In the Running Page 6

Matt merely snorted.

  “Eat while it’s hot,” he instructed Maura.

  Matt had made an effort to make her tray attractive. He’d folded the paper napkin carefully, put her orange juice in a stemmed water goblet and cut her toast in triangles. Maura’s appetite had fled with the news that Bronwyn was meeting with Jon’s assistant, but, under Matt’s steady gaze, she did her best to eat.

  “This looks great, Matt,” she told him, trying to look as if she was enjoying a piece of overdone bacon.

  He looked pleased and turned to his sister. “What’s your plan for today, Wyn?”

  “Looks as if I’m going to be on the run all day. I was going to wait here for Walt’s call, but seeing that Reenie’s doing so well, I think I’ll be on my way. Are you all right with that?”

  Matt looked at Maura.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Dad’s been after me to take him downtown to buy a present for Tommy’s birthday next week. I’ll hit the supermarket while he does that, then make up some casseroles for dinner and drop yours over after I meet with Walt.”

  “I’ve a better idea,” Maura said. “If you’ll pick up some groceries for me, I’ll cook the dinner.”

  Picking up a pen and a pad of paper from the telephone table, she jotted down a couple of items before she remembered to reach for the reading glasses that were lying on the table. She mustn’t get too casual.

  “Do you eat spaghetti and meatballs, Matt?” she asked.

  “My favorite,” he answered.

  “How about your family, Bronwyn?”

  Neither Bronwyn nor Matt seemed to have noticed her gaffe with the glasses.

  “Tommy and I like it. And Dad will love you forever.” Bronwyn sounded immensely relieved. “You’re a lifesaver! If you don’t mind fielding a phone call for me and leaving a message on my answering machine about where and when to meet Walt Ames, that solves all my problems.”

  “I can do that.”

  Maura’s flesh crawled at the prospect of having to deal with Walt - even over a telephone wire. She wasn’t sure she could disguise her voice enough to fool someone who’d heard it as often as he had.

  Not quite an hour later, Bronwyn returned with the groceries.

  “Has Walt called yet?” she asked as she breezed in the door.

  “Not yet,” her brother told her. “Has Gus got competition?”

  Bronwyn flushed. It could have been from annoyance but Maura hoped, for Bronwyn’s own sake, that she didn’t have a personal interest in Walt Ames.

  “Gus is a friend, Matt. Leave me alone and stop behaving like a bratty kid brother.”

  Matt chuckled. “I’m off to attack the Sailing Solution’s woodwork. I can have more impact there. See you later, Reenie.”

  After Bronwyn left to take her father downtown, Maura did what she always did when she had something she didn’t want to think about. She baked. By eleven o’clock, she’d made four dozen butter tarts and two apple pies. The trays of oven-roasted meatballs and the big saucepan of tomato sauce would have served a small army. She told herself it all froze well, and Matt and his family could use the food after she’d left.

  However, even in the midst of her cooking frenzy, she listened for the dreaded ring of the telephone. Finally, shortly after eleven, its strident summons shattered the silence.

  Maura froze. She couldn’t do it. She tried to reach for the receiver but her hand refused to obey.

  “It would be suicide,” she whispered.

  The ringing continued. How could she explain not answering? In the shower, she wouldn’t be able to hear the phone. She began to strip off her clothes. At least, she wouldn’t have to lie about that.

  She was already turning on the tiny shower in the washroom off her bedroom when the ringing stopped.

  “Please don’t try again,” she prayed and stepped under the hot spray.

  When the phone had begun to ring, Matt was stripping varnish from the cabinet doors in the Sailing Solution’s galley. Involved in a tricky bit of detail work, he let the infernal nuisance ring five times before he put down his scraper with a loud expletive and hurried to the extension. Reenie had said she’d answer the damned phone. As he picked his way through the clutter of tools, lumber, and cans of paint and varnish that littered the floor, he attempted to get the worst of the sticky varnish off his fingers with paper toweling which, of course, only stuck to the varnish and added to his irritation.

