by Paula Graves
Sara shook her head. “We have to deal in the facts, not in what I want to believe. The fact is, Renee was working in the athletic office for Jim Allen. The fact is that Jim hadn’t been married long at that point—he and Becky were practically newlyweds. And I told you Donnie thought the Allens had been having marital problems back then.”
“So maybe the coach thought his marriage was on the rocks and got himself all tangled up with Renee, who was only a few years younger than him. And just the kind of sweet-natured, romantic girl who could mistake sympathy for love and need for commitment.”
“But then Jim learned Becky was pregnant, and everything changed.” Sara grabbed a couple of plates from the cabinet over the sink and spooned the omelets onto them.
“Maybe he told Renee about Becky’s pregnancy before she had a chance to tell him about hers.”
“And Renee realized she couldn’t ask him to choose between her child and his child with his wife.”
Cain took the plates from her and set them on the table while she retrieved forks. “Renee might have loved him enough to take a chance that he’d leave Becky for her, but once a child was involved—”
Sitting in the chair across from him, Sara poked at her omelet, looking as if the last thing she wanted to do was eat it.
Cain reached across the table, covering her hand with his. “I know you don’t want to think Coach Allen did something so terrible. But we have to follow this lead as far as it takes us.”
She looked at him thoughtfully, her expression suddenly hard to read. “If we’re right about Jim Allen being the father of Renee’s baby, then he’s also the father of Ariel Burke’s.”
“And he almost certainly killed them both.” Cain looked down at the omelet, his appetite long gone. He shot her an apologetic look and pushed the plate away. “I’m not as hungry as I thought.”
“Me, either.” She sat back in her chair, looking shell-shocked. “But why would he kill Renee? If she had no intention of telling him about the baby, how would he have even known? Could she have changed her mind?”
Cain gave it a moment of thought. Renee had seemed so resigned to having her child without any help from the father. He’d believed her when she’d said she didn’t intend to tell him about the baby.
Could something have changed her mind?
“She said she wasn’t going to tell anyone who the father was,” he said finally. “She meant it.”
“So how did the baby’s father find out?”
“I don’t know.”
Sara pushed to her feet as if propelled by some burst of energy her slim body could no longer contain. The grim look of resolve in her dark eyes sent a shiver of alarm rocketing through him.
“Where are you going?” he asked as she started toward the front door of the cabin.
“To get answers.” As she passed the antique desk by the door, she paused long enough to open the lap drawer and pull out a gleaming Walther PPK in a pancake holster. She clipped the holster to the back waistband of her jeans and grabbed a thick wool jacket from the coat tree on the other side of the door.
“And where do you plan to get those?” he asked, catching up with her before she opened the door. He closed his hand over hers on the doorknob, pulling her to face him.
Her eyes sparked flashes of fire as she met his gaze. “From Jim Allen, of course.”
Answering heat fluttered low in his belly but he pushed the sensation aside. “You can’t go there in the middle of the night, wave that gun in his face and demand answers.”
“How stupid do you think I am?” She tried to pull her hand away from his grasp, but he tightened his grip.
“I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re desperate for answers and you think Jim Allen can give them to you.”
“What if he can?” Her question came out in a tone more vulnerable than he expected. He saw her own frustration flicker over her expression at the trembling undertone of her own voice. “I can’t just keep sitting around, doing nothing. I have to know what happened.”
“To Renee? Or to you and Donnie?”
“To all of us.” Her voice escaped in a raspy whisper. “To me. I have to know why I drove us off that bluff.”
He pulled her into his arms, curling his palm around the back of her neck. She resisted briefly, then relaxed into his embrace, her cheek warm against his shoulder.
A few moments later, her hands began to move lightly over his back, a hypnotic, seductive rhythm that charged the atmosphere around them. Not even his best intentions could stop his body’s instant, obvious response to her touch.
She lifted her head, gazing up at him with fierce intent. “You should have let me know you were outside sooner,” she whispered.
His pulse thudded in his throat. “So you could send me home?”
“So I could let you in,” she whispered, rising until her lips brushed his. Her lips parted, her tongue darting against his upper lip.
He opened his mouth to her kiss, slid his hand over the curve of her hip to pull her closer so she could feel what she did to him. His tongue tangled with hers, tasting coffee and the underlying sweetness of her passion.
She pushed him toward the living room, reaching the ruins of the sofa before she seemed to realize that whatever she was looking for couldn’t be found there. The look of puzzlement in her eyes as she took in the ruins of the sofa was so comical he couldn’t hold back a laugh.
She swung her gaze to him. “I don’t have a sofa anymore.”
“You have a bed.”
She turned a delightful shade of pink. “It was my grandparents’ bed,” she said in a hushed tone. “I can’t have sex with a guy in my grandparents’ bed!”
He laughed harder, frustration giving way to an almost painful level of affection for the blushing woman who stood in front of him. “It’s okay. I’m not going to suggest the floor. Your grandmother probably used to mop it or something.”
She gave his arm a light punch. “Funny.”
He cradled her face between his hands. “I could go back outside to the truck.”
