Lisa Jackson – The Mccaffertys: Matt (страница 4)
“And the baby survived,” she pointed out, remembering all too clearly the condition of mother and son.
Matt wasn’t about to be deterred. Like a runaway freight train gathering steam, he kept right on. “
Her fingers coiled over a pen on the desk. “I understand all this—”
“Fortunately little J.R. is a McCafferty. He’s tough. He pulled through.”
“So he’s fine,” she reminded him, trying to keep emotions out of the conversation, which, of course, was impossible.
“Fine?” He snorted. “I guess you might say so, except that he needs his mom, who is still comatose and lying in a hospital room.” For a brief second Matt McCafferty actually seemed as if he cared about his nephew, and his brown eyes darkened in concern. That got to Kelly, though she refused to show it. Of course he was worried about the kid—McCaffertys always looked after their own. To the exclusion of all others. “And that’s not all, Detective,” he added.
“I’m sure not,” she drawled, and he scowled at her patronizing tone.
“It’s a miracle that Thorne survived the plane crash and ended up with only a few cuts and bruises and a broken leg.”
“The way I see it, either the McCaffertys are having one helluva string of bad luck, or someone’s out to get us.”
“Randi was driving and hit an icy patch. Your brother was flying alone in the middle of a snowstorm. Bad luck? Or bad judgment?”
“Or, as I said, a potential murderer on the loose.”
“Who?” she asked, meeting his glare, not backing down an inch though she was beginning to sweat, and the office, filled by his presence, seemed even smaller than usual.
“That’s what I was hopin’ you’d tell me.”
God, he was close to her. Too close. The desk between them seemed a small barrier.
“Believe me, Mr. McCafferty—”
“Matt. Call me Matt. There’re too damned many McCaffertys to call us by our last name.”
She wouldn’t argue that point.
“And somehow I have the feelin’ that you and I, we’ll be workin’ real close together on this one. I intend to stick to you like glue until you find out who the hell is behind this, so we may as well cut the formalities.”
The thought of working closely with anyone named McCafferty stuck in Kelly’s craw, and this one, this damnably sexy, cocksure cowboy, was the most irritating of the lot, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. “All right,
“Not fast enough,” he growled.
“And none of us, me especially—” she hooked a thumb at her chest “—needs anyone looking over her shoulder.” She stuffed the pen in the mug on her desk. “Didn’t you hire your own private detective?”
His thin lips tightened a fraction.
“A man by the name of Kurt Striker?” She folded her arms across her chest.
He nodded. “We thought we needed more help.”
“So what has he got to say?”
“That he thinks there’s foul play,” McCafferty said, his eyes narrowing on Kelly as if he couldn’t quite figure her out. Tough. She was used to men distrusting her as a detective because she was a woman, and that’s what Matt McCafferty was saying; she could read it in his eyes. Well, that was just too damned bad. She wasn’t about to be bullied or intimidated. Not by anyone. Not even one of the high-and-mighty McCaffertys. Matt’s father, John Randall, had once been a rich, powerful and influential man in the county, and his descendants thought they could still throw their collective weights around. Well, not here.
“Has Striker got any proof that someone’s behind the accidents?” she asked.
Hesitation.
“I didn’t think so.” She slipped from the desk. “That’s it. Now, listen, I have work to do, and I don’t need you barging in here and making demands and—”
“Striker says there’s some paint on Randi’s rig. Maroon. Maybe from the other car when she was forced off the road.”
“
“Listen—”
“No, you listen to me, okay?” Her temper was stretched to the breaking point as she stepped around the desk and went toe-to-toe with him. “This force is doing everything in its power to try and find out what happened to your sister and your brother. Everything! We don’t take either accident lightly, believe you me. But we’re not jumping off the deep end here, either. Your sister’s Jeep could have hit ice. It’s just possible she lost control of the vehicle, it slid off the road up in Glacier and she ended up in the hospital in a damned coma. As for your brother, he was taking a big chance with his life flying a small craft in one helluva snowstorm. The engines failed. We’ll determine why. We haven’t yet ruled out foul play. We’re just being careful. The department can’t afford to go off half-cocked and making blind assumptions or accusations.”
“Meanwhile someone might be trying to kill off my family.”
“Who?” she demanded as she rounded the desk again, plopped down in her worn chair and took up her pen. Yanking a yellow legal pad from the credenza behind her, she dropped it on the desk and sat ready, ballpoint pressed against the clean sheet of paper. “Give me a list of suspects, anyone you know who might hold a grudge against the McCafferty clan.”
Matt’s eyes narrowed. “There are dozens.”
“Names, McCafferty, I want names.” She hoped she sounded professional, because he was cutting a little too close to the bone with his damned insinuations.
“You should know a few,” he said, and though she wanted to, she didn’t allow herself to rise to the bait.
“Don’t beat around the bush.”
“Okay, let’s start with your family,” he shot out.
Kelly’s back went up. “No one in my family has any ax to grind with your brother or half sister.” She raised her eyes and met the simmering anger in his.
“Just my dad.”
“Lots of people had problems with him. But he’s gone. And my family aren’t potential murderers, okay? So let’s not even go there.” She bit out the words but wouldn’t give in to the white-hot anger that threatened to take hold of her tongue. The nerve of the man. “Now…” She clicked the pen again. “Who would want to harm your sister, Randi, and your brother Thorne?”
Some of the anger seemed to drain from him. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m sure Thorne’s made his share of enemies. You don’t get to be a millionaire without someone being envious.”
“Envious enough to try and kill him?” Kelly said.
“Damn, I’d hope not, but…” He closed his eyes for a second. “I don’t know.”
That, at least, sounded honest. “He’s based out of Denver, isn’t he?”
“He was. The corporate headquarters are there.”
“But he’s moving back here and getting married.” It wasn’t a question, but Matt nodded and Kelly noticed the way his dark hair shone under the humming fluorescent lamps. He unbuttoned his jacket, revealing a flannel shirt stretched over a broad chest. Black hairs sprang from the opening at the neck. She tore her eyes away, gave herself a swift mental kick for noticing any part of his male anatomy and scribbled down some notes about Thorne, the oldest of the brothers.
“Yeah, he’s marrying Nicole Stevenson.” Matt managed a half smile that was incredibly and irritatingly sexy. “Lots of people are losing that particular bet.”
Kelly understood. Thorne, like his brothers, had been a confirmed bachelor. He, along with Matt and the youngest brother, Slade, had raised holy hell in high school and cut a wide swath through the local girls. Rich, handsome and smart to the point of arrogance, they’d soon been regarded as the most eligible bachelors in the county and thereby broken more than their share of hearts. Matt, in particular, had earned the reputation of being a ladies’ man.
But now it seemed that the first of the invincible and never-to-be-wed brothers was about to fall victim to matrimony. The bride was an emergency room doctor at the local hospital, a single mother with twin girls.
“Okay, so what about your sister?” she asked, trying to keep her mind on business. “Any known enemies?”
Annoyance pulled the smile off of Matt’s cocky jaw. This wasn’t new territory. Ever since the accident, the sheriff’s department had been looking into Randi’s life. “I don’t know,” Matt admitted. “I’m sure she had her share. Hell, she wrote a column for the
“Advice to the lovelorn?” Kelly filled in.
“More than that. It’s more like general, no-nonsense advice to single people. It’s called—”
“‘Solo.’ I know. I’ve got copies on file,” she said, not admitting that she’d found his sister’s wry outlook on single life interesting and amusing. “But most of the advice she gave was about a single person’s love life.”