  “Yes!” he snapped into the receiver.

  Walt Ames informed him that he’d be arriving in Millbridge within the next hour. He was effusive about wanting to explain the changes in GEL strategy to Bronwyn if she’d meet him at Elsie’s Restaurant at one o’clock. Matt was welcome to join them.

  Matt declined the invitation and assured Ames he would give his sister the message. As soon as he hung up, he called and left the information on Bronwyn’s answering machine.

  He cleaned off his fingers and was starting on the varnish he’d got on the receiver when it occurred to him to wonder why Reenie hadn’t taken Ames’ call. Had she fainted? Was she lying on the floor injured? Worse, had her pursuer caught up with her?

  He took off for the house at the dead run.

  Chapter Six

  Matt burst through the back door, then made himself stop and call Reenie’s name in a normal voice. There was no answer.

  The kitchen was redolent with the aroma of Italian herbs and garlic and sweet smells of apple pie and butter tarts. The containers of spaghetti sauce on the kitchen counter were still hot. He called again. Where was she?

  He hurried through the living room, and rapped firmly on the bedroom door. He didn’t wait for a reply but opened the door and entered the empty room.

  Then, he heard the shower running. Heaving a sigh of relief, he sank down on the edge of Reenie’s unmade bed. When his hips encountered a large lumpy object, he reached back and pushed it out of the way. However, a spot on his index finger, still tacky with varnish, refused to free itself completely from the woolen fiber. He reached behind him and picked up the familiar loosely woven tapestry bag. Thoughtfully, he put it back on the bed.

  He looked from the closed washroom door to the loosened drawstring of the bag that gaped invitingly at him. Matt was not a sneak. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t even be tempted to look inside a woman’s handbag, but his investigative sense was telling him not to be a fool. That bag held an important clue to the reason behind Reenie Kelly’s terror.

  Matt lived his life within the solid framework of rules. He liked knowing two and two always added up to four. A specific cause always produced a predictable effect. If you touched a flame you felt a burning pain. And he tried to keep to a few simple rules for life in general. Family was important. Dishonesty had to be punished. The strong had an obligation to help the weak. No one could argue with any of that.

  However, the intensity of his response to Reenie had him thinking of ignoring one of his own rules. He didn’t trust her, but he didn’t seem to be able to fight a compulsion to protect her whether she was honest or not. Her beautiful eyes and her delightfully curved body fascinated him. Her fiercely independent spirit was almost irresistible.

  Wait a minute! No matter how attractive she was or how indomitable her spirit, a crook was still a crook! If he had any sense, he’d give Reenie a helping hand right out of his life. Forget the questions; stop worrying about her safety; just help the woman on her way. Yeah, sure.

  There was no use telling himself that her mysterious problems were none of his business. He knew that was a lost cause. So, it seemed, were his scruples. He couldn’t help her if he didn’t know what kind of trouble she was in.

  One corner of a large brown envelope protruded slightly from the opening. Looking more closely, he could see that the envelope was bulging. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her private papers. But he did loosen the drawstring a little so that he could see what else was in the bag. When he did, he caught a flash of someth
ing glittering in its depths.

  His heart sank. Reenie was a thief after all. Resigned, he reached in and pulled out a sparkling diamond solitaire. It had to weigh at least a carat.

  “What are you doing?” Reenie cried as she caught sight of him. She swooped at him and snatched the bag out of his hands. “Those are my things.”

  “I doubt it,” Matt bit out.

  She was clutching the purse to her chest, protecting it with her arms. Although he was holding the ring in plain view, it was something else still in the bag that concerned her.

  “Where did you get this, Reenie?” he challenged, his voice hard with disappointment.

  “The ring?” Her tone dismissed it as inconsequential.

  Then, it was the manila envelope that was so important.

  “It’s mine. Why were you rummaging through my bag?” Reenie’s eyes were flashing blue fire. A good part of her fury, he suspected, was disappointment that he would go through her things.

