Loe raamatut: «The Lawman Who Loved Her»

Chapter One

By the time Cody’s brain registered what he’d heard, it was too late. He threw himself sideways with every ounce of strength he commanded, but it wasn’t enough. His head hit first, and slid as his shoulder slammed into the hardwood floor. For a few seconds, the quiet, ominous click echoed in his ears, seeming louder than the explosion which followed.

He lay, tense and still, listening for any sound that would tell him his attacker was still there. Nothing. The building was quiet, now that the echo of the gunshot had faded. Down the hall, he heard a door slam. His mouth turned up. Thanks, neighbor. Good thing he wasn’t hurt. Cautiously, he reached for his gun, and his left shoulder screamed with pain.

Too slow. Dev and the other guys would give him hell for being too slow to dodge a bullet. Dana would be terrified.

He winced at that unguarded thought. No she wouldn’t. She wasn’t part of his life anymore. He sat up slowly and took stock of his condition. Nasty bump on his forehead, painful scrape on his cheek. Bullet wound in his shoulder. From the way it felt, he guessed the bullet had gone clean through the meaty part of his bicep. He turned his head and saw the mark on the wall. Yep.

He stood, and swayed with unexpected dizziness. His left arm didn’t want to work, and he could feel blood, hot and sticky, wetting his sweatshirt. He glanced down. Damn. His leather jacket was ruined.

Cody pulled out his cell phone and nudged it open with his chin. He pressed a fast-dial button and leaned against the wall, praying that his partner hadn’t let his cell phone battery go down.

“Dev? Hey, man. I need some…help.” Cody blinked against the blackness that was seeping in from the edge of his vision and looked at the kitchen chair, which had been positioned directly in front of the door.

“Help? How’d you manage to get in trouble in the past fifteen minutes? What’s up?” Detective Devereaux Gautier’s voice was tinged with amusement.

“Well, I’ve got a situation. At my apartment. Can you get over here right away and call it in?”

“Situation? You okay?” His partner’s voice immediately became professionally crisp.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said wryly. “Just a flesh wound. Fontenot booby-trapped my door. Listen, man, I’m afraid he may have done something to Dana’s place.” His gaze roamed over the revolver and the nylon cord securing it.

“Fontenot? So your crazy notions about that bastard ain’t so crazy, eh? Stay there, Cody. I’ll be right over.”

“Nope. Can’t. Dana’s out of town. Her answering machine says she’ll be back tomorrow. I’ve got to check her house tonight. Dev? Can I count on you?”

“You know it, my man.”

“Thanks.” He flipped off the cell phone and walked over to look more closely at the .38 special. The cord had been run through the trigger guard and around the back of the chair, then fashioned to an intricate pulley mechanism attached to the doorknob.

He looked at the barrel of the gun, then at the door, then back at the gun.

Cody cursed as he took in the full implications of what he saw. “If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? You’re playing with me.”

Anger, harsh and swift, cut through him, then his knees went weak. “Dana,” he whispered, refusing even to allow his brain to imagine what Fontenot might have done at her place. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the tiny gold disk he’d found this morning on his car seat. He closed his fist around his ex-wife’s earring.

“I swear to God, Fontenot,” he whispered to the empty room. “If you hurt one hair on her head, I will hunt you down like the monster you are.”

He glanced around his apartment, now a crime scene. Dev would take care of things here. Cody had to get to Dana’s.

DANA MAXWELL SANK gratefully into the scented water. It was so hot her skin tingled. As she leaned her head back against the headrest molded into the fiberglass tub in her ultramodern apartment in Metairie, the stiffness began to seep out of her neck muscles. She rolled her head and groaned, flexing the aching tendons.

Why had she thought working in corporate law would be less stressful than the courtroom? Maybe it was less exciting, but spending an entire week in meetings with stodgy, old-guard businessmen who were stuck in the fifties, maybe even the forties, was not conducive to a good mood.

If she’d had to hear “honey” or “little lady” one more time, she thought she might have contemplated murder. Then, this afternoon, the senior partner had the gall to ask her to step outside while the “menfolks have us a confab that might not fall too sweetly on your pretty little ears.”

Dana sank a little lower into the water. She’d stepped outside all right. She’d stepped out of the room and into her car and driven back to New Orleans, calling her office on the way and telling them she was sick, and wouldn’t be in the next day, Friday.

