She swallowed hard, wishing she had the words to tell him how beautiful he was, all hard muscles and broad strength. Her body ached to touch him, to feel him moving inside her.
They spent long moments exploring each other, until both of them were shaking with desire.
Finally, just before she was about to resort to begging, he reached for a condom. She watched him put it on, grateful she wouldn’t have to ask about protection since she hadn’t exactly had reason to use birth control pills for the past few years.
He kissed her fiercely while he entered her. That’s all it took, just that first hard thrust, and she completely shattered, coming apart in a thousand brilliant colors as she bowed up from the bed with the overwhelming power of her release.
When she could think again, she realized he had stilled inside her as the aftershocks rippled through her. He was watching her, an arrested look on his face. “Wow,” was all he said.
“S-sorry.”
He gave a ragged laugh. “Why? You’re making me feel like the world’s greatest lover here and I haven’t even done anything.”
“The…the warm-up was pretty incredible.”
“Wait until you catch the rest of my act.” He grinned again and moved inside her.
Unbelievably, her body instantly rose to meet him again. She gasped as that glorious, aching pressure began to build again, until she was arching into him with each shattering press of his body. His kiss was fierce, possessive, and she cried out against his mouth, sensation after sensation rocking through her, as she found release again.
With a low groan he followed her to the stars.
“Remind me to thank Leigh,” she gasped when she could manage to convince her lungs to work again.
He looked startled. “For what?”
“Well, to thank her caterer, anyway. For, uh, helping you keep up your strength.”
He gave a ragged laugh. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that department, Miss Quinn. I’ve been in a perpetual state of arousal since we met.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really,” he mimicked.
“Oh,” she breathed. She wasn’t used to the idea that she could have such power over a man. She had to admit, she liked it.
They lay snuggled together in the bed while rain sizzled against the skylight. He was so gorgeous, so male. She still couldn’t believe she was here with him, wrapped in his arms like this. It seemed like a dream, like some amazingly realistic secret fantasy.
She traced the hard planes of his chest, memorizing him with her fingertips. He stretched under her touch like a cat sprawled out in a sunbeam. He was even purring, a low, rumbly sound deep in his chest.
She explored him for a long time until her fingers touched something unusual, a dime-size section of raised tissue different from the rest of his skin. She propped up on an elbow for a better look and for the first time noticed a small, jagged starburst-shaped scar gleaming white in the moonlight.
“What happened there?” she asked.
His gaze followed the tracing of her finger. “Nothing. I got shot a couple years ago. It was no big deal.”
She froze, horrified. “No big deal? You were shot and you say it was no big deal?”
The hard muscle under her fingers rippled as he shrugged. “It sounds worse than it was, believe me. If I had been paying attention like I should have been doing, it never would have happened.”
She couldn’t begin to understand the breed of man who could speak so casually of such a traumatic thing as a gunshot wound. “Was it…did it happen in the line of duty?”
“Yeah.”
She waited for him to elaborate but he said nothing more. He obviously didn’t want to discuss the injury, but she couldn’t leave the subject alone.
“What happened?”
He sighed. “You’re not going to let up until I give all the gory details, are you?”
Her face burned at her own temerity but she shook her head, her hair brushing across his skin.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” he muttered glumly. He tangled his fingers in her hair. “Okay, here’s the long and ugly story. I was working with a multijurisdictional task force investigating an assault weapons smuggling ring that eventually led us to Jack Dugan’s company. Turns out a couple of his employees were trying to bring in a little money on the side. We were searching the company’s airplane hangar when the suspects tried to hijack one of Dugan’s jets and fly out of the country, taking along Emma and Grace for insurance.”
He cleared his throat. “When I objected, one of them shot me.”
He was quiet for a moment, his fingers stroking her hair like worry beads. “I ended up using deadly force on the person who shot me. A woman. I had to or she would have killed Grace and Em both and maybe Dugan, too. She, uh, died at the scene.”
He had done his job but it hadn’t been easy for him to kill a woman, Elizabeth realized. A tangle of emotions choked in her throat—love, pride and a vast, aching regret for his physical and emotional pain.
She wished desperately for some brilliant, healing words of comfort but could think of nothing that didn’t sound trite. Finally, with tears burning behind her eyelids she leaned across his warm skin and pressed her mouth to the puckered scar just below his collarbone.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
When she met his gaze, his eyes were dark, stunned. He said nothing for several moments, his body still against her except for the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
She thought he might have drifted off to sleep but finally he spoke again, more shades of Georgia coloring his voice than she’d ever heard there.
“When I was a boy I always believed my parents died in a car accident.”
It took her several beats to realize he was answering the question she had asked earlier in his living room.
She held her breath and listened to his heartbeat in her ear, afraid to speak for fear she would say something wrong.
