THE HEART TEACHES BEST (REAL ROMANCE COLLECTION Book 2) Page 2

  After a time, she became still. “I’m sorry,” she said again, somewhat more controlled this time. “Thank you so much for everything you did tonight. It was irresponsible of me to…” She trailed off, staring out the front window at the tree trunk of a huge elm. After a few seconds she twisted her body to him, concern showing in those immeasurable blue eyes of hers. “You’re okay, aren’t you? He didn’t hurt you?” She laid one of her soft hands on his arm.

  Finding his voice was a struggle as he was unnerved by her closeness. “Not a scratch.” He decided to try one of his most charming smiles on her. She dropped her eyes, so he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “Thank you for driving me home.” She turned to her door again, and he saw her shaking hand fumble with the lock and then get it open.

  He hopped out and raced around to her side of the car. “I want to see you safely in.” She nodded her assent and he loped along beside her, hands stuck inside his jacket pockets. The wind had picked up and she shivered. The light was on outside her door. It was a nice place, a two-story townhouse with a balcony on the second level.

  She unlocked the door and turned to him. “Thank you, Officer…?”

  He stuck out his hand. “Cooper Sullivan.”

  “Officer Sullivan. My name’s Laney.”

  “Cooper, please. My dad’s Officer Sullivan.”

  “He’s on the force, too?”

  He nodded, glad to see she seemed to be regaining her equilibrium.

  “Won’t you come in to wait for your ride? It’s cold tonight.”

  He wasn’t the least bit cold, but he followed her inside. When the lights came on, he was surprised by the palatial space in front of him. He was standing on a wide, marble semi-circular landing, with steps leading down to a luxurious living room. A classy-looking wet bar stood on the left and a large, U-shaped couch had been placed in front of a massive fireplace. A gilded mirror hung over it. A long staircase with an elaborate banister that ended in a swirl ran along the wall at the right. Above, a hallway was open to the floor below, hemmed in by wrought-iron railings.

  Cooper bit off the low whistle rising in his throat. “Nice place,” he commented, trying to look nonplussed. “What do you do for a living?”

  “Huh?” she said, preoccupied. “Oh. I teach high school English.”

  He couldn’t hide his surprise this time. “Wow! They must be paying English teachers a lot these days.”

  “Hmm…oh, no. My mother bought me this place for my birthday. She refused to visit me at my other place,” she added, without explaining why.

  He looked around some more, taking in the crystal chandelier and what he guessed were some pretty expensive paintings on the wall. At the far side of the room, a dark, tigerwood bar separated the living area from a spacious kitchen. Three lights hung over it, suspended several feet from the ceiling, and covered with frosted amber-colored shades. Beyond that, he could make out black cabinetry with several glass-fronted doors. Pretty nice birthday present.

  A small glass and wrought iron table stood to the right of the door, and as the girl turned to put her keys down on it he noticed a huge bruise beginning to form in a line across her back. He touched her shoulder so he could bend and get a better look. “Oooh! Is that from hitting the bar?”

  “Umm…I think it was the stool, actually.”

  “That son-of-a-bitch should have never laid a hand on you. I should have arrested him for assault.”

  Her eyes widened at his outburst. “No. I’m okay.” She squinted up at him, changing the subject. “You were working undercover, weren’t you?”

  Cooper nodded.

  “And I almost blew it for you.” Her voice was remorseful. “I was being stupid.”

  “Out of curiosity, just what were you doing there?”

  She stepped into the living room. He still winced at the sight of her back, and something about her being barefoot made her seem vulnerable, touching him as well. He followed her.

  “I don’t know. I thought somehow…” She sighed and shook her head.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You thought what?”

  She dropped her eyes. “I thought…maybe I could discover something. I don’t know, something that would maybe—somehow—help it all make sense.”

  He placed his hand gently under Laney’s chin and lifted her face. Her eyes were misty and her lips trembled. His mouth was dry. “Are you going to be okay, Laney?”

