Twilight (4 page)

“She knows how to use a gun, yes?”

“Very amusing, Maria. You seem to forget that I have at least a vague familiarity with guns myself.”

“The difference is that you have vowed never to touch another one. Can you say the same for Mrs. Miller?”

Rick could only say that he knew, with relative certainty, that she hadn’t had one with her the night before. She would have found some way to use it on him.

Of course, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t grab a gun the second she realized who was on her doorstep. Another adrenaline rush raced through him at the prospect. Disarming her could prove to be absolutely fascinating.

4

T
he screeching of that damnable doorbell brought Dana to her feet at once. It had to be a stranger. No one she knew liked the sound of it any better than Kate.

“Want me to get it?” Kate offered.

“I’m still capable of answering the door,” Dana said dryly, pushing aside the virtually untouched slice of the pecan coffee cake that she had made when she could no longer sit still. “I haven’t lost all my wits yet.”

She stepped into the foyer and paused. She could see the large shape of a man through the glass panels on either side of the door. Tall, broad-shouldered and wearing an ancient football jacket from one of the Catholic high schools in Chicago, Rick Sanchez was unmistakable.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered under her breath.

“Dana, who is it?” Kate whispered, slipping up behind her.

“Rick Sanchez.”

“
Oh, boy,
is right. Has he brought the police with him?”

“I doubt that Mr. Sanchez is any fonder of the police than I am at the moment.”

“Were you counting on that when you broke into the Yo, Amigo headquarters last night?”

“No, I was counting on not getting caught,” Dana said, keeping a wary eye on the man outside.

He seemed to be growing more agitated by the minute. When he turned and leaned on the doorbell, filling the house with the squealing sound, she decided there was no point in postponing the inevitable. He was here to see her and he’d probably break down the door, if he had to. She was in no position, at the moment, to complain about a little breaking and entering on his part.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” she shouted as she unlocked the door. When it was open, she glared at him and said, “Mr. Sanchez, you really need to work on your patience.”

A twinkle lit his brown eyes, softening his hard, unyielding expression. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

Standing squarely in the doorway, Dana refused to concede the point. “Why are you here?”

“To talk.”

“I’d say we both made our positions completely clear last night. Anything we said today would be a waste of breath.”

“Then I guess you haven’t seen the error of your ways,” he said with exaggerated regret. “Too bad. I was hoping this was going to be easy.” He glanced over her shoulder. “Hello again, Mrs. Jefferson. Good to see you.”

Dana shot a warning look at Kate, whose love life was such that a potent man like Rick Sanchez might be able to charm her with little more than a smile. “Don’t think you can use my friend to get to me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m an up-front kind of guy. My friends say I’m direct.”

“And your enemies?”

“They say quite a lot of things about me,” he conceded.

With his hands shoved in his pockets and his hair tousled by the wind, he had a look of pure innocence about him. Clearly it was deceptive. “I can imagine,” she said.

“I’m hoping you and I will become friends.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she said fiercely.

“That’s what Ken would have wanted,” he added with quiet conviction.

Dana wanted to hit him for dragging Ken into the conversation, even though he was obviously the reason Rick Sanchez was here. “Do your friends know that you hit below the belt, Mr. Sanchez?”

He didn’t look half as insulted as Dana might have liked. In fact, he looked her squarely in the eye.

“I’m a product of the streets,” he reminded her. “I fight any way I have to for what I believe in.”

The penetrating, brown-eyed gaze, the softly spoken words sent a chill washing through her. For the first time, she fully accepted just how dangerous an adversary Rick Sanchez could be. Knowing the enemy could sometimes be as important as arming against him. With that in mind, she stepped aside and gestured toward the kitchen.

“Kate and I were just having coffee, if you’d care to join us.”

There was nothing gloating in his expression, no hint of smug arrogance. In fact, if she’d had to describe what was going on inside him, she would have had to say he looked relieved. Obviously, he hadn’t expected her to capitulate so easily. Good. That meant she’d thrown him off guard.

In the kitchen, she poured him a cup of coffee, then refilled her own and Kate’s. She deliberately didn’t offer him any of the coffee cake. It didn’t matter. His gaze landed on her slice, then lifted hopefully. “Aren’t you planning to eat that?”

