Rich, Rugged...Ruthless Read online

  Samantha guessed Jessica was feeling compelled to relay gossip. “Who’s she?” Samantha asked her.

  “Jackson Crommer’s daughter. The girl’s mother was a school friend of Deidre’s. The Montgomerys knew all of the Crommers. That didn’t matter.” Jessica clarified, “Of course, as bank president he had every right to fire her if she wasn’t doing the job, but my point is that he has no soft spot.”

  Sam wondered if that was really true. She said goodbye to Jessica and set down the receiver. The sound of the lawn mower reminded her of her original goal to meet the gardener.

  Showing no hesitation, he offered a bright greeting when she approached him minutes later. He then explained that the housekeeper, the one who’d run off in tears, was willing to come back, thanks to Rachel’s call. A dozen questions and fifteen minutes later, Sam reentered the house.

  There was no delicate way to discuss the problem with Max. Sam waited until he finished eating the pancakes she’d made for breakfast. With the soothing strains of a Beethoven concerto wafting on the air from the radio, she told him, “The housekeeper would be willing to come back and clean if—” Deliberately she paused to make sure she had his attention.

  Over the rim of his coffee cup, he peered at her. “Come back?”

  “She was your housekeeper until the day before the accident.”

  A frown bunched his dark brows. “Why did she leave?”

  “You learned that she was seeing the gardener, and fired him.”

  More puzzlement darkened his eyes. “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. I fired him but she left?”

  “She didn’t want him fired, so she chose to quit.” Sam stretched behind her for the sugar bowl on the counter. “Now she’ll come back if—”

  “If what?”

  She couldn’t soften the explanation. “If she answers to me, not you.”

  He winced.

  “Should I tell her no?”

  “No. You weren’t hired to clean this museum. Hire her back.”

  “I’ll call Rachel and tell her what you decided.”

  He returned his attention to the pancakes. “What day off did my sister give you?”

  “She didn’t.” Sam spooned sugar into her coffee. “We both assumed you’d make that decision.”

  “What day would you like?”

  She’d given that part of her job no consideration. Off the top of her head, she thought she’d like Thursdays off. Usually there was a telecast of a baseball game on Thursday. She’d like to make popcorn and watch the game from beginning to end. “Tomorrow?”

  “That’s okay. You can go out. I don’t need a—”

  Sam interrupted. “I don’t have to go out. What I want to do is here.”

  Curiosity flickered in his eyes. “What’s that? Swim? Play tennis?”

  “Watch a baseball game.”

  “Baseball?” Why was he surprised? “If you want, watch it on the big screen in the den.”

  His offer pleased her. At home, she owned a television with a thirteen-inch screen. “Want to keep me company? Or don’t you like baseball?”

  “I like it. I played third base in college.” He appeared dumbfounded. “I’ll be damned. Where did that come from?”

  “What do you remember about playing?”

  What did he remember? Max concentrated hard on the nearby wall, tried to visualize. He saw uniforms that were white with a gray stripe running down the sides of the legs. A white hat with a bluish-gray bill. He heard cheers, lots of cheers, and grinned with the memory. “Hitting a grand slam. Do you know what that is?”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” She cast a pseudo affronted look his way. “I became a real baseball fan when we lived near Houston.”

  “Why?”

  “Joe lived for the game.”

  “Joe was a boyfriend?”

  “Stepfather.”

  “You had a good relationship with him, then.”

  “With all of them.” She hummed a few notes with the music that was drifting on the air. “Don’t you love this concerto?”

  His gaze shifted from the radio to her. “What’s with the highbrow music? I thought you liked blues.”

  “I love Beethoven, too. Ian gave me that. He was a musician who played electric guitar with a group at local clubs, but he loved all music. When I was nine, he introduced me to Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ From that moment on, I was hooked.”

  “Ian was…?”

  “Another stepfather.”

  How many were there? Max wondered. “So you like Beethoven and baseball. What else? Skydiving? Hang gliding?”

