Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  When he yanked down her pants, she squeezed him through the fabric of his trousers. His hips responded eagerly even as he struggled to get her naked. Once she became determined enough to start unzipping his slacks, Jack took over. Boots first, socks, then pants. No, don’t toss them. Have to keep my wallet. He pulled out the two packets and had no idea what became of his wallet after that. Getting the condom on while he kissed her was a challenge. Then he explored her slick flesh with his fingers, said, “I need you,” and parted her thighs.

  “Yes. Please. Please, please,” she chanted as he found her entrance and forged his way inside, going deep.

  For one moment, suspended above her, he drank in the sight of her gorgeous face, lips parted, dazed green-gold eyes focused on his. And then he pulled back, drove deep again, and kept doing it as she pushed to meet every thrust, kept saying his name, wrapped one leg over his hip while the other foot stayed planted on the bed to give her leverage. It was madness, it was pleasure, it was frighteningly new. When her convulsions started and she made a sound he’d never forget, Jack let himself go.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Gabby felt drunk, but in a good way. It was like becoming weightless at the same time as she reveled in his weight on her. When he stirred, her arms tightened. She didn’t want to let him go.

  “I’m crushing you,” he mumbled.

  “Uh-uh.”

  Of course, superior muscle mass meant he had his way. She grumbled after he rolled off until he rearranged her to sprawl half-atop him. With her head on that wide, powerful shoulder, she could study the curly hair on his chest, brown to match the hair on his head. She turned her head enough to kiss his taut, salty skin before settling down dreamily. Either she was hearing her own heartbeat, or that was his. Or maybe they’d synced to beat in time. Could that happen?

  She drifted, her entire body tingling. Her toes kept curling. Why had she bothered resisting Jack? But she knew the answer, she’d already told him. They hadn’t known each other much more than a week. Physical risks didn’t scare her as much as emotional ones. She’d lost too many people in her life already and had shaped her decisions to avoid any more losses on that scale.

  Right now, she felt too good to stiffen even as darkness began to tinge her thoughts.

  He lifted his head from the pillow, distracting her, and gave her the single, sexiest smile she’d ever seen. “Your hair.”

  “What?”

  The hand that had been stroking her back lifted her braid. The next thing she knew, he’d peeled off the elastic and was concentrating on freeing her hair from the tight confinement. Once the annoyingly thick black mass fell loose over her back and face and shoulders, he told her how beautiful it was as he ran his fingers through the waves left from the braid. The intense concentration and happiness on his face made her glow inside.

  But amazing as she felt physically, awareness of her internal bruises awakened. Had she really remembered everything for all these years?

  Yes and no, she decided. More memories had been waiting for her to call them up than she’d guessed, but her recent nightmares and coming home to Leclaire, even seeing the house, had stirred the bits and pieces she’d been missing. On a guilty pang, she wondered if she’d been able to tell this much to detectives at the time, would they have been able to find her mother’s murderer?

  She’d been too young to think like that. It had been days before she’d managed more than a few hysterical words. She’d curled her body as tight as she could make it most of the time, usually in bed under her covers just as she had beneath those sheets. He can’t see me. He can’t. She’d secretly started sucking her thumb at night, when no one would see her. Her father had had to haul her out for meals and when he couldn’t stand knowing that’s all she was doing.

  The police... She couldn’t remember their exact questions, but a few stuck out. The detectives had jumped around, as if they were trying to trick her into answering instead of patiently coaxing a child’s narrative. They’d scared her, all three of those men. They weren’t dressed like the other people at the police station, but she could see their badges and guns and hear their impatience.

  Truthfully, Gabby didn’t remember what she had told them. Obviously, that the killer had worn what looked like a blue uniform when he walked out, or else Jack’s father wouldn’t have been a suspect. Otherwise, she suspected she’d been huddling inside herself even when she was in a conference room or sitting on a chair in the hotel room being interviewed.

  Why hadn’t she told anyone the killer had been puffy and white when he appeared? Was she afraid it sounded too silly to say, “He was the marshmallow man”?

  Her happy glow diminished further when she thought about Jack’s relentless string of questions. Was he blond? Did he have a beard? Blurry? Baseball cap? And the hardness in his voice when he said, If you know that, you must have seen his face.

  He’s a cop, she reminded herself. Jumping in to question a witness must be second nature to him. Which meant she had been a witness in his mind until they finished and he regained awareness of her as a woman. He was a far more skilled interviewer than the ones who’d terrified her as a child, able to soften his tone and encourage her when that was what she needed, ask that sharp question when he sensed the answer was surfacing in her head.

  And he hadn’t backed off when she became distressed.

  If you know that, you must have seen his face.

  Something he’d said had jarred her at the time. Gabby fought to separate it from all the rest. It didn’t help that she was still reveling in cuddling with him, bare skin to bare skin, or relishing the sensations as his hands continued to wander from one sensitive spot to another. She could easily become aroused again if she weren’t also bugged by what had come before.

