her and Connor McCoy than she’d been the night of Kelli and David’s wedding. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t seen him since, and likely wouldn’t for a while, what with David and Kelli being off on their honeymoon in the Poconos for the next two weeks.
And not with Connor being implicated in the death of Melissa Robbins.
Tightening the sash on her white silk kimono, she opened the door and scooped up the eight newspapers stacked haphazardly on the cement steps of her Georgetown town house. The spring morning was warm and clear. She hugged the papers to her chest and tilted her face toward the sun dappling the steps through the trees.
“Good morning, Miss Bronte.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at the elderly woman that lived two doors up. Seven o’clock and already she was digging through the spring flowers flowing from artfully placed baskets in her front window, bright yellow cloth gloves protecting her aging hands. “Morning, Miss Adele.”
The neighborhood was comprised mostly of young professionals or tenured academics and budding politicians, but Miss Adele added a little bit of the something Bronte had been looking for when she first moved to D.C.—a kind of old-world, southern charm she was coming to cherish. “Your geraniums are looking good.”
Miss Adele smiled. “Nothing like a few coffee grounds mixed into the soil to perk them right up, I always say. A little trick my grandmother taught me.”
Bronte waved, then headed back inside her town house. Padding into the kitchen, she slid the newspapers one after another onto the thick oak tabletop. She sighed, Miss Adele and her geraniums quickly forgotten. If the story about her witness and Connor McCoy’s alleged involvement in her death wasn’t on the front page, a teaser leading to it was.
When she’d first arrived on the scene at the safe house, still decked out in full maid of honor wedding regalia, she’d brushed away any possibility of Connor’s involvement in Melissa Robbins’s death. After all, hadn’t she just spent the better part of that day salivating after him, first in the church during Kelli and David’s nuptials, then later at the reception?
Then it slowly dawned on her that a good six hours had stretched between the ceremony and the reception. And it was smack dab in the middle of those six hours that Melissa’s death had been approximated.
Still, she’d been unwilling even to consider that a man so obviously a steadfast believer in the law would break it so acutely. Then little circumstantial pieces of evidence began to pile up. The fact that there was a strong history of conflict between Connor and Robbins while she was in his custody; there were several minor complaints littering her file from Robbins over the past couple months claiming Marshal McCoy had been physical with her. At the time she’d written those complaints off, simply because she’d had a difficult time dealing with the demanding woman herself. And follow-ups to the complaints had proven that the physical incidents Robbins had cited were minor events brought on by her stepping outside the boundaries set for her protection, and were completely warranted. Such as the time when Connor took the phone from Robbins’s hand and pulled the cord from the wall when she was going to order in from a swanky D.C. restaurant where she was well known. Or when she’d tried to ditch her protection during a visit to Bronte’s D.C. office so she could squeeze in a visit to a spa that had been deemed prohibited by the marshal’s office.
Separately, the occurrences could be explained away. But when combined, and coupled with no apparent outside breach of security…well, Bronte’s arguments for Connor’s innocence had lost a bit of punch.
Of course, it didn’t help that his alibi of target practice out in an abandoned stretch of countryside during the window of opportunity couldn’t be verified.
None of the circumstantial evidence was enough to issue a warrant for his arrest. But given the air around the U.S. attorney’s office, the possibility was growing more likely with each passing hour.
Bronte stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and sighed. Boy, she really knew how to pick them, didn’t she? Wasn’t it bad enough she’d gone through what she had with Thomas? Did fate have to toss one hottie in the shape of Connor McCoy into her path so soon afterward? An alleged murderer, at that?
She snatched her hand away from her mouth, then slid into a chair. “It was just a kiss, for God’s sake.”
Clasping her rose-etched antique cup of Earl Grey between both hands, she took a long sip. She grimaced at the cool liquid, then glanced toward the unplugged microwave and the television tuned in to the local news next to it. She couldn’t run both the microwave and the TV at the same time in the old town house, a wiring challenge she hoped to remedy with her plans to renovate the place. Plans she could put into motion just as soon as she settled on a design.
She jerkily opened the first newspaper and carefully spread it out on the table in front of her. Just a kiss. Yeah, right, and the Concorde was just a plane. First kisses didn’t even remotely resemble what had passed between her and Connor in the park the other night. There had been something…explosive about the meeting of their lips. Something undeniably sexy. She’d felt the amazing urge to push her dress up and cradle him between her thighs with no thought about tomorrow. No qualms about how well she didn’t know him. Absolutely no thoughts of why they shouldn’t be indulging in such decadent behavior in the middle of a park in the heart of the nation’s capital.
She propped her head in her hand. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t so long ago that she had entertained ideas of indulging in such behavior solely because it was the nation’s capital. While she didn’t claim to be an exhibitionist, there was something decidedly erotic and intense about the idea of having sex a mere stone’s throw away from the White House.
The city itself had proved an incredible aphrodisiac when she’d first started attending G.W.U. Or could it perhaps have been that D.C. wasn’t the small town of Prospect, New Hampshire? She still couldn’t be sure. But leaving the place where she’d grown up as the youngest of three daughters of the high-school math teacher had been wonderfully freeing. Not once had she been taunted for her height. Nor had she felt hemmed in by her lack of career choices. The sky was the limit as far as her future was concerned. And when she discovered that men were attracted to her…well, she’d taken to them like chocolate, in some odd way trying to make up for every guy who had shunned her in high school, every kid who had teased her, made her feel like a towering tree with absolutely no grace. In essence, she’d become a serial dater.
She supposed the reasons were far more complicated than that. Still, while her personal life was littered with debris from failed relationships, she had excelled in her studies and career. Affirmative action may have made it easier for her to obtain certain positions, like clerking under an esteemed superior court judge, followed by a stint in the local prosecutor’s office, then a gratifying round with a citizens’ action group, but it was her unabashed ambition and singleminded purpose that had landed her in the U.S. attorney’s office four years ago.
Then came Thomas.
She shook the paper vigorously, hoping the action itself would snap her from her reverie. She didn’t want to think about him now. Didn’t want to think about Connor either. After Thomas…well, she’d vowed to spend uninterrupted quality time with herself. And that didn’t include one U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy. Especially given the cloud of suspicion now hanging over him.
The wall phone rang. Bronte slanted a look at the clock, then continued reading. Too early for her mother. Besides, she’d spoken to her the day before yesterday, so it would probably be next week before she spoke to her again, unless something important popped up. And if it was something important, she didn’t think she could deal with it right now. She turned
