by Jami Alden
Danny nodded. Dark stubble shadowed his chin. Even as a teenager he’d had a thick beard, and she’d loved to run her fingers along the raspy skin. She shoved her hands in her pockets to keep her tingling fingertips from venturing out on their own. “The area where the bodies were found is part of an open space preserve. There was a cabin up there, taken out by the landslide. It took a little digging, but we discovered that before it became open space, the title was held by Barbara Sanford. It was donated in 1991.”
Caroline’s stomach sank as she sat back against the cushions. First the book. Now the bodies were found on land that belonged to James’s first wife. “Jesus,” she shook her head in disbelief. “I thought James was hiding something towards the end, but I thought it was an affair.” Could he really have been responsible for those two bodies?
Could he really have—no she didn’t want to go there yet. The pang of hunger that had reared at Danny’s cooking died a swift death as her stomach fisted inside her.
There had to be another explanation, other than that she’d spent a decade married to a murderer.
“I never heard about any land, or any donation,” Caroline said. “We can ask Kate.”
Danny went to the stove, stirred his chicken and broccoli concoction and dumped pasta into the now boiling water. “Not yet. I don’t want to clue anyone in until we know who to trust.”
“We can trust Kate. I told you.”
Slabs of muscle shifted under his shirt as he shrugged. “We just got off a case where a woman killed her parents and plotted to kill her sister in a fake drug overdose.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and the woman was Alyssa Miles and there were millions of dollars in blood diamonds to cover up.”
“Why would someone be after James and after you, if not to cover something up?”
“Kate has nothing to do with James’s death, and besides, she was too young when your mother disappeared to have had anything to do with that.”
Danny forked up a bite of chicken from the pan, chewed thoughtfully, then grabbed one of the dozen spice jars he’d unearthed from her pantry and threw in a pinch of something. “Maybe she was helping her mother cover something up. James and Anne were having an affair. Susan got angry, killed Anne, hid the bodies in the cabin.”
Caroline frowned, his emotionless theorizing sending a chill through her. How could he be so cold, referring to his mother as Anne, like she was a stranger. Then again, Danny had always been good at cutting off his emotions, separating himself, shutting out anything that distracted him from his duty. She had no doubt it had made him an awesome captain when he was in the Army.
But it had eventually made it impossible to have a relationship with him.
“What about the other body?” Caroline said.
“Was James into threesomes?”
“No!” Even the thought made her squirm.
“Not that you know of.”
“Besides, I thought the other woman died after your mother.” She watched to see if he reacted to her reminder of exactly who one of the victims was. Not even an eyelash quivered.
“Maybe. It’s hard to know for sure.” He opened a drawer and rifled through it. Caroline tried not to wince at the thought of him messing up her carefully organized utensils. She looked up and caught him watching her, his lips curved into the barest of smiles. Bastard was doing it on purpose, knowing how much it bugged her.
He used to do the same thing whenever he came over to her house. He’d pick a perfectly organized drawer and make a mess of its contents and ignore her pleas to stop. Only when she physically tackled him would he give in, and then because he was too distracted fooling around to mess with her anymore.
She wondered what he’d do if she tackled him now. Renewed heat pooled low in her belly, and she deliberately turned her back on him.
“Look, all I’m saying is in a situation like this, you can never rule anyone out. You never really know anyone as well as you think you do.” He deposited a plate on the low table in front of her chair and set the other in his lap as he settled onto the love seat. A size twelve black shoe thumped on the table and he shoveled a mouthful of garlic scented pasta and chicken into his mouth.
She thought of James as she picked up her plate and twirled the fork tines through the pasta. She’d been shocked enough when she believed he was cheating on her. The thought that he could be a murderer…She set the plate back down, unable to muster any appetite.
“What I don’t understand is why,” Danny said as he polished off his mountain of pasta in a matter of seconds.
“I don’t know why James would be involved with your mother, either,” she replied.
“Not that,” he shook his head and pinned her with an intent stare. “I want to know why you married him in the first place.”
Oh God, she so didn’t want to get into this with him. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to discuss the details of my marriage with you.”
“Why?” he scoffed. “You already admitted you thought he was playing hide the salami with another woman. He may have killed my mother. It’s not like you’re going to dishonor his memory.”
She bristled. Even if he hadn’t been a perfect husband, James had been good to her. And it wasn’t like she was wife of the decade either, marrying a man because he represented a safety net at a time when she was in a free-fall.
“Was it the money?” He sat back against the love seat in a casual sprawl, but she could see the tension rippling through every sinew. Danny was a predator, ready to pounce if she made one wrong move.
“Yes,” she said bluntly, shoving down the hurt at the disappointment in his eyes. He’d lost the right to judge her a long time ago. “At least that was part of it.” Caroline struggled to explain how weak she’d felt to a man who didn’t understand the meaning of the word. “He was safe, stable.”
“Since when did you need someone to take care of you? You were always kicking ass and taking names, keeping it together when everything else fell apart.”
