Melting the Ice Page 12

  Isabelle gestured to the table. “And how is Daniel?”

  Hannah went rigid under his hand.

  “Uh…he’s well. Everyone is well. Thanks, Isabelle.” Her tone brooked no further discussion.

  “Well then, I will leave you to enjoy your dinner, bon appetit.” Isabelle gave Rex a warm, conspiratorial smile and turned and made her way back to the door to greet an older couple.

  Rex pulled out a chair for Hannah. “Who’s Daniel?”

  She sat, placing the bag of Amy’s belongings carefully beside her on the floor. Her eyes were wide gold pools, picking up the flicker of the candle flame on the table. She looked like a wild animal, cornered.

  “He’s…he’s family.”

  She was hiding something. Not trusting him. But then, who was he to talk about being open. Trusting Hannah, telling her the whole truth, would mean betraying the Bellona Channel and the men and women who upheld its values. He’d shared too much already.

  But it ate at him. Was Daniel a lover? He took a seat opposite her, shelving the subject, for now.

  “So you’ve dined here before? I’ve been eyeing it since I arrived in White River.” Rex opened the menu. “What can you recommend?”

  Her eyes softened in relief at the change of topic. The mellow candlelight played on the velvet of her skin. Sitting there, across from him, she was just as she had come to him in his dreams.

  “I haven’t eaten here in ages, but the seafood is still supposed to be excellent.”

  Who brought you here to Ma Maison last, Hannah? he wanted to ask her. What are you doing in this ski town in the Coast Mountains? Why did you leave CNA so suddenly? Who is Daniel? What mysteries was she harboring? Rex figured from what Isabelle had said, Hannah hadn’t been on a date for a while. He’d hoped she would’ve moved on after he left her in Marumba. Found someone, settled, had a family. He wished for her the things he didn’t dare to wish for himself. She was a woman who deserved the best, deserved it all. But a secret part of his soul was guiltily satisfied she hadn’t. That secret part of him jealously wanted her for himself.

  Rex ordered a crisp, dry Riesling and a seafood platter for two.

  The sommelier filled their glasses and Rex raised his in a toast. “To solving the mystery.” And to moving on.

  She lifted her glass. “To finally wrapping things up.”

  She was right. He’d come full circle, from Marumba to White River, to finally wrap this thing up. It wasn’t just Hannah. He had a sense that what started going down in Marumba would play out the notes of its finale here in the Canadian mountains, a full six years later.

  The pale-gold liquid swirled against the side of her glass as she lifted it to her lips, taking it in. His stomach did a lurching swirl of its own as he watched her lips, lush against the rim of the wineglass. She set her drink on the table and looked out of the window. He followed her gaze. Darkness was coaxing shadows into the courtyard. Little candles in jars shivered and flickered outside in the evening mountain breeze.

  “You don’t go out much.”

  She turned and faced him. “Is that a question or a statement?”

  “Both.”

  She turned away from him, her attention back on the winking lights outside. “I’m busy. I have commitments.”

  “You’re single.”

  She flashed a warning look at him. “Another statement?”

  He reached out, gently took the tips of her fingers in his hand. “Is there a man in your life, Hannah?” Rex knew better than to tread here. Yet the woman in front of him was a drug. He was the addict slipping deep into the abyss. The more he saw, tasted, the farther he slid, the more remote his control.

  She looked down at his fingers touching hers. She was staring at the silver ring. He wondered if she remembered. He’d never taken it off. During that heady time with her in Marumba, she’d intoxicated him beyond sound judgment. He had thought he would get a copy of the ring made for her in platinum. She deserved the finest. God, he had thought to make her his forever. He had never been able to bring himself to take the little silver ring off.

  She looked up from the ring, at him, her eyes shimmering in the glow of the flame. Her voice was smoky, thick and heavy with emotion. “I had a man. Once.” She bit the bottom corner of her lip. “I loved him.”

  He felt his muscles react, his jaw set. Her comment pierced to his core.

  She turned her hand to face upward under his, running her soft fingers along the underside of his palm. His stomach dipped. The sensation was exquisitely sensual. It roused the serpent of desire that lay coiled in the pit of his belly. Rex sucked in air, slowly. Very slowly.