  Then it slipped into place. She’d been near frantic when she said, What if I told the police that I saw him look right at me? If I did—

  And he said, You didn’t.

  How did he know she hadn’t? Did he know more than usual about the investigation just because it had involved his father? Or had he gone digging when he first joined the police force, or more recently when the odd things started happening after she arrived in Leclaire? If so, why hadn’t he told her? Wouldn’t it have made sense for him to say, “I went looking for some background, and here are some things I learned”?

  Yes.

  Earlier, there’d been another thing. She’d explained about the marshmallow man, and Jack had said, So that’s why—, then broken off.

  He claimed he was thinking that’s why she hadn’t seen the killer’s face, but he already knew she had seen the man when he wasn’t wearing what she now guessed was a Tyvek suit.

  So what had he meant?

  * * *

  JACK WAS REELING from a combination of the best sex of his life and Gabby’s extraordinarily detailed testimony about her mother’s murder. If the then-detectives hadn’t been such fools, they might have gotten somewhere. He’d known some of the answers were in her head, but he was still stunned at how she’d woven the child’s view with details her nightmares had helped her unlock. No, she hadn’t identified the killer, but he had a feeling there was more yet lurking in her head. Even if she couldn’t describe the man’s face, she’d seen it. If she met up with him now, would her subconscious know him?

  And that hat. He bet her adult self was already thinking, Hmm. A four-year-old wouldn’t know what kind of hat he wore, but I do.

  Jack hoped like hell that would happen, because he had a bad feeling about the hat, the navy blue uniform, the shiny black shoes that weren’t typical dress shoes. Say they were more substantial, had a thicker sole that allowed for action.

  He’d worn a uniform like that for seven years before he’d been promoted. There were plenty of workers in other professions that used protective suits, but they’d be readily available to a law enforcement officer. />
  “You...seem really invested in finding out what I remembered,” she said suddenly.

  Oh, hell. He turned his head on the pillow, but couldn’t see her face well enough to read it.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said after a minute.

  “Are you?”

  He jackknifed to a sitting position, which sent her tumbling off him and scrambling to sit up herself. Worse yet, she clutched the sheet and bedspread to cover herself. “What does that mean? You don’t think I give a damn if a cold-blooded killer runs you down on an icy street or murders you in your hotel room?”

  She laid a hand on his arm and squeezed. “That’s not true. I know you do. You wouldn’t be in law enforcement if you didn’t care. That...has to be a big part of your personality.”

  “You’re saying I don’t care about you personally.”

  This, when he’d realized just tonight what had been happening to him since he’d gotten to know her. His priorities had done more than shift. They’d tumbled on end.

  His father didn’t need him to be able to proclaim to the world, See? You were wrong to suspect him for a second! Even if Colleen Ortiz’s murder had impacted his parents’ relationship, they’d both moved on. He alone had stayed fixated on a single goal: arresting her killer. He still wanted to accomplish that, but only for Gabby. To give her answers, to free her from her fears, to stop a murderous bastard from killing her.

  What he cared most about now was Gabby.

  “I’ve gotten a funny feeling about you a few times.” She sounded unnervingly thoughtful, but he heard the underlying distress, too.

  He could keep lying to her. Tell her he’d gone digging in the files because of what had been happening to her and at the house. She’d believe him. But what if they had a chance at a future together? What if she ever found out the truth?

  And could he go on with this kind of lie between them?

  No. He’d known all along that he couldn’t, that it would come to this. What he had to do was make her understand that she’d been an abstraction before he met her, but that everything had changed since.

  Jack let out a long breath. “I’ve told you my father was a suspect.”

  Wary eyes watched him.

  “What I didn’t say is that a lot of people kept suspecting he really had killed your mother. The police couldn’t prove he’d done it...but he was the only suspect they’d come up with. If there’s smoke, there has to be fire, right?”

  Gabby still didn’t say anything.

  “Things changed then between my parents. I still don’t know if Mom believed for a minute that Dad would do something like that, or if she was embarrassed because she knew what other people were thinking, or—”

  Wandering from the point.

  “I grew up thinking my family would have stayed together if the cops had arrested the killer, that I wouldn’t have lost my mother and sister, that Dad wouldn’t have finally had to move away, too. I became a cop so I could arrest that monster.”

  “That’s why you stayed in Leclaire,” she said slowly. “Why you became a detective.”

  “Yeah. The job...suits me,” he admitted. “It’s not like I’ve been hunting your mother’s killer night and day since I joined the force.”

  Even more slowly, she said, “Just since I came back to town.”

  True confessions. Damn. He wished he’d gotten dressed before they started this. What would she think if he reached for his pants?

  “When I made detective,” he said, “I read about your mom’s murder, what I could without having to get permission. The only solid tie I had to those days was Ric, but we’d mostly gone our own ways. I wanted to keep in touch, so I changed health clubs so I’d run into him now and again.”

  “He doesn’t know that, I assume.”

  “No.”

  Jack had the unnerving feeling she was watching him the way she might a student taking a test whom she suspected of cheating.

  “He told you about my visit.”

