by Gayle Wilson
The hard wall of his chest flattened her breasts. Her hands found his hips as she lifted her body to his.
Skin against dampened skin. His, hair-roughened. Unabashedly male.
And suddenly, despite what had just occurred, she wanted more. She wanted it all.
His heat and hardness inside her. Ravaging her body as his mouth continued to ravage hers.
Everything she had learned that he could give her, and more important now, everything that she had learned to give him.
Her legs opened to welcome him. And when he pushed into the heat and wetness he had created, her body responded, relaxing to accept him fully. Trying to become one with his.
As he slowly began to move above her, incredibly, she felt that infinite pleasure begin to build again. Her hips strained upward, seeking to match his movements with their own.
Joined with this one man in a union older than time, she was aware of nothing but Jake. Mindless with love and desire, she sought to bring him to completion.
And when the release he sought finally came, his frame was racked by its force. She clung to him, nails biting into the powerful muscles that continued to drive above her.
To fulfillment and beyond. More this time than she thought she could bear. Her body echoed the explosion in his as the air thinned and darkened around them.
When it was over, they lay exhausted by what had just happened. Their panting bodies still joined. Still one.
Like waves retreating from shore, the internal sensations finally trembled into stillness. Eventually, their ragged breathing eased, too, and then slowed.
After a long time, Jake lifted his torso from hers, allowing the artificially cooled air to touch the dampness of her skin. She shivered, more an aftershock of what they’d shared than an expression of discomfort.
“Cold?” With one hand he reached back to pull the tangled sheet over them.
“Lonely.”
The silver eyes came back to her face, questioning.
“Lonely for you,” she clarified.
“I couldn’t be closer.”
“Not now. I think I’ve been lonely for you all my life.”
As she said the words, she recognized their truth. She had been alone almost her entire life.
In the space of a year, she had lost her sister, her mother and her childhood. And although she had never doubted her father’s love, she had gradually come to understand that his support and encouragement had been as much about insuring someone would continue his quest as helping her reach her own potential.
When Jake didn’t respond to what she’d said, she knew she had stepped over the line they’d established last night.
“No pressure.” She smiled at him as her fingers brushed along the trace of silver in the dark hair at his temple.
“It’s not that. I just…” He shook his head. “Of all the lingering annoyances of the last year, it was the flashbacks I hated most.”
Her face must have reflected her surprise, because he added, “They should have seemed minor, I guess, compared to the rest. But I’ve always valued control. Of myself. Of whatever situation I found myself in. After I was injured, I wasn’t in control anymore. Not of my body. Not even of my memories.”
She said nothing, knowing how hard this confession would be for the man he was.
He took another breath before he went on. “But the flashbacks… Seeing Raine in them… I don’t have an explanation for how that was possible. I doubt I ever will. The ultimate loss of control, and yet…here we are.”
“This wouldn’t have happened except for those,” she finished for him.
“For the first time, it all seems worth it.”
Her eyes burned, but she denied the tears. He wasn’t a man who would welcome sympathy. Not for anything he’d gone through.
“Full circle,” she said softly.
His brow furrowed slightly as he shook his head again.
“My father’s obsession. He didn’t find Christie, but the files left from his search led to your recovery of Raine. I wasn’t the investigator he wanted—someone like him, determined not to give up—but I respected him enough to keep the information he’d accumulated. And in the end…”
“A little girl came home because of it.”
She didn’t blink away the moisture that filled her eyes this time, because it was for her father and not for Jake. “A fitting legacy of a father’s love.”
“Who knows?” Jake used his thumb to wipe away an escaping tear. “Maybe they all had something to do with this. Guiding us. Watching over Raine.”
“Do you believe that?” She would like to. It would help make what her family had endured mean something at last.
“I told you. I don’t have an explanation. But to me…that’s as good as any.”
It was, she discovered. Something she would always hold on to as a connection to those she had loved and lost.
And a reminder, if she ever needed one, of how much they, too, had loved her. Another little girl who was also—finally—coming home.
Epilogue
“I’ve been meaning to call you. And then I run into you right here in the grocery store.”
Eden looked up from the steaks she’d been trying to choose between to find Laurie Greene standing at her elbow. Acknowledging that this was probably the confrontation she’d been expecting for the past six weeks, she laid the packages she’d been considering back on the stack in the cooler.
“Hey, Laurie.” Deliberately, Eden imbued her voice with a friendliness she didn’t feel. “What can I do for you?”
Although she and Jake had tried to be discreet about their relationship, considering both the sensibilities of the Bible Belt town and her position in it, she knew from the sideways glances she’d noticed lately that it was being talked about. Apparently, Laurie Greene had taken it upon herself to speak to her about what had developed between them.
“I was just wondering, since things seem to have calmed down around here…” Laurie hesitated. “I mean, the investigation is over, isn’t it?”
“Of the kidnapping?”
Laurie nodded.