  She held his gaze with those glimmering pools of emotion.

  “Rejection is painful, Rex. No matter what form it takes. It breeds a kind of hate.”

  He knew it well, the hate that cloaked the pain of rejection, had known it most of his life.

  He gripped her fingers, hard. She recoiled in surprise. But he held on to her hand, pulling her closer as he leaned in toward her. “God, I’m so sorry, Hannah. I never wanted to hurt you. I…I never knew.”

  One tear slipped from her left eye. The candlelight caught its shining trail down her cheek. When she spoke, her voice was soft. So soft. “You never knew what, Rex? How much I once loved you? How I bled when you left?”

  He clenched his teeth, fighting at the dam of emotion swelling in his skull. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

  Her eyes didn’t leave his. They bored into his, searching for answers. Answers he couldn’t give.

  Then she pulled her hand suddenly out from under his. “Look, Rex, I don’t want to talk about the past. Or the future. I don’t want to talk about me, any more than you want to talk about you. So let’s stick to the business at hand, okay?”

  “Hannah, I—”

  “Do you want to know what I found at the Gazette?”

  Rex drew air in through his nose, sucking it deep down to his gut as he mentally swept his mess of emotions back into a black corner. “Right. Business. Let’s get this over with.” He took a swig at his wineglass. “The sooner the better. What did you find?”

  She crossed her arms on the little table covered in white damask, her hair a shining fall over her shoulders. Her jaw was set firm. She cleared her throat, but still the pain lingered in her eyes. When she spoke, the smoky thickness of emotion still threaded her voice. “It’s pretty astounding, really.”

  “Well, you going to share?”

  She reached down and pulled a Manila folder from the bag at her feet. “I printed out the article and photo that ran in the Gazette at the time of Grady Fisher’s accident.” She opened the folder and pulled out the copy. “Sven was right. Grady doesn’t look like he’d be Amy’s type. Kind of scrawny intellectual. Amy had a thing for athletic, macho males.”

  Hannah laid the printout on the table. “The reason I didn’t remember more about the canyon accident was because Grady Fisher went off the road the day after Amy disappeared. We were all so engrossed in the search-and-rescue efforts I guess no one really paid a whole lot of attention.”

  “So Grady Fisher disappeared the day after Amy Barnes went missing? Now, that is interesting.”

  He watched her smooth out the paper on the table with those beautiful hands.

  “Al had a journalism student helping out as part of a work experience when Grady’s accident happened. He put this story together.”

  She took a sip of her wine. “And there’s more.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a stapled document. “The RCMP initially suspected drunk driving. That’s what the student reported in his story. However, he did send for a copy of the coroner’s report. It must have arrived some weeks after he went back to school. It ended up getting filed and forgotten in all the turmoil. No one ever followed up with another article.”

  Rex looked at the document in her hand. “You got the coroner’s report?”

  “Yes. And guess what? Toxicology tests showed virtually ze
ro blood alcohol content. Grady Fisher reeked of booze at the scene and apparently there was an open whiskey bottle found in the car, but there was not enough inside him to legally declare him an impaired driver.”

  Rex whistled softly through his teeth. “This is looking serious, Hannah.” It smacked of a setup. He’d seen this kind of thing before. Perhaps Fisher’s death was no more accidental than Amy’s. “Do you know if anyone got prints from the whiskey bottle?”

  “There’s no mention anywhere of prints in what I could find at the office. But police did find a vial with traces of something called GHB back in Grady’s apartment.”

  “Gamma hydroxybutyrate? It’s an anaesthetic and hypnotic. Like Rohypnol, it’s being used more and more frequently as a recreational drug and has been implicated in date-rape cases.” Rex took a sip of his wine. “Liquid GHB is common in some club scenes, but when mixed with alcohol, or taken in too high a dose, it can result in breathing difficulties, coma and death. It’s got a host of trendy names, one of them Grievous Bodily Harm.”

  “Well, apparently routine forensic toxicology tests don’t look for drugs like that.”

