But paradise could only continue for so long. With first light came reality, seeking to reestablish its claim on them both.
Natalya opened her eyes with enormous reluctance. The second that she did, she found Mike leaning over her, his head propped up on his upturned hand as he looked down at her.
God, she had to look awful. But she couldn’t very well throw the blanket over her head. He’d already seen her. “What are you doing?”
Enjoying himself, he thought. “Watching you sleep.”
“Why?” She tried to be glib, to hide the awkwardness she felt. Belatedly, she realized that she hadn’t pulled the cover over her body. She tugged it into place now. “Am I doing something entertaining?”
“Not now.” He curbed the urge to pull the blanket away again. “But you were.”
She stared at him, almost afraid of the answer. “In my sleep?”
“No, before that.” He threaded his arm around her waist, tucking her against his side. “Anyone ever tell you that you are one exciting lady?”
God, but this felt right. She knew she should be getting up, should be creating her own space again, but all she wanted to do was be with him a little longer.
“Not that I recall.”
“Well, you are.” If he didn’t get up now, he was going to start making love to her all over again and he wasn’t sure how she’d respond to that in the light of day. Mornings had a way of changing the rules of the game. “Want me to make you breakfast?”
Her eyes widened as she looked up at him. “You cook, too?”
He lifted a single shoulder, then let it fall again. “Passably.”
“Only passably?” He nodded. She wasn’t hungry for anything that could be placed on a plate. But she did want something that he could serve up, hot and ready. Oh, God, she was thinking like a guy and she didn’t even care. “How about we end this on a high note?”
He settled his body against hers, reading between the lines but wanting to be absolutely sure the text wasn’t just wishful thinking. “What do you mean?”
She raised her arms to his. “Guess.”
With a laugh, he took her into his arms. “How many guesses do I get?”
Her body was already humming in anticipation as she felt the warmth of him radiating through the blanket. “I’ll be very disappointed if it takes you more than one to get the answer.”
“Then I’d better not disappoint you.”
N
atalya put her key in the lock and turned it softly. Her hand on the doorknob, she moved it a fraction of an inch at a time. Taking a deep breath, she entered the apartment on tiptoes, carrying her shoes in her hand.
Only to find herself looking straight into Kady’s amused eyes.
Her sister looked as if she were on her way out. Just her luck. “Welcome home, Cinderella. Is the ball over?” Kady guessed, not bothering to hide her wide grin.
Natalya pressed her lips together. She’d been hoping to slip in without making Kady aware of the time. The very last thing she wanted right now were ques
tions, especially since she couldn’t begin to honestly answer any of her own, beginning with
What the hell was she doing?
She had no idea what she was doing, getting in deeper with a man she couldn’t possibly have a future with. But the truth of it was, the more she was with Mike, the more she wanted to be with him. And at least part of her felt that he felt the same way, as well. Which made it all the better, even as it made the situation worse.
Natalya held her hand up to ward off anything that might be coming from her younger sister. “Please, no third degree, Kady.”
“Third?” Kady echoed. “Honey, that wasn’t even first degree. I was just a little worried about you, that’s all. And a little envious,” she added with a wink. “He is a hunk.”
Natalya tried her best to be nonchalant. The half shrug was careless. “He’s okay.”
This time Kady hooted. “Okay?” She slipped her arm around Natalya’s shoulders. “Sweetie, I have
never
known you to spend your time with just plain ‘okay.’ You’re not the type, no matter what you want Mama and Dad to think.” It was a valiant fight, but her resolve to keep her questions to herself died a quick death. She
had
to ask. “Is it serious?”
Natalya threw off her wrap and let her clutch purse drop on top of it. “No. Yes.” She held her head, which was beginning to ache. “I don’t know.”
Unfazed, Kady nodded. “Fair enough.” She slanted a look at Natalya’s face. “So, do you want it to be serious?”
On occasion, she’d hedge to her sisters, but she never once lied outright. “Yes, but it can’t.”
Clear as mud, Kady thought. It
had
to be love. Out loud, she said cheerfully, “I love riddles. Do I get any more clues?”
She might as well tell Kady everything, Natalya thought. “Mike wants children.”
Kady looked as if she were still waiting to hear what the problem was. “So?”
Had it slipped Kady’s mind? “I can’t have any, remember?” Natalya told her.
To which Kady could only shake her head as her sister took hold of her arms to keep her from walking away. “Nat, Nat, Nat, you’re a doctor. You of all people should know that there are
so
many options available to us these days.” She paused for only a moment. “Not the least of which is adoption.”
