An Officer and a Gentle Woman Read online

“Are you all right?” Helen asked, sotto voce, while beaming for the crowd and kissing Alicia’s cheek.

  “I am now,” Alicia replied.

  “That was quite a charming greeting you got from the hoi polloi outside,” Helen said dryly.

  “I guess I should have entered through the kitchen as the security director advised,” Alicia replied. “For some insane reason I thought it was important to show my face and act as if I had done nothing wrong.”

  “You’d better exit through the kitchen. Or the basement, or the skylight. They are still lying in wait for you out there, believe me.”

  “I never realized that I was so popular.”

  “You have that dishy policeman in tow again,” Helen whispered as she leaned in to link arms with Alicia. She led her friend forward to start greeting people. “What he does for that tux is scandalous. Is he here to protect you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Details. I want details.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Alicia retorted briefly, looking over her shoulder to make sure that Lafferty wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying. He was not far, scanning the crowd, his expression alert and speculative.

  “You can bet on that,” Helen said sweetly, and extended her hand to the pencil-slim wife of a captain of industry. “Mrs. Dilworthy, it was so kind of you to come.”

  Alicia assumed a similar gracious expression, casting a final glance in Lafferty’s direction.

  He was, as always, watching her.

  The rest of the evening passed without incident. Lafferty sat behind Alicia during the performance and when she glanced back at him she found herself secretly amused by his attempts to look interested and appreciative; he was obviously not a fan of the opera. Helen and her date, a rising congressional aide with steel-rimmed glasses and a professorial air, made conversation with Alicia during the two intermissions, while Lafferty stood nearby and tried to appear unobtrusive. He didn’t succeed. As Helen had commented while she was downing the first of several glasses of champagne, “No matter what he does, he looks like a cop.”

  Alicia exited through the kitchen and encountered only a few persistent hecklers who had anticipated her alternative route and stood waiting outside the service door.

  “These people need a life,” Lafferty muttered as he bustled Alicia past them and into the waiting limousine. “Don’t they know what time it is?”

  Alicia ignored their thin catcalls as she settled into her seat and kicked off her shoes with a sigh. It was over at last. She had done her duty but didn’t think she would be venturing into public again anytime soon. If she had needed a reading on the popular opinion of her guilt or innocence she had gotten it tonight.

  The ride back to her house was swift and silent. Lafferty didn’t say a word the whole time, and the driver broke the silence to ask a question only twice. Alicia dozed and then sat up with a start when the long car came to a stop in the circular drive in front of her Scarsdale house, behind Lafferty’s unmarked police car.

  “I’ll take over from here,” she heard Lafferty say to the driver. He handed her out of the car, which then continued around the drive as Lafferty took her keys and opened the door.

  The house was silent. Maizie had left the hall light on, but the children were in bed.

  Lafferty looked around uncomfortably. “Well,” he said, running his finger inside his collar, “I guess I should get the car back.”

  “Yes, Detective, I imagine that you are dismissed. Unless your mission extends to checking the closets for assassins. Weren’t you instructed on that point?”

  Lafferty reddened slightly, and Alicia regretted the thoughtless barb.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sighing. “It’s been a long night. Of course you want to go.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Lafferty replied, finally meeting her eyes. His were very blue.

  “Then take off your coat and tie and I’ll make some coffee,” Alicia said. “Just let me have a minute to change.”

  She ran upstairs, aware that she had shamed Lafferty into staying, but unable to work up any guilt about it She did not want to be alone.

  Alicia took off her evening clothes rapidly and donned jeans and a sleeveless top, stepping into loafers. She pulled the pins from her hair as she walked across the room and dropped them in a tray on the dressing table by the door. She was fluffing her hair with her fingers as she descended the stairs, then stopped short as Lafferty looked up at her from the first-floor hallway.

  “What?” she said, at the expression on his face.

  “That’s quite a transformation,” he said quietly. “You look about fifteen.”

  Alicia laughed shortly.

  “In dog years,” she said wearily, and then realized that he was looking uncharacteristically abashed.

