Paula Graves - Forbidden Temptation

Men like Orion.

That’s why he was here-wasn’t it?-when every instinct he had was screaming at him that Rose Browning was dangerous to him on a lot of different levels. No matter how attractive he found her, no matter how much he wanted to scoop her up out of her chair, take her up to her bedroom and finish what they’d started the night before, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Rose knew more about Orion than she was admitting.

“I can’t stop wondering why you were at Alice’s apartment that morning.” He leaned toward her. “Melissa said you met Alice only the night before. Why would you go to her apartment the next morning?”

Her expression shuttered. “I told you, I called her workplace and she wasn’t there.”

“And you just offered to go to a virtual stranger’s apartment to check on her?” Daniel shook his head, conviction tightening his gut. “You already knew something had happened to her, didn’t you?”

“Her employee seemed upset on the phone. It wasn’t far to Alice’s apartment, so I went to check.”

“Very altruistic.”

“What exactly are you implying?”

“You were hunting Orion in the bar. Looking for him at the other bar, where you met Alice. What do you know about him?”

Her eyelids flickered, but she didn’t respond. He stood, rounding the table to her side. She looked up at him, fear and something else in her eyes.

Something that looked a lot like guilt.

Daniel’s stomach knotted. “Who is he, Rose?”

“I don’t know.”

He clenched his fists and crowded her, his voice hardening. “I don’t believe you.”

The stricken look on her face caught him off guard. He stepped back, bumping into the chair. It banged to the floor, making Rose flinch.

Daniel picked the chair up, surprised to find his hands shaking. He wasn’t prone to anger, especially not while interviewing suspects. He was the master of control. The one who manipulated situations and events, not the other way around.

Yet, here he was, on the verge of putting his fist through the nearest wall.

He needed to get out of here. Get some air. Some perspective. “I have to go.”

She nodded, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Yeah.”

She walked with him as far as the living room and stopped, letting him cross to the front door alone. He opened the door and turned to look at her. She stood with arms folded across her stomach, her gaze unreadable.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“I know.” Her soft reply had a plaintive edge that softened his anger.

Back in his Jeep, Daniel closed his eyes and laid his head back on the headrest. But he couldn’t get Rose’s tear-bright eyes out of his mind.

Or the look of guilt on her face when he’d told her he didn’t believe her.

He’d practically accused her of knowing who Orion was-yet if she knew, why had she been bar-crawling in search of him? And if she knew who the killer was and how he operated, why would she have gone to Alice Donovan’s house looking for her? Orion never killed his victims at home and he never dumped them where they lived.

So she didn’t know Orion. But she knew something.

What was she hiding?

ROSE ARRIVED at Bella a little after two, still reeling from her confrontation with Daniel. He didn’t trust her, and who could blame him? She was keeping secrets.

Bella Charmaigne met her at the door with a long-suffering smile. “Ms. Bannerman’s already here. She brought her gown so that she could see how the veils looked with it.” She motioned for Rose to take a seat outside the dressing area.

A moment later Melissa emerged from the dressing room on a cloud of snowy silk and lace. Rose lifted her gaze to Melissa’s smiling face. Her heart plummeted.

Shimmery gashes wept crimson over Melissa’s face.

Rose swallowed convulsively, fighting for control.

Melissa modeled the gauzy drape, turning to look at herself from all angles in the bank of full-length mirrors. “It matches my dress perfectly.” She lifted the long silk skirt of the wedding gown and waved it gently, admiring the glossy ripple of fabric. Rose looked down at her hands, noting the pasty whiteness of her tightly clenched knuckles.

I have to tell her, she thought.

“Well?” There was an edginess to Melissa’s voice, an imperious tone that caught Rose off guard. Rose forced herself to look up.

“Do you like the veil or not?” Melissa’s choice of words popped a big bubble of hysteria in Rose’s stomach. Adrenaline spilled out, sending wild tremors through her nervous system.

She pushed to her feet. “Melissa, you’ve got to change and come with me.”

Melissa’s face crinkled with surprise. “Where?”

“Somewhere private.” She wasn’t handling the situation well, but she didn’t know what to say, how to explain. All she knew was that she couldn’t tell Melissa about the death veil here, in the middle of a dress shop.

Melissa looked perplexed. “It can’t wait?”

Rose took a desperate step toward Melissa. “No, it can’t. Please get dressed.”

Melissa hesitated a moment, as if to protest, but she finally pivoted and returned to the dressing room. Rose glanced at Bella, not surprised to find the dressmaker’s expression as wary as Melissa’s had been. She looked away and started pacing off her nervous energy until Melissa reemerged from the dressing room wearing a business suit.

She handed the veil she’d selected to Bella. “Put this on my account and hold it for me, okay?”

Bella scurried away to ring up the sale while Melissa draped her garment bag over one arm and grabbed Rose’s elbow with the other hand. She led her outside at a brisk, angry pace, stopping when they reached the silver Lexus parked in front of the dress shop. She put the dress in the backseat and faced her, eyes flashing fire. “What the hell’s going on?”

Rose’s legs trembled with the urge to run far away from the skeptical world, to a place where she’d never have to try to explain the unexplainable again. She pushed her fingers through her hair with shaking hands and took a deep breath. “Okay. When you hired me, you checked my references, right?”

Melissa’s eyes narrowed. “Right.”

“And people in Willow Grove probably had a good bit to say about me, didn’t they?”

Melissa’s lips quirked. “They think you’re some kind of romance wizard. Said you were quite the matchmaker.”

“I used to be. I used to be a lot of things.”

Melissa gestured impatiently. “What’s going on, Rose?”

“I see-” Rose paused, wondering if there was a better word than veil. She could think of nothing. “I see veils.”

Melissa blinked. “Veils? Wedding veils?”

Rose shook her head impatiently. “Not wedding veils. Just-veils. Shimmery veils over some people’s faces. I used to see good ones. Happy ones.” Rose rushed through a quick explanation of the true-love veils.

“So you see true-love veils and use them to match people?” Curiosity battled with skepticism in Melissa’s dark blue eyes.

“Yes. Or, at least, I did,” Rose admitted. “But this is about something else-”

Melissa’s expression darkened. “Something bad?”

Rose looked up at Melissa, willing the girl to believe. Taking another deep breath, she plunged ahead, saying the words she’d never said out loud before, even to herself.

“I see death.”

“You see death.” Melissa’s posture, expression, tone of voice all conveyed rejection.

“I know, it sounds crazy-”

“It doesn’t sound crazy. It is crazy. First you say you can see true-love veils, but, oops, you don’t see those anymore because now you see death. Do you even hear what you’re saying?” Melissa reached for the car door handle.