# Romancing the Crown: Nina & Dominic

Lyn Stone, Mary Mcbride

A Royal Murder by Lyn Stone Nina Caruso had come to Montebello to find her brother’s killer. Steely investigator Ryan McDonough had been ordered to work with her – and to investigate her as a suspect. But when Nina became a target, Ryan took command. The crazy attraction between them was just one more reason for Ryan to solve the case fast.Sarah’s Knight by Mary McbrideDarkly handsome doctor Sir Dominic Chiara sent female pulses racing everywhere he went. But Nick’s son had stopped speaking – and Nick, who had been knighted for his service to the royal family, did not know why. Until a beautiful new nanny, Sarah Hunter, offered hope…

Royalty is their birthright, power and passion are their due!

### ROMANCING THE CROWN: NINA & DOMINIC

A thrilling royal mystery…

A brooding investigator and a handsome

knight head towards their destiny…

Two glamorous, modern stories of regal

romance from two favourite authors

## ROMANCING THE CROWN: NINA & DOMINIC

A Royal Murder

LYN STONE

Sarah’s Knight

MARY McBRIDE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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## A Royal Murder

LYN STONE


Dear Reader,

The opportunity to interact with the other authors in this ROMANCING THE CROWN series has been a joy. Montebello, Tamir and all the inhabitants of these locations have become quite real to me after visiting them and their creators so regularly in the books and online.

My sincere thanks to Leslie Wainger and Lynda Curnyn for offering me the chance to participate in this unique project, and for the wonderful guidance and editing that made all the books tie in so well.

A Royal Murder introduces Ryan McDonough, former Savannah detective and present private investigator hired by the Montebellan royal family, to the sister of the murder victim, Nina Caruso, a graphic designer from California determined to see justice done. Not exactly a match made in heaven when it comes to solving a murder, but they do strike a match of another kind. The resulting blaze flames out of control even as they dodge the danger of a killer tying up loose ends.

Enjoy the heat!

Lyn Stone

This book is dedicated to my grandmothers,

Dolly Pauline Cato, who treasured home

and family togetherness, and Jessie Herron

Perkins, who loved travel, adventure and

making up stories.

Chapter 1

Ryan McDonough gave the woman the once-over, noting the thinly concealed frustration in her sin-dark eyes and her subtly defensive stance. “I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Caruso,” he said automatically, words repeated countless times to families of countless victims. “I understand your offer to help, but what you want is not possible.”

He was sorry to see anyone grieve. God knows he knew what it was like. Grief in this instance must already have passed beyond tears to the second phase. Anger. She was gritting her teeth.

The Caruso woman inclined her head and said, “Thank you for your condolences, but I must insist.” Very proper. But still not acceptable.

Ryan turned to Vincente Pavelli, the royal messenger, or crown gofer, or whatever the hell the man’s title was. “Tell His Majesty I said thank you, but no dice. Phrase it however you want to, just get the message across.”

“But Mr. McDonough…” Pavelli’s swarthy face fell and he started to hyperventilate. Sweat popped out in little beads on the forehead that extended to the back of his head as he slid a shaking finger beneath his collar to loosen it.

“Hey, it’s not like he shoots the bearer of bad tidings, man. Lighten up.” Ryan came around his desk to usher them out. He clapped the man on his skinny, expensively padded shoulder. “Tell him I make it a policy never to include civilians while conducting an investigation. Hard and fast rule. Capisce?”

The gofer took several jerky steps toward the door, still looking as if he wanted to argue about it.

“Wait just a minute,” Ryan said, his voice a warning growl. “You forgot something.” He turned and gestured at the woman, who seemed determined to hold her ground.

She ignored him. “Go ahead and wait in the car, Mr. Pavelli. I need to speak with Mr. McDonough alone.”

Pavelli left hurriedly, closing the door, leaving them alone.

Ryan kept a cool head. It usually gave him the advantage. Neither the Montebellans nor the Italians passed on many even-tempered genes to their progeny. Nina Caruso was descended from both. Being raised in America obviously hadn’t altered her temperament much. While all that fire just beneath her surface intrigued him, he didn’t need to deal with it right now.

“We have nothing to discuss, ma’am,” he told her calmly. “The king will have my preliminary report on your brother’s death first thing in the morning and any further information as soon as I discover it. His Majesty’s advisors will keep you up to date.”

She sighed, walked around his desk and sat down in his chair, bold as you please. His chair. Propping her elbows on the arms of it, she steepled her fingers under her chin. She had great hands. Long, supple fingers tipped with fairly short nails, painted wine red to match her lips. He tried not to look at the lips, but they kept drawing his attention even when she wasn’t speaking.

Ryan shook off his fascination, disgruntled with himself for noticing her looks and with her for provoking him to notice.

“I didn’t come halfway around the world to sit somewhere and wait,” she declared, her voice clipped and precise, totally devoid of an accent. “My brother’s been killed and I’m sticking to you like Super Glue until we find out who did it. Get used to it.”

Ryan fought hard for patience. She might be rude, but he hated to be sharp with her. That wasn’t his way, especially when she was probably just upset about her half brother’s violent death.

Probably being the key word here. Now that he looked at her more objectively, she didn’t appear to be all that grief stricken. And she was dangerously close to pushing the wrong button on his control panel, barging in here demanding to know what he’d been doing on the case.

Hell, he was tired. Clearing out all his most urgent cases had eaten up most of yesterday and last night. Since the prime suspect had been cleared, Ryan had yet to decide where he’d go first with the investigation he’d just been assigned. There were forensics reports to go over. He’d only thumbed through the prelims, knowing they weren’t yet complete.

Also, he needed to plan interviews, conduct them, talk with the coroner and also do an additional forensics sweep. The police had done the initial investigation of the scene, but he wanted to be thorough now that he was in charge.

First things first. He needed to unload the little baggage who had just arrived.

He sat on the corner of his desk and assumed a relaxed pose, wishing he felt relaxed. “Look, Ms. Caruso—”

“Nina,” she said curtly. “We might as well use first names since we’ll be spending a great deal of time together. Why don’t you begin by listing what you’ve found out so far. You’ve had two full days and part of this one.” She paused for a second, then added, “Ryan.”

Ryan bit his tongue and unclenched his fist, deliberately projecting benevolence and goodwill. She didn’t react as expected to outright dismissal. He’d try manners. Not usually his last resort and shouldn’t be now, but they had gotten off on the wrong foot the minute she’d walked in.

Empathize first, he thought. “Of course you want to know what’s going on and I understand that completely. You may read copies of the reports tomorrow if His Majesty sees fit to share them with you. Until then, I must ask you to excuse me so that I can continue to do my job.” There. Polite and to the point. Get lost, cookie.

“Exactly what is your job?” she asked, not moving a hair.

“I’m a private investigator frequently employed by the Crown,” he answered. “Surely you knew that already.”

She nodded. “Not chief of criminal investigations.”

So she was capable of a neatly placed low blow. “There is no one with that particular title in Montebello. But I assure you, I am qualified to undertake the investigation. I was a homicide detective in a former life.” He offered her another smile. “Savannah.”

“You were fired?” she guessed.

“No, I resigned.” He looked around his well-appointed office as if that was explanation enough for changing jobs. The light gray walls and expensive carpet, sturdy black furniture and maroon leather chairs beat the hell out of his corner of the precinct where he’d spent his first twelve years in law enforcement. And the job here had literally saved his life and sanity.

Lorenzo Sebastiani, chief of royal intelligence, whom Ryan knew well, often called on him to dabble a little in the political intrigue so prevalent in this area of the world. In fact, Lorenzo had recommended him to the king for this particular investigation. Lorenzo had a personal interest in it. He was also half brother to Desmond Caruso, the victim in this case. Both were sons of the king’s brother, Duke Antonio Sebastiani, who had died some years ago.

Desmond’s mother had been one of the palace maids. She had married an Italian businessman, Guiseppe Caruso, and had moved to the States. Ryan studied the young woman sitting in his chair, a product of that marriage.

“King Marcus assured me you would welcome my help,” she said.

“I regret to say he was wrong.”

The door opened. Duke Lorenzo entered without preamble. “Good morning,” he said formally. Nina rose from the chair.

Ryan eyed him with suspicion. “In case you two haven’t met, Nina Caruso, this is His Grace, Duke Lorenzo Sebastiani.” Lorenzo reached for her hand and bowed over it. “Little sister. I regret we must meet for the first time in such terrible circumstances. I share in your grief for the loss of our brother.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she mumbled, obviously a little taken aback and unsure what else she should say.

She made a perfect curtsy, however. Her mother must have taught her court manners, Ryan decided.

Ryan managed a nod, his version of a bow, in Lorenzo’s direction.

Americans generally had problems kowtowing, and Ryan admitted he was the rule rather than the exception. Also, he knew the duke well enough to know when Lorenzo was putting on airs. Ryan had seen him in his shirtsleeves, smoking cigars and dealing cards across the table.

Not that Lorenzo even noticed Ryan’s nod. He was too busy taking Nina Caruso’s measure.

“I am so sorry to have missed your arrival at the palace,” Lorenzo said graciously. “The king has explained your mission to me.”

He then addressed Ryan. “And Pavelli just informed me of your objection. I should reiterate that our Nina’s participation in the investigation is not simply a request. It is her right as a sister, I believe.”

“I see,” Ryan said, tasting dry defeat. “Her right? Some new custom I’m not aware of?”

“Precisely,” Lorenzo affirmed. “There will be no problem accommodating her in this endeavor?” Though phrased as a question, Ryan knew very well it wasn’t.

He shrugged. “Probably, but I guess I’ll work around it if I have to.” His continued employment might be contingent on doing that, and this job was everything to him right now.

Work was his life. It was all he had left, and damned if he planned to junk it over something like this. He’d just have to invent some busywork to keep the woman out of his way while he was doing what had to be done.

“Excellent.” Lorenzo offered his hand and firmly shook Ryan’s, then smiled in Nina Caruso’s direction. “I shall tell the king that all systems are go. A space term for launching success, yes?” He raised an eyebrow at Ryan.

“Yes. Just before blastoff. Then everybody prays there’s no malfunction,” Ryan said wryly.

“As we all shall do. Grazie.”

Grazie for nothing, Ryan thought. He liked to think this was his investigation. The king had brought him in on it, but there wasn’t much doubt it had been Lorenzo’s idea to do so. And no doubt at all that Lorenzo was running the show. Ryan needed to know. “Shouldn’t we put all our cards on the table now. Decide who does what?”

The duke shrugged. “I provide you whatever access you need. You and your people follow through. Keep me up to date.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan agreed. It would simplify matters not to have to plow through the usual red tape involving court orders and search warrants. “I’ll be in touch.”

Lorenzo nodded, started to leave, then turned at the door. “When things settle a bit, we should arrange for another game. It has been a while.”

“Any time,” Ryan said, recalling the night at Pete’s not long ago when he had beat the royal socks off Prince Lucas, his chauffeur and Lorenzo. A strange, if rewarding, experience.

Ryan was usually up for a card game. And the winnings were nice, but he also gleaned information from those get togethers that sometimes proved valuable. He smiled at the thought.

“I shall leave you both to it then,” Lorenzo said and exited as swiftly as he had entered.

The determined look on Nina Caruso’s face instantly sobered Ryan’s smile, as did the prospect of stumbling over a family member of the victim while he concentrated on finding a murderer. Lorenzo would stay out of his way and allow him to do what he’d been hired to do, but it was clear this woman wouldn’t. Not when she had royal sanction to interfere.

“So, do I need to ask again for your consent in this?” she asked.

“Nope. Not necessary,” Ryan said. “It’s all in the way you put the question, I guess. A duke for backup definitely helped.”

This was Ryan’s first homicide in nearly a year. How was he supposed to give it his undivided attention and baby-sit at the same time? Nina Caruso was going to be trouble with a capital T, he just knew it.

In the first place, she was highly distracting. In the second place… she was highly distracting.

“You’re not going to be one of those condescending types, are you?” she asked as she rounded his desk, picked up her purse and slung the strap over her shoulder. “You should know, I loathe being patronized in any way.”

“Why, no, ma’am, I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured her, sounding as superciliously indulgent as he possibly could. And as Southern as anybody from Savannah, Georgia, ever had.

The phone rang. “Would you excuse me a moment, please?” he asked her, looking meaningfully at the door.

Reluctantly she nodded and stepped just outside and closed it as Ryan answered, “McDonough.”

“My, but you do sound put upon, my friend.” It was Lorenzo again, obviously calling from his cell phone.

“That’s only because I am,” Ryan said conversationally, then added the requisite, “Your Grace.”

Lorenzo continued, speaking swiftly and much more seriously, “I had hoped to arrive before she did, but I was delayed. There was no time to arrange another audience with the king so that he could make you aware of the situation. He sent me to inform you that Nina Caruso is to be closely watched and that he wishes you to do this personally. Her motive for coming here bears careful scrutiny.”

“Why is that? Her brother’s dead and she’s come to find out what happened. Isn’t that motive enough?”

Lorenzo issued a little hum of suspicion. “So she told the reporters at the airport when she arrived this morning.”

“Reporters?” Ryan asked.

“TV-news team and the usual print hounds. She must have notified them herself. How else would they have known she was coming?”

Ryan shook his head. “Not necessarily. You know the papers keep a file on all you royals and everybody associated with you. Once word got out that Desmond had been killed, they would have started calling his family to get a reaction. If they found out where Nina worked, anybody in her office could have told them she was on her way over here. Especially if the caller represented himself as a friend who was worried about her, or used some ruse like that. The paparazzi are experts at that kind of thing. They’d have been lying in wait when she got off the plane.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Good point. But still supposition.” “You think she had prior knowledge, maybe conspired to have Desmond killed?” Ryan asked.

“Possibly. Find out and keep an eye on her while you do. A very close eye, my friend.”

“Count on it.”

So Nina Caruso was a suspect. Her motive for coming might be to insinuate herself into the royal family, play on their loyalty and gain their sympathy and acceptance by showing her grief. However, it was also possible that she was the one who had arranged Desmond’s murder and planned to cash in on his death. No doubt there was an inheritance of some kind.

He couldn’t deny she bore watching. Ryan just wished he wasn’t the one directed to do it.

Since he had no choice, he assured Lorenzo he understood and would comply. Then he went to join Ms. Caruso in the outer office.

“So, we are to be partners,” Ryan said, but he did so pleasantly, as if perfectly resigned to the situation.

She yanked the outer door open and stood aside for him to exit. “I’ll pull my weight,” she announced, her classic features set with fierce determination. “You’ll see.”

“Of course you will,” he answered idly. As if any cop in his right mind would actually allow a civilian and family member to take part in a murder case. And he was still a cop at heart.

Pavelli was waiting for them outside. “Ms. Caruso’s bags are in the boot,” he told Ryan. “If you like, Marcello and the car are at your disposal today.

Ryan accepted the offer, gesturing grandly toward the long black beast as if he owned it. “Your carriage awaits.”

She climbed into the limo and settled back against the butter-soft leather. Pavelli got in front with the driver as Ryan joined Nina Caruso in the back. He was glad to see that the glass partition was closed. It gave them privacy.

Ryan looked at her and imagined he saw her chin tremble. Had to be a trick of light. Nevertheless, he was prompted by it to ask, “Why are you really so intent on doing this, Ms. Caruso?”

She met his gaze with one just as intent as his. “Because Desmond was my brother.”

“He was Duke Lorenzo’s brother, too, and the duke trusts me to handle this.”

She granted him a short nod. “That may be, but I still want to be involved.”

“I can understand if you came over for the funeral, but why horn in on my duties? You don’t know a thing about investigations.” Then it occurred to him that she might. “Do you? Are you a cop or something?”

“No, I’m a graphic designer.”

Ryan snorted, not knowing—or caring much—what that entailed. He knew it didn’t have a damned thing to do with detective work.

“I have an excellent eye for detail,” she assured him, chafing her arms with her palms as if she were cold. “To tell the truth, I have to do something. Can’t you understand that? I have to do something for Desmond.”

“You and your brother must have been very close,” he said.