  She nodded and a piece of hair fell into her eyes. Without thinking, he brushed it back. Lights beamed in through the narrow windows on either side of her door, announcing the arrival of the police cruiser he had called for.

  “I should go,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. She didn’t move. “Good night, then.” He stepped back. She didn’t say anything as he turned to walk away, closing the door behind him. He paused outside her door, breathing a heavy sigh. He shrugged into his jacket more, feeling the chilly night air now, and headed down the steps.

  * * *

  “Hey, Coop.” Aidan McConnahy, his roommate and partner, pulled in just as he was getting out of his ‘Vette at their apartment.

  “Late night?” Cooper raised an eyebrow with a grin. Aidan had been out on his third date with a cute brunette, a former EMT who had recently joined the department’s Victim’s Services area.

  Aidan folded his arms on the roof of his sedan and put his chin down on them with a goofy grin. “I think this is the one, Coop.”

  Cooper chuckled and shook his head. “Mmm-hmm.” He shut his car door. “That’s what you say every time.”

  “Yeah. But this time I mean it. Jenna’s really—”

  “Special,” Cooper finished, having heard it before. “Just like Ali was special, and Karen was special, and—”

  “Okay, okay. Shut up, will ya? You sure know how to ruin a guy’s mood.” Aidan shut his own door and met him on the sidewalk.

  “Sorry, man.” He slapped Aidan on the back and then let him pass. He was feeling a bit moody himself, and he didn’t know why. Something was irritating him. He decided a cold brew would go a long ways toward mellowing him out. “You wanna have a beer before we hit the sack?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.” Aidan flashed his neon white smile and turned the knob he’d just unlocked to let the door open. He was as tall as Cooper, but that’s where the resemblance ended. He had dark, thick hair to Cooper’s blond, and was lanky, where Cooper was muscular.

  As the door opened, Cooper surveyed the room with a fresh eye, unconsciously comparing it to Laney’s place. It was a standard bachelor pad, complete with pizza boxes still on the coffee table—left over from the night before, when they’d been watching the fight—sports pages unfolded on the chair, beer bottles here and there as accent pieces, and dirty laundry of varying degrees of uncleanliness throughout. He stepped in with a frown.

  “So,” Aidan quizzed, heading for the fridge while he stopped to fold the newspapers, “how was the stakeout? Did you learn anything new at Phat Jack’s?”

  “No, not really.” What should he tackle next? The pizza boxes or the clothes?

  Aidan returned. “What’s with your hand?”

  “Huh?” He looked down. He hadn’t even realized he’d been clenching and unclenching his fist. “Oh, got in a fight.”

  “What?” Aidan laughed, handing him a bottle of beer. “With who?”

  “Oh, some asshole who thought it was fun to push a woman around.” He gave up and flopped down in a worn, tweed chair, which had been beige once, but now was a sort of muted grey.

  “Man!” His roommate plopped down in the chair on the opposite end of the coffee table, putting his feet on the table to mimic him. “I wish I could have been there for that one.” He gritted his teeth. Cooper knew his partner had a special hatred for men who hit women because of his sister’s abusive relationship with her ex-husband. “Did you at least score a couple?” Aidan pantomimed throwing a few punches.

>   “Not really, Rocky,” he retorted. “The guy was huge! I gave him my best to the rib cage and he didn’t even flinch.” He rubbed his sore knuckles. “Speaking of Rocky, now I know what it feels like to hit a side of beef.”

  “Wish I’da been there. I’d have laid him out cold.”

  “Yeah, sure you would have, A-hole.” He picked up a stale piece of pizza crust from the end table and whipped it at him.

  He laughed, dodging it easily. They both took a drink of their beers.

  “Was she hurt?”

  “Yeah. Guy tossed her like…like she was pizza dough,” Cooper stated, finding inspiration at his fingertips. “Only, he didn’t catch her. She had a nice bruise on her back.” He got hot again just thinking about it.

  Aidan sat up, perhaps catching something in his tone. He raised an eyebrow. “You saw her back?”

