She pulled the soft cotton garment over her head and thrust her arms through the appropriate holes, tugging the shirt down until it covered her to mid-thigh. The retained body heat sent a reactive shiver of appreciation skittering down her spine.
"Listen, Hayley, I'm sorry," he said.
Her head jerking up, she stared at him, skeptical to the bone. "Sure you are."
He blew out a breath and looked out over the lake. "Believe it or not, I didn't come out here to hassle you. And it was not my intention to scare you like that either." He hesitated but then turned to look at her and added grudgingly, "The truth is, I heard you had left Bluey’s upset and I was concerned. I felt bad about what I said earlier and I, uh, just wanted to make sure you were all right."
Her exercise-induced fatigue had already disappeared beneath a rush of adrenaline. Now her hard-earned equanimity was destroyed as well—and all by a few kindly spoken words from the last person she expected to be kind.
Jon-Michael's general motto was “don’t apologize, don’t explain,” yet he had just done both. And if his explanation was reluctantly given, he had extended it all the same with devastating sincerity.
She stared at him in confusion, then to her complete and utter horror, felt her lower lip begin to tremble and hot tears rise in her eyes. Dear God, not again. Did her supply of these damn things have no limit?
Apparently not, for just when she thought she had finally exhausted her quota for the night, here came more, cresting her lower lids to slide silently down her cheeks.
"Heyyyy," Jon-Michael crooned in alarm. "Hey, now, I didn't mean to make you cry. Shhh." He regarded her with consternation. "Ah, come on, Hayley, don't cry. Please. Oh man, do not do this."
His earnest entreaty only made her tears roll faster.
"Oh, hell." Reaching for her, he sank to sit cross-legged on the dock.
Hayley didn't worry about her awkward sprawl across his lap. She did not expend any energy thinking, period. Wrapping her arms in a death grip around his neck, she pressed her face into the warm, bare hollow just below his collarbone.
And bawled.
It was quite a while before she regained awareness of Jon-Michael as an entity separate from herself. All she knew at first was that he was solid and warm and something she could hold onto. She gradually took comfort from the strength of the arms that held her, the soothing voice that murmured reassurances and his fingers tunneling through her damp hair, stroking her back.
Eventually, her body quit shaking and her tears dried up. She lay limply, her face hot where it pressed against his chest. In fits and starts she grew aware of matters beyond her own flayed emotions. First it was Jon-Michael's scent: the man-smell of his skin, the barest trace of left-over cologne, a hint of sweat. Then it was the rustle of some night creature making its way through the woods edging the property.
Ultimately, however, what gained her complete attention was the breeze on her all but naked butt where the borrowed T-shirt had ridden up. With a sound of distress, she untangled an arm from around his neck, reaching back to pull ineffectually at the bunched material.
"I'll get it," Jon-Michael said, and she both heard the words he spoke and felt their resonance vibrating through the chest beneath her ear. Tough-skinned hands untangled the T-shirt and gently smoothed it over her hip.
Bringing her own hands to his chest, she stiff-armed herself away from his upper body and peered up at his face. A minute ago she had acquired comfort from him. Now she was beginning to feel like a first class fool, an unfortunately familiar sensation this evening. Her gaze slid away as she slipped off his lap.
"My purse is around here somewhere," she said hoarsely. "Could you find it for me?"
"Sure." There was a moment of rustling. Then he extended it to her.
She took it, dumped the contents out onto the dock, then pawed through the pile until she located a tissue. She blew her nose, stuffed everything back in the bag, and then reached for her small stack of clothing. Her panties had mostly dried and she donned her jeans. Her vulnerability decreasing in direct proportion to the amount of skin she covered, she speared her fingers through her hair to hold it off her face, expelled a deep breath, and finally looked up to meet Jon-Michael's level gaze.
"I'm sorry." The words were beginning to feel like her personal theme song.
"Hell, don't apologize. I feel like it's my fault."