She cringed. She’d walked out on an important meeting. She’d lied to her boss about being sick. Was there anything else she could think of to do to jeopardize her job?

Bennett was the biggest client her boss had ever assigned to her. Today was Thursday and she was supposed to have that new contract signed by Friday. What would Mr. Fraser do?

Over the weekend, she’d have to come up with a plausible excuse for walking out on Irwin, Borne and Howe’s third-biggest corporate clients.

Are We Boring and How was the name Cody had given the law firm. She smiled involuntarily at the thought. He hadn’t tried to stop her from quitting the public defender’s office and moving to corporate law, but he’d looked at her in that way he had and said that being bored to death was a horrible way to go.

Dana frowned at the direction her thoughts were taking. Why was she thinking about that? She didn’t want to go back there.

Ugh. She gave a mock shudder. No way. She’d had enough of long hours and hopeless cases to last her a lifetime.

And talk about tired. On countless nights, she had dragged in after nine or ten, dead on her feet, only to have to turn around and go back to work early the next morning.

Dana stretched her stiff neck muscles, thinking longingly of the big old claw-foot tub in Cody’s French Quarter apartment. Now, that tub was made for relaxing. She would fill it up, sink down until the water lapped at her nape like fingers teasing, massaging. The smile kept tugging at her lips. How many times had Cody run her a bath and crouched behind the tub to massage her neck? She closed her eyes, almost able to feel his fingers kneading, rubbing, coaxing out the stiffness as he whispered risqué suggestions in her ear.

Then his touch would lighten as her muscles relaxed, and he’d pick up the soap and run it over her shoulders, across her collarbone and down, until her breasts and belly were slick with suds and his teasing fingers were doing things with the soap that Procter & Gamble never dreamed of.

“Damn it, Cody, get out of my head,” Dana muttered, splashing water as she sat up. It was all his fault. If he hadn’t called earlier in the week, his voice sounding oddly serious on her answering machine, she wouldn’t be fighting off these memories that should have had no meaning for her anymore.

She blinked away a stinging sensation behind her eyelids and pushed thoughts of Cody out of her brain.

How could a man be so easy to love and so impossible to live with?

She picked up the soap and began washing her shoulders and arms briskly, thinking longingly of a glass of wine, a new book and soft white sheets.

Tomorrow, she would ignore her conscience and drive up to the lake. She could actually have a mini-vacation, the first one she’d taken since…well, in a long time. A weekend at the converted fishing shack on Lake Pontchartrain that belonged to her grandfather’s best friend was just what she needed. Then she could relax and think up answers to the questions her boss would fire at her on Monday.

She’d made up her mind on the way home today. She’d even written it in her day planner.

Friday: buy junk food, buy two romance novels, spend weekend alone at the lake house, reading and eating.

She’d leave all her messages unanswered, her mail unpicked up, and just go. Maybe on Sunday, she’d pull up some weeds and replant the bulbs she’d planted four years ago, the last time she and Cody had gone up there together, right before that awful night when Cody had nearly died.

Dana shook her head angrily. She was not going to let the memories get to her this weekend. It had been four years. She was doing fine. Just fine.

A muffled thump echoed through the apartment. She jumped, then froze, but she heard nothing else. It was probably the neighbor’s dog knocking over her trash can again. She sank back into the water.

The bathroom door swung open slowly.

Her heart slammed into her chest. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t even get a breath. Her gaze darted quickly around the room but there was nothing she could use as a weapon. Her fingers clutched the wet soap as the door creaked and the sound of labored breathing reached her ears.

A scuffed brown loafer appeared and an irritatingly familiar voice said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Damn it, Cody!” The soap slipped from her fingers and plopped into the water. She forced a huge gulping breath into her lungs and sank even lower, trying in vain to spread the washcloth over her breasts. “You scared the daylights out of me.”

Relief that it was just Cody set her heat-loosened muscles to quivering as a wave of anger washed over her. Then his words sank in.

Her face burned. “What do you mean what am I doing here? I live here. The question is what are you doing here? Get out of my bathroom. How did you get in?”

Cody grinned stiffly and held up a bank card. “Accepted in thousands of locations worldwide.”

“Somehow I never pictured you carrying a gold card,” she muttered, looking him over. There was something wrong. His smart-mouthed remark hadn’t sounded quite biting enough. His voice had a hollow ring and his grin was crooked and meager.

