by Paula Graves
Which was why she’d thought about playing a game of Popsmack in the first place.
“Popsmack?” he questioned when she told him the name of the game. “What kind of stupid name for a game is that?”
“I think it grew organically out of the resulting fisticuffs between my cousins when they played the game,” she explained, dealing out the deck evenly between them.
“Are these the cousins who fish?”
She chuckled. “They are indeed. Gabe and Jake—they’re twins. They actually fished the tournament tour a couple of years. Did pretty well—both of them bought houses outright with their winnings, so I guess they know what they’re doing.”
“About fishing, at least,” he conceded. “Not sure about card games.”
“Oh, quit whining.” She finished dealing the cards and put her hand on the top card. “You go first.”
“I thought we laid them out at the same time.”
“Okay fine. One, two, three, deal.”
They each laid a card on the table. Isabel’s was a seven of spades. Scanlon’s was a nine of hearts.
“There. You win,” she said. “Not so bad, is it?”
His smile was wicked. “Not for me, anyway.”
She felt a little flutter of apprehension as he made a show of thinking up a question. “You know, it’s perfectly fine to ask a person her favorite color or something like that.”
“Your favorite color is turquoise blue. Every bloody knickknack you ever put on your desk was that color.” He shook his head. “I’m thinking of something a little more, you know…personal.”
She tried not to react, since he clearly wanted her to. “Okay, shoot.”
“What was your most memorable date in high school?”
“Thank you for assuming I dated in high school,” she said with a soft laugh. “I did, but not until my senior year—orthodontics took a toll on my sex appeal up to that point.” She gave the question some serious thought. “You did say memorable, right?”
He nodded, looking genuinely interested in her answer.
“It was homecoming of my senior year. The braces had been off since the previous summer, and guys were actually starting to see me as something other than a walking metal grin.” It had been a heady time, those days, when she’d actually started believing her father’s assurances that she was a pretty girl. “Trent Jameson—football player, very popular, kind of hot in that jock sort of way—asked me out for homecoming and actually meant it. Not as a joke or anything.”
“Good grief, those first three years of high school must have been a doozy,” Scanlon murmured.
“So the day before homecoming Trent and some of his friends had gone hiking up Gossamer Mountain. It was October, but still kind of warm, and they ended up taking off their jackets and hiking in short sleeves. Through really thick woods.” She winced, remembering how Trent had looked the day of the homecoming dance.
“Let me guess—leaves of three, let them be—only he didn’t?”
“Exactly. Trent was covered with poison ivy rash, his poor face was swollen up until he was unrecognizable. There I was, my first real date, with one of the coolest guys in school, and he looked like something out of a Japanese monster movie.”
Scanlon laughed. “Poor Trent.”
“Poor me! It took the rest of the year to live down my instant reputation as a jinx date.” She laughed, now that she was long past the horror. “College was better.” She reached for the next card on the deck and laid down a ten of spades.
Scanlon dealt a six of diamonds. “Uh oh.”
What to ask? She wondered whether she should ease him in or go straight for the things she really wanted to know.
“Be gentle,” he pleaded softly.
“You’re a big guy. You can take it.” She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Why did you become an FBI agent?”
The question seemed to catch him completely by surprise. “I—I don’t know, really. I guess the usual thing—I wanted to help people. I thought the FBI would be a good place to do that, so I added an accounting degree to my English degree because I knew the FBI looked for accountants.”
It was a perfectly reasonable answer, she had to admit. But she didn’t believe a bit of it.
He had another reason for joining the FBI. She’d known that about him for a long time, though he never showed any inclination to share his motivations with her.
She was beginning to wonder if he ever would.
* * *
TOLLIVER FEED AND SEED had closed at five that evening, but Opal Swain knew her sister would still be in the back, counting the day’s receipts. The feed store itself would have been perpetually in the red, of course, if it had depended only on sales, but the store actually existed to launder the money earned from methamphetamine and marijuana sales, so it would never go under. Not as long as there were fools who wanted to alter their consciousnesses.
Opal herself had never sampled the family wares. She didn’t even drink, knowing full well that her most marketable asset was her mind.
She had never been pretty, like Addie and their sister, Melinda, had been when they were younger. But she’d been smart. Smart enough to marry Earl Butler and support his hardworking ways. Smart enough to get J.T. out of Bolen Bluff when it looked like he was aiming to be as shiftless as the rest of his cousins, whose only goals in life seemed to be growing weed and cooking meth until the next generation took over the business.
Smart enough to realize when it was time to come home and claim her rightful place at the head of the Swain household.
The front door was locked, but Opal had a key. The business had belonged to their father long before Addie and her lazy husband took over the shop twenty years ago. He’d left it to all of them equally; Addie had been the only one who’d wanted to run it. It had given her husband, Carl, something to do to keep out of trouble and other women’s britches, and Addie had enjoyed the position it had put her in—right in the throbbing heart of the family business.
Addie looked up in surprise when Opal entered her office without knocking. “Damn it, Opal, you scared the hell out of me. You can’t knock?”
