He was right. Of course he was right. They couldn’t make love while two little boys slept downstairs. That would be wrong. She supposed locking the bedroom door would be wrong, too.
He took a step back and placed his hands on her shoulders.
“Do you need help with Adam and Wally?” she asked.
“Honey, do us both a favor and stay up here until you see my taillights heading toward town.” His hands dropped from her shoulders and he backed away toward the bed. “I’m afraid I used up all my willpower pulling that tank top down over your breasts. Leaving that see-through bra on you was just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I can’t take much more.” He picked up Wally’s and Adam’s shoes and looked at her one last time before he left the room.
Hope moved to her bedroom in the front of the house, and from the window she watched him start the sheriff’s Blazer. He came back into the house and made two trips, carrying each boy one at a time. When he pulled out of her driveway, she thought she saw him glance up at her. But it was dark and she wasn’t sure.
She looked at her refection in the glass. At her weighted lids and puffy lips. She wasn’t really sure who was looking back. The woman looked like her, but she wasn’t behaving like Hope Spencer.
She walked from her bedroom and headed downstairs. She knew better than to want the sheriff the way she did. She didn’t believe in meaningless sex. She knew better… but she just seemed to forget or not to care. When Dylan was around, she just didn’t feel so lonely anymore.
Dylan Taber made her feel like a desirable woman again. The sound of his deep voice and the touch of his strong hands twisted her insides into hot little knots, and she liked the feeling. She liked it a lot. No man since her divorce had looked at her and made her feel like that. Like a whole woman. She supposed it was because she hadn’t given any man a chance, but it wasn’t as if she were consciously giving Dylan the chance now. She just didn’t have any control. The combination of Dylan’s easy charm and hot touches was very hard to resist.
She wondered if she should even try.
Chapter Nine
MAN SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTS
The next morning, Hope sipped coffee and stared blurry-eyed at her monitor. She scrolled through her e-mail and opened a letter from her editor, Walter. He loved the alien story and wanted more, which was perfect, since she already had an idea for an article on alien wilderness guides. At the end of the e-mail, he warned her that Myron Lambardo had contacted the paper and wanted to know where she was living. He’d obviously discovered she wasn’t living in her condo, which also meant that he’d violated the restraining order.
Hope decided to do nothing about it for now. She wasn’t worried. No way could Myron find her. He wouldn’t even think to look in the wilderness of Idaho.
She set her cup on the table and got busy. Her fingers tapped furiously for half a page, then stilled. The image of Dylan standing behind her, his hands cupping her breasts, entered into her head and stopped her cold. She tried to push aside the memory and get her mind back to work, but she couldn’t. He was there and he was staying, blocking her creative flow.
There was only one thing to do. Wait it out. She opened a small vanity case and reached for a bottle of fingernail polish remover and a bag of cotton balls. She conditioned and cut her cuticles and painted her nails mauve because she was in a mauve mood. Not really bright and cheery, but not dark, either. In between and kind of uncertain. Like her life.
While she painted, she carefully looked over the information she’d gathered on Hiram Donnelly. As far as she could tell, the old sheriff had been into dominance and submission. During the day he’d been a control freak, but at night he’d liked to be dominated. From the information she’d read, outside of what was considered normal sexual behavior, D and S wasn’t all that unusual a fetish. In fact, powerful men and women were the staple crop behind every successful dominatrix.
She also read reports and academic theories on why certain men were attracted to being dominated, but writing an article on the psychology and pathology of fetishes wasn’t what she wanted. She was much more interested in the man who’d managed to get himself elected sheriff of a conservative town for over twenty years, while secretly fantasizing about sexual deviance that finally consumed him.
When Hope’s nails were dry, she called across the street and checked up on Shelly. Paul told her Shelly was asleep but that she might be awake in a few hours, so to come over around noon. Since it was only ten Hope had hours to kill and painted her toenails, too. She thought about the aliens in her feature and the many possibilities for future stories. She thought about whether she should query magazines before she wrote her piece on Hiram Donnelly or just write it first. But mostly she thought about Dylan and what he’d said about living like a priest. She just couldn’t imagine a guy like him on the wagon.
She thought about how he looked at her, the desire in his eyes and in the rough texture of his voice that wrapped her up and warmed her all over. She’d tried to attach meaning to every smile, every word, every touch. She liked to think he cared about her a little, but she didn’t know. And the fact was, except for liking him personally and craving him physically, she didn’t know how she felt. Beyond loneliness and their undeniable attraction to one another, she couldn’t say they had anything in common. She didn’t even know if she would see him today or tomorrow or not again until next week.
Did she want more? Did he?
She thought about Dylan’s ex-wife, too. If the woman was really a waitress, she wondered why Adam couldn’t talk about what she did for a living.
Except maybe… she was a topless waitress. One of those women who worked in gentlemen’s clubs. That would explain why Dylan might not want his son mentioning his mother’s profession to anyone. Small towns could be closed-minded about that sort of thing.
At noon, Hope knocked on her neighbor’s door, and Paul showed her into the living room, where Shelly sat in a recliner wearing her blue chintz robe.