  He had meant to pay her a compliment.

  “Thank you,” she added. “That’s nice to hear.”

  His jacket and tie lay on the marble-topped table in the hall. He had opened his collar and rolled his sleeves up to the elbow; he looked as informal and relaxed as it was possible for a man still wearing a cummerbund and tuxedo pants to look.

  “Follow me,” Alicia announced, and led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house, its hanging copper-bottomed pots gleaming dully in the darkness.

  Alicia flipped a switch, and the room was flooded with light, the polished tile floor reflecting the overhead glow like a mirror.

  “You could field a soccer team in here,” Lafferty said dryly. He glanced around at the separate dining area with hanging Tiffany lamp, large oak food preparation table and triple-glass doors leading out to a spacious redwood deck.

  “Yes,” Alicia answered dryly. “Joe did everything on a grand scale.” She went to the oversize stainless steel refrigerator and removed a bottle of milk.

  “Joe? Didn’t you buy this house with him?”

  “No. He bought it with a real estate agent. I never saw it until I moved into it.”

  “It is a beautiful house.”

  “The decorator has to take credit for that. Joe had it ‘done’ and presented it to me as a wedding gift”

  Her tone was neutral.

  “Didn’t it occur to him that you might have found that a little...high-handed?” Lafferty asked, aware that he was overstepping his bounds but eager for a reading on her attitude about her husband’s arrogance.

  “You mean I killed him because he didn’t let me decorate my house?” she asked, smiling slightly.

  Lafferty was silent. Her ladylike manner belied an incisive wit, as her grandmother had pointed out to him. She was sharp and feisty under the gracious facade, something Joe Walker, preoccupied with himself and distracted by her undeniable loveliness, may have discovered too late.

  Alicia took two mugs from a cabinet and set them on the table. “You never met Joe, so you can’t understand what he was like. If he was interested in you, there was nothing he would not do for you, and it would have seemed so ungrateful for me to quibble about the terms of such an extravagant present.” She took two spoons from a drawer. “But once he lost interest in you, it was like you became invisible. You did not exist for him any longer.” Her tone continued to be noncommittal; if her husband’s dismissal of her had enraged her enough to shoot him, she was a very good actress.

  “Would you like something to eat with the coffee?” she asked as she took a couple of checked napkins from a holder and placed them on the table.

  Lafferty shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  “Have a seat, Detective,” Alicia said, when she saw that he was standing awkwardly with his arms at his sides.

  Lafferty pulled out a rustic dark pine chair and sat on the well-padded, leather-covered seat. He stretched his long legs under the table and sighed.

  “Tired?” Alicia asked. “Opera fatigue?”

  He looked at her and smiled. Alicia was glad she had already put down the box of coffee filter bags because otherwise she might
have dropped it.

  That was quite a smile.

  “I gather that you are not an opera fan, either?” Lafferty asked slyly.

  Alicia shrugged as she dropped a filter bag into the cup and locked the plastic basket into place. “I am a survivor of many performances. As Joey likes to say, it wouldn’t be so bad except it has all that screaming in it.”

  Lafferty laughed. “For entertainment value, I’ll take the Knicks any day.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind next time I am planning a chanty event,” Alicia said dryly. She filled the well of the coffeepot with water and flipped the switch to start the brewing cycle. She sat across from Lafferty as the dark liquid spurted into the glass pot, and the delicious aroma of brewing coffee drifted into the room.

  “So, Detective, is this what they call ‘fraternization?’” she asked.

  “I guess this must be it,” he replied, sitting back and closing his eyes.

  “No Kaffeeklatsches allowed?”

  He opened his eyes. “Does all of this seem so ridiculous to you?” he asked tersely, not smiling.

  She framed her mug with her hands, not looking at him. “No,” she replied slowly, “not at all. It’s just that I’m terrified and I always make jokes when I’m scared. I’m sorry.”

