Double Jeopardy (Entangled Select) (18 page)

“I also admire your nerve,” he complimented her.

“It comes from living with a cop’s macho attitude. You learn about the times when you can’t afford to back down. We’ve come to one of those times, Josh.”

Thoughts of her ex-husband still didn’t set well in his gut. “Yeah, I know.”

It wasn’t difficult to tell he didn’t look happy about something. She wondered if he was worrying about what was going on. She playfully ran her finger down his cheek.

“You could look on the bright side of all this.” She lowered her voice to a sultry level. “Just think about it, Josh, an entire weekend with me. Isn’t that something you’ve been angling for? What you meant when you talked about us getting away later on? Think of it,” she lowered her voice a bit more, “us, alone, no worries about cases for you, or autopsies and visiting crime scenes for me.”

“Something tells me you’ll get the better deal if you’re not going to be worrying about dead bodies.” Josh turned onto Lauren’s street and pulled up her driveway.

He had just helped her out of the car when a patrol car drove by. It slowed to a crawl when it noticed them. When the spotlight briefly blinded them, Josh lifted his hand in a wave. The two officers nodded their acknowledgment and drove on.

“Shows they’re on the ball.” Josh walked with Lauren up to her door. He stood to the side while she disarmed the alarm and unlocked her door, but held her back when she would have entered. “Let me go in first.”

Concern crossed her face. “You can’t think she’d do something?”

“I hope not, and I don’t intend to take any chances at this point.” He eased the door open and walked in. He was startled when the light went on.

“It was Kevin’s suggestion,” Lauren explained. “While a couple of main lights go on at dusk, a few others are on motion sensors.”

“A good idea.” Josh made a quick but thorough pass through the house.

“I’m glad I didn’t leave any clothes lying around.” Lauren refused to stay in the entryway and remained on his heels as he checked out each room, ending with her bedroom.

“Then it’s a good thing you haven’t seen my place. I’m not exactly known for my neatness.” He switched on the bathroom light and checked it out also. “Everything looks all right.”

“How about some coffee?” She led him back to the family room. “I’ve got the coffee maker set up, so it won’t take long.”

“Sounds good.”

She walked into the kitchen and pulled cups out of the cabinet. “All right, have a seat and I’ll bring it in.”

Josh sat on the couch, glancing at the magazines on the coffee table and picking one up out of curiosity. He fanned through the pages, pausing a few times when something interested him. He glanced at the books on the lamp table.

“Forensics, studies of bones, decomposed bodies,” he muttered. “What do you read for enjoyment?”

Lauren carried in a tray holding a coffee server, two cups, and a bottle of Irish Cream. “Nancy A. Collins, John Sanford, Clive Barker, Stephen King.” She filled both cups with coffee, topped them off with a splash of Irish Cream, and handed him one.

“It sounds like a repeat of your work.”

She couldn’t wait until he started to drink his coffee before speaking. “We only drain the blood, Josh, we don’t drink it.”

It took him a great deal of effort not to spew out the coffee. He gulped and choked so badly he began coughing.

“Want me to thump your back?”

Josh rapidly shook his head, unaware his face was a bright shade of red.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” He wheezed once he caught his breath. “You went for the shock value just for the sheer hell of it.”

“There’s a lot of coroners out there with a very sick sense of humor that rivals, if not surpasses, any cop’s,” she said matter-of-factly, as she sat down beside him. She edged off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her. “You know, one of my favorite movies is ‘The Sting’.” She lifted her cup. “To a successful con.”

Josh tapped her cup against his before taking hers out of her hand and setting both of them down on the tray. “Can’t be anything but, although I have a better way of sealing the deal.” He pulled her into his arms.

Lauren’s smile grew as she allowed him to settle her in his lap. She looped her arms around his neck and brushed her lips against his until his mouth opened. Tongues tangled as they tasted each other with the hunger that had been building for some time.

Free to explore each other without worry of unwanted watchers, they loosened each other’s clothing until Lauren’s top was free of her shoulders and Josh’s shirt was open.

“Now, this is more like it,” he mumbled, nuzzling her ear.

“There’s no beach.”

He obligingly blew softly in her ear. “That’s the ocean breeze. I’ll work on the water part later, when we have more time.”

