“Don’t worry. I’ll let you know the minute I think it’s something you should know.”
She couldn’t really explain why, but he was beginning to irritate her. She looked down at where he still held her arm.
“Everything all right, Miss Villefranche?”
Josie glanced at Detective Chevalier standing in the garden doorway wearing his requisite wrinkled overcoat and holding his hat. While he’d spoken to her, his gaze was very obviously on Philippe.
Philippe released her abruptly, looking abashed. “I’m sorry. I’m just really worked up about everything going on here lately,” he said quietly.
Josie smiled at him softly. “I know. I am, too.” She glanced at the detective. “Everything’s fine.”
Philippe disappeared into the kitchen and she turned to face Chevalier, crossing her arms over her chest. “What can I do for you, Detective?”
He fiddled with the brim of his hat, turning it in a circle. “Could you have Mr. Morrison come down, please?”
Josie straightened the papers she still held in her hands. “Mr. Morrison isn’t here.”
“Do you know where I might find him?”
“At the convention is my guess.” She brushed past him on her way toward the front desk.
“Ah, that’s right. He’s in town on business, isn’t he?”
There was a touch of unmistakable irony to his voice that caught Josie’s attention. “Has there been any progress on solving either of the murders that occurred in my establishment, Detective?”
He squinted at her. “I don’t know. It all depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On what Mr. Morrison has to say.”
She leaned against the front desk. “I’ve already told you, he was with me the night of the murder.”
“Yes, but you also told me he was in town for a convention.”
“You just said yourself he was here for business.”
“Yes, but apparently an auto-parts convention doesn’t factor into that business. It’s my guess that Mr. Morrison wouldn’t know a gasket from an air filter.”
Josie didn’t like where this was heading. Her skin felt suddenly cold. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
She carefully placed her papers on the desk. Getting anything from Chevalier was like pulling teeth and up until now she hadn’t made the effort. Although, given the information Claude and Akela had shared, maybe she should have.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Detective?” she asked, crossing her arms again so tightly that she cut off circulation. “Or are we going to play more word games?”
He stepped to the other side of the desk and put his hat down. “How well do you know Mr. Morrison?”
Josie felt her cheeks flush. She’d already answered that question and didn’t care to have to repeat herself.
“Oh, wait.” He took his notepad out of his overcoat pocket and thumbed through its battered item. “You and he are engaged in a sexual relationship. Temporary.”
She glanced toward the courtyard, unable to meet his gaze. She’d been the one to add the word temporary. Because at the time, that’s what she’d believed it to be. The problem was she was coming to see that there wasn’t anything temporary about her growing feelings for Drew.
“That’s right.”
“So is it over?”
She recalled Drew standing outside on the street late last night and her chest gave a none-too-subtle squeeze. “Seeing as Mr. Morrison has checked out, I’d chance a yes.”
Chevalier smiled as he put his notepad back into his pocket.
“Oh, I have it on good authority that he’ll be back,” he said, placing his hat on his head.
Her heart gave a hopeful lilt even as dread spread in her stomach. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because he hasn’t done what he came here to accomplish yet.”
She didn’t say anything as he walked toward the door.
He turned before stepping outside. “He hasn’t gotten you to sell the hotel.”
15
HE WAS TOO LATE.
Drew knew that the moment he entered the hotel and the assistant manager, Philippe, considered him with barely concealed contempt.
He’d had a bad inkling all morning. Actually, since last night he’d had the strange suspicion that somehow, some way, Josie had learned the truth about him. And that had bothered him beyond his capacity to deal with it just then.
He looked around the lobby and courtyard and didn’t spot the person he was looking for, the only one who mattered in this entire situation.
“Where’s Josie?”
Philippe crossed his arms. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“That’s why I asked.”
“She doesn’t want to see you.”
There it was. What Drew had been dreading: she knew.
He turned toward the stairs.
Philippe moved faster than Drew would have thought possible, blocking his progress. “Whoa. Where do you think you’re going?”
“To find her.”
“I told you she doesn’t want to see you.”
Drew stared down the younger man, suppressing the urge to remove him physically from his path. He was surprised by the primal desire. For the past decade he’d used words to make his point, to wage his business war. He hadn’t resorted to physical confrontation since his stint in the military.
It didn’t help that his adversary seemed to be egging him on, as if he wanted Drew to take a swing at him. Which gave him considerable cause for pause.
“That’s all right, Philippe.”
They both turned to see Josie standing at the top of the stairs.
For an all too brief moment, the world stopped turning. Or rather, it began revolving again, propelling life in the right direction.
Drew’s breath froze in his lungs. While Josie was wearing a summery dress similar to the others he’d seen her in, she could have been wearing a slinky evening gown, the way the sight of her stopped his heart. Just looking at her made him feel not himself somehow. As if the moment she entered a room, a part of him fused with her, as if they were two parts of one whole instead of separate entities.
The sensation was unfamiliar to him. And left him feeling unprotected. As if he were in the middle of a clearing with twenty sniper rifles aimed at him.
The expression on her face told him she was experiencing some similar emotions that she didn’t quite know how to handle either.
Her expression also told him that he’d lost something he’d never be able to regain: her trust.
“Can I talk to you?” he asked.
Philippe spoke, “Haven’t you already said and done enough?”
Josie started down the stairs. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything, Philippe.”
The other man appeared prepared to object.
But thankfully he thought better and moved out of Drew’s way as he followed Josie to the kitchen. Drew didn’t miss Philippe’s lethal look though, that conveyed all that Philippe would have said and done if Josie hadn’t appeared.
As he walked behind her, Drew couldn’t keep from taking in the gentle, unconscious sway of Josie’s hips and the sexy curve of her neck. But he had no place appreciating her pure grace when inside he felt so impure, as though a tar-like stain spread under his skin. A dread that all they’d begun to build between them was forever lost.
As much as he wished otherwise, Drew knew that this meeting in the kitchen wouldn’t have anything to do with food and Josie being enjoyed on top of the island.
He expected her to turn toward him when they entered, but instead she busied herself making coffee.
“Talk,” she said.
Josie’s heart was beating so hard she thought for sure he could see it through her chest.
When Detective Chevalier had spilled what he knew, she hadn’t wanted to believe he was telling her the truth. It didn’t fit in with anything she knew about Drew or with what had happened between them.
But as the homicide detective had continued talking, verifying that the tip had been phoned into his office by an anonymous source who had nothing to gain, and that some checking had proven that Drew wasn’t a car-parts salesman but rather an independent contractor who’d been dubbed “The Closer” by those he worked with, she’d had the sinking sensation that Chevalier was right.