“Our part of it at least,” Eden agreed, at a loss now as to what this could possibly be about.
“I didn’t want to ask while y’all were so busy, and it’s silly, really. Link said to just let it go, but… The thing is, Moxie—that’s our dog, you know—likes her little quilt. I like it, too, ’cause it just fits in her bed, and besides that, it washes like a dream. And Dean promised me we could have it back when the evidence people were through with it. He said that might take weeks, but it’s been that now. So if they are, through with it, I mean, can I get it back?”
“The quilt.” Eden had repeated the words to give herself time to think, but the phrase Laurie had used was the only thing in her head. Dean promised me we could have it back…
“The pink gingham one. Link used it to cover the seat of the truck when he took Moxie to the vet that day. Then, because she’d got it dirty, he just threw it in the back. It’s a wonder it didn’t blow out while he was driving home.”
“That was your quilt?”
Laurie’s mouth opened, but apparently something in Eden’s voice or expression made her think better of whatever she had been about to say. “It doesn’t matter. You just send it back to me when you get through. Y’all grilling tonight?” She glanced down at the package Eden’s fingers were resting on.
“We are,” Eden managed to say.
“Well, you have fun. Major Underwood seems like a very nice young man.”
Eden smiled, still trying to assimilate the information that had just fallen into her lap. “He is. He really is.”
“You take care now, you hear.” With that, Laurie Greene, who sat in the front row of the Pentecostal church every Sunday, put her stamp of approval on Jake and then put her shopping cart into motion.
Eden turned back to the cooler, using her supposed perusal of its contents as an excuse not to meet anyone’s eyes while the even
ts of the night they’d found that quilt played through her head like a movie. Her reaction to it. Dean’s comment that she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. If he had somehow known about Christie’s kidnapping, the rest would have been easy enough to put together.
Had her deputy chief carried out that campaign of terror? Was Dean, whom she not only considered a colleague, but also a friend, capable of that kind of duplicity? And if so, for what reason?
She realized the answer to that had occurred to her more than once during the course of the investigation into Raine’s abduction. Dean believed he was better equipped to be Chief of Police of Waverly than she was.
She picked up the steaks she’d considered and wheeled her buggy to the front. As she stood in the checkout line, memories from those frantic days ran endlessly through her head.
Her first impulse was to find Jake. To tell him what she’d learned. He would know exactly what to say to put this into perspective. She couldn’t think of anyone she knew whose advice on how to deal with this kind of betrayal she would value more than his.
Except maybe, she admitted, as she walked to her car, that of the man who had stood at her side for the past three years. A man who had been her mentor, her second-in-command and—or so she had thought—her friend.
IN THE END, she had opted to handle this on her own. Jake couldn’t fight her battles for her. She didn’t want him to.
She walked into the station and then back to Dean’s office. Now, at the end of his workday, he was sitting with his feet up on the desk, hands behind his head.
As soon as he saw her, he straightened. “I thought you had gone for the day.”
“I was. Then I ran into Laurie Greene at Publix.” She could tell by the way his face changed that he knew what was coming.
It was all so stupid. Didn’t he think about the possibility that one of the Greenes might say something to her about the quilt? Or was the opportunity to get back at her too good to pass up, so that he had decided he’d deal with the fallout, if there was any, when it came?
“Yeah? How’s she doing?”
“She wants her quilt. It seems you promised she could have it back when the state lab was done.”
Dean’s lips pursed, but he didn’t attempt to deny or explain. He just sat there, waiting.
“How did you know about my sister?”
“Your daddy was a real good law-enforcement officer. I ought to know. I worked with him for fifteen years.” He shrugged. “Being a pretty good officer myself, I got curious about what he was doing on all those trips he took. Once I did, it didn’t take much effort to find out what had happened.”
“You never once mentioned her disappearance to me. Not even when Raine was taken.”
“I wasn’t sure how much of it you remembered. I didn’t want to—”
“Bring up painful memories?” she finished when he stopped.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I did what I did.”
He still hadn’t put it into words, Eden realized. Maybe he wasn’t capable of admitting how low he’d stooped. Being a pretty good officer myself…
“What I don’t understand is why. What was the point, Dean?”
“You’d lost your objectivity. Buying into what Underwood was telling you. I thought maybe the other was affecting your judgment.”
“The other? My sister’s kidnapping? You thought that was interfering with my ability to do my duty, so you decided to re-create events related to it? Were you hoping I’d have a breakdown and just turn the job over to you?”
“I thought,” he said evenly, “considering your situation, that I was better equipped to lead the investigation.”
“You thought Raine was dead. How the hell could that possibly have made you ‘better equipped’ to find her?”
“The agents thought she was dead.”
“And they were wrong, too. What I don’t get is you doing something like that when everybody else is out searching for a missing child. Trying desperately to find her before she could be murdered.”
“So was I,” he said indignantly. “I worked as hard as anybody on that case. That’s one thing you can’t accuse me of. Slacking on my duty.”