She made a rude sound. "You always did flatter yourself you were the center of the universe," she said, but the statement lacked ire and she gave him a small, wry smile.
Jon-Michael did not dispute her, but neither did he engage her in their usual verbal wrangling. She didn’t know what to think when he merely stroked a fingertip down her cheek.
"Between your husband's murder, the trials and the upcoming execution, you have had a mountain of shit to deal with the past year or two. Having people remind you of it regularly must make for some damn difficult moments." He contemplated her quietly for a moment. "You used to have some pretty strong convictions about capital punishment."
She went very still beneath his stroking finger.
His hand also stilled, then dropped away. "Holy shit. You still do, don't you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," she said coldly. "That was a long time ago."
"You used to be dead-set against it," he remembered aloud. Then his dark eyes pinned her in place. "But as you said, that was a long time ago. What does Hayley Prescott, widow of the victim, think about the death penalty now? They say the staunchest conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. So what is your opinion? Does Lawrence Wilson deserve to die?"
"Read my lips, Johnny. I do not want to talk about it."
Calling him a name he had always detested for sounding juvenile did not deter him nearly as well as it used to. The sheer force of his gaze kept her eyes locked on his, and his tone became downright authoritarian. "Does Lawrence Wilson deserve to die?"
Hayley looked at him sitting beneath the faint illumination of the waning moon, his feet and chest and the hard abs that stopped women in their tracks bare, his dirty-blond hair flopping over his forehead, his eyes and facial stubble more inky than the surrounding shadows. How on earth could a gaze that appeared so sleepy look so commanding at the same time?
"When did you stop drinking?" She counter-demanded. When in doubt, attack. That had always been her philosophy when dealing with Jon-Michael, and the issue of his sobriety was the one question she deemed most likely to get him off her back. Raising her chin, she drove the point home. "When did Jon-Michael Olivet, the lush of Lincoln High, trade in his ever-present bottle of Black Velvet for a club soda?"
But he answered without hesitation or the least sign of embarrassment. "The day after I rolled around on a blanket with you," he retorted readily, "then woke up to discover I could not remember a single thing about what must have been the best damn night of my life if I am to believe even half of what the soccer team told me."
Jon-Michael could see the possibility had not occurred to her. He watched with interest as it stole her composure. She blushed, she opened and closed her mouth several times and could not quite hold his gaze. He had witnessed a lot of uncharacteristic behavior from her tonight and wished in a way he could pursue this particular response, but that wasn’t his primary objective at the moment. He didn't want to give her time to recover her equanimity before he moved in for the kill. "Does Lawrence Wilson deserve to die?" he demanded for the third time.
"Yes. Okay? What do you want from me, Jon-Michael? Lawrence Wilson is an animal." She didn’t have the least problem meeting his gaze now and what he saw in it made him ache in ways he did not care to acknowledge.
"He made himself a sandwich in my kitchen and sat down to eat it while Dennis damn near bled to death on the floor!" Rising to her knees to face him, her posture unnaturally rigid, she demanded, "They put down mad dogs, don't they?"
He was pretty sure she intended the remark to be offhand, perhaps even a little flip. But
her tone was too defensive and her hands were fisted at her sides. "That’s what Wilson is," she continued. "A rabid dog.” She shook her head. “No, he is worse. He gives whole new meaning to violent. It’s only fitting that he, too, should be put down."
Jon-Michael pushed up from his sprawl and knee-walked the old planks until the distance separating them dwindled to mere inches. Reaching out, he ran his hands up and down the arms she held so stiffly at her sides. She flinched at his touch but he did not let go. Instead, he rubbed more firmly. "But?" he prompted gently.
"But nothing. There is no but." Trembling, she avoided his gaze.
"Yes there is," he whispered and eased her into his arms. "You never could lie worth a damn. Not to mention if you were any stiffer we could paddle you across the lake."
