Finger Prints by Barbara Delinsky Page A

recognized you from some case a few months ago. You were on television a lot?”
    “The Duncan case.” He nodded. “And your friend? Who was he?” It was one of the questions he’d been aching to ask. Now she’d inadvertently given him the opportunity. He had to admit that he felt slightly guilty. His interest in her friend had nothing to do with the Duncan case or the fact that her friend had recognized him. It was pure jealousy.
    Fortunately Carly had spent enough time with Sam, particularly when she’d first arrived, to know precisely how to introduce him. They’d been over it many times. It was nothing more than a version of the truth.
    “His name is Sam Loomis. He’s a good friend of mine.”
    “Do you date him?”
    “Date? Not in the sense you mean.”
    “Then in what sense?”
    “In the sense of friends. Period.”
    “And he doesn’t want it differently?” Ryan couldn’t believe it wasn’t so. Even now, amid the compulsion that kept him questioning her when he knew he should let up, he wanted only to reach out and smooth a stray curl from her cheek. With her hair caught loosely up in a ponytail and her face damp and makeup free, she looked no more than twenty, until one looked into her eyes. They were older, more knowing. It was one of the things he found so intriguing. That fleeting look of sadness, of pain and fear and understanding. Once again he wondered what she’d been through in life to have been so thoroughly seasoned.
    “What is this?” she teased uneasily. “An interrogation?”
    The edge in her voice, underscoring the flicker of apprehension in her eyes, brought him to his senses. He dropped his head in an outward show of contrition, then sighed, looked up and smiled more gently. “No. We lawyer types get carried away every so often.” When her lips remained taut, he went on. “Actually, it had nothing to do with lawyer types. That was me wanting to know about you .”
    “About Sam,” she corrected softly.
    “About Sam as he relates to you. What I really want to know,” he murmured hastily, helplessly, “is why you wear a wedding band, and whether you’re involved with Sam or anyone else. I want to know if you’re free.”
    “Free?” Her voice was weak, seeming to come from far away. Her eyes grew sad beneath the weight of memories. As she looked away, her gaze fell to the leaves beneath the trees, leaves that had been alive and aflame with color mere days before, yet now lay drab and dried, like cold ashes in the hearth. “No,” she whispered without looking up, “I don’t think I am.” Lost in a trance, she headed for the door.
    She was through the lobby and on the stairs before Ryan went after her.

Five
     
     
    “c ARLY, WAIT!” CATCHING THE DOOR JUST before it closed, he ran through, crossing the lobby in two strides, taking the first three steps in another. Reaching up, he grabbed her hand. He spoke more softly then. “Carly, please. Don’t just run off like that.”
    She kept her head tucked low. “I’ve got to go,” she whispered, but didn’t remove her hand from his.
    “Not yet,” he murmured, climbing another step just until they were at eye level. “We haven’t set a date.”
    She raised her head slowly. “A date?”
    “For dinner. Locke-Ober’s?”
    Her gaze dropped to the railing where her free hand had tightly anchored itself. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
    “Why not? It’d be fun. Don’t you need that sometimes?”
    “I do. And I have it sometimes. It’s just that….” How could she explain her sudden fear, when she didn’t understand it herself? Ryan was no threat to her in the usual sense of the word. She accepted that, as Sam had told her to do, as her own instinct had told her to do. But there was something new now, something related to the rapid beat of her pulse, to the warming feel of his hand on hers, to the fact that when she looked into his eyes she didn’t want to look away. “It’s just that I’m really