“You know, Sophie’s wrong,” she sighed, running her fingers through the thick thatch of hair on his chest. She shivered when she felt him caressing the sensitive skin around her breast. “You’re not such an old guy, after all.”

“Believe me, I’m only too happy to prove it.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Exactly what does a woman take with her when she goes away with a man for the weekend and she has seduction in mind?” Lauren studied the contents of her closet, hoping something would jump out at her. This wasn’t the first time she’d wished for something similar. She doubted the long weekends she and Ron had taken during their marriage counted. Especially toward the end, when her idea of nightwear was a football jersey. She doubted it would be appropriate for what she had in mind.

She started to pull open the dresser drawer that held her sexier nightwear, but hesitated. She uttered a sound of disgust as she finally just jerked it open.

“Stop it, Lauren. She’s not the type to leave something disgusting in here. Well, she is, but hopefully, not today.”

She still carefully probed the contents as she pulled out a couple of nightgowns she felt would be more appreciated than a football jersey.

“It never hurts to be prepared,” she murmured, as she folded them and placed them in her suitcase while keeping one eye on the clock. Josh would be there to pick her up in about fifteen minutes, and as usual, she’d left everything to the last minute and was now running around, getting everything together. She quickly packed up her cosmetics and threw them in her bag. She looked at the clock again. “Damn!” She quickly pulled her hair back in a braid and dressed in dark wash jeans and a burnt orange sweater. She set her overnight case by the front door at the same time she noticed Josh drive up. She walked outside, noticing the early morning light had barely touched the sky. Her breath frosted in the cold air.

“Hi.” He greeted her with a good morning kiss. “All ready?”

“I probably forgot something. I always do, so I won’t worry about it.” She closed the door and set the alarm. “I was tempted to leave a note. Just in case anyone decided to stop by while I was gone. Too bad I don’t have a cat I could ask her to feed. Or maybe a python would be more fitting for her to cuddle up with.”

“Well, hell, why not a black widow spider?”

“If we’re talking about venom, I’d prefer something with a lot more kick.” Once settled in the car, Lauren linked her arms around Josh’s neck and pulled him toward her for a much warmer kiss than the one he’d given her.

When they finally broke free, Josh stared at her with glazed eyes. “Lady, I’d say that was hot enough to wake the dead.”

Her smile was equally dazzling. “Now you know why I chose pathology.”

Josh shook his head to clear it. “You are something. Now that we’ve gotten our hellos out of the way, you want to give me a hint? Are we going north or south?”

“North to a very nice bed-and-breakfast outside of Solvang. The place is owned by some friends of mine.”

“It sounds good to me.” He nodded his approval. “I haven’t been up there in years. Although I thought you’d choose something closer to the beach.”

“I thought we’d save that for later.” She couldn’t resist glancing around as Josh headed for the freeway. “I can’t believe she’s stayed quiet for so long. I swear this is making me more paranoid than when every time I walked in the door I wondered if I’d find evidence of her having been in my house.”

“I’m just glad there haven’t been any more flowers,” he told her. “Once I found out they had meanings, they bothered me almost as much as the other shit she pulled. But you know what I want to do?”

She slipped on her sunglasses against the sunlight now filling the car. “If it’s anything kinky, you can forget about it, Brandon.”

“Then you’re safe, because I left the handcuffs and other little toys home. But I do want to state that no mention of our hellish friend will be made from the time we leave the city limits until we return. Deal?”

That was something Lauren was more than happy to agree to. “Deal. But if you want me to be an agreeable traveling companion, all I ask is you hit the first Starbucks drive-through for coffee. I didn’t get a chance to make any this morning.”

Josh swung by the coffee chain and ordered two large coffees with espresso shots added to Lauren’s. “Anything else?”

She shook her head. “Just the caffeine. I live on coffee so much when things get hectic at work, I don’t feel normal if I don’t have my morning fix to give me a much-needed kick start.”

“I still can’t imagine your work getting hectic. It’s not as if your patients can get up and walk out on you if you’re running behind.”

Lauren grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they did, since it does tend to get a bit chilly in the waiting room. They probably feel as if they’re fur coats put away in cold storage.”

Josh groaned. “That’s really bad.”