Yeah, but that was before you broke me. She wasn’t even going to touch that. “I’m not superhuman like you, Danny. You remember everything that was going on,” and was still going on. “Ricky had gone back to jail, Dad was out of work again, and Mom,” she shook her head. There were no words for her mother. That was one of the things she and Danny had bonded over, beyond mutual teenage lust. Like Anne Taggart, Lena Palomares was an unhappy woman, from the roots of her silver streaked black hair to the callused bottoms of her feet. Unlike Anne, Lena may have had cause. Caroline could see how a delinquent son and an alcoholic husband could grind a woman down.
Her mother found no joy in anything. Not even a daughter who snagged herself a scholarship to an exclusive private high school, then put off her plans for college indefinitely to keep her parents from losing their house. Lena’s unhappiness fueled her hypochondria. Every headache was a brain tumor, every bout of heartburn a heart attack or a gastric perforation. Her multiple trips to the urgent care clinic—sans health insurance, of course—nearly sank them, no matter how many tips Caroline pulled in working as a bartender at a chic San Francisco restaurant.
Danny knew all that. She didn’t need to go into detail. Just as she wasn’t about to lay out how he’d devastated her. How the long absences, how not knowing where he was or if he was coming back ground her down, even though she tried to put on a strong front, be the supportive girlfriend back home since he was out there saving the world after all.
Yeah, that had worked out well.
She’d limped along for nearly two years after they broke up, convincing herself it was for the best. Caroline wasn’t cut out to be a military wife, holding strong at home while Danny was out there dodging bullets. And she couldn’t spend the next fifty years needing a man who refused to be needed, much less ever let himself need her back.
“It was nice to lean on someone else for a change, instead of having to handle everything by myself. But it wasn’t just money,”
she continued. She picked her plate up and took it to the sink, eager for an excuse to get away from him. “We had a lot of similar interests in books, literature and art. He loved to travel and took me all over the world.”
“So you talked and read and looked at pretty pictures?” His eyebrow cocked skeptically. “That, along with a big fat bank account was enough to make you happy?”
“Yes,” she said, avoiding his eyes so he wouldn’t see the lie in hers. She rinsed her dish and bent to put it in the dishwasher.
“Bullshit.”
She straightened and jumped back when she realized he was right next to her. How could a man his size make it across the room so fast and without her hearing him? “I was happy,” she said, backing away until her butt hit the edge of the kitchen island.
“James was about to divorce you,” he countered.
And she’d been happy about that too, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “We’d grown apart.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Danny leaned forward and braced his hands on the counter on either side of her hips. “You need more than friendship from a man, Caroline, and we both know it.”
“You never know anyone as well as you think you do. You said it yourself.”
“I know you well enough to know you need more than a polite tumble once or twice a year.”
He was so close she could see each individual whisker on his dark skin. His eyes were liquid silver, framed by heavy dark lashes. “James and I had a fine sex life,” she managed. Total lie. James had a fine sex life. Caroline put on a good show and gave a prayer of thanks when James’s doctor told him he couldn’t take Viagra anymore once he started his new heart medication. “Besides, sex isn’t everything.”
“Said like a woman who hasn’t gotten it like she needs it in a good twelve years or so.”
“You have no idea what I need.” Oh, but he did. And judging by the thick column of flesh tenting out the front of his pants, he was just the one to give it to her.
“You need passion, Caroline,” he said. One hand came off the counter to wrap around the base of her ponytail. He pulled, tilting her face up to his. “You’re lying to yourself if you think you don’t.”
She felt his breath across her face, his grip tightening almost painfully in her hair. But his kiss wasn’t the voracious, hungry assault she’d braced herself for. Danny was surprisingly gentle, his lips firm but soft, sucking, nipping as his tongue flicked out to tease the seam of her lips. She made a last ditch effort at retreat. “This will complicate things.”
“I like complicated,” he whispered.
She almost laughed. That was a load of crap and he knew it. Danny was the most black and white, you’re in or you’re out person she’d ever met. He didn’t even like to admit his eyes were gray.
But she couldn’t keep herself from responding to the stroking of his lips and tongue, the gentle nip of teeth. She knew exactly what he was doing. Holding back, asking to be let in, making her want it so much she would be the one to make it happen.
He still knew how to play her. Her lips parted, her tongue stole out to slide against his, and heat exploded between them like a nuclear bomb. Danny held her head still as he took her mouth.
She’d spent years trying to forget. The taste of his mouth, dark and rich and spicy, the smell of his skin. The feel of him, his lips hot and sweet against hers, the thick silk of his hair tangling around her fingers, the leather and cedar scent of him.
It was so good, so awesomely familiar, tears stung the backs of her eyes. He was right. She needed this. But she’d spent so long convincing herself that part of her was dead she’d forgotten how much.
Danny groaned against her mouth and wrapped his hands around her waist to lift her up onto the counter. Both hands came up to cup her face, his thumbs stroking across her cheekbones, tracing their way along her hairline as his mouth devoured her. God, she’d always loved the way he kissed her, like he couldn’t get enough of her taste, like he could kiss her for the next hundred years and not care if it went any farther.
