Crime Of The Heart Read online

  There must be a woman like this in every man’s past,

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Allie Harrison

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Copyright

  There must be a woman like this in every man’s past,

  Lee thought. A woman like Erin Fleming.

  A woman who, after months of separation, could still overwhelm his senses. A woman who haunted his dreams and seemed to find a place in his mind at the oddest times of the day. A woman who could still fill him with incomparable desire.

  A woman who reminded him of fire—hot and mysterious and inviting—and burned him if he got too close.

  Dear Reader,

  Once again, you’ve come to the right place if you’re looking for that seductive mix of romance and excitement that is quintessentially Intimate Moments. Start the month with The Lady in Red—by reader favorite Linda Turner. Your heart will be in your throat as rival homicide reporters Blake Nickels and Sabrina Jones see their relationship change from professional to personal—with a killer on their trail all the while. And don’t miss the conclusion of the HOLIDAY HONEYMOONS miniseries, Merline Lovelace’s The 14th...and Forever. You’ll wish for a holiday—and a HOLIDAY HONEYMOON—every month of the year.

  The rest of the month is fabulous, too, with new books from Rebecca Daniels: Mind Over Marriage;

  Marilyn Tracy: Almost Perfect, the launch book in her ALMOST, TEXAS miniseries; and Allie Harrison: Crime of the Heart. And welcome new author Charlotte Walker, as she debuts with Yesterday’s Bride. Every one of these books is full of passion, and sometimes peril—don’t miss a single one.

  And be sure to come back next month, when the romance and excitement continue, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Enjoy!

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  CRIME OF THE HEART

  ALLIE HARRISON

  Books by Allie Harrison

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Crime of the Heart #767

  Silhouette Shadows

  Dream a Deadly Dream #20

  Dead Reckoning #40

  ALLIE HARRISON

  has been writing since she was in school but never really took it seriously until she joined her local RWA chapter six years ago: She now works to divide her time between her husband, their two small children, reading the latest hot romance and creating her own intriguing stories.

  She lives in a small town in southern Illinois and believes everyone should follow their dream and never give up.

  To Wayne and Ben and Rachel

  With love always

  And to Ginny S. and Linda J.

  For the inspiration and support

  Thank you

  Prologue

  Liam McGrey was aware of two things upon opening his eyes.

  The pain in his head and the pain in his leg.

  His head simply pounded. His leg felt more as though it was on fire. He closed his eyes again, hoping to get lost in the mystical, painless place from which he’d just come. But he couldn’t. He had to stay and face the pain.

  Opening his eyes a second time, his breath caught and his heart skipped a beat at the sight of the woman who sat in the chair beside his bed. By the sounds coming to him from the open door and the smell of antiseptic in the air, he realized where he was, and so didn’t take his gaze off the woman before him to look around.

  She was staring at him, her green eyes looking large and round and puffy.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “What are you doing here, Erin?” he asked at the same time, his throat dry and scratchy, making the words painful.

  “I couldn’t not come,” she replied.

  “Why? You wanted to rub some salt into my wounds?” he bit out.

  She sighed heavily. “Lee, please—” she began, leaning closer but staying in the chair.

  “Please what?” he asked, ignoring the pain in his leg. The pain in his soul suddenly seemed deeper, fresher. “Please accept you with open arms? Please let you hold my hand so that in a few weeks when I’m out of here, you’re gone, too? Just get out of here, Erin.”

  “Lee—”

  “Leaving shouldn’t be any harder for you now than it was two weeks ago,” he snapped.

  “I told you my reasons for having to go,” she said, her words coming out in a rush.

  “Oh, yes, I remember your reasons well. You couldn’t live with my being gone so much. You couldn’t live with my being in danger. You couldn’t live with my line of work. You couldn’t live with the worry that someday I just might get shot. Well, I’m sorry to point it out to you, but that day’s come, hasn’t it? And here I am. And here you are. And I don’t want you here. I don’t need you here. So get out.” Lee realized for the first time that he was shouting at her, his voice echoing through the bland room.

  “Mr. McGrey, you need to remain calm and rest.”

  Lee looked toward the door, blinking against the pain and taking in the woman in white. Hell, just what he needed—another woman telling him what to do. Well, he could give orders, too. He was, after all, contributing to her paycheck. “Get her out of here,” he said.

  The nurse looked at Erin. “Perhaps it would be best if you left now.”

  Lee closed his eyes and refused to look at Erin, but he could feel the heat of her stare. Finally, he heard her footsteps on the tiled floor as she left.

  The nurse, however, didn’t leave. She came closer. He opened his eyes to find her checking the IV that was stuck in his arm. Then she took his wrist to check his pulse.

