Tex Appeal (16 page)

F
OR AT LEAST
the fifth time in an hour, Cade glanced up from his file on Elton Leonard to check on Macy. She was still seated at the island in her kitchen, staring at her laptop while she fiddled with a button on her sweater. She rarely sat perfectly still.

He’d moved her away from the desk because it sat in front of a window. Nothing in Leonard’s file indicated that he had sniper abilities, but Cade wasn’t taking any chances.

They hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other since Alan had left for the market. That had surprised Cade. He’d fully expected that once they were alone, Macy would want to lay down some new ground rules and organize their relationship. He’d spent some time thinking about a few rules himself. But when he’d reentered the house with the files Nate had brought him, he’d found her busy at her laptop, planning the “Sexy Supper,” the final and grand prize in the Valentine’s Day contest.

So he’d followed her example. For a while at least. There’d been a new e-mail with the usual cryptic message—Smoke gets in your eyes. He should be concentrating on figuring that out. Instead, he was sitting here like a schoolboy, staring at a woman he wanted. A woman whom, try as he might, he couldn’t stop wanting. No other woman had ever affected him in quite this way. Right now, he wanted to go to her, snatch her up off that stool, and make love to her again on that counter.

Disgusted with himself, Cade shifted his gaze back to the information he’d accumulated on Elton Leonard. At least with Leonard he had a better idea of what his next step should be. If Cade didn’t miss his guess, Leonard would make his final move on Macy at some point during the shooting of her last TV show. Nothing would please the man more than having his work captured on film and run on the twenty-four-hour news channels.

The problem was figuring out what kind of a move Leonard would make. And when. Even though the man was a master of disguise, it would be safer to make his play when Macy was delivering the dinner to the lucky winner. But Leonard didn’t always play it safe—he’d run quite a risk cutting those brake lines yesterday. Cade had been standing no more than fifty yards from Macy’s car. The problem had been that he’d been watching Macy.

Just as he was watching her now. No woman had ever affected his concentration this way. And he didn’t like it. In the two months that he’d stayed away from her, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking of her. He’d pictured her in his office. He’d pictured her in his car. He’d pictured the way she looked when she was lying beneath him and he was inside her.

But he’d never once imagined the way she might be at work. She worked hard. In the three hours since Alan had left, she hadn’t taken a break, not even to drink one of her colas.

A whirring sound had Cade stiffening. Macy slid off the stool, grabbed papers from the printer, and moved back to the island. Not once did she shift her gaze to him. Clearly, she was having an easier time concentrating than he was.

For a moment, as annoyance streamed through him, he toyed with the idea of breaking her focus. He knew her weaknesses and he knew how to exploit them. He’d already risen and started to close the distance between them when, suddenly, she tossed the paper down, fisted her hands on her hips and began to pace.

“Problem?”

She turned and blinked. “What?”

“You were a million miles away.”

“Yes.”

And clearly on an entirely different wave length. Cade straddled one of the stools. “Maybe it would help to talk it through. That’s what I do with Nate sometimes.”

She studied him for a moment. “Promise you won’t laugh.”

He raised his right hand. “I swear.”

“I don’t have a sexy enough idea for my Sexy Supper. It was Alan’s idea to run a theme of aphrodisiacs through the three shows.”

Cade smiled. “Yeah. I got that. It’s very effective. Watching you play with the asparagus gave me a hard-on.” Of course, he had one now, and there wasn’t a stalk of asparagus in sight. But the worry in her eyes had him keeping that thought to himself. “What’s on the printout?”

“Everything you ever wanted to know about chocolate.”

Cade pulled it toward him and skimmed it. “The Aztecs called it ‘Nourishment of the Gods.’ And it’s thought to have cancer-preventing enzymes. And it’s not strictly speaking an aphrodisiac.”

Macy threw up her hands. “But you can’t have a Valentine’s Day Sexy Supper without chocolate. So I have to think of something sort of erotic to do with it.”

“Like what?”

Macy tapped her fingers on the counter. “The best I’ve been able to come up with is to feed your lover bits of rich dark chocolate between sips of red wine.”