  Sam realized he was actually teasing her again. “Nothing so exciting, though I’d like to hang glide sometime. But I do have a brown belt in karate.”

  “No, you don’t.” As she laughed, Max accepted the obvious. This woman was far from ordinary. Baseball, Beethoven and a brown belt. There were a lot of layers here. He’d like to peel them back one-by-one and discover everything about her.

  “Do you want to watch the game?” she asked. “I’ll bring the popcorn. You bring—”

  “The beer.”

  “Works for me.” This definitely was not the man people kept warning her about. At a distinctive sound from outside, Sam looked out the window and saw the postal carrier truck. “Mail’s here. I’ll go get it.”

  She was a step from the door when he called out, “Hey, Carter.”

  Samantha grasped the doorknob, but didn’t turn it, and shifted her stance toward him. “What?”

  “Can you make chile rellenos stuffed with chicken?”

  “Can I?” Who’d have expected such a question? “Hot enough to make smoke come out of your ears, Mr. Montgomery.”

  “It’s Max.”

  She’d heard him, but asked, “What?”

  “Call me Max.”

  Suddenly she was on a first-name basis with him.

  A smart woman would have viewed that step forward as a giant warning. Not her. Showing traces of being her mother’s daughter, she couldn’t think of anything but the fact that she suddenly felt warm and fuzzy just because he’d smiled at her.

  Nothing was in sync in his world. Max couldn’t get a handle on the man who lived in this mausoleum. Why would he have such a big place just for himself? And what did he do when he was home? There was a tennis court and a heated swimming pool. Whom did he play tennis with? Did he swim daily? Who came over to play billiards with him? Why weren’t the pieces of the puzzle called his life falling into place?

  And why was he letting one woman inch her way under his skin? She wasn’t a part of the world he was trying to recapture. She’d only complicate his life.

  Trying to get some direction as to his daily routine, he called the bank after dinner to talk to his assistant again. “Edna, it’s Max,” he said when the woman answered the phone.

  “Mr. Montgomery?”

  “Edna, would you come over Thursday instead of Friday with whatever is current on my desk?”

  “Yes, sir. What time?”

  “Three or four. Whatever works for you.”

  Bafflement colored her voice. “Whatever works for— Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. See you then, Edna.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Max placed the phone on its base. How long had the woman worked for him? From what Ellis had said she’d been at the bank a long time, but he gathered no closeness existed between them. Why not?

  Damn it, he was tired of all the questions.

  There had to be something in the house that clicked his memory. From the foyer, he wandered into the den. The room was masculine, done in dark woods. He noticed that a plant he’d thought needed to be tossed was showing new life. In passing, he dabbed a finger into the soil. It was moist, no doubt the recipient of Carter’s TLC.

  He’d noticed, too, that most of the bookshelves contained biographies and nonfiction. He kept looking and finally spotted a mystery and a few thrillers among them. Could amnesia chang
e a man so he had different likes and dislikes?

  With a shift of his body, he was staring at a photograph on the desk. Ellis sat in a chair like a king on the throne. On one side of him, Max stood, unsmiling. To the other side of the old man were his daughters. The taller, Rachel, with her shoulder-length dark hair and dark blue eyes, had a quieter beauty than their younger sister. Christina, petite and curvy, with a dimpled smile, was a pouty-faced beauty.

  He stared hard at her, so hard his eyes hurt, but he couldn’t remember her. Had they been close as kids? What about him and Rachel? Questions. Always so damn many questions. Swearing, he spun around to find Samantha standing in the doorway.

  “I didn’t mean to bother you,” she said.

  That was impossible. She bothered him constantly.

  “I came in to—well, could I borrow a book?”

  Nothing was easy. He felt strange that she had to ask him a question like that. Everything around him was his, he reminded himself. The problem was, he didn’t remember any of it. “You’re free to use whatever you want. The swimming pool, the tennis court, the books. Whatever.”

