Breaking Free. Лорет Энн Уайт

well over six feet, features ruggedly handsome. He had the lean, hard lines of an endurance athlete—a sign of mental resilience, the kind that could too easily translate into obstinacy. But it was the overall impression—his electric aura—that shocked her to her toes. The impact was total, complete.

      And it made her mouth turn dry.

      “Thank God you’re here, Megan,” Louisa said, trying to twist out of the cop’s grasp. “Get my lawyer, Robert D’Angelo, get him on the phone. At once!”

      Megan felt herself hesitate. The directness in the cop’s clear gaze was unnerving, commanding her attention in such a way she was barely able to register anything else in the room.

      She cleared her throat, her eyes beginning to water with the effort of meeting his penetrating gaze. “I’m Megan Stafford,” she said to the cop. “Louisa is my great-aunt. What’s going on here?”

      His eyes dipped quickly over her damp body, her skimpy bikini, bare feet. Megan pulled her robe closed, belting it tightly across her waist.

      “Detective Sergeant Hastings,” he said. “And this is Constable Ron Peebles. The constable is here to execute a search warrant on the property. It’s on the desk over there. Your aunt is coming with me. She’s under arrest in connection with the murder of Sam Whittleson.” He began to escort Louisa out.

      “Wait!” Megan surged forward, grabbed his arm. “You’ve made a mistake,” she said, locking eyes with his. “My aunt is eighty. She…she didn’t do this.”

      His eyes narrowed. “Hindering an officer is an offense under the law—I don’t want to have to take you in as well, Ms. Stafford. Now if you’d please step back.”

      She withdrew her hand slowly, adrenaline zinging through her, and with it came the first stirrings of hot anger.

      The officer walked Louisa out of the library.

      “Megan!” she called over her shoulder as the man led her into the hall. “Just get D’Angelo, will you? His number is on the library desk. Tell him to meet me at the Pepper Flats station at once. And watch that numbskull search,” she demanded. “Don’t let him touch a damn thing! Mrs. Lipton—”

      “This way please, Miss Fairchild.”

      “Mrs. Lipton, get Patrick,” Louisa shouted, craning her neck round as the cop opened the front door, escorting her out. “Tell him to speak to the managers. Tell them…tell them I’ll be back in a few hours.” Louisa’s voice was strained, her features pinched.

      But it was the parting look she shot Megan that unnerved her grand niece the most.

      Megan barely knew her estranged aunt, but the woman’s iron reputation preceded her. Louisa Fairchild was un-shakable.

      Unsinkable.

      Except now. Megan could see in her steel-blue eyes that this macho cop had rattled her aunt. Badly.

      He’d shaken something deep and hot in Megan, too.

      Adrenaline tightened her stomach. With it came an uncomfortably cold whisper of doubt. The cop had to have something on Louisa to actually arrest her.

      Could her aunt be involved in murder?

      She exhaled, trying to steady her hands. Right. Call Robert D’Angelo. Then get Patrick. Her brother could help gather the farm managers together.

      She scrabbled through the papers on Louisa’s library desk. She’d met D’Angelo at dinner last week. He’d reminded her of a hungry beak-nosed bird of prey. Damn, she couldn’t find his cell number anywhere in this mess. Louisa’s private office was being redecorated, her boxes stacked in one of the outbuildings while most of her immediate paperwork and files had been temporarily relocated to this oak rolltop.

      “Do you have the keys for this gun cabinet, ma’am?” Constable Peebles asked.

      Her eyes shot to the young, dark-haired cop. “No. I don’t.”

      He broke the lock. Tension fluttered through her stomach and perspiration began to prickle over her brow. “Mrs. Lipton! Where’s th—” She found an address book in the drawer. “Oh, I got it!” She flipped it open to D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates, quickly dialed the firm’s number in Sydney. He wasn’t there, but they gave her his mobile number. She dialed again.

      Robert D’Angelo answered on the first ring. And the knot of tension tightened in Megan’s stomach as he told her he was miles away, on the outskirts of Sydney, and that APEC security blockades were going up along all major arteries because of the bomb blast. It was unlikely he’d make it through anytime soon.

      “You need to get down to the Pepper Flats station yourself, Megan,” Robert instructed in his reassuring baritone. “And tell Louisa not to say one word. Anything she says while in police custody can be used against her in court. Drive that home to her, understand? I cannot stress this enough.”

      Megan knew this was going to be a tall order. Asking Louisa to keep her mouth shut and her abrasive opinions to herself was akin to asking the sun not to come up.

      “The police have four hours within which to officially charge her and to get her in front of a magistrate,” Robert said. “If they want to hold her longer, they’ll need to apply for another warrant. Watch this. Let them know you know it. And you must be allowed to speak to her in private.”

      Megan nodded to herself, thinking ahead. She knew the basics. She’d started studying criminal law at university herself, before dropping it in favor of art and corporate law. The combative nature of the criminal justice system wasn’t a fit for her personality. She’d learned that pretty quickly.

      “Keep me updated via mobile,” Robert told her. “I’ll start assembling a criminal team at the town office.”

      “You…think it’s that serious?”

      “It is if they believe they have enough to take her in. My team will commence background checks on the arresting officer right away. What did you say his name was?”

      She glanced up at Peebles, now rifling through cabinet drawers, and she thought of the cop with the steady blue eyes. “Detective Sergeant Hastings.”

      “By the time I’m done, Hastings won’t have a job. And you let him know it.”

      Megan hung up picturing the tall, swarthy and cerebral Robert D’Angelo squaring off with the physically robust and tanned cop. And a shimmer of electricity rippled through her belly at the thought of having to square off with him herself.

      She was no substitute for the formidable lawyer.

      And no match against that determined hunk of police officer.

      Chapter Two

      “Mrs. Lipton, get someone to bring a car round for me!” Megan yelled as she raced up the sweeping marble staircase.

      She flung open the cupboard in her guest room, grabbing a sleeveless shift dress, the creation of a young up-and-coming Sydney designer, urban casual.

      All Megan’s clothes were the work of emerging artists—fledgling designers she predicted would become household names. She liked to support them at the start of their journeys. It had become her trademark philosophy, and her sartorial style on the Sydney art gallery circuit had begun earning her a familiar spot on the social pages of the city newspapers and glossies. That in turn had garnered attention for her clients.

      Attention for her clients was good. It fed her business.

      She shimmied into the dress, not wasting time to take her bikini off. Quickly sliding her feet into sandals, she grabbed her purse, and stalled in front of the mirror as she caught sight of her wet hair still plastered to her head. She cursed, grabbed a silk scarf off the dresser, flinging it over her hair as she snagged her large sunglasses, and clattered down the broad staircase, and out the front door.

      “Biltong” Laroux,