“But while you were doing your duty,” she repeated sarcastically, “you had time to break into my house and pull pranks. How’d you get in, by the way?”
He hesitated, but he told her. After all, what difference could it make now?
“I made a copy of your door key. You always leave yours lying around.”
Because of their bulk, she usually tossed her ring of keys on top of the bookcase beside her office door as she came in each morning.
“I want it.” She held out her hand.
After a long moment he reached into his desk drawer and then laid the single key on her palm.
“And I want your badge.”
The shock in his eyes was gratifying. She wasn’t sure what he had thought she was going to do about what he’d done, but firing him clearly wasn’t it. “You’re joking.”
She laughed. “Unlike you, I wouldn’t do something like that. Play with somebody’s emotions.”
“What I did wasn’t a firing offense. You’ll have a hard time explaining that to the town and to the rest of the department.”
“You know, I don’t think I will. I suspect that, like me, when they find out what you were up to while the rest of us were trying to find Raine, they’ll applaud my getting rid of you. And if they don’t, then I’ll deal with any objections they have when they make them. As Chief of Police, that’s my job.”
“One you were never entitled to,” he said bitterly.
It was almost a relief to have it out in the open. Something she had suspected from the first.
“I have a degree in criminal justice. The mayor and the city council believed that qualified me.”
“Your daddy badgered them into hiring you.”
“I don’t doubt he had influence. But they had options. And they chose not to take them.”
“They chose a piece of paper over years of experience.”
“Apparently, experience doesn’t necessarily come with integrity. Give me your badge.”
She thought for a moment he was going to refuse. Instead he unpinned the emblem of authority he’d worn during his long service to the town and put it in her outstretched hand.
“You’ll regret this.”
She smiled again as her fingers closed around the badge, so tightly that the metal edges bit into her palm. “Thanks for the warning, but I don’t think so.”
He held her eyes, and then, seeing nothing in them but the determination she felt to get this over and done with, he picked up his hat and stalked to the door. “I’ll come tomorrow to clean out my office.”
“I’ll have somebody do that for you. On behalf of Waverly, thank you for your service. And for what it’s worth, you’re right. You were a pretty good police officer. Until you forgot what that’s all about.”
Dean’s lips tightened, but he didn’t say anything else. And the sound of his angry footsteps retreating down the hallway was satisfying on a level Eden almost felt guilty about.
“HOW WAS YOUR DAY?” Jake asked, as she put the groceries down on his kitchen table.
She looked up to find him in the kitchen doorway, hair still damp from his shower.
“Interesting.” Reaching into one of the bags, she began to put away the things they wouldn’t need for tonight. “I’ll tell you about it over this.” She held up the bottle of red wine she’d bought to go with the steaks. “What have you been up to?”
“Plowing the south forty?” he suggested with a grin.
“Since the south forty is mostly swamp, I don’t think so.”
Her smile invited him into the room. When he put his arms around her, the familiar scent of the soap he used surrounded her like the welcome warmth of a fire on a winter’s night.
“You smell good,” she murmured, her lips against his neck.
“You feel g
ood.” His hands slid down her spine to cup under her bottom.
“Yes, I do,” she said, pushing away from him to complete the unpacking.
“Somebody’s mighty pleased with herself.”
“Yes, somebody is. And with you,” she added with another smile.
“Good. Because I’ve been thinking.”
When he didn’t go on, she looked up from the potatoes she’d just placed on the counter beside the sink. Despite the way their relationship had progressed in the past few weeks, she felt a frisson of anxiety. “About what?”
No promises. No guarantees. Those had been the rules when they’d begun this, and if he had decided now that what they were doing—
“That I’m going to hate like hell for you to go home tonight. And that I hate like hell when I have to leave your place.”
“I told you—”
“I’m not suggesting we scandalize the town. Scandalizing my grandmother is bad enough. I expect her ghost to start haunting me any day. Warning me to mend my wicked ways.” The line of his mouth was tilted.
A good sign, Eden told herself. He wasn’t going to walk away. Not like this. Not while making jokes about his grandmother.
“Considering your…shall we say…colorful past, if Miz Etta hasn’t given you that message before now, I doubt she’s going to.”
“The thing is, I have a suspicion there are a couple of messages she’d like to give me.”
“Like what?” She was smiling, too. Relaxed, now that she knew this wasn’t going where she’d feared it might.
So much for not making promises. Definitely not all it was cracked up to be.
“Like…it would be nice if I could leave my truck in front of your house all night, and nobody would say anything about it.”
She’d been reaching up to get the cheese grater down from the top shelf. She looked over her shoulder to smile at him. “Then Miz Etta wouldn’t be the only one who’d be giving you messages.”
Jake moved behind her to retrieve the grater. “I said if nobody had anything to say about it.”
“They would. Believe me. And don’t tell me we’re in the twenty-first century. We’re also in Waverly.”