “See you around.”

“Wait.” Bess scrambled through her own purse and came up with her mini recorder. “If it won't bother your ethics, I thought you might use this.” At Rosalie's wry glance, Bess's cheeks heated. “I don't mean to record that part. Just the streets, conversations with the other women, maybe a couple of, ah…transactions.”

“You're the boss.” Taking the recorder, Rosalie slipped it away.

“Be careful,” Bess added, though she knew Rosalie would laugh.

She did, sending a last cocky look over her bare shoulder. “Girlfriend, I'm always careful.”

Still chuckling, Rosalie headed down the narrow corridor toward the freight elevator. She was already picturing the way Bess's eyes
would pop out when she listened to the tape and discovered that her “consultant” had recorded
everything.
The prospect of pulling such a fine joke had her grinning as the doors slid open. Her amusement died a quick death when Alex walked off.

While they eyed each other with mutual suspicion, Alex pressed two fingers to the Door Open button. “How's the moonlighting going, Rosalie?”

“It passes the time.”

When she started past him, he raised an arm to block the elevator opening. “What do you know about Crystal LaRue?”

“I know she's dead.” Rosalie fisted a hand on her hip, cocked it. “Something else you want?”

Alex let her see that her snide invitation only amused him. “What do you know about her before she was dead?”

“Nothing.” She would have given him the same answer if she'd been Crystal's most intimate friend, but as it was, she was telling the simple truth. “I never met her. Heard she was new, didn't have a man yet.”

“Now, I heard that, too,” Alex said conversationally. “And I heard that Bobby wanted to make her one of his wives.”

“Maybe. Bobby likes to start them young.”

Alex struggled with his disgust. She'd been seventeen, he thought. A runaway who hadn't known the rules and would never have a chance to learn them. “Did Bobby roust her, put on the pressure?”

“Can't say.”

“Can't say? Or won't?”

Rosalie opened the hand on her hip and began to drum her fingers there. “Listen, I don't know what Bobby did. I've been keeping out of his way lately.”

Saying nothing, Alex studied her face. The bruising had faded. “Seems to me Bess is paying you enough that you could stay out of his way altogether.”

“That's my business.”

“And hers,” Alex said evenly. “I don't want him finding out about this sideline of yours and going after her.” His eyes were cold and passionless. “Then I'd have to kill him.”

“You think I'd turn Bobby on to her?” Arrogance was sidelined as fury snapped into Rosalie's voice. “I
owe
her.”

“What?”

“Respect,” she said, with an innate and graceful dignity that had Alex softening. “She had me eat at her table. She even said I could stay in her extra bedroom. Like a guest.” Her lips thinned at Alex's expression. “Don't sweat it, honey. I didn't take her up on it. Sure, she's paying me, and maybe you don't think that's any different than me taking money from some slob off the street. But she treats me like somebody. Not some
thing,
some
body.
” Embarrassed by her own vehemence, she shrugged. “She doesn't have the sense not to.”

“She's got sense, all right. Not all good.” Alex's lips twitched, even as Rosalie's did. “Maybe she hasn't gone so wrong here. I just don't want her hurt.”

“Neither do I.” Rosalie tapped a scarlet nail on his chest. “You got a bad case, cop. Stars in your eyes.” The little wisp of envy came and went, almost unnoticed. “Make sure you keep them in hers, or you'll answer to me.”

His grin flashed before he could prevent it. The charm of it nearly had Rosalie changing her mind about cops. “Yes, ma'am.” Like Bess, he wanted to say something that would stop her from going back on
the streets. Unlike Bess, he accepted that there was nothing that would do it.

“Maybe I see why she's so stuck on you.” When he moved his blocking arm, she stepped into the elevator, turned. “You be good to her, Stanislaski. She deserves good.”

The elevator doors clunked shut. Alex stood studying them a moment before he turned and wandered down the corridor to find Bess.

She was bent over the keys, rapping out a machine-gun fire of words onto the monitor. Her fingers moved like lightning, but her eyes were far away. In Millbrook, he thought, smiling to himself.

She had her legs crossed under her, up on the chair. The way her shoulders were hunched, he imagined her muscles would complain loudly the moment she came back to earth.

She was wearing a skirt again, a little leather number in bold blue that was hiked high up on her thighs. The hot-pink blouse she'd tucked into it should have clashed with her hair, but it didn't. The blouse looked like silk and was carelessly shoved up to her elbows. A half-dozen gold bracelets clanged at her wrist as she worked. Rings flashed on her fingers, and the big Gypsy hoops she wore at her ears peeked out of her tousled hair.

His heart ached with love for her. And his loins… Alex let out a little breath. He wanted, quite simply, to devour her. Inch by delicious inch.

What the hell was he going to do, he wondered, when she tried to slither out of his life? He was sure she would, as she'd done with others before. He could lock her up, carry her off. He could beg or threaten. He already knew he would do whatever he had to in order to keep her in his life.

What had ever made him think he would one day find some nice, pretty woman with simple tastes and a quiet style? Someone who would be content to sit home while he worked his crazy hours? Who would have and help him raise the houseful of children he so badly wanted?

With Bess, nothing was simple, nothing was quiet. She would never be content to sit home but would badger him incessantly, picking at him until he gave in and talked about the darker aspects of his work, those pieces of his life that he wanted to keep locked away from everyone who mattered. As for children… He didn't know how the devil to get and keep a ring on her finger, much less ask her to help make a family.

Being in love with her left him helpless, made him stupid, brought him a kind of fear he'd never faced as a cop. Not fear for his life. Fear for his heart.

He could only take his own advice and leave things as they were. Handle each day until she was so used to him she'd want to stay.

As he watched, she stopped typing, lifted a hand to her neck for a quick, impatient rub. Her skirt hiked higher as she shifted. It took all his control not to lick his lips. She punched a few buttons, had the machine clicking. A moment later, the printer beside her began to hum.

With a smile on his face and lust in his heart, Alex closed the door quietly at his back. Locked it.

She jumped like a rabbit when his hands came down on her shoulders. “Didn't anyone ever teach you to sit in a chair?”

“Alexi.” She pressed a hand to her galloping heart. “You scared— Oh…” Her sigh was long and heartfelt as he massaged away the aches. “That's wonderful.”

“You're going to do permanent damage if you keep sitting like that all day.”

“I was planning on soaking in a hot tub for two or three days.” She leaned into his hands.

“Where's Lori?”

“She wasn't feeling too terrific.” As the printer continued to rattle, Bess closed her eyes. “I told her I was leaving, too. Then I snuck back. I wanted to make a few changes for tomorrow.” She brought her hand up to one of his, skimming her fingers over it to the wrist. “You said you might have to work late.”

“Lead fizzled. We'll work on tracing the heart necklace down, but that's better during business hours.”

“Trace it down?”

“Hit the jewelers,” he explained, “see if we can track down to when it was bought. Long shot, but…”

“Do you think the heart has a personal meaning for him?”

“Like some woman broke his heart, so he gives them a symbol of it before he whacks them?” He gave a little grunt as he continued to knead her muscles. “It's a little too obvious to dismiss. Psychiatric profile figures him as sexually inadequate on a normal level, so he pays for women to perform. He wants them and detests himself for that, as much as he detests them for being available. The fact that he goes through a short courtship routine shows that—” He broke off as she reached for a pad. “Hold on, McNee.” He gave her shoulders a hard squeeze. “I don't know how you do it. One minute I'm thinking about getting you out of these clothes and the next you've got me talking about a case.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “No notes.”