by Nora Roberts
Rage trembled over his face, quaked visibly through his body. “You’ve got yourself a big, bad temper, don’t you, Bing?” Nate said softly. “The kind that’s earned you some assaults on your record, had you spending a few nights here and there behind bars. The kind that’s pushing you right now to crack my skull like an egg with that wrench. Go ahead, try it.”
Bing heaved the wrench across the room where it smashed a chip out of the cinder-block wall. He was breathing like a steam engine, and his face was red as brick.
“Fuck you. Sure I punched a few faces, cracked a few heads, but I’m no goddamn dog killer. And if you say I am, I don’t need a wrench to bust your head open.”
“I asked you what time you left the movie.”
“I went out to catch a smoke at intermission. You saw me. You started in on how we had to prep for possible flooding. I came back here. Loaded those damn sandbags.” He jerked a thumb toward the bed of his truck where at least a hundred sandbags were stacked. “Figured I’d tune up the engine while I was at it. I’ve been here ever since. Somebody went to Joe’s place and killed that dog, it wasn’t me. I liked that dog.”
Nate took out the bagged gloves. “Are these yours?”
Staring at them, Bing rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. The red was dying out of his cheek, with clammy white rising. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yeah, they’re mine, I’m not denying it. I told you somebody took ’em, took my spare gloves and my buck knife. I reported it.”
“Just this morning, too. A cynical person might wonder if you were covering yourself.”
“Why the hell would I kill a dog? Damn, stupid old dog?” Bing scrubbed at his face, then shook another cigarette out of the pack in his breast pocket. His hands shook visibly.
“You don’t have a dog, do you, Bing?”
“So that makes me a dog hater? Christ. I had a dog. He died two years ago this June. Got cancer.” Bing cleared his throat, drew hard on his cigarette. “Cancer took him.”
“Somebody kills a dog, you have to wonder if he had problems with the dog or the people who owned it.”
“I didn’t have any problem with that dog. I got no problem with Joe or Lara or that college boy of theirs. You ask them. You ask them if we had any problems. But somebody’s got problems with me, that’s for damn sure.”
“Any idea why that might be?”
He shrugged, jerkily. “Only thing I know is I didn’t kill that dog.”
“Keep available, Bing. If you plan on leaving town for any reason, I want to know about it.”
“I ain’t going to stand by while people point the finger at me.”
“Stay available,” Nate repeated, and went out the way he’d come in.
MEG NURSED A BEER and her temper as she waited. She didn’t like waiting, and Nate was going to hear about it when he got back. He’d snapped orders at her like she was some sort of half-wit, green recruit and he was the general.
She didn’t like orders, and he was going to hear about that, too.
He was going to get both ears full when he got back.
Where the hell was he?
She was worried sick about her dogs—no matter how the sensible part of her insisted they were fine, that Nate would keep his word and get them for her. She should have been allowed to get them herself instead of being under some sort of half-assed house arrest.
She didn’t want to be here, worrying, helpless, sipping beer and playing poker with Otto, Skinny Jim and The Professor to pass the time.
She was up twenty-two dollars and change, and she didn’t give a damn.
Where the hell was he?
And who the hell did he think he was, telling her what to do, threatening to lock her in jail? He’d have done it, too, she thought as she drew the eight of clubs to fill out a very pretty full house.
He hadn’t been sweet, sad-eyed Nate when he’d stood out in the rain beside that dog. Beside poor, dead Yukon. He’d been something else, someone else. Someone she imagined he’d been back in Baltimore before circumstances had cut him off at the knees. Cut him off at the heart.
She didn’t give a damn about that either. She wouldn’t give a damn.
“See your two dollars,” she said to Jim. “Raise it two.” And tossed her money into the pot.
Her mother had given Jim an hour break and was working the bar. Not that there was a lot of business, Meg thought as The Professor folded and Otto bumped her raise another two. Other than their table, there was a booth of four—Outsiders. Climbers waiting out the weather. The two old farts, Hans and Dex, had another booth, whiling away a rainy evening with beer and checkers.
And waiting, she knew, for whatever gossip might come in the door.
There’d be more in and out if the river rose. People coming in for a few minutes of dry and warm, ordering up coffee before they went out to sandbag again. When it was done, there’d be more. Piling in, wet and tired and hungry, but not ready to go home alone, not ready to break the camaraderie of bucking nature.
They’d want coffee and alcohol and whatever hot meal was put in front of them. Charlene would see they got it; she’d work until the last of them were gone. Meg had seen it before.
She tossed in two dollars to call when Jim folded.
“Two pair,” Otto announced. “Kings over fives.”
“Your kings are going to have to bow to my ladies.” She set down two queens. “Seeing as they’re cozied up with three eights.”
“Son of a bitch!” Otto watched the nice little pile of bills and coins as Meg swept them away. Then he lifted his chin, pushed back his chair as Nate stepped in from the lobby. “Chief?”
Meg jerked around. She’d sat facing the outside door, waiting to pounce the minute he opened it. Instead, she thought sourly, he’d snuck in behind her.
“Could use some coffee, Charlene.”
“It’s good and hot.” She filled a large mug. “I can fix you a meal. That’d be good and hot, too.”
“No, thanks.”
“Where are my dogs?” Meg demanded.
“In the lobby. Otto, I ran into Hopp and some others outside. Consensus is the river looks like it’s going to