“Yes, of course.” Then she added, “But he’s been away a long time. Since he was twenty.” The admission cost her, he thought. She didn’t like confiding anything about herself, but it was his business to pry out secrets. And he was curious.

If she was anything at all like Desmond Caruso, there might be excellent reason to keep close tabs on her. By most accounts, the man had been a crass opportunist. Ryan had met him once and thought he was a jerk. But even jerks deserved justice.

“How did you find out about the murder?” he asked, carefully noting her body language for an indication that she would lie.

She sighed. “Someone from the palace phoned me. I’m sorry, I didn’t get the name. The call woke me, then I was so upset.”

“Yeah, well, that’s understandable,” Ryan granted. “When did you receive the call?”

“The morning he… his body… was discovered. The person who called me suggested that I would be welcome if I decided to come. But I would have anyway,” she added.

“I see,” Ryan commented. “Was this official who notified you a man?”

She looked directly at him then and frowned in consternation. “I couldn’t say for certain. A husky voice, but not too deep.”

Couldn’t say, or wouldn’t? Ryan wondered. She gave no outward signs that she was lying or withholding the truth, but that meant very little other than that she could be accomplished at it and had studied body language herself.

Nina understood why she was being so adamant about participating personally in the investigation of Desmond’s death, even if Ryan McDonough didn’t. She did think it surprising and somewhat peculiar that the king would allow and even encourage it. The best she had hoped for when she’d asked permission was, as McDonough had suggested, to be kept informed as events unfolded. And to hound someone for answers if they weren’t forthcoming.

Much to her surprise, the king had sent her to the P. I.’ s office with the suggestion that she assist him. That alone indicated to her that the investigator might need a push to get things done, that the king either knew him to be shorthanded or lacking in initiative. Nina glanced out the tinted windows at the city surrounding them. It was so lovely here in San Sebastian, an inter esting combination of old-world architecture and innovative modern buildings that signified a successful transition into the twenty-first century.

Had Desmond loved it? Had he felt at home here? Accepted? There had been a time in her life when she had absolutely idolized her older brother. He had been so handsome, so aloof and tragic even as a teenager. How proud she had felt whenever he took the time to notice her and smile down at her.

Looking back, she realized that he’d had much the same affection for the family dog. Still, all her friends had sighed, giggled and mooned over Desmond. He had actually championed her a few times when Dad had called her on the carpet for one transgression or another. Later however, she had noticed that Desmond routinely argued with her father on just about everything.

Had they been close? No. As much as she had wished it so, her brother had been little more than an enigmatic stranger.

If she were perfectly honest, this hurried trip and her involvement here were more in the nature of alleviating her guilt. She had sailed through life without a glitch, taking for granted the love of her parents, her success in school, her wide circle of friends and her sense of belonging. Desmond had suffered every step of the way.

He had always been at odds with the adults in his life, parents and teachers. Desmond had been a loner and had never quite fit in anywhere. He’d either tried too hard or, in some instances, not tried at all.

Nina hoped he had found his place here in Montebello, where his birth father had once lived. She wished she had been able to discuss it with the duke, who must have known him very well. She had to admit, royalty intimidated her.

Desmond was born of royalty, though he hadn’t known about it until after Nina’s father had died. To a very young and impressionable Nina, that discovery had fully explained Desmond’s difficulties in adjusting to life as they had known it. A prince among paupers, she recalled thinking at the time.

Now she could laugh at that childish conclusion. Her family might not have been rich, but they were solid upper-middle class with a healthy bank account. Love and affection were also in ready supply. Neither she nor her brother had ever lacked for a single thing they truly needed.

Nina missed her parents. Her father had succumbed to a virulent case of pneumonia just before Desmond left. The revelation that followed his death—that Desmond wasn’t really his, but was instead the illegitimate son of a Montebellan Duke—had further alienated her brother. The loss of both husband and son had been too much for Nina’s mother. She had died only months later, finally giving in to the weak heart that had plagued her for years.

Of course she had romanticized the sad figure Desmond had become. Most of his problems were of his own making. But he was her brother, faults and all. Poor, handsome, tragic Desmond did not deserve such a sad end.

If she could just do this one last thing for him, see his killer brought to justice, Nina thought she might be able to put aside the guilt she felt for having a childhood that was so much better than his. She had always felt she owed him something to make up for what he had missed and she had enjoyed, and this was all there was left to do for him.

“When did you last hear from your brother?” McDonough asked, interrupting her bittersweet thoughts.

She turned to look at him. “The last time? A few weeks ago.” Desmond had contacted her for a loan, but that was none of this man’s business. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder.

“You said you once entertained a close bond with him. That was not true lately?” he asked, the intensity of his gaze absolutely unnerving.

“Is this an interrogation, Mr. McDonough?” she demanded, feeling defensive, especially since she did not want to answer the question.

“Yes,” he readily admitted. “And what happened to calling me Ryan? I thought we were supposed to become more familiar. It was your idea… Nina.”

They had stopped at a traffic light and she had the overwhelming impulse to get out and slam the door shut in his face. Instead, she took a deep breath and prayed for patience. Only when she had collected herself did she answer. “My brother and I were as close as can be expected given the eight-year difference in our ages and the fact that we had not visited much since he left home.” And not at all since he had come to Montebello.

He pursed his lips and nodded. Then he smiled sadly. “And there was also the fact that you had different fathers. How did that affect the two of you?”

Nina shifted in her seat, gritted her teeth and met his gaze with a glare. “If you’re considering sibling rivalry as a possible motive, I do have an alibi. I was on the other side of the world at the time Des was killed.”

He smiled more naturally. “And that can be verified quite easily, I’m sure.”

“Absolutely. So you can eliminate me from your list of suspects, McDonough,” she snapped. “If you have any suspects.”

“I have several hundred thousand at the moment. But you’re going to remedy that with your input on the investigation, aren’t you? When would you like to begin?”

“Now.”

“First I’d like an answer to my previous question. Was there any sibling rivalry between you and Desmond?”

“Certainly not on my part!” she exclaimed. “Are you always this abrasive?”

He shrugged those shoulders she couldn’t help but admire. “Nope. Sometimes I’m even more so. It’s a plus in this line of work, trust me. Looks like you have the attitude down pat, if nothing else.”

Then he cocked his head to one side and raked his bottom lip with his straight, white teeth. She thought she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. “But you obviously don’t trust me, do you? If you did, you would be content to lie around the palace eating grapes or whatever it is the royal cousins do, and let me handle this case.”

Nina refused to rise to the bait. Calmly she crossed one leg over the other and smoothed the knee-length skirt of her new gray suit. “You know very well I’m not a royal cousin. But Desmond was. You said we could begin the investigation now. Will you give me something specific to do?”

He cleared his throat, quickly looking away from her legs. “You should get settled first. Get over your jet lag.”

“I don’t have any. And I’m already settled, as you put it. Mr. Pavelli has arranged a flat for me.” She gave him a smug little smile and raised her brows. “The vacant apartment next to yours is no longer to let.”

To his credit, he managed not to groan. His sigh of resignation provided her a brief moment of victory. Then he seemed to recover. “I guess he thought it would be convenient for us. Would you like to go there first, or get right down to business?”

“Right down to business,” Nina declared. “That’s why I’m here.”

He nodded once and leaned forward to push a button, obviously an intercom, because he spoke to the driver. “The palace, please.”

“The palace? You’re not talking the king out of this,” Nina warned him. “You heard Lorenzo.”

“I did. And, good little Montebellan subject that I am, I wouldn’t dream of bucking the powers-that-be.”

Before Nina could comment, he continued, this time very seriously. “We’re going to the scene of the crime.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

His eyes were piercing as his gaze fastened on hers. “This is for real, Ms. Caruso. Not like you see on television.” “Please tell me you don’t believe I’m stupid enough to think it is.”

“All I’m saying is that if you’re going to help me, get objective because I don’t have time to baby you. A man has been killed. I need to discover who did it, and time is all-important. It’s already been nearly forty-eight hours. Will the sight of blood make you faint?”

Nina sucked in a sharp breath of shock. He sounded horribly heartless.

“I know that seems cold,” he admitted, his features rock hard and uncompromising. Unsympathetic. “But if you’re going to accomplish anything at all, you have to divorce your emotions from what you will be doing. Do you understand?” “Yes.”

“I hope so. You cannot deal with murder if you don’t. It’s ugly. It will give you nightmares. Sometimes it will make you cry and wake up screaming. This is particularly true if you knew the victim.”

He was trying to scare her off. She had crossed her arms over her chest and was clenching her biceps until they hurt.

Then she saw something in his eyes that told her he was speaking from experience, that he knew exactly what he was talking about. He’d said he worked homicide before. Did he have these nightmares?

“That means I must see… the body.”

“I wouldn’t advise that.” His voice gentler now, thoughtful. “It shouldn’t be necessary.”

“I want to,” she said, steadying her voice, making up her mind to do it. What help could she be to this investigation if she allowed her emotions and her fears to rule every decision she made? “Yes. I should.”

McDonough shook his head and heaved out a deep breath. “You’re that afraid I might miss some clues?”

“Have you even looked for any?” Nina asked.

“I haven’t seen the body yet, if that’s what you’re asking. The king only put me on this late yesterday. I’ve been catching up on what the police have done so far.”

“A second pair of eyes never hurts, does it?” she asked.

“Your eyes will hurt if you insist on this,” he said, betraying a little of that emotion he had just warned her to bury. “I’m afraid yours will. It’s going to be difficult, if not impossible, Nina, to forget the victim was your brother.”

“I can do it,” she said as convincingly as she could. “I can be objective if that’s what it takes. Couldn’t you, if the victim was a relation of yours?”

He gave her the strangest look, then tore his gaze from hers. Well, let him be angry, she thought. This wasn’t about Ryan McDonough’s pride anyway. It was about Desmond and finding out who killed him.

She probably would be able to handle seeing Des. At least, she could fake it for the short time it would take. She’d never been squeamish. And she knew very well that a person’s essence left the body when that person died. It wouldn’t be Desmond she was seeing. Not really.

Suppose McDonough did miss something? Would she know enough to find it? And if she did, would he admit the error? At least if she was courageous enough to see what a real investigator should, he might take her wish to help more seriously.

“I won’t faint,” she assured him. “I’ve seen bodies before.” He nodded and offered no further argument. Nina only wished she had convinced herself as easily as that.

Chapter 2

Ryan wished he could insist on taking Nina to her apartment before going to the palace as he had planned. Her arrival had thrown a monkey wrench in his schedule.

Strange as it seemed, that old adage about criminals returning to the scene of the crime did hold true occasionally in homicides. Consequently, Ryan had stationed one of his best men, Joseph Braca, at Desmond’s house at night to keep watch. The back doors purposely had been left unlocked for easy access, and Ryan had hidden two motion-activated cameras in strategic locations to record the image of any intruders.

In addition to bringing Joe up to date on the preliminary forensics report, Ryan needed to make him aware of the new wrinkle in the investigation. Nina. While Ryan kept her busy later today, Joe would be running her background, checking the alibi and going over the victim’s phone records to see if there had been any contact other than what she’d admitted.

Ryan could have phoned Joe instead of coming over, probably should have, given the circumstances. Or he could have requested that Joe report to him at the office before going off duty. The truth was, Ryan employed any reason he could think of to get out from behind that desk and into the field. Also, this might satisfy Nina Caruso that he was allowing her to assist him.

A scant quarter hour later, they drove through the gates of the palace. Ryan scanned the royal compound, realizing how many hundreds of people must be residing, employed or visiting there. Any one of them might be responsible for killing Desmond Caruso. And it was up to him to discover the needle in this palatial haystack.

The landscaping prevented driving right up to the front. There was a large paved parking area for vehicles situated between the wing of the palace that contained the heritage section and the wing housing the throne room. In deference to Nina, who must be tired and was wearing high heels, Ryan decided to forgo the walk from there. The flagstones and graveled paths would be hell on her feet in those shoes.

He pushed a button and gave the driver his orders. “Bypass the regular parking area. Pull around and park as near the guesthouse as you can. Once you let us out, you can drive Mr. Pavelli back around front. I’m sure he has a report to make.”

He turned to Nina. “The guesthouse where your brother lived is virtually isolated,” he explained, pointing as they rounded the heritage wing of the palace. “It’s there, just beyond those trees. As you can see, the gardens between the palace and the guesthouse conceal it from view. Even if someone had been looking out the windows of the throne wing, which is usually deserted late at night, they wouldn’t have seen anything.”

She concentrated, leaning forward and looking up, stretching within the seat belt as far as she could. “And the second floor?”

“It’s called the first floor here. Ground floor, then the first,” Ryan informed her. “Those are the princesses’ bedchambers above the throne room, and there would be a better view of the guesthouse from there. If anyone had been up there and looking in that direction. Unfortunately, none of the princesses are in residence. I haven’t had a chance to question their staff yet.”

“I’ll do it,” she volunteered, sitting back and clasping her hands in her lap. “I’m not afraid.”

Ryan chuckled. “Well, neither am I, but it probably won’t prove useful. You can bet your favorite lipstick the king has already determined whether anyone on duty has any information to add to the investigation. If they did, it would have come to me through channels already.”

“Channels?” she questioned. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged. “Protocol. I’ll be given a list of who was on duty and work from there.”

She shook her head and gave a disgusted huff. “This whole thing is going to get buried in bureaucracy. Mired down and unsolved. I just know it.”

Ryan let that go as the car came to a stop, glad to change the subject. Protocol was a sore point with him, but one he had to live with. In this instance, he trusted Lorenzo would make sure he got what he needed. “Here we are.”

His fellow passenger was frowning, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth and eyeing the guesthouse now like she might be dreading this. Wait until we get to the morgue, he thought with a reluctant pang of sympathy.

He could keep her from viewing the body if he chose to, but he wanted to see her reaction. It would tell him more about the relationship between Nina and Desmond Caruso than hours of interrogation.

Ryan couldn’t envision Nina Caruso actually killing anyone. If she had anything at all to do with her half brother’s death, she had probably hired it done. And if she had, that would mean Murder One, premeditated, conspiracy, not the crime of passion indicated by the evidence.

God only knew there were plenty of wackos out there greedy enough for a buck to kill anybody anywhere. Though security was fairly tight, someone with a little ingenuity might gain entrance into the palace grounds. Service people came and went, as did numerous tour groups. But Ryan was pretty sure that the victim had known the person who killed him. That narrowed the field considerably. He assisted Nina out of the limo and kept a grip on her elbow as they marched down the pathway that led to the building.

There was no yellow-tape boundary visible out here to mar the beauty of the fairy-tale setting. Outside, all looked right with the world in happily-ever-after land.

“This is it,” he announced. On the door was a discreet sign clearly printed with Entrance Forbidden in both English and Italian.

Ryan pushed the doorbell and heard the muted chime inside. The door opened almost immediately. Joe Braca, built like a refrigerator, dressed impeccably in silk suit and tie, gave them that little leaning-forward nod with head inclined that Italians used when they wanted to look subservient or greeted ladies they wanted to impress.

“Good morning,” he said, his dark gaze roving over Nina as if she had answered his call to an escort service. Natural for Joe, of course.

“This is Nina Caruso, the victim’s half sister. She just flew in early this morning. Nina, Joseph Braca, my right-hand man.” Ryan called them both that, Joe and Franz. Truth was, they were a crackerjack duo and he was being sincere.

Joe effected his most sympathetic smile and took the hand Nina offered. “I am so sorry for the loss of your brother, Ms. Caruso,” he said gently.

“Thank you, Mr. Braca,” she replied, her gaze slipping past him to the foyer and a partial view of the living room.

Joe stepped back and allowed them to enter. He glanced at Nina’s back, then raised an eyebrow at Ryan in unspoken question.

“You know the drill,” Ryan ordered. “Get Franz going on the computer. You make the calls.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe agreed, fully understanding who the subject of inquiries would be. “I’ll phone you tonight if anything turns up.”

“You’ll phone me in either case,” Ryan said. “Before six o’clock.”

