So the real question was did she have the guts to give it all she had, to stop holding back? She had always used the Plan as an excuse for walking away before a relationship could really go anywhere; that excuse was real, because she truly wanted to execute the Plan; but the other part of her reason was that loving someone meant giving away some of your personal control, and she had always prized that above any man she was dating.
If she became involved with Cahill, she might eventually walk away from him, but she wouldn't walk away heart-whole. He could do some damage to her. She suspected she could love him as she had never loved anyone before, if she let him get close.
No matter what she decided, there were risks-big ones. She could either risk loving him and losing him, or she could risk missing out on the love of her life because she was afraid.
Sarah didn't like thinking herself cowardly, in anything.
"Do you recognize this man?" Cahill asked the next morning, letting a blurry photograph slide from a big envelope down onto the breakfast table. The photograph had been enhanced and enlarged, and it was still piss-poor. It was, however, all he had.
Sarah looked at the photograph and gave a decisive shake of her head. Randall, Barbara, and Jon all crowded around and stared at it. "I don't think so," Randall said doubtfully. "Not without seeing his face. He doesn't ring any bells, though. Why?"
"He made the last call to your father, from a pay phone in the Galleria."
Barbara jerked back as if stung. "You mean he might be the killer?"
"I can't make that assumption," Cahill said evenly. "I'd like to, but I can't. But your father might have said something to this man about a visitor he was expecting, or any other detail that might help. I'd definitely like to talk to this guy."
They all stared at the photograph again, as if concentration would wrest an elusive memory from their brains. The man in the photograph was trim, wearing a light-colored suit, with neat pale hair, either blond or gray. His head was turned so that the camera caught only the line of his left jaw and cheekbone. Unless you knew the man well, it would be impossible to recognize him from that picture.
Sarah handed Cahill a cup of coffee and tilted her head for another look at the photograph. "He's wearing a suit," she said. "The weather was warm last Wednesday."
Both Randall and Jon looked up, their attention caught. "It was too warm to wear a jacket," Jon said, "unless you were wearing a suit for work."
Barbara looked puzzled. "So what?"
"So he's white-collar," Cahill explained. "Professional."
She sighed. "All of Daddy's friends were white-collar professionals."
"Retired," Sarah put in. "That man isn't retired."
"He's younger than Daddy, then, but that's obvious from the picture. Either that or he's had a face-lift." Barbara pointed to the fairly firm jawline.
"Take what you know," Cahill prompted. "Younger than your father-say, no older than early fifties-professional. The hair is probably gray, or blond that's going gray. He's in good shape, trim, I estimate about six feet tall. No one comes to mind?"
They all shook their heads, regretfully.
'Well, if you think of anything, let me know." Cahill replaced the photograph in the envelope. "Don't concentrate on his close friends, but on someone he would know only casually."
"Sarah would be more help there than any of us," Jon said. 'We've all lived away from the area for years, so we don't know anyone he may have met recently." He made a wry face. "By 'recently' I mean the last ten years, at least."
"Longer than that." Barbara sighed. "Dwight and I moved to Dallas before Shaw was born, and he's nineteen. Make that twenty years. I'm afraid we won't be any help there, Detective. Sarah is your only hope."
Everyone looked at Sarah, who shook her head. "He knew so many people. He was forever nodding to someone, then saying he didn't remember his name but he worked with so-and-so. He never really talked about anyone other than his close circle of buddies."
"So unless this guy"-Cahill tapped the envelope-"calls again, he's a dead end."
"I'm afraid so, at least as far as I'm concerned. One of the neighbors might recognize him, or you might try the Judge's friends. They were a pretty close group."
"I'll do that." He looked at the others. "I need to get back to work, but is there anything I can do for you here?"
Barbara gave him a sad, gentle smile. 'We're just packing up photographs and personal items that we want to keep. Thank you for all you've done, the advice you've given. I know you'll do everything possible to find whoever killed Daddy."
"Yes, ma'am, I will." He glanced at Sarah. 'Would you walk out to the car, Miss Stevens?"
The day was warmer than the day before, but still chilly enough that she grabbed a jacket on the way out. The sun was bright, picking out the fresh, bright colors of spring, the pink of the azaleas, the tender green of new leaves, the white and pink dogwoods. Sarah squinted at the brightness, lifting her hand to shade her eyes.
'What is it, Detective Cahill?"
"Nothing much, I just wanted a minute alone with you. What are your plans for now? They'll be selling the house, right? What are you going to do?"
"I'm staying here, for now. They all have to leave this afternoon, so I'll handle all the packing, getting things ready for the house to be put on the market."
"You're staying here? In the house?"
"I can look after things better if I'm here, on-site."
"Will it bother you to be here alone?"
"It bothers me that the Judge is dead. It bothers me to go into the library, because I keep seeing his body there, and smelling . . . smelling things. But it doesn't bother me to be alone. I think what happened was targeted specifically at him, though I have no idea why. So I'm not in any danger." She paused, struck by a fleeting expression on his tough face. "Am I? Is there something you haven't told me?"
"No, nothing. I think you're safe. It's just that you have more guts than most people. A lot of men I know wouldn't want to stay here by themselves."
"So who says men have more guts than women?"
He grinned at the challenge in her voice. "No one. Men just tend to do stupid things out of pride. Now that I've admitted we're all idiots, will you have dinner with me tonight?"
"What? Go out with an idiot?"
'1hink of the entertainment value."
"You have a point." She smiled up at him. "I'd like that, then. What time, and where are we going?"
"Six-thirty, and we'll go someplace casual, if that's all right with you. "
"Casual is great."
