by Radclyffe
She’d discovered by accident when she was ten or eleven that the voices of the characters she created in her imagination drowned out the sounds of Darlene’s harsh criticism, muffled the loud curses outside her window of drunks wandering home through the trailer park in the small hours of the night, and muted the insidious none-too-subtle putdowns of the kids in school. Never had she dreamed then that her escape into those fictional worlds would someday provide her freedom from a life she abhorred.
Fifteen minutes later, clean and relatively refreshed, Jenna wrapped herself in the plush white robe offered by the hotel and sat down at the desk to answer e-mail while awaiting her late-night supper. Before she made it through her unread mail, the bell outside her suite chimed. A quick glance at the clock sent her heart racing. Too soon to be room service.
She opened the door to the length of the security chain. “Yes?”
“Ms. Hart?” a female voice inquired.
“Yes?” Jenna’s pulse kicked higher.
“I thought I should return this to you.” Her bookmark emerged through the three-inch opening, held between well-manicured, tapered fingers.
Heat flared in the pit of her stomach, and Jenna tilted her head to see out into the hall. The redhead smiled back.
“What’s your name?” Jenna asked.
“Brin MacIntyre.”
“I just ordered room service. Are you hungry?”
“Eternally.”
Laughing, Jenna closed the door, slid the security chain free, and opened it. “I thought you said you didn’t read romances?”
Again, the red-gold brow winged upward as Brin stepped inside. “I don’t follow.”
“I believe you’re quoting one of my books with that line.”
“Is it getting me anywhere?”
“Oh yes.”
Jenna slid the chain back on, wrapped her arms around Brin’s neck, and kissed her. The kiss started out languid and soft, just a slow exploration. Brin was a very good kisser. With a tug from Brin, the tie on Jenna’s robe came loose and warm hands clasped Jenna’s waist. Her breasts tightened and her nipples hardened. The arousal was automatic, pleasant, welcomed.
Leaning back from the kiss, Jenna assessed her partner. Brin’s eyes were glinting hotly, her mouth a sensuous curve. She looked as confident as her kiss suggested she was. Jenna wanted more of those hard kisses and demanding hands, just as soon as she was sure Brin agreed to her Number One Rule. She was in charge.
“I want to take you to bed,” Jenna said. “First I want that beautiful mouth of yours”—she brushed her thumb over Brin’s lower lip and moaned softly when Brin gently bit her—“on me until I come. Then I intend to make you come, more than once.”
“No complaint from me,” Brin murmured without hesitation.
“You should know, too, I’ll be leaving at five in the morning.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste any time.” Brin walked Jenna backwards to the open bed, gently eased the robe from Jenna’s shoulders, and guided her down. Holding Jenna’s gaze, Brin unbuckled her belt and pulled her shirt from her pants. She had just opened the last button, exposing small breasts beneath a pale silk bra, when the doorbell rang again.
“Damn, that’s room service,” Jenna moaned, already so wet, so ready for that first searing caress she hurt.
Brin smiled and crossed to the door. Without opening it, she said, “Leave it in the hall.”
“Very well,” a voice from outside responded.
Within seconds, Brin eased into bed, braced herself on her forearms, and settled her hips between Jenna’s thighs. The pressure against Jenna’s clitoris made her stomach tighten.
“God, you feel good,” Jenna whispered.
“I’m going to make you feel a whole lot better very, very soon.”
*
Gard Davis studied the corpse.
The elderly woman lay on her back beneath a handmade quilt in a handsomely crafted bed that Gard was willing to bet had been in this woman’s family for over a hundred years. Although her skin was tinged with the faint blue of death, she was still beautiful. Her thick white hair flowed softly around a delicately sculpted face that, despite the decades, remained poignantly elegant. Gard saw no evidence of struggle, pain, or anything amiss, but she went through the prescribed steps because the deceased, and her family, deserved her best. She felt for a pulse in the carotid and radial arteries, and found none. She placed her stethoscope on the chest and listened for breath sounds or a heartbeat, but the torso remained motionless and deeply silent. Straightening, she arranged the covers until only the woman’s face showed against the soft linen pillowslip.
