In the Running Page 13

  Reenie moaned and suddenly took control of the kiss. Her tongue plunged into his mouth, danced around his and stroked the inside of his cheeks. She sucked and nibbled at his lips as if she couldn’t get enough of the taste of him, all the while whispering over and over, “I..do…Matt… I.. do.”

  The fastening of her robe came undone easily and Matt’s hands, at last, knew the feel of her. Her skin was smooth and damp and she smelled like lilacs. He pushed the robe off her shoulders and trailed hot wet kisses down her neck.

  While his hands roamed her slender back and her buttocks, Reenie managed to unbutton his shirt do some exploring of her own. Her murmur of appreciation as she stroked the muscles of his chest did his ego good. He was thankful for the long summer days of lifting motors and launching watercraft that had whipped his body back into shape. Her fingers followed the narrow line of fine black hair that bisected his stomach down into his jeans. She struggled with the stiff button.

  Matt ripped off his shirt and threw it to the floor. The stubborn buttonhole gave. He gulped a huge deep breath and forced himself to still her hand at his zipper. His chest was heaving as he gasped, “Oh, God, Sweetheart. Are you sure about this?”

  She nodded. Her pupils were large and dark. He could see himself reflected in their depths.

  “Tell me.”

  “I want you, Matt,” she whispered. She tugged at his hand impatiently. “My room.”

  Matt pushed her dressing gown off her arms onto the floor and drank in the marvel of her unclothed body. She was satiny smooth and perfectly proportioned. Her breasts were round and up-tilted, her waist trim, her hips just rounded enough to be womanly, and her legs were unexpectedly long and slim.

  “Perfect,” he whispered as he lifted her up into his arms.

  “I’m too heavy,” she protested.

  “Have to do it,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to carry a gorgeous, naked woman to my bed to ravish her.”

  “Hurry,” she said, laughing, when he deposited her on the double bed and swiftly slid off his jeans. “Let’s get to the ravishing.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” Matt began to dig into his pocket then threw the jeans down in disgust. “Damn! I don’t have anything …”

  “Bronwyn’s Care Package!” Reenie cried, triumphantly reaching into her bedside table and brandishing the large box of condoms.

  He didn’t question the provenance but, almost at the speed of light, opened the first plastic envelope he came to.

  Reenie giggled.

  “Don’t look at it,” he ordered as he donned the garish Glowing Pink latex condom. “Nothing is going to ruin this moment.”

  Matt knelt between her legs. He wanted to make this good for her but he wasn’t going to be able to hold back much longer. He bent and kissed one swollen nipple, then the other.

  “Please, Matt.” Reenie pulled him closer and squirmed beneath him, as he positioned himself at the entrance to her warm, wet center.

  “This isn’t going to last very long,” he warned her.

  Her answer was to wrap her legs around his waist. With one thrust he entered her. He lay still, savoring the heat of her tight sheath as long he could, but his urgent need compelled his body to begin the instinctive, rhythmic thrusting that has always bound a man to his mate. As if she had been created for him, she matched his rhythm and his passion. Her fingers dug painfully into his back. She gripped him more tightly with her legs. The discovery that her desire was as fierce as his fired him to thrust faster and harder.

  The gnawing need to join with her went far beyond the urgency of extraordinary lust. He wanted to be part of her, to share the very essence of her being. When he felt the first spasms of her climax, he exploded with his own.

  “Matt,” she breathed as she went limp under him. “Oh, my!”

  He rolled them over so that they lay, still joined, with Reenie on top of him, her head under his chin.

  “Sweetheart,” he whispered, placing a kiss on the top of her head.

  This blissful state was strange and new. Oh, he was familiar with the pleasant aftermath of sexual release, but he’d never experienced this warm emotional rush that he didn’t want to put a name to. Nor had he ever felt as if he had handed a vital part of himself to another human being. A man could get hooked on this euphoric mood. He put that disturbing thought out of his mind. He finally had Reenie naked in his arms.

  He ran his hands over the smooth skin of her back in long, lazy strokes. She made contented noises and nuzzled his chest. Her warm breath tickled a little. He picked up her hand and slowly, thoroughly, investigated each finger with his lips and tongue. He concentrated on her palm for a while, then moved on to the pulse on the inside of her wrist.