He winked at her as he got in the car. "See you at six-thirty."
Her heart was lighter as she went back inside the house. She still grieved, but life did go on; the awful thing about cliches was that they were usually right. The terrible pain and depression had lifted, and she was already looking ahead, focusing on the future. She had chores to accomplish, affairs to be put in order, a job to find.
But more immediately, she had a date with Cahill.
Chapter 14.
"YOU'LL NEVER GUESS," SHE SAID BY WAY OF GREETING when she opened the door to him that night, "what came in the mail today."
He tensed. "Another gift?"
"Something almost worse," she grumbled. "Two job offers."
His dark, level brows knotted. "And that's bad, how?"
"They were postmarked Saturday. These people must have written the letters almost immediately after they heard about the Judge."
"I repeat: That's bad, how?"
She gave him an impatient glance. "Vultures. It's like people who read the obituaries and call the surviving spouse for a date immediately after the funeral."
"I think it's smart, if they want you. Get an offer in first, and you might take it before any others come in."
"Too late, since I had one week before last, right after that segment aired."
"But they didn't know that. I'd do the same thing," he said reasonably. "I see you, I want you, I make my move and try to cut out anyone else thinking the same thing."
She snorted as she pulled on her jacket. "Really bad analogy, Cahill. You saw, and you ran."
"Don't I get brownie points for working up enough courage to come back?"
"No. I don't work on the points system."
"Then I guess I'll have to rely on physical coercion." He caught the front of her jacket in his fist and pulled her to him. Sarah lifted her head to meet his kiss; it wasn't until his mouth touched hers that she realized how sharp was her need to feel this again, to have him hold her. Their tongues engaged in slow combat, sliding, probing, twining. He wasn't in any hurry, and neither was she.
He lifted his mouth enough to murmur, "Are you coerced yet?"
"Not yet. Keep trying."
His mouth curled in a smile as he rested his forehead against hers. "I don't want to overstep my bounds. Give me some ground rules, here. If I get rowdy and out of control, at what point do you slap my face? The trick is to stop just short of that point."
Sarah lifted her brows. "I don't slap faces; I kick asses."
'Wow. That sounds interesting. Pants up, or down?"
She buried her face against his jacket, snickering. "I should have guessed you'd be a pervert."
"A boy just wants to have fun. " His big, warm hand slid up and down her back in a restless movement that told her he didn't like restraining himself, but was doing it anyway. "And if we don't get going, I may get my ass kicked. I've never been very good at knowing when to stop."
On the contrary, he had wooing down to a fine art-for wooing her, anyway. He made it very plain he was attracted, but didn't come on too hot and heavy for the early stages of getting to know each other. She was thoroughly charmed by his wry humor, more charmed than she wanted him to know. If he pushed his luck, she thought, she might very well end up in bed with him, and she deeply appreciated that he was restraining himself because she suspected he knew exactly how charmed she was. Cahill was one sharp cookie.
"Did either of the job offers look interesting?" he asked as he opened the door of his truck for her.
"No, they both wanted me to start immediately, and that's out. I'll be here at least another month; when the house is ready to close up, I doubt the family will want to continue paying my salary just to sit in my quarters, so I don't expect it to last much more than a month, but I'm not free until then."
"You don't think they'll hold the position open? It isn't as if butlers are thick on the ground around here."
She shrugged. '1hey might, they might not. I think they only want me because of the so-called celebrity factor, and I don't like the idea of that."
"Since you're trained as a bodyguard, too, will you consider only jobs with that need?"
"That would be nice," she said wryly. '1he pay is a lot higher. But, no, a lot of things come into consideration. How much I like the family, for one thing. Whether or not there are any positions open for both butler and bodyguard, where in the country the job is, things like that."
"You don't like certain parts of the country?"
"It isn't that. I'm a military brat; I'm used to living just about anywhere. But my parents and sister live in Florida, and I like for visiting them to be fairly convenient."
"You're close to your folks?"
"We talk on the phone a lot. I don't get to see them as much as I'd like, maybe three or four times a year, but I'd say we're close. Even though my brothers are both in the military and are sent all over the world, still, we manage phone calls. How about you?"
'Well, we're originally from this area, so I have aunts and uncles and cousins scattered all over central Alabama. My sister, DeeDee, lives in Redneck Riviera-that's Gulf Shores, to outsiders-and my brother, Dudley Do-Right, lives in Montgomery."
"DeeDee and Do-Right?" she asked, amused.
"She was named after the two grandmothers, Devonna and Darnelle. Which one would you like to be called?"
"DeeDee, hands down."
"No joke. Dudley, now-his real name is Thane-is a state cop, so he wears the Do-Right uniform. Between the two of them, they've made me an uncle five times. DeeDee's the oldest, by two years. I'm thirty-six, by the way."
"You don't have any kids?"
"No, thank God. That's the only good thing about my divorce, that we didn't have any kids whose lives we wrecked. The rest of the family always thought I was a slacker for not reproducing, but now they're glad, too."
'What about your parents?"
"They thought I was a slacker, too."
She punched his arm. "Smart aleck."
He grinned, then frowned a little and rubbed his arm. "Ow. You pack a punch."
"I pulled it. You're just a wuss." Yeah, right. His arm was so hard, she could have seriously damaged her knuckles. "Your parents," she prompted.
"They live in Kentucky. They had a reason for moving there, but I don't know what it was."
'What's wrong with Kentucky?"
"It snows there."
'What's wrong with snow?"
"I've been a patrol cop, you know. Have you ever seen what happens down here when it snows?"