  “He did. We’d...talked about you now and again.” He moved his shoulders uncomfortably. “Because we had a history. He...kept me up to date.”

  “That’s why you came to dinner that first evening. Ric and I had already quarreled and you didn’t want me to get away.”

  “It was more complicated than that.”

  She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Sure it was. That’s why you asked me out the next evening, and every time since then. If I hadn’t asked you to make love to me—no, to have sex with me—we wouldn’t be in this bed right now, would we? I suppose you have enough sense of honor to think it was wrong to go quite this far to wring an interview out of me.” Her voice could have etched glass.

  “You have to know I was attracted to you from the beginning.” He sounded as desperate as he felt. “I knew I had to tell you the truth before I made love to you or talked about where we can take this relationship. Yes, I wanted your trust, but I’d never have—”

  “And yet you did.” The pain in her eyes ripped him open. “I suppose I should give you some credit. Your goal was estimable. But you could have done this entirely differently. The irony is that I hoped to recover my memories when I came home. Once I worked through my instinctive panic, I’d have been glad to talk to you. Instead, you’ve left me feeling dirty and ashamed that I was too stupid to realize how obvious you were. Of course I’m the most beautiful woman ever, and you can’t stay away.” Her laugh was razor sharp. “Congratulations. You’re good at your job. I have nothing more to contribute, so I’m asking you to go now.”

  “Gabby, damn it, listen to me! I shouldn’t have let it get this far, but the way I feel about you is tangled up with my...quest.” There was that damn word again. “Ric kept saying you refused to even talk about it, and I told myself you needed your mother’s murder to be solved, too, that it had to have haunted you—”

  She shook her head hard. Once. “Get out. I’ll call the front desk if you don’t leave right now.”

  “I know this is too soon, but I’ve been falling in love with you.”

  This laugh was worse. He didn’t know why he wasn’t bleeding. Jack managed to say, “I’m sorry.”

  In shock, he located his clothes and wallet. He got dressed, shoved his feet in his boots and looked around for his coat. At last he turned to face her and had the horrifying realization that she was holding herself together the same way she probably had as a child.

  And he’d done this to her.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said hoarsely.

  “I won’t answer. I never want to see you again.”

  This was worse than he’d expected, yet he couldn’t blame her. After a moment, Jack nodded and left.

  * * *

  GABBY DIDN’T CRY. This felt too huge, too devastating. She’d have to tell Ric, but not tonight.

  Tonight... Oh, God, she didn’t know how she could bear all of this slamming her at the same time. The spray of blood, the ruin of her mother’s face, the certainty that he had turned his head and looked right at her. Discovering how much she did remember caused guilt that she’d never told, that as an adult she’d been so determined to block it all to save herself from crippling memories.

  And now Jack. It had happened ridiculously fast, but she’d been drawn to him at first sight, and liked all the complexities of his personality that she’d since discovered. Jack had slipped through her defenses, letting her see the boy he’d been, shattered by his parents’ inexplicable divorce. He’d talked about his relationship with his father. Even about his job, the satisfactions, the frustrations, the need to learn to harden himself, in a sense, from the never-ending tragedy.

  And he’d been lying to her—no, not just to her, to her and Ric—about why he wanted to spend time with them. He’d been deftly working her to the point where she’d spill all. She was furious, thinking o
f the several times he’d apologized for upsetting her with a question, or when he seemed angry at Ric for being so clueless about how seeing the weirdly unchanged house would affect her.

  All a pretense, or at least, all carefully planned. She hated knowing how credulous she’d been, turning to him, trusting him, even going so far as having the passing thought that she might explore the job market around Spokane.

  A raw sound escaped her as she remembered seeing Jack and Ric walking toward her that first night, at the Italian restaurant. Jack locking on to her like a heat-seeking missile, never looking away, traversing the crowded room with confident strides.

  Oh, by the way, he was a cop. He’d seemed almost abashed when telling her he thought his choice of career had been influenced by her mother’s murder. In retrospect, that was funny.

  Well, yeah, he was a detective working major crimes—read murder—and he had a way of directing conversation back to the subject of Mom’s murder even when she wanted to shy away.

  He hadn’t even been subtle, she thought now, feeling like a fool.

  She’d had boyfriends, even a few semiserious relationships when she was in her early twenties and still pretending to be normal, but none had left her as devastated as she was now. She was tempted to grab her laptop and book a flight out of here tomorrow morning, but knew she had to talk to Ric first. Maybe get together with him again, let him drive her to the airport for a last hug.

  It suddenly occurred to her that the day after tomorrow was Thanksgiving. She and Ric hadn’t even talked about celebrating together, probably because the only place they could have cooked was his kitchen.

  Or Jack’s.

  I’ve been falling in love with you.

  Too bad that was as believable as just about everything else Jack had said to her.

  * * *

  THIS WAS REALLY bad timing to be summoned to Sergeant Rutkowski’s office and find the police chief there, too.

  Keeping his expression neutral with an effort, Jack said, “Sergeant. Chief. Can I do something for you?”