  “She’s been sitting beside you since you were brought in yesterday,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t care,” he muttered. “She didn’t want to stay beside me before. I don’t want her beside me now.”

  “Would you like me to give you something for pain, Mr. McGrey?” the nurse asked.

  “No,” he replied after a moment. “It doesn’t hurt that much.”

  The nurse left a few moments later, first checking to make sure the bandage on his thigh was clean and dry.

  After she had gone. Lee thought about his lie. It doesn’t hurt that much. The truth was it hurt like hell. Not only in his leg, and not only in his head.

  But Liam knew damn good and well that no painkiller was ever going to ease the ache he felt in his heart.

  Chapter 1

  Eight months later

  Lee answered the. door and stared into the eyes of the woman standing on the other side. There must be a woman like this in every man’s past, he thought to himself. A woman like Erin Flemming.

  A woman, who after months of separation, could still overwhelm his senses. A woman he could taste and smell. A woman whose face and smile he could see when he closed his eyes. A woman who haunted his dreams and seemed to find a place in his mind at the oddest times of the day. A woman who, after months of not seeing her, of not hearing from her, could still fill him with incomparable want.

  A woman who reminded him of fire—hot and mysterious and inviting—and burned him if he got too close.<
br />
  Erin Flemming now stood on the other side of Lee’s threshold, looking even better than she did in his memories.

  He hadn’t seen or heard from her since the day in the hospital. Mentally he uttered an oath and did his best to keep the emotion from his face. “Erin,” he said through a throat that suddenly felt so tight he would have sworn there was someone trying to strangle him. “What are you doing here?” he tried again.

  Her hair was still a lovely auburn, still wavy in its own wild way and looking as soft as he remembered. Only now it was shorter, falling to just below her shoulders in a style that was much more sculpted and fit in well with her tailored suit.

  Memories flooded his mind. Memories of the way she looked with her hair fanned around her on his pillow as she lay beneath him, the way her laugh floated away on the breeze as they fed ducks in the park and the way her emerald eyes sparkled in the moonlight as they walked hand in hand along the shores of Lake Michigan.

  Hell, Lee could picture it all so clearly. He closed his eyes briefly, not wanting to see any of it at all. For with the memories came the sharp, familiar pain of her desertion.

  Lee did his best to ignore that pain, just as he’d learned to do for the pain in his leg.

  “I need to talk to you, Lee,” she replied. “And I was afraid to call you.”

  He pushed aside the sound of his name on her lips. The way she said it, the words seemed to reach in and take hold of his heart. It was the breathy, needful tone in her voice he had to fight to ignore.

  “What do you need to talk to me about?” he muttered, doing his best to keep his gaze fixed on her face and not let it travel down her body to her shapely legs. “Did you suddenly discover you’d forgotten something when you moved out?”

  Get this over quick, he thought. The sooner he shut the door, the sooner he could collapse in the nearest chair and try to stop the pounding of his heart. The sudden throbbing in his bad leg, too. God, it must be going to rain, he told himself.

  Lee took a deep breath, trying to bring his body under some semblance of control. But all he managed to do was inhale a strong whiff of her perfume. It was the same one it had taken eight months to wash out of his bedding...out of his whole damned house.

  “Can I come in?” she asked.

  For a long moment, he didn’t respond. Once Erin stepped through his door, somehow, someway, she would be back in his life. And he didn’t want her there. He had worked too hard to get her out of his system, to convince himself that he didn’t need her...or anyone.

  He could say no. It was his house. And it was just one word. It should be easy. No.

  So why couldn’t he say it? Instead, he motioned her inside. The moment she stepped through the door, the house felt different to him, warmer, more like home. Even his own house betrayed him.

  “Would you like some coffee or something?” he asked, running a hand through his hair.

  Erin watched his movements, and Lee thought he saw something reflected in her eyes, some hint of sadness, as if his actions or appearance had brought back some unwanted memory for her. Well, good, he thought bitterly. She deserved it.

  “Coffee would be great,” she said.

  Lee turned toward the kitchen, not wanting to feel her eyes on him any longer, not wanting to see the way she seemed to be drinking him in. Still, he felt her closeness as she followed him.

  He had been up most of the night trying to exercise away the pain in his leg and fighting the urge to take something for it. He didn’t understand why his leg hurt the worst at night—it should have hurt more after his exercise therapy. When he’d last looked at the clock, it had been a quarter to three in the morning. And it had been some time after that before he was finally able to fall asleep.

  Erin’s knock on his front door had awakened him after no more than three or four hours of fitful sleep. He glanced at the digital clock on the stove. Ten after eight. He felt like hell and imagined he looked even worse.

  “You’re still limping,” she observed.