“You think that’s bad, you should hear what some of us used to pull during medical school. One guy liked to pretend to be a corpse and lay on a gurney for the first session of gross anatomy class. The minute they pulled down the covering, he’d blink his eyes as if he’d just awakened from a nap and tell them the last thing he remembered was falling asleep upstairs in class.”

“So the moral was not to fall asleep in class?”

“Exactly.”

“You know, for a classy-looking lady, you have a very sick sense of humor and a strange idea of what’s fun.”

“Are you telling me you never pulled off any practical jokes in law school?” she challenged.

“There were days I felt I was lucky if I was awake enough to attend class, but we had one guy, Pat Hamilton, who was known to plant a mannequin holding a tape recorder in his seat during some of the classes.”

“The tape recorder was to record the class?”

He shook his head. “Nope, he had a hidden recorder for that. This one was strictly playback, and it played back the sound of a man snoring. We were always surprised he wasn’t thrown out.”

“Don’t tell me, he’s now a federal judge or something.”

He shook his head again. “Even worse. He operates a storefront law office in East LA where he likes nothing better than going up against the big guys. Quite a few big-name law firms have tried to persuade him to go with them, but he’s always turned them down. Says he prefers helping guys who can’t afford the kind of attorneys they need to sitting in a high-rise office where he couldn’t dare put his feet up on the furniture.”

“Sounds a bit like you with your distaste for wearing ties to court.”

“Yeah, there’re some who’re not too happy about that, so the day may come when I’ll have to give in and wear one of those nooses. That new judge cornered me in the hall one day and said the day I show up in his court without a tie would be a day I’d spend in jail along with a hefty fine.”

“Judge Burns?”

“That’s the one. Talk about a stuffy old fart.”

Lauren chuckled. “I had to testify in his court a couple days ago for the Winston case.”

“The kid who OD’d on speed and the parents are suing his best friend’s parents for knowing their kid sold drugs and not doing anything about it?”

She nodded.

“I was damn grateful I didn’t get that case. It’s tricky to prove the parents are at fault. If I remember correctly, Larry has that one.”

“He does. But it was Judge Burns who informed me the next time to come to his court dressed in a ladylike manner. I’d shown up in a pantsuit and I was told I would wear a knee length skirt or dress next time. During my testimony, he never called me ‘Doctor,’ but addressed me as Mrs. Hunter the couple times he asked me to clarify something, and he was so old-world stuffy that I was ready to hit him.” She made a face. “Unfortunately, I made a smart remark under my breath that next time I’d show up in my crinolines, and he didn’t appreciate it.”

Josh chuckled. “I’m sure he didn’t. The last few times I’ve seen Larry, he’s been muttering to himself. He says his blood pressure has probably tripled since the case began. He figures the way his luck is going, he’d probably have a stroke right there in the courtroom. And get slapped with a contempt charge for staging courtroom dramatics. I told him if he’s worrying so much, he should get some pointers from Ted. That guy is a genius when it comes to doing anything theatrical and outlandish.”

“There was a judge in LA,” Lauren began a story that soon had the two of them laughing. It wasn’t long before they forgot the real reason behind this trip.

By agreement, they chose the coastal route instead of driving inland to Solvang. During the drive they continued to trade courtroom war stories. As a forensic pathologist, Lauren had spent more than her share of time in court, giving expert testimony, and could offer a different perspective from Josh’s.

“I’ve spent enough time in courtrooms to know I’m much happier in pathology. Especially when the cops are badgering my office for reports on posts not even performed yet or demanding them within the next few hours. But since I have a habit of discussing my work in very clinical terms, they tend to leave me pretty much on my own.”

“Now I know where to hide out when I need peace and quiet.”

“You’ll be fine as long as you move around every so often so we don’t think you’re one of our residents,” she assured him.

They soon reached Santa Barbara and took the mountain route to Solvang. As Josh drove the winding road, he couldn’t help keeping an occasional eye on the rearview mirror. Especially since a dark-colored truck had been keeping pace with them since they’d left the highway. Traffic had been fairly heavy the closer they’d gotten to Santa Barbara, so he hadn’t noticed it before.

“I thought we were going to leave our worries back home.” Lauren’s quiet voice startled him.

“I have.”