“No,” she said resignedly and pushed it toward him. “There’s more on the counter.”

“I can smell the cinnamon and nuts. Just baked, isn’t it?” he asked, sounding as eager as a kid.

“Yes.”

“Why’d you bother if you didn’t intend to eat it?”

“For something to do. What difference does it make?”

He shrugged. “None, I guess. Just making small talk.”

“Don’t waste your time.”

He accepted the advice without comment and pulled out a chair. When he was seated at the round oak table, Dana suddenly wished that she’d suggested the living room instead.

This table, bought at an auction the first year of her marriage, had been at the heart of her family’s life. Every breakfast and every dinner, they had gathered here, no matter the other demands on their time. This was also where she and Ken had discussed the future, made plans for vacations, argued over finances. It was at this table, lit by the soft glow of candles, that she had first told him she was pregnant on three different occasions.

It was also where they had lingered over coffee, gazing into each other’s eyes with yearning, both of them regretting for just a moment that there were boys underfoot to keep them from acting on the desire that always simmered just beneath the surface of their relationship.

Seating Rick Sanchez here, of all places, seemed to defile the memories. She had never wanted this man to touch the intimate portions of her life with Ken. That was why she had stubbornly refused for so long to include him in family dinners, in holiday celebrations. Ken had accepted her decision, had even understood its roots, but it had been clear that he thought less of her for her inflexibility.

Even then, she realized, Rick Sanchez had found a way to come between them. Now he was doing so by replacing her memories of Ken sitting across from her with his own powerful and very masculine presence. She added that to the list of things to hold against him—the fact that he was so virile, so alive, while just outside her husband was cold in his grave.

She could feel the patches of angry color burning in her cheeks as she scowled at him. “Why are you here?” she asked for the second time that morning. There was nothing gracious or even polite in her tone. Kate glanced at her sharply, subtly warning her to back off. Dana sighed and forced a smile. “That is, what did you want to talk about?”

“You and me,” he said.

She scowled at that. “Oh?” she said, her voice a lethal warning against assuming any kind of intimacy was possible between them.

His perfectly sculpted lips curved ever so slightly. “
That
was not what I meant, Dana.”

Despite the denial, her name on his tongue was like a caress. Heat crept up her neck and inflamed her cheeks again. “Of course not,” she said stiffly. “But I think you’d better explain exactly what you did mean.”

Without answering, Rick pushed himself away from the table and stood. Half of the coffee cake remained. Obviously, his appetite had fled, too.

Still silent, letting her demand for answers hang in the air, he moved toward the window, as if he couldn’t stay away. She knew precisely what he was seeing—the cold, barren earth, the simple marker, the place where Ken would rest for all eternity.

“He deserves to rest in peace,” he said so quietly that she had to strain to hear him.

When the words registered, she realized it was as if he had read her mind. For a brief second, there was a connection between them, a fragile thread of understanding that she hadn’t expected. It shook her to discover that she could feel that, despite the overwhelming hatred she felt toward him.

When he finally turned back, his eyes glistened with unshed tears. As Kate had warned her, it was a devastating sight in one so strong. Dana had to steel herself against that image, as she had against so many others lately. She couldn’t afford to feel any compassion for this man. None. Ken had been nothing to him, nothing more than someone to be used for the good of his cause. She believed that of Rick Sanchez, because she had to. The hatred, the need for revenge, was all that anchored her these days.

Rick leaned against the counter, propped one sneaker-clad foot on the rung of a chair and cradled his coffee mug in hands that, despite their nicks and scars, looked somehow graceful. Sure and competent hands. Hands that could caress a woman’s body and bring it alive.

Dear heaven, where had that last come from? She glanced at Kate and saw that she, too, was fascinated with Rick Sanchez, fascinated the way a woman would be with a devastatingly attractive man who radiated sexuality from every pore.

That, of course, was his single most potent weapon, Dana realized. If she weren’t careful, if she weren’t strong, he would weave that easy magic over her, as well. She was lonely now and, like too many lonely women, she was vulnerable. She could not,
she would not,
allow anything to happen between her and this man. She would keep the hostility alive as protection, as a duty.