“That’s what my grandmama always told me. I found out the truth the year I turned sixteen. It wasn’t a car accident like Marie always insisted. I don’t know how she hushed it up so well, but that woman controlled everything in Big Piney. The police chief, the newspaper editor. Everyone. Somehow she managed to keep it a secret.”
She risked a glance at him and saw his jaw tightly clenched. What was it costing him to tell her this? She wanted to tell him to stop, that she didn’t need to know, but he went on before she could.
“For nine years she lived one nasty mother of a lie. I’d still probably be stupid enough to believe her if I hadn’t met Harlan James, my father’s best friend and the only other person alive who was willing to tell me the truth.”
He paused, his fingers moving now to her shoulder. Premonition shivered down her spine with icy fingers as she waited for him to speak again.
“After a lifetime of being fed nothing but lies, I finally learned what really happened. My parents didn’t die in a car accident. It was a murder-suicide.”
A gasp escaped her before she could yank it back.
“Nothing new or original to it. My father caught my mother in bed with his best friend and shot them both. Killed my mother, wounded Harlan, then turned the gun on himself.”
Her chest felt tight, achy. “Oh, Beau. I’m so sorry.”
“It was tough enough finding out the truth. No kid needs to hear that kind of thing about his parents. But I could have handled that. What got to me was knowing my entire life had been based on one obscene lie after another.”
“You were a child. I’m sure your grandmother was simply trying to protect you.”
“She was trying to protect herself.” His voice was harsh, tight, but she could hear pain threading through it. “Marie cared about protecting the Riley name and her place as the social leader of Big Piney. That was it. She didn’t give a rat’s rear end for the feelings of a scared little kid. Think of the scandal if all her snobby friends learned her son had
done such a low-class kind of thing! She wouldn’t have been able to bear it. So she paid everybody off to keep their mouths shut and they did.”
“Is that what led you to become a police officer?” she asked after a moment. “Finding out the truth about your parents?”
His hand stilled its slow caress of her skin. “Yeah. I guess so. I never thought of it that way but you’re probably right. Nothing makes me angrier than somebody trying to lie to me about who they are, what they’ve done. I hate being lied to, probably because of my grandmama.”
A chill rippled down her spine at his words. She was the biggest liar of all. She had hidden the truth about herself behind a thin facade—created a wobbly mirage of a confident, self-assured woman, when her reality was far different.
I hate being lied to.
How would Beau react if he found out? He would be furious at her deception, would hate her for the grand lie of omission she had perpetrated on him.
Not if he found out. When. He was going to learn the truth. And when he did, she would lose everything. He wouldn’t want to help a woman who had misrepresented herself so blatantly. And he certainly wouldn’t want a woman he couldn’t trust in his bed and his life.
Intellectually she knew she was being melodramatic. She had a speech impairment, not some hideous fatal disease. But while her mind might accept that her disorder didn’t define her—that she was so much more than fumbling speech and missed words—it was hard to find comfort from that knowledge when she had so many emotional scars because of it. Her father’s cold rejection, Stephen’s mocking disdain, the cruelty of people like the Leigh Sheffields of the world.
Beau wouldn’t be so unkind. She knew it—how could she love him otherwise?—but still she couldn’t manage to battle through her fears enough to tell him.
“So now you know all my ugly secrets,” Beau said. “This would probably be a good time for you to run away while you have the chance.”
His ugly secrets had nothing on hers. She drew in a ragged breath, knowing she should do just that—leave while she still could. She couldn’t, though. Not when his skin was warm and alive under her fingers and her senses were full of him.
She wanted one more memory to add to her precious trove.
With her heart pounding, she slid across his body. To her surprise, he was aroused again.
“Good thing I had that second helping of poached salmon at dinner,” he said, smiling a little against her mouth. “I think maybe I’ve still got a little strength left in me.”
She smiled in return. Framing his face with her hands, she kissed him deeply, pouring all her emotions into the kiss.
She would run away like the scared, stupid rabbit she was.
But not yet.
CHAPTER 15
It took him several moments after he awoke to realize something was wrong.
Beau came back to consciousness slowly stretching well-used muscles while rain softly clicked against the windows and the skylight. What a great night. A fabulous night. A wow-I-love-my-life kind of night.
He rolled to his side, reached for her, then crash-landed to full consciousness.
She was gone.
His eyes jerked open and he gazed around the empty bedroom. Nope. No Elizabeth. He must have dropped off like a rock, since he hadn’t heard a damn thing.
Usually he was a restless sleeper, prone to waking up even if Gordo simply walked into the room, but he had apparently dozed through Elizabeth sneaking out of bed, getting dressed back in her formal clothes and walking out the door.
A whole herd of emotions thundered through him in just a few seconds—most he couldn’t identify. He was trying to sort them all out when he heard the low murmur of a woman’s voice from some distant spot in the house and for the first time noticed the thin ribbon of light curling under the bedroom door.
Some detective he was. She hadn’t deserted him yet, but she was on her way.
