She really did enjoy that.
“A rock. Her robe.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t think much of it, but the chief says she’s not the forgetful type. I mean, with her amnesia and all…”
Ellison reached out and touched his hand. “Everybody is different, love. You know that.”
He nodded, averting his eyes. He did know that. He’d come to accept—and even forgive—his father to some extent. It had been years since he’d thought about the old man with any kind of bitterness. But … sighing, he pushed those thoughts out of his head. He had other things in mind tonight that were much better than the past anyway.
“So…” He drew the word out, keeping his tone casual. “What do you think? Is she…” He hesitated, because this was dodgy ground.
“Damn it, Beau.” She slammed her glass of wine down, rising from the couch to pace. “I don’t know why you keep doing this. Patient confidentiality is patient confidentiality.”
She swung back around to face him, her full lips compressed, color riding high on her cheekbones. She folded her arms under her breasts and he had to remind himself not to stare.
If he got distracted, she’d get distracted and then she’d get pissed and accuse him of using sex to distract her.
The bottom line, though … with Ellison, she could get sidetracked with anything as simple as a lotion commercial—the kind where it showed a woman slicking up her legs with lotion before she went out for a night on the town with her man. He both loved and hated how easily she embraced her sexuality. Loved it, because he benefited from it. Hated it, because once upon a time, other men had, too.
Clearing his throat, he eased himself to the edge of the couch and braced his elbows on his knees, staring at the aquarium that graced the far side of the wall. It took up almost a quarter of it, built into the wall and catching the light of the sun as it came through the windows in the morning. He found it soothing. Ellison found it sexy. Go figure.
“Ellie … it’s not so much me wanting to invade privacy,” he said diplomatically. “You have to look at this from my point of a view.”
“My point of view is a doctor’s,” she snapped.
He surged upright, his temper snapping. He got damn tired of keeping the peace when she jumped boots first down his throat over the smallest damn thing. “And mine’s a cop’s, Ellie!”
Her eyes widened at the bite in his voice. Something sparked in her eyes and she licked her lips.
He held up a hand. “Don’t,” he said quietly.
Her lids drooped.
He wanted to swear. Then he did. “Son of a bitch. Would you listen to me? Ellie, if she’s stable and her head isn’t … if she’s not like my dad, then maybe she didn’t put that damn robe in her closet and that rock in the pocket.”
“It’s just a robe,” Ellison said softly.
“But that don’t matter.” He moved toward her and caught her hand.
She squeezed back and he knew the storm was over, but he still needed her to understand. Tugging her with him, they moved down the hall. The master bedroom had a big, elaborate bathroom, but he’d decided when they moved in that he’d just leave that bathroom to Ellison. Every damn thing in there had a place.
They stopped in the doorway and he flicked on the light.
After seven years of living here, he did know that certain things belonged in certain places. Ellison even had a list for when a replacement had to come in for their cleaning lady. There were two robes, one for spring and summer, one for fall and winter. The robes were washed, like clockwork, on Saturday mornings and then went back into place on the hook beside the shower. Two towels were precisely folded on the heated rod next to the robe, while another was on the rod inside the shower.
“If we came home from work, the two of us together at the same time one day … for once…” He caught sight of her rolling her eyes and he grinned at her. “Humor me, okay? Say it was Tuesday and you knew you’d left everything in its place and the cleaning lady hadn’t been in … now.”
He stepped around her and took the robe, carried it out of the bedroom and laid it on the bed, arms open wide, as though a person had gone to lay down in it and simply … faded away while the robe remained. “Say we came in and found the robe like that. Would you be spooked?”
Ellison swallowed, staring at the robe. Then she lifted her eyes and stared at Beau. “Yeah.” She nodded.
“So that’s my thing. I don’t know Hannah.”
“I do,” she whispered. “Not as well as some, but … yeah.”
She licked her lips and nodded again, slower, more thoughtful. “She’s a paramedic, baby. She’s a paramedic and she wouldn’t have gotten the go-ahead to come back to work if the state of Mississippi thought she wasn’t mentally sound.”
Beau went back to staring at the robe. Passing his hand over his neatly trimmed beard, he heaved out a hard sigh. “So the chief has a reason to be concerned. But why would somebody break into her apartment—and how could somebody break into her apartment so easily—just to rearrange some of her clothes?”
There was only one reason, though.
Somebody had wanted to scare her.
* * *
I’ve loved you since high school …
Hannah brooded over the decaffeinated sweet tea she’d been given along with her dinner.
She’d drunk half of the tea and had pushed her food around enough so that it looked like she’d eaten more than four bites.
She kept remembering bits and pieces of a dream and she kept thinking about a river rock, shoved into the pocket of her robe.
She hadn’t been back inside her apartment all day but she’d have to soon.
It was almost dusk and she was so tired, she was dragging.
Yeah, she’d gotten up at two o’clock, but she didn’t care. Night shifts had never been her favorite and between that and the pregnancy, her mental clock was so off-kilter, it was pathetic.
“Hey.”