She grew even more rigid in his embrace and Jon-Michael smiled into her hair. But he knew she had about reached her limit for the evening, and ignoring the number of questions he still harbored he said lightly, "But not to worry, baby; you don't have to tell me if you don't want to." He held her a little tighter. One hand slid up between her shoulder blades while the other stroked down over her hip, and he buried his nose behind her ear in flyaway hair just beginning to dry. "At least not tonight," he amended, closing his eyes and inhaling. "You don’t have to tell me anything else tonight."
"I do not have to tell you anything, ever, if I don't want to," she said firmly.
"Ah, now that is where you’re wrong," he disagreed. "We will be talking about it again, all right, and probably a lot sooner than you think. It's obvious you have a serious conflict going on with yourself. Clearly, I need to take you in hand and get you straightened out."
"Why, you fat-headed, arrogant, son of a—" Straining away from him, Hayley saw the self-satisfied smile curling up one side of his mouth and swallowed the rest of the words clogging her throat. Oh, the bastard. He had pissed her off on purpose.
"That's more like it," he said. "I hardly recognize you when you go all sweet and pliable on me." His grin grew. "I could get used to it, though."
"In your dreams, bud."
"You want to hear about my dreams, Hayley?" Leaning his upper body away to gaze with heavy-lidded eyes down into hers, he rubbed his hands up and down the curve of her ass, nudged his pelvis a little more firmly into the notch between her thighs, letting her feel his erection. "You want to hear how I wake up all in a lather from dreams of the night when you opened your sweet thighs…"
"My God, you never let an opportunity pass you by, do you?" Reaching behind her she peeled his long hands off her butt, then climbed to her feet. "Have you actually ever gotten anywhere with a line like that?"
"Not too often."
"Well, there’s a huge surprise, being it’s so smooth and all." Yawning, she looked down at him and realized she was actually pretty relaxed again. And tired enough to sleep. "Jon-Michael?"
"Yeah?" He, too, had risen to his feet and stood with his hands in his front pockets, staring down at her.
"I am sorry about the crack I made earlier."
"Which one, petunia? You always poke so many holes in my ego it's hard to keep up."
"About you picking a fight just to make your father angry."
"Forget it. You were right. The old man hauled me up in front of him this afternoon to ream me out for being an embarrassment to the family name. I hadn't actually thought as far ahead as getting my name in the Chronicle to rub his nose in it, but I was looking to take it out on someone. So, when Brian was too stoned to play, I picked you."
Hayley ignored the apology that was implicit in his words and went straight to the heart of what she found really interesting. "What is the story with you and your dad? It sure surprised the hell outta me when Kurstin told me you had gone to work in the family biz."
Jon-Michael laughed. "It is an unlikely fit, all right. And as you can see, it was an experiment that didn't work for shit. Some day you and I just might have to sit down and swap stories." He cocked an insinuating eyebrow at her. "You show me yours, honey, and I'll show you mine."
"Absolutely. We’ll have to do that." Her tone was sarcastic, but as they rounded the trees and walked side by side up the sloping expanse of manicured grass, she privately acknowledged her fierce curiosity.
And wondered just how long she would be able to hold onto her own secrets if divulging them was the only means of discovering his.
Nine
“Thanks for fitting me in on the 4th of July,” says the prospective client as he takes the seat facing my desk.
“It was good timing on your part—I just dropped by to pick up a contract for a client.” And with everything I need to do today, I should have put him off. But I took one look at the man and decided I could spare twenty minutes.
He is in his mid-thirties, handsome in a clean-cut, upwardly mobile sort of way with his dark hair and light eyes, and wearing clothing whose casualness comes at a deceptively expensive price. Urbane is the word that pops to mind. "You said on the phone you think you would like to rent rather than buy?"
"Yes. I have a feeling I'd like to settle in Gravers Bend. It’s beautiful here and has the advantage of being away from the city while still retaining reasonable access to it if I crave a sudden fix of urban culture." He shrugged his elegantly clad while. Because when all is said and done I’m a city boy at heart. I want to be sure I can adapt to small town life before I tie myself down to something as permanent as a mortgage."