“Don’t need to knock. The place belongs to me, too.”
Addie’s lips flattened to a thin line. The lively beauty she’d possessed as a girl was long gone now, stolen by time and a harsh and ugly life. Of the two of them, Opal was the more attractive now, though neither of them would turn heads anymore.
“There somethin’ you want?” Addie asked.
“I want more to do with the business. I’m good with books. You never had much of a head for numbers.”
“I do all right.”
“You get by. The business could be doing more.”
“Do a whole lot more, and people will start takin’ notice of what we’re doing here. Nobody wants that.”
“They already notice, Addie. We’re always livin’ on borrowed time. Always.”
“And you want to stir things up and bring that time crashin’ down on us even faster?” Addie asked bluntly.
“Time is already crashin’ down on us. We got strong young wolves snappin’ at our heels.”
“You think Leamon and the boys are gonna give us trouble? They don’t know how to find their backsides with their own two hands,” Addie scoffed.
“It’s not those boys I’m worried about.” Opal didn’t elaborate. If Addie didn’t see the danger lurking around her, Opal felt no particular obligation to point it out. Sometimes the herd needed culling, and Opal didn’t mind if someone else did it for her.
“Did you come by here for a particular reason, or did you just want to lord it over me about what a bad job you think I’m doin’?” Addie returned to adding up the day’s haul in her tiny, crooked handwriting. None of the family trusted computers, of course—the paper trail was so much harder to control. But someone should have replaced Addie in the bookkeeping job long ago. Her sister had never been good at math, and there was no telling how much family money was being sip
honed away at the ground level because Addie couldn’t keep track.
“I was serious about the books.”
Addie looked up at her, exasperation etched in every line on her aging face. “If I start thinkin’ I need your help, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”
Opal had every right to take a stand here, to demand her full share of the business. But she also knew that a confrontation with her sister at this point, when Addie held the position of strength in the family, would be a fool’s game.
Change was coming, and Addie wouldn’t be able to weather the storm. She wasn’t smart enough or nimble enough.
Opal could bide her time. Wait for the opening she needed. It would come, sooner than later.
She changed the subject. “Davy McCoy said you’d asked Mark Shipley to watch the store tomorrow durin’ the barbecue.”
“I did.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He gets along good with the boys. Dahlia McCoy’s got the shivers for him. God knows the boy needs money, and he’s willin’ to do just about anything the boys ask of him.”
“Have they asked for somethin’ special from him?”
Addie shot her a sly look. “Not yet.”
So Addie had invited Shipley to work at the feed store as a test of some sort. What was her sister up to? “How do you know he’s not a fed undercover?”
“The boys have been keeping an eye on him. Checkin’ his place when he’s out. They took him down to see some people—” Addie hushed up quickly. Opal swallowed a smile—her sister could never keep a secret, even when she tried.
Of course, Opal knew all about the mercenaries. She even knew what they were up to here in Halloran County.
There wasn’t much that went on around here these days that she hadn’t made her business.
Maybe she should add Mark Shipley to that list.
* * *
SCANLON WAS FEELING ENTIRELY TOO RELAXED and content. He knew it was a dangerous combination, especially with the constant threat of discovery haunting his every step.
But it felt so good—so right—having Isabel with him again. Setting aside the relentless simmer of attraction that kept his heart pounding and his skin prickling, he’d missed her sharp humor and quick mind. She was his anchor, in the best sense of the word, and he’d felt absolutely lost without her.
It was going to be hell letting go of her again.
“We need to take this party into the bedroom,” he said. The sloe-eyed glance she slanted his way made his gut tighten into a knot. “It’s not really safe up here,” he added, his voice oddly hoarse.
Her lips curved but she dutifully gathered up the remains of their card game and tucked the deck into the pocket of her jeans. She nodded toward the radio sitting on the counter near the stove. “Can we take the radio?”
“Sure.” She’d turned the radio to a classic rock station out of Georgia earlier, and the evening DJ was on a serious Southern rock kick—a little Skynyrd, a little Charlie Daniels, some Allman Brothers. He didn’t mind a little Southern-fried head-banging, either.
By the time they reached the bedroom and plugged the radio in, the opening beats of .38 Special’s “Second Chance” was pouring through the speakers, tinny but infectious.
Isabel’s eyes lit up. “I love this song!” She started to dance, her lithe limbs moving with surprising grace as she caught the beat. “Come on, Scanlon, you can’t tell me this doesn’t make you want to tap your toe.”
He managed a smile, completely entranced by the sinuous play of her long limbs as she danced toward him across the bedroom floor. When she grabbed his hand and tugged him closer, he gave up trying to resist and let her draw him into the dance.
He wrapped one arm around her slim waist and pulled her to him, swaying against her as he listened to the lyrics, a plaintive plea for a second chance at love and forgiveness.
“Too much light in here, don’t you think?” She danced away from him and flicked on the small lamp by the bed, then shimmied over to the wall to turn off the overhead light. Shadows descended on the room, cocooning them in oddly comforting darkness. She slipped back into his arms, laying her head in the curve of his neck.
