“Nice to know that there are still some standards left.”
Chapter Twenty-four
She felt him leave the bed shortly before dawn. There was the smallest of rustling sounds. A moment later she heard the soft slide of a zipper. The door slid open.
He had gone outside onto the patio. She wondered if he had left something out there last night: his watch or shoes, perhaps. When he did not return immediately, curiosity got the better of her. She sat up to see what he was doing.
The curtains were open. From the bed she had a clear view of the pool and the wrought-iron fence beyond. Jake had opened the gate. He stood at the edge of the patio, looking out at the rolling desert landscape. The calm, alert stillness of his stance told her that he was watching something very intently.
She rose from the bed and pulled on his robe. Tying the sash, she crossed the room and stepped outside onto the patio.
The exhilaration of the predawn atmosphere struck her full force. The sweet scents, the perfect temperature with the promise of the heat to come, the exotic light, all combined to give her an odd, thrilling rush of awareness.
Halfway across the patio she saw the first coyote. It was a few yards from where Jake stood, watching her with an unwavering gaze. After a few seconds she saw the second and then the third. The trio regarded her for a long moment, and then, evidently concluding she was not a problem, they went back to prowling the underbrush.
She came to a halt beside Jake. He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side.
“What’s going on out here?” she whispered.
“Those three are hunting breakfast.”
She winced. “I hope they don’t find it while I’m standing here watching. Something tells me they don’t eat a lot of soy burgers.”
“At this hour they’re probably after rabbits.”
“What about you? Staking out your territory? Marking your boundaries?”
“In a way.”
“It better not involve peeing on the fence. I don’t mind a little back-to-nature stuff, but I’d have to draw the line at that.”
“Go ahead, take all the fun out of it.”
She laughed and turned into the curve of his arm. He kissed her there in the light of the desert dawn, sending energy splashing across all her senses.
When he raised his head at last she could see the exciting heat in his eyes.
“I didn’t buy you dinner last night,” she said. “So I’ll make breakfast instead.”
“Works for me.”
He walked into the kitchen some time later, showered and shaved and aware of a hungry anticipation that had nothing to do with food. Clare was at the center island, cracking eggs into a bowl. He could see that she had just come from the shower herself. Her hair was held back in a ponytail. She had on a pair of black pants and a rust-colored T-shirt. Both looked good on her. Both looked familiar.
He stopped in the doorway, giving himself a chance to enjoy the sight of her in his kitchen.
She looked up from the eggs, smiling a little shyly. “Hungry?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I meant for breakfast.”
“That, too.”
He went around the counter, picked up the teapot and poured Dragon Well green into a heavy white ceramic mug. He lounged back against the counter and watched Clare work on breakfast. She seemed to have made herself very much at home, he noticed. He liked that.
Too bad he was going to have to ruin the warm, romantic atmosphere.
“I’d like to take you up on that offer to make use of your washing machine and dryer after breakfast, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“No problem.”
A non-stick frying pan was heating on the stove. Clare put a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard into the egg mixture and added some chopped fresh dill and a large dollop of ricotta.
“Something I need to ask you,” he said.
She picked up a wire whisk and went to work on the egg mixture. “Hmm?”
“Who do you think killed Brad McAllister?”
She stopped whisking very abruptly. “I told you. I have no idea.”
“But you’re not buying the interrupted burglary theory, are you?”
“No. I didn’t buy it six months ago and I really can’t buy it now. Not after what happened to Valerie Shipley.”
“Got a theory of your own?”
She concentrated very hard on putting a dab of butter into the hot pan. Then she added the eggs. He could tell she was choosing her words carefully, deciding what and how much to tell him.
“The truth, Clare,” he said.
She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know who killed Brad but I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What?”
“Until yesterday, I was very grateful to that person.”
“Because the killer came up with a permanent fix for Elizabeth’s problem?”
“That, too,” she admitted. “But there was another reason.”
“What?”
Clare looked up from stirring the scrambled eggs. “I think he or she probably saved my life.”
A chill went through him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m sure that Brad intended to kill me that night. Someone else got to him first.”
Chapter Twenty-five
She knew she should be having some serious concerns about confiding in a man who was still, in far too many ways, a stranger. She had not talked to anyone, not even Elizabeth, about her darkest fears relating to the night of Brad’s death.
She had an uneasy feeling that the intense intimacy of last night’s blistering sexual encounter had broken through the last of her carefully constructed barricades. She had kept her secret too long, she thought. Only now did she fully realize how desperately she had wanted to discuss her nightmarish theory with someone.
If anyone could address her anxieties with cold reason, it would be Jake.
“I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, wondering,” she said. “But I never told anyone.”
“Why would Brad McAllister want to kill you?”
“Because I was the one who pulled Elizabeth out from his clutches. The divorce was not yet final when he died. I think he figured that if he got rid of me, he could regain control of Elizabeth.”
“From all accounts, Brad McAllister was an all-around terrific guy.”
The eggs were done. Clare scooped them onto two plates and added toast.
“Brad was a manipulative sociopath,” she said. “Make that a manipulative para-sociopath. And he was so good-looking and so charming and so damned smart that he got away with it. Elizabeth is sure he was having an affair while they were married but she could never prove it.”