Intimate Strangers Read online

  He sent another mental note of thanks to the Light Street Foundation. Without them, he’d still be rotting in his cell.

  Because of his educational background, he’d worked in the prison library, where he’d read the Washington Post every morning. In the feature section, he’d seen an article about how the foundation was reopening a select few felony cases, thanks to a guy named Lucas Somerville, who himself had once been falsely accused of murder and robbery. Somerville had given them a wad of money to help people in similar circumstances.

  Mark—he was careful to think of himself as Mark now—had had all the time in the world to compose a long, well-written letter, explaining that his lawyer had done a pretty poor job of refuting the circumstantial case against him. Veronica’s body had never been found. But when she disappeared, her parents came forward and told the police that she’d been having problems with her husband.

  Actually, he and Veronica had been on a speeding train headed for a divorce. But he hadn’t killed her. He’d thought he had nothing to hide, so he’d let the police search his home and office. Somebody had planted a bloody shirt and a pair of slacks in his tool room. And the blood was Veronica’s type.

  After that, the cops had come down heavily on the failing marriage and the very public fight he and Veronica had had the night she disappeared. And on the million-dollar insurance policy he was supposed to have taken out on her life. They didn’t believe he’d known nothing about the policy until the company had notified him.

  The mound of evidence had been enough for the state to win a murder conviction and a life sentence.

  But Dan Cassidy, a lawyer who volunteered at the Light Street Foundation, went back to the bloody clothing and forced the court to order DNA testing, comparing the blood to cells from Veronica’s hair, which had been taken from among her things in her family’s place in New Jersey. They didn’t match. Since her body had never been found, that pulled the linchpin out of the state’s case.

  Cassidy was very persuasive—about the evidence and about the inadequacy of the previous defense lawyer. After some pro forma protests, the state turned Mike Randall loose. As soon as he walked through the penitentiary gates and heard them hiss shut behind him, he started planning his return engagement in Perry’s Cove to find out who had set him up.

  He touched his hand to his face, just a quick touch as he marveled once again at the wonders of modern science. One of the first things he did after getting out of prison was visit a top plastic surgeon. Dr. Hamilton was an artist with his knife. He’d changed Mike Randall into Mark Ramsey—a man who bore little resemblance to the guy who’d spent five years in prison.

  Unlike most ex-cons who came out of the joint penniless and unable to cope with life in the real world, Mark had money. Light Street Foundation had set him up with one hundred thousand dollars, and once the murder conviction was overturned, he collected on that million-dollar insurance policy.

  Lunch arrived, and Mark dug in, savoring the flavor of the snapper. In his old life he’d taken good food for granted. Now he appreciated every bite.

  As he ate, he looked out across the street to a building being renovated. Apparently one of the shops was getting a complete face-lift, including new cedar shingles, trim and new roof.

  He could see workmen moving around on the roof, and he watched as he ate his lunch.

  A sign leaned against the bottom of the front wall beside the two front steps. It said the Calico Duck.

  The cute name should bring in the tourists, but the merchandise would determine whether they parted with some of their cash.

  When he’d lived in Perry’s Cove, he’d owned a contractor business, so his interest in the construction was more than casual. He would have finished the roof before setting up the scaffolding on the front. But probably the shop owner was in a hurry to get things completed. After lunch he resisted the tempting offerings on the dessert tray. He liked his new body, and he had no intention of letting it go to fat.

  One of his next stops would be one of the real estate offices at the edge of town to look for a rental where he’d have enough space for some home-gym equipment. He planned to tell everyone that he was an author who had come to Perry’s Cove seeking peace and quiet to finish a book.

  In fact, that wasn’t a lie. He was planning a book—about his experiences as a man wrongfully imprisoned for murder. But there was no way to end the book until he unraveled the mystery of who had murdered Veronica Randall.

  He paid his bill with the new credit card he’d acquired in the name of Mark Ramsey. In fact, he had bought a whole set of credentials: social security card, birth certificate and a good credit rating to go along with his new gold and platinum cards. Fingerprints would be a problem, of course. But he didn’t intend leaving them anywhere it would make a difference.

  Interested in the work on the building he’d been looking at, he walked across the street, then into an interior courtyard. The sound of a car door slamming snared his attention, and he stopped dead in his tracks when he realized who had pulled into the parking pad in back of the new construction site. He caught only a glance of her blond hair through the car window, but he was sure it was Molly Dumont.

  He’d thought he was prepared to come back here and face the past, but suddenly he felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. If picturing Bill Bauder in hell had helped him wile away the endless hours behind bars, Molly had provided quite different fantasies. In the tough, all-male environment of the cell block, he’d fallen asleep imagining what he and Molly Dumont could do in bed together. And her presence had carried over into the wild, erotic dreams there had been no way to repress.

  He could have chosen any woman in the world for his favorite partner. In fact, in his narrow prison bunk, he’d imagined himself making love with models and movie actresses. But he’d always come back to Molly because his memories of her were more real, more vital than any of the false images from American popular culture. In prison, when he’d thought he was never going to see her again, he’d had no hesitation investing a lot of emotional and creative energy in their fantasy encounters.