  He regretted challenging her—why did he always say the wrong thing to her? Why wasn’t he driving back to the city right now, instead of sitting in this murder suspect’s kitchen trying to make himself believe that she was as innocent as he wanted her to be?

  “Why did you become a policeman?” she asked suddenly.

  He didn’t answer immediately, and she took his lack of response as a rebuke. “I guess everyone asks you that,” she mumbled, rising “Not very original, am I?”

  “Actually, my wife wanted me to be a lawyer,” he said, and she turned to stare at him.

  “You’re married?”

  Was it his imagination, or did the idea seem to upset her?

  “Divorced. She didn’t want to be married to a cop.”

  “She’s a fool,” Alicia said crisply, then she blanched. She paused a long moment before adding quietly, “Forgive me again. I must have drunk too much champagne at that reception. I obviously need this.” She filled two mugs with coffee and set one before him, resuming her position at the table and staring down at the cup.

  “It’s all right,” Lafferty said quietly. “I’m over it by now. I removed the dart board with her picture on it six months ago.” He inhaled a large swallow of his coffee.

  She smiled and looked up at him.

  “Good,” he said, gesturing with the mug.

  “Premixed, premeasured, prefab. My favorite type of consumable, I can’t do a thing to ruin it.”

  “Not much of a cook, eh?”

  “I could screw up a grilled cheese sandwich and have. My kids would starve without Maizie.”

  “Oh, somehow I think you would be resourceful enough to open a soup can if Maizie quit.”

  “I’d be resourceful enough to run an ad for another cook,” she replied dryly, and he grinned.

  “Don’t those finishing schools teach proper young ladies all the homely arts?” he asked.

  “I didn’t go to finishing school,” Alicia said crisply. “I went to college and majored in journalism, which came in handy every time I had to write a description of a flower show for the Congressional Women’s Quarterly.”

  Lafferty was silent, unsure how to reply.

  Alicia glanced at him and sighed, then laughed lightly. “My, don’t I sound bitter? I’d say that I’m sorry again, but I know I’m beginning to sound redundant.”

  “Most people falsely accused of a murder would tend to be bitter.”

  Alicia studied his face and then looked down at her drink. “You and my new lawyer, Oswald Kirby, seem to be the only people who consider that a possibility.”

  “What?”

  “That I might be falsely accused.”

  “Mrs. Walker, several people saw you shoot your husband. Those people might say that I was a fool for keeping an open mind.”

  “I didn’t kill Joe. There were plenty of times when I was younger that I wanted to, but by the time he died I was over it.”

  “Over what?”

  “The rejection, the disappointment, the misery. We just moved on and had separate lives. He had his career and his...women, I had the children. Except for official functions, when he needed me on hand as his armpiece, we barely saw each other.”

  “So you just didn’t care anymore?”

  “Oh, I cared, I was just numb. To love somebody as much as I loved Joe at the beginning and then to experience such an emptiness with the same person, that was hard. But I learned to shut it off, to disconnect and survive. The pain lessened as time went on and it became a condition of life, like a headache that would never quite end.” Alicia met Lafferty’s steady gaze and then looked away. “I should shut up, shouldn’t I? All this babbling about my existential angst is making it sound even more like I shot him.” She rose abruptly and dumped the rest of her coffee into the sink.

  Lafferty got up and followed, looming at her shoulder, just standing silently behind her until she was forced to turn and look up at him.

  “Existential angst?” he asked, and raised his brows.

  Alicia smiled slightly, then wider as he smiled back. “My mother always did say that I dramatized myself,” she replied, and he chuckled softly. At close range his eyes looked a deep blue, almost indigo, and the beard shadow on his cheeks was visible as stubble. He looked down shyly and his lashes swept his cheeks; when he looked up again they framed his eyes like fringe.

  “I should go,” he said, his voice low, a low rumble deep in his chest.

  “I know,” Alicia said softly.

  “I don’t want to,” he added. He reached out to touch her, and she flinched. They both looked down and saw a large, purpling bruise on her upper arm.

