“Actually, it was really quiet earlier, but if you have another idea?” She adjusted the strap of her work tote on her shoulder as they left the building and strode out onto the street into mild afternoon pedestrian traffic. The neighborhood was more residential than commercial, with elegant facades and a wealth of domestic help walking dogs, parking cars and carrying groceries into the buildings where they worked.
“No. That’s fine. But what have you got against white?”
“It’s a long story I refuse to bore anyone with. Not even a detective intent on asking me questions.” Her mood lifted out on the street, her comfort level higher hanging out with dog walkers and personal shoppers than the high-powered people who could afford those luxuries.
“I wouldn’t be here today, Tabitha, if you’d been honest with me last night.”
That halted her in her tracks.
“I was very honest with you.” She’d admitted she owned a gun—a weapon forced on her by Manny as a Christmas gift one year.
She pointed out the coffee shop as they cleared the next street, her apprehension returning as quickly as it had fled. Her state of agitation wasn’t helped by the fact that Warren’s strong arm reached around behind her to open the door, his torso coming in momentary contact with her back. Awareness skittered down her spine to pool at the base and tingle through her hips.
“You neglected to mention you and your ex were at one another’s throats during your divorce when I asked about enemies.”
Just when Tabitha had caught her breath from feeling his chest close to her back, he lay one palm lightly on her spine to steer her toward a table in the far corner of the shop. The place was decorated with Italian marble and granite tabletops, but Tabitha would venture into the most upscale of businesses if there was good coffee to be had. The colors were yellow-gold and brown with a few muted blues mixed in the Venetian artwork. Best of all, there were several empty tables spaced far apart.
Tabitha waited until Warren’s hand disappeared from her spine and they were seated safely across from one another to respond.
“I didn’t mean to suggest my ex-husband and I like one another, Detective. I just wanted to make it clear that my ex wouldn’t purposely try to hurt me. Physically.” He’d sure as hell put her through the wringer other ways, but violence? Not his style.
“Are you sure about that?” He held up a hand to the waitress who approached and the woman backed off to give them more time.
“Yes.” She didn’t appreciate his tone that implied she would lie. “Look, if Manny Redding wanted to hurt me he would have done so when I broke up his Valentine’s Day rendezvous with an up-and-coming actress. He’d been angry enough then at my public meltdown in the foyer of a friend’s house party where Manny had been banging his starlet in a downstairs bathroom.”
“Ah, hell.” He scrubbed a hand through his shorn hair, not moving the bristly strands one bit. “I know the questions must suck, but—”
She interrupted, unable to tamp down the old fury that still surprised her sometimes.
“You have no idea. But if Manny wanted to hurt me physically, I guarantee he would have done it right then. If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means, please share it.”
“Fair enough.” The detective leaned forward over the table to reach for her hand. He glided his fingers over the back of hers for a moment before he seemed to catch himself. He backed off slowly.
The gesture caught her off guard coming from the man who’d pointed a gun at her the night before and who seemed to think she’d deliberately withheld information. Still, the misplaced nature of the touch didn’t make it any less potent. The heat he’d started inside her last night simmered again, reminding her it wasn’t going away anytime soon.
“Tabitha, when you told me last night that you owned a .38, you didn’t say anything about the gun being missing.”
Blinking, she tried to ignore the hedonistic wants of her body to make sense of his words.
“It’s not missing.” Confused, she waited for him to explain what the hell he meant by that. “I keep it in a gun case in my closet. The same place since I first moved in to the apartment.”
“Have you opened the gun case lately?”
A sick feeling bubbled in her stomach and not even the scent of coffee couldn’t take away the impending nausea.
“I—I’ve always hated the sight of that thing.”
“Your ex reported the weapon stolen from the home you shared over a year ago.”
3
HE NEEDED TO BACK the hell off.
Warren scrolled through old newspaper archives on his home computer the next afternoon and told himself he shouldn’t be spending his day off digging through Tabitha’s past after the flood of inappropriate thoughts he’d been having about her from their first very unorthodox meeting. But then, if he was being honest with himself, hadn’t he taken the day off from work purposely to see what he could find out about this ex of hers?
“Producer’s Partying Puts Wife Over the Edge” read one headline on his most recent search, making Warren incensed that tabloid journalists could soft sell infidelity as partying.
Technically, a stray shot through a woman’s window was not an official NYPD investigation yet. He’d filed a report in case she had any more trouble, but without any concrete reason to suspect she’d been targeted, the work Warren did this afternoon was strictly out of personal interest.
Personal because—hell, he couldn’t deny it—he was attracted to Tabitha. When they’d parted ways at the coffee shop the day before, he’d had to hold his tongue firmly beneath his teeth to keep from suggesting he escort her home and be there at her side when she looked to see if her gun was in its case. He wanted to be there for her because he knew what she would find—a gut hunch confirmed by her phone call an hour after he’d gotten back to the precinct. There was no gun in the case, just a pile of bullets nestled in the foam cutout of the gun to weigh down the pouch.
“Aspiring Actress Loses Prime Part Amid Blackball Accusations.” The next headline that caught his eye was taken from a more reliable source than the article about Tabitha going “over the edge” about her ex’s partying.
Apparently Tabitha had wanted to be a character actress at one point—a more prominent role in the community where she now worked as a silent participant. According to the story, she’d lost a recurring role on a popular soap opera after she’d filed for divorce, and she’d publicly accused Manny of pulling the strings to make it happen. Bastard.
The more stories that Warren scrolled through, the more pissed off he became at a guy who would try to railroad his wife’s career simply because she didn’t let him get away with flagrant adultery. Warren couldn’t help but relate to the woman whose life had been steered off course by someone hell bent on revenge. But it wasn’t until he discovered an old photo of Tabitha in a decorating magazine ensconced on a pristine white couch in the middle of a snow-white living room that he knew he couldn’t back off Tabitha Everhart.
She sat alone and off center in the photo of a palatial living room, a vibrant woman with flaming hair and a heart-stopping smile. A woman with dreams she’d been forced to reroute because she’d gotten involved with a man who thought what she wanted didn’t matter.
Shutting down his computer, he whistled to Buster and decided to take his run early today—right past Tabitha’s place. There was no law against what he was thinking about doing, no code of ethics that prevented him from seeing her again on a personal level since there hadn’t been an official investigation into the incident at her place.
He had no idea what he was going to say to her, but then, if things went his way, maybe they wouldn’t