  The touch of Reenie’s tongue to his nipple sent an electric impulse to his groin. It reacted.

  “Matt?” she said, raising her head. Her dark hair was tousled and her lips swollen from his kisses. Her smile was pure seduction. “Really?”

  “Would you like to see if we can make an Electric Blue last a lot longer than the Glowing Pink did?” He grinned in fond reminiscence. “I have a serious need to get acquainted with every inch of your body.”

  “Mmmm,” she said, leaning over to kiss his other nipple. “Yes, please. But Glowing Pink is a hard act to follow.”

  They both winced at the unintentional pun.

  “I have a small chore to perform,” he said, getting out of bed and heading towards the bathroom. “Don’t lose your place.”

  Electric Blue more than lived up to its promise. Matt made her feel like the most beautiful and adored woman in the world. With him, she was daring and insatiable. They didn’t fall into an exhausted sleep finally until she’d had a turn at becoming acquainted with most of his body during a pre-dawn tryout of Positively Purple.

  She awakened Sunday morning to find Matt’s warm arm across her body and the heat of his chest against her back. Still lost in the sensuous haze in which she’d spent the night, she wriggled her bottom against him.

  “Morning, love. Are we planning to work our way through the rest of the rainbow today?” Matt’s amused voice was a lazy rumble in her ear.

  She, suddenly, was wide-awake. “What time is it?”

  He raised his arm to look at his watch. “Eight-thirty.”

  She sat up. “I have to get Pete’s breakfast.”

  Matt sat up, too, and put his arm around her shoulders. “You can relax, sweetheart. When I called a while ago, Pete told me to let you sleep in after the day you put in yesterday.”

  His expanse of bare chest reminded her of her unclothed state. When she tried to pull the sheet up over herself, Matt reached down to the foot of the bed for her bathrobe. He must have retrieved it from his room where she’d abandoned it the night before. Unselfconsciously, he followed her out of bed, and held her robe while she slipped into it. He bent his head and kissed her on the side of the neck. She leaned into the kiss. It was going to be all right.

  “Tell me you don’t regret last night.” He turned her around in his arms and looked warily into her eyes.

  “How could I?” She asked, smiling up at him. “It was the most wonderful night of my life.”

  He kissed her, then. His lips were warm and gentle on hers, his morning stubble a little rough against her sensitized skin. He deepened the kiss for a moment, maybe to remind her of what they’d shared. She knew she’d never forget.

  “We’ve just begun, you and I,” he said. He spoke the words solemnly; then grinned and gave her bottom a gentle, possessive swat. “Who gets the first shower? I’d like to suggest we conserve water, but we have important things to do this morning.”

  Just like that, the ugly world came crowding back.

  “Right,” she said, trying to sound jaunty. “I’ll be quick.”

  “You do know I have to return Ryan’s call.” He hurried on before she could voice her objections again. “You have my word that whatever he called to tell me has nothing to do with you.”

&nb
sp; “I believe you.” After all, she did.

  “I’ll get him to run Jon Casen, Walter Ames and Danny DiMarco through the computers for us. The antiracketeering boys may already be onto them. I won’t mention you.”

  “I identified myself as the housekeeper when Ryan called last night.” What he was suggesting made sense. “All right. Go ahead. I hope it’s the right thing to do. The full names you want to check are Daniel Ugo DiMarco and Jonathan Peter Casen.”

  “I’ll call him right away.” Matt gave her another quick kiss, then resignedly pulled on his jeans. “By the way, the last time I talked to Ryan was when he called about the sextant.”

  He was already punching in Ryan’s number when he heard the shower being turned on.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Ryan greeted him. “I tried to send you an e-mail several times yesterday but it kept coming back with “Undeliverable” attached. What’s up?”

  “Sorry about that. I was moving out to the apartment. Guess I forgot to check my email when I got the computer hooked back up. What’s so urgent?”

  “Thought you might want to know the IRS wanted a background check on you. What have you been up to buddy? Sending your millions to the Bahamas?”