His jeans were brown with dust. An angry red scratch marred his cheek and a bruise discolored his forehead. He leaned against the bathroom door trying to look insolent and nonchalant, but he was pale as a ghost and his jaw was clenched tight.

Still, that didn’t keep his gaze from roaming over her with a hunger she could feel along every wet, trembling inch of her body. It affected her just like it always had. Even if her mind was determined not to get caught up in painful memories, her body had no such compunction. A wave of remembered desire streaked through her, making her legs feel like jelly and her breasts tighten, intensifying her anger.

She tried to make the washcloth cover more, and drew up one leg in an attempt to cover her nakedness. “Get out of here,” she snapped. “Hand me my robe.”

He shook his head slightly and winced. “Nice to see you, too,” he muttered dryly, then grabbed her robe and tossed it toward the tub.

She caught it just in time to keep it from falling into the water. “Get out of here, Cody.” She stood, holding the robe in front of her.

He complied without comment.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was right by the door, so she had to squeeze past him. She marched into the living room in her bare feet and started to open the blinds. “Would you please tell me why you—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted in an oddly quiet but compelling voice.

She shrugged and left the blinds closed, then turned to peer at him in the darkness. He looked tired and bedraggled. His trademark leather jacket wasn’t sitting quite as carelessly on his wide shoulders. The collar wasn’t turned rakishly up. His posture wasn’t the insolent hip-cocked leaning that always sent a shiver of desire through her. He looked…exhausted. Something was wrong.

Dana forced her thoughts away from how her ex-husband looked. She reminded herself that he was here because he’d broken into her apartment. “I have a perfectly good doorbell. Would you please tell me why you felt you had to break in?”

“I thought you were still gone,” he said. “How many times have I told you not to put that kind of information on your…answering machine? The whole city of New Orleans doesn’t…need to know you’ll be out of town until Friday. You might as well take out an ad—’I’m gone. Please…steal me blind.”’

She ignored the strain in his voice. “Oh, I see. You only broke in because you thought I was gone? You’ve turned to burglary now, I guess. The police force isn’t dangerous enough for you.” She switched on the lamp and pulled her robe tighter around her.

Her fingers touched something sticky on the terry cloth. She looked down. Dark red streaked the front of her robe, where she’d brushed by Cody, and stained her fingers. Blood. It was blood. Slowly, reluctantly, her brain wrapped itself around the thought. Her throat closed. She looked at Cody, a sickening dread overriding her anger.

His left arm hung uselessly at his side, and in the lamplight, she saw what she hadn’t noticed before. Blood dripped slowly onto the floor.

“Oh, Cody, you’re bleeding. What have you done now?” she moaned, mesmerized and horrified by the dark drops that trickled down his motionless fingers to fall onto the polished wood.

He shrugged and tried to grin, but a grimace of pain crossed his face. His eyes closed and his legs buckled and he slid down the wall.

Through lips white with pain, he muttered, “Dana, don’t be mad. I’ll leave.”

Déjà vu surrounded her in shades of slowly dripping red, spinning her head crazily. “You obviously can’t leave. You can’t even—” her voice caught on a sob “—stand up.” She hated her accusing, bitter tone, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been here, done this, and she didn’t want the T-shirt.

“Look at you. Damn it, Cody….” He hadn’t changed—although that was no surprise. He’d never changed and he never would. He would always step right into danger’s path. He would always be the same cocky, brash kid she’d fallen in love with at first sight.

They’d only dated a few weeks before Cody had talked her into getting married. She’d been in law school, and he’d just joined the New Orleans Police Department. But that was a long time ago. Now their marriage was over, and he had no right to come into her house, bleeding and hurt. He had no right to make her start worrying about him again. She opened her mouth to say so, but his head lolled to one side and his body slumped.

“Oh, God.” She stared at her ex-husband, passed out on the floor. She kneeled down and pushed his silky hair out of the way to feel his forehead. “Cody, wake up! What do I do?”

He opened his eyes and looked a little to the left of her head. “Whoa,” he whispered. “There’s two of you, Dana. Wow, twice as much to love.”

Something deep inside her ached with loss and sorrow. No. Please don’t use the word love. I can’t stand it. She concentrated on helping him.

“Where are you hurt? What happened?” She stood up and pulled on his unbloodied arm, trying vainly to master the queasy fear that was stealing her breath. Cody was hurt. Again. “Can you stand up?”