“What do you think?” asked Rob Richards.
“I think Elizabeth Hardy was a very lucky woman.”
“Huh?” Rob’s broad, open face puckered with confusion as he surveyed the dead woman. He was reliable and loyal, and unfailingly literal.
“What is she, ninety-four? Ninety-five? She died in her sleep.” Gard shook her head. “She’s lived all her life on this farm. As near as I can tell, she loved it. I hope I die in my sleep in my own bed when I’m her age.”
Gard couldn’t imagine dying with the sense of peace Elizabeth Hardy seemed to have attained. She was already thirty-three and had spent most of the last decade rootless. She didn’t see happiness in her future, not after losing her family, her lover, her social status, and pretty much everything that had defined her—or what she’d thought had defined her. With an irritated shake of her head, she turned to the paperwork she needed to fill out.
“You can go ahead and get the gurney, Rob. We’ll take her over to Simpson’s funeral parlor.”
“Shouldn’t we call someone?”
“I know she doesn’t have any family around here, and I don’t want to leave the body in the house. It’s going to hit ninety tomorrow. We’ll let Mark Simpson do what needs to be done while we call the sheriff and have her track down the family, if there is any. Then I’ll call them.”
“Okay, Gard. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
“No rush,” Gard told her assistant. Elizabeth Hardy was in no hurry, and neither was she. She had farm calls to make in the morning, but one thing she had plenty of now was time.
Chapter Two
Jenna fumbled in the near dark on the bedside table for her jauntily jingling cell phone. She recognized the personalized ringtone. Alice. A garish rainbow collage, reflections from the neon signs and passing cars on the street below, shot through the open drapes and slashed across the ceiling. The first thin fingers of gold hinted at the coming dawn.
“It’s the middle of the night, Alice.” Jenna’s voice sounded scratchy and worn in the otherwise quiet room. They hadn’t slept, and her brain was hazy from the nonstop sex. When she wasn’t on the brink of orgasm, in the throes of orgasm, or breathlessly struggling to recover from an orgasm, she’d been busy repaying the favor. Brin was extraordinarily talented and Jenna did not want to be outdone. Satisfying her bedmates wasn’t so much a matter of pride as it was a matter of giving as good as she got, or better. She didn’t want to be beholden, not even in the bedroom.
“This is your wake-up call, sweet thing.”
“I’ve got fifteen more minutes.” Brin’s mouth teased between her legs and Jenna laced her fingers through the thick, damp hair at the back of Brin’s neck, tugging slightly to signal her to wait.
“I hope you got some sleep,” Alice said briskly. “The plane lands at eleven and we’ve got just enough time to collect our bags and stop at the hotel before the one p.m. Borders signing.”
“I know.” Jenna tried to shift away and Brin followed, ignoring her silent command. Brin continued with the maddening cycle of licking and sucking that had kept Jenna on the edge of coming for what felt like a century—driving her to the peak and then, just as she started to crest, easing the pressure until Jenna crashed back down again, whimpering and cursing while Brin laughed. Jenna’s thighs tightened and she started to climb faster.
“No. I’m here.” Jenna struggled to keep her voice even and calm but her toes were curling with the first whispers of release humming through her blood. So close now. So close.
“Jenna?” Alice said suspiciously. “Tell me you didn’t work all night.”
Jenna bit her lip and yanked on Brin’s hair. She didn’t care if it hurt—Brin knew she was torturing her, and she was not going to come with Alice Smith on the other end of the line. Brin finally relented and chuckled softly, her breath dancing over Jenna’s twitching clitoris. Jenna arched off the bed at the electric shock of pleasure. God she wanted to come.
Drawing in a breath, she said, “Alice Ann. Stop harassing me. I’ll see you in the lobby.” She disconnected and threw her cell phone onto the floor. “Oh my God. I was two seconds away from coming all over you with my agent listening.”