  Matt was nonplussed. “I can’t imagine why they’re interested in me. You know the only income I’ve ever had is my salary.”

  “Maybe they heard what a whiz you were for us and want to hire you.”

  “Lotsa luck.” Wondering about the IRS was low on Matt’s list of priorities. His conscience was clear. “I need a big favor, Ryan.”

  “Big enough to earn me a weekend on the new sail boat?”

  “At least one. I need some background information on three solid citizens.”

  When he had listed the names, Ryan commented, “Interesting choice. O.K., keep your secrets. I’ll get back to you as soon as I get anything on this.”

  After his friend had rung off, Matt stared, perplexed, at the receiver as he slowly replaced it on the hook. Which secrets was Ryan talking about? His friend had no idea that the missing Maura Irene Fitzpatrick had just spent the night in his bed. Reenie. A surge of that emotion he felt last night flooded over him at the thought of her. They must have been fated to meet. Why else would she have been driving on that deserted back road at the precise moment that the whitetail decided to dart across it?

  Why had Reenie been on that road? Her first story about looking for work at a ski lodge was obviously a fiction. She would know too many people in the business to risk it.

  Reenie stepped into his room from the shared bathroom, vigorously toweling her hair. She even looked appealing in the too big terry cloth robe.

  “Shower’s free,” she said.

  “You were quick,” he said, dropping a quick kiss on her nose as he went by. He hesitated in the doorway. “I was thinking of everything that had to happen for us to meet the way we did. I know you were taking a detour, but where were you headed?”

  “I guess I didn’t mention the cabin.” She sounded absolutely matter-of-fact. “My Dad left me a winterized cabin north of Higgins Lake. The subject never came up with Jon and if Gran even remembers it exists, she wouldn’t know its exact location.”

  “You were planning to spend the winter there?”

  “Good heavens, no. I could never have counted on that old Buick if I needed to get out in a hurry when the temperature was much below freezing. But it was somewhere to stay until I figured out what to do next. Did you get Ryan?”

  “He’ll do the background check. Funny thing, the reason he called was to tell me the IRS wanted one done on me.”

  By the time Matt emerged from his shower, Reenie was dressed and on her way out the door to fulfill her obligations to Pete.

  “There are muffins in the breadbox, if you’re hungry,” she told him. “You’ll come over for lunch?”

  He said he’d call if he got too involved in his investigation. As it turned out, Matt didn’t get to lunch. He was oblivious to everything but his futile attempts to make sense of the contents of the envelope. No matter what tack he took, he found himself blocked by lack of information. The section of the file that Danny had printed out was simply two sets of similar numbers, some of which were identical. Someone, probably DiMarco, had circled a few numbers in the second column. Matt suspected that showed how much money Jon had skimmed from the partnership.

  Those numbers had also been circled on a long handwritten list that contained dates from May first through September. Beside the dates were what looked to Matt like bank account numbers, and, opposite them, four to six digit money amounts.

  The list’s high proportion of numbers just under the ten thousand dollar reporting threshold could be significant. Banks had to report transactions of more than ten thousand dollars.

  Matt spent most of the frustrating day trying to work his way through the rest the envelope. The prize, as far as evidence was concerned, was a receipt from a Montreal bank for a fifty thousand dollar Canadian treasury bill in the name of J.P.Casen. T-bills were popular for being easy to buy and sell and for being virtually anonymous.

  The most intriguing item was a large cheque made out to Good Earth League that had been endorsed by Jon. Matt imagined that it had been awaiting deposit in one of the bank accounts when the Fitzpatrick robbery took place. The question was where Casen had intended to deposit it.

  The other items were meaningless to him. There were lists of names and initials - some of them crossed off; hodgepodges of numbers - some of them crossed off; some handwritten notes containing single letters and phone numbers; and one in aggressively rounded feminine handwriting which read “Glenlivet 2-4 Hilt 923.” It had a postscript “Gran C. R. B. 132488220915” and was signed with a flamboyant L. He hoped Reenie might have a clue what any of that meant.

