RaeAnne Thayne - The Quiet Storm

The first thing he saw was a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling windows with a killer view of the downtown Seattle skyline across the water.

The second thing was Elizabeth Quinn.

Wearing jeans and a thick, cream-colored turtleneck sweater, she sat on the floor with her back to the door, plopped down right in the midst of what looked like a whole convoy of toy trucks involved in some massive pileup. In front of her was a dark-haired little kid who looked to be a couple of years younger than Em. Both Elizabeth and the kid were gesturing wildly.

It took Beau a few beats to figure out what she was doing waving her hands around like that. Sign language, he realized. The boy was hearing impaired, at least judging by those aids in his ears, and the ice princess was communicating with him.

In a million years he never would have expected to find her like this, cross-legged on the floor playing with a little kid. He suddenly remembered a flash of their conversation from the day before.

Tina has a son. A beautiful little boy. He lives with his grandmother and with me.

This must be the kid. The file hadn’t even mentioned him, so of course it wouldn’t have included the information that he had a hearing impairment. Was the woman who answered the door his grandmother, then? Tina Hidalgo’s mother?

Why did she fairly crackle with animosity toward him? Didn’t she want her daughter’s case reopened? What did she have to hide? the cop in him wondered.

In a cool, emotionless voice the older woman announced his presence. “The policeman is here.”

Elizabeth whirled around and looked up at him, two bright splashes of color scorching her cheeks. “Oh. You’re early.”

“A few minutes. The ferry wasn’t as crowded as I expected.”

“I…come in.”

She scrambled to her feet. The boy rose, too, watching him out of huge, thickly lashed eyes that didn’t appear to miss anything. Beau started to greet him, then remembered the boy wouldn’t hear the words. Unsure if the boy could read lips, he finally opted for a wave and a smile.

“This is Alex,” Elizabeth said, signing for the boy’s benefit as she spoke. “Alex, this is Mr. Riley.”

The boy smiled shyly and held out his hand like a perfect little gentleman. Beau tucked his grin away and crouched to his level, shaking the offered hand solemnly.

“I need to talk to our visitor for a while so you can go play with your…” Elizabeth paused for a moment as if her mind wandered or she forgot the words she was signing while she spoke aloud. “Grandmother,” she finally said. “Abuela. Can you do that? I’ll try to tell you a story before bed.”

The boy nodded. Picking up one of the trucks—a miniature blue Peterbilt with bright orange flames licking down the sides—he hurried past Beau with another shy smile and slipped his hand into the older woman’s.

A young, leggy yellow Lab Beau hadn’t noticed before bounded up from a corner and padded after them, leaving Beau alone with Elizabeth in the surprisingly comfortable, lived-in room at odds with the formality he’d seen in his quick glimpse of the rest of the house.

Elizabeth nibbled her lip for a moment then blew out a breath. “Alex is…was Tina’s little boy.”

“And his grandmother?”

“Luisa. She’s been housekeeper here since I was a baby. She and Tina lived in an apartment above the kitchen.”

The woman was a tangle of contradictions. She wore what was probably a three-hundred-dollar sweater to play trucks on the floor with her housekeeper’s grandchild and she spoke of them more like family than servants. He had to admit he was intrigued in spite of himself.

“Nice digs,” he finally said, scanning the recreation room’s plump leather couches surrounding a huge flat-screen TV. Watching Sonics games here would be almost as good as courtside seats.

Not that he would ever have the chance for either, he reminded himself. This was business. Strictly business.

She shrugged. “It’s too big for just me and Luisa and now Alex. I’ll probably sell it eventually but I hate to give up the view.”

He shifted his gaze reluctantly from the TV to the city landscape across the water. “I can see why.”

“I’m sure you’re anxious to begin,” she said after a moment. “Tina’s things are stored in…”

Her voice trailed off, and she paused for a few seconds. The color that had begun to fade now returned. “A room upstairs,” she finally finished. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the way.”

He gestured to the door and she led him without a word to retrace the route he and the housekeeper had taken from the front door, then up a long, curving flight of stairs rising from the entry.

She wasn’t much of a chatterer, he couldn’t help but notice. Was it snobbishness or just reserve, as Grace had said? He followed her up the stairs, trying hard not to ogle her long, luscious legs in whitewashed blue jeans. They weren’t designer threads, he observed, just plain old off-the-shelf Levi’s that looked as if they’d been well-worn. Another piece to the puzzle.

At the top of the stairs she took off to the left and he followed her past at least ten closed doors.

How the hell many rooms were in this mausoleum anyway? he wondered. If the Quinn publishing fortune ever took a downturn, she could always open a medium-size hotel.

Finally they reached the end of the hallway and she opened the door. Inside he found a good-size bedroom where a small huddle of cardboard boxes had been stacked neatly against a wall. Not many boxes, he noted, maybe not even a dozen. A pitiful legacy for a woman who had walked the earth for twenty-eight years. The thought made him sad.

Elizabeth seemed to be on the same wavelength. “It’s not much,” she said, her voice small and sorrowful. “I’m not sure what you hope to find here.”

“I’m not, either. I’ll know when I see it.”

“Would you prefer if I left you alone?”

He smiled a little at the barely concealed eagerness in her expression. Obviously, something about him made Miss Millionaire Quinn nervous. He had to admit he liked the sensation.

If it was true what Grace said, that Elizabeth was only reserved around people she didn’t know, maybe she just needed to spend a little time with him to thaw some of that ice.

“No, stay. You might see something out of place, something I would otherwise miss.”

Elizabeth stared at that small smile, at the way the sun-bronzed skin creased at the corners of his mouth and the sparkle in those green eyes. That smile was entirely too appealing for her peace of mind. It made him seem far too approachable, not nearly as terrifying, and she wondered what he would do if she snapped at him to knock it off, to just keep his blasted smiles to himself. She couldn’t, of course. Not if she didn’t want to appear any more ridiculous than she already did with her awkward pauses and jerky, stop-and-go conversation.

Staying here with him was the last thing she wanted to do. Every instinct in her shouted for her to escape while she could, to put as much distance between them as possible, which in a house as sprawling as Harbor View was a fair span. But she couldn’t do that, any more than she could politely ask him to please refrain from smiling in her presence.

Instead she forced herself to pull a low ottoman nearer the boxes. She perched on it with her hands folded in her lap and tried hard not to stare at the way the powerful muscles in his back flexed under his casual black golf shirt as he hefted a large box from the stacks and lowered it to the floor.

They lapsed into silence as he unfolded the flaps of the box and began sorting through the contents. It was so difficult seeing these things of Tina’s that she had used and loved lying forlorn, jumbled together in boxes.