Within Striking Distance (9 page)

“I know you’re very strong. I didn’t mean to offend—”

He shot out his free hand and caught her wrist. “It wasn’t my leg that made me let you go, it’s the fact I wanted to kiss you.”

The frank admission knocked out the air from her lungs. The pleasure she’d felt in his arms returned in a rush, and once again, she had trouble catching her breath.

She tipped her face to meet his gaze. For once, he wasn’t masking the warmth there. Honest desire shone from his eyes, sending her heart tripping in response. She didn’t try to conceal the effect he was having on her. There was no point. With his fingers on her wrist, he’d be able to feel how her pulse was racing. “I’ve thought about it, too, Jake.”

“That just proves how vulnerable you are because of this case. I don’t have that excuse.”

“Jake—”

“All this delving into your childhood is stirring up some serious emotions for you. Anybody would get confused. I’d be a real bastard if I took advantage of the situation.”

“You wouldn’t be taking advantage.”

“Come on, Becky. Look at me. I’m forty-eight. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re just getting started on your life. More than half of mine has already gone by. We want completely different things. I shouldn’t want to kiss you. I should be looking out for you.”

“I’m a big girl, Jake. I don’t need you to look out for me.”

“Too bad. That’s what I’m doing.” He rubbed his thumb along the underside of her arm, then released her and held up his palm. “I’ve got no business having any feelings about you in the first place.”

And she shouldn’t be having feelings for him, either. She was looking for her birth family, not a man. Jake was right; her emotions were probably confused. She’d already thought of that. This crush she had developed on him might be the result of excitement over what he was doing and gratitude for the fact he was doing it.

Yet none of her reasoning could prevent the effect he had on her senses whenever he touched her. Or stood near her. Or merely looked at her. His cheek was twitching again. Becky lifted her hand and stroked his jaw.

He inhaled hard through his nose. “Becky,” he said firmly, “we still need to work together. I’m trying to do the right thing here. You can see that, can’t you?”

Yes, she could. She’d felt from the start that Jake was a good man. That was one of the reasons she would welcome a kiss from him. More than welcome it. More than one kiss, too.

Yet he wouldn’t kiss her
because
he was a good man.

She drew back her hand, frustrated.

As if that settled the matter, Jake dipped his chin in a curt nod and retrieved the box of photos. Becky watched him go, trying to be grateful for his restraint. But that was tough to do when his walk looked sexier than ever.

“D
ARLING, DO YOU HAVE
the sales figures for the last quarter?” Cynthia asked, pausing in the doorway of her husband’s office. “The steering arm division in particular.”

Hank Brown looked up from the computer and peered at her over the rims of his glasses. “Not yet. When do you need them?”

“By two, if you could.” She smoothed her hand over her French twist, ensuring there were no stray hairs. “I’ve called a meeting with the planning committee.”

He returned his attention to the keyboard and poked a few keys with his index fingers. “I’ll get right on it.”

She murmured her thanks but didn’t move away. Even after three decades of marriage, she enjoyed the sight of her husband. He had been blessed with a strong, chiseled bone structure that had only improved with age. The gray hair at his temples gave him a mature elegance, as did the custom-tailored shirts she had ordered for him. He’d draped his suit coat over the back of his chair and loosened his tie, a habit she’d been unable to break him of, yet he still looked handsome enough to take her breath away.

That was how it had been from the moment they’d met. Hank had been driving for the Shillington team then. Cynthia remembered how she hadn’t wanted to go to the track that day—she hadn’t shared her father’s interest in NASCAR—
but she’d had documents that had needed Gerald’s signature and so she had driven there straight from the office.

Everything had changed when Hank had squealed his car to a stop and lithely emerged to stand on the pavement. He hadn’t won the race, yet everyone had been excited by his top-ten finish. He’d shaken Gerald’s hand, then had taken off his helmet and grinned at Cynthia.

His hair had been thick, brown and rebel-long, plastered to his head from the afternoon’s heat. His deep-set eyes had sparkled with race-fueled adrenaline that hadn’t yet faded from his system. He’d been tall and lean, his body humming with excitement as the sleek, powerful machine he’d managed to control for hundreds of laps had steamed behind him.

In that instant, Cynthia had been struck with a wave of longing unlike anything she’d known before. She’d wanted Hank. It didn’t matter that he was younger than her, or that he was merely her father’s employee. She’d been crazy with the urge to possess him and had been unable to think of anything else. She’d joined Gerald on the NASCAR circuit, taking advantage of any opportunity that would get her close to Hank. She would have done anything to make him love her…

“Is there something else you wanted, Cynthia?”