  “I had to find out if I was harboring a criminal,” he informed her. He grasped the ring between his thumb and forefinger and thrust it at her. She barely glanced at it. “Judging by the size of this diamond, I guess my suspicions were right.”

  “I am not a thief.” Reenie held his gaze by the sheer force of her indignation. “I wish I’d never accepted that ring. But it was given to me.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that a woman who was driving that decrepit old wreck and is looking for work as kitchen help would own an expensive ring like this? Come on, Reenie.”

  Against all reason, Matt found himself tempted to believe her. The woman who stood imperiously before him, wearing a set of men’s sweats that were sizes too big for her, her face bruised and head bandaged, could certainly own expensive jewelry.

  “If you aren’t a thief…” he began. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “What the hell is going on? If the law isn’t after you, who is?”

  Matt loomed over her by almost a foot. His coal black eyes burned with anger and frustration. Maura should have been intimidated. However, instinctively, she knew Matt would never hurt her. For some strange reason, he cared what happened to her. The caring might be the same kind he’d give to a wounded animal, she hastened to warn herself, but he cared.

  Any sensible woman would take her precious evidence and run. Maura wasn’t feeling sensible. She was feeling vulnerable. She wished he would put his strong arms around her and offer in his gravelly voice to be by her side when she faced Jon and his thugs.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Matt wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than total honesty, and she wouldn’t endanger him and his family by showing him the evidence that Danny had gathered. She was beginning to realize that the tentacles of Jon’s influence could be long and far more ugly than she had imagined at first. The candid shot of him with Sal Gerardo suggested possibilities she didn’t want to think about.

  She could give Matt part of the truth.

  “My fiancé. No … my ex-fiancé,” she said. “I’m hiding from my ex-fiancé.”

  “Fiancé.” Matt uttered the word as if it had an unpleasant taste. “The man who gave you this rock.”

  He dropped the ring on her purse, then wiped his hands fastidiously on his denim-covered thighs. “You can do better than that.”

  “It’s the truth.” She could see incredulity at war with some other emotion in Matt’s face. Suddenly irate at having her word doubted, Maura snapped, “Believe me or not. It’s up to you.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Suddenly, Matt’s hands were gripping her upper arms.

  His grasp pulled the material of her shirt tight over the wound on her shoulder. When she flinched, Matt quickly released her arms and took her fingers in his big warm hands.

  “No. But he will if he finds me,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. This was the closest she had come to putting her conviction that her life was in danger into words.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Matt’s fierce hold on her fingers was becoming painful and he was slowly drawing her forward into his arms.

  “Where is he?” he demanded. “Who? We’ll go to Gus. We’ll get a restraining order.”

  “No. We can’t go to the police yet. If they tell him where I am, he’ll find a way to have me killed. Please. I can’t tell you any more.” She tugged her hands out of his grip but didn’t step away. Another minute and she’d surrender to her need to be held and make a complete fool of herself.

  “You’ve done all you can for me,” she protested, as much to convince herself as Matt. “Please take me into town, Matt. I can’t drag you into this.”

  Did she think she could simply walk away? After dropping like a whirlwind into his nice predictable life, did she think she could simply take off again without giving either of them time to deal with the chaos her arrival had created?

  “Just like that.” Matt’s voice was flat but he was struggling to contain too many mixed emotions. Anger, hurt, confusion, sympathy, desire were fighting for supremacy. All of them centered on this infuriating woman. Without intending to, he had virtually taken suspicion out of the mix.

  “I can’t stay here.” There was a catch in her voice.

  Reenie’s tempting lips were raised toward his. Her words said she was leaving, but the message her eloquent blue eyes were sending was that she needed to be kissed. And, God help him, he’d wanted to taste her lips since almost the first moment he’d seen her.