She glanced up at the familiar voice and smiled at Neve. Nodding to the wide, mostly vacant booth, she said, “Please. Join me. Save me from myself.”
“But you look like you’re having so much fun…” Neve teased as she dropped into the booth. It was a big U, and she scooted around so that she and Hannah were side by side.
A big green utility-styled bag hung from her side and Neve slid the strap from her shoulder, letting it fall to the seat. She wore it with a silk shirt, a pair of slouchy, loose khakis, and sandals that looked like they cost the sun. Only on Neve could such a mix of styles look so coolly, casually perfect.
Dangles of gold and gems fell from Neve’s earlobes, catching in the dim light as she brought her hands up and folded them on the table in front of her.
“So.” Neve said the simple word with an air of finality.
“So.” Hannah echoed, drawing it out into a question.
Neve canted her chin up and arched a brow. “Seems like my bad luck fell into your lap.”
Hannah snorted. “Nah. I didn’t have some nutbag come into my kitchen and try to drag me back to Scotland.”
The skin around Neve’s eyes tightened.
“Ah, hell.” Hannah blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“Why? It’s nothing but the truth.” Neve leaned an elbow on the table, shifting her body to face Hannah. “You got a different, special flavor of nutbag … into rocks and robes. Now that is fancy crazy, Hannah.”
Hannah couldn’t suppress a shiver.
Neve’s eyes softened. “Are you okay?”
“It was just a rock. He moved my robe. Why be so freaked out?” she murmured.
“Because you don’t know who he is?” Neve offered helpfully. “Because there’s no idea how he got inside your place? Because he came into your place while you were sleeping?”
“Yeah.” Hannah reached up and worried the neckline of her shirt, staring off into the distance, but seeing nothing.
“I don’t…” She started to say, only to real
ize she didn’t know what she’d planned to say from the get-go. She passed a shaking hand through her hair and then lowered it, staring at the faint tremor of her fingers. “Sitting here is making me nuts. I need to get out of here for a while.”
“But—”
Hannah shook her head. She pulled out the money she’d readied for the bill and dropped it on the table.
She hurried out the door, leaving Neve behind her.
Ian joined her a moment later.
“Brannon’s going to kill us,” she said quietly.
“We only promised we’d keep an eye on her while she was here, love,” Ian said, a grim look in his dark eyes. He skimmed a hand down her back, staring through the window at the bent head of Hannah Parker as she crossed the street. “We can’t exactly wrap her up and put her in a box, now can we?”
“Brannon would prefer it.”
“Well.” Ian seemed to ponder the idea before he met her eyes. “There was a time when I might have preferred it for you. But ya would have thrashed me, wouldn’t you?”
* * *
Hannah climbed into her car and drove.
She had no destination and nothing in mind, other than the plain and simple fact that she had to move.
Had to get out and had to breathe.
She felt like a million people were staring at her.
She felt like a million people wanted to ask her questions.
Questions … she had a million of them herself and she was almost certain there were answers locked up inside her head, but they were going to stay there, obscured behind a fog so thick, nothing could penetrate it.
You were down at the river, Hannah. Do you remember?
She thought about what Gideon had told her months ago.
Rubbing her belly with one hand, she pulled to a stop at the four-way at the edge of town. She had three choices. She could turn left and make a slow, meandering circle that would take her back through town. She could go straight and eventually find her way to the highway and that would put her on the interstate. Maybe she could just disappear for a few days. Not too many. Her savings would only last so long and she might be able to beg a few days of personal time, but eventually, she’d have to come back.
Or she could turn right.
That would lead her to the river.
To her houseboat.
To the running paths.
Do you have any idea what you were doing down there, Hannah? Have you ever seen Shayla Hardee there?
You saw something.
You called 9-1-1. Think, Hannah. Think. You need to remember.
Her head pounded hard, so hard, she felt herself getting nauseated.
But she turned right.
* * *
“She left?” Brannon pinched the bridge of his nose as he listened to Neve’s apologetic voice, coming soft over the phone line. His instinct was to snarl—that was almost the norm for him lately. He bit it back. “Neve, stop. It’s not … look, it’s not like you could sit on her, right?”
Neve’s laugh was weak. “Well, I could have tried. She would have shrugged me off like I was nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Both of them were close to equal in height but while Neve might have fit the image that society had in mind for their idea of beautiful—slim and lithe—Hannah looked more like a starlet from the golden age of Hollywood, a delightful powerhouse of curves. And he knew for a fact just how much strength those curves hid. Yeah, she could have picked up his baby sister and probably carried her across a football field if she had to.
“Any idea where she went?” he asked, gesturing to Marc to shut it down for the night. “She head home?”
His gut wrenched at the idea of her being in her apartment alone. He’d told her to hang out and wait for him at the pub. He’d been planning on asking her to … well, not move in with him, but maybe … well. Stay with him. For a while.
And now she was out there without him. While some freaky fuck broke into her house and shoved rocks into her clothes. What the hell was that?