"That is probably wise." I pull a listing book off the shelf, then glance back at him. "If you could give me an idea of what you are looking for?"
“I'd like something on the lake."
So he has the income to go with the clothing. It is with genuine regret I meet his gaze across the desk. “I’m sorry. The lake is all privately owned and the few homes that are summer rentals are not available this late in the season." Which was a damn shame. As much as this guy would have loved the lake, I would have loved the commission more. Still, it gives me an idea of what kind of money he is willing to spend. "Do you prefer a house or an apartment?"
"If a house on the lake is out of the question, I would prefer an apartment. Somewhere quiet for my work." He leaned forward. "I have a passion for tennis, though." The smile he flashes is all white teeth and self-deprecating charm. "Perhaps you have something near a club? I trust there is a club that caters to tennis?"
"Of course, our country club." I, too, lean forward. "And there’s a nice two-bedroom townhouse on the green I think would be perfect for you. It is private, quiet and very elegant. They only rent to members, of course, but the requirements are not exceptionally stringent and as it happens, I’m a member. I head the Fourth of July bash every year and I would be pleased to sponsor you as my guest. That would give you a chance to look around, get a feel for the people and check out the facilities." Then I recall my professional decorum. "Or I could simply run you out there now to take a look around. Forgive me, I have a tendency to forget myself when it comes to this event. You must think I’m crazy for suggesting you spend your Friday night stuck at some social affair where you won't even know anyone."
"Actually, I was just thinking what an exceptional woman you are to go out of your way to make me feel welcome like this." He rises to his feet and sticks out a hand. "I would be honored to be your guest. Shall I meet you there?"
I also stand and shake his hand. "Yes. Friday night at eight-thirty. Do you need directions?"
"If you write down the address my GPS will do the rest."
"Then I will leave your name at the desk and make sure you are included at our table. Or better yet, come at eight and I will see that you get the grand tour before the dance begins. Here is my card, Mr. Holloway."
"Please, Patsy," he says charmingly as he tucks the little rectangle of embossed card stock into his breast pocket. "Call me Ty."
I am still riding the wave of my success an hour and a half later when I turn into the driveway and shut off the engine. I climb out of the ca
r and go around to the back to pop the hatch. Reaching in, I pull out the new compound bow I stopped to purchase on the way home.
It is a surprise for Joe, one I intend to give him at the
conclusion of a small, private celebration I have planned, a minor festivity I consider well-earned. The price of the weapon is a drop in the bucket compared to the commission I will be getting from the Ty Holloway rental.
Okay, so it is not official yet. As far as I am concerned, however, it is already money in the bank. I have been in real estate long enough to have developed a sixth sense for successful closings. And the vibrations this one sent out has me practically dancing up the driveway.
The house is quiet when I let myself into the kitchen and I open the door to the garage to see if Joe's car is there.
It is, so he is home.
Smiling to myself, I silently climb the stairs, thinking to surprise him in the bedroom. But it, too, is empty and I come to a halt in the middle of the room and simply stand there frowning as I look around. Then I shrug. So he’s out back, tending to the yard. And that is just as well, actually, for it gives me a moment to put a big frilly bow on my gift and stash it away to be brought out later. Yes, much better to stick to the original plan. I have already decided the presentation of the compound bow he has been eyeing for the past six months at Gaard's Sportsman should be the evening's coup de gras. Giving it to him immediately would merely slow the momentum of the celebration. I lean the bow against the wall next to the closet so I can pull the box of ribbons off the shelf.
A faint bump from the third floor filters through the silence. Frowning, I pause in the midst of tying my bow to glance up at the ceiling. Is Joe upstairs? I finish fastening the red ribbon and rise slowly to my feet.
I am quiet as I climb the stairs to the third floor. The door to the little-used storeroom at the end of the hall is open a crack, and I approach it cautiously.
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