He grinned at her. “I could go for that.”

She frowned. “I need something better.”

“Could you use chocolate syrup?”

“I suppose.” Then she narrowed her gaze. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m thinking dribble it on certain body parts and lick it off. I’d be happy to demonstrate if you’ve got some syrup.”

It pleased him to no end when the color rose in her cheeks.

Then her eyes brightened. “I’ve got an even better idea. Chocolate tattoos.”

He winced. “The kind with needles?”

“No. Fake ones. I could even provide little cut-out stencils—hearts, flowers and a page with the alphabet so you could write your initials in the hearts. Then you paint chocolate into the stencil, let it dry and lick it off. Thanks for the idea.”

The smile she beamed at him had something fluttering right beneath his heart. Had she ever looked at him in quite that way before?

“The offer to demonstrate still goes.”

“I’ll have to give you a rain check. Right now I have to see if I can get the chocolate to the right consistency.” She grabbed a bag of chocolate pieces out of a cupboard and poured them into a glass bowl. Then she filled a pan with water and set it on a burner. “You can’t melt chocolate directly over heat.”

When she turned the gas burner on, there was a loud whooshing noise. Heat and fire shot everywhere. Flames streaked across the surface of the stove and leapt upward to the ceiling. Fire bit greedily into the kitchen curtain over the sink, but all Cade saw was the flame licking its way up Macy’s sleeve. He vaulted over the island and ripped the sweater off her.

“Where’s your fire extinguisher?”

She pointed at the wall near the sink. “Right there.”

The wall was empty.

“It’s always right there!” she insisted.

Smoke billowed into thickening black clouds. He pulled her out of the kitchen. “C’mon!”

“My laptop!”

“I’ll get it.” Releasing her arm, he moved back to snatch it off the island. “Pick up the file I left on the sofa and get out to Nate’s car.”

Cade cast one last glance at the fire that had now spread over half the kitchen. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Leonard had set it.
Smoke gets in your eyes.
His eyes were stinging with it when he caught up to Macy at the front door. “Stay close to me. Leonard will be out there somewhere, and I don’t want any more surprises.”

They were both sitting in Nate’s car when the first fire engine arrived.

“M
Y RANCH
isn’t much farther,” Cade said as he turned onto a narrow dusty road. “I promise you, you’ll be safe there. You don’t have to worry.”

Macy was worried all right. But it wasn’t just about her safety. So many things had happened in the past few hours that she was still trying to absorb them all. And at the top of the list—she just couldn’t get her mind around the fact that Cade was taking her to his ranch. It was located a mere twenty minutes from downtown Austin, and tomorrow she was going to be filming the Sexy Supper segment there.

She glanced at his face, then at his hands gripping the steering wheel. From the first time they’d met, she’d sensed that he was a man who was highly skilled at his job. And he was equally skilled as a lover. This was a man she’d been intimate with, yet there were so many things she was still discovering about him. First there was the ranch. He’d never mentioned it. Then there was the car they were in. It wasn’t the Ranger issue SUV he’d been following her around in. It was a sleek black convertible. Sporty with an air of recklessness about it, it revealed a side to Cade that she’d never seen before.

Another discovery was that he was an absolute rock. Sitting in Nate’s car, watching her kitchen burn, she’d nearly fallen apart. But Cade had been so calm, so cool. And he’d handled everything. He’d contacted Alan and he’d even talked to Danny at the TV station to arrange the change in the shooting location.

“The fire inspector isn’t certain yet, but he believes some kind of odorless and colorless accelerant was used.”

Macy nodded. The inspector had spoken with her briefly. The good news was the fire had been contained in the kitchen. The bad news was that the damage was fairly extensive and she couldn’t safely move back into her house until it had been repaired.

She and Alan had prepared the clients’ dinners at his apartment. Shortly after Alan had left to make deliveries, Cade had smuggled her out a rear exit of the apartment building, and his convertible had been parked in the alley. Just to make sure they weren’t followed, Cade had executed some fancy evasive driving maneuvers before they left Austin.