  Seeing her in person, he realized she was going to be a complication he didn’t need.

  He’d known her for two years before his murder conviction, when they’d both been married. Even back then, he’d thought about what his life would be like with her instead of the shrew his wife had become. But he hadn’t done anything about it. Illicit relationships weren’t his style. Nor was breaking up someone else’s apparently stable marriage.

  As far as he knew, she was still with Phil, but that didn’t stop his heart from beating faster as he watched her get out of the car, didn’t stop the hitch in his throat as she walked gracefully toward the front of the shop, her wheat-colored hair blowing back from her delicate face.

  He got only a profile view of her features, screened by that curtain of thick hair. Then her back was to him, but his mind filled in the rest. Her blue eyes, her straight nose and her sensuous lips had been branded on his consciousness.

  Could she possibly be as beautiful as he’d remembered? He needed to find out. He figured he was going to run into her some time. No time like the present to gauge how she reacted to him.

  He knew he was rationalizing. He knew he was making up excuses for embarking on a risky course of action. He had no business approaching her. It wasn’t necessary, unless she turned out to be involved in… What?

  A conspiracy against him?

  He hated to think in those terms. Somehow, he’d rather it be just one person who had a beef against him and Veronica. Enough of a beef to kill her and pin the murder on her unsuspecting husband. Still, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he was up against something bigger.

  But what?

  He was going to find out—without getting tangled up with Molly Dumont. That very wise decision didn’t stop him from walking closer to the parking pad.

  He had stopped several feet from the car when movement on the roof of
the shop caught his attention. Someone was peering over the edge, looking down at Molly.

  He’d seen the workmen leave, probably for lunch. But now one of them was back, a guy wearing blue coveralls and a navy cap pulled down over his face.

  Mark thought that maybe the guy was going to call out to her so she’d know he was up there. But he said nothing, and there was something strange about the way he moved with slow deliberation, as if he wasn’t comfortable up there.

  Then suddenly the man seemed to stumble. His foot shot awkwardly to the side, hitting a large metal container sitting too near the edge of the roof. It was filled with something heavy, Mark could tell by the way it rocked back and forth, teetering on the edge of disaster just as Molly marched up the back sidewalk toward the door, oblivious of what was going on above her.

  Mark watched the unfolding drama in horror. The bucket wobbled again, and he knew it was going over the edge, its trajectory on a collision course with the woman below.

  Chapter Two

  “Molly, watch out!” he shouted. At the same time he launched himself with lightning reflexes across the space that separated them. With milliseconds to spare, he caught her in an upper-body tackle and threw her off the walkway, just as the metal bucket hit the sidewalk with an earsplitting crash.

  But the bulk of his attention was focused on Molly, who gasped as she landed under him on the ground.

  Thank God he’d angled them toward a clear patch of grass, otherwise she might have come down on construction debris.

  For long seconds neither one of them moved, probably because they were both too stunned by the impact. Still, his mind was registering familiar sensations. As he lay there on top of her, he realized that it had been years since he’d gotten this close to a woman, his body crushed to hers, separated by only a few layers of clothing.

  He wanted to press himself more tightly against Molly’s feminine curves. But that way lay madness. Instead he shifted his weight to the side, keeping his arms protectively around her.

  The emergency’s over. Turn her loose, he ordered himself. Before you give away the whole show. But now that he held her in his embrace, his body wouldn’t obey the command from his brain.

  The shock of clasping a living, breathing woman was overwhelming. Not just any woman. This woman. Of all the ones with whom he could have made first contact after the long years of living inside his own head, it was Molly. He was instantly rock hard, his whole body taut and ready for action.

  He’d come out of the pen thinking that now he could have all the things he’d been denied for years, starting with a sixteen-ounce strip steak and sex. The steak had been no problem. Sex was another matter.

  Maybe, before he’d given himself a chance to think too deeply, he should have picked up some likely candidate in a bar. But there were reasons why he hadn’t done it. He’d felt tainted then. Felt as though the sour smell of prison was oozing out of his pores. So he’d kept his distance from the females of the species and focused on the other facets of daily life that were new and strange to him—like waking up and going to bed when he wanted, buying clothing and picking a different delicacy every night for dinner.

  Then he’d gone in for surgery, and his face had looked as if he’d been pounded by Mike Tyson for fifteen rounds. That had automatically disqualified him from any intimate contact.

  Now here he was holding Molly Dumont.

  Turn her loose, he told himself again. But his muscles still failed to obey the command, and he realized in that moment that he was more needy than he’d dreamed possible.

  The sudden feeling of vulnerability was like a crushing blow to the chest. At least it did something to deflate his arousal.

  He’d told himself that his dreams of Molly had no relationship to reality, and in a way that was true. The dreams had served him up an image that was devastatingly sexual.

  In the flesh, she was even more devastating.