“No. We’ll figure out something.” She looked so adorably conflicted, he almost kissed her again. But kissing her was what had gotten them into this muddle to begin with.
“Got a sleeping bag? I could lay it over what’s left of that sofa and sleep there tonight.”
She eyed the sofa with skepticism. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
She gave his hand a quick squeeze. “Be right back.”
He walked around the living room, trying to cool down the fire her touch had set blazing in his gut while muffled rustling noises filtered down the hallway where she’d disappeared. By the time she returned carrying a sturdy sleeping bag folded over her arm, he felt a reasonable level of control over his libido, though the look of helpless consternation on her still-pink face threatened to set him on fire again.
“I’m sorry.” She thrust the sleeping bag into his hands. “I guess I’m not as sexually liberated as I thought.”
He tried not to laugh again. “If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t exactly feel right about having sex with a woman in my grandmother’s bed, either. Mostly because she’d box my ears.”
“You’re very understanding.”
He couldn’t stop himself from touching her cheek. Nor was he able to keep the hunger from his voice as he whispered, “I’m very patient.”
Her dark eyes blazed back at him. “Good.” She rose toward him, slanting her mouth across his with a fiery intensity that nearly undid all his good intentions.
Dragging her mouth away, she stepped back and flashed a wicked smile. “Don’t be too patient.”
Too much patience, he thought as he watched her disappear into the bedroom, would not be the problem.
* * *
DAYLIGHT SLANTING THROUGH the narrow space between her bedroom curtains nudged Sara awake, dragging her from a dream she couldn’t exactly remember but knew she hadn’t wanted t
o end. For a second, the sound of movement in the front of the cabin made her whole body jerk into a knot, until she remembered how her eventful night had ended.
Had she really turned down sex with Cain Dennison because she couldn’t bring herself to do it in her grandparents’ bed?
Bringing her knees up to her chest, she buried her hot face in her hands. Why did something as natural and normal as sex make her feel like a scared teenager all over again? She wasn’t a virgin, hadn’t been for over a decade. She and Donnie had shared an exciting, fulfilling sex life together; even during the more stressful period of their marriage, sex had never been an issue for them.
Maybe that was the problem. She’d had a lot of great sex, but always with just one man.
Forget falling in love again—what if she couldn’t figure out how to please another man?
A knocking sound from the front of the house sent her nerves jangling. Was that the door?
Footsteps sounded in the hall, and a couple of sharp raps on the bedroom door. “Sara?”
She grabbed the jeans she’d discarded the night before and tugged them on. “Yeah?”
“Your dad’s at the front door.”
Cold flushed through her body. “Oh, damn! He said he’d call first.” She shrugged into her bra and threw a sweater over her head on her way to the door.
Cain stepped back as she jerked open the door. “You knew he was coming this morning and didn’t think to warn me?”
“I forgot,” she said, shooting him a look of apology. “But he said he’d call.”
“I’d suggest making my escape out the back, but he can’t miss my truck parked out there.” He sounded damned near panicked, she realized.
She closed her hands over his upper arms, holding him in place. Stifling the sudden urge to laugh, she made him look at her. “It’s okay. I’m well past the age of consent.”
“But he’s armed.”
She couldn’t stop a chuckle from escaping her aching throat.
“Oh, yeah, laugh it up,” he muttered. “You’re not the one he’s going to chase down with a shotgun.”
She was still chuckling a little as she opened the door to her father’s repeated knock. But the grim expression on Carl Dunkirk’s face drove out any thought of humor. He barely gave Cain a glance, stepping inside on a cold blast of wind and putting his hands on Sara’s shoulders.
Her stomach dropped like a chunk of lead. “What’s wrong? Is it Mom?”
Her father shook his head. “Your mother’s fine. It’s Jim Allen.”
Cain stepped closer, all signs of his earlier mortification gone. “What about him?”
Carl finally let his gaze settle on Cain, a hint of curiosity flickering across his face before his expression went deadly serious again. “A student found him in his car in the high-school parking lot about an hour ago. Looks like he shot himself in the head.”
“He’s dead?” Sara asked, torn between surprise and dismay.
Carl looked at her, regret gleaming in his eyes. “Not yet. But the doctors don’t think he’s going to make it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Westridge Medical Center’s sleek facade brought back memories for Sara. Just not the ones she most needed to recover. As she and Cain followed her father through the front doors of the Knoxville hospital, the faintly antiseptic smell of the place hit her like a gut punch, and she stumbled over the large rug that stood in front of the sliding glass doors.
Cain’s hand slipped under her elbow, keeping her from falling further off balance. She shot him a queasy smile, and his eyes widened a notch, but he didn’t comment. He kept his hand curved around her elbow as they hurried to catch up with her father’s long, quick stride.
The receptionist directed them to the waiting area of the emergency wing, where they found a couple of uniformed deputies milling near the coffee carafe and Lieutenant Brad Ellis sitting next to a teary-eyed Becky Allen and her three shell-shocked children. Becky was dressed in dark red scrubs, Sara noticed. Work attire? She had a faint memory that Becky had been working at a doctor’s office when she married Coach Allen.