Her hair stuck up on her head like red springs and one hand was bandaged, so that just the tips of her fingers stuck out. Hopped up on painkillers and lack of sleep, Shelly was a bit rummy and feeling very sorry for herself. She didn’t want Hope’s offer of lunch, but she took one look at Hope’s fingernails and decided she’d have a manicure instead.
While Paul retreated to his bedroom for a nap, Hope ran back to her house and grabbed her vanity case. When she returned, she sat on a stool next to Shelly’s recliner and carefully conditioned and cut the cuticles on all ten fingers. While she gingerly filed the nails into perfect crescent moons, she listened to Shelly talk about last night’s drama. The house was unusually quiet and she wondered where Wally and Adam were.
“How were the little boys last night?” Shelly finally got around to asking. She set the vanity case on her lap and pawed through the rows of fingernail polish with her good hand.
“Pretty good, but they like to hit each other a lot,” Hope answered. She gently blew dust from Shelly’s fingers, then added, “And pass gas.”
“Yeah, boys’ll do that.” Shelly pulled out a bottle of Hot Pants Pink and handed it to Hope. “I like this. It looks like something a hooker would wear.”
It didn’t, but Hope didn’t want to argue. “Where are Wally and Adam?”
“Dylan hired one of the Raney girls to watch them over at his house today. He thought I could use the rest.”
“That was nice of him.” Hope took out a bottle of clear polish. “I imagine he’s really tired, too,” she said as she gave Shelly’s nails a base coat.
“Nah, he probably didn’t get home too late.”
Hope knew better and concentrated on the thumb of Shelly’s bad hand.
“Or did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Get home late. Paul said the twins got to the hospital around ten-thirty. So Dylan must have pulled up to your house about an hour after that. After grabbing the boys, he probably got home around ele
ven-forty-five.”
He might have made it home by then, too, if he hadn’t stayed and kissed her neck and her mouth, and if he hadn’t decided he wanted to touch her stomach and pull up her shirt. Hope kept her gaze averted and said on an indifferent sigh, “That sounds about right.” She screwed on the cap of the clear polish, then shook the bottle of Hot Pants Pink.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why do you look like something did?”
Hope finally glanced up. “I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. This Percodan has me feeling kind of funky, but I’m not totally out of it.” Shelly’s red brows lowered on her forehead. “And besides, I saw you two jump apart when Paul and I came into the kitchen. I stabbed my hand, not my eyes. What were the two of you doing?”
“Talking.”
“Yeah, right. I think he likes you.”
Hope shrugged and painted the fingernails on Shelly’s good hand. “I think Dylan likes women- period.”
“Yeah, he does. Always has, even in grade school, but he talks to you a little bit different than he talks to anyone else.”
“How?”
“When he talks to you, he watches your mouth.”
Hope bit her lip to keep from smiling. She hadn’t noticed Dylan watching her. Well, maybe once or twice.
“So what’s up with the two of you?”
The last time Hope had spoken of her love life to a friend, her friend had used it to steal her husband. She knew that Shelly was different, and besides, nothing she could tell Shelly could come back to hurt her anyway. She didn’t love Dylan, and he didn’t love her.
“Nothing really,” she answered, which was basically the truth.
“It sure didn’t look like nothing. Did he try his cheap moves on you?”
“Moves?”
“Yeah. In the eighth grade, he used to pretend to have an itchy pit so he could hook his arm around a girl and make it look like he was just scratching himself.”
Hope laughed. “No itchy pit.”
“I should probably warn you away from Dylan.”
“Why, what’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing. He just has it in his head that he can’t get involved with a woman right now. He says he has to wait until Adam is older, but the way he looks at you… well, I haven’t seen him stare after a woman in a very long time. Not since he used to watch Kimberly Howe run the hundred.” Shelly paused to blow on her nails and carefully offered Hope her injured hand. “You’ve got to admit, he’s better-looking than most of those sissy boys you see pasted up on billboards, and it’s not every man who can look that good in a pair of jeans.”
That was true.
“Paul has a flat butt.”
Hope had noticed that, too. “If Dylan’s so great, why aren’t you married to him?”
Shelly’s nose wrinkled as if something smelly had entered the room. “Sure, looking at Dylan is like looking at a work of art, but just ‘cause you can appreciate the beauty of it doesn’t mean you want it in your living room.” She shook her head, then added, “I knew I wanted Paul Aberdeen the first time I laid eyes on him in the first grade. It took me ten years to hook him, but even if Paul were gone tomorrow, I’d never be interested in Dylan that way. We’ve known each other too long, and the way he does things drives me crazy.”
“Like what?”
“He only does laundry when everything in the house is dirty.”
Since Hope was the same way, she didn’t think there was anything unusual about it.
“He puts his boots on the coffee table, and if he and Adam have a green vegetable for dinner, it’s a miracle. Dylan thinks if you eat a banana or an apple every other week, you don’t need vegetables.”
Hope finished painting Shelly’s nails and sat back and waited for them to dry. “Adam looks healthy and happy.”
“Healthy at least.” Shelly studied her injured hand.