  He glanced away, then, looked him in the eye. “She had on a backless dress, you moron.”

  “Umm.” Aidan leaned into the cushions again but his gaze never left Cooper’s face as he took a long pull on his beer.

  “And get this.” He sat up, leaning forward. “She’s the victim’s sister.”

  “What victim?”

  “What victim? Sydney Essex. The author.”

  “Oh.” Another long pause filled the air. “Is the sister as hot as the author?”

  Before he could think better of it, his mouth spoke for him, “Oh, yeah!” He glanced over at Aidan, but he seemed to be busy messing with his bottle label.

  Just when he thought he had gotten off the hook, Aidan asked, “Any chance she could be…‘special’?” His brown eyes danced with suppressed laughter.

  Time will tell, Cooper thought speculatively, but he shut his mouth, noting how his partner was examining him. He rose from his chair, stretching. “Thanks for the beer.” He clinked his bottle against Aidan’s as he passed him on the way to the kitchen. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Good night, then…” Aidan’s voice trailed off, but Cooper could feel his eyes following him out of the room. The pair had lived together since their days at the Academy. It was a rarity for Cooper to talk about a girl. In all that time, he had never brought a girl home, never even dated anyone, besides the few girls Aidan had pressed him into taking out on a double date. He kept his nose to the paperwork grindstone, so to speak. He was always finishing up their collars, allowing Aidan to go out. He dated a lot in high school, had been involved in one longer relationship senior year. The girl dumped him right after he entered the academy, and his dating life had suffered since.

  Once alone in his room, he removed shirt and pants and sat on the end of the bed to take off his socks. He rubbed his chest. His blond hair, which he wore short in the back and long on the top, fell into his face. Maybe it was time for him to be seeing someone. Certainly, he was over the whole Carrie breakup, and this girl seemed to invoke some strange response in him. But he discovered long ago, physical attraction wasn’t enough to make a relationship work. And, if his dad found out, he would kill him. He could hear the old man now, Coop, if there’s one thing I know for certain, its reputation is as important to a cop as his gun is. He drilled that into Cooper time and time again. And getting involved with a victim’s sister—that was taboo. He whipped off his socks, throwing them carelessly on the floor. He bounced his way up to the top of the bed. He couldn’t shake a feeling of disappointment, though.

  He lay awake for hours.

  Chapter Four

  Laney paced around her living room. She had tried tackling the stack of papers she was grading when Sydney called, but stopped on her thirteenth perusal of the same student’s essay. She hadn’t slept a wink, and now the thought of lunch with her mother, the jetsetter, Camille Essex, was making her ill. She didn’t know if she could face “The Baroness de Dragon”, as they liked to call her, without Sydney around to help her let off steam afterwards. Nobody else knew how expertly their mother could trigger emotions with just a half-sigh. But, because of what her sister meant to her, she’d do it for Syd. She’d sit through lunch while her mom prattled on about Paris, or Istanbul, or wherever the hell her Country d’ Jour was. Or, if she was in one of her foul moods, she would listen to her rattle off Laney’s faults like a child’s Christmas List. Or, perhaps it would be one of those stiff, stilted meals, when she wasn’t sure what she would say to set her mother off on a tirade. The thought sent a chill down her spine.

  She sighed and continued her lap around the room, though slower this time. She picked up a tear-shaped lead-crystal paperweight her mother had selected for her in Ireland. It was the one thing in the room she liked. She held it up to catch the sun like a prism and saw the reflected jewels of color dance over her wall. Syd had been like that. She’d taken the cold, hard crystal, which was her mother, and splintered her into the myriad of colors that was the laughter they shared after an encounter with The Baroness. Laney would be down, or aggravated, and Syd would schedule dinner and greet her with an uncanny imitation of their mother, one time going so far as to don a white feathered boa like their mother sometimes wore.

  After today, she was sure it would take her weeks to pull herself up out of the hole her mother created for her. I let her create for me, she corrected. She knew her mom would not have that power if she didn’t hand it to her. But as yet, she had not discovered the trick to not turning back into a child when her mother was around. Sydney had. Although there were times when their mother cracked through her armor, for the most part, Sydney was able to laugh her off, sometimes to her face, Laney recalled with a smile.