  “Right. But if Fisher’s blood alcohol was so low, they must have tested for other routine drugs.”

  “They did. But according to the report, there was no trace of the usual suspects—cocaine, morphine, codeine or cannabis. After they discovered the vial, police did ask for a special benzodiazepine analysis but nothing was found.”

  “Well, those tests might have shown if there was GHB in Grady’s system, but only if they were done in time. How long did it take to find his body?”

  “A full day after his car apparently left the road. Actual cause of death was head injury and blood loss.”

  “So it was many hours before they ran those tests. You see, that’s the trouble with stuff like Rohypnol and GHB. They have a short half-life and you have to take body fluids within a relatively narrow timeframe to detect them. The way I understand it, inactive metabolites can be detected in blood only for about four to six hours after administration.”

  “You know your stuff, Doc.”

  “I head up a pharmaceutical division, I should know my stuff.”

  “Right.” Hannah reached for her wine. Rex was pleased to see a healthy sweep of color brushing those aristocratic cheekbones.

  “The coroner did note that Grady’s employer indicated he’d been having substance abuse problems and that he hadn’t been himself a few weeks prior to the accident. But he said if drugs were a factor in the actual accident, there was no forensic evidence to confirm this.”

  “So the bottom line is Grady Fisher’s death was ruled accidental, like Amy’s?”

  “You got it.” Hannah gathered up the report and printouts as she saw two servers approach bearing the Ma Maison specialty. “Ah, the food. Good, I’m absolutely starved.”

  One of the waiters set a burner on the table and lit two little tea lights. The other set a platter on top of the burner. Steam spiraled from the lobster, a fiery coral in color. It was set amongst prawns, oysters, mussels and thick fillets of succulent white fish. There was garlic and herb butter, lemon wedges and little finger bowls.

  Hannah peered at him through the gently curling steam. A hint of a smile tugged at her lush lips. “Rex, this was a good plan.” She shook out her napkin and set it on her lap. “I think I must be drooling.”

  She reached for a prawn, split the skin and dipped the white meat into the lemon and herb butter. He watched as she savored it, licked the juices from her lips and reached for another. It drove a hunger of his own, one quite unrelated to prawns drenched in garlic and herb butter.

  He squeezed lemon onto the oysters. “Looks like I better tuck in before you polish it off without me.”

  “Mmm.” She reached for her glass. “Oh, the other thing the student dug up during an Internet search was an old Orange County newspaper article. Seems Grady Fisher had a bit of a shady past himself. According to the article, Grady was charged in California several years ago for drug possession, but the charge never stuck.”

  “So the theory that he was abusing drugs fits. Interesting stuff, Hannah. Well done…partner.” He raised his glass.

  She grinned at him, her lips slick with sauce.

  He paused to split open a prawn. “What was found with Amy’s body?”

  “Not much. It sure looks like she wasn’t going on a hike, though. She had a flashlight and a reporter’s notebook with her. It has notes in it from the last couple of interviews she did before she went missing. Nothing really stands out as unusual. But, on the inside cover, there is a telephone number for the White River Spa with Grady Fisher’s name. Next to his name are the words ‘Grizz Hut, 5 p.m., to trail, meeting, BW. Urgent.’”

  “Grizz Hut, that’s the cabin up near the glacier where she fell?”

  “Yes. Grizzly Hut.”

  Rex lifted the bottle to top up Hannah’s glass. She moved her hand over it. “No, no, thank you.” Her eyes trapped his. “I’ve had way more than I need. We missed lunch, you know. Wine’s going straight to my head.”

  “Sorry, that’s my fault.” He topped up his own drink. “Years of bad habit. I tend to ignore my own hunger until it’s too late.”

  She scooped a delicate mussel from its pearled shell and slipped it between her lips. “If I do that, I get ravenous. Then I eat too much, overindulge and seriously regret it later.” She maneuvered another succulent piece of flesh from its blue-back shell and dipped it into the butter sauce.

  He felt like that now, ravenous, mad with hunger, a rapacious need as he watched her lips, slick, lush with juices. He’d glimpsed that same dark hunger mirrored in her golden cat’s eyes. He sipped his wine, allowing it to linger on his lips, watching her lick the butter from her finger.

