laundry, and he needed to call Ann Cameron and tell her he couldn't meet her for coffee tomorrow. He'd stopped by her deli that morning before work, and she'd made him breakfast. She was a real nice lady, and he needed to call and break their date.
Instead, he stood in Gabrielle's house watching her pour oil into a shallow bowl and light candles on the mantelpiece and on different glass tables like she was preparing for a sacrifice. Instead of leaving, he tilted his head to one side and watched her ugly, shapeless dress ride up the backs of her smooth thighs, stopping just short of fantasy land.
She turned down the lights, then flipped the switch next to the fireplace, and orange flame shot from the gas vents and licked at the fake logs. He watched her tie back her long, curly hair with a piece of ribbon, and he debated whether he should tell her that the ivory chess set in Kevin's bedroom, the one with all those little pawns with their wicked little woodies, had been stolen from a house in River Run last month.
Ever since he'd watched her go over that balcony, he'd thought about telling her the truth. He'd thought about it on the drive to his house, while he'd talked to Walker on the telephone, and after he'd hung up. He'd thought about it as he'd stood on her porch with her key in his hand, and as he'd looked into her trusting green eyes. He'd thought about it even as he'd agreed to a massage that he knew was a bad idea.
The captain didn't want Gabrielle informed of anything, but Joe thought she deserved to know the truth about Kevin and about the shelves crammed with many of the antiques recorded as stolen in police central file.
Until about an hour ago, Joe would have been in complete agreement with Walker. But that had been before she'd stood guard outside the guest room door while he'd searched. Before he'd looked into her eyes and asked for her trust. Before she'd gone over that railing for him. Until an hour ago, he hadn't been sure of her innocence, nor had he really cared. It hadn't been his job to care. It still wasn't his job.
'I'll go get my massage table and you can get comfortable.'
'I want to sit in a chair. One of those dining room chairs will be good.' A hard,
'Are you sure?'
'Oh yeah.' But when he'd seen her climb over that railing, clearly terrified, something had shifted within him and changed how he looked at her, what he felt deep down in his core. Watching her dangle above his head, those little white panties filling his view, his heart had lodged somewhere in his throat. As he'd looked up at her hanging above him, he'd known he would have a real hard time catching her if she fell, just as he'd known there was no way in hell he'd let her fall. And in that moment she'd become more than his informant with a killer body, she'd become someone he wanted to keep safe. Someone he wanted to protect.
He'd felt something else, too. As he'd held her in his arms and kissed her neck, he'd felt a sharp tightness in his chest even after the danger had passed. Maybe it had been residual fear or latent stress. Yeah maybe, but whatever it was, he didn't plan to examine it too closely. Instead he chose to focus his attention on Gabrielle's progress as she dragged a wooden chair from the dining room and set it in front of the fireplace.
Even though he believed she deserved to know about Kevin, he couldn't tell her, because she was so extremely readable. Everything she felt showed in her eyes. She couldn't lie without looking like she expected a bolt of lightning to zap her. He couldn't tell her, and he shouldn't stay.
He took a step backward and debated the wisdom of letting Gabrielle rub her hands on him. The debate didn't last long. She tilted her head to the side and looked at Rim. 'Take off your shirt, Joe,' she said, and her voice flowed through him like that oil she was warming on a little burner. He guessed he didn't have to leave just yet. He was thirty-five and in control.
It was a massage. Not sex. After he'd been shot, he'd had the knots kneaded from his muscles on a regular basis as part of his therapy. Of course, his therapist had been in her fifties and looked nothing like Gabrielle Breedlove.
Yeah, he could stay. As long as he remembered that Gabrielle was his informant, that screwing around with her would screw up his job. And that just wasn't going to happen. No way in hell.
'Aren't you going to take off your clothes?'
'I'm leaving my pants on.'
She shook her head. 'I wish you wouldn't. The oil will ruin your pants.'
'I'll take my chances.'
'I won't peek.' The tone of her voice and the frown on her lips told him she thought he was absurd. Then she raised her right hand as if swearing an oath. 'I promise.'
'Towel's too small.'
'Oh.' She left and returned a moment later with a big beach towel. She tossed it on the arm of the sofa beside him. 'How's this?'
'Great.'
Gabrielle paid fascinated attention to Joe's hands as he drew the bottom of his silk polo from his gabardine trousers. Like a maddeningly slow striptease, he pulled the ribbed material just enough to give her a flash of flat stomach and a vertical line of dark hair before he released the shirt and it fell to his waist. She released a breath she hadn't known she was holding and lifted her gaze to his face. She stared into his brown eyes watching her watch him. He raised a hand to grab a fistful of shirt between his shoulders. Then he pulled it over his head and tossed it on the sofa next to the bath towel he'd refused to wear. His hands moved to his belt buckle, and she quickly glanced away.
She turned her attention to the almond oil she'd poured into a shallow lotus bowl and left warming on a vaporizer. Her mouth felt impossibly dry and watery all at the same time. She turned her gaze so he wouldn't catch her staring, but not before she'd seen the fine curls covering the defined muscles of his chest, spreading down his sternum and flat stomach and disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers. His nipples were a darker brown than in her painting of him, the hair on his chest softer and not as thick.
She added three drops of benzoin and eucalyptus to the almond oil, then placed the bowl and defuser on a small table next to the fireplace. Joe spun the dining room chair to face the fire, straddled the seat, and sat backward. He folded his arms across the top rung and presented her with his smooth back. His tight skin stretched across hard muscle and the indent of his spine that ran between his shoulders to the small of his back. A nicotine patch was stuck to his waist and half hidden by the thick white towel hung low on his hips.
'Don't you think it's going to get too hot sitting so close to the
'If your skin isn't warm, your pores will be closed to the healing benefits of the benzoin and eucalyptus.' She stood beside him and placed one palm across his forehead and the other at the nape of his neck. 'Drop your head a little bit,' she said and gently squeezed his knotted neck muscles. 'Bring awareness to the tension in your head. Now take a deep cleansing breath and hold it until I tell you,' she instructed as she rubbed the pad of her thumb up the top vertebras of his spine and into the fine hair at the base of his skull. She counted to five and slid her thumb back down. 'Release your breath, and with it, the tension you feel in your head. Let it go.'
'Ahh… Gabrielle?'
'Yes, Joe.'
'I don't have tension in my head.'
The relaxing essence of lavender and geranium filled her living room as she moved to stand behind him. Her hands slid to his temples, and she massaged away the tension he didn't think he had. 'Joe, you're so tense you're brittle.' She slowly combed her fingers up the sides of his head; his silky hair curled around her knuckles as she entwined them on top of his skull. She applied pressure with her palms and rubbed. 'How does that feel?'
He groaned.
'That's what I thought.' She spent a bit more time than usual on his skull and neck, but his hair felt so soft between her fingers that she couldn't help herself. A warm little tingle traveled up her arms and tightened her breasts, and she forced herself to move on, to relinquish the pleasure of touching his hair.
She poured a small measure of the massage oil from the lotus bowl into her palms. 'Take a deep cleansing breath and hold it.' She placed her hands on the back of each shoulder and rolled and squeezed his muscles. His trapezius and deltoids were tight and knotted, and she moved her hands to the outside edge of his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows. 'Feel the tension in the base of your skull. Let it go as you exhale,' she instructed even though she had a real good feeling he wasn't using his breathing to relax. She kneaded her way back up. 'Visualize the bad stress flowing away from you and replace it with white prana, or clean universal energy.'