  A host of sensations swamped his senses. Her scent enveloped him—the delicate aroma of soap and flowers and woman. His face brushed her soft cheek. And as he stared into the blue of her eyes, he felt as though he would drown in their depths.

  The totality of her only increased the sexual awareness. One of her breasts pressed against his side, and he was vividly aware of that very feminine combination of softness and fullness.

  Perhaps she heard his sharp intake of breath, because she was the one who pulled away, those blue eyes alive with questions. Her pretty lips parted, but she remained silent, just looking at him.

  He wanted to scramble up and run. But he managed to stay where he was and say in the new gravelly voice he’d acquired, “Are you all right?”

  The question seemed to bring her out of a trance. She blinked, then moved her arms and legs, taking a silent inventory. “I think so. What happened? You came out of nowhere and knocked me down.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I saw something falling off the roof. You were going to walk right under it.”

  “I heard it hit.” She turned her head, breaking the eye contact with him, and he grappled with a sudden sense of loss.

  She stared at the metal can and the dark shingles scattered around it, before her gaze came back to his. “It would have been pretty bad if that thing had landed on me.”

  “Yeah.”

  She tipped her head to one side as she continued to study him. “There’s something so familiar about you. Do I know you?”

  “No!” His answer came out too sharp and too quick.

  Her tongue flicked out, stroking across her bottom lip, as though he’d convinced her of just the opposite.

  He stood up abruptly, thinking he should offer her his hand. But she was already pushing herself up. Bending, she brushed her hands across the streaks of dirt on her dark skirt, slapping at it with only partial success.

  He might have offered to help, but he kept his own hands at his sides.

  When she raised her head again, it was to study him with unnerving intensity. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”

  He wanted to clamp his teeth together, but somehow he kept his jaw relaxed. “I’d remember if we had.”

  “Yes.” She said it slowly, agreeing with him. Then she delivered a punch to his guts, “You called my name.”

  “What?”

  “When that thing was falling off the roof, you called out to me. You called me by name.”

  “No.” He shook his head in denial, then added, “How could I have?”

  Damn. He wasn’t as good at deception as he’d thought he’d be. First he’d instinctively used her name when he saw she was in danger. Now he was jumping in with both feet to issue a denial.

  He turned his head toward the can lying bent and twisted on the sidewalk, changing the subject with deliberate speed. “I’m wondering what that big container was doing up on the roof.”

  “They’re remodeling the shop.”

  “Who?”

  “Tilden’s.”

  He nodded. Tilden’s had been his chief rival back in the old days when he’d been on the success tread-mill, bidding on every project that came along. Sometimes he’d get the job; sometimes they did. Their work was okay, but he didn’t think much of their estimating abilities. Or maybe Jerry Tilden had lowballed him on purpose.

  She was watching his expression, as if seeing the wheels turning in his head. “You know the company?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered, another denial, another lie. The words tumbling out of his mouth didn’t feel natural on his tongue, but he’d known all along that if he came here looking for the murderer, he was going to have to do a lot of prevaricating. But now he was being forced into lying to Molly Dumont—and he felt like a rat.

  He directed the discussion back to the aborted disaster. “A workman was up there. I saw him catch his foot on the bucket or give it a push.”

  “Not on purpose!”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  He shrugged, then stood an
d walked to the metal can where heavy shingles had spilled out onto the ground, nasty missiles that would have done a lot of damage raining down on human flesh.

  An involuntary shudder traveled over his skin. If that bucket had ended up on the edge of the roof by mistake, it was a pretty serious safety breach. If not…then what had been the motive?

  “Do you want me to go up there and have a look?” he asked on impulse.

  She stood for a moment, staring off into the distance, then swung her gaze back to him. “I think you’re assuming that I’m having this shop renovated for myself.”

  “You’re not?”

  “This isn’t my place. I’m looking in on the project for Shoreside Realty. A client is fixing up the property for sale.”

  “Oh.” He tried to fit the answer into the facts he remembered. Five years ago Molly Dumont and her husband had owned an antique business. They and a group of other dealers, including Veronica, had banded together to buy an old seafood-processing building. Mark had done the conversion himself, turning the large space into an antique gallery with about a half-dozen businesses under the same roof. The place was called the Treasure Hunt Pavilion. When he’d seen Molly outside the Calico Duck, he’d assumed that the Dumonts had been doing well enough to expand into their own space.

  But he could hardly go into any of that background now—or ask why she’d changed her profession when she’d been so good at fixing up and selling old furniture and decorative pieces. He settled for, “Shoreside Realty? I was going to stop over at their office.”

  It was her turn to say, “Oh?”

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m thinking of renting a house in the area for several months, and I want to find out what’s available.” In the next breath, he heard himself asking, “Would you be interested in handling that for me?”

  WOULD SHE? Molly hesitated a beat before answering. Lord knows, she needed the money. She’d only gotten her real estate license within the past two years, and she was finding that it was either feast or famine. When you made a sale, you got a very nice commission. But you could spend days taking clients around with no results. And then there was the problem of listings. You got the best commissions when you were the agent who had signed up the property. Otherwise, you had to split the money.