  If he coaxed her gently, softly over the edge, tipped her into a blind, maddening swirl of need, would she overindulge? Would she suck him in with the same delight, the same fervor with which she was tucking into those firm, butter-drenched prawns? He’d gone way too long with this need. How long could a man turn a blind eye to the hunger that was devouring him?

  He speared a piece of fish with his fork. Damn. She was driving him wild. It wouldn’t be so bad if he couldn’t see she wanted him, too.

  She was watching him as she chewed. Their eyes locked, meshed. It was as if she was reading his thoughts, the words hanging unspoken, charged, shimmying with the candlelight between them.

  He broke the silence. “So how’s your rib, are you up to it?”

  She raised her eyebrows, almost choking on her food. “Up to it?”

  He grinned, the serpent in his belly writhing. God, he was sure up to it. “Up to a hike tomorrow, to check out this hut on Powder Mountain.” Then he leaned forward, dropping his voice to a smoky whisper, words meant only for her. “Unless you had something else in mind.”

  Her eyes caught the glint of the candle flame. He could see it reflected there, flickering, dancing gold, the dark coffee rims around the lighter amber of her irises feline.

  She swallowed, said nothing. Just looked at him, her fingers playing gently along the stem of her glass.

  The night air was crisp on her face as the water churned in warm bubbles around her limbs.

  He was right.

  This felt good. She was glad she’d relented and allowed Rex to persuade her to pick up a swimsuit at the Presidential’s boutique.

  Her aches, mental and physical, melted away as she rested her head back on the lip of the tub and looked up at the night sky. A giant’s brush had flecked the heavens with twinkling gold. A gibbous moon hung heavy and huge just above Powder Peak. The mica shimmered silver off the top of Moonstone.

  She sat up out of the water suddenly. “Oh look, Rex, a falling star.”

  “A shooting star.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  He wasn’t watching the sky. His eyes were intently fixed on her. She sank back into the frothing water, conscious of h
is gaze upon her breasts.

  “I have no idea. I would guess a shooting star goes up and a falling one goes down.” He laughed, the sound rich, baritone. It rolled over her, through her.

  “There’s a sense of direction, purpose and future about a shooting star. A falling star, well, it’s time has come. It’s a has-been. No future.”

  Like us. She challenged the look in his eyes, the weighted meaning of his words. “Weird thing about the heavens, Rex, is it’s all about the past. Many of those stars up there, they’re long gone. What we’re seeing is their history, a beautiful explosion, a glory spent, yet the memories, the light of them still hurtles through space to remind of what once was. What will never be again.”

  His eyes were suddenly serious. Deadly so. She saw the dangerous edge in them. And the hunger. “Hannah.” His voice, low, curled through her blood, raising the small hairs on her nape.

  “What?” She could barely manage the word. It came out a throaty whisper. He was undressing her with those Arctic wolf eyes. He was taking off her bikini top, watching as her breasts spilled free of the thin fabric, buoyed by the effervescence of warm bubbles. It sent an electric thrill to her core.

  “It’s not over, Hannah. You know that.”

  She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. She could feel the throb of her heart in the warm water. His eyes were undressing her. Mentally, he was stripping her naked. She could read it in the feral set of his features, hear it in the depth of his breath. And it was insanely titillating. The wine must have gone straight to her head because she was powerless to resist the image. All she wanted was to make love to him. Now. Here in this tub. Under this sky, while people watched from darkened balconies of the hotel rooms above.

  His eyes held her entranced. And she lost sense of the sky, the hotel, the lambent water of the adjacent swimming pool, the steam rising into the night air. All she knew was him, and her, cocooned in the hot froth of the tub. She was falling deep, mentally, physically, right into the moment, just like six years ago. And like that time, she was just as blinded, just as bewitched by the sheer male sensuality of the man inches from her near-naked body. This alpha wolf. This loner. His arms, thick and muscular, rested on the rim of the tub. The dark hair on his broad chest was wet. He had never had any intention of staying with her six years ago. And he had none now.