Natalya didn’t think that was an option in this case. “I think Mike wants his own.” The words came out with a sigh.
Kady peered up at her face, searching it. “You think or you know?”
Restless, upset and on the verge on being emotional Natalya threw up her hands and began to move away. “I couldn’t exactly interrogate him about it.”
“Number one, when you adopt, the child instantly
‘becomes’ your own. Number two, there’re so many ways to have a baby these days that didn’t exist a generation ago. I read about this woman who couldn’t give birth to a baby so her mother volunteered to carry it to term for her. She wound up having twins.”
Natalya laughed. “Now there’s something to ask Mama for Christmas. ‘Could you give birth to your grandchild, Mama?’ Provided she could, of course, which we both know isn’t possible anymore.”
Kady refused to be put off. She did, however, come close to losing her temper. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her sister like this. This Mike person had her twisted up inside. Whether that was good or not remained to be seen.
“Stop putting obstacles in your way, Nat. Let nature take its course.” She peered closer, and then grinned. “Although—” she used her thumb to gently wipe away a slight smudge of lipstick from her sister’s mouth “—I think you’ve already started on that path.” She looked at her meaningfully.
Natalya picked up her purse and began to head for her room. “I’ve got to go change.”
“Highly recommended,” Kady called after her. “I’ll see you later. I’ve got to go see a patient.”
House calls were a thing of the past, but Natalya knew for a fact that there was one patient, a man in his late seventies, that Kady indulged. She turned around to look at Kady.
“Today?”
Kady lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Hey, hearts don’t look at calendars.” Hand on the doorknob, she paused one last time. “You going to be all right?”
“Sure.” Natalya tried to sound as cheerful, and positive, as possible. But even as she said it, turning toward her room, she knew she wasn’t. Not for a while, at least. Not until she could get everything sorted out in her mind.
An hour later found her no better. She needed air. Needed to go out and try to clear her head. It was Sunday. She always liked Sundays in New York. The traffic, both pedestrian and automobile, was far less congested on a Sunday. The office buildings stood like tall, silent sentries. It made walking less of a competitive sport and allowed her to window-shop. Window-shopping was her favorite diversion. And for once, it was one of those wonderful sunny days that came along so rarely in New York.
Her mind made up, she took her jacket out of the closet and put it on. As she began to walk out of the apartment, Natalya absently put her hand into her pocket. And stopped dead.
Her fingers came in contact with something. It took her only a second to recognize the thin, smooth shape. It was a camera.
Clancy’s camera.
She’d forgotten all about it. Taking it out, she
closed the door again and stared at the slim object in her hand. It hardly looked like a camera. For as long as she could remember, Clancy had always been into electronic gadgets. Be it a computer, a cell phone or a camera, he liked them cutting-edge fast, and the tinier, the better. And this was almost spylike tiny.
A pang zigzagged over her heart. For a moment, Natalya debated just putting the camera away again until she could deal with looking at the photographs a little better.
But then she suddenly thought, what if Clancy had managed to take a photo of his killer? Or, at the very least, a photo of the last person he’d been with the night he died. That could help reconstruct his evening. So far, it seemed as if nobody had seen him from the time he left the mortuary until the time he turned up behind the art gallery. She knew he both date and time stamped everything, it was part of his obsession with organization.
Natalya took a deep breath and pressed the view menu on the camera. One by one, she began going through the photographs on the memory card backward to the most recent. There was nothing remarkable about the first few. It was almost as if he’d snapped them in the shadows. But then, that was Clancy. It seemed almost ironic to her that, with his passion for cameras, he’d never actually taken the time to learn how to frame scenes to their best advantage.
She’d gone through five shots of shadows and was about to stop when she saw the photograph. The light
was bright, making everything visible. It had obviously been taken at the funeral parlor.
Natalya cringed. The photograph was of a dead man. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties. By his build, he appeared to be in the prime of his life.
The man was stark naked.
“Oh, God, Clancy, was that snake, Tolliver, right? Were you doing something with those dead people you weren’t supposed to?” She could feel tears gathering in her eyes. There had to be some mistake. Clancy wasn’t like that. He
wasn’t.
How well do we know anyone?
The question echoed in her head as she moved back to the next photo and then the one that had been taken before that. When she came to her sixth shot, her stomach had completely turned. What the director had said about Clancy had to be right. He’d been doing improper things with the bodies that were brought into the funeral parlor to be prepared for burial.
She almost stopped, but then, she’d come this far, she might as well see it through.
Natalya’s breath lodged in her throat when she saw the seventh shot. It was of a woman.