Braca nodded. Ryan passed him and followed Nina to the arched entrance to the living room where she had stopped. She was staring at the stain, black on the patterned Persian carpet. Her eyes were wide and her face bone-white.

“Th-that’s where it happened?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Yes. Tests confirm he was struck with a statuette that was found sitting on the credenza there.” Ryan pointed. “He died instantly. One of the sharp edges made contact with the left temple area. If it had struck anywhere else, it probably would only have knocked him unconscious.”

“So it wasn’t planned.” she guessed.

“Probably wasn’t,” Ryan said, not certain of that by any means. Maybe whoever had hit him had fully intended to beat him to death with the thing and had hit a home run on the first swing.

She started to walk into the room but Ryan caught her arm. “Not yet,” he told her. “I’ve ordered Forensics to make a final sweep before anyone else goes in. We can walk around back. That could have been the point of entry.”

“Someone broke in?” she asked as she walked back to the front door.

“No sign of it. The French doors to the patio were probably open. Either that, or Desmond knew the killer well enough to invite him or her in the front door.”

She picked up on the pronouns. “Her? You think it could have been a woman?”

He shrugged. “Entirely possible.” In fact, Princess Samira Kamal of Tamir, Desmond’s former lover, had said in her statement that when she’d dropped by to see him a couple of weeks ago, Desmond had been getting cozy with an unidentified woman.

Farid Nasir, the princess’s bodyguard, had threatened Desmond’s life publicly. Fortunately for Farid, he had an ironclad alibi, as did the princess herself.

Rumor had it those two had just revealed they were married. Ryan had already decided he needed to interview Samira again to determine just what her relationship with the victim had really entailed and how Farid figured into the equation.

They might not be guilty, but they could have useful information that they hadn’t given the police.

“Let’s go,” he said, placing his hand at Nina Caruso’s back to usher her out. Touching her was a mistake. She tensed beneath his palm as a current passed between them. Not a good sign at all, and Ryan was sure she felt it, too. Still, he didn’t break the connection. He didn’t want to think about why that was.

The three of them went out the front, Joe closing and locking the door behind them as they headed around the side of the building. Ryan guided her past the tiny, landscaped fishpond that decorated the garden directly in back of the dwelling.

There were large windows in the living room that allowed a broad view of the garden. Conversely, anyone interested would have a terrific view of those rooms from the garden if the lights were on. French doors between the windows allowed access into the room.

“It looks so…safe,” Nina murmured, staring into the room where the murder had taken place. She moved out of his reach and walked over, almost touching the glass-paned doors that were now shut, a yellow band taped across them.

She stooped a bit and examined the levers that served as door handles. Ryan watched, thinking idly how much he missed the land of round doorknobs. But he wouldn’t go back there. Not for anything.

What was she thinking about? he wondered. Was she bemoaning the loss of a brother, or gloating over the fact that she’d gotten her money’s worth from a hired killer? He exchanged a look with Joe, who pursed his lips as if he was wondering, too.

When she crouched farther down, ostensibly to examine the flower bed next to the window, Ryan stepped back just out of hearing and motioned for Joe to accompany him. Quickly, he related what new information he’d gotten from Forensics, which was little more than they had already guessed.

There was no need to reiterate what he wanted done in the way of investigating Nina. Joe was an expert at that and needed no direction.

“You want me back here tonight?” he asked Ryan.

“No, we’ll have to let the regulars handle security. The cameras are all set, right?”

“Maybe we could have used a couple more, but at least we’ve got the doors covered,” Joe assured him.

“Good. I need you on the BI.” Background investigations were Joe’s specialty, and God only knew there were enough of those to run.

Joe nodded, smiling slightly at the sight of Nina Caruso on her knees, bending over to part the foliage in the flower bed. “Searching for tracks,” he observed. “You should hire her. She seems quite thorough.”

“Bite your tongue,” Ryan said, turning so that he blocked Joe’s view of Nina. That cute little behind of hers was enticing enough when she was standing up. “Why don’t you go phone for a guard to get over here?” he suggested. “You need to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and then get started on the other business.”

As soon as Joe started around front, Ryan stepped across the flagstones nearer to Nina. “We might as well go unless you’ve found something we overlooked.”

She glanced up at him, frowning. “Did you check for footprints around here?”

“We found the head gardener’s, but he has an alibi. Would you care to question him?” Ryan reached down and helped her up.

She brushed the soil off her hands and straightened her short jacket and skirt. Her dark, silky hair had fallen forward over one eye. Ryan had the craziest urge to brush it back in place for her. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead and backed off.

“I’d like to see him now,” Nina said, taking a huge breath as if to fortify herself.

“The gardener?”

She rolled her eyes, then closed them. Probably praying for patience. “No. I would like to see Desmond.” Ryan watched her swallow hard and brace her shoulders in defiance of her fears. “His body.”

Ryan’s hand, acting independently of his better judgment, took Nina by the elbow as he escorted her around the building. The driver had returned with the limo, minus Pavelli, who was probably giving the king an earful about the uncooperative American investigator.

Though Ryan knew it might help him gain information about Nina, he wished she would change her mind about going to the morgue. Hell, he wouldn’t even go there if it wasn’t necessary. It was, however, and he would be going anyway, whether she went or not. “I could drop you at the apartment. Are you sure you want to do this?”

She snatched her arm away from him. “Yes. I have to see him. If nothing else, I need to say goodbye.”

For a long, tense moment, Ryan held her gaze, trying to judge how she would hold up. “This is not like viewing the dearly departed in a funeral home, Nina. He’s on a slab. In the morgue.”

“Has… has there been an autopsy?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper again as if she couldn’t bear to ask the question out loud.

“No, not yet.” But there would be. Probably late this afternoon. “If we’re going, we’d better go now and get it over with,” he suggested. “Sure you’re up to it?”

She nodded, clutching her purse with white-knuckled hands. He wanted to take them in his and warm them a little because they looked so cold. Damn, she was tying him in knots. What was with him, wanting to touch her every chance he got?

He hated that she dredged up his protective instincts. Hell, she was a suspect, for crying out loud. How was he supposed to stay objective when she was batting those big brown eyes, pursing her lips and making him want to do a caveman act? This was not like him, not at all.

Damn Lorenzo and his bright ideas anyway. Why hadn’t he sicced her on the police? They probably weren’t doing diddly down at the station.

In the States, a private investigator would never have been put in charge of something that so obviously fell under official police jurisdiction, but the cops here hadn’t had the experience he’d had and the king and Lorenzo knew that. For the first time, Ryan regretted the royal appointment. More to the point, he resented its unwritten other duties as assigned clause.

“Come on, then,” he said to Nina. She got into the car and he followed her. At least he got to ride in style when she was along. He was sorely tempted to break open that fancy bar and try to get her drunk before the next stop. He could use a shot himself, but he’d sworn off.

As they cruised through traffic toward the new part of San Sebastian and King Augustus Hospital, Ryan felt obliged to give her some preparation. “When we get there, you’ll wait in the corridor. There’s a camera, so you won’t actually have to go into the lab. You’ll be able to view—”

“No,” she interrupted. “I need to see him. Up close.”

Ryan leaned his head back against the seat and pressed his lips together to stifle a curse.

She laid a hand on top of his. It felt delicate. Cool. None too steady. “Please?”

He caved, knowing it was a mistake. “Okay.” God, he was such a pushover. He was never like this! Never. What was the matter with him today?

Ryan reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and punched in the number of the morgue. Ryan figured the least he could do was notify Doc to clean up things as best he could for Nina.

Dr. Angelo answered the direct line himself.

“McDonough here,” Ryan said and skipped right over the usual pleasantries in the interest of time. “Look, Doc, I’m on my way over there now with the sister of Desmond Caruso. We won’t be using the viewer. Our ETA’s around twenty minutes. Can you manage?”

As he’d expected, Angelo tried to dissuade him, using the same arguments Ryan had used with Nina. Ryan cut him short in the middle of a sentence. “She insists. Set it up, will you?”

Nina had focused all her attention out the car window as if she were trying not to listen to the conversation.

Ryan couldn’t help himself. He reached down and grasped the hand she had fisted on the seat between them. To his surprise, she didn’t jerk it away, but opened her hand and clutched his fingers like a lifeline. She didn’t look at him or acknowledge his gesture of comfort in any way whatsoever. But she was damn near cracking his knuckles.

“It’ll be okay,” he told her, inane as it sounded.

She didn’t answer, and neither of them said another word for the rest of the ride over to the hospital, but she kept that death grip on his hand.

Damn. He knew what this felt like to her and wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. Well, at least it wasn’t a husband she was going to have to look at. It wasn’t her child.

The sudden image and echo of a laughing little girl, blond hair flying in the breeze as she ran, skittered through his mind. Ryan gritted his teeth and forced his mind away from the past. Six long years had given him lots of practice, and he should have been more successful at avoidance by this time.

When the car stopped in front of the hospital, Ryan exited with a calmness he did not feel. He knew his face showed nothing that would betray the roiling in his gut.

He focused on the nearby man-made lake, the precision of the landscaping surrounding King Augustus Hospital, the pink marble of its unusual structure. All the beauty that disguised an approaching nightmare.

Automatically he opened the car door for Nina Caruso and gave her his hand again, this time to assist her out. He let her go as soon as she was steady.

But he needed the connection, even if she didn’t, and placed his hand under her elbow. Yeah. Gentleman to the core, official as the day was long, a steady rock to lean on. A consummate liar and a fraud. He was shaking inside like he had d.t.’ s. He was dreading the morgue, possibly more than she was.

He had been there before in the course of his duties. The reaction was nothing new. He had dealt with it and would again, but he knew it would always be the same. The memories would flood right through that dam he had laboriously constructed. And then he’d have to rebuild it.

Maybe if he concentrated on her reaction, he wouldn’t be dwelling on his own so intensely. With that in mind, he was maybe a bit too solicitous on the way through the hospital and in the elevator that led to the lower level.

“Just try to focus on the fact that what you’re going to see is not really your brother,” he advised, still holding on to her arm. “It’s just a lifeless shell he once used. Disassociate if you can.”

She frowned at him, her dark eyes curious. “Are you all right?”

Ryan took a deep breath and tried a smile that felt unsuccessful, more like a grimace. “Yeah, sure. You?”

“I’m okay,” she replied, still frowning as they stepped out of the elevator.

The smell hit him, and they weren’t even close to the lab. She looked as if she’d noticed it, too. “Chemicals,” he explained. A lie. It was the smell of death. “Breathe through your mouth.”

Her lips opened as she complied. Full, tremulous lips that begged him to draw closer, to warm them. To warm his own.

Yeah, he thought, go ahead and think about that, fight the other thoughts. No, he reminded himself, her lips were definitely off-limits. Better lock on to something else.

But what? The odor of the place seemed to seep into him, to permeate his sinuses, to leave its taste on his tongue. Nothing was audible but their determined breathing, the echoes of his footsteps and the click of her high heels on the tiles.

Someone had placed pictures along the corridor, perhaps to distract visitors from what was to come, but the paintings were made up of shapes he didn’t recognize, done in vapid tints that reminded him of badly colored Easter eggs.

Nina removed her elbow from his grasp and took his hand as if she, too, were looking for a port in a storm. He laced his fingers through hers.

They halted in front of a door marked Laboratory, next to which was a window set into the wall. The window had kept distance between the viewer and the body before modern technology, with its camera equipment, had made it unnecessary. The blinds were drawn on the inside.

He gave Nina’s hand a bracing little squeeze and then released it as he tapped on the door with one knuckle.

Doc opened it and stood back to allow them entrance. Ryan forced himself to enter before Nina, as if he could police up the area and make it less terrible if Doc had not. Of course there was nothing he could do about it at that point, but he’d have acted the same upon entering any room with a woman where there was a chance of anything threatening. The urge to run interference for a female had been ingrained from childhood, and he’d never been able to shake it. Thank you, Mama.

Doc had removed the body from the drawer, had placed it on a table and had covered it with a pale green sheet. There was nothing else in view—no instruments or other cadavers—to cause her any horror, but Ryan supposed the remains of her brother would be enough to do that.

Even though they weren’t touching now, he could feel her tension. Or maybe it was his. Ryan couldn’t tell. She appeared calm enough, though the lights in the lab faded her complexion to white.

Doc stood waiting to be introduced. Ryan jerked his attention to that chore and kept it brief. “Nina Caruso, Dr. Angelo.”

They nodded to one another and Doc spoke in that deep, resonant voice that reminded Ryan of Boris Karloff. “My condolences, Ms. Caruso.” He looked a bit like Boris, come to think of it.

“Thank you,” she said in automatic response. “May I see him now?”

She wanted to do her duty and get the hell out of there, Ryan thought, but no more than he did. He fought the flashes of memory and pain associated with another time, another morgue, two pull-out, refrigerated drawers containing… He shook his head, cleared his throat and tried to clear his mind of his own feelings so he could observe hers. After all, that’s the reason he’d let her come, he reminded himself. She looked up at him, silently asking him to accompany her to the table. Ryan slid an arm around her, his hand at her waist, and guided her to the examination table.

Doc turned back the sheet so that only the head and shoulders were visible. Thank God he’d done everything he could. There was no blood. Even the gash on the temple, deep as it was, didn’t look particularly lethal now that it had been cleaned up.

Contrary to Ryan’s warning to Nina, the body didn’t look radically different from what she might have viewed if it had been prepared for a funeral and lying in a casket, except for the absence of a suit and tie and a bit of flesh putty to fill in the wound. Ryan had not been involved in the case or seen the body at the crime scene before it had been removed and brought here. But even there it wouldn’t have been nearly as gruesome as some he’d seen.

Nina stepped closer and touched the forehead, brushing a lock of dark hair from the brow. “He’s… so cold.” Two tears made tracks down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. For a long moment, she stood looking down at the remains and mouthed the word goodbye.

So much for disassociation. Ryan turned away. He realized he should have done what she was doing six years ago. He should have touched. He should have wept. He should have said his goodbyes and let go. Instead, he’d felt a welling of rage so great he hadn’t been able to contain it.

Hell, he couldn’t even remember what he’d said then, what he’d done, but he knew it hadn’t been anywhere near as dignified as this. The things he did recall he was still working to forget.

His partner, Sam, had gotten him out of that morgue somehow, and when reason had returned—a brief spate of it, anyway—Ryan had been able to do what had to be done. Only when his obligations had been met had he fallen apart. Then had begun that lost year, twelve months of nothingness. Dragging his mind back to the present, now almost thankful for where he was and for any excuse to dismiss the past, Ryan carefully examined the victim’s wound and checked the rest of the body for bruising and lividity. He noted the hands. No trauma there, which meant no fistfight. Hardly a surprise. No needle marks that he could ascertain. “Any evidence of illegal substance?” he asked the doctor.

“None evident. Wait for the lab results. That will be in the autopsy report.”

“I guess that’s it,” Ryan said, backing away from the table as the doctor covered the body. A memory flashed. Another covering up, the finality of it triggering something savage in him.

“I’m ready to go,” Nina said.

“Thanks, Doc,” he muttered to Angelo as he guided her out. “I’ll call you later.”

He would have to come here again, Ryan thought with resignation. After the autopsy, he’d have to come back. It never got any easier.

She appeared to be completely recovered, Ryan thought when they exited the elevator on the ground floor. Dry-eyed and composed now, she seemed to be in deep thought. Not at all the emotional wreck she might have been after seeing a beloved brother’s dead body.

Ryan filed away the impression that the bond of affection between Desmond and Nina Caruso must not have been all that tight if her grief was this superficial.

Chapter 3

When they emerged from the hospital, Ryan sucked in a deep breath of fresh air. Better. He squinted against the bright sunlight, welcoming it.

The limo cruised up to the curb and Ryan automatically reached past Nina to open her door. She slid inside.

When he got in, she turned to him and said the last thing he would have expected. “He wasn’t struck from behind.”

“No,” Ryan agreed as he fastened his seat belt and motioned for her to do the same.

“Then whoever did it was facing him, holding the statuette?” “Yes, given the placement of the wound.”

“Could I see the weapon?” she asked.