“I’m waiting,” she said, keeping her voice icy, her expression remote. “Unless you have something specific to discuss, I’d like you to go.”

His lips curved again. “Patience, Dana.”

“I don’t have time to be patient. I have things to do.”

“Planning more break-ins?”

She scowled at him. “Possibly.”

“Not at Yo, Amigo, I hope.”

“If that’s where the answers are, then I’ll be back.”

“I’ve already told you that the program and its boys are not the key to Ken’s death.”

“How can you possibly be so confident of that?”

“Because everyone at Yo, Amigo loved Ken,” he said.

The simple declaration shook her as more vehement statements might not have done so. For just a moment, she wished she hadn’t remained so adamantly opposed to what Ken had been doing. She wished that she had accepted one of his repeated offers to take her with him, to let her see for herself why these lost kids mattered so much to him.

Instead, she had clung to the long-ago betrayal of a boy very much like those in Rick’s program. She had been trying to help him and his lawyer fight armed robbery charges he claimed had been unfairly brought. She had believed in him. Only after they had successfully fought off a conviction had she discovered he was guilty, that he had played on her sympathy and used her clever investigative skills to win his case.

Weeks later, released from jail, he had shot and killed another storekeeper in yet another robbery attempt. A scared sixteen-year-old boy had been his accomplice. He had been shot by police arriving at the scene. She had vowed right then never to trust her instincts again, never to trust vows of innocence and remorse from the very kind of boys Ken and Rick believed capable of change.

Had she put aside that vow and gone with Ken, would she have shared Rick’s belief that his teens were incapable of harming Ken? She doubted it. Her own experience would have warned against it.

In fact, she would have grabbed on to any possible motive, any possible suspect, just as she was doing now. She was too desperate for answers to exclude anyone on blind faith alone.

“What do these kids know about love?” she countered.

“Precious little,” Rick agreed. “But they experienced it with your husband. Ken showed them what it meant to be accepted unconditionally, to be forgiven. He taught them they were worthy of God’s love. Every one of them was blessed to have known him.” His gaze locked on hers. “And they knew that.”

Dana shuddered under that unwavering gaze. In his own way, Rick Sanchez was as fervent in his beliefs as Ken had been in his. She, to the contrary, believed in nothing anymore, not even in the generous, compassionate, forgiving God who had guided her husband.

Despite their opposing views of his boys, she couldn’t help being swayed just a little by Rick’s faith in them. “Okay, Mr. Sanchez. Say I were to take your word for the moment that no one connected to the program had anything to do with Ken’s death. Where would you start to look for answers?”

“Closer to home,” he said at once.

He said it with such quick certainty that she was startled. “What on earth does that mean? Surely you don’t think that I...?”

“Of course not. I was talking about the people Ken dealt with right here, in his own congregation, in his own community. He told me there was a faction who wanted him removed.”

Dana stared. “If there was, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“It had just come up. He didn’t want to worry you. He told me it was the sort of nuisance thing that arises every now and then. A few people don’t like the way their minister thinks, or they respond to some imagined slight. In Ken’s case, he suspected there were some who disapproved of his work with Yo, Amigo. They feared he was already dragging the gang problem into their backyard.”

It was easy enough to make the connection, then. “This came up after he brought Juan Jesus here to live with the Wilsons, didn’t it?” she asked.

Rick nodded. “That would be my guess.”

“But he is such a sweet young man. How could anybody fear him?” Kate demanded.

It was the first time she had said a word in so long that both Dana and Rick turned to stare at her. Rick smiled at the fiercely protective tone of voice. Obviously, all of her motherly instincts had been aroused. And unlike Dana, she hadn’t been a holdout, fighting Ken’s commitment to the kids in the barrio. She had gotten to know Juan Jesus and any of the others he had brought around from time to time. Kate’s soft heart hadn’t been touched by the kind of tragedy that had made Dana so terribly wary.

“Taken individually, most of our boys are just like Juan Jesus,” Rick responded. “They’re tough on the outside, but if you look beyond that, you find a scared, vulnerable kid. Put him in the right environment and he will flourish.”