Desire tightened between her legs, so intense it was almost painful. She wrapped her arms around his back and pulled him closer, her breath quickening as his hips settled between her legs. His cock was a hard ridge against her throbbing sex, and even through their clothes, the heat of him was enough to burn her alive. She knew exactly how he’d feel inside her, hard and thick, stretching her almost to the point of pain as he worked himself inside.
This is such a bad idea. But she couldn’t make herself push him away, especially when he was rocking his hips against her in a too familiar rhythm. And not when his big hand skated up her torso to cover her breast. And not when he pulled away from her mouth to fasten his lips on the exact spot on her neck guaranteed to send her into the stratosphere.
His fingers pinched her nipple through her sweater and she almost jumped out of her skin.
Danny Taggart was about to make her come in her kitchen and she wasn’t going to do a single thing to stop it.
CHAPTER 7
Bells. That was a new one. Danny had never heard bells while kissing a woman before. Bombs, fireworks, a roaring in his head like a tsunami was coming in—he’d heard all of those in his head at one time or another. Especially with Caroline.
But never bells. Until now.
And why fucking not? She tasted even better than he remembered. Sweet, spicy, hot, her own unique taste custom made to drive him wild. He closed his mouth over a patch of skin on her neck, right under her ear, and groaned when she shuddered like she’d been hit with an electric current.
She still loved that. He remembered the first time he’d discovered the spot on her neck that he now licked, nipped, sucked. Back before she’d let him get past third base. He’d had his hand in her panties, his fingers soaked with her juice as he stroked her. Using every last bit of control he had to resist the urge to strip off his own clothes and beg her to please, please, just let him get inside her. Frustrated, he’d nipped Caroline’s neck on that exact spot and she’d gone off like a rocket, jerking and moaning and shuddering against him.
Danny’s cock got even harder at the little groans she was making in the back of her throat. God, he’d always loved those sounds, the way she couldn’t hold back her pleasure. Now they were almost enough to make him unload in his pants. Her hands were all over him, rubbing up and down his back, over his ass, pulling him close until he could feel the heat of her pussy through her clothes and his. Her nipple was hard as a bullet beneath his fingers, driving him insane with the need to suck it into his mouth.
Bells. He wondered what sound he would hear when he finally got inside her.
But her hands stopped stroking him, and instead of pulling him closer she was pushing him away. He settled more firmly against her. No way was she stopping, not when he was this far gone.
He tried to cover her mouth with his and let out a frustrated grunt when she pulled away and flattened her hands against his chest.
“Doorbell,” she said, half gasp, half moan. “Someone’s at the door.”
Danny shook his head, clearing away the red lust haze as her words registered.
Bells. The bells in his head were nothing but the doorbell. And what he’d thought was the sound of his heart beating out of his chest was someone pounding on the front door.
He stepped back and tried to slow his breath as she jumped off the counter and started for the door. He grabbed her arm to stay her. “Let me,” he said. “After what happened today, I don’t want you answering the door by yourself.”
Danny walked to the entryway, forcing his mind back into some semblance of calm when all he wanted to do was grab Caroline, throw her to the floor, and finish what they’d started. She was only a step behind him, so close he could hear her agitated breathing, smell the combined scents of her perfume and arousal coming off her skin.
Yet another thing that hadn’t changed. For Danny, being around Caroline meant pretty much a perpetual hard-on.
“It’s my friend Melody,” Caroline said, trying to brush past him to open the door. He grabbed her hand before she could slide the deadbolt free and gave her a stern look.
“Let me make sure she’s alone.” He looked through the peephole and saw a blond woman whose big fake hair rivaled her big fake tits, but no one else. He nodded for Caroline to open the door.
“Oh my gawd, Caroline are you okay?” The woman hurled herself through the door on a wave of perfume and pulled Caroline into a fierce hug.
“I’m fine, Melody, really.” Caroline gave her friend a brief squeeze and pulled out of her embrace.
Danny recognized the name from both the news coverage of the murder and the handful of e-mails she and Caroline had exchanged. Melody Easterbrook, the wife of Patrick Easterbrook, who had been portrayed in the press as James Medford’s oldest, closest friend.
Danny had found it intriguing that while everyone seemed eager to buy into the idea of Caroline as a murderer, those closest to James had rallied around her.
“I saw what happened on the news. That’s just terrible about Rachael and you were right there! You must have been so terrified,” Melody’s face pulled into a mask of sympathy. “I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon, and when you didn’t answer I got so worried I decided to come over.” Melody’s heavily lined blue eyes locked on his. “But I see you’re not alone.”
“Melody, this is Danny Taggart. He’s uh, an old friend of mine who’s a private investigator. I hired him to help me look into James’s case.”
“An old friend, huh?” Melody quirked a perfectly arched brow and held out her hand. It was soft, smooth skinned, and tipped with lethal looking pinkish-orange nails.
He could see why Melody was skeptical. He’d totally wrecked Caroline’s neat ponytail, and her hair lay in a messy tangle around her shoulders. Her cheeks were still flushed, her lips red and puffy from kissing. And he was pretty sure that was a scrape of whisker burn along her jaw. “Nice to meet you, Melody.”