  When he bent to kiss her, she met him half way. Nothing in the world could have stopped his mouth from covering Reenie’s full, soft lips. He’d expected her kiss to be warm and vibrant like everything else about her, but even his dreams fell short of reality. Her response was so fresh and spontaneous that his own normal caution and restraint went up in smoke. When she parted her lips, the pent-up emotion of the past few days burst into a raging conflagration. She was as eager to taste his mouth as he was to savor hers. Matt nibbled at her lips; Reenie touched her tongue to his, then his plunged inside.

  At first, only their mouths touched. Everything else in the world faded. Matt was only conscious of heat and sweetness. Then, she was in his arms. Her breasts were soft against his chest and she smelled of soap and lemon scented shampoo.

  The sensation of her fingers plunging into his hair made him too hard and hot to endure for long. Her slender body arched against him. Her rounded buttocks fit perfectly into his hands.

  Good Lord! What was he doing? In another few seconds, he would have lowered Reenie onto her much-too-handy, rumpled bed. Calling on more will power than he thought he had, he dragged his mouth away from hers and looked into her dazed eyes.

  “What am I doing?” she whispered, sounding as shaken and confused as he was. She placed her palms flat against his chest.

  “This is crazy, Matt. That shouldn’t have happened.”

  “It had to.”

  The amazing, life-altering kiss was an indisputable fact. He’d never imagined a woman’s kiss could have this kind of an impact. From the first, Reenie had fascinated him. He’d struggled not to give in to the pull of her magnetism but now he had to acknowledge he no longer had any choice. Somehow, that blazing kiss had forged a link between them. He didn’t know how long this insanity would last, but his need to meld with her fiery spirit was as real as his urgent desire for her delectable little body.

  Matt held her hands firmly against his chest, but stepped back enough to leave a few inches of space between their bodies.

  “The chemistry’s been there from the beginning, little one. This was inevitable,” he said, trying to ram this emotional firestorm into a logical framework. “But it’s only one of the things we have to talk about.”

  “I’ve told you all I can, Matt. And I have to leave before he finds me.” She was still breathless and her lips were swollen from their kiss.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “He mustn’t find me here.”

  “Better here than somewhere on you
r own.”

  Reenie shook her head. “I can’t involve you.”

  “Too late,” he stated. “You can’t go now.” Matt took a deep breath. Nothing in his life had ever been more important than convincing her of that.

  Reenie set her stubborn little jaw, but he thought he saw a trace of agreement in her eyes.

  At that moment, he became aware of the sound of a vehicle coming to a stop on the gravel driveway in front of the house. Apprehension flashed across Reenie’s face. Car doors slammed. As the front door opened, a loud, impatient male voice shattered the emotion-filled silence.

  “For the love of God, girl,” Matt heard his father bark. “Don’t hover. I can walk.”

  Reenie’s face had drained of color at the sound of an unfamiliar male voice. That settled it. There was no way he’d let her leave.

  “It’s my father,” he told her. “Wyn said she’d bring him by to meet you while they were out and about. Don’t think this conversation is over,” he warned. “When Wyn and Pete leave, you’re going to tell me why you’re so frightened of the guy you used to be engaged to.”

  He didn’t wait for her reaction but strode into the living room to meet his father. Maura paused only long enough to push the tapestry bag under the bed and plunk the ridiculous half-glasses on the bridge of her nose before she followed him.

  Pete Hanson’s frustration at his physical condition was evident as he leaned on his walker and waited, grim-faced, for Maura to approach him.

  “So this is Reenie.” The smile that lit his face was almost as devastating as his son’s. He held out a large work worn hand. “I understand you almost got close up and friendly with Hazel Leigh’s lapstrake hull. Wyn said you were fine, but I had to see for myself.”

  Pete was more heavyset and shorter than his son, but he had the same heavy brows and broad cheekbones. He also had deeper laugh lines around his mouth and the corners of his dark eyes.

  He met her gaze and held it for a long time before he released her hand. Maura had the uneasy feeling he had catalogued every thought she’d ever had.

  “Let’s sit in the kitchen.” He led the way in that direction, making respectable speed with his walker. “I like a straight chair these days. Besides, something smells mighty good out there.”