supposed to be allowed to investigate said case.”
He should be the last one to talk about rules, she thought angrily. “No, they haven’t changed,” Natalie replied stoically.
Matt spread his hands in a silent question. “Well then, why—?”
She stopped him before he could go any further. “My captain put me on bereavement leave.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Well, not only did she not know him but he obviously didn’t seem to know her, either she thought bitterly. “Do you honestly expect me to sit with my hands folded and not even try to find my sister’s killer?” she snapped.
“No,” he admitted, “I expect you to do exactly what you’re doing. We have that in common, you and I.” Their eyes met, and she wanted to look away, but found she couldn’t. “We’re both loyal to our families—even when they don’t deserve it.”
She took offense for her sister. “You’re a fine one to pass judgment.”
“I was talking about my own family,” he clarified quietly, and with those few words, he effectively took the wind out of her sails.
“Oh.” For a second, she was completely at a loss as to how to respond.
Sensing her discomfort, Matt changed the topic. He always had been in tune with her. “So, you’re a police detective.”
She looked at him warily. “Yes.”
He smiled. It went straight to her belly. “Can’t say that’s something I saw in your future.”
“I don’t think there was anything you saw about my future.” She couldn’t refrain from making the dig. It kept her from demanding to know why he had walked out on her all those years ago without so much as a word of explanation.
There were so many things he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t. They would all sound like excuses. And he knew she was better off this way. And safer. That had always been his goal, the motive behind his actions, to keep her as safe as possible. And that meant they couldn’t be together. But if he’d told her the truth back then, she wouldn’t have allowed it to keep them apart.
It was better this way. If he’d begun to waver in his decision, Scott’s phone call had convinced him otherwise.
“I’d like to see those surveillance tapes from last night if you don’t mind,” she said crisply, her tone indicating that even if he did mind, she would still find a way to view them.
There were an awful lot of tapes to go through. They had a hundred different cameras just on the ground floor alone. That made for a great deal of viewing time. “What exactly is it that you’re looking for?”
She wanted to say “anything suspicious” but she kept it succinct. “I want to see if Candace went home with anyone, or if anyone followed her.”
There, at least, he could be of some help. “Well, I don’t know for certain if anyone followed her, but I can tell you that when she left here, she was alone. I stood at the entrance and watched her for a few minutes to make sure she didn’t double back.”
He made Candace sound like some sort of undesirable. Granted her sister had been loud and tended to be outlandish at times, but she’d never been barred from any place. Casinos vied for her attendance.
“Exactly why was she escorted off the premises?”
“You’d have to take that up with Luke Montgomery,” he told her.
His answer wasn’t good enough. “You have no thoughts on that?” she wanted to know. “No impressions as to why he’d ask you to remove her?”
He told her what he knew. “They looked like they were quarreling when Montgomery signaled for me to come over.”
The bartender had said the same thing. “Quarreling? Quarreling about what?” Maybe Montgomery sought Candace out later in her condo, to pick up in private where they had left off. She needed to know the nature of the argument.
Matt made an educated guess, based on what he knew about Candace. “I think your sister wanted to cause a sensation with her ring, and Montgomery wanted the focus to remain on the gems at the gala. Montgomery went to a lot of expense to get celebrities to donate the jewelry and get them all under one roof and, well, Candace always had a way of making love to the camera, to the exclusion of everyone else.”
Natalie’s eyes narrowed. “I guess you would know about the lovemaking part.” The retort was out before she could prevent its emergence.
She’d managed to catch him completely off guard. “Excuse me?”
Oh, he was good, Natalie thought. He really looked as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Give it up, Matt. Candace told me that she thought you were really good in bed. One of her ‘better’ lovers, I believe she said.”
For a moment, he was speechless. “Candace would have no way of knowing that.”
She wasn’t about to be taken in by his act, no matter how much part of her wanted to believe it. “Oh, don’t bother playing innocent with me, Matt. Why would my sister lie?”
“The last thing I am is innocent,” he informed her. “But I never made love to your sister and as for why she would lie to you, I could think of a dozen reasons. Her being a pathological liar would be at the top of the list.” He saw that made Natalie angrier, but he stood by his statement. “I think, between her lifestyle, the booze, the drugs and the men, your sister lost her grasp on reality a long time ago.”
Incensed, heartbroken and still in shock at seeing Matt after all this time, Natalie found herself in a very fragile state. Far more fragile than she ever thought she would be. Without thinking, she reacted, defending a sister who could no longer defend herself. She took a swing at Matt.
He caught her by the wrist, stopping her fist from making contact and then quickly caught the other when she switched hands.
Furious, she tried to pull free. “Let me go,” she fumed.
“Only if you stop making a fist,” he told her. When he saw her uncurl first one hand, then the other, he released her wrists.
And promptly received a stinging slap to his cheek. Without registering surprise—he really should have seen that coming, he upbraided himself—Matt merely looked at her as he rubbed his face.
“Feel better?”
She wanted to say yes, but nothing had been solved, nothing had been released. She still felt this pent-up anger, and it had nowhere to go. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.” He wanted to take her hands in his, not to restrain her, but to make contact. He refrained, relying on his words instead to bridge the gap. “Look, I’m sorry about Candace, but unless you want to be next, I think you should leave this alone and let someone else handle it.”
“Is that a threat?”
“That’s an observation. Maybe the ring was just icing on the cake. You said she had bruises on her face. She didn’t when she left here. Whoever killed your sister might have done so in a blind rage. Maybe revenge, not theft, was the motive.”
“Revenge?” Natalie echoed. Candace had been thoughtless and had rubbed a great many people the wrong way, but she was harmless. She’d never done anything to anyone that would make them want to kill her. “You think whoever killed her was trying to teach her a lesson?”
He had a somewhat different theory to back up his thought. “No, maybe they were trying to get back at your father.”
“My father?” she repeated. “Why?” But even as she asked, it made sense—if she thought of the note he’d shown her.
“All rich men make enemies along the way. What better way to get back at him than to kill someone in