He looked at his left hand, covered in blood. “Look. I’m bleeding on your floor. I’m sorry, Dana, I know how much you hate a mess.” His voice was faintly slurred. He wiped his fingers on his jeans, streaking the dusty fabric with thick black blood and shearing what was left of Dana’s breath from her lungs.

Her gaze followed the path of his hand. Blood. Cody’s blood. “Cody, shut up. Talk to me.”

Cody laughed weakly. “Pick one, chère.”

“How bad are you hurt? Should I call a doctor?”

“No!” He pulled himself upright with a huge effort. “Please, Dana. No doctor. It’s not that bad. Just a flesh wound. Damn,” he whispered, leaning back against the wall, his face turning paler, if that was possible. His forehead furrowed and more lines appeared on his face. He looked as though he was in agony.

Dana’s heart pounded so loudly the echoes seemed to reverberate around her. Cody was in trouble. It was the same old story, the same old Cody, and Dana felt the same old terror squeezing her chest.

Not again. I can’t do it again.

Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she grabbed his good arm and draped it around her shoulders. “Damn it, Cody, when are you going to figure out you’re not immortal? When are you going to realize that those bullets are real? This isn’t cops and robbers. That’s not make-believe blood.” She stopped herself with an effort. Her voice was beginning to sound hysterical.

“When are you going to…remember my name is not ‘Damn it, Cody.”’

She sniffed in exasperation. “Come on. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”

“I know. Messing up your floor.” Cody was mumbling and leaning heavily on her. He was almost out again.

She glanced at the tiny bathroom, then dismissed it as too small. Instead, she turned him toward the bedroom. “Wait a minute. Can you stand, just for a second?” She peeled his arm from around her shoulder and jerked her new Battenberg lace bedspread off the bed.

Cody made a short, derisive sound and Dana’s face burned. “It’s brand new….” She stopped, embarrassed. He was bleeding to death and she was worried about a bedspread.

“Don’t worry, chère, I understand. Hard to get that blood out…wouldn’t want a stain. Wouldn’t want a mess.” His voice was fading, but she heard him.

She started to respond but Cody was losing his fight to stay upright. She caught him around the waist as he swayed.

“You still smell like roses,” he said, his voice rumbling against her shoulder and his breath warm on her ear. “Al…always like roses.”

And you smell like danger, and trouble, and everything I lost. “Can you stand up long enough to get the jacket off?”

“Maybe,” he said. But just as she reached for the collar to pull it off his shoulders, his knees buckled again and he crumpled onto the bed. “Then again…maybe not.”

“Damn it, Cody, how can you joke at a time like this? You’re bleeding and in trouble. Try to take it seriously, please. Turn over. I’ve got to get that jacket off.” She pulled at the sleeve, and when it slid off, she saw where the blood was coming from. Her stomach turned upside down and she had to swallow against the queasy lump that began to form.

“Oh, God,” she breathed as her stomach pitched. “Cody, you’ve been shot.”

“You got that right,” he whispered, then groaned as she tugged on the torn sleeve of his sweatshirt. It was soaked with blood and stuck to his skin. There was an ugly black hole in the upper arm.

She looked at his back. Another hole marred the shoulder. “Is—is this the same b-bullet? How many times were you shot?”

“Just once,” he gasped. “It went clean through. I heard it hit the wall behind me.”

Dana moaned at the picture his words evoked. “It went through,” she repeated doggedly. “That’s good, I think. We need to get you to the emergency room.”

“No.” Cody shook his head against the pillow and grabbed her wrist with his good hand. “Just wrap it up, please.”

She pulled away. “God, Cody. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever known. You need stitches, and probably a tetanus shot, and a blood transfusion for all I know.”

“No, I don’t. Got a tetanus shot, last year, when I—never mind. All they’d do is…wrap it up. Please, Dana?”

“Fine,” she grumbled, grabbing a pair of scissors from the sewing box under her dressing table. “What do I care, anyway? It’s none of my business. I don’t know why you even came here.”

Her fingers shook and her mouth filled with acrid saliva as she cut the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Nausea burned in her throat. She swallowed hard, while a shudder ran up her spine.

It was just like before. Like all the times before. “You haven’t changed a bit. It’s just like the last time, and the time before that. How many times were you shot in the two years we were married? Three times? Four?”

Dana hadn’t seen much blood in her life, and most of it was Cody’s.