Until You

He'd come here to ask Miranda a couple of questions, get her to admit what had seemed such a basic truth that he hadn't questioned it. She'd written the note, she'd acknowledge it under his prodding, and he'd go back to the States, the investigation concluded and his basic male curiosity satisfied.

What was it Robbie Burns had said about the best-laid plans of mice and men?

Conor puffed out his breath, took down the coffee canister he'd put away only moments before, and glared at it.

All those best-laid plans had gone up in smoke. Miranda hadn't reacted the way she should have when he'd mentioned the note and then lied about its contents. Instead, her face had gone white and the next thing he'd known, he'd been standing in a bedroom that looked as if it had been sacked by the Huns.

The closet was open and the clothing from it was everywhere, on hangers, off hangers, a tangled mess of stuff strewn all around the room. The doors of what she'd insisted on calling an armoire were open, too, and underwear as lacy and silken as a man's dream was spilling out of the drawers. The bed was messed up, the pillows dented in as if a head had laid on them.

None of which proved anything.

Conor filled the electric kettle with water and plugged it in.

For all he knew, the woman always left her bedroom like that. He'd seen enough boudoirs in his time to know that not all females subscribed to the belief that neatness counted, especially when they were getting dressed to go out.

As for the bed—so what if both pillows were dented? Miranda had made a big point of telling him that she slept only on the right-hand side of the bed, that she only used the right-hand pillow.

That didn't mean her lover hadn't used the other one.

Conor had had a sudden image of her naked on that bed in the arms of the Frenchman with the pretty face.

He leaned back against the sink, arms folded and mouth thinned.

That was the exact moment he should have turned to her and said, I'm out of here, but how could he?

Either she was lying, trying to divert his attention and convince him she hadn't sent Eva that note, or she was telling him the truth, and somebody had been in the apartment while she was out.

Maybe some poor, demented bastard had seen her wearing that come-and-get-me smile one time too many and had finally decided he just had to jimmy the door and sniff her underwear—and maybe not. Maybe she'd been paid a visit, but not by a sexual sicko. There could just be a connection between the note sent to Eva and whatever had gone on here tonight.

It was Conor's job to find out.

He'd checked the door. The lock was easy, the kind of thing you could open without raising a sweat, assuming you knew your stuff.

Would a sicko have known his stuff? Would a nut-job have been able to slip the lock without leaving a scratch?

Which meant, he thought glumly as the kettle sent up a shriek, which meant that there was a chance that Miranda was telling him the truth, that she hadn't sent the note, didn't know anything about it and that maybe, just maybe, she was the quarry in a scheme that was somehow connected to it, and to Eva.

He was starting to think that she was. She could have faked the messy room but could she really have faked the way she'd looked at him as he'd set out to check every nook and cranny in the apartment? It was possible but he wasn't taking any chances. So he'd told her to calm down, make some coffee and they'd talk.

And she'd looked at him with those big green eyes, with her soft mouth trembling, and the contrast between the frightened innocence in her face and the sexy voluptuousness of her body poured into the too-short, too-tight, too-everything dress had turned his brain to mush and he'd had all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms and saying that it was all right, he wouldn't let anything hurt her.

He hadn't done that, thank God. He might be jet-lagged but he wasn't crazy. Not completely. They'd moved into the kitchen, he'd perched on a high stool at the central island counter while she made coffee. Then she'd opened a box of cookies, sat down beside him and they'd drunk all the coffee and munched most of the cookies while he'd asked her half a dozen questions half a dozen times.

Finally, she'd said she couldn't think straight anymore.

Hang in just a little bit longer, he'd said.

What he hadn't said was that not thinking straight was the general idea.

If she couldn't think straight, her tongue might trip her up. She might begin changing the answers she gave him. She might slip and admit she'd written the note to Eva or that she'd thought fast, lied about someone having been in her bedroom.

But she hadn't. What she'd done, eventually, was groan, bury her face in her hands and say she had to splash cold water on her face or she'd fall asleep where she was.

Conor had yawned.

"Go on," he'd said wearily, "and I'll put up another pot of coffee."

Another bit of volunteerism gone bad, he thought, glaring at the coffee maker.