She put on a smile. “No, darling. I’m simply admiring how handsome you look this morning.”

His jaw tightened. “I need to get to work on those figures you asked for,” he said.

She lifted her hand in a parting wave and returned to her office. Hank had appeared tense. She’d have to look into getting an assistant for him. He’d been given several different positions at Shillington Enterprises during the years after he’d quit racing. She’d thought he was happy in his current placement in the accounting department—he’d shown an unexpected aptitude for numbers despite his lack of higher education—but perhaps he was overworked.

Her steps faltered. There was another possibility for his tension. Hank might be sensing her own worry over the problem with the girl. He’d probably noticed that Gerald had been more agitated than usual lately, too. She’d done her best to maintain the regular routine at home, but it was difficult to shoulder this responsibility alone. She would have to try harder, for Hank’s sake. It was because of him that she’d taken that baby in the first place. It had seemed so long ago…before this life she’d built for him. She’d wanted so badly to win his love.

Cynthia closed her office door, leaned back against it and pinched the bridge of her nose. It was the same gesture she’d seen her father make a thousand times when he tried to think. Yet Cynthia had difficulty concentrating through the emotions that clouded her mind. Hank was hers. Fate had bound them together even before they’d exchanged their wedding vows. After everything she’d done for him, she couldn’t conceive of losing him.

But she knew, with the instinct of a woman in love, that Hank would never forgive her if she told him the truth. He had a simplified concept of right and wrong, a holdover from his blue-collar roots. He wouldn’t care what a scandal would do to the company the way she did. Sometimes she suspected he didn’t care about their marriage as much as she did, either.

No! She wouldn’t go there. The counseling had done wonders. She and Hank were happy. She would ease his workload, perhaps arrange a vacation for the two of them once this was over. Then everything would be fine, just the way it had been before.

Squaring her shoulders, she pushed away from the door, took out her cell phone and called Ralph Bocci.

He answered after seven rings. His voice was thick, as if he’d just awoken.

Cynthia glanced at her watch and scowled. “What have you learned?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Hang on.” He cleared his throat, then started to cough.

It was a phlegmy, disgusting sound. She held the phone away from her ear until he finished. “You should use a nicotine patch, Mr. Bocci.”

“Sure. I’ll get right on that.” There was the click of a lighter, followed by a soft squeak as he drew on his cigarette. “The girl’s in Italy for a week.”

“Why?”

“Some modeling contract. You want her agent’s number?”

What use would that be? Bocci was an idiot, Cynthia thought. She hadn’t had much choice, though. She couldn’t very well have interviewed candidates for the job she’d given him. She strove to retain her patience. “That won’t be necessary. What did you learn about the investigation?”

“There was nothing new in the files. Seems to me the investigation is stalled. With the girl out of town, looks like McMasters is taking a break.”

“That’s no excuse for you to do the same, Mr. Bocci.”

“I never said I was.”

Cynthia wanted to believe him, just as she wanted to believe that the detective was slowing down. With stakes this high, though, she couldn’t afford to do either. “Spare me the protestations of innocence,” she snapped. “Both I and your parole officer know exactly what kind of character you possess, so unless you want me to enlighten him about the material you tried to steal from my company, you’ll go and do what I tell you.”

J
AKE PULLED
into the lot at the Halesboro track and shut off the ignition. The smell of rubber and exhaust, along with the whining buzz of racing engines, came through the open
window. Since it wasn’t a NASCAR-sanctioned track, the Cargill-Grosso team was testing here today, so it was a good opportunity to catch up with the person he needed to see. Casually, though. He wanted to keep this low-key, for everyone’s sake. That should be easy to do, since he was family and he followed the team closely enough that no one would think his presence at the track was unusual. All he had to do was get a handle on the anticipation that was curling through his gut.

He took a deep breath, then reached into his shirt pocket for the snapshot that had brought him here. The baby in it appeared too young to lift her head, so she would have been only a few weeks old. She was strapped into a plastic infant seat that had been set on the middle of a round, wooden table. The picture had been taken in the Peters’s kitchen—the yellow cabinets and the seventies-style flowered wallpaper in the background looked the same as they did in pictures where Becky was older. There was a white rectangle on the wall in the upper right corner that was probably a calendar, but it was too blurry to show any details.

It didn’t need to. The date was obvious. The baby was dressed in a red, white and blue sleeper that was adorned with tiny stars. Floyd Peters was leaning across the table, a sappy grin on his face while he waved a miniature flag on a stick to amuse his new daughter.