“He’s leaving this Friday to visit his mother. He’s always a little weird when he comes back.”
“Weird how?”
“A little withdrawn and has a real bad case of the poor pitifuls. He thinks if his mama and daddy would just spend some time together, they could all live happily ever after.” Shelly shrugged. “I suppose that’s normal, though.”
“How long is he usually gone?”
“Two weeks; then it takes him an entire month to settle back into his routine. I’ve never met Adam’s mama, but she must be extremely indulgent with him, because when he comes back, he sleeps in too late and just lies around like a slug.”
Hope was dying to ask Shelly to tell her everything she knew about Dylan’s ex, but she didn’t want Shelly to know she was interested. Even if Hope had been able to share her feelings, it was too soon and too new to talk about the confusing tangle of emotions tugging at her whenever Dylan happened to smile her way.
Hope missed sitting around chatting with other women, talking about men and life and sex. She missed the kind of connection it took time to develop. A deep connection with someone who understood the inequalities perpetrated against females and the injustice of running into your high school sweetheart on a bad hair day. She missed discussing burning issues like health care, world peace, the shoe sale at Neiman’s, and whether or not size mattered.
She wanted that again. She wanted to talk about her confusion, her feelings, and her life. She wanted to tell Shelly why it was hard for her to talk about herself, why it was hard for her to trust a friend.
“What story are you working on for your magazine?” Shelly asked through a yawn.
The opportunity to open up passed, and Hope reached for Shelly’s good hand. “Aliens masquerading as humans in a wilderness town,” she said as she applied the second coat of polish. “They play tricks on tourists.”
Shelly’s eyes perked up. “You’re writing about Gospel?”
“A town similar to Gospel.”
“Oh, my God! Can I be an alien?”
Hope looked at her new friend, her red hair sticking up, her eyes wide and glassy, and really regretted that she couldn’t use Shelly. She would have made a good alien. “Sorry, but ever since Myron, I don’t use real people anymore.”
“Bummer.”
As Hope gently blew on the tips of Shelly’s fingers, she glanced up into her drugged gaze. Now probably wasn’t the best time to ask Shelly about the Donnellys. Not when she was high and her tongue was loosened by drugs, but maybe just a few simple questions wouldn’t hurt. If Shelly was uncomfortable about discussing her old neighbors, Hope wouldn’t press the issue. “How well did you know Minnie Donnelly?” she asked.
“Why?”
Since it was no secret and half the town knew anyway, she confessed, “I’m writing an article about what happened with Hiram.”
Shelly blinked and apprehension narrowed her gaze. “For The Weekly News of the Universe?”
“No. I’m going to send out queries to more mainstream publications.” She told Shelly about her ideas, and once she explained that she wasn’t interested in writing a salacious article about kinky sex, Shelly relaxed and opened up.
“Hiram could be a real son of a bitch, and I didn’t like him very much. Still, I’d hate to see his sex life exploited for the sake of selling magazines,” Shelly said. “There was more to his life than what he became. More than hookers and sex clubs and pornography. Ask anyone in town, and they’ll all have a different story to tell about him. They’ll also tell you that he treated everyone the same.” Shelly talked about Minnie and about how she’d been the real control freak. “Everyone thought she was a saint, but I lived across the street from her, and I know she ruled that house with an iron fist. I could hear her yelling and hollering all the time. No wonder her kids left and never came back. No wonder that after she died, Hiram felt lost without someone to beat up on him.”
Hope carefully reached for Shelly’s injured hand and applied a top coat to her nails. “You sound like you feel sorry for him.�
�
“Hell, no. He was too big a pervert for me to feel sorry for him. Toward the end, he was hiring girls just shy of their eighteenth birthday. I don’t feel sorry and I don’t understand, but I can look at the situation and see how it happened. Out from underneath Minnie’s thumb, he just spiraled out of control.”
“You told me several weeks ago that Hiram got careless toward the end and brought girls home. Did you ever see anything suspicious?”
“No.” Shelly lifted her bandaged hand and looked at her nails. “When are you going to write the article?”
Hope didn’t believe her but she let it drop. “I’m waiting for the FBI report. Once I look it over, I’ll figure out where to start,” she answered. But first she needed to finish the story she was getting paid to write, and in order to do that, she had to think about aliens and not a certain smooth-talking cowboy. “I’d hoped you could show me those waterfalls you and Paul told me about. I wanted to take some pictures of them for my next alien article.” Hope shrugged. “But I can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“Ask Dylan to take you. He knows where they are, but ask before Friday, because he always takes time off when Adam is away.” Shelly settled back into her chair. “He stays up at the Double T, helping out his mama and brother-in-law. If you don’t ask him before he leaves, chances are you won’t see him for a couple of weeks.”
Two weeks. For two weeks she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Dylan or think about the slow touch of his hands or his hungry mouth on hers. Two weeks would give her the time she needed to clear her mind and concentrate on her work. Which was the reason she’d come to Gospel in the first place. Now that her career was finally back on track, she needed to focus and push ahead. But suddenly work wasn’t enough and two weeks sounded like a very long time.
True Confessions Page 15