As Sara’s father went to talk to Brad, Cain gave Sara’s arm a light nudge and nodded toward Becky and her children. “Did you know Mrs. Allen was a nurse?”
“She used to work at a doctor’s office in Barrowville,” she answered quietly. “I guess she still does.”
“Do you know what kind of doctor?” Something in Cain’s tone made her look up at him. He was still looking at Becky, her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“I was just wondering how Jim Allen could have learned about Renee’s pregnancy. Or Ariel Burke’s, for that matter.”
“You think he learned from his wife?”
“We should find out who Becky works for. And if it turns out to be an ob-gyn, we need to find out if Renee and Ariel were patients.”
The quickest way to get that answer, Sara supposed, was to ask Becky herself. But she was clearly distraught at the moment, in no condition to be interrogated about her employment.
Sara had never really considered the coach or his wife to be anything more than acquaintances. She certainly had no idea why she and Donnie would have gone to see the Allens the night of the accident. Coach Allen had been Donnie’s friend, not hers, and she’d never gotten the feeling that the coach’s wife saw his students as anything but people who took his time and attention away from his family.
Still, the woman had just taken a sharp shock to her system, and so far, there didn’t seem to be people gathering around them to offer comfort. The news was too fresh, she supposed, and people couldn’t exactly drop everything to come be with her.
“I should go talk to Becky,” she told Cain. “I should probably go alone, though.”
He nodded, giving her elbow a light squeeze, as if he realized how much she was dreading what she was about to do. And she was dreading it. It brought back too many raw memories of waking up in this very hospital, two weeks after her accident, and learning that those disjointed, terrifying nightmares she couldn’t remember from her time in a coma were nothing compared to the truth of all she’d lost.
She walked over to the row of connected chairs where Becky and her children sat, not sure what she should say. “I’m sorry” seemed entirely inadequate. She’d never been the kind of person who could sit for hours offering sympathy and a willing ear. She was a doer. A fixer. Dealing with a problem, for her, meant seeking out concrete, physical needs and meeting them as well as she could.
“Sara.” Becky spoke before she could come up with anything to say. She reached her hand toward Sara, and Sara took it, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“How’re y’all holding up?” she asked, knowing as soon as she spoke the words that it was about as lame a question as she could have thought to ask.
“As well as we can. I just—” She looked at her two youngest children, a pained expression in her reddened eyes. Lowering her voice, she added, “I just don’t understand why this happened.”
Sara looked at Jeff, the older boy. Like his mother, he was teary-eyed and shell-shocked, but when she suggested he take the two younger children to the gift shop to look for a get-well card for their father, he took his brother and sister in hand and did as she asked.
“Thank you,” Becky said quietly. “I couldn’t really talk very freely around the babies. They’re never going to understand what their father has done. I don’t understand it myself.”
“You had no idea he was troubled enough to do something like this?”
Becky shook her head, wiping her eyes with a wadded tissue. “Not something this drastic, no.”
“But you knew he was worried about something?” Sara pressed as gently as she could.
After taking a long, deep breath, Becky met Sara’s gaze. “He was worried. And secretive. It started in earnest the night of the last Purgatory High get-together dinner. You remember it? You were there.”
“The night the
sheriff broke the news about Ariel Burke.”
She looked stricken, and Sara wondered if she knew about Ariel’s pregnancy. Did she suspect that Jim was the father of the baby?
Did she fear he’d been the person who’d killed her?
“Was she one of his students?” Sara asked carefully. At a school as small as Purgatory High, coaches often taught classes as well as coached teams. Coach Allen had taught history when Sara had been a student there.
“Not a student, no,” Becky said in a subdued voice.
“But he knew her?”
“Star of the cheerleading squad? Oh, yeah, he knew her.” The bitterness in Becky’s voice was razor sharp. She looked up suddenly, as if realizing what she’d just revealed.
Sara was torn between pushing ahead for more information and letting Becky Allen deal with her grief in private. Even though she’d frequently questioned grieving family members about homicide cases during her time as a detective in Birmingham, something about Becky’s raw pain and humiliation made Sara want to pull her punches.
She glanced toward her father and saw him still conversing with Brad Ellis. But Cain wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Turning back to Becky, she opened her mouth to excuse herself for a moment. But before she could speak, Becky caught her arm in a surprisingly tight grip and bent her head toward Sara.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said quietly, her fingers digging into Sara’s arm so hard it was beginning to be painful. “There’s something you need to know, something I should have told someone long before now. But Jim asked me not to.”
Forgetting about Becky’s painful grip, Sara leaned forward. “What is it? Is it something to do with Jim?”
“With Jim. And with you and Donnie.” Becky’s face crumpled. “Jim told me not to say anything, that getting involved would just make life harder for us, and it wasn’t like there was anything we could have told anyone that would have changed anything.”
“Is this about the night of the accident?” Sara asked. “About Donnie and me coming to visit you and Jim earlier that evening?”