She had a feeling that part of her attraction to him was because, despite the fact that they were investigating heinous crimes, she sensed a natural optimism in him, a brightness of spirit that drew her.
And there was no reason why she couldn’t follow up on her attraction to him. She knew he wanted her. She’d felt the heat of his gaze lingering on her throughout dinner, remembered the taste of passion that had been on his lips when he’d kissed her.
She wasn’t worried about getting drawn into anything she couldn’t handle. She’d never been in a relationship where she felt at risk. She simply didn’t allow it.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.
“This and that,” she replied, unwilling to share these intimate thoughts with him. “You know if our killer is on the escalated time line that the first two murders indicated, then you might have another body on your hands within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said with a frown. “It would help if we could find out where those roses came from.”
“Or exactly what they mean to the killer,” she replied, more comfortable with thoughts of the bad guy than her previous thoughts about Matt.
“We’re still conducting interviews with friends and family members of both victims.”
“What about putting tails on our three leading suspects?” she asked.
“I don’t have the manpower or the budget to do that. Besides, the last thing I need is legal action by an innocent man for police harassment. In the meantime, I keep digging and remember that just because we have three men in our sights, it doesn’t mean the guilty is on that short list.”
“Miranda would have met a lot of people as a waitress at the café,” Jenna said.
“So would have Carolyn as a dental assistant in the only dental office in town, and Carolyn often ate lunch at the café. So basically, anyone in town is a potential suspect at this point in time.” He released a disheartened sigh.
Although Jenna was normally not a toucher, she couldn’t help the impulse that led her to reach across the table and cover his hand with hers. “You’ll catch him, Matt. You’re smart and I have all the confidence in the world that eventually you’ll get him.”
“I just hope it’s before another body turns up.” He twined his fingers with hers. “You know, for a woman I wanted to throw into jail the first time I met her, you’re definitely growing on me, Agent Taylor.”
Once again she felt a flicker of heat ignite in the pit of her stomach but tried to ignore it. “I told you all about myself before we ate, now I think it’s time you tell me all about you. How did you get your scar?”
He reached up and touched his face, his fingers dancing across the scar as if feeling it for the very first time. “I got it on the day my wife was murdered.”
She heard the small gasp that escaped her. His wife was murdered. It was the last thing she’d expected, that he’d been that intimate with violence, with senseless tragedy. “What happened?” she asked.
He leaned back in his chair and wrapped his hands around his coffee mug. “We had a good life. I liked my job as a Chicago cop and Natalie loved her job as a social worker for Child Protective Services. We’d started talking about planning a family and things were going well.”
He paused and took a sip of his coffee and his eyes darkened. He set the mug back on the table and cast his gaze out the window. “The call came in at three minutes after two on a Wednesday afternoon, a man with a gun holding hostages in the Child Protective Services office building. I got there as quickly as I could. I managed to get there before SWAT, before the brass. It was just me and a couple of patrolmen.”
He turned and looked back at her. “The situation was volatile. The gunman was shooting out the window, threatening to kill the hostages one at a time. When he winged a cop I knew there wasn’t time to waste. I went around the building and found an open window on the first floor. I got inside and headed for the lobby. My wife was seated on the floor, along with a dozen other people, and the gunman stood at the window screaming to the cops outside. He had a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, but all I knew was that I had to get him down. I was afraid to use my gun. The lobby was tiny and there were too many people inside for me to be comfortable with that.”
He got up from the table and carried his mug to the coffeepot. He turned his back on her to refill it, then turned back to face her once again.
“I took him down and in the process he managed to cut my face. Unfortunately he also managed to squeeze off one shot before I got him on the ground.”
Jenna’s heart squeezed tight in her chest. “And that bullet found your wife,” she said softly.
He nodded. “She died instantly. I was heralded as a hero who saved the lives of all the other people, but the price was definitely high.”
Jenna didn’t know what to do with her emotions. She’d never felt this kind of a heartache for another person. She got up from the table and approached him, her heart beating with the pain of his loss.
She placed a hand along the scar on the side of his face and gazed up at him. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He put his hand over hers and for a long moment they simply gazed at one another. She felt as if they were surrounded by death, two dead women crying out for justice and another who had been loved and lost.
Jenna wanted life—right now, with him and as she raised up on her toes, she saw the white hot flame that lit his eyes.
He took her mouth, stealing her breath with the voraciousness of the kiss. His arms wrapped her up and pulled her tight against him, so tight she could tell that he was aroused.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and molded herself to him, wanting to get lost in the moment, lost in the man. Opening her mouth to him, she not only allowed him access to deepen the kiss, but rather deepened it herself, sliding her tongue into his mouth as a low moan escaped her.
He backed her up against the counter and her heart began a rapid stutter-step of pure desire. As his hands swept down the length of her back and cupped her buttocks, their kiss continued wild and hot.
It was as if nothing mattered more at the moment than the sweet sensations of being in each other’s arms, of tasting each other’s lips.
