shoulder.
And felt her heart clench.
Rafe Diaz.
She made herself turn slowly to face him. Emotion exploded through her. Each second seemed endless, drawn out, excruciating.
The same way it had felt in the courtroom during her testimony.
He was as tall as she remembered, but more muscular. Not even the gray sports coat could conceal shoulders that looked like he tossed around hundred-pound weights on a regular basis. His skin was the same burnished olive, but his face had changed. Hardened. Lines had scored into the corners of his eyes and mouth, giving him a taut aura of danger that hadn’t been there before. Looking so dark and foreboding, he could pass for a bad guy. But Rafe Diaz had never been a bad guy, and Allie had spent years dealing with the pangs of conscience over the part she’d played in sending an innocent man to prison.
The cool disdain in his dark eyes sent the message he hadn’t forgotten—or forgiven—her involvement, either.
Her fingers clenched on the dust cloth. “Rafe, what…are you doing here?”
“Business.”
Her gaze swept across the racks of silky lingerie and shelves of feminine accessories. “You came to buy something?”
“Hardly.” He kept his gaze locked on hers as he moved to the waist-high glass counter near the door. “I’m here on my business, not yours.” He pulled a card out of the inside pocket of his sports coat, laid it on the counter and waited.
The fact he hadn’t walked to her and handed her the card indicated he didn’t intend to make their meeting easy. Fine, Allie thought, as she moved toward the counter, her heels echoing against the polished parquet floor. After what he’d been through, she couldn’t exactly blame him for holding a grudge.
She stowed the cloth under the counter, then took in the information on the card. “What business does a private investigator have with me?”
“Hank Bishop’s my client. He’s been charged with murdering Mercedes McKenzie.”
“I heard he’d been arrested.” Allie swallowed hard. She hadn’t yet been able to rid her mind of the vision of Mercedes lying dead on the condo’s kitchen floor. “What has Hank Bishop hired you to do?”
“Prove he’s innocent.”
“Do you believe he is?”
“I believe in giving him the benefit of the doubt.” Rafe dipped his head. “Not everyone who gets arrested is actually guilty.”
Ouch. Allie felt heat flood into her cheeks. “No, they’re not.” She laid the card aside. “You were innocent, Rafe. As much a victim as Nina was, but in a far different way.”
Even after so many years, Allie still shuddered at the horrific memories. For the pain her best friend suffered. And what Rafe must have endured. “Does it make you feel better to hear me say you were innocent?”
She saw a shadow of emotion move in his eyes before the shutter came down. “What I want to hear from you are details. What happened when you found Mercedes McKenzie’s body?”
Allie eased out a breath. Okay, so his coming here didn’t include clearing the air about the past. Talking about finding a dead body wasn’t high on her list of subject matter, either.
“I went over everything with the police,” she said. “Several times.”
“I’m not the police.”
She hesitated when a long-ago memory stirred inside her. Nina, her best friend and roommate who’d been dating Rafe, had mentioned his driving goal was to be a cop. His conviction ended that dream. And though it had been expunged as if it had never happened, Allie didn’t think any police department would hire a man who had served time in a state penitentiary.
“I want whoever killed Mercedes put away, so I’ll tell you all I know about that night,” she said quietly. “But I’m still a little unsteady from the experience. I’d prefer to talk over there.”
His gaze tracked hers to the plush sitting area tucked into one corner of the shop’s main showroom. “Fine.”
When she moved past him, she caught the tang of masculine-scented soap. She had to stop herself from turning her head, inhaling deeply of the scent that was indescribably male.
As she walked across the shop, she was acutely aware of Rafe moving behind her.
Allie settled onto the powder-pink love seat. “You might as well get comfortable,” she said, gesturing toward the upholstered chair on the opposite side of the round glass coffee table.
Instead of sitting, Rafe stood behind the chair. “About that night?” he prodded.
She leaned back against the love seat’s cushions and met his waiting gaze. “All I saw was a dark form lunge from behind the door. I couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. I’m sure the police had reason to arrest Hank Bishop, but it wasn’t because of anything I told them.”
“He was arrested because he was Mercedes McKenzie’s lover,” Rafe said. “He owns the condo she lived in, his prints are all over everything, his DNA is on the sheets, he has clothes there. And he has no alibi for the time of the murder.”
“So Bishop could have killed Mercedes and assaulted me.”
“Could have, but didn’t,” Rafe said. “Do you know the exact time you got to the condo?”
“Right at nine-thirty. I paid attention to the time because I was miffed I had to deliver lingerie that Mercedes was supposed to have picked up here earlier.”
“Did you see anyone else? A neighbor out smoking a cigarette? Someone walking a dog, maybe?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anyone?”
“No,” Allie said, then paused. “I heard a car start. And saw it speed by the driveway.”
“Going which way?”
“East.”
“What kind of car?”
“It was too dark to tell. All I saw were the taillights.”
“How many?”
She blinked. “What?”
“How many taillights? What shape?”
She arched a brow. “The police didn’t ask me such specific questions.”
“I believe in being thorough.”
You would have been a good cop, Allie thought and felt a wrench of regret for the unfair hand life had dealt him. “The taillights were round. Two on each side.” She tried to picture something about the car during the few seconds she’d glanced its way. “I think they were high up, close to the lid of the trunk.”
Rafe nodded. “You didn’t see enough of your attacker to ID him. But did you get a sense of anything about him?”
“No, there wasn’t time. Everything happened so fast. Too fast.”
Before she could block it, the vision flashed in her head of the dark form lunging at her. The fear came barreling back, sending a wave of nausea lurching in her stomach. Leaning forward, Allie propped her forearms on her knees and shut her eyes against the blinding white spots spinning before them. God, would the image never start to fade?
“Are you all right?”
She flinched when Rafe’s voice came from just beside her. She hadn’t even heard him move. “I’m…fine.” A sheen of clammy perspiration enveloped her entire body. “Fine.”
“Fine, hell,” Rafe muttered. With one hand, he shoved her head between her knees. “You’re as white as chalk and about to pass out. Take deep breaths.”
With