“Don’t wait any longer on my account,” Brin murmured and drew Jenna back into the warm haven of her mouth.
Jenna closed her eyes, her body on autopilot while she mentally reviewed what she needed to do before heading to the airport. She was prepared for Borders and she wasn’t reading until tonight at Wald—
“Oh!”
The sharp edge of orgasm penetrated her consciousness and pleasure swamped her synapses. The climax was raw, hard, blinding after the long delay, and she lost herself for a few seconds until she could refocus on what mattered. The galleys…she needed to proof them on the plane. She’d have just enough time.
*
At 5:15 a.m. Gard stored her emergency colic kit and med box in the back of her Ford F150, locked the cap down, and climbed behind the wheel. Bursts of pinks and purples flamed over the Green Mountains, and though she’d seen dawn break thousands of times before, she paused to watch. The pyrotechnic brilliance had eluded description by the finest poets and painters and songwriters for centuries, and as she sat absorbing the splendor, the tight place in the center of her chest eased a fraction. She knew the ache for what it was. A core of loneliness she’d learned to live with and could usually ignore. Still, simple pleasures like this helped assuage the distant pain that never left.
Frantic barking finally drew her gaze from the spectacle and across the hard-packed expanse of the paddock beside her two-story white Greek revival farmhouse to the open doors of a red wood barn three times the size of her house. Her yellow Lab raced toward the truck at breakneck speed, and she barely managed to lean across the front seat and shove the door open before the four-legged rocket propelled itself into the front seat.
“Beam,” Gard chided and reached over to close the door. “When have I ever left without you?”
Sunbeam graced her with a wide doggy smile before planting her paws on the armrest and sticking her head out the open window.
“Hold on.” Gard shifted into gear and headed down the drive to the rutted dirt road that bordered her thirty acres to Route 7, a two-lane blacktop road and the closest thing to a highway to be found in the county. Her farm backed up against the Green Mountain National Forest and her nearest neighbors were a mile away. At night she couldn’t see their lights or hear any sound other than coyotes howling, owls hooting, and the sonorous rumble of bullfrogs in the small pond out behind her house. A far cry from the never-ending bustle of Manhattan. She reached over and stroked Beam’s back. The solid, warm body under her palm and the quick splash of a wet tongue over her forearm banished the familiar melancholy.
She had been looking forward to a morning of routine calls until John McFarland had called at 4 a.m. to say one of his broodmares was colicking. She was headed there now and hoped the situation wasn’t so far advanced she’d need to operate. Anticipating an easy day, she’d told Rob to take the day off since they’d been up half the night seeing to Elizabeth Hardy. Rob’s stint in the Navy Medical Corps made him an excellent surgical assistant and she primarily used him on the afternoons when she performed surgeries in her clinic. He rarely went out on field calls with her unless she expected to need help with a seriously ill large animal. The owners usually provided ample assistance. Sometimes they wanted to provide more help than she actually needed, but she had learned very quickly upon setting up practice in the countryside that the best way to keep her clients happy was to let them give her advice on everything from the proper way to birth a calf to the appropriate treatment for founder. Once in a while they actually listened to her advice. John McFarland, fortunately, was a savvy farmer who knew when to ask for help.
Just as she was about to turn onto the long gravel drive to the farm, her cell phone rang.
“Davis,” she said.
“Gard, it’s—”
“Hi, Rina,” Gard said to the county sheriff.
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not we talk so often you know my voice.” Rina laughed.
Rina had a nice laugh, deep and mellow like aged scotch. Gard imagined Rina’s blue eyes and short wavy brown hair, her quick smile, her small tight body. Rina had been flirting in a friendly, test-the-waters kind of way for the last few months, but Gard hadn’t given her any openings to take it further. She liked Rina, and she wasn’t interested in complicating a good relationship for casual sex. Since even casual demanded more intimacy than she could do, that didn’t leave much. Which was one reason she was celibate. She didn’t want to think about the other reasons.