He sighed. “Nina, you’re taking this Murder She Wrote business a little too seriously, you know that?”

“Maybe,” she admitted, “but I think you should humor me. I do have permission to assist you.”

Well, hell. Ryan couldn’t tell her the real reason the king had sent her directly to him.

“Okay. Tomorrow. We’ll go over the evidence then. Today I think you’ve done enough, don’t you?”

She looked pointedly at her watch. “It’s barely one o’clock.”

“We’ll grab a bite of lunch and drop you at the apartment so you can rest.”

“But—”

“No buts,” he warned. “This is not the only case I’m working on, Nina. There’s plenty I have to do this afternoon that has nothing to do with this. I can’t drag you all over the island while I take care of business.”

“But tomorrow you’ll be back on this case, right?”

“Yes, tomorrow morning.”

“And I can go with you?”

He nodded emphatically. “Now, what would you like to eat?”

In a self-conscious gesture, she tucked her hair behind her ears, crossed her arms beneath her breasts and looked out the opposite window. “Oatmeal,” she mumbled.

“Excuse me?”

Defiantly, she turned her head and pinned him with a glare. “I said oatmeal. With wheat toast and butter and cinnamon. And hot tea. Earl Grey with lemon.”

“You’re joking, right? I don’t know anywhere in San Sebastian that serves oatmeal.”

She raised one dark brow in challenge. “Well, you did ask.”

Ryan shook his head. He’d known she would be trouble from the minute he’d laid eyes on her. “Your wish is my command. Apparently that’s turning out to be my phrase for the day.”

He leaned forward, pushed the intercom button and ordered the driver to stop at the nearest grocery.

“You’ll have to cook it yourself unless you want me to send you back to the palace,” he told her emphatically. “I don’t do oatmeal.”

* * *

Almost an hour and three grocery stores later, Nina Caruso, her oatmeal, Earl Grey tea, and various other containers of comfort food were safely deposited in the apartment adjacent to his.

She could eat her wallpaper paste and take a nap. He had to figure out how he was going to solve this murder while she was poking her lovely little nose into every aspect of it. All in all, he’d rather stick pins in his eyes, but he had his orders.

Her presence and demands had crowded out the possibility of his lapsing into a couple of hours of depression after the visit to the morgue the way he usually did. For that distraction, he ought to thank her.

It bothered him that she hadn’t seemed all that upset to see her brother’s body. Oh, she’d acted nervous and cried a little, but that could have been for show. Ryan just wished he hadn’t had his own renewal of grief to deal with at the time. He could have been a hell of a lot more accurate in judging whether hers really existed.

He arrived back at his office and went over the other cases he had pending, made a few necessary phone calls and worked on putting Nina Caruso out of his mind until Joe called just before six. “Turn on the news,” Joe advised.

Ortano’s news clip stated that Nina had never been to the island before. She had come now to see that the investigation of her brother’s murder was carried out expeditiously and to offer what assistance she could. Her words to Ortano verified that.

Other than stating the family connection and capitalizing a bit on the emotional aspect of the event, the reporter had little to add of any consequence. The clip was surprisingly low-key. The video was fantastic. Ryan switched off the set and returned to the phone call.

Joe assured Ryan that calls between Nina and her brother—all except the last of which had originated with her—had been few and far between and of brief duration. The last had been two weeks ago, placed from Desmond’s guesthouse to La Jolla, California, where Nina lived. She had neither made nor received any calls since she’d arrived in Montebello.

As for her possessing a motive to have Desmond killed, Joe had not discovered one. Fear, Ryan dismissed. Revenge or jealousy were possibilities. Greed was a contender, too, but Joe assured him that Nina Caruso had a substantial trust fund and a very healthy investment portfolio.

There was an insurance policy her father had taken out on Desmond when he was a child. The premiums on it were paid through a trust which, now that the original capital was no longer needed, would also become Nina’s. But was that enough to prompt her to arrange a murder when she was already fairly well off?

Ryan’s gut told him no. At least, he hoped that was his gut and not another part of his anatomy.

When he called her around seven o’clock to make dinner arrangements, he received no answer. Jet lag must have finally caught up with her, he supposed. Just as well, Ryan thought, totally denying the spark of disappointment he felt that he wouldn’t see her again until morning.

Maybe he should stop in and check on her. She could have experienced a delayed reaction to all that had happened, he told himself. She might be all alone and crying herself sick right now. Suddenly he found himself hurrying to get there and see if that was so.

Nina wasted little time planning the rest of her day after Ryan McDonough left her alone. It was like pulling teeth to get him to let her do anything with regard to Desmond’s murder, and she needed to get on with it. She had a few weeks’ vacation built up, but her job at home wouldn’t wait forever.

She mapped out what she would do as she prepared her lunch and ate it. Rest was necessary. Ryan had been right about that, so she would take an hour or so in preparation for tonight. Later, she would call a cab, return to the palace and see what she could learn about the last days of Desmond’s life. After that, she meant to go over the scene of the crime with a fine-tooth comb.

Forensics should be finished with their official duties there by now. They’d had all day yesterday and today. Nina seriously doubted she would find anything significant that professionals had overlooked, but she needed to get back into that guesthouse all the same.

If nothing else, seeing how Desmond had lived, getting a feeling for his lifestyle here and walking the rooms he had inhabited might give her some clue as to the man he had become since they had last seen each other.

If Ryan McDonough objected when he found out she’d been there, too bad. At least he’d know she wasn’t going to be satisfied with little pats on the head in lieu of his accepting her help. She might not be a qualified investigator, but at least her dedicated involvement might speed things up a little.

When she’d finished eating and cleared the dishes, Nina went into the bedroom, kicked off her shoes, lay down on the puffy slate-blue comforter and closed her eyes.

She liked the accommodations arranged for her well enough. Efficiency over elegance, more practical than pretty. It suited her. Nina liked to think of herself in just those terms. She wondered whether Ryan McDonough’s place next-door suited him. She fell asleep trying to decide what sort of decor would.

She awoke at seven-thirty, disgruntled when she realized she’d slept most of the day. Hurriedly she showered, then chose a lightweight navy jacket and skirt with a matching silk shell. She found her lowest-heeled pumps—dressy, but still great for walking.

What she was wearing looked businesslike, she thought, like something an investigator should wear. It wouldn’t quite do for dinner at the palace, of course, but she wouldn’t presume to impose on the royal family anyway. If she could manage to avoid them, they wouldn’t even realize she was there. This evening, she’d stick to speaking with employees who might have served Desmond in some capacity. Surely there would be footmen or maids around somewhere to give her some names and locations of people who had served at the guesthouse. She would simply explain what she needed and tell them she was working with Ryan.

And then she would see inside his home. She nodded with self-satisfaction, recalling how stealthily she had checked the French doors at the back of the place and noticed that someone had left them unlocked. Didn’t leaving the crime scene vulnerable that way indicate McDonough was not taking his job seriously enough?

She couldn’t figure the man out. She’d only known him for a day and during that short span, he’d exuded charm and exhibited annoyance, very nearly simultaneously. He’d declared his dedication to the job and talked a good game, but had done remarkably little in the way of investigating, as far as she could tell.

He had offered her compassion when they’d gone to see Desmond’s body, but had broken out in a sweat himself. He hadn’t even asked the doctor many pertinent questions.

She picked up a hint of humor occasionally, yet he certainly could be brusque.

What a mass of contradictions the man was. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to know him any better than she already did. He made her nervous, and she wasn’t certain why.

But leaving the back entrance to the victim’s guesthouse open was definitely careless on the part of the investigator in charge of the murder case. If he gave her any grief when he found out what she had done tonight, she’d be quick to point that out to him.

The best defense was a good offense, and that was a fact.

Nina called a cab. When the doorbell chimed a few minutes later, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door, remarking to herself how prompt the taxi service was here.

She probably should have rented a car on her arrival, but she hadn’t had time to go online and see if there were any peculiar driving rules in Montebello. Or if an international license would be required to drive here. Besides, she absolutely hated driving unfamiliar vehicles. With her luck, she’d have to accept one without an automatic transmission and with the steering wheel on the wrong side. Montebello wasn’t that large. Wherever she couldn’t walk, she’d take a cab.

When she opened the door, her heart sank. “McDonough!”

He smiled, his eyes focused on her shoulder bag. “Going somewhere?”

“Uh, out to eat.” Nina couldn’t meet his eyes. He seemed to divine her every thought, and she was no good at lying. Would he guess what she was planning?

“I’ll join you,” he said.

Ryan had no clue where she’d been planning to go. If he’d been using his brain at the time, he would have pretended not to notice she was holding that purse and how she was dressed when she answered the door. He would have asked how she was doing, wished her good-night, then waited out of sight and followed her. But she could be telling the truth about going out to eat, in which case, he was only doing the hospitable thing, escorting her to a nice restaurant and buying her evening meal.

He knew he was bending too far backward, giving her too much benefit of the doubt because he didn’t want her to be involved in this murder. And to be honest, he really didn’t believe she was. Given how attracted he was to her, however, Ryan wasn’t sure he could trust his instincts right now.

“We’ll go somewhere close by,” he said, determined to give her the chance later to do whatever she intended. And he would follow. It was his job, after all. “It would be best if we make an early evening of it so you can rest.”

“Yes, that would be good,” she agreed, still not looking directly at him. Guilt was written all over her.

Either she was up to no good or his presence made her uncomfortable. She sure as hell had that effect on him.

“I’m expecting a cab,” she told him.

He smiled cordially. “We’ll wait for it then.” His own car was less than thirty feet away, but she didn’t know what he drove and he wanted to keep it that way, at least for tonight.

It was no chore to keep up a running patter about the local sights she should see while she was in Montebello. She didn’t seem to be paying much attention anyway, preoccupied as she was.

“Ah, here we go,” he announced as the white Audi pulled up to the entrance to the building. He took her arm and led her out to the vehicle where the driver was already opening the door for them. “Hey, Luigi. How’s the wife?” he asked the man.

“She is good, sir. We have another son since last I saw you.”

“Congratulations, Mano! That makes five, right?” Ryan asked as he got in.

“Four, sir. Our second was a daughter,” the driver said, beaming.

Ryan noted Nina’s consternation. He smiled again. “Our world is small here. Tourists and visiting businesspeople are the only strangers.”

She made no comment on that, but he could see that it upset her. Another mistake on his part, giving her that information. Now she would be leery of hiring another cab for fear he’d find out where she was going. If she planned on going anywhere she didn’t want him to know about, of course.

Ryan felt a little better about his lack of objectivity now. He was back on the job as he should be. Everyone was a suspect, even the woman who had temporarily thrown him for a loop.

“You like Thai cuisine?” he asked hopefully. Ryan hadn’t been crazy about the time he’d spent bumming around in that country, but the food had been good. He had regained a few of the pounds he’d lost and begun his recovery there.

“No, nothing oriental,” she said, looking rather glum.

“Please tell me you eat something besides hot cereal or we’re out of luck.”

To her credit, she managed a grin. “I love Italian food.”

“Well, you’re in luck.” He nodded and instructed Luigi, “Take us to Pirandello’s.”

“They have a new chef there,” he informed Ryan. “You must try his tortellini.”

“Will do.” He turned again to Nina. “I hope you have a good appetite. Picky eaters annoy me.”

She pursed her lips for a second. “Well, I surely wouldn’t want to annoy you.”

Ryan laughed full out, thinking about how annoyed he’d been for most of the day because of her. Right now he was feeling pretty damned confident again, since he was on top of the whole situation.

So she was beautiful, he thought as he looked at her without even trying to conceal his interest. So she rang his chimes a little. Okay, a lot. He had faced the worst nightmare included in this job with that trip to the morgue today and had managed to handle it much better than usual. Maybe his heart had hardened enough now that nothing could affect him to the point where he couldn’t function.

Even if he discovered Nina Caruso had paid someone to cap Desmond, Ryan could do what had to be done. He’d feel disappointed, sure, but he would be able to carry through and process her as he would anyone else.

Feelings did pass, he knew now, if you shoved them aside enough times and replaced them with a purpose. Giving in to them could wreck your life in nothing flat. He’d found that out the hard way.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” she asked. Demanded.

Ryan forced a smile. “Nothing. Just hungry.” And he was. “I skipped lunch,” he said.

And he would skip feeding this hunger for her, too, he thought as he tried not to devour her with his eyes. “Sometimes I get busy and forget,” he admitted.

But he wouldn’t forget what he was supposed to do with respect to Nina Caruso, he promised himself. Or what he was not supposed to do.

Nina had hardly been able to do justice to the meal. McDonough’s arrival had thrown her plans off-kilter. Now she wouldn’t arrive at the palace in time to interview anyone about Desmond. But she could still go to the guesthouse, if the guards would let her onto the grounds. There had been no problem that morning when she had identified herself, so she didn’t anticipate any tonight.

As soon as McDonough said good-night and left, she hurried to the phone and called a different cab company. Thankfully, there were three to choose from. Hopefully, this driver wouldn’t be one of the detective’s friends.

Perhaps she had lucked out, Nina thought, as she entered the taxi a quarter hour later. This guy was obviously Middle Eastern and both his English and Italian were nearly nonexistent. He did understand where she wanted to go, however, and took her straight to the palace.

Nina paid the cabbie at the gates and then identified herself to the smartly uniformed guard who stood there holding a wicked-looking machine gun. He examined the pass she’d been given that morning when she had first arrived, compared it to her passport, gave both back to her. He required her to open her purse, which he gave a cursory examination. “Shall I phone for a cart to transport you to the palace?” he asked politely. “It is some distance.”

She smiled up at him. “No, thank you. It is such a beautiful night, I prefer to stroll. That is allowed, isn’t it?”

“If you wish. May I ask the purpose of your visit this evening, the better to give you direction?”

Nina knew he was not asking out of politeness, but that he was required to know. “My half brother was the king’s nephew. The one who was recently killed. A couple of the maids who knew him invited me by to talk.”

“Ah yes, such a tragedy that was. Please approach through the main entrance. I will ring up and have someone meet you at the door. Have a pleasant visit, signorina.”

“Thank you very much,” she said, smiling, amazed that he was actually going to let her roam around unaccompanied. She took the well-lighted path to the left of the fountain and flower beds that graced the center of the enormous courtyard, though it led to the opposite side of the palace from the guesthouse where Desmond had lived. Periodically, she glanced over her shoulder until she saw that the guard had turned to mind his station at the gate. Then she quickly cut across to the other side.

Once surrounded by the verdant gardens, Nina felt even more vulnerable, rather than safe as she’d expected. So many times she had read about people experiencing the feeling of being followed and she felt that now. It must be guilt that prompted it, she realized, since she was not supposed to be here doing what she was doing.

So large were the palace grounds, it took her a good half hour, squeezing around hedges and ducking low-hanging limbs of trees to reach the back entrance to the guesthouse. She stopped to listen often to see whether anyone was behind her, but never saw or heard any indication that there was.

She had been on the lookout for guards patrolling, but had only noticed two marching slowly around the outer wings of the palace itself. They looked as if they were there for show more than anything else since they stared straight ahead, didn’t alter the precision of their steps and never even scanned the grounds. Those offering real protection would probably be outside the walls to prevent the entry of anyone unauthorized. Nina shivered to think how easily she had gotten in. Had Desmond’s killer gained entry this way? Surely the police had interviewed the guards on duty to find that out. She’d remind Ryan to get the names and do just that.

The lights were off in the guesthouse, and no one stood guard out back. There might be someone in front, she figured, so she would have to be careful, at least until she had completed her search. At that point, she wouldn’t really care if she were caught. She would enjoy informing McDonough that he should have secured the place if he didn’t want people inside it.

Boldly, Nina walked up to the back doors and opened them. One of the hinges squeaked in protest. Just inside the doorway, she slipped off her pumps and picked them up.

Through the large back windows, moonlight combined with the muted electric lanterns placed about the garden provided enough illumination to see her way around the dining and living room areas. Nina had a penlight in her purse, but didn’t want to use it unless she had to.

The place seemed sterile as a newly built home, containing no feeling that anyone had ever lived here.