As he pulled her hips against his, he released a moan that stoked the flames of desire even higher inside her. She wanted him. She wanted him now.
She broke the kiss and pulled back from him. Instantly he dropped his hands from around her. “I want you, Matt.”
She didn’t think his gaze could grow any hotter, but it did, sliding slowly down the length of her. “I want you, too.”
She reached out and took his hand and led him from the kitchen down the hallway to the guest room. Her heart kept up its rapid beat of anticipation as they entered the room and she stepped back into his embrace.
He wasn’t just hot, he was also a nice man and she suddenly felt the need to warn him, to remind he was nothing but a temporary fix, a man simply for the moment.
“This has nothing to do with love,” she said. “Consider me a ship passing in the night.”
“And I’m any port in the storm,” he replied as he reached up and dragged a finger across her lower lip. “Don’t worry. No expectations,” he said just before he took her mouth with his once again.
The kiss electrified her, shooting sizzling sensations down to her very toes. As the kiss continued she reached up and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. She wanted his warm bare skin against hers and she wanted his hot breath against her bare body.
She made short order of the buttons and he shrugged the shirt off his shoulders, exposing a tanned muscular chest and taut biceps.
He reached out and grabbed her by the bottom of her T-shirt and tugged her closer, then in one smooth movement pulled the T-shirt up and over her head. Her nipples hardened and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the coolness of the room or the heat of his gaze.
Or it might have been how his breath caught and released on a deep sigh of want that stirred her nearly mindless with desire.
As his fingers moved to the fastening of his slacks, she unbuttoned her jeans, sat on the bed and pulled them off. By the time she’d finished he stood before her in a pair of briefs that strained against his arousal.
Instead of desire she saw a wave of panic cross his features. “I don’t have any protection,” he said.
There was no way Jenna was going to allow this moment to explode apart. “I’m on the Pill and I trust you if you trust me.” She held her breath to see what happened next. He’d subtly indicated that he hadn’t been with a woman since the death of his wife, but he knew very little about her sexual history.
She couldn’t blame him if he pulled his pants on and walked out, but sweet anticipation winged through her as he stepped closer and pulled her into his arms.
He kissed her ravenously, as if she tasted better than anything he’d ever had in his life and with their lips still locked they tumbled onto the bed.
It was as if she’d been ready for him forever. Within minutes they were naked together, stroking heated flesh and exploring the secrets of each other.
As his hands cupped her breasts and his mouth found one of her nipples, she couldn’t help the low moan that escaped her lips. She tangled her hands in his hair, loving the feel of the rich soft strands against her skin.
His long hardness pressed against her thigh, the feel of it sending her surprisingly close to climax. When his hands moved down the length of her body and his fingers touched the core of her, the wave washed over her hard and fast and she cried out in stunned surprise at the intensity.
Immediately he positioned himself between her thighs. She was more than ready for him and welcomed him by opening her legs.
As he entered her his gaze locked with hers, his eyes shining silver in the deep glow of twilight that filled the room.
She closed her eyes, finding his gaze even more intimate than their act of lovemaking. As he began to stroke deep and slow within her, she felt the rising tide begin to sweep over her again. She clung to him as reality filtered away and thought became impossible. There was only Matt and this moment and she gave herself to it as she was swept over the edge.
He stiffened against her and groaned her name as he found his own release. For a moment neither of them moved, then he shifted the bulk of his weight to her side and tenderly kissed her forehead.
In that instant she wanted him gone, out of her bed and out of this house. He felt too close, too good. He felt like danger.
Without saying a word, she scooted out of the bed and padded across the hall to the bathroom. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, the tousled hair and the swollen lips. Don’t let him in, a little voice whispered in the back of her head. It was the same voice that had kept her safe through her miserable childhood, the same that had kept her from wanting or needing anyone in her life.
She cleaned up and pulled on her short summer bathrobe, then returned to the bedroom, disappointed to find him still in the bed. She flipped on the overhead light as darkness had fallen outside the windows.
“It’s getting late. You should go,” she said.
He sat up, the sheet falling to expose his magnificent chest. “Feels a little like slam, bam, thank you ma’am.”
She felt a blush warm her cheeks. “I just have things to do and I’m not one to bask in the afterglow. I’ll be in the kitchen.”
As she left the bedroom she turned on lights in the living room and then in the kitchen. She would have liked a cup of coffee, but feared that if she made any he’d take it as an invitation to hang around and have a cup.
The files he’d brought to her sat on the table, and after the brief escape from death into his arms, she was once again eager to read the files and see if she could come up with something that might have been missed.
She turned as he came into the kitchen, his eyes dark and unreadable as he gazed at her. “I guess I’ll see you sometime tomorrow?” It was obvious from his tone that he was reluctant to leave, perhaps hesitant to leave her alone with a killer on the loose.