  Lee grimaced. His leg stood out worse than a sunburned nose, and despite all the therapy, he often felt just shy of having to resort to the damned cane he’d used after coming off the crutches.

  “Yes, well, I suppose it’s going to take awhile before I’m as good as new. But don’t worry, I’ve got lots of time,” he muttered, without turning toward her.

  “I heard you were still on leave,” she said.

  “I wonder who told you that,” he muttered, knowing full well his ex-partner, Tom, had probably told her.

  Erin didn’t answer.

  Lee ignored the dirty dishes piled in the sink and pushed several pieces of junk mail from the counter in order to make room for the coffeemaker. “Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and the cleaning lady isn’t due back until early next week.”

  Even with his back to her, he could still feel the heat of her stare. He forced his hands to stop trembling as he scooped coffee into the filter.

  No other woman had ever had this effect on him, and he was annoyed that Erin still held the strange physical power over him that she always had.

  Lee laughed to himself when he recalled that he once had actually planned to spend the rest of his life with her. He’d come home after a two-week stakeout with a ring in his pocket...and found her suitcases packed in the foyer. It had taken twelve months for him to reach that point in his life where he was willing to commit himself to one woman forever. And with merely a snap of the lock on a suitcase, Erin had closed that door in his heart before it was ever really opened. Lee had vowed never again to be that vulnerable.

  Lee let the coffeemaker do its thing and turned to face Erin. “So what did you need to talk to me about?” he asked, trying to ignore the pain in his bad leg, and the way his emotions were tearing his insides apart. A part of him wanted to pull her to him, to feel what he’d been missing in his life for the past nine months.

  But another part wanted to rattle her.

  “I’m in trouble,” she blurted out, wringing her hands together. She sounded as though she had no idea where to begin. And Lee thought he saw fear in her eyes.

  He kept his feet firmly planted to keep from moving closer and taking her in his arms. “What kind of trouble?”

  “I...” She started pacing back and forth in his kitchen.

  “Sit down, Erin,” he ordered, trying to remember if he’d ever seen her so upset. Her job as a reporter with the Chicago Earlybird had gone well because she didn’t let herself get emotionally involved. She asked questions and searched for answers with a calm certainty and strength that had attracted him to her the first time she interviewed him about a case.

  He knew she’d recently accepted an award for her investigative report on medical hazardous waste that was being dumped a short distance from one of the largest grade schools in Chicago. He’d seen her picture on the front page of the Earlybird, where she’d been labeled the paper’s best new asset. In the picture, some nice-looking stranger was holding her hand.

  Lee forced away the memory.

  Erin sat down on a nearby kitchen chair, still twisting her hands.

  “Now take a deep breath,” he instructed.

  She did. Lee didn’t think it helped much.

  “What kind of trouble are you in?” he asked again. She bit her bottom lip. It was a nervous habit, Lee remembered.

  “Take another deep breath and let it out slowly,” he persisted, hoping she would relax. She was starting to worry him. He’d never seen her behave like this.

  Lee found two clean mugs. Remembering that Erin liked two spoons of sugar in her coffee, he pulled out the sugar bowl and a spoon and took them to the table before filling the mugs.

  Erin’s breath sounded loud in the quiet room. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed her sitting at the table. How many times had she sat at that same table with him? Lee tried to close his mind to such memories.

  He brought her the coffee and sat down across from her, not d
aring to sit any closer. Out of habit, he propped his bad leg up on the chair next to him. It did little to ease the pain he felt.

  “Be straight with me now, Erin. No games. Calm down and tell me what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into,” he said.

  He wanted quick, precise answers. Nothing more. He didn’t want her to talk about anything else or show him any more unwanted concern. Letting her into his house was bad enough. He damn sure wasn’t going to let her into his personal life. Again..

  And if she told him her trouble was something trivial, like being unable to find all her tax information or balance her checkbook, he was liable to show her to the door with no second thoughts.

  Erin wrapped her fingers around her mug as if to warm herself and he tried not to look at her hands. Gentle, soft hands that only served to remind him how she had once touched him....

  “I need your help,” she said, getting right to the point. “Your protection.”

  “What for?” he snapped, feeling disappointed and just a little relieved at the same time.

  “I’m in trouble,” she repeated.

  “You said that before. What kind of trouble?” he asked again, wondering how many times he was going to have to ask. He could have laughed, just imagining what kind of trouble she had gotten herself into. Hell, she was the most straitlaced person he’d ever known. She was frighteningly honest and would never harm another soul. Even though she could be a cut-to-the-quick reporter in her search for the truth, she was always up-front about it.

  “I saw a murder—and now I think somebody’s after me. Someone keeps calling, but when I pick up the phone, I only hear breathing. And I have the feeling I’m being followed. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m being followed.”