  “I never noticed that,” Alicia said in a wondering tone, as if she had suddenly sprouted a tattoo. “I must have gotten it tonight.”

  “How?” he asked. Their gazes locked and they both had the same thought at the same moment.

  “I did it,” he said.

  “No, of course not...”

  “I had a death grip on you, getting us through that crowd. Look, you can see the imprint of my fingers. Oh, geez.”

  “Michael, it’s nothing.”

  He blinked when she said his name.

  “I hurt you.”

  She shook her head. He was very close. Her head came just to his chin level, and she could feel the warm exhalation of his breath.

  “I never meant to do that,” he added.

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “I can’t forget it,” he replied, and bent his head, watching her face. He kissed the bruised flesh of her upper arm, and she gasped at the touch of his warm lips on her skin. She waited, her lips parting, and then he straightened up and looked at her.

  “Better?” he whispered.

  “A little. Not enough.”

  “You want more?” he said hoarsely.

  “Much more,” she murmured, and he kissed her.

  His mouth was soft but firm, and he drew her in slowly with his arm so that she rested against his shoulder. It had been so long since a man had kissed her with passion that she’d thought she would forget how to react, but this was not the case. All her senses reawakened and responded with a rush to meet his desire. Her lips opened fully under the pressure of his like flower petals reacting to the sun; she felt his probing tongue and caressed it with hers. When he made a sound deep in his throat, tightening the pressure of his arms, she found herself moaning softly in return.

  Lafferty was big, both taller and heavier than her late husband. Her memory of Joe’s embrace was muted by the passage of time but not completely silent, and so she was conscious by comparison of feeling engulfed and very small in Lafferty’s arms. He pulled her more closely against him and she stood on t
iptoe to put her arms around his neck, but somehow her hands crept upward and sank into the wealth of hair at the back of his head. It felt surprisingly soft—with the heavy texture of smooth raw silk. Strands of it clung to her fingers as she buried them luxuriously, reciprocating his embrace so ardently that he finally groaned in frustration and lifted her bodily onto the prep table behind them.

  Alicia gasped as he broke the kiss and pressed his face into the hollow at the base of her throat. His skin was hot, his mouth wet from her kisses, and Alicia arched her neck to give him greater access as his lips traveled inside the collar of her sleeveless blouse. He had one large hand splayed against her back at the base of her spine to hold her to him. With the other he undid the buttons of her blouse, fumbling in his haste but never taking his mouth from her skin. Alicia shrugged and let the blouse fall, staring at him as he finally raised his head and took in the wisp of strapless bra she had worn with the gown earlier. His lashes lifted and he met her gaze; his expression was hazy, needy, drugged, and she knew just how he felt. When he moved to kiss her again she opened her mouth expectantly and wrapped her legs around his hips.

  This time he did not hesitate; he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her and he acted accordingly. His mouth moved from her lips to her cheek and then to the curve of her shoulder as she lay back in his arms submissively. She sighed as he trailed his lips to the hollow between her breasts and then gasped as he covered one swollen nipple with his mouth, its heat beating through the silk as if the cloth barrier were not there. Impatient, he popped the front clasp of the fragile garment with his thumb and sent it sailing to the floor. In the next instant he had pulled her toward him again, lifting her up to brush his lips over her breasts as Alicia closed her eyes and held his head against her. His mouth was everywhere, laving and teasing, driving her finally to tug on his clothes in a frenzy, so hungry to feel his skin against hers that she pulled his shirt loose from his cummerbund and ran her hands up the smooth skin of his back.

  He released her long enough to unbuckle his shoulder holster and drop his gun to the floor, then pulled the top stud from his shirt and yanked it over his head and dropped that too. As he stepped forward to embrace her again Alicia looked avidly at the strong line of his throat, the dense mat of black chest hair, the long, ropy muscles of his arms, the flat, ribbed abdomen. The overhead light glinted off his glossy black hair and brought out the hollows under his cheekbones. This man was gorgeous and decent and on fire with desire for her. She had wanted him, she now realized, from the moment she met him.