Now they were on the way to Cade’s ranch. The knots in her stomach tightened. She would be foolish to read too much into the fact that he was taking her to his home. He had to keep her safe. He was just doing his job.

“If you want to talk about it, I’m a good listener,” Cade said.

Macy swallowed hard. The truth was they still hadn’t discussed their relationship. “Yes, I think we should talk about it. We should set down some ground rules.”

He frowned. “Ground rules? I thought we dispensed with all of that last night.”

“We did—which means that we need some new ones.”

He shot her a look. “Are you going to tell me that you don’t want to make love again?”

“No. I do want to make love again…I mean, if you do?”

“I definitely do. So if we’re in agreement, why do we need more rules?”

“I just think we should both be clear that this is a temporary arrangement. There’s no reason why we can’t enjoy each other, but we shouldn’t expect more out of it than…that. Once Leonard is behind bars, we’ll go our separate ways. No harm. No foul.”

For ten charged seconds there was silence in the car. Then Cade said, “I’ll agree to your rules on one condition. Once Leonard is behind bars, I reserve the right to renegotiate them. And now we should talk about Leonard.”

Relief. That’s what she was feeling. Not disappointment.

“First of all, I owe you an apology,” Cade said. “I did a lousy job of protecting you at your house.”

She glanced at him, and for the first time noticed that he looked as tired as she felt. “You did a great job. You got that sweater off me before I was burned. And you made sure that Alan and I were able to service our clients. You’re not to blame for what some obsessed criminal has done.”

“He’s not finished.” The look Cade shot her was grim. “My gut instinct tells me that he’s going to make his final move on you tomorrow.”

“Something to look forward to.”

He took her hand and linked their fingers. “When I told your director about the fire, he immediately offered to film the segment in a kitchen at the studio. I think that may have been what Leonard wanted. That may be why he burned your kitchen. Odds are he has an inside person who works at the TV station. The way he knows the shooting schedule, who the prize winners are…he may have even gotten himself a low-profile job there, perhaps as a janitor. We figured out that’s what he did at each bank he robbed. He always knew things that only an insider would know. Nate’s checking out employees right now.”

“Originally, Danny and I talked about filming the cooking segments at the studio, but he liked the idea of doing it in my kitchen.”

“So that’s why he agreed so quickly to switch the location to my place.”

“Why did you want to do it at the ranch?”

“So far Leonard has been having it all his way. I wanted to throw a monkey wrench into his master scenario. If his plan was to have the last segment filmed at the studio, now he has to improvise, and he may make a mistake.” Cade pulled to a stop. “Here we are. There’s no way he can trace you here.”

Macy had been so intent on their conversation that she hadn’t noticed where they were headed. Now she simply stared at the ranch house. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but certainly not this graceful sprawling structure of glass, stone and wood. Flowers bloomed in neat beds and spilled out of terra cotta pots. Shifting her gaze to the outbuildings, she noted what looked to be a stable and acres of fenced-in fields. The whole place shouted money.

When he opened her door, she swallowed hard. “It’s lovely.”

He took her arm and led her up a flagstone path. “Better than that—it’s safe. Only my family and Nate know that I bought the place. There’s no record of it at headquarters.”

The inside of the house was even more impressive than the outside. Beyond a spacious foyer was a cavernous room with high vaulted ceilings. A huge stone fireplace dominated the far wall, and clustered around it in a U were three comfortable-looking leather sofas. Early-evening sunlight spilled through tall windows and gleamed off wide-planked, cherry-stained floors.

“My family calls this place Cade’s Folly.”

“Why?”

“Because they can’t understand why I bought it. They know how important my job is to me, and running a ranch is a lot of work.”

“Why
did
you buy it?”

He moved to one of the windows and Macy followed the direction of his gaze. She saw the stable and fields bordered by neat fences. Beyond that the land stretched for miles. After a moment, he turned back to face her. “When I was a kid, I always had this dream of running a ranch. But I also wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become a Texas Ranger. A year ago I was driving around—I do that sometimes when I’m thinking about a case—and I saw the For Sale sign. The owner gave me a tour. There was something about the place that pulled at me, so I bought it. I just knew that it was right. Crazy, huh?”