The floor felt a bit gritty beneath her feet. Nina crouched down and touched it, discovering another reason why the room lacked any warmth or lived-in qualities. Someone had rolled up the plush Persian rugs and removed them since she had been there.

Perhaps McDonough had ordered it done to go over the rugs for further traces of evidence. She hadn’t thought he would be that thorough. Maybe she would have to reassess her opinion of him if that were the case.

She approached the area where the bloodstain had been, where Desmond had lain after the attack. She could see where his lifeblood had seeped through the rug and stained the light marble tiles. Unwilling to stand on the exact spot, Nina kept as close to the wall as possible.

“Ouch!” she yipped as she stepped on what felt like a tack. Quickly, she backed up to the hearth, dropped her shoes and sat down to pull the sharp object out of her instep. When she extracted it, she found it was not the tack she’d expected. Fishing out her penlight, she held it close to the object and examined it.

An earring! A clue? She had found a clue!

Of course, it might have been here for ages. Or it could belong to one of Desmond’s friends, not the person who killed him. Still, it was something Mr. Royal Investigator had missed. Nina felt a glimmer of satisfaction in that. Now he would have to admit she could be of help to him.

She tucked the earring into the zippered compartment inside her purse, switched off the penlight, slung the purse over her shoulder and continued her search. Maybe she could find something else.

The house was larger than it seemed from the outside. The second bedroom she checked was the largest and probably the one Desmond had used. There were no clues to be found as far as Nina could determine. The drawers and wardrobe had been emptied. A fine dust coated everything. Fingerprinting dust, she supposed.

Nina had just reached the open door to the bathroom when she heard the noise. The hinge from the French doors off the dining room creaked.

It must be the guard from out front doing a routine check, she thought. She listened for a few seconds, then ducked into the bathroom and quietly closed the door. She stepped into the bathtub and crouched low behind the door of thick frosted glass to hide.

Oh, lord, where were her shoes? By the door? On the hearth?

Her heart hammered so loudly, she was afraid whoever had come in would hear it and find her immediately. Surely it was the guard from the front door doing a regular check. She hated to think who else it could be or why she was so frantic not to be discovered after all.

In spite of that reluctance to guess who was in the house with her, Nina did recall that no lights had come on just prior to or just after she’d heard that creak of the door. Wouldn’t a guard need light to check the place out? No reason for him not to light up the place. Oh, God.

She remained exactly where she was as time passed, scarcely daring to breathe or shift her position against the end of the tub enclosure.

The air inside the bathroom felt exceedingly warm and she wished she could shrug out of her suit jacket. But she didn’t dare move. Her silk blouse clung to her skin and her hose felt like they would melt on her legs. Perspiration dotted her face and made her scalp tingle. She was breathing through her mouth, practically panting. Nerves.

Now was no time to develop panic attacks, she cautioned herself. Be calm. Wait till they leave. Grab your shoes and get the heck out of here.

Furtive rustling sounds from the bedroom had her scrunching down even farther in the bathtub, holding her breath until there was a roaring in her ears. When she did draw in a deep breath, she recognized the acrid odor. Her nostrils began to burn and her eyes stung. Smoke!

The place was on fire!

In full-blown panic now, she scrambled to her feet and out of the tub. She grabbed the door handle, then stopped herself and flattened her palm against the door. Hot! She didn’t dare open it. The fire roared and crackled audibly on the other side.

Hurriedly climbing up on the commode, Nina raked the curtains aside and shoved open the tiny window. No way could she fit through it, she thought, but she had to try.

Shoving her head, one shoulder and arm through the opening, she screamed for all she was worth. When she grew hoarse, she stopped and began wriggling, gaining only an inch now and then in her struggle to break free. Frustrated and panicked, she screamed again.

This time a siren screamed back. She glanced to her left. Glass and flames had burst outward through the front window of the living room.

People were running toward the guesthouse through the gardens, two men dashing toward her. McDonough shouted, but she couldn’t distinguish his words.

“Help!” she cried. “Over here! I’m stuck!”

Together, Ryan and the other man dragged over a wrought-iron bench, climbed up and began hammering at the top part of the window that had her trapped, breaking the panes and mullions until the entire thing gave way. They roughly shifted her sideways so that her hips fit through the opening and finally yanked her free. The three of them tumbled into the bushes below, landing in a heap.

She’d no sooner hit the ground than McDonough had her in his arms and was running away from the building. Oddly, she thought of the purse and the earring inside it. Grasping at the shoulder bag, she clutched it to her and sighed with relief. It was still on her shoulder. She hadn’t lost her clue.

If it was a clue.

Chapter 4

Ryan dumped her unceremoniously into the back seat of a waiting car. “Are you hurt?” he growled, grasping her hands and bringing them to his face. He took a deep breath in each of her palms, then released her. A strange thing to do, she thought, looking down at them, flexing her fingers.

“Um, no, I don’t think,” she replied, sounding rough, either from the smoke or the screams. Her hips were banged up and her throat felt raw. She glanced down and saw a cut on her lower leg from the broken glass. It stung a bit, but she was out of that firetrap and that was all that mattered to her at the moment.

“Good God, you’re bleeding,” he muttered, running his hand beneath her calf. Without warning, he slid both his hands up under her skirt and tugged down her ripped panty hose. She had no thought to object, as she watched him discard them and straighten her clothes.

“Medic! Over here!” he called, his voice deep and carrying on the night air above the racket around them. Then he spoke softly to her. “Listen to me, Nina. Did you see anyone inside the house?”

“No,” she rasped. “Whoever set the fire was there, but I didn’t see them.”

“You didn’t start it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course not!”

A man in white came loping over. “Her leg,” McDonough said, holding it to examine it himself now that it was bare. “Superficial cut, but it needs cleaning.” He allowed the medic to look. “Let’s get her over there.”

He helped her out of the car and picked her up again, carrying her to the small white emergency vehicle that had pulled up several car lengths away in the middle of a flower bed. He set her inside the double doors in back. “Get in there and stay in there, you hear me? I’ll be back in a minute.”

Nina nodded and crawled up on the cot. She was exhausted. And scared. But no one would dare try to hurt her in front of so many people. Would they?

In the confusion, anyone could approach. The EMT started to climb in. If he closed those doors, she would be alone with a stranger. God, anyone could steal a white coat!

She scrambled out before he could stop her and began running. “McDonough! Ryan!” she yelled. Her voice wouldn’t cooperate, emerging at little more than a ragged whisper. Oh, God, oh, God, where had he gone? “Ryan!”

Strong arms closed around her from behind and she began to struggle, determined to get away.

“Nina! Calm down. It’s me. You’re okay now,” he said, his tone sounding angry, yet with the only power available to relieve her mind. He turned her around, grasping her shoulders. “Look at me.”

Nina flung her arms around his neck and held on. “Don’t leave,” she gasped.

He lifted her again, holding her close, his jacket rough against her cheek, his face pressing hard against her hair.

“I’ve got you. I’m here, Nina. Settle down now. We’ll go back to the ambulance and I promise I’ll stay with you. Okay? You’ll be fine. Safe.”

She nodded, sniffling, as she burrowed as close to him as she could get. There was no one else in this entire country she could trust at the moment. “Thank God you were here!” Then a thought occurred. “Why were you here? How did you get here so quickly?”

“Followed you, you little nitwit. I just gave you too much slack in the leash.”

“Leash?” she demanded, suddenly incensed. “What am I, a puppy?”

“Don’t start with me, all right? I was minutes behind you, but you faked me out. From what you told the guard, I thought you’d gone into the palace to ask questions. By the time I found out you weren’t there, the fire alarm sounded. Now hush. We’ll discuss that later. Count on it.”

“Okay,” she murmured, grasping him tighter as another stranger approached.

“Take it easy,” he said soothingly. “It’s Dr. Chiara. He’s the palace physician.”

Ryan placed her back inside the ambulance and left her there with the doors open while he spoke with the doctor. Nina gave up trying to hear what they were saying. The noise outside obliterated everything else. She did keep her eye on him, however, to make certain he stayed near.

The doctor checked her out, administered oxygen and gave her an injection.

“I should send you to the hospital overnight,” he told her.

“No!” she argued. “I just want to go back to my apartment.”

Dr. Chiara addressed Ryan. “She should be fine, but watch her. If she shows any sign of respiratory distress, get her over to Augustus on the double.” He patted her arm.

“I will, Nick. Thanks,” Ryan said.

After the doctor had bandaged the cut on her leg, Ryan carried her back to the car he had taken her to after the rescue. This time he put her in front and went around to the driver’s side.

“I wish you’d agree to go to the hospital,” he grumbled.

“Not a chance.”

“Stubborn.”

Though he was obviously angry with her, he still hadn’t upbraided her the way she’d expected, nor had he threatened her with any reprisals. But she knew he wasn’t through with her. Not by a long shot.

As soon as he fastened his seat belt and checked hers, he sat there, silently pinning her with a gaze so intense, she felt interrogated already. Tired. Wrung out. Incredibly sleepy. “What in the world was in that shot?”

“Antibiotic,” he snapped, then abruptly launched into another tirade. “You had no business being in that guesthouse. You nearly got yourself killed.”

“I wanted to see for myself,” she muttered, “because… because Desmond lived and died there. I promise you I didn’t strike any matches.”

He said nothing, and Nina felt obliged to fill the silence.

“I swear I didn’t,” she insisted, her words slurring. “I only wanted to be in there by myself, see if I could feel what he felt, what he was like. Only… only there was nothing there of him.” Tears leaked down her cheeks and she swiped at them angrily. “And then…”

“Did you see anything?” McDonough asked finally.

“No, nothing. I was in the bedroom. Heard the back door creak. I hid in the bathroom, in the shower. Next thing I knew, the place was on fire.”

“Whoever started it used an accelerant. Had to, in order for it to spread that quickly,” he told her. “The arsonist went out through the back. As soon as the guard out front saw flames through the window, he reported it.”

“You sniffed my hands,” she accused. “You thought I set it.” Nina wished she could summon the energy to get really angry about that. But she was so tired.

“And now I know you didn’t.” He sighed. “You need to get to bed.”

Panic begin to rise again. “You won’t leave?”

His mouth quirked, more in resignation than reassurance, she thought. “No. I won’t be leaving.”

“Thanks,” she said, breathing the word as she leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. She felt like a hundred and ten pounds of molten lead.

Nina was vaguely aware of the car stopping near the flashing lights of the fire truck and Ryan speaking to someone out the car window, but she couldn’t seem to rouse herself enough to listen to the conversation.

Tomorrow he would tell her everything he had found out. Tomorrow, when she showed him the earring, he would have to agree that she’d discovered something his team had overlooked, even if it was insignificant. Then he would take her attempts to help seriously. He would have to.

The car rolled forward, soon picked up speed, and the noises associated with fighting the fire faded into the distance. She yawned widely, drawing in much needed oxygen to try and stay awake, but her eyelids refused to open.

“Not antibiotic,” Nina guessed.

“Nope.”

“’Gainst the law,” she said, yawning again, wishing she sounded more irate.

“Sue me in the morning.” Had he chuckled? Was he laughing at her?

“Found a clue,” Nina murmured, hardly able to form the words.

“What?” he demanded. No humor now, she noted. “What did you find?”

She sensed his full attention on her now. Payback time. Nina allowed her head to loll to one side on the headrest and faked a soft snore. She knew the second or third snore would probably be for real and tried not to smile.

The smell of fresh coffee ought to bring her around, Ryan thought as he waved the steaming cup of it close to her nose.

She gave a little grunt of pleasure in her throat and turned her head on the pillow, following the scent. Her eyes opened slowly, lids still at half-mast as she licked her lips.

Ryan could no more suppress his rush of lust than he could have held back the tide in the harbor. The feeling took him by surprise at the oddest times. She should be haggard and pale after the night she’d endured. Instead she looked as if she’d given some lucky man a wild night of hot sex. No, not that exactly, he decided. Too innocent for that. Too unaware of her sensuality.

He continued to tempt her with the coffee, moving it closer, then drawing it away to watch her seek it out. Then he realized what he was doing and stopped the motion immediately.

He took a fortifying breath and looked away as he spoke. “C’mon, Nina, wake up. How am I supposed to get any work done if you sleep all day?”

She slowly pushed herself up until she was leaning on one elbow. His peripheral vision caught that and also noted the covers slipping down around her waist.

He’d undressed her in the dark last night, leaving her bra and panties on so she wouldn’t freak out when she woke up. Still, he’d had a rough time getting to sleep on her sofa after that. His imagination had been working overtime, fueled by the remembered sensation of her velvety skin against his hands.

The touching had been unavoidable, of course. Inadvertent and innocent. Totally innocent. Reliving it later and adding fantasies was not, he admitted. Neither were his thoughts at the moment, seeing her deliciously rumpled, tousled and sleepy-eyed.

“Timeizzit?” she grumbled, reaching for the coffee like it was an antidote to poison she’d just ingested.

“Nearly seven o’clock. Up and at ’em. I’ve been up for two hours.” And awake a lot longer than that, damn her luscious hide.

She grunted and gulped another slug of caffeine, eyeing him evilly over the edge of the cup. “Not fair. You weren’t drugged.”

Ryan shrugged. “I wasn’t a basket case.”

“Neither was I,” she argued, shoving the cup back at him as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “Get out of here so I can change.”

As she looked down at the scrap of lacy pink bra and whisper thin silk bikini bottoms she was wearing, he watched the light dawn.

“Wait a minute! Who took my clothes off?”

Ryan backed out of the bedroom, stopping in the doorway. “Who do you think?”

“Pervert,” she growled. She snatched the covers up to her chest, leaving an excellent view of those long, long legs, lovely despite the six-inch bandage marring one of them. When he managed to drag his gaze up to her face, he saw her shooting daggers and gritting her teeth. “I think I’m reporting you to the police! That’s what I think!”

“Okay, enhance my reputation if that’s what you want to do. In the meantime, I’m on my way to rehash some of the evidence and see what else needs doing. I just wanted you awake and aware before I left. Be sure you keep the doors locked while I’m gone.”

She jumped up, dropping the sheet, abandoning her attempt at modesty. “Wait! I’m coming with you.”

He’d known that. He’d already decided it would probably be better if he didn’t leave her here alone anyway. The fire might have been meant to destroy the crime scene, but Nina had almost died in it. Whoever set that fire must have seen her enter the guesthouse and realized she was still there. Setting it in the bedroom adjacent to the bathroom where she was hiding could have been meant to prevent her escape.

It was his responsibility to see that nothing like that happened again, and the best way to do it was to get her out of Montebello as soon as possible.

Ryan downed the rest of her coffee as he watched her dash for the bathroom. The back view was as nice as the front. “Ten minutes!” he called out as she slammed the door.

He prepared to wait thirty. She was ready in fifteen, marching into the living room, looking like she’d spent a full hour in front of the mirror.

Not bad, he reflected, remembering how long it used to take… No, he wasn’t going there this morning. But for some reason, the flash of memory hadn’t stabbed him in the heart the way it once had. He realized he’d been smiling when he thought back to the time when he’d been a husband, listening to the hair dryer, hearing Kath humming off-key while she put on her face and he tapped his foot waiting.

He shook it off, promising himself he would examine his reaction later when he was alone. Test the waters with one of the happier recollections and see how it went. Not here and now with the feisty Ms. Caruso raring to play Watson to his Sherlock.

“What did you do with my purse?” she demanded.

Ryan pointed to the chair by the door. “You know that’s the first thing a good cop looks for when a woman’s reported missing?”

She glanced up from examining the contents of her shoulder bag, zipping this pocket and unzipping that one. “Hmm?”

“Handbag. If the purse is still there and she’s gone, it’s a sure bet there’s been foul play. Women won’t take off voluntarily without their stuff.”

“Don’t be sexist. You go anywhere without your wallet?” “Point taken. You about ready to hit the road?”

She smiled smugly, holding up one fist. “You about ready to add to your collection of evidence?”

“The clue you mentioned,” he guessed, returning her smile. “What have you got? That kept me awake last night.” Among other things. It had also prompted him to search her purse and clothing.

“I meant it to. Are you going to guess which hand, or just take this and have a look?”