  “Thank you.” In the past, Sam had several patients who’d given her the same permission, but she hadn’t been sure about Max. Crossing the room toward the bookshelves, she again saw a distant look in his eyes, as if he were in a trance. “Max?”

  He blinked. “I don’t remember her,” he said, sharing the one thought he couldn’t get out of his head. He rounded a look at her. “Did you know Christina?”

  “No, I didn’t. Do you know that she—”

  He guessed the reason for her hesitation. “Died?” he finished for her. “Yes. Ellis told me when I was in the hospital. What exactly happened?”

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Not details. I know she was killed.”

  “She disappeared last August.”

  “Just like that. She was here one day, then gone?”

  Sam bridged the space between them. “Kate Randall Walker—do you know who she is?”

  Max leaned his backside against the edge of the desk. “A judge. Ellis wants her to run on the ticket with him.”

  “Kate was at the Hip Hop on the last day Christina was seen. She said that Christina was on the phone and looked distraught.”

  “Who was she calling?”

  Sam had heard it all. The gossipers had had a field day when Christina first disappeared. Anything that had to do with the Montgomerys was newsworthy. “When they began tracing Christina’s actions, you told the authorities that she’d called you.”

  “And I went to see her?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  She watched tension take over.

  His back straightened; his jaw tightened. “Why didn’t I?” he asked.

  “I don’t know the answer to that.”

  “Tell me about her. What do you know?”

  “Not a lot. She was outgoing, a bit of a flirt.”

  His eyes bored into hers. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “I only know what the gossips said.” She observed his hand gripping the edge of the desk so tightly that his knuckles had whitened. “Everyone had thought Christina looked pregnant. And then she disappeared.”

  “Who was the father?”

  “I don’t know.” Seeing his deepening frown, Sam thought she might have given him too much to think about. “Why don’t we talk about this later.”

  “No,” he snapped. “Now. Tell me what you know.”

  Sam had no choice. Steel-blue eyes trapped her. “Days passed, and since all her things were still in her room, authorities had to consider a kidnaping. They waited, but no ransom note came.” Sam longed to stop, but she understood his need to learn everything, to piece together a puzzle. “Along with the help of local psychics Crystal Cobbs and her aunt, Winona Cobbs, Deputy Sloan Ravencrest found Christina’s body after several months of searching. Everyone was convinced she’d had a baby before she died. Everyone also had doubts the baby would ever be found.”

  “Was it?”

  Sam nodded. She was glad to give him some better information. “Rachel got the baby, rather anonymously. The baby was dropped off on her porch with a note from the father saying he would be back. At the time, Rachel suspected the baby was Christina’s.”

  “Did she have it tested?”

  “Yes, and a DNA test proved that the baby was Christina’s.”

  Slowly he shook his head as if trying to make sense of everything she’d said. “What about the father?”

  “No one knew who he was. And for a while, authorities believed that Emma Stover was guilty of the murder.”

  “Emma Stover.” He considered the name for a long moment. “The name means nothing to me.”

  “She’s a waitress at the Hip Hop. But she isn’t the one who did it,” Sam was quick to tell him. “Deputy Sloan Ravencrest and the sheriff declared that evidence—”

  He held up a hand. “What kind?”

  Meeting his steady, unflinching stare, Sam told him what she’d heard. “Strands of hair, fiber, drops of blood that were not the victim’s, and footprints from the scene cleared Emma. And it cleared Homer Gilmore.”

  “Another name.” Disgust threaded his voice. “Another person I don’t know. Who is he?”

  “He’s an eccentric old man. You’ll see him around town once in a while.”

  “So the murderer hasn’t been caught?” he said so softly she strained to hear him.

  “No, Max. But I heard that the sheriff plans to test several men.”

  “Test?”

  “DNA,” Sam answered.

  “Hell.” He closed his eyes for only a second as if there was something too painful to look at. “I suppose I should feel something about her but I don’t.”