He tried to clamp down on the anger that exploded inside him. He’d told her to leave, right after he told her the truth about his parents. Why was he so bent out of shape when she took him up on it?
She had every right to creep away in the middle of the night if she wanted to. It was a free country.
That didn’t keep him from simmering more than he knew he had a right to as he yanked on his jeans and shoved open the door then padded in his bare feet through the house.
His place was small enough that it didn’t provide too many hiding places. He found her in the entryway, wearing her fancy dress and heels again, watching raindrops chase each other down the skinny window next to the front door.
At the sight of her, some of his anger escaped like steam from a teakettle. She looked fragile and a little lost with her hair loose and her wrap slipping off one elegant shoulder.
A rumpled princess waiting for her coach.
He leaned against the doorjamb. “Going somewhere?”
She jumped and whirled around, pressing a hand to the skin just above her neckline. “Beau! You startled me.”
He crossed his arms across his bare chest and waited. It was a classic interrogation technique, one of those old saws based in grim, unalterable fact. Give a suspect enough rope and he—or she—will eventually be eager to knot his own noose.
Sure enough, color flared high on her cheeks and Elizabeth looked away from his gaze. “I-I’m sorry. It’s late. I needed to return to Harbor View. You were, um…you were sleeping and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
Too late, Princess. You’ve been disturbing me since the first time we met.
“I told you I would take you home.”
“I know. But I thought this would be…easier.”
“Easier?”
Of course she’d think that. Creeping out in the middle of the night without a word to him would have been a hell of a lot more enjoyable than this tense confrontation.
“Yes. It’s a…long drive and it’s late and I don’t want to…to put you out. You’ve already been more than kind. I’d simply be more…comfortable with the car service taking me home.”
She still wouldn’t look at him, as if those intense, profoundly, emotionally devastating hours they’d just spent wrapped around each other, inside each other, had been nothing more than a polite encounter between strangers.
Just like that, his initial fury returned. She was leaving, rejecting him again, and he wanted to pound his fist through that window she was staring through so intently.
What the hell was the matter with him? From the moment they met, the woman had rejected every single overture he’d ever made and yet he just came running back, begging her to kick him in the heart again.
Under other circumstances, he might have let her walk away—he’d experienced his own share of morning-after regrets—but he was too furious to think rationally. He wanted to lash out, hurt her like she’d hurt him.
Or at least force her to look at him one more time before she walked away.
“What is it about me that scares you so much?” he growled.
Her gaze flitted to him then away. “S-scares me?”
“Terrifies you. Isn’t that what you said earlier? Crowds make you nervous but I terrify you.”
He took a step closer to her and had the satisfaction of seeing her blink rapidly. She hitched in a little breath and would have moved away but she had nowhere left to go but the cold, hard door at her back.
“What is it about me that really scares you, Elizabeth? Is it because I’m a cop? Because I carry a gun and have used it on occasion? Or is it because of my parents and the sordid little story I told you earlier?”
He paused and loomed even closer, until he could feel her shallow breathing against his bare chest. “Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe you just hate the idea of dirtying your elegant hands with somebody who’s not part of your class and has absolutely no desire to be.”
“Wh-what?” She lifted her gaze from the floor, her eyes wide and her color fading a little.
; That astonished act might have been convincing to anyone else. But he was a cop, trained to figure out when a suspect’s story didn’t ring quite true. And Elizabeth Moneybags Quinn was doing her damnedest to hide something.
“I know I’m not country-club material, Princess. That’s fine with me, believe me. I like driving an old pickup truck and eating in cheap diners. If you’re such a snob you can’t accept me the way I am, it’s your problem, not mine.”
She hitched in a little breath, her face as pale now as that lacy curtain Grace had put up on the window. She didn’t say anything for a long time and then she finally met his gaze just for an instant, then looked away quickly. “I’m sorry, Beau. I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
At the sound of her voice, small and forlorn and not at all convincing, some tiny, relentlessly hopeful corner of his heart shriveled and died. He wanted her to deny it in ringing terms, wanted her to yell at him. If she told him he was crazy, that she wasn’t a rich elitist just like her beloved godfather, he would do his best to try believing her.
Instead, she could only manage to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Right.”
“I don’t!”
“You can play dumb if you want, but we both know I’m talking about the world of difference between us. Like you said, we don’t have that much in common. We’re like Tina and the judge, just not on the same page here. I don’t see that changing any time soon.”
“I…I see.”
He gazed at her rumpled elegance, the hollows of her collarbone above her gown, the shadows under her eyes. Despite his anger, he wanted to tuck her against him, to cherish her.
To love her.
He had feelings for her, Beau realized. Big feelings, bigger than anything he’d known before, and they scared him worse than anything he’d ever faced on the job.
He heard the hum of tires on the wet road and saw headlights slicing through the rainy night then come to a stop in front of his house. Suddenly he wanted her gone, wanted to be alone to figure out what the hell had gone wrong here.
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