Ryan accepted what she offered. “An earring. Not yours, I take it.” It was for a pierced ear and hers were pierced. He had assumed it belonged to her when he’d found it.

“Nope, not mine. I stepped on it last night in the guesthouse.” He managed not to gape. The thing was small and could possibly have been missed in the sweep. “Where exactly?”

“A couple of feet from the bloodstain. I think it might have been caught in the pile of the rug or tangled in the fringe. Your people did vacuum, you said, but you know how vacuums are. Mine barely picks up dustbunnies. Rolling up the carpet could have dislodged it.” She focused on the bauble in his palm. “You think it could it be important?” “Could be,” he granted, squinting at the thing. It was half the size of a dime, suspended by a few tiny links of chain from a round silver ball welded to the post. “If we can get any prints from it, they’ll probably be yours.”

“I thought it was a tack in my foot or I’d have been more careful handling it. Sorry.”

“Not your fault. We’ll check it out anyway.” He went to the kitchen, found a roll of plastic wrap and swaddled the earring. “I just wish we knew how long it had been there.”

“I can tell you how you might find out,” she cooed, rocking back and forth, pulling a face that begged him to ask her.

“I’ll bite. How?”

She waltzed forward, took it from him and examined it through the transparent wrap. “I recognized it the minute I saw it.”

“You know whose it is?” This was too good to be true.

“No, but I know where it came from. At least I think I might. On the plane coming over the airline furnished a catalog with duty-free merchandise. You know, the stuff you can only buy at the duty-free shops and while you’re in the air? This particular earring was offered. I almost bought a pair, but the price was outrageous.”

Ryan smiled at her enthusiasm. He felt pretty charged up himself. “We can find out when the catalog was issued, when the earrings were added, and how many have been sold and on which flights. Might get lucky with a credit-card purchase in a name that’s familiar.”

“Precisely. Well?”

“Well what?” he asked, slipping the earring into his jacket pocket.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she questioned impatiently. “Like thanks, well done or something equally grateful?”

“Something equally grateful. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

Her face fell. “That’s it?”

Ryan took her arm and led her to the door. “After I feed you, I thought I would show you the evidence room and the lab.”

“You’re going to let me help now, aren’t you?” she asked hopefully. “I mean, really help you, not just putz around like a fifth wheel?”

“Sure I will,” he said as he set the alarm and locked the door on the way out. Like hell, he thought. If she believed accidentally stepping on a clue made her Miss Marple, let her think it. Someone had nearly killed her last night and he wasn’t about to let her risk her life again. And no doubt she would, the little loose cannon. Who knew what she’d be up to the next time he turned his back?

He needed to talk to King Marcus this morning and convince him to order the woman back to the States on the next plane out.

What he needed now was a safe place to leave her, somewhere she’d stay put while he accomplished that.

“Can you handle reading the reports?” he asked. “Some are lengthy and fairly graphic. Pictures.”

She looked suspicious. “Well, since I’ve seen the real thing, I think I can manage without freaking out. But what will you be doing while I’m doing that?”

He glanced over at her before backing out of the parking lot and lied straight-faced. “Checking on the earring. What else? You want to catch up on the case or ride out to the airport? I figure there’s no point in duplicating our efforts, right?”

She only hesitated a moment, looking doubtful, then agreed.

Ryan almost heaved a sigh of relief. Once he spoke to the king and had her exiled, she was going to be mad as hell. He doubted she’d ever forgive him for it.

But what did he care? He’d never see her again after she left. At the realization, depression hit him like a train. It had hit before on a fairly regular basis and he was used to it now, but this time it was a little different. This time, there was a smattering of hope mixed up in all that gloom.

Maybe Nina would return to Montebello when all this was over. If she would just come back to ream him out about this, or visit her brother’s grave, or just see the sights she’d missed, he might have a chance to convince her he’d been doing her a favor.

Stupid idea. None of those reasons would bring her back here. He was about to end it all before he even started anything with Nina Caruso. Safer that way, anyhow, he thought. He had no business letting her get a hold on him the way he’d been doing. It had been ages since he’d had anything going with a woman that lasted longer than it took to put his clothes back on. That was the way his life went now, and he would keep it that way.

When they reached police headquarters, he took her up to the fourth floor and introduced her to Franz Koenig, his forensics specialist and erstwhile computer geek.

Koenig was geeky, bless his heart, complete with postadolescent pimples and the requisite penholder sticking out of his pocket. He’d only recently replaced his taped-together horn-rims with round granny glasses, and then only after Joe had dragged him down to the optometrist.

Franz was one of those guys who could get it all together, and then forget where he put it. The fact that he could get it all together so methodically was what had landed him the job. Ryan could take it from there, and actually preferred it that way. When it came to piling up seemingly insignificant bits of evidence, nobody did it better than Franz. Sorting them out was Ryan’s forte.

“Franz here is our detail man,” he told Nina. “He catalogs and lines up the pieces of the puzzle, and I mean all of them.” Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Ms. Caruso found us a possible clue last night.” He pulled the wrapped earring out of his pocket and handed it to Franz. “Give me some quick photos of this and then get what you can off of it.”

Franz held the thing between his thumb and forefinger and began looking around for the camera. He found it, then tugged on gloves to position the object for photographing.

“Ms. Caruso’s going to keep you company while I run an errand, Franz. I’m giving her the initial reports to read. You see if you can answer any questions she has about them. I’ll be back in a couple of hours to pick her up.”

Franz shrugged. “Okay.”

Ryan scribbled a phone number on a phone pad and handed it to Franz. “If you need me, call my cell phone. Here’s an alternate number just in case.” He knew he’d be required to turn off the cellular during his audience with the king.

“Okay,” Franz mumbled again, took the paper and laid it down beside his microscope.

Ryan went to the portable file cabinet he had set up in the area where Franz was working. He unlocked it, withdrew a folder and brought it back to Nina.

She eagerly took the file, looked around for a space to work and made herself comfortable at the desk nearest the door. Good. She’d be out of the way and occupied while Ryan took care of business at the palace.

He waited around for the Polaroid shots of the earring to give to Joe, who would check it out with the airlines. Nina seemed thoroughly engrossed in reading and content to stay, but he shot a look of warning over her head to Franz, who nodded back. Ryan just wished Franz didn’t look quite so spacey. Most of the time it didn’t matter.

Nina, eyes locked on a page in the file, tossed him a negligent wave as he walked past her to leave.

Ryan experienced a strange sense of unease. He stopped at the table and looked down at her. “You have enough to do here?”

She nodded, then placed her finger on the page to hold her place as she looked up at him. “You guys have been busy after all, I see. There’s much more here than I expected.”

He shrugged off the backhanded compliment. “If you need anything while I’m gone, just ask Franz.” He gestured toward Koenig, who was so engrossed in his work he wouldn’t notice if the walls fell down around him. “Interrupt him.”

“All right,” she replied and went back to reading the file, dismissing Ryan as surely as if she’d slammed the door behind him.

Chapter 5

Ryan wasn’t too surprised that he had to wait awhile when he arrived at the king’s offices. Not that it was a bad place to cool his heels, if he’d had time to waste.

The lap of luxury hardly began to describe the palace. The furnishings were Italianate, of carved dark mahogany. The rich fabrics mirrored in the polished marble floors. Everything in the palace was as lush and exotic as the setting for the buildings themselves.

The doors finally opened and Prince Lucas emerged. He spied Ryan immediately and inclined his head. “McDonough.”

“Your Highness,” Ryan replied, shaking the prince’s hand when it was offered. “It’s good to have you back. It goes without saying, everybody’s been worried about you and relieved to have you home again.”

The royal expression looked sad, distracted, even if the lips were turned up at the corners. “Yes, well, it was an eventful year to say the least.”

“No doubt. Bet you’ve had enough of the States for a while.”

A haunted look replaced his official for-the-public smile and Prince Lucas gave a short shake of his head.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked, peering a little more closely at him.

Immediately Lucas straightened, once again regal. Didn’t matter if he was dressed today in slacks and a pullover sweater, nobody would ever mistake him for anything less than what he was, Ryan thought. And he guessed it was not all that politic to question the future king’s health, much less his state of mind.

“I’m fine, thank you. And you? Lorenzo tells me you’re heading up the investigation into Desmond’s death. How is it going? I hear the crime scene was burned to a crisp last night. I suppose that won’t help.”

“Not much,” Ryan agreed with a shrug.

“Well, good luck with it.” He stood aside and nodded at the door he’d just exited. “The king’s ready to see you, I expect, so I won’t keep you.” He turned and walked away without another word.

Ryan watched him start down the now-deserted corridor, noting his bowed head and the hands stuck in his pockets, the lack of spring in his step. Really glum when he thought no one was watching.

Did the upcoming coronation weigh that heavily on him? Ryan wondered. After all he had heard about the exploits of Lucas Sebastiani, he couldn’t imagine that the mere job of running a little country would get him down. Must be something big.

Well, he had stuff of his own weighing pretty heavy on his mind without worrying about the prince’s problems.

The king’s secretary appeared at the door and beckoned.

When he was finally shown into the royal office, Ryan even broke his own tradition and bowed. Hell, he’d drop to his knees and beg if that’s what it took to get Nina out of Montebello. He waited for the king to recognize him.

The monarch looked very distinguished in his gray silk suit, conservative tie and pale blue shirt. He might have been any chief executive who confidently exerted absolute control over every aspect of his corporation.

King Marcus was good at his job, better than most kings because he possessed the real power to rule and did so in a fair and equitable way. He was well loved and respected by his subjects and also by expatriates like Ryan who now called Montebello home.

“Good morning, my friend,” Marcus said after a long moment spent studying him. “Are you here concerning last evening’s fireworks?”

“In a way,” Ryan admitted, then decided he should come right out with it rather than dancing around the issue. Surely his time in here would be limited. “Sir, I believe Nina Caruso’s life is in danger. The person who ignited that fire did so in the bedroom adjacent to the bathroom where she was hiding. She would have died if we had not been able to break the window frame. Even then we could not have gotten her out if she were not so slender. You should send her home before something worse happens.”

The king sat forward over his desk, his fingers clasped together, his full attention on Ryan. “Perhaps she misjudged the size of the window she would need to exit. The fire might have been set by her to deflect suspicion.”

Ryan almost rolled his eyes. “Your Majesty, surely you don’t think she put herself in such danger! We know for sure she wasn’t in the country when the murder took place. And I’ve found no reason at all to think she had anything to do with arranging Desmond’s death.”

“We must consider that through her mother, she probably has contacts in Montebello, providing her with the opportunity to secure an accomplice. Perhaps the person she hired is attempting to get rid of her. That accomplice might see her as a threat now that she is here,” the king pointed out. He narrowed his eyes at Ryan. “Also, I am not discounting her father’s relatives in Italy. Family ties are strong in both places. Desmond might have shared the Caruso name, and ultimately the inheritance, but he did not share the blood. She might well have asked help of them.”

Ryan almost scoffed. “That’s a stretch, don’t you think, sir? There’s no indication she had any motive to have her half brother killed. What could she possibly gain by it?”

“The insurance policy purchased by her father on Desmond’s life when the children were young. The trust fund he left has continued to pay those premiums. You know of this. True, it does not represent a fortune of any magnitude, but in addition, there is also the half of her father’s estate that Desmond inherited, even though he was the adopted child and she, the natural one. That caused resentment, surely.”

Ryan shook his head. “I wouldn’t think either motive strong enough to warrant a solicitation of murder.”

“It is your task to discover whether that is so,” King Marcus reminded him with an inclination of the royal head. “She comes here without invitation, immediately, insisting that she be allowed full access to the details of the investigation. She was never officially notified, you know. Is that not suspicious to you?”

Yes. It was definitely suspicious. “I think the murderer called her for the express purpose of getting her to Montebello. Why, I don’t know yet, but last night’s close call is enough to make a rough guess. Somebody wants her dead.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“She’s loyal to her brother. That’s why she came,” Ryan explained, wondering why in the world he was arguing with the king over a woman he hardly knew. “I would demand justice if I were in her place. Wouldn’t most people?”

“Perhaps. It may very well be that you are correct in believing her innocent. I but play the devil’s advocate. Keep an open mind and do the task assigned you. Arrest her if you find any evidence of conspiracy. If indeed, she is innocent, then no harm is done by your industriousness.”

Not what Ryan had in mind. “You have hired me to solve your nephew’s murder, Your Majesty. She’s making that extremely difficult. Not overtly, of course. But she’s… bothersome.”

“What an interesting word,” the king said, looking faintly amused. “Not one to sit idly by while you complete this mission, is she?” he asked.

“No, sir, she is not,” Ryan admitted. An understatement.

“You must ask yourself why that is so. Will your protectiveness toward this woman blind you to the possibility of her guilt?”

“Absolutely not,” Ryan assured him truthfully. “I will be thorough. Depend on it.”

King Marcus smiled and nodded once. “If I did not believe that, another would take your place.”

Ryan knew the best he could do now was reiterate his reason for the audience and get the hell out. “Sir, I do sincerely believe it would be best if you order her to return to the States until this case is cleared.”

King Marcus sighed and sat back. “I am not inclined to do so until you discover for certain whether she is somehow involved or clear her completely. Extradition would prove a delicate, if not impossible matter if you later find evidence she is guilty. As you know, her precipitous arrival troubles me.” He met Ryan’s eyes. “And you cannot know for certain whether or not she set the fire last evening.”

Ryan was already shaking his head. “No. She had no scent of any accelerant on her hands. No way she could have washed it off. All the soap had been removed from the bathroom by Forensics. The water was turned off.”

“The report indicates petrol was used,” the king said.

“Well then, she could not possibly have done it. She had no time to acquire any between the time we parted company and the time I rescued her.”

“She could have siphoned it from one of the autos in the car park. A quick and simple procedure, is it not?”

“In what? No container was found. No hose,” Ryan argued.

“But they were found. Melted globs of plastic, of course. A copy of this report has been sent to your office from the fire inspector.”

Ryan ran a hand over his face as he processed that and tried to think of anything else that might exonerate her. “She was searched as she came in. Braca questioned the guard on duty.”

“And she lied to that guard. An accomplice could have provided what she needed, or the petrol itself. It would be relatively simple for someone to enter the grounds as a tourist and remain behind after the gates are closed to the public.”

“I assume that is being remedied, sir?”

“I thought it already had been remedied, given the recent murder,” the king admitted.

Someone’s head would roll in security, Ryan thought as the king continued. “You are intrigued by this woman. Understandable, but you must not allow—”

“That is not a factor here,” Ryan insisted with a sweep of one hand for emphasis. “You know it isn’t!… sir.”

The king remained silent, his expression inscrutable.

Ryan paced for a minute, searching his mind for something irrefutable to validate Nina’s innocence. “There are the surveillance cameras. As soon as we’re able to—”

“Recovered within the past hour. Ruined.”

Ryan absorbed the kick of disappointment and went on. “Look, she even found what might be a clue last night before the fire took place, a piece of jewelry. Apparently it was missed in the initial sweep for evidence.”

The king nodded sagely, stretching out his long arms, his palms flattened on top of the enormous hand-carved desk. “An earring, one that could quite conceivably belong to her. Interesting that you missed such a thing, is it not?”

“How did you know about it?” Ryan demanded. But he wasn’t all that surprised. “Franz Koenig,” he guessed.

It ticked him off that the king would think it necessary to recruit a spy from the team. Of course, it was entirely possible someone here had called within the last hour and asked for an update on the forensics. Lorenzo, probably. Franz would be duty-bound to give it. That scenario was much more believable than Franz as a spy, Ryan decided.

“You must not be upset that we insist upon keeping informed.”

The royal we? A not-so-subtle reminder of who was boss here. Ryan shrugged and smiled. “Not upset, Your Majesty. It’s just that I came to tell you myself and Franz stole my thunder.”

The king smiled back as he reached for the solid-gold fountain pen and opened the leather folder in front of him. “Nina Caruso will remain until we have all the answers. Go and find them.”

Ryan had no choice but to accept the dismissal. He ducked his head in his usual salute and turned toward the door. Damned if he’d bow and back out of the room.