“I’ll check in sometime tomorrow afternoon,” she replied. She needed some space from him. “I’ll walk you out,” she said firmly.
Together they left the kitchen and headed for the front door. When they reached it he turned back to her and she felt the need to explain away what had happened between them.
“Matt, I don’t normally fall into bed with a man days after I meet him. This tonight was out of the ordinary and probably shouldn’t happen again.”
“But if it did happen again, I wouldn’t be real upset,” he said with a small smile. “Good night, Jenna.”
She stepped out on the porch and watched him walk to his car. She could have stayed in his arms through the dark night, could have been wrapped up in his strong embrace, with the beat of his heart against hers.
For a moment a wave of yearning swept through her, a desire for something more, for something indefinable. She wrapped her robe more tightly around her as his car drove down the street.
When the sound of his car was no longer audible, she remained standing in the moonlight, wishing things were different, wishing she were different.
She was just about to go inside when she felt it, the subtle sense of no longer being alone. She’d always been good at instantly analyzing a situation for danger. She was adept at listening to her instincts, decoding her natural fear responses.
Glancing around she tried to figure out what could have possibly triggered the flood of adrenaline that worried through her, the sense of unease that whispered of danger.
Unable to figure out what had caused the feeling, she slid back through the door and locked it behind her.
SHE WAS JUST LIKE the others with her brown hair and blue eyes, with her innocent smile and wicked heart. He watched her from behind a tree across the street until she went back into the house.
He tamped down the rage that buoyed up inside him, a rage that had been born a month ago. He couldn’t get to the woman who had created the rage, but he’d suddenly realized that Miranda Harris looked like the object of his hatred and when he’d played out the fantasy and she was dead, some of the rage had gone away, but not for long.
He’d thought Carolyn Cox might ease the pain that tortured him, but killing her hadn’t helped either. Maybe this one would finally eradicate the burning torture of memory, quench the fiery need for revenge.
Maybe killing Jenna Taylor would finally give him peace.
Chapter Seven
Normally Jenna was out of bed by six. She was naturally an early riser and rarely slept in. But this morning it was just after seven-thirty when she pulled herself out of bed and stumbled wearily into the shower.
It had been a long night. She’d sat at the kitchen table and read over the files Matt had brought, comparing the crime scenes, looking for similarities and differences between the two murders and anything that might have been missed initially.
She’d charted and graphed and created her own little murder book but felt no closer to coming up with a concrete profile on their killer.
When she’d finally fallen in bed around three, her dreams had been haunted by blood red roses and visions of herself with a knife through her heart. Even when those nightmares had passed, she’d dreamed of Matt and in that dream he was the one wielding a knife and chasing her.
It didn’t take a psychiatrist to understand the final dream. Although she knew Matt was no physical threat to her, he threatened her well-being with the power of his smile, with the fire of his kisses, with the pleasure in his touch.
He made her want things that scared her because they had the capacity to hurt her. Miranda was the only person she’d ever let into her heart and look how that had turned out.
Once she was showered and dressed, she had her day planned out. First stop, Dr. Patrick Johnson, town vet. She’d spoken to the man bri
efly on the night of Carolyn Cox’s murder, but she wanted to talk to him alone, get a look, a feel for the man herself without the sheriff around. And after that she was hunting down Bridgewater’s resident bad boy, Bud Carlson, for the same reason.
She left the house just after eight-thirty and headed for the vet’s office. When she got there the hours printed on the door told her he didn’t open until nine-thirty. With almost an hour to spare, she went next door into the cool comfort of the café.
Michael greeted her with his usual pleasant smile as she sat on a stool at the counter. “Breakfast?” he asked as he held a menu.
“Sure, why not?” she agreed and accepted the menu from him.
“Any progress on these crimes?” Michael asked as he poured her a cup of coffee. Leroy sidled up next to his uncle.
“We’re getting closer to identifying our perp every minute,” she said, although it was a lie. The last thing she knew Matt would want the townspeople to know was just how far away they were from making an arrest.
“How come a pretty woman like you isn’t married?” Michael asked.
“Never felt the need,” she replied.
“Maybe she’s just a love ’em and leave ’em type,” Leroy quipped, then he blushed so violently the tips of his ears turned red.
“Speaking of love ’em and leave ’em,” Michael said beneath his breath as he looked over Jenna’s shoulder to the young man who had just entered the café.
She sat up straighter on the stool as he approached them and slid onto the stool next to hers. Perfect. He’d made it easy for her.
“Morning, Bud,” Michael said. “The usual?”
“Yeah, and plenty of coffee,” Bud replied. “And don’t give me a cup of that crap that’s been sitting in the pot for hours.”
“What about you, Jenna. Have you made up your mind?” Michael asked.
“I’ll have the breakfast special,” she replied and handed him back the menu.
Leroy left the counter as Michael poured Bud a cup of coffee, then Michael disappeared into the kitchen.
Scene of the Crime: Bridgewater, Texas Page 7