Cold Case Affair. Лорет Энн Уайт
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up the wooden stairs.
Muirinn pressed her trembling hand to her stomach, trying to collect herself. Then, forcing out a huge breath, she followed him—and the light—up to the attic.
He creaked open the attic door, the movement causing a draft to rush in from the attic window behind Gus’s desk. Drapes billowed out, scattering papers to the floor. Outside, the rain fell heavier, the breeze carrying the moisture in with it.
“I … I could swear that window wasn’t open earlier,” Muirinn said, moving quickly into the study and stooping to gather the documents scattered across the Persian rug. Her movements were awkward around her growing stomach and she could sense Jett watching her. She stilled, and her gaze slid up to meet him.
In the light of her lantern, the planes of his face were rough, utterly masculine. His mouth was shaped with a sculptor’s fine precision, wide and bracketed by laugh lines that had deepened over the years. New, too, were the fine creases that fanned out from his cobalt eyes—eyes still as clear and piercing as the day she’d left town. And they bored into her now with an animal-like intensity that turned her knees to jelly.
Muirinn swallowed.
She knew he had to be thinking about her pregnancy. She also knew that he was too damn proud to ask. They were alike in so many ways.
She stood up, awkwardly clutching the papers to her belly, her cheeks flushing as something darkened in his eyes. Something that made her feel dangerously warm inside.
“It must have been how Quicksilver got in,” she said quietly, trying to fill the volatile space between them. “My cat,” she explained, then laughed nervously. “Gus got him for me when I turned thirteen, remember?”
“That cat can hardly be called yours, Muirinn,” he said crisply. “You left him. Eleven years ago.”
The implication was clear. She didn’t have any rights. Not here, not anymore, not in Jett’s eyes. Not even to a cat.
She moistened her lips.
Jett turned from her suddenly and crossed the room. He held the lantern up behind Gus’s desk. “You didn’t see this, either?”
“God, no!” Muirinn said, coming to his side and seeing shards of glass glinting on the carpet. The desk drawers had been wrenched open, too, folders lying scattered beneath the leather chair in which she’d sat only hours before. The computer tower beneath the desk was toppled onto its side, wires ripped from the back. A chill rustled through her.
“Someone was up here, Jett, while I was sleeping.”
Jett yanked back the heavy drapes. “The windowpane’s been shattered. Whoever came in here must have ransacked Gus’s desk.” He frowned, surveying the scene. “The sound of my truck must have interrupted them.”
Muirinn wrapped her arms over her tummy, shivering as the rain-damp wind from the broken window whispered over her skin. “Why would someone want to go through Gus’s things?”
“Hell knows,” he said, studying the floorboards under the window. “But whoever did this was clearly looking for something. He might’ve tried to take the whole computer tower because your solar power is off, and he couldn’t access the information he wanted right here.”
“He?”
“There’s dirt transfer on the wooden floor here, left by a boot, about a size 12. I’d say it was a guy.”
Another gust of wind chased a ripple of goose bumps over her skin, tightening her nipples. Jett glanced at her breasts, then caught her eyes for a long beat. He looked away quickly, rubbing his brow as he cursed softly.
“Is it that hard, Jett?” she whispered. “Seeing me again?”
He kept his face turned away from her for a long moment.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It is. Come—” He touched her elbow, gently ushering her out onto the landing. “We should leave the scene as is. I’ll call the cops.”
He pulled the attic door closed behind them, the space on the narrow landing suddenly close, the halo of lantern light too intimate. Jett had that effect on space—it shrank around him. It wasn’t just his physical size; he radiated a kinetic energy that simply felt too large for contained spaces. He thrived out in the wilderness, and it was why he’d refused to follow her to Los Angeles. He’d said the city would kill his spirit, who he was.
In retrospect, Muirinn knew he was right. A crowded urban environment wouldn’t accommodate a man with a latent wildness like Jett’s. He was born to roam places like Alaska, the tundra, in his plane. It’s why people like him came north of 60 in the first place.
Los Angeles would have been a concrete prison for him. But at the time, it had represented freedom and adventure to her—a key to a vibrant new world.
Yet, he had left for a while. He’d gone to Las Vegas. Where he’d gotten married. And that really burned.
It also made him a hypocrite.
He glanced down into her eyes, sensuality swimming into his features.
“Jett—” she said quietly.
He swallowed, tension growing thicker. “Get something warm on, Muirinn,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to call this in. Then I’ll connect your power and wait with you until someone from the police department arrives.”
She blew out a shaky breath, nodded. “Thanks for doing this.”
He held her eyes a moment longer, then jogged down the stairs without a word.
Jett stood in the brick archway, quietly watching Muirinn busying herself in Gus’s rustic, open-plan kitchen. She’d pulled one of her grandfather’s voluminous sweaters over her white nightgown, and she’d caught her rampant copper curls back in a barrette. He felt relieved—the other look was driving him to total distraction … or destruction. Same difference with Muirinn O’Donnell.
Damn if he hadn’t gone red-hot at the sight of her on hands and knees in that cotton nightgown as she’d gathered up Gus’s papers, strewn all over the attic office. There was something about her pregnant body that drove him wild. And made him incredibly sad.
Hurt.
She’d always had such power over him, yet she’d never known the extent of her control. But now, in Gus’s oversized sweater, she looked small, vulnerable. Jett wasn’t so sure this look was any better for his health. It aroused protective instincts in him—things he didn’t want to feel for her. This was such a total shock, seeing her again, without warning. He needed to figure out what this might mean to his family. To his son.
To him.
“Hey,” she said with a soft smile, as she caught him watching. His blood quickened.
He stepped into the kitchen, making sure he remained on the opposite side of the rough wood table.
She poured him tea from a stubby copper kettle, which she set back on the gas stove, still steaming. He avoided eye contact as he took a seat at the table, and accepted the mug from her.
She’d made his tea just the way he liked it, black and sweet. The fact that she even remembered cut way too close to the bone. Why should it matter? Truth was, it did.
Everything about Muirinn mattered.
And right now he was struggling with his emotions, trying to avoid the elephant in the room that was her pregnancy, trying to be the gentleman and not ask, yet desperate to know who the father was, where he was. Why she was here alone.
The fact that she was expecting a baby at all sliced Jett like a knife. He forced out a heavy breath of air. Civility be damned—they were beyond that. There was no way to be polite about what had transpired between them, no way to bridge the divide with small talk. So he chose a direct approach. “You never came to visit Gus,” he said quietly. “You