A Dangerous Widow (A Dangerous Series) (16 page)

“All right…”

“What I can tell you is that Ben is a former
SEAL turned private investigator.
 
When the idea that Michael might have been murdered came to my
attention, I hired Ben.
 
We’ve been
looking into his death for the past few months.”

“How did the idea that Michael may have been
murdered come to your attention?”

“Through a friend.”

“Can you offer a name?”

“To protect that person, I can’t.”

“What have you learned so far from the
investigation?”

“I can only say that I’ve learned enough to
go forward with the investigation.”

“Where is the investigation at this point?”

“We’re narrowing in on a potential suspect.”

When I said that, I could sense Ben
bristling beside me.
 
I hadn’t
brought up a suspect until that moment, and now I’d done so with the
New York Times
, of all publications.
 
Later, he’d have at me for that, but
since I was impatient when it came to all of this, I nevertheless thought it
was the right thing to do, if only to step things up and potentially put an end
to this.

“A suspect?” Eli repeated.

“A potential suspect.
 
Or, to be honest here, several potential
suspects.
 
It’s still too soon to
tell.”

“But why come out with this now?” he
said.
 
“Why go public with it?
 
If any of this is true, you know that
you’re only putting yourself at risk.
 
There could be repercussions for what you’ve made
public—specifically, your own life could be at risk.
 
Certainly you know that.”

“Of course I do.
 
And because of that, I have a team of
bodyguards in place that protect me 24/7.”

“Are any of them here with you now?”

If I said that there were, he’d just fact
check it with Maxine and find out that I was lying.
 
So, I told the truth.

“Ben is with me now.
 
I’d say that a former SEAL with two
tours of duty in Afghanistan behind him is enough to keep me safe for
tonight.
 
But the rest of my team is
just outside, waiting for us to leave.
 
They protect me wherever I go.”

“Kate, off the record, what’s the point of
going public with this?”

“To end it,” I said.

“You want to draw a potential murderer
toward you?”

“Still off the record?”

“Yes.”

“I do.
 
We have a plan.
 
And if any
of this is true, that plan will bring this person to justice.”

“For the record, what else would you like to
say?”

“If someone did murder Michael, I have the means
and the resources to root them out and make them pay for what they did to
him.
 
On the other hand, if
Michael’s death was, in fact, an accident, which I hope to God it was, then
this investigation has all been for naught.
 
What it comes down to is this,
Eli—even after all the years that have passed since Michael’s death, I
owe it to him to find out if there’s any truth behind what I’ve learned.
 
If nothing’s there, fine—I’ll just
move on with my life knowing that it was an accident.
 
But if it was murder?
 
I can promise you this—Ben and I
will ensure that Michael receives the justice that he deserves.
 
My only goal here is to get to the
truth.
 
What I can promise you now
is that I’m working hard to make that happen.”

He switched off his recorder when I said
that, and then he hugged me.

“Thank you for being so candid.
 
And, Kate, know that I’m with you on
this—despite my fears about how you’re handling the situation.
 
Because when this hits the Internet by
night’s end and the papers by tomorrow morning, I’ll be worried as hell about
you.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“You don’t know that.”

“Like I said, I have a team in place.”

“No disrespect to Ben or to anyone on your
team, but no one is infallible, Kate.
 
We’re all human.
 
Mistakes
can and will be made.”

“Put yourself in my shoes, Eli—what
would you do if you were in my position?
 
Just stand back and do nothing?
 
Or, if you were madly in love with someone as I was with Michael, and
new information came to light about that person’s death, would you just ignore
it?
 
Or would you fight it?
 
If any of this is true, I have to get to
the bottom of it.
 
Even if it does
cost me my life.
 
That’s how serious
I am.
 
That’s how much I loved him.”

“And I respect you even more because of it,”
he said.
 
“You’ve always been
formidable, Kate.
 
And now you’ve
proved just how formidable and daring you really are.
 
I don’t know when we’ll see each other
again, but know that I’ll be thinking about you and wishing you the best.
 
You’ve always been one of the good ones,
you know.
 
Zero pretension.
 
A genuinely kind person.
 
I don’t often come upon that.
 
But several years I ago, I did with you.
 
I’ve never forgotten our first meeting,
and all the fun we’ve had since then.
 
So, I will report on this, and I’ll do my best to assist you in your
quest with all of the facts that I have on hand.”

“I appreciate that, Eli.
 
You’ve always been kind to me.”

He looked at Ben.

“Keep her as safe as you can,” he said.
 
“Because soon, everything is going to
change.
 
I’m not the only one who has
been wanting to have at her.
 
Along
my periphery, I can see my colleagues from the
Daily News
and the
Post
just waiting for their chance
.
 
But I
doubt that they’ll have Kate’s best interests at heart as I do.
 
It’s just not who they are.”

“I’ll be fine, Eli,” I said to him.