  Disappointed in the results of his day’s work, Matt stowed the brown manila envelope back in the Sailing Solution’s safe. He’d hoped to impress Reenie with his brilliance, and all he’d found were a number of definite signs that Jon Casen was up to his ears in money laundering but no real evidence to prove it. He needed to access the whole file. There must be a backup disk tucked away in some safe spot along with the negatives that Casen had been trying to get from Danny DiMarco.

  He had just returned to the apartment when Ryan called again.

  “I didn’t intend you should go back to the office on a Sunday,” Matt apologized. “You must really be keen to earn some time on the boat.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t ask for the data out of idle curiosity,” Ryan explained. “Especially, when the floater some fishermen picked up on Lake Michigan this morning turned out to be Daniel DiMarco.”

  Matt uttered a heartfelt expletive. “I was afraid of something like that,” he muttered. “Can you forget I inquired about him?”

  “I can unless someone discovers I’ve been in the file,” Ryan said. “Are you in trouble, Matt?”

  “Not me,” he replied. “I’ll fill you in the minute I can, Ryan. You have my word.”

  Ryan did not answer for a moment. Matt knew his friend was trying out different scenarios in his agile mind. “I thought maybe you’d stumbled onto something when I found a flag on Danny DiMarco’s file. That’s probably because Danny’s mother is Sal Gerardo’s sister. There’s nothing in the file but a short list of minor juvenile incidents. Nothing recent. And, the only stuff on Jon Casen is related to student protests he was involved with. Only one interesting bit that I could see. The IRS has shown some interest in his file.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” Matt commented.

  “Yeah, and those guys don’t share much unless they need something from us.

  “How about Ames?”

  “Straight arrow.” Ryan hesitated.” As far as I know, the only reason he has a file is that, right after law school, he worked for the Justice Department for a couple of years. I can’t put my finger on it, but I wonder if there’s more to him than meets the eye. You’re sure you can�
�t tell me what this all about?”

  “I wish I could.” He also wished Ryan had been able to find out more. “Maybe I can by the time you get here for Thanksgiving.”

  “Tell Bronwyn I’ll try to get a couple of extra days before the Thanksgiving weekend.”

  “Be sure. I don’t think Wyn ever heard of a tentative plan.” Ryan’s persistent pursuit of his older sister bewildered Matt. It seemed to bewilder Bronwyn, too. Ryan was Matt’s age, for God’s sake. “Thanks, Ryan. See you in a couple of weeks.”

  Reenie met him at the door. The moment he saw her, he knew she’d heard the news. He drew her into his arms and whispered into her hair, “I’m sorry about your boss, sweetheart.”

  “At least, we know,” she replied quietly.

  Pete was paying the price for the active day he’d put in yesterday, and he’d been in quite a lot of pain all day. As Reenie insisted on staying with him until she was sure he was settled for the night, they didn’t get back to the apartment until late.

  She and Pete had been together the whole day. He’d sat at the kitchen table while she worked, and she’d stayed with him in the living room the rest of the time, trying to take his mind off the pain in his joints. He’d been unexpectedly frank.

  “Mattias and I have never seen eye to eye,” he told her, out of a clear blue sky, when she brought his mid-morning muffin and cup of tea out to him. “When the children were small, I worked almost every hour there was to get this marina up and running. Matt was the same age as Tommy is now when his mother died. None of us suspected she had a heart defect until she had the miscarriage that killed her. I pretty much fell apart and Bronwyn looked after Matt. She’s only five years older but she’s always mothered him.”

  Reenie took a sip of her own cup of tea. That explained why Matt tolerated Bronwyn’s bossiness so well. “Then he went off and joined the army instead of working with you,” she guessed.

  Pete nodded. “Millbridge was too tame. He warned me not to count on him staying, but I wasn’t too good at listening when he said things I didn’t want to hear. He didn’t keep in touch much. Of course, for a year or so, he was in some kind of special antiterrorist outfit. Gave that up for computers! Went to work in Washington. Got tired of that and came home to help with the marina. He’s determined to expand the winter business. Make Hanson’s a year round operation, a real moneymaker. He’s doing it, too. But now he’s fixing up that sailboat. I expect by the time it’s done, he’ll be ready for another change.”