“Here we are again,” she whispered a few minutes later, her breath warm against his throat. “Right where we always seem to end up. One foot in forever and the other in never.”
The pain in her voice made his chest hurt. “I know.”
“I don’t want to leave here with any regrets,” she said.
He sighed, the ache settling somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. “I know.” He let her go.
She licked her lips, reached into her pocket and pulled out the dog-eared deck of cards. She plucked two off the top, facedown. “Pick one.”
He eyed her warily. “What are you doing?”
“Pick a card. One last round of Popsmack.”
He pulled a card from her hand and looked at it. Four of clubs. That didn’t bode well. He looked up at her. She was studying the card in her hand, her look reflective.
“What do you have?” he asked.
She flipped the card over and showed him the two of diamonds. “You win.”
He held her gaze, his heart in his throat. He had a sneaking suspicion that she’d cheated to get the low card, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking the question burning in his brain. “What do you want to happen now, Isabel? The truth.”
She took the card from his hand and stacked it on top of the deck, setting it on the dresser. She closed the distance between them, rising to her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.
Her blunt, honest answer sent a shiver down his spine.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She gazed at him with shining eyes. “If we step away this time, we may never get another chance to get it right.”
He threaded his fingers through her curls, pulling her closer again. “Are you sure this is right?”
“No,” she admitted, rising to her toes again. Her lips rasped across his beard stubble. “But it’s worth the risk, don’t you think?” She dropped a kiss along the tendon at the side of his throat, making him groan as heat exploded low in his belly.
He wanted her. More than he wanted his next breath. So much that he couldn’t stop his hands from shaking as he cradled her face and bent his head to kiss her.
She tasted as sweet as pears, as tart as cherries. As dark as midnight and just as seductive. He couldn’t have resisted the slow, determined exploration of her hands on his body, utterly disarmed by her touch.
She stepped back, evoking a low growl of frustration from his throat, but she retreated only long enough to shrug out of her soft cotton T-shirt. The lavender lace of her bra was a delightful surprise, a silken reminder of the woman who lay hidden beneath the facade of the capable, pulled-together FBI agent he’d worked with every day for almost seven years.
“You need me to undress you, too?” she asked with a wicked smile, shimmying out of her jeans to reveal a pair of turquoise-blue bikini briefs.
He couldn’t stop a chuckle at the mismatched underwear. Somehow, the fashion failure only made her that much sexier. He shed his own shirt at record speed and cursed his choice of button-fly jeans that morning when he was getting dressed. He fumbled at the buttons until she crossed to him and made quick work of them, helping him yank the jeans down over his hips. He stepped out of them, kicked them out of the way and reached for her.
She was silky soft and fiery hot, vibrating with life and intensity, going to his head like hard liquor until he was dizzy and hot. He followed her lead back to his bed, falling on top of her when she pulled him down with her.
Her thighs parted and he positioned himself between them, not at all surprised by how perfectly their bodies fit together. He stayed utterly still a moment, just enjoying the sensations of her skin on his, the tremors moving up and down his spine in rhythm with his hammering heart.
She moved her hands slowly up his sides, fingertips tracing laz
y circles over his skin. She smiled up at him, anticipation sparkling in her eyes. “I already like this better than our usual modus operandi.”
“Now you’re just trying to make me hot.”
“Is it working?” Her fingers danced along the ridge of his spine, scattering shivers along the trail she blazed.
He rocked his hips against hers. “What do you think?”
“I think we’re entirely overdressed.”
He slid his hands under her, finding the hooks of her bra. He tugged them loose and plucked the lacy fabric out of the way, letting it drop to the floor.
He pressed his mouth to the ripe curve of her left breast and kissed his way from one side to the other. Her low moan of pleasure was like gasoline on the fire in his belly.
He looked up to find Isabel gazing at him with desire-drunk eyes, her expression serious. “How am I going to say goodbye to you?” she whispered.
He lowered his mouth slowly to hers, kissing her with all the urgency that burned in the center of his aching chest. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer until he felt her breasts flattened against his chest.
They made love with quiet intensity, each touch, each whisper, each groan of pleasure and passion a reminder of how fleeting the time remaining between them really was.
He felt her come apart in his arms, her low growl of release like air to a drowning man. He let go, unraveled, twined himself around her until he wasn’t sure he existed anymore. He was part of her. She was part of him.
And tomorrow, he thought, pain ripping through his chest, he would have to find a way to let her go.
Chapter Thirteen
A static-edged Eagles ballad drifted through the room, the melancholy tone settling in the center of Isabel’s chest. Beneath her cheek, Scanlon’s heart had finally slowed to a steady cadence, slipping into rhythm with her own.
His hand played lightly in her hair, wrapping her curls around his fingers. “So that’s what we were missing.”
She leaned her head back to look up at him in the dim, golden light. Though she was finally used to his scruffier appearance, a sense of uncertainty struck a hammer blow to her confidence. In so many ways, he was no longer the man she thought she knew almost as well as she knew herself.