“One further word with you, my friend.”

The deep commanding voice halted Ryan in his tracks, his hand on the gilded door handle. He turned, looking in question at the head of state. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

“We have every confidence in your skills and your objectivity. Keep Nina Caruso close to you in the event your current assumptions are correct and there is indeed a threat to her. Keep her very close.”

Ryan met the king’s unwavering gaze with one just like it. “And also in the event that my assumptions are wrong.”

“How better to judge?”

* * *

As Ryan made his way down the long hall leading from the royal offices to the enormous entry foyer, he mulled over all the king had said. And not said. He slowly realized that the sly old fox no more believed Nina Caruso was guilty of anything than Ryan did. This obviously was a smoke screen to hide the real reason the king wanted Nina to stay in Montebello. Hard to figure what that might be at this point.

At any rate, Ryan had no choice but to do exactly what the king advised—commanded, rather—and keep her as near as he possibly could. Her safety was paramount, as important to him now as solving the case. Maybe more so.

That didn’t say much for his dedication to the job. And this job had been his whole life for years now. It was what sustained him, gave him purpose and prevented his sliding back into that pit he’d climbed out of.

No matter what the king had said, Ryan knew his professionalism and his objectivity were at stake here. Keeping his hands off of Nina took up too much of his energy and concentration. Another excellent argument for sending her away. But that wasn’t going to happen now, so he would just have to deal with it.

Somehow, he had to find a way to distance himself even while keeping her within reach at all times. How the hell was he supposed to do that?

Nina hurried toward the grand staircase, her high heels clicking on the beautifully veined marble. She had made it halfway there when a large hand closed around her arm. Oddly enough, it did not surprise her all that much to find herself staring into the furious blue-gray eyes of Ryan McDonough.

After all, the possibility of running into him was the reason she was in such a hurry. If only she hadn’t taken the time to interview those two guards, she might have made it upstairs to the residential wing before he finished his business in the royal office. Without a doubt he would object to what she was doing just because it was her idea and not his.

His long, strong fingers burned right through the sleeve of her beige linen suit. Every time he touched her, apprehension swept through her like fire in her veins. Not that he frightened her physically. Her own reaction to him as a man was what caused her fear. She worried what she might do if his touch gentled again as it had last night. No danger of that at the moment, she thought with a sigh. Right now he looked livid.

Though he wasn’t hurting her, she knew better than to resist his grip. Maybe if she didn’t act as guilty as she felt, he wouldn’t frog-march her out of here like a prisoner. Nina smiled her friendliest smile. “I take it the audience with the king is over?”

“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice, though he kept it low, seemed to echo in the cavernous entry.

Nina knew he was about to read her the riot act for leaving the lab when he’d ordered her to stay put. She decided to brave it out rather than cower. “Asking questions. Something you—” she accused, poking him in the chest “—have obviously been neglecting to do around here!”

He grabbed her finger and removed it from the indentation her nail had made in his tie. “And how would you know what I’ve done or not done?”

“I asked!” she hissed. “The two people I’ve spoken with already were very eager to help. I’m on my way to request an interview with the princesses’ staff.”

“Oh, no you’re not,” Ryan assured her. “Even you have to observe protocol.”

He started for the main entrance, still clutching her upper arm. She had no choice but to follow or be dragged. “So make an appointment!”

“I have. Now shut up and come on!”

“Where?” she demanded, taking two steps to his every one in order to keep up.

“Out of here before you get yourself shot. How’d you get past the guards?”

Nina hated to tell him, but she knew he wouldn’t let it go. He’d be reaming someone out about lack of security. “Well… I showed my ID, told them I was Desmond’s sister and, uh, that I had your permission.”

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head. He glared at the nice young guards with the big holstered weapons and all but shoved Nina through the doors leading outside.

He glanced around. “How did you get here? Taxi?”

She nodded, almost tripping in her attempt to match his haste as he ushered her around the arts wing to the parking lot to his car.

“How did you know I was here?”

Her smile was smug. “Saw the number you left Franz. Public Affairs office, the same one I called after I arrived at the airport yesterday. You came here to see the king and get me kicked on a plane, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Only when they were out of the palace grounds and he was occupied driving through the noon day traffic did Nina risk a question. “So, what did the king have to say about it?”

He shot her a dark glance, then trained his eyes on the street again. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Nina bridled. “Don’t be an ass, McDonough. Apparently it didn’t work, since you’re so mad.”

“When do you collect on your brother’s insurance?”

She frowned at the abrupt change of subject. “What?”

“Have you made the claim yet?”

Nina almost laughed. “You’ve got to be joking! There’s no insurance.”

“A policy for half a million, all paid up, plus the capital in the trust fund that paid the premiums,” he snapped.

She was astounded. “How could… But that couldn’t possibly… I know nothing about anything like that! Who—?”

“Don’t play dumb, Nina. Your father insured you both and made certain the premiums were taken care of.”

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, trying to ward off the headache that was rapidly growing to gigantic proportions behind her eyes. “I swear I didn’t know. There was nothing like that in Dad’s papers after he died.”

“And I suppose you knew nothing about Desmond receiving half your father’s estate? Get real, Nina, you couldn’t help but know.” He scoffed.

“Yes, of course I knew about that.”

“And resented the hell out of it, I bet,” Ryan commented.

“No,” she argued. “I didn’t resent it at all. Desmond sold the property he inherited, which he was perfectly entitled to do. I guess he spent all the money.”

That got Ryan’s attention. He stopped at a red light and turned to face her. “What makes you think so?”

Nina hesitated, but guessed it didn’t matter now what anyone thought of Des. Lots of people were not that great about managing their money. “He called a couple of weeks ago wanting to borrow a bit from me.”

“A bit? How much?” Ryan asked, creeping ahead as the light turned and no longer pinning her with that laser glare.

Nina shrugged. “Twenty thousand. He said he would repay me with interest when he received his next quarterly allowance from the crown.”

“Good God.” Ryan coughed a laugh of obvious disbelief. “So you’re here for repayment? King Marcus won’t authorize you a nickel if your brother didn’t sign a note, and even then—”

“No,” Nina interrupted the tirade, “I didn’t loan Desmond anything. My assets are mostly tied up in investments and CDs, so I didn’t have access to that much cash at the moment. Besides, I never make loans, especially not to friends or family. I believe it eventually causes bad feelings.” “You’re right. It really is very bad business to loan money unless you’re a bank. Why did he need it?”

“He didn’t say. I told him I was sorry, that it wasn’t possible, and asked him if he was in trouble of some kind. He said no, of course he wasn’t.”

“Was he angry? How did he react to your refusal?”

Nina shrugged. “He said never mind, then goodbye and hung up.”

“Nothing else? Did he ask how you were doing? Tell you anything about how things were going with him?”

Nina felt embarrassed to have to admit that her own brother had no interest in her life at all and hadn’t been inclined to share what his was like. “He sounded as if he was in a hurry. I guess he didn’t have time for small talk.”

“Interesting indeed. Did he ever have time?”

Now she felt defensive, as if Ryan were attacking Desmond or something. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

But she couldn’t, of course, especially now that he had made a big thing of it. Desmond hadn’t really cared much. Maybe not at all. So why the hell was she here? Nina blinked back tears.

Ryan reached over and took her hand without looking directly at her. “Hey, I get carried away sometimes. It’s no big deal, okay?”

“Okay.” But it wasn’t okay. Now she was questioning not only Desmond’s feelings for her, but hers for him. Maybe she harbored a deeply buried resentment after all and had never admitted it, even to herself.

“Let it go, Nina,” he suggested softly, squeezing her hand. “Think about something else.”

At least the change in topic had taken Ryan’s mind off her ignoring his orders earlier. His anger seemed to have lessened. She suspected that he rarely held on to it for long anyway, thank goodness. She wasn’t up to a fight in her present frame of mind.

She was getting to know Ryan better now. He found vulnerable spots with unerring accuracy, that was for sure. He also gave good advice. Picking apart her relationship with her brother wouldn’t do anyone any good now. He’d been killed, and she was here to find out what happened. It was that simple. Reasons no longer mattered.

She would concentrate on Ryan for the moment. Figuring him out might make the difference in her success or failure in this venture.

His bad temper popped like firecrackers and just as quickly disappeared, the residual smoke dispersing a bit more slowly, but even that was clearing with the breeze of diversion. All she had to do to diffuse a situation with Ryan was to sidetrack him.

“So, how about if I buy you lunch?” she asked, forcing a lilt into her voice.

“You make me crazy, you know that?” he asked.

Nina decided the question was about as rhetorical as questions ever got, so she didn’t answer it. Instead, she made an observation. “You really ought to work on your adaptability, McDonough. Did you go through this trauma every time you hired an assistant?”

“You are not an assistant,” he said, only pretending anger now and not doing it very well, either. “You’re a serious liability is what you are. All I want is to do my job, and now I have to divide my time between that and keeping you out of trouble.”

Nina clicked her tongue in sympathy. “King’s orders, huh?”

“Yeah. King’s orders.” He heaved a gruff sigh. “You want this murder solved or not?”

“That’s why I came here,” she told him, exerting her best effort to sound patient and companionable.

“Yeah, well, I hope that’s why.” He risked another glance even as he wove through the traffic. “If it is, then you owe me some cooperation. You have to do exactly what I tell you and quit taking off on your own the way you did last night and today.”

“I’m yours to command,” she said primly, folding her hands in her lap.

He laughed and shook his head. She couldn’t help noticing the creases beside his mouth that could almost be called dimples. His teeth could be a toothpaste ad and his long-lashed eyes crinkled just right at the corners. The laugh was infectious, but she resisted the urge to laugh with him since he was laughing at her.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, but he didn’t answer. Once his laughter subsided, they rode in silence. He was still holding her hand while they both pretended not to notice.

Just when she thought she had him figured out, another side of him would emerge to confuse her. About the only thing she had locked down about Ryan McDonough was his firm determination not to act on his attraction to her. Oh, it was there, as surely as hers for him, but he resented it as much as he resented her helping him with the case.

She didn’t care, Nina told herself. It was just as inconvenient for her as it was for him. The man was not her type at all. The chemistry between them was a purely physical thing that sometimes happened for no good reason at all. Pheromones or something equally ephemeral. An accident of nature in this case.

When the two people involved had nothing at all in common and no way in the world to make a personal connection work, they should simply ignore it. Or fight it tooth and nail, if it turned out to be this strong. That’s what he was doing and helping her to do, she assured herself.

His strategy was working for the most part. She should applaud that and thank him for attempting to be a jerk so she could keep her distance and he could keep his.

She ought to develop some kind of defense herself instead of testing their attraction at every turn, of analyzing it and rationalizing it and wishing it could somehow work.

God, where had that thought come from? She didn’t wish it would work. Did she? No, certainly not with a man like McDonough, who admitted he had no time or inclination to involve himself in anything but his job.

One thing she definitely had to do was to stop questioning his ability to do that job. At first she really had believed he was shirking his duty with regard to Desmond’s case, but now she knew better. She had seen the collection of files and realized the vast amount of work he and his men had accomplished in a very short period of time. She knew that she could leave today and rest assured that Ryan would eventually solve her brother’s murder for her if it could possibly be solved. So why didn’t she simply go to the airport and leave it to him?

Nina honestly couldn’t answer her own question. She liked to think she owed it to Desmond to have a hand in bringing his killer to justice. But a small voice inside her head warned her that her original reason for being in Montebello had evolved into another that had an even less certain outcome.

Ryan parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street just outside Pietro’s. Pete served the juiciest hamburgers on this side of the world and the greasiest fries anywhere. Nina could have her blasted oatmeal when she craved comfort food. He hit Pete’s place when he needed a brief shot of home. Today was turning out to be one of those days.

God only knew what she’d try next if he left her anywhere so he could get some work done. He’d just have to haul her with him everywhere he went, he supposed.

Maybe his stopping for the junkiest food available in Montebello had a little revenge attached to it. She definitely looked like a yogurt-and-bean-sprout kind of girl. Damned yuppie. Graphic designer? What kind of job was that? Probably did those so-called subtle ads with tons of blank space for products that were unidentifiable to the average guy.

He hadn’t asked her about her job because he didn’t want to know. The less he knew about her, the better. But then again, he had to find out as much as he could to determine whether he was right about her being innocent. God, he hoped he hadn’t misjudged. The king would never trust him with another assignment if he screwed this up.

Ryan shoved the car into Park and got out. By the time he had gone around and reached her door, she was already standing on the narrow cobbled sidewalk.

“Where are we?” she asked, slamming her door and adjusting her shoulder bag. She raked her hair behind her ears, baring those model’s cheekbones and strong, square chin.

“This way,” he ordered, taking her arm. He knew he shouldn’t touch her. Hell, just looking at her messed with his mind, and even through her sleeve, he felt the soft sweetness of her. The warmth. It made him remember how she felt without sleeves. Without clothes. This was not good. It was nonprofessional, and it was wrong.

When she recoiled a little, he held on, knowing it wasn’t wise. Knowing he couldn’t help himself and would use any excuse for continued contact. “The walking’s hazardous in those shoes,” he muttered. Lame reason, but better than none. He tightened his grip and endured—no, enjoyed—the resulting heat that suffused him.

“Oh,” she said, looking down at the rough paving, then back up at him with a bright little smile. “Thanks.”

Chapter 6

He led her two doors down to the hole-in-the-wall pub, identifiable only by a weathered wooden sign about the size of a car tag sticking out of the stones about ten feet up. Pete didn’t believe in advertising much. Word of mouth brought him about as much business as he wanted to handle.

They entered the dark cavern lit only by candles on the occupied tables and a long fluorescent Bud sign over the bar.

“Wow, this is some place,” she whispered, taking in all the details of the humble little pub’s interior. Some might call it picturesque with the beer signs, names carved into the walls with pocket knives and tables covered with mismatched tablecloths.

Pete looked up from his task of wiping down the bar and grinned, showing a missing eyetooth and the wide, wicked scar on his neck. “Hey, Mac! What’s up?”

“Not a lot, Pete. Bring us the usual and two iced teas, would you?”

“I’ll have coffee,” Nina piped up.

“No, trust me, you don’t want to do that,” Ryan advised. “Tea,” he reaffirmed, looking at Pete.

“Gotcha, Mac,” the man said, then called their order through the door to the kitchen which lay directly behind the bar. “Grab that corner over there,” he told Ryan. “More romantic,” he added, wiggling his bushy gray eyebrows suggestively. “Who’s the babe?”

Ryan winced, then made the introductions. “Nina Caruso, Pete Jones, a fellow Yank.”

She smiled and gave a small wave. “Hi, Pete. Nice place.”

And thereby won Pete’s heart, Ryan thought, unsurprised by it. Reckless as she could be at times, the woman did have class to spare.

He guided her to the table Pete had indicated and pulled out the chair for her.

Pete brought over two tall glasses of tea, floating three ice cubes each. On the tray with those sat a long-necked bottle of the off-the-wall brew Pete preferred. He dragged out a chair, sat down with them, pulled a matchbook out of his pocket and lit the candle on the table.

The candlelight threw a soft glow over Nina’s features. Ryan realized he was staring at her and blinked to break the spell. “A singular honor when the proprietor joins you at table,” he told her.

She grinned and nodded, racheting his respect for her up another notch and solidly cementing her new relationship with Pete. She didn’t look down that aristocratic nose at the humble surroundings the way he’d thought she might.

Ryan wasn’t sure he was glad about that. It would have thrown up another obstacle between them, and God knows he needed a few of those after last night.

Pete shifted his three hundred pounds around on the stout oak comb-backed chair to get comfortable, indicating he meant to stay awhile. So much for “romantic.”

After another gap-toothed smile of appreciation accompanied by a closer check of Nina’s visible assets, he turned to Ryan. “The sister.”

Desmond Caruso’s murder was headline news and Montebello a small island. No doubt most everyone knew who she was by now since the article in the paper yesterday.

“Half sister,” Ryan clarified, reaching for his tea and taking a long swig. Sweet enough to pour on pancakes and only a shade above lukewarm, it tasted almost like home, as close to Savannah fare as he could get here.