“Liar.”

“Are you calling me, an officer of the court, a liar?” He opted to keep it light.

She looked at him with a strange calm. “With the side view mirror on this side, I can see that truck back there, too, Josh. The first time I noticed it, it was on the highway about fifty miles before we reached Santa Barbara. The windows are tinted so we have no idea who the driver is, and there’s no plate on the front. Most of the time he stays too far back for us to get any kind of identification.”

He put his foot down a bit more on the accelerator. The car shot forward. Right about now, he’d welcome a cop pulling him over for speeding. “Then you’ve observed more than I have. There’s no guarantee the truck has anything to do with us. He might be going to the same place and decided on the same route.”

“That’s right.” Her eyes flicked toward the mirror again, then to the other side and downward, to where the cellular phone was nestled. “At least, we have a way to call for help.”

Josh’s expression was grim. “Maybe not. When there are mountains around, the reception can be between lousy if not zip.”

The silence around them grew tense as they each glanced in a mirror to see where the truck was. They didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until it turned off onto a private road.

Josh exhaled a heavy breath of air. “Looks like our imaginations were working overtime.”

Her own body slumped. “I thought I’d left it all behind. That the minute we reached the freeway I could forget about her. I can’t believe I was so wrong.”

He took his hand off the steering wheel and grabbed her hand, lacing her fingers through his. “You and me both.”

But the tension didn’t completely disappear until they were out of the mountains and Lauren gave him directions when they reached the outskirts of Solvang, California’s piece of Denmark.

“Dave and his wife, Chloe, moved out here and started their bed-and-breakfast after Dave retired,” she explained. “He was a federal prosecutor in Sacramento. They decided they wanted a quiet life after the fast pace of the big city. They used to spend a lot of time down this way and decided years ago this was where they’d retire to.”

A name tapped the back of his mind. “David Sinclair?”

Lauren nodded.

He emitted a low whistle. “You know some pretty heavy-duty people.”

“Actually, Dave and Chloe are friends of my parents,” she explained. “Chloe and my mother met in college and became immediate close friends. They were each other’s main attendants at their weddings and the men soon became good friends, too. They’re also Dana’s parents. My parents come up here a few times a year and I have an open invitation.”

“And they don’t mind that you’re bringing someone?”

She smiled. “Don’t you mean, bringing a man I’m not married to?”

“Yeah. Is it going to bother them, or pardon me for being crass, have you done this before?”

“Don’t worry about the pressure about being first.” She suddenly pointed to her left. “Turn there, at the sign.”

He slowed down to read the sign carved in the shape of a sun. “Sunshine Hollow?”

Lauren wrinkled her nose. “Unfortunately, that’s been the inn’s name for the last sixty years, when the original owners opened it up and they requested the name stay the same. Dave and Chloe agreed.

“It’s at the base of the hills. There are six bungalows set around the property so there’s maximum privacy. They have a few horses for anyone who wants to try the trails nearby, a pool, and a large patio for those who don’t want to do anything more than vegetate,” she explained.

Josh slowed as he neared the end of the circular driveway. “Where are Kevin and Sharon this weekend?”

“They’re in La Jolla, at a small and very nice beachside resort I heard about.”

As Josh helped Lauren out of the car, a couple emerged from the front of the Spanish-style house and Josh got a good look at the man who was once known as the most intimidating federal prosecutor in the state.

“Lauren, how good to see you!” The woman threw her arms around her for a big hug. She stepped back and gave Josh an assessing look. “I’m glad to see you finally got some sense. He’s a marked improvement over Ron.”

Lauren shook her head in exasperation. “You’ve been talking to Dana.”

“Of course we have. She’s our daughter.” Chloe Sinclair turned to Josh and held out her hand. “Hello, Josh, welcome to our home. I’m Chloe, the old man over there is Dave, and if Lauren has brought you up here, you must be all right.”

He was immediately charmed by her slight Southern accent and beauty he saw as lush in Dana and matured in Chloe. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Old man,” Dave scoffed, coming forward with his hand outstretched. The man was tall, with iron-gray hair and sun-creased wrinkles etched in his face; Josh could see why he had been considered a formidable opponent in court. “I hear you’re an ADA. We’ll have to talk shop after dinner.”