There had been almost two dozen other pictures in the envelope where he’d found this particular shot. They presented a record of what must have been one of Becky’s first outings. Becky had cried. She’d had a bottle. She’d gone to sleep in a baby stroller with her bottle tucked beside her. She’d nestled in Floyd’s arms while he’d stood on the sidewalk to watch a parade go by.

A Fourth of July parade.

Unless Peters had invented a time travel machine, Becky’s birthday wasn’t the seventh of July.

Her parents had lied. They hadn’t been very good at it, either, since they’d taken their own photographic evidence that would prove they’d lied. They’d obviously thought better of it afterward, though. That’s why these pictures had never made it into a photo album. They’d been crammed into the bottom of a box, stuck in an attic and forgotten about. It would have been smarter to destroy them, but the Peters had doted on their new baby. They wouldn’t have wanted to lose the memories they’d captured on film.

Jake tapped the photo against his palm. It still wasn’t proof that Becky was Gina. There could have been some other reason the Peters had wanted to conceal their daughter’s actual birth date.

Yet the facts continued to point in that direction. Jake knew what a newborn looked like. His sisters-in-law had been producing children on a regular basis, and they’d been almost as camera-happy as Lizzie Peters. His nieces and nephews had all shared that same wide-eyed, somewhat startled look when they tried to focus on things, and they all had the same floppy, neckless body shape. It was a safe bet that Becky had been born around the same time as the Grossos’ missing baby.

When he’d found this picture three days ago, his first impulse had been to call her. She’d been gone since the weekend and he’d already been missing the sound of her voice. He knew she’d be thrilled with the news. He could imagine how her tone would rise with excitement. She’d probably laugh when he described the picture to her and then make some comment about how her mother had liked to dress her funny. He liked the sound of her laugh. He wanted to make her happy.

Yeah, right. He wanted a lot more than that.

Which is why he hadn’t called her. It was just as well that Becky was currently on the other side of the world. Distance was exactly what they both needed.

Jake slipped the photo back into his shirt pocket, got out of his car and headed for the track. The drivers were giving each other some friendly competition, in spite of the fact it wasn’t a race. Jake watched while they sped across the backstretch, then he scanned the infield, looking for Dean. The team was doing well this season, thanks in large part to Dean Grosso’s steady guidance.

The family had had a lot to deal with, starting with the murder of Alan Cargill just before the ownership was to be transferred to the Grossos. More than seven months had passed since then with no charges being laid, yet the New York cop who was working on the case, Lucas Haines, had struck Jake as a competent man, so he had faith that the culprit would be found eventually. It had been tough on the Grossos to lose their friend in such a violent way. They’d only begun to come to terms with it when the news that Gina might still be alive had broken.

Dean and especially Patsy had taken it hard. They’d mourned their daughter years ago, and ripping open that old wound must have been painful. Jake would be only too glad to bring the Grossos some good news, but there was no way he would set them up for more heartache.

He spotted Dean standing beside the starter’s tower. His thick, brown hair and broad shoulders made him easy to pick out, but what really distinguished him was his body language. He looked like a man accustomed to being in charge, whether it was behind the wheel, as he used to be, or behind the team as he was now. He didn’t look like Becky, but as Jake had thought before, the two did share a certain stubbornness. At the moment, Dean appeared deep in con
versation with his crew chief. Jake took advantage of that and headed in the opposite direction.

The No. 414 car pulled into the pits trailing a puff of blue smoke. Kent Grosso emerged and yanked off his helmet as he gestured toward the hood. By the time Jake neared, the pit crew had already surrounded the car and were working to make adjustments. “How’s it look, Kent?” he called.

Kent glanced toward him. “Hi, Jake. Didn’t know you were coming.”

“Yeah, I had the afternoon free so I thought I’d drop by.”

He nodded, his attention still on the car. Kent focused the way Dean did, his posture radiating the same kind of confidence. He’d inherited his Italian features from his father’s side of the family, with the exception of his blue eyes. They were a striking shade that was more intense than Becky’s. Still, his height and body type were more similar to Becky’s than to his parents’.

As a matter of fact, Kent was exactly the same height as Jake, but that similarity was probably due to coincidence, not heredity. Jake was Patsy’s cousin several times removed. The blood tie between them had happened generations ago.

That was good. If Becky did turn out to be Gina, her kinship with Jake would be distant enough that there wouldn’t be any medical reason why they couldn’t—

Jake slammed the door on that thought before it could finish forming.

“It’s nothing serious,” Kent said. “The engine’s just got the usual prerace hiccups.”

“I heard it’s going to be a hot one this weekend. The forecast for Chicago’s calling for high nineties.”

“That’s what we figured.” Kent stepped back to give one of the mechanics more room. “Are you coming to the barbecue after the race?”