But when he didn’t answer me—when I
saw what looked like real fear and concern in his eyes—I knew that he
didn’t believe me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

By the time Ben and I left the party, I’d
been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including the
Daily
News
and the
Post
, and I’d achieved
what I’d wanted.
 

Soon, I would become the news.
 
And so, if Michael had been murdered, it
would only be a matter of time before someone would try to shut me down to keep
me from finding out who was responsible for his death.
 
Before that happened, Ben and
I—along with whatever security team he had in mind—would strategize
about how best to go forward with our effort to trap the killer.

Was I frightened?
 
A part of me was.
 
But there was a larger part of me that
was determined to give Michael his justice.
 
I had meant what I’d said to
Ben—if any of this was true, I’d be damned if Michael’s killer got to continue
to walk free.
 
Some might consider
my actions reckless—including Ben and Eli—but I had to believe that
those people had never had the kind of love that Michael and I had once shared
together.

“I should stay with you tonight,” Ben said
when we stepped into the limousine waiting for us outside the Witherhouses’
mansion.

“You should what?”

“Stay with you.”

“Ben, I know that things heated up between
us tonight, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for that.”

“That’s not what I meant.
 
I should stay with you to make sure that
you’re safe.”

“But I live at the San Remo,” I said as my
chauffeur closed the door behind us and then stepped behind the wheel.
 
“Nothing is going to happen to me
there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because so many celebrities live
there—and, hell, even a prince lives there.
 
That place is designed to be a fortress,
and believe me, we pay a premium to be as well protected as we are.”

“Are the security guards who protect the San
Remo armed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, that’s some fortress, isn’t it?
 
So, let me stay in one of your extra
bedrooms.
 
Given what I saw, you
probably have a suite of them.”

As the car lurched into motion and moved
down the street, I looked out my window and felt my pulse quicken.
 
“There are five bedrooms other than
mine.”

“Then put me in one of them.
 
Tomorrow morning, we’ll have coffee,
we’ll assess the papers together, and then we’ll take to the Internet to see
what the other media outlets are saying.
 
You’ve done what you set out to accomplish tonight, Kate, and now it’s
time for you to follow through with your promise to let me take over.
 
When I assemble a team to cover
you—which will happen quickly—I’ll start looking into Mark Dodd, as
well as Bill and Maxine Witherhouse.
 
What I’m also going to need from you is a list of all of the people we
spoke to tonight.
 
Not the
press—but your former friends.”

“None of them are my friends.
 
They’re just people that I used to
know.”

“I still need their names.”

“I’ll get them to you.”

“I’m staying with you tonight, Kate.
 
Don’t fight me on this.”

I lived in a six-bedroom penthouse, and
several of the other bedrooms were far and away from my own bedroom.
 
In fact, two of them were on the second
floor while the master was on the third.

“You really think that’s necessary?”

“Why are you giving me push-back on this?”

Because I’m still attracted to you,
Ben.
 
Because I haven’t forgotten
who we once were.
 
Because when you
first kissed me tonight, I felt something in that kiss, and that feeling has
only intensified as the evening has worn on.
 
I’m not sure that I trust myself around
you—especially when it comes to you sleeping over.

“I don’t mean to,” I said.

“Then I take one of the bedrooms so I can make
sure that you’re safe tonight, and we assess the papers and the rest of the
situation in the morning.
 
OK?”

“OK,” I said reluctantly.

*
 
*
 
*

When we arrived at my apartment, I tossed my
purse onto the foyer’s side table and kicked my heels beneath it.

“I hate wearing heels,” I said.

“Since when?
 
I remember you wearing them in high
school…”

“Back in the day, my heels came from
Payless, and because they were so cheaply made, they were far more forgiving
than anything from Dior.”

“Then maybe you should shop at Payless
again.”

“You know—maybe I should, because
tonight the shoes were a bitch.”
 
I
turned to him.
 
“Now that I’m out of
harm’s way, how about if I get you a drink?
 
You haven’t had one all night.
 
I don’t have Guinness, but a friend of
mine does enjoy a Heineken every now and then, and I know that I have that in
the fridge.”

“A Heineken would be perfect,” he said as he
started to remove his jacket.
 
And as
he tried to shrug it off his shoulders, his massive chest strained against his
shirt.

“Stop,” I said as I walked behind him.
 
“Let me help you out of it.
 
Otherwise, you’re just going to burst
out of your shirt and turn into Superman.”

“I wouldn’t want that to happen.”

I’m pretty much sure I can’t say the same!

“This jacket must have been tailored to
you,” I said as I removed it from him.
 
“I mean, good God—it fits you like a glove.
 
How did you even get into it?”

“Getting into it isn’t an issue.
 
But getting out of it?
 
Let’s just say that there have been
several issues when it comes to that.”

With a final tug on his sleeves, I freed him
from it.

“There,” I said, facing his ridiculous
sprawl of a back, which my gaze lingered upon longer than it should have.

I’m so screwed when it comes to tonight…

“You’ve been unleashed,” I said.

When he turned around to take the jacket
from my hands, we were standing so close to one another, our eyes met.
 
