O'Halloran's Lady Read online

  Thanks to an inconvenient perfectionist streak that had seemed to become more pronounced with every year, she had trouble meeting anyone with whom she could visualise having an intimate, meaningful relationship.

  As in sex.

  Another hot flashback to the night in O’Halloran’s apartment made her stomach clench and her breasts tighten. She definitely wasn’t a nun, but for nine years she had lived like one. She hadn’t set out to be so isolated and alone—lacking almost any semblance of human warmth in her life, lacking the mate she wanted—it was just the way things had worked out.

  Or was it?

  The feeling of constriction in her chest increased as she examined the extremity of her reaction to the cover of her new book.

  She had gotten over the loss of both of her parents; and she had gotten over Dane. The fact that they had never slept together, because he had surprised her by proposing literally minutes before he had shipped out, had meant they had never had the chance at a full, intimate relationship. As much as she’d loved him, in her mind, he would forever remain a part of her childhood and teen years, not a part of her adult life.

  For the past few years, as much as she had wanted to find someone she could fall for, marry and have babies with, she hadn’t come even remotely close.

  As outwardly attractive as her dates had been, there had always been something wrong. They had been either too short, or too tall, or their personalities just hadn’t appealed. She had been picky to the point that most of her friends had long since given up introducing her to eligible bachelors.

  Now she had to consider that the reason she had never been able to move on to the healthy, normal relationship she craved was because at some deep, instinctual level, O’Halloran still mattered. That in the weeks they had dated—and maybe because he was the first and only man she had ever made love with—in a primitive, purely masculine way, he had somehow managed to imprint himself on her so deeply that she had never been able to open up to another relationship.

  She stopped dead, barely noticing the trees that dappled the sidewalk with chilly shade, or the young mother with a stroller who walked past her. It was even possible that in some sneaky, undermining way, she had fallen for O’Halloran because of his dangerous occupation; that the reason she wasn’t attracted to a “normal” nine-to-five guy was because her years on military bases had hardwired her to be attracted to edgy alpha types.

  She forced herself back into motion again, automatically turning down the street that led to a small park. The sick feeling in her stomach increased as she strolled, along with the desire to bang her head against the nearest wall she could find in the hope that that salutary action might jolt some sense into her.

  She felt like she was staring down a long tunnel inscribed with the words obvious reason for multiple relationship failures.

  Now was not a good time to realise that as hard as she’d tried to bury her past and the attraction to O’Halloran, like the heroine in her book, she hadn’t succeeded.

  And now it had come back to bite her.

  * * *

  Two hours before midnight, and the clock was ticking....

  On edge and gripped by a tense air of expectation, haunted by a past that had teeth, Marc O’Halloran, clad in a pair of grey interlock track pants that hung low on his hips, closed the door on his private gym. A towel from the shower he’d just taken slung over one muscled shoulder, he padded through the darkened luxury of his Auckland waterfront apartment, not bothering to turn on lights.

  Stepping out on his terrace, he allowed the damp chill to settle around him like a shroud as he stared broodingly out at the spectacular view of the Waitemata Harbour. To one side, the graceful arch of the Harbour Bridge was almost obscured by a wraithlike veil of mist, and the headland that was Devonport, with its naval base and steep streets crammed with houses, glittered quietly.

  Below, street-lighting from the busy viaduct glowed through the wrought-iron railing that edged his terrace. The pulse of neon lighting from the busy restaurants and bars flickered garishly in time with the beat of a jazz band, adding a strident, unsettling rhythm to the night.

  As Marc stepped back into his lounge, the glass of the bi-fold doors threw his reflection back at him. The scars that marred his right shoulder and his forearms were an unwelcome reminder of the house fire that had taken the lives of his wife and small son six years ago. Luckily, the broken neck, courtesy of the falling beam that had also damaged his shoulder, hadn’t required surgery or scars, just months in a neck brace.

  Nothing too major, he thought grimly. He had lived.

  Walking through to the laundry, he tossed the towel in a basket, grabbed a fresh T-shirt out of the dryer and pulled it on. Minutes later, after collecting a glass of ice water from the kitchen, he entered his study. The view of the port, and the shimmer of city lights, winked out as he switched on a lamp and unlocked his briefcase.

  Bypassing the correspondence file from the security business in which he was a partner, he searched out the bookstore bag that contained the novel he had bought during his lunch break.

  Hot off the presses, the latest Jenna Whitmore.

  With an effort of will, he shook off the miasma of guilt that went with the impending anniversary of his wife’s and child’s deaths, and the hot burn of frustration that the only crime he had never been able to solve had been the murder of his own family. Dropping the paper bag on the gleaming surface of his desk, he studied the cover with its tense, dark backdrop.

  The book was a suspense, but also a romance, not something he normally read, but he had once dated Jenna so, out of curiosity, he had bought her first book.