“She took her car. I don’t know where she was going, but I saw her pulling out from behind her apartment.”
Brannon’s gut wrenched.
* * *
Leaning against the stoplight, he watched as Hannah Parker drove out of town. He considered where she might go, then he considered whether he should follow.
He still had no idea if she remembered anything.
She’d spent most of the day sitting around the pub or wandering the sidewalk back and forth in front of the building where she lived, her expression tight and drawn, eyes dark.
He’d passed her by once, said hello, and she’d barely glanced at him.
Nobody was saying much of anything, so if she’d done any talking, there wasn’t any news to be had. Plenty of people had heard that she’d had some excitement at her place, but very few were talking in detail. It was all speculation. As a matter of fact, speculation was about all anybody had about Hannah. She rarely spoke of anything concrete.
Abruptly, he made up his mind and pulled his keys from his pocket.
He had an idea where she might be going.
As he moved at a quick clip to his car, he pulled out his phone to see if he’d heard back from the delightful doctor. Her husband had been in Hannah’s apartment today, but the phone calls had gone unanswered and he imagined she either wasn’t on call or she was deliberately ignoring him. She was on rotation with several other OBs in the area, so she did get her share of evenings away from the hospital, and the beautiful bitch did enjoy teasing him.
He’d once taunted her back by stretching himself out and wrapping a hand around his cock, stroking himself and capturing an image of it. Careful to make sure anything that could identify himself was cropped out, he’d sent her the picture, along with the words, I was thinking of you.
She had him listed simply as F in her contacts.
When he’d asked her about that, she’d giggled and gone down on him, wrapping her lips around his cock and sucking until he thought she might suck him dry. Fuck … as in my fuck, as in fuck me, as in please fuck me now … fuck, lover.
He asked her how she kept all her fucks straight and she’d beamed at him. You’re my only fuck, darling. There is a cock, there is a dick, there is one pussy … but you’re my only fuck.
And what do you call your cop?
Her eyes had gone dim.
He’d never asked her about her cop again.
He decided he pitied her. Love, as he’d always believed, made a fool out of anybody.
It had certainly made a fool of Dr. Ellison Shaw.
He’d worry about Ellison later, though. Right now, he needed to focus on Hannah and see if his hunch played out.
* * *
A year ago, if somebody had asked him how well he knew Hannah Parker, Brannon would have scowled and said, “I don’t.”
But he would have been lying and now, he knew it.
He knew a dozen things about her—no.
More.
He knew that she loved soft, almost spring-like colors and he knew she also loved battered jeans and motorcycle books and black t-shirts. She had a leather jacket she wore in the fall and he’d actually bought himself a motorcycle without realizing that the reason was because of some subconscious fantasy to feel her tucked up against his back as they tore up and down the roads that twined through southern Mississippi.
He knew that she hated beer but loved cider and he knew that she’d drink almost any kind of cocktail that tasted sweet, but she could also throw back bourbon. She hated vodka and she loved tequila.
She loved to read, but you couldn’t catch her with a western.
She loved TV, but if you tried to talk to her about reality TV, she’d laugh in your face.
She loved children and she hated bigots.
More than once, he’d seen her get in the face of any man who was giving his girlfriend a hard time and more than once, he or Ian had thought they’d have to in
tervene … only to see Hannah set the son of a bitch on his ass.
Gideon had once commented that at some point, he expected he’d have to arrest her, but the whole damn town would pitch in for her bail.
He knew that every Sunday she visited her mother’s grave.
He knew that at least two weekends a month, she went down to the houseboat. He knew that because he’d find himself looking for her car as he sped past the dock as he drove into town and more than once, he’d find himself letting up on the gas so he’d have a chance to maybe see her up on the deck, or maybe even jogging along the path before she disappeared into the woods.
That path connected the docks to the town, a good five mile stretch. It was that path where Hannah had been running when she came across Shayla’s murdered body.
Did he know her?
Yeah.
He knew her.
He knew her better than he knew just about anybody and looking back, he realized he was the biggest idiot in town. Half the town had probably seen the truth long before he had.
But that was fine.
Brannon could live with being an idiot.
As long as he had her.
He slowed as he drew near to the turnoff for the dock where several people kept their houseboats, Hannah included.
His headlights fell across the bumpers of two cars. One was Hannah’s. He hit his turn signal and pulled into the parking lot just as another car drove past him. Absently, he glanced over and saw the long, sleek lines, his brain mentally cataloging the car, then filing it away.
He had other things on his mind.
He had Hannah on his mind.
In his head.
In his heart.
Down in his gut and in his soul where he didn’t think he’d ever be free of her.
* * *
Bent over the table, Neve focused on the genealogy records she’d printed out from Ancestry.com. She wasn’t being very green and she felt kind of guilty about it—but hey, it was all recycled paper, so that was good, right?
But she thought better when everything was printed out.
“What’s all this?”
Ian sat down next to her and she looked up at him with a smile. The smile turned greedy when she saw the pints he put down in front of them.
The Trouble with Temptation Page 23