And when they did, I knew that the
inevitable was about to happen.
 
I
was in for it.
 
I just hoped that I
was emotionally prepared for it.
 
I
hadn’t been with another man since Michael.

“Ben…” I said.

“Yes or no?”

“This will change everything.”

“Maybe everything needs to be changed.”

“We could be making a terrible mistake…”

“Or one of the best decisions of our
lives.
 
Look, Kate, you’ve already
taken one risk tonight—why not take a risk on me?
 
Aren’t I worth it?”

“That’s what scares me,” I said.
 
“You’re more than worth it, Ben.
 
I just feel that I need to protect my
heart.”

“Let me protect it for you.”

Instinctively, he dipped down and kissed me
on the lips.
 
As I leaned into him,
his right arm swept around me and pulled me in close to him, and our kiss
lingered and deepened as I stroked the length of his back.

When we parted, his voice was so low and so
deep when he spoke that I felt a tingle of anticipation when he reached out for
my hand.
 
“No words.
 
They’ll only ruin this.
 
Go with your heart.
 
Where’s the bedroom?”

With my hand trembling in his, I took him
upstairs to my bedroom, which thankfully wasn’t the hot mess it sometimes was
after I’d been getting ready for a party.
 
It actually was neat.
 
And
then there were the views of Manhattan that glimmered before us in the
floor-to-ceiling windows that were just beyond the bed.
 
Somehow, the twinkling lights alone
seemed to make this moment even more breathtaking, exciting, and romantic than
it already was. Using the switch in the doorway, I turned on the lamps on the
bedside tables and dimmed them to a soft glow.
 

And then I wondered…

What would it be like to be with Ben
again?
 
After all these years?
 
How would time have changed us when it
came to making love and all of the pleasures we could bring to one another?

Instead of wondering, I chose to just listen
to him, knowing that not only words but also thoughts could ruin what was
happening between us now.
 
If we
were going to make love again, it would be best to just let myself go and be
with him—and to delight in all of it—because as scared as I was to
put my heart on the line again, I’d be a liar if I told myself for one moment
that I didn’t want this to happen.

With exquisite care, he came up behind me
and gently kissed me at the base of my neck as he deftly unzipped my
dress.
 
Like a whisper, it dropped
away from me and fell to the hardwood floor.
 
I felt his strong hands embrace my bare
shoulders as his lips pressed against my ear and he murmured something—a
memory?—that I couldn’t quite decipher.
 
I wanted to ask him what he’d said, but
I didn’t.
 

I preferred the mystery.

Since I didn’t want to be the one who was
completely naked first, I turned to him in my lacy black bra and panties, and
watched the desire on his face as he soaked me in.
 
What did he see in me after all of these
years?
 
Certainly not the woman he
once remembered.
 
Due to age alone,
our bodies had changed, which made me feel vulnerable as I stood on tiptoe to
kiss him on the lips.
 
And when I
did, he lifted me off the floor, I hooked my legs around his ass, and our
tongues intertwined in a dance that was at once familiar and unfamiliar.
 
I reached up and ran my fingers through
the thick, dark hair above the base of his neck, and it was as if we were young
again.
 
His hair felt the same to
me.
 
It was just as soft as I remembered,
and that memory brought me back.

“My turn,” I said when he put me down.

“No words,” he reminded me.

“Some words need to be said,” I countered as
I reached up to unbutton his shirt.
 
“Especially the right words—OK?”

He conceded to that with a nod and then allowed
me to unbutton and then remove his shirt, which revealed a lightly hairy chest
that was so cut and expansive, it was almost intimidating.
 
When I placed my right hand over his
left pec to feel how hard it was, I also felt how hard his heart was
pounding.
 
It was at that point that
I realized that I wasn’t alone in this—he was just as excited, thrilled,
and on edge as I was.
 

“I want to see you naked again,” he
said.
 
“Because, even though I might
have gotten married and divorced, you always have been the one who got away,
Kate.
 
Let me show you what you
continue to mean to me.”

And he did.

When he unfastened my bra and flung it
across the room, his eyes filled with the kind of lust I remembered from our
youth.
 
He covered one of my nipples
with his mouth and when he sucked on it, bit on it, and tasted it before moving
to my other breast and doing the same to it, my head reared back in ecstasy and
I nearly came.
 

He was standing so close to me that I could
feel his hardness throbbing against my thigh.
 
I knew how large he was and that alone
turned me into a silo of heat for everything that was to come.

“Your pants,” I said.

“What about them?”

“I want to take them off you.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“So do it.”

Who was this man?
 
Over and over again, I kept asking
myself the same question.
 
He was
the same, but different.
 
More
commanding.
 
More confident and in
control.
 
Completely alpha.
 
I’d never been so attracted to him.

I removed his belt and unbuttoned his pants,
and as he slipped out of them, I saw that he was wearing a snug pair of black
Spandex underwear that looked as if it was about to burst at its seams.