  To his surprise he had been hooked from the first page. Despite her link to his past—one of the links that he had systematically eradicated from his life—Jenna’s books had become a guilty pleasure and a deep, dark secret. If the detectives he had used to work with at Auckland Central or his business partner in the security business he now part-owned, Ben McCabe, ever found out that he read romances, he would never live it down.

  Automatically, he turned the book over and examined the publicity photo on the back cover. Despite the tension that coursed through him, he found himself gradually relaxing. Jenna, who also happened to be his dead wife’s cousin, frequently changed her hair. The constant process of reinvention never failed to fascinate Marc.

  This time she had opted for caramel streaks to complement her natural dark colour and a long, layered cut. As modern as the cut was, the overall effect was oddly elegant.

  When they had dated, even though it had only been for a short time, he had liked Jenna’s hair exactly how it had been, long and soft and completely natural. Although he was willing to be converted by the lighter streaks and the sexy cut, which highlighted the delicate curve of her cheekbones and made her dark eyes look long and unexpectedly smoky.

  Settling into a black leather armchair set to one side of the desk, he propped his bare feet on an ottoman and flipped open the book.

  The vice-like grip of guilt and frustration, the knowledge that approximately an hour from now, the man who had murdered his family would contact him, slowly eased as he forced himself to turn pages.

  Reluctantly engrossed by words that flowed with a neat, no-nonsense economy, Marc ceased to notice the silence of his Auckland apartment and the inner tension that sawed at his nerves.

  As the minutes flowed past, he sank deeper into the story, noting that it was her best yet. The hero, Cutler, a detective, had a lot of grit and texture, and the procedural details were right on the button.

  The plot reached a crescendo as Cutler and the heroine, Sara, after a series of tantalising near misses, finally, electrifyingly, made it to Cutler’s apartment.

  Unexpected tension burned through Marc as he was drawn through the passionate interlude. By the time he had reached the e
nd of the love scene, he had ceased to visualise the damp chill of a rainy afternoon, and instead his mind had shifted to another season, another room, filled with heated shadows and moonlight....

  The sound of distant sirens brought his head up, an automatic reaction that, after two years out of the force, he hadn’t been able to kick.

  His jaw tightened. Thinking about Jenna was crazy. Since his wife, Natalie, and their baby had died in a house fire, Marc had had no interest in another committed relationship. He had enough guilt to process.

  Added to that, he hadn’t seen Jenna in years and, apart from one unplanned episode after they had broken up and following a near accident with a car, they had never made it anywhere near a bedroom.

  A vivid memory of Jenna scrambling off the couch they’d ended up sprawled across nine years ago, moonlight flowing over the pale curves of her body, jolted him out of the story altogether. A new tension coursing through him, he put the book down.

  Broodingly, he recalled flickering images of her fastening the low back of her dress. The tense expression on her face as she’d searched for shoes and her handbag. She had refused a lift and waved her cell at him, indicating she had already called a cab.

  Marc hadn’t pushed it. The fact that they had slept together after they had broken up had underpinned the awkward minutes until the cab she’d ordered had slid into his drive.

  The blinding fact that it had been Jenna’s first time had added to the tension, although Jenna had brushed it off. He could still remember her quiet assertion that if it hadn’t been for the adrenaline-charged moments when Marc had stepped in and saved her from being hit by an obviously drunk driver, what had just taken place on his couch would never have happened.

  Marc had had to accept her self-contained approach. He’d been aware that she hadn’t liked the fact that he was a police detective or that he commanded an armed first response team, the Special Tactics Squad.

  When he’d started dating Jenna’s cousin, Natalie had held a similar view. She hadn’t liked the long work hours, the seaminess or the danger, and she hadn’t liked being closed out of that part of his life.

  After the first year of marriage, Natalie had wanted him to quit the force and go back to law, in which he had a degree. His parents, both lawyers, had their own successful law firm, and she hadn’t been able to understand why he didn’t want to be a part of it.

  The argument had been the start of a wedge in their relationship he hadn’t been able to mend. When it came down to it he preferred the practical, hands-on approach to justice that police work offered him, rather than the intricacies of negotiating the legal system.

  The whoosh of incoming mail on his computer brought his head up. Tension slammed into Marc as he noted the time: eleven o’clock, exactly. He had been so engrossed by the book, and the window into the past it had opened, that he had forgotten the time.

  Jaw taut, he strolled to his desk and read the email.

  The message was simple. The same message he had received every year for the past five years on the anniversary of the house fire. A fire he had been certain had been started deliberately, an act of revenge by the notorious criminal family he had been investigating at the time.

  Catch me if you can.

  Cold anger edged with frustration burned through Marc. Although, there was a certain relief in the fact that the waiting was over. Punching the print button, he waited for the hard copy of the taunting message to feed out.

  He had never been able to trace the message to an actual person, or prove the message was connected to the crime. Each time he had traced the email to the server, the name and physical address hadn’t panned out. The trail had been predictable, a string of stolen identities, mostly deceased persons, through which cash payments via fake bank accounts had been made. Non-existent people and random addresses, all added up to a wild-goose chase.

