In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [22]
“Sure.” Camelia got up. He straightened his silver-gray silk tie and smoothed back his hair, Al Pacino–style, Mel thought, as he walked across the room and asked the uniform standing outside the door to get her a Diet Coke.
“Make that two,” Camelia added, closing the door again.
Mel took a good look at him, taking him in as a man and not just a cop—and a cop who thought she had tried to murder her lover at that. This guy was quite the fashion plate. If he were not a cop, she might have tabbed him as a member of the mob.
“You must be married,” she said, fingers still drumming on the table.
“Why do you say that?”
He leaned back in his more comfortable chair, one leg draped lazily over the other.
“No cop living alone would look as smart as you—freshly ironed shirt, light starch only, pants pressed, shoes shined.”
He grinned. “I shine my own shoes.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
He laughed then. Leaning across the table, he took hold of her hand. “Stop that drumming,” he said. “Anyone would think you were nervous.”
“Who, me?” She stuck her chin defiantly in the air. “I’m not nervous, I’m just trying to find out the truth.”
“Like me.”
“Like you.” Their gazes locked, and then, because she just couldn’t help it, she cracked. Tears streamed down her face. Big fat tears that rolled down her cheeks, dripped from her chin, leaked into her ears. Gosh darn it, she was bawling like a kid and all because her heart was breaking. Ed was lying in that hospital bed, Ed was gravely wounded, Ed was dying. . . .
“I can’t bear it,” she wept, still sitting bolt upright in the chair. “I just can’t bear to lose him.”
Camelia got up. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.
She looked at it and then up at him. A kind of giggle, or maybe it was a hiccup, interrupted her sobs. “That’s what I mean about the wife,” she said. “A clean handkerchief. Anybody else would have offered a box of Kleenex.”
Officer Brotski knocked on the door, then entered, carrying two cans of Diet Coke. “With caffeine,” he mentioned to Camelia, who gave him a withering look.
Brotski took in the sobbing blonde, the clean white handkerchief, the tension in the air, and with a muttered, “Sorry, excuse me, sir” quickly departed.
“You really love him that much?” Camelia flipped open the can and handed it to her. “You haven’t known him that long.”
“Long enough.” She hiccuped. “And then again,” she added in a whisper, “not long enough.”
Camelia tilted his chair. He sat, one leg draped over the other, arms folded, silently watching her. There was something so vulnerable, so gallant about her at that moment, he was almost tempted to believe her. Then he reminded himself she was there because Ed Vincent had said she had tried to kill him. He took in the ragged crop of blonde hair, the earnest whiskey-brown eyes, the wide trembling mouth. And also the long legs and the extremely short skirt that suddenly, for some reason, reminded him of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. And nobody, he recalled uncomfortably, had been more wicked than her character.
With an embarrassed cough, he uprighted his chair and took charge again. “And so did you?” he asked abruptly. “Telephone him, I mean.”
“I tried, God knows I tried endlessly. But Ed’s office was like a fortress with a barricade of secretaries and assistants placed firmly between me and the boss. They said Mr. Vincent did not accept calls, and could I please tell them what I was calling about?” Mel lifted her shoulders, she shook her head. “How could I tell them? They would think I was some kind of nut. Mr. Big Shot, I thought. So full of himself. Too important to speak to little people. I almost let it go at that,” she added soberly, “but then I reminded myself. Ed Vincent was a big shot in danger.