“Pretty early for a social call,” Gard said, chasing away the dark memories.
“Believe me, I really wish it were. You busy?”
“In the truck.”
“Damn, I forgot how early you start.” Rina’s voice dropped. “Although I rather like morning people.”
“I’m your woman, then.”
“So you keep promising.” When she next spoke, her tone was more serious. “I’ve got the information on Elizabeth Hardy’s next of kin. At least I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Hold on.” Gard kept a small clipboard with a pad of paper and an old-fashioned wooden pencil stuck to her dashboard with a suction cup for taking messages on the fly. Sliding the pencil from the clasp, she said, “Go ahead.”
“I tracked down a Frank Hardy who seems to be the grandson of Elizabeth Hardy’s cousin on her father’s side, once or twice removed. He’s dead, there’s no wife listed, but there is a daughter, Jenna. At least I think she’s his daughter. I got lost in the interdepartmental computer archives trying to track birth records and can’t verify that until the records room at the courthouse in Harrisburg opens at eight and I can talk to an actual person. Looks like they lived somewhere out near Lancaster, PA. You want her number or do you want to wait?”
Gard thought about it. Based on her comparison of Elizabeth Hardy’s body temperature to the ambient temperature inside the old farmhouse, which was a good ten degrees cooler than outside, she had deduced that the elderly woman had died approximately twenty-four hours before. She did not like to delay informing the next of kin for a protracted period of time. Somehow leaving the dead in limbo, unmourned, bothered her.
“Give it to me. I’ll call after I finish at McFarland’s. I’ll contact you after I talk to her and let you know if she’s the right person.”
Rina rattled off a number and Gard scratched it down.
“Will there be an autopsy?” Rina asked.
“Not unless the family insists. I didn’t find anything suspicious about her death.”
“Okay then. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll call the courthouse and keep chasing the records.”
“Thanks.” Gard clipped the pen back on the dash. “Sorry to drag you out of bed so early for this.”
“You can make it up to me with breakfast,” Rina said.
Gard hesitated. Nothing wrong with having breakfast with a woman she considered a friend and colleague. Rina was smart enough not to read more into it. “After I get things settled at McFarland’s, I’ll make that call to Jenna—what’s her last name?”
After a few seconds of silence, Ri
na said, “Looks to be Hardy. Either she’s not married or she kept her own name. Must run in the family. Elizabeth Hardy was married about fifty years ago but resumed her maiden name when her husband died.”
“After I talk to her, I’ll call you and we’ll see where things stand with breakfast. I’m already behind and I haven’t started yet.”
“Fair enough. But I expect a rain check at the very least.”
“You’ve got it, and thanks again.”
“No problem,” Rina said. “I appreciate you doing the hard work.”
“Comes with the fancy title. Talk to you later.” Gard could have passed off notification of next of kin to the sheriff, but she was the county corner and she would do what needed to be done.
*
Jenna stepped out of the elevator into the hotel lobby at exactly the appointed time of 5:30 a.m. and winced when a din of voices hammered at the headache bequeathed by her night without sleep. A bellman in a brass-buttoned navy jacket emerged from the jostling group of men in business suits congregated in front of the reception counter and hurried toward her.
“May I get your luggage, ma’am?” he asked.
“Thank you.” She gratefully relinquished her bags, scanned the crowd, and spied Alice at the registration desk, undoubtedly taking care of their bill. In her blood-red fitted jacket, tailored skirt, and heels, Alice stood out from the men in regulation blue and gray like an exotic bird among pigeons. Even after ten years of friendship, she still got a jolt of pleasure when she saw her. Alice was beautiful—beautiful and indispensible.
Even though she was still annoyed by Alice’s ill-timed phone call, she had to admit she was lucky to have someone who took care of all the details. Hell, Alice not only managed her career, she managed her life. All Jenna needed to do was concentrate on her writing and the personal appearances Alice scheduled. The only area where Alice didn’t take care of her needs was in the bedroom. Had things been just a little different, she might have done that as well.