all right,” he said. “I lied before. I’ve never seen better.”
She shook her head and laughed. “This is ridiculous.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Of my dad’s liquor? I don’t think so. I…I might do something I’ll regret.”
“You think?”
She let out a breath, glanced him up and down and nodded. “Yeah, I think.”
He should have stopped himself right then while he still had a chance of taking control of the situation, but he didn’t and tossed back his drink. “Maybe regrets are too highly overrated,” he said, dropping his glass onto a chair and closing the distance between them. He noticed her pulse fluttering on the smooth skin of her throat, knew that she was as scared as he was.
But it had been a long time since he’d kissed a woman and he’d been thinking about how it would feel to kiss Randi McCafferty for weeks. Last night, he’d found out. He’d wrapped his arms around her and as a gasp slipped from between her lips, he’d slanted his mouth over hers and felt his blood heat. Her arms had instinctively climbed to his shoulders and her body had fitted tight against him.
Warning bells had clanged in his mind, but he’d ignored them as his tongue had slipped between her teeth and his erection had pressed hard against his fly. She was warm and tasted of lingering coffee. His fingers splayed across her back and as she moaned against him, he slowly started inching her nightgown upward, bunching the soft flannel in his fingers as her hemline climbed up her calves and thighs. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to use his weight to carry them both to the rug in front of the dying fire…
Now, as he sat in his pickup with the rain beating against his windshield, Striker scowled at the thought of what he’d done. He’d known better than to kiss her, had sensed it wouldn’t stop there. He didn’t need the complications of a woman.
He hazarded a glance at the third finger of his left hand where he could still see the deep impression a ring had made as it had cut into his skin. The muscles in the back of his neck tightened and a few dark thoughts skated through his mind. Thoughts of another woman…another beautiful woman and a little girl…
Angry with the turn of his thoughts, he forced his gaze to Randi’s condominium. This particular grouping of units rested on a hillside overlooking Lake Washington. He’d parked across the street where he had a clear view of her front door, the only way in or out of the condo, unless she decided to sneak out a window. Even then, he’d see her Jeep leaving. Unless she was traveling on foot, he’d be able to follow her.
He glanced at his watch. She had forty-seven minutes to cool off and get herself together. And so did he. Leaning across the seat, he grabbed his battered briefcase and reached inside where he kept an accordion folder on the McCafferty case. With one eye on the condominium, he riffled through the pages of notes, pictures and columns he’d clipped out of the Seattle Clarion, columns with a byline of Randi McCafferty and accompanied by a smiling picture of the author.
“Solo,” by Randi McCafferty.
Hers was an advice column for singles, from the confirmed bachelors to the newly divorced, the recently widowed or anyone else who wrote in, claimed not to be married and asked for her opinion. Striker reread a few of his favorites. In one, she advised a woman suffering from abuse to leave the relationship immediately and file charges. In another she told an overly protective single mother to give her teenage daughter “breathing space” while keeping in touch. In still another, she suggested a widower join a grief-support group and take up ballroom dancing, something he and his wife had always wanted to do. Her columns were often empathetic, but sometimes caustic. She told one woman who couldn’t decide between two men and was lying to them both to “grow up,” while she advised another young single to “quit whining” about his new girlfriend, who sometimes parked in “his” spot while staying over. Within each bit of advice, Randi often added a little humor. It was no wonder the column had been syndicated and picked up in other markets.
Yet there were rumors of trouble at the Clarion. Randi McCafferty and her editor, Bill Withers, were supposedly feuding. Striker hadn’t figured out why. Yet. But he would. Randi had also written some articles for magazines under the name of R. J. McKay. Then there was her unfinished tell-all book on the rodeo circuit, one she wouldn’t talk much about. A lot going on with Ms. McCafferty. Yep, he thought, leaning back and staring at the front door of her place, she was an interesting woman, and one definitely off-limits.
Well, hell, weren’t they all? He scowled through the raindrops zigzagging down his windshield and his thoughts started to wend into that forbidden territory of his past, to a time that now seemed eons ago, before he’d become jaded. Before he’d lost his faith in women. In marriage. In life. A time he didn’t want to think about. Not now. Not ever.
“He’s okay?” Randi said into her cell phone. Her hands were sweaty, her mind pounding with fear, and it was all she could do to try to calm her rising sense of panic. Despite her bravado and in-your-face attitude with Striker, she was shaky. Nervous. His warnings putting her on edge, and now, as she held the cell phone to her ear and peered through the blinds to the parking lot where Kurt Striker’s old pickup was parked, her heart was knocking.
“You dropped him off less than an hour ago,” Sharon assured her. “Joshua’s just fine. I fed him, changed him and put him down for a nap. Right now he’s sleeping like a…well, a baby.”
Randi let out her breath, ran a shaking hand over her lip. “Good.”
“You’ve got to relax. I know you’re a new mother and all, but believe me, whatever you’re caught up in, stressing out isn’t going to help anyone. Not you, not the baby. So take a chill pill.”
“I wish,” Randi said, only slightly relieved.
“Do it… Take your own advice. You’re always telling people in your column to take a step back, a deep breath and reevaluate the situation. You still belong to the gym, don’t you? Take yoga or tae kwon do or kickboxing.”
“You think that would do it?”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
“Just as long as I know Joshua’s safe.”
“And sound. Promise.” Sharon sighed. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you might consider going out. You know, with a man.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Just because you had a bad experience with one doesn’t mean they’re all jerks.”
“I had a bad experience with more than one.”
“Well…it wouldn’t kill you to give romance a chance.”
“I’m not so sure. When Cupid pulls back his bow and aims at me, I swear his arrows are poisoned.”
“That’s not what you tell the people who write you.”
“With them, I can be objective.” She was staring at Striker’s truck, which hadn’t moved. The man was behind the wheel. She saw movement, but she couldn’t see his facial features, could only feel him staring at her house, sizing it up, just as he’d done with her. “Look, I’ll be over tomorrow, but if you need to reach me for anything, call me on my cell.”
“Will