  “Oh, Syd. How I wish you were here,” she said aloud to the empty room. How ironic it was that it was now Syd’s death which had her mother flying halfway around the world to make her life even more miserable. In a sudden burst of temper, she raised the crystal as if to throw it in the fireplace, but thinking better of it, she returned it to its spot on the table. She straightened the cream-colored pantsuit she had chosen as her armor today and headed for the door, grabbing her purse off a chair along the way. She would get to the restaurant early so she could collect herself and have a drink, before her mother arrived.

  * * *

  Cooper sat at his desk, drumming his nails. What to tackle next? He’d talked to Sydney Essex’s agent yesterday and found out nothing. Yes, Sydney was working on a new book. No, she didn’t know what it was about, but she couldn’t imagine anyone trying to kill Sydney over one of her romance novels.

  He knew he needed to talk to Laney, but for some reason he kept putting it off. The mother, Camille Essex, had been a real case, inviting him to lunch to discuss details. She “didn’t want to be bothered with talking over the phone.” Never mind it was an inconvenience for him to drive halfway across town to some hoity-toity restaurant to talk to her.

  Aidan had pulled up Sydney’s financials, and nothing out of the ordinary had shown up there. The nightclub was another story. Red flags were popping up all over the place when it came to Phat Jack’s. Apparently, some high-end drugs were being run out of the establishment and the place was already under investigation. The narcs agreed to pull out though, for the time being, so they could get a handle on the murder case. Murder trumps drug running, at least in this case, where the victim was a prominent citizen. Cooper read through the narcotics unit’s file though, and it seemed like all they had was a lot of suspicion and no real hard evidence yet. But what if Sydney Essex had seen or heard something that night she shouldn’t have? Could it have led to her murder? It was something they would have to investigate.

  By the time he had read through the file, and talked to the Narcotics detectives, it was rolling on twelve-thirty and he had to break to go downtown to meet up with Camille Essex. Aidan and Cooper agreed only one of them would go, no need to double team the grieving mother, and neither wanted to shell out that kind of money for lunch in the first place. Cooper was almost certain they would have no real food anyway and he’d be searching down the menu in vain, but he lost the coi
n toss.

  * * *

  For the second time in as many days, Cooper felt underdressed. He had put on a tie he pulled out of the glove box of his car and straightened it in the rearview mirror. But when he entered the restaurant, he decided his suit cost much less than the designer suits the businessmen surrounding him wore. He was casting looks around uncomfortably when the maitre de led him to the table tucked away from the others, so he didn’t even notice her sitting there, at first.

  Camille Essex was what he expected. Her snowy-white hair was meticulously coifed, her teal blue suit impeccable. But what caught him off guard was the pretty blonde sitting next to her in the large circular booth. Camille shook his hand and then introduced her daughter.

  “Nice to meet you,” Laney hurried to say after the introduction, looking him intensely in the eyes.

  Cooper caught on. “And you, Miss Essex. I’m sorry, what was your first name again?” He fought the smirk twitching his lips.

  “Laney.” She appeared annoyed, much to his amusement. It was obvious she didn’t want her mother to know about her nocturnal visit to the club and the ensuing incident.

  “Yes, it’s a dreadful name, I know. But her father let me name Sydney, so he insisted on naming her Laney, of all things.”

  Laney stared down at the tablecloth, her cheeks becoming flushed.

  “Well, I think it’s a pretty name.”

  She glanced up, smiling at him gratefully.

  “Yes, well…” Camille sniffed, as if his opinion was beside the point. “You had some questions, Detective?”

  “Ahh. A lady who comes straight to the point. I like that.” He smiled at her broadly, trying to charm his way into her good graces, but she would have none of it.

  “Well, I don’t know what you expect to find out from me. I don’t even know what Sydney was doing at such an appalling place.”