“Too bad, what happened,” Pete said to Nina, who merely nodded in reply.

Ryan set his tea glass down and began to turn it round and round slowly in the puddle of condensation that was forming. “Any scuttlebutt I need to know about, Pete?”

There was a massive clearing of throat and a marked hesitation.

“Nina’s helping me on the case. You can talk.”

“My girl Jonet says Desmond made a play for Princess Samira Kamal. Succeeded, too. You know about that?”

“Pete’s stepdaughter Jonet works at the palace,” Ryan explained to Nina, then answered Pete. “Yeah, we know about Princess Samira. Anyone else?”

Pete cast a wary eye at Nina. He took the time to down half his beer before answering. “He was seeing somebody else on the sly.”

“Got a name or where she hangs out?” Ryan asked.

“Nope. Could be somebody just saw him with a pros,” he added with a shrug.

“A pros?” Nina questioned, then seemed to suddenly realize Pete was using street slang for prostitute. “Oh.” She blushed.

“Thanks, Pete. You get anything else, you’ll call me?”

“Natch. If I run across anybody knows who she was, I’ll give you a buzz.” He upended the bottle and chugalugged.

Pete was upward of sixty and had come here straight from ’Nam back in the seventies. Ryan felt he had a lot in common with Pete despite totally different backgrounds and the generation gap. Both had run from dreaded reminders of the past and settled in a place that bore no resemblance to home.

Neither had talked about it much, but they’d made enough oblique admissions in the past couple of years to establish they shared a motive for transplanting here.

Pete was the only American in residence on the island that Ryan called friend. He had also proved to be a valuable source of information, since he had stepchildren and children by Sophia, his Montebellan wife, working in just about every occupation on the island. There were thirteen of them in all, not counting a slew of grandchildren. Quite a network.

Pete excused himself, bowing slightly to Nina after he got up. “Pie’s on the house,” he declared, making the first offer of free food Ryan had heard in the two years he’d been frequenting the place.

“You made quite an impression,” Ryan told her. “Free pie.”

“I like him,” Nina said, watching Pete’s pillowy frame squeeze through the opening to the back of the bar. Then she dropped the smile. “This woman he mentioned that Desmond was seeing. You think she killed Desmond?”

“Possibly. We’ll need to talk to Jonet and see if she can give us a description or tell us who might.”

“I still want to see that statuette,” Nina said.

Ryan smiled. “You want to check the angle of that projection against the wound, right?”

Her mouth dropped open. Then she recovered, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm. “That’s why you’re the detective, I guess.”

“I already calculated and confirmed it with Doc. We agree the angle of the blow, combined with the force of it, probably indicates the perp was around five-six or -seven and not very strong.”

“Ah, a small wimpy guy or a woman. Is that what you’re saying?” She sounded insulted for some reason, but she was right on the money.

Ryan inclined his head in agreement. “It was a lucky blow. Because of that and the choice of weapon, I really don’t think the murder was premeditated.”

Nina huffed. “Maybe not, but last night’s fire certainly was.”

“Maybe whoever set it didn’t know you were in there. Could have been to destroy any trace evidence.”

“Then why wait until you’d already made the sweep?” she argued. “They knew I was there, all right. I had the distinct impression I was being followed all the way to the guesthouse.”

“Later.” Ryan shushed her when Pete’s son, Jack, started over with their food.

Ryan attacked his burger immediately, amazed that Nina did exactly the same.

“Umm,” she crooned, the look on her face one of ecstasy as she chewed a mouthful of the juicy fat hamburger.

A smudge of mustard dotted her lower lip, enticing him the way mustard never had before.

The frosty attitude he’d worked up against her that morning had thawed down to acceptance, then warmed up to something he didn’t even want to name.

Ryan reached for the sugary tea, grasping at any kind of reassurance that his life hadn’t changed all that radically. He was in trouble here. Even his ice cubes had melted.

When Ryan took her back to the lab over the police station, Nina didn’t bother apologizing to Franz Koenig for her earlier escape. As for Franz, he didn’t even seem aware that she had been gone.

Ryan got right down to business, asking Franz to produce the murder weapon from the evidence vault downstairs. Nina felt edgy about seeing the thing that had killed Desmond, but also eager to check out what had occurred to her about it. Ryan remained quiet while they waited, ostensibly reading over a page of notes Franz had been writing when they arrived.

Once she had the statuette in her hands, she turned the small bronze figure this way and that, holding it by the marble base while she examined the arm of it through the plastic bag. The sculpture depicted a standing nude, one arm fused to the side of the body, the other raised with the hand buried within the hair at the nape of the neck.

“The bent elbow there inflicted the killing blow,” Franz mumbled, pointing clumsily at it.

“It had been wiped, but we found traces of blood and skin particles in the crevices of the arm where the bronze is textured,” the tech related in a monotone with just a hint of a German accent. “We also have isolated a half print, not yet identified.”

She wondered what sort of person would have the presence of mind to wipe off the makeshift weapon after bashing Desmond with it and watching him die. Somehow she couldn’t believe it had been someone so stricken with outrage they didn’t know what they were doing. Whoever had done it must have recovered their senses pretty quickly after the so-called crime of passion.

“Not squeamish at all, are you?” Ryan commented, inclining his head toward the object she was holding.

Nina realized he’d been watching her, his eyes narrowed, as she’d handled the instrument of her brother’s death. It did seem strange, even worried her, that she felt so little.

“I’m being objective, as you suggested,” she replied. She could hardly blame him for wondering about her lack of emotion when she wondered about it herself.

Maybe it was because she really hadn’t known Desmond well. Not the man he’d become after he left home. Maybe she had used up all her grief over losing him when he had left the family without a backward look.

Her little-sister grief had turned to anger eventually, then finally to acceptance. The victim of this crime was a virtual stranger to her. While she truly regretted Desmond’s death, Nina knew she would feel almost as distressed about anyone who died so needlessly.

She was doing this for the memory of that brother she had worshiped so long ago, for her mother’s son and especially for a boy who had been so angry he’d allowed no one to get close to him.

She hefted the slender little sculpture to feel its considerable weight. It was only about sixteen inches high, but could no doubt make a truly serious dent if wielded with some force. Desmond’s wound had not looked terribly deep, just lethally placed.

“Hold it like this.” Ryan took her hand and positioned it. “That puts your thumb where we found a partial print. Stand here like this,” he told her, moving her in front of Franz. “He’s about the same height as Desmond. Draw the thing back naturally and swing in slow motion.”

“Very slow motion, please,” Franz said, exhibiting the first sign of full awareness she had noticed in him. She’d pegged him as a space cadet, wrapped up in his work to the exclusion of everything else. She was glad to know he at least had a sense of self-preservation.

She raised the object and swung. When the plastic-covered arm of the statuette touched the technician’s temple, she immediately saw that the angle was wrong to inflict the same kind of blow Desmond had suffered.

“See that? Your mark would be too vertical,” Ryan said, following the angle of the protrusion on the statue with one long finger. “The person who struck him must have been taller than you. Say, around five-seven or -eight, we think.”

“Nearer Desmond’s height,” she confirmed and he nodded his agreement.

Nina gladly released the thing when Ryan closed his fingers around hers and took the object with his other hand.

“It was a woman,” she said conclusively. “This demonstration and the earring convince me.”

He shrugged. “Well, you have a fifty-fifty chance of being right.”

“More like eighty-twenty,” she argued, hitching herself onto a stool next to the counter by the lab table. “You said a man would probably have hit harder, too, and made a deeper wound. I agree.”

“Okay,” he said. “There’s a good chance our perp is female. But it could still be a man with a weak swing. Hopefully we’ll get something useful on the earring.”

He penned a note in one of the folders and snapped it shut. “We’re finished here for today. Let’s go back to my place.

“I’m taking copies of the files with me to go over some of the interviews tonight,” he told Franz. “I need to make lists of further questions before I reinterview. You check out the rest of those things that were bagged out of the bathrooms. I want the results in the morning.”

They left Franz bent over a microscope, either engrossed in his work or sulking. Nina couldn’t tell. The man was none too happy with their long interruption of his afternoon, or Ryan’s berating him for his premature report on the earring to the king’s office.

Despite Franz’s pouting and Ryan’s gruff manner, Nina realized she was beginning to feel a part of the team. Ryan was now being fairly generous with information and in allowing her access to everything he and his men had discovered.

“Thanks for not shutting me out,” she said as he deposited the box of folders in the back of his SUV.

“No problem,” he muttered, slamming the hatch and walking her to the passenger side. He opened the door, waited for her to fasten her seat belt, then closed it.

He was lying. He had a problem with it, all right. Though he had apparently relented, he didn’t look very happy about it. He hated to relinquish one ounce of control, she decided.

She had really misjudged him at first, when she’d assumed he didn’t care one way or the other about apprehending Desmond’s killer. Everything he did seemed directed toward that end. She could see by the volume of files alone that he had put forth a bigger effort than she could have expected from any police department this quickly.

After a silent drive through the city, Nina followed him into his apartment without waiting for an invitation. She stood by as he set the box of files on the dining table.

“I’ll help you go through them,” she offered. “A fresh eye might help, don’t you think?”

“Right,” he snapped. Then, almost as an afterthought, he tossed her a half smile to soften the reply.

That wasn’t exactly a plea for assistance, but she wouldn’t quibble. At least he wasn’t chasing her out of the place with the broom.

She looked around. His apartment had the same floor plan as hers, only reversed. There was a living room/dining room combination, separated from the small kitchen by a waist-level bar with stools.

It looked very similar to any midpriced apartment in the States, only the rooms were more spacious, the unscreened windows larger, offering a view of the distant ocean. And there were no closets, making her wonder whether Montebellans were taxed by the number of rooms as they were in some European countries.

His furnishings looked expensive, but not outrageously so. The color scheme consisted of beige and browns, more masculine than her rose and green. This decor seemed incredibly boring for a man such as Ryan.

She noticed no personal items at all. No photos, plants, no original art, no brass or bright colors to spice up the monotony. Maybe he was going for restful here. It was enough to put anybody to sleep immediately, she thought with a yawn.

“Sleepy?” he asked, almost hopefully.

“No, wide awake.”

“Hungry?” he asked, this time reluctantly, as he shucked his jacket, hung it on a dining room chair and headed around the breakfast bar to the kitchen.

“Not much. Lunch was substantial.”

“It will have to be soup and sandwiches, then. I’m not much of a cook.”

“Can I help?”

“No, I’ll get it.” He rummaged through the few cans she could see on a shelf in one of the upper cabinets, his back to her. “Tomato or chowder?”

“Tomato. I hate clams.”

His actions stretched his shirt smoothly across his broad shoulders, emphasizing their width. Nina hitched one hip onto a stool and propped her elbow on the counter, resting her chin in her hand.

No question, the man was very easy to look at. Incredible buns, she thought, idly tracing her smile with one finger.

Every move he made was a study in graceful economy. Amazing how much he accomplished and how quickly he did it without seeming to hurry.

“When I do the interviews, I guess you’ll want to sit in,” he said.

“You bet.” She continued to watch as he bent over, retrieving sandwich things from the small, European-size refrigerator. “Do you realize that almost every conversation we’ve ever had has centered on the case?” she asked.

He straightened and turned around, frowning. “So?”

Nina shrugged. “So, I thought maybe we could take a break from it. Talk about something else for a change. Sort of rest and regroup.” Ryan yanked open a drawer and fished out the silver ware. “I don’t break until the case is closed.” He met her eyes directly. “To me, that means solved.”

She flared her hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. It was just a thought. How is your solve rate, McDonough?”

“Pretty damn good. I mean to keep it that way.”

“A fanatic, huh?” she guessed. “Pitbull tenacity?”

“Somethin’ like that,” he admitted, methodically slicing a thick loaf of crusty bread.

Nina reached across and grabbed one of the knives, the mayo and the plate of bread. “I’ll do that. You do the soup.”

He placed a slice of bread on the plate just as she took it and their fingers touched. For a second, neither of them moved. With a short embarrassed laugh, Nina pulled the plate toward her and Ryan turned away.

She began spreading the condiment, slowly to make the task last since it was all she had to do. “You know, you had me fooled in the beginning. The way you move. The way you talk. I admit I worried you might have an idle streak.”

He gave a self-deprecating grunt, plopped the tomato soup into a pan and ran a canful of water to add to it. He stirred while she watched the subtle play of shoulder muscles beneath his shirt.

Nina continued. “But you don’t have. I guess you’re the proverbial duck. Serene and smooth on the surface, and paddling like hell underneath.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “That’s how you see me? A duck?”

She grinned back at him, loving his Southern drawl, now knowing how deceptive it was. The guy was no duck. If he only knew how she saw him. What would he do?

“How do you see me?” she asked.

He drew his mouth to one side and frowned in thought. Then he held up one finger. “Cat,” he said with a firm nod and a reluctant smile. “Yeah. Sly. Independent. Unpredictable and untamable.”

“Lots of ‘uns,”’ she remarked, not totally displeased with his comparison. He couldn’t seem to hold on to that determined resentment of his for long. Nina decided doing that just went against his nature.

“And you’re a little bit wild and scary when riled,” he added.

She also purred when she was stroked, but he hadn’t found that out yet. Probably never would. But she figured it was smart to drag him out of that mood of his if she ever planned to get on his good side.

“See there?” she said. “I’ve tricked you into a break after all.”

He had put down the spoon he’d used to stir and was now propped against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. “You always get your way, don’t you? Smiling like the kitty that ate the canary.”

His intense gaze lingered on her mouth, then roamed every inch of her visible above the bar. Nina had the distinct impression that he was filling in the rest from memory, since he had undressed her after the fire.

His voice was a near growl when he spoke again. “Yeah. Definitely a cat.”

Nina pursed her lips and raised her brows, not certain whether she should read more into this sudden rapt attention than simple teasing.

Then she looked past him. “You might want to paddle around to that soup, Ducky. It’s about to boil over.”

They laughed together as he rescued their dinner and began dishing it up. She loved his laugh, the spontaneity of it. He always sounded a little surprised by it, as if he’d never expected it to happen again.

“Tell me, Chef Duck, what brought you here to Montebello?” she asked, satisfied that she was making real progress, establishing camaraderie.

Suddenly he ceased what he was doing and slowly raised his eyes to meet hers. His were as cold and desolate as midnight in the desert. Though he refused to offer even one word in answer to her question, Nina understood the break was now over. She had encroached on forbidden territory.

The familiarity he’d allowed a few moments ago no longer existed. There would be no more banter about ducks or cats or long, sensuous looks or accidental touches that generated sparks. It was as if he’d thrown up an impenetrable fire wall between them.

Nina knew her question had caused the sudden turnaround, but told herself she should be glad it had happened. While a brief fling with a man like Ryan might be an experience worth remembering, Nina was all too afraid it would be impossible to forget when the time came to do that. She never had brief flings anyway, so it was for the best if nothing happened. If he could pretend no electricity passed between them, she could, too.

The man obviously had baggage. Big-time baggage she had no business exploring. He was an admitted workaholic, a man who lived for his work. She could see it clearly now.

He would never give up. He’d keep doggedly at it until he got all his answers. Then he would dive directly into another case without a pause, she would bet.

Had he always been that way, or was it connected to his leaving his job with the police force in Savannah and coming here to live? Beautiful as it was, she doubted he’d come here for the scenery. Savannah was a beautiful place, too, or so she had heard.

Something life altering must have happened, given his reaction to her question, but she wouldn’t ask him again what it was. She knew what curiosity did to cats.

Despite her decision to leave well enough alone, Nina had to admit that she enjoyed—and, at the same time, was annoyed by—the sudden, unfamiliar, and almost overwhelming thrill of anticipation that surged through herwhenever they had what she liked to think of as a moment

Well, that needed to stop. No more of those moments. She would focus only on helping discover who’d killed Desmond. That was why she was here, she reminded herself.

Someone ought to teach Ryan how to pause and celebrate the small successes the way she had learned to do, but Nina didn’t figure that someone would be her.