  What she felt was his discomfort. Compassion flowed through her. How hard this all was for him. He could pretend to roll with each new piece of information, but there was such pain in his eyes. Jessica had said that he had no soft spot. That wasn’t true, Sam thought. She’d seen his vulnerability at not being able to remember a sister who’d died. “Max—” As she reached out to touch his cheek, he stepped back. Sam didn’t even try to get past the wall he’d so quickly erected.

  “Let it go,” he said in a tone that sounded more angry at himself than her. He heaved a deep breath and squinted at the mountains. “Where do you live?”

  Sam assumed he was looking for a distraction from his own troubled thoughts. “In a small apartment around the corner from the Hip Hop. It’s a one bedroom, but it’s all I need. I’m out of it more than in it.”

  “Is there a man waiting at home for you?”

  Why would he ask that? It means nothing, she berated herself. He’s making conversation. “We’re supposed to be finding out about you, not me.” Her voice trailed off as he reached out and toyed with a strand of hair near her ear. The touch was far lighter, far gentler, than she expected.

  “You’d be more interesting.”

  Her eyes snapped up to meet his. Usually she loved the unexpected, spontaneity. But he’d caught her off balance. Never had she anticipated his making a move on her. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe she was making too much of his touch.

  “There’s no one, is there?” he asked in a low voice that sounded dangerous.

  He curled his fingers around her arm, and as if in slow motion, he tugged her closer. She was imagining nothing, she realized now, standing between his legs. She should have pulled back, but she was curious. “I—” The token protest died when his mouth caressed first one corner of her lips and then the other.

  He murmured something. She didn’t care what he’d said. She wanted to dive into his kiss. Her heart pounding, when his lips met hers firmly, she slipped her hands around to his back and braced for sensation. It did no good. Excitement rushed through her.

  Tongues met and dueled. Using only a kiss, he weakened her; he seduced her.

  And her heart felt suddenly fragile. That frightened her. How often
had her mother felt like this? Sam made herself remember. Wasn’t this kind of feeling what she’d vowed to avoid?

  As a slow-moving ache fluttered through her, she wavered between deepening the kiss or tearing her mouth from his. She knew the insanity of letting the moment go on. Still she didn’t move away as his lips twisted against hers. She tried to tell herself the kiss was nice, nothing more. But her pulse pounded, and she felt hungry for more, far hungrier than she’d ever been.

  Before the will to stop him was lost, breathless, she wedged a hand between them. How could she think of him objectively if he dissolved all her good sense, if she let him snatch the breath from her? “That was—” Exciting.

  His hand slid down her arm as if he couldn’t not touch. “What…what was it?” He sounded just as breathless.

  Shaken, Sam barely managed to keep her voice steady. “A mistake.” She might be just a convenience to him. Or he might have kissed her because he was confusing attraction with gratitude. Briefly, she hesitated, then turned away. She left the room with the warmth of his kiss still lingering on her lips.

  Five

  She was wrong. Max knew that hadn’t been a mistake. While her softness had pressed against him during the kiss yesterday, he’d realized how much he needed her in ways that had nothing to do with sex. With a smile, a laugh, a kiss, she’d made him feel less angry about his own inadequacies, less vulnerable.

  No one else had done that. When he’d been in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, his family, had all assured him that he’d get back his memory. Only he still had doubts. Even now, after coming home.

  So now what? Did he forget the past and make new memories? Should he grab what was within his reach—his sister, father, his job—a redhead who made him smile, a woman whose kiss had leveled him?

  He could have pushed for more, but he honestly didn’t like wanting her so much. It didn’t matter that he needed her, that with his attraction to her he felt a sense of normalcy. He’d also felt as if control might slip away with one more sampling of her taste. And that, he realized, he didn’t like. So he’d learned from a kiss, and from the desire heating his gut, that control mattered to him. He learned, too, it would slip easily around her.