  Despite his contention that the house fire that had killed his family and put him in hospital had been a copycat crime committed by someone other than the serial arsonist the police had been hunting at the time, no one had bought into his theory. Since the arsonist had died during a shootout just after he had tried to set a police station on fire, there was no one to question. The supposed perpetrator was dead, the fires had stopped, end of story.

  Grimly, Marc filed the message with the others in a heavy manila folder that contained every police or fire department report and newspaper article relating to the fire and the death of his wife and small son.

  Maybe he was being obsessive about his hunt for a shadowy criminal. Maybe he had been wrong all along, and the investigative team who had sifted through what was left of his house were right. The psychological reports that had finished his police career were adamant on that point.

  Even so, Marc couldn’t let go. The two people he had cared about most had died of smoke inhalation when he should have been at home, protecting them. Instead, he had used his free time—the quality time he should have been spending with his family—working surveillance on a powerful criminal family who had slipped the net on his last operation.

  Courtesy of the injuries he had sustained getting Natalie and tiny Jared out of the house, he had ended up flat on his back in hospital for weeks. Further months on sick leave while he had waited for his neck and shoulder to heal, followed by reconstructive surgery for his shoulder, had added to his frustration. By the time he had been fit for duty again, the case had been closed.

  He was no longer a detective, but he had not dropped the case. Thanks to bequests from his grandparents and a talent for investment, Marc was independently wealthy. Enough so that he had been able to buy in to the security business he presently co-owned and could afford to fund an ongoing private investigation into the case.

  When he had finally woken up from sedation in hospital to find that both Natalie and Jared had died, grief and cold fury hit him like a blow. Despite the gloomy prognosis on his fractured neck, he had made a vow.

  It was too late to save his family, but he would use his talent for solving crime, which had resulted in their deaths, to bring the man he was certain had murdered them to justice.

  He hadn’t made a significant breakthrough in the six years he had chased leads and walked down investigative dead alleys. But the murderer who was taunting him would make a mistake, and when he did Marc would be waiting.

  It was just a matter of time.

  Chapter 2

  An hour before midnight, and the anniversary of Natalie’s death.

  Jenna walked through the darkened parking lot of the shopping mall in central Auckland, glad for the casual warmth of jeans and boots and the cashmere coat belted around her waist to push back the chill.

  Overhead, thick clouds hid any hint of moon or stars. On the ground, streamers of cold mist rose off damp concrete and wreathed ranks of wet, glistening cars, adding a dismal air to a chilly winter’s night.

  Behind her, footsteps echoed, the tread uncannily mirroring her own so that at first she had thought the step was just an echo.

  Adjusting her grip on the carrier bags, which thumped against her legs with every step, she walked a little faster, although speeding up was an effort. She was tired from a string of late nights and too many hours spent at her computer. From the scratchiness at the back of her throat and the sensitivity of her eyes, she suspected she was also coming down with a virus. The diagnosis was further confirmed by the chills that periodically swept her and the aches and pains that seemed to have sunk into her bones.

  She strained to listen behind her and logged the moment the change in her pace put whoever was following her out of sync with her step.

  Automatically, her too-fertile writer’s brain analysed the tread. There was no sharp tap of heels. The sound was more deliberate, solid, so it was likely the
person wasn’t female. He was probably one of the young guys she had seen hanging at the entrance to the mall on her way out.

  Now that she knew there was definitely someone behind her, the fact that he hadn’t either veered off, or walked briskly past, but had chosen to remain approximately the same distance behind and maintain her snail’s pace sent a chill shooting down her spine. The farther she walked away from the lights of the mall, the more sinister the trailing footsteps had become.

  As she approached an SUV, in an effort to catch a glimpse of whoever was behind her, she slowed and glanced in the wing mirror.

  Apart from wet cars and dark, thin air wreathed with mist, as far back as she could see, the parking lot appeared to be empty.

  In that same instant, she registered that the footsteps had stopped. Somehow that was more frightening than if she had actually caught a glimpse of whoever had been following her.

  Heart pounding, she swung around and skimmed the rows of cars. The background hum of city traffic, the distant blare of a car horn, seemed to increase the sense of isolation in the misty parking lot, the muffling, encapsulating silence.

  Somewhere off to the left a car engine coughed to life. She let out a relieved breath. Mystery solved. Whoever had been behind her must have stopped to unlock their car just seconds before she had gotten up the courage to check on him.

  Castigating herself for the paranoia that had leaped at her from nowhere, she adjusted her grip on the carrier bags, and continued on toward her car.

  She had parked on the far side of the lot, next to the clothing department stores, because when she’d made the decision to do some late night shopping, she hadn’t originally counted on buying groceries. Her goal had simply been to get out of her house, away from her office and the memories that, at this time of year, always seemed to press in on her.