Something was wrong here. Clancy was not in to women, he admitted that to her when they were thirteen.
But if he wasn’t into women, why had he taken the photograph? It didn’t make sense.
She needed to see things more clearly than the tiny
screen allowed. Camera in hand, she went back to her room and switched on her computer, then waited for it to go through its paces. It moaned and groaned and emitted a battery of strange noises, its lights winking and flashing.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she urged impatiently.
Once the noises and lights had settled down, she slipped the memory card out of the camera and into a slot on her tower. Within a minute, she was pulling up the shot of the nude woman, enlarging it until it filled her entire monitor.
She caught her breath as she saw what Clancy had seen. Quickly, she flipped to the other photos, viewing them one by one.
It was beginning to make sense.
Natalya never bothered shutting off her color printer. It took far too long to come around when she needed it. She hit Print and the machine came out of sleep mode. It was printing within seconds. Slowly, eight by tens of Clancy’s photographs began to emerge from the mouth of the printer. Mike was going to need to see these.
Mike hadn’t known exactly what to make of her phone call when it came. Essentially, Natalya’d said nothing, only that she needed to see him right away. With the scent of her body still fresh in his head, not to mention on his sheets, he could only think that she was returning because she wanted more of the same.
Well, that made two of them, he thought.
He’d begged off from his mother’s weekly Sunday lunch and was glad now that he had. Otherwise, he might have missed Natalya’s call.
Again, it bothered him a little that the moment he’d told her to come over, he caught himself looking forward to her appearance with an anticipation that he wasn’t accustomed to. Now, all that mattered was that she was coming over.
Replaying her last words in his head, he realized that she’d sounded mysterious, but, hell, that was her right. He had to admit, it kind of made things more interesting.
Maybe, he thought, as he went to answer the door, she was having as much trouble reconciling everything that had happened last night as he did. Like where, if anywhere, was this going?
No point in wondering about that until it got to the starting gate, right?
It seemed like a solid philosophy. He still went on wondering.
When Mike opened the door, she was wearing a blue sweater beneath a jacket and a pair of jeans that looked as if they’d been applied with a paintbrush. He could feel his temperature rising already.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d been running. Or wrestling emotionally with something, unsure of which side to take.
Damn, he had to stop overanalyzing things.
Mike laughed at himself as he closed the door behind her. He was a cop. Overanalyzing was what he did for a living.
“Elevator out again?” he asked. When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “You seem breathless.”
“No, it’s working,” she assured him, trying to measure out every word. She certainly didn’t want him to think she was panting at the very sight of him—although it would take very little for that to happen. He’d answered the door shirtless.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he confessed.
The remark stopped her for a second. Was that his way of saying that Saturday night—or was that Sunday morning—had just been one of those things? Great, but over?
Stop it, Nat. This is bigger than your all-consuming attraction to Supercop. This is about Clancy and what he was getting ready to tell you.
“I have something to show you,” she told him. She held up the manila envelope she’d brought.
“All right,” Mike said gamely, his curiosity aroused. “Come into the living room. The lighting’s better there.”
Natalya shrugged out of her leather jacket as she went. When she felt his hands behind her, she sucked in her breath, surprised, before she regained control. Looking a little amused at her reaction, Mike took the jacket from her.
She realized that her fingers were shaking slightly as she opened the manila envelope and took out the photographs she’d printed less than an hour ago. She handed him the lot.
“Here.”
Slightly bewildered, Mike took the photographs from her. The bewilderment grew as he looked at the first photograph and then the second.
“You came here to show me naked pictures of men?” He raised his eyes to hers, his expression a little uncertain. “I don’t—”
“The pictures are from Clancy’s camera. He took them.”
He continued to go through the photographs. He dealt with death every day, but this was a little hard to stomach. “We didn’t find a camera.”
She debated making up an excuse, then decided that if he pressed her, the truth would come out. And then he wouldn’t know when to believe her. It was best to face the music now and get it over with.
She slid the tip of her tongue along her lips before beginning. “That’s because that first day, when you came into the apartment, you startled me. I was holding the camera and I guess I must have slipped it into my pocket without realizing it. It’s practically the size of a credit card,” she added quickly, “and with everything else going on, I guess I just forgot about it. Until this morning.” She bit her lower lip before concluding. “I put my jacket on and there it was.”
Finished, he straightened the photographs in his hands and looked at her. “Okay, I still don’t see—”
That’s because he didn’t know what he was looking for, she thought. And because he hadn’t looked at them through eyes that were desperate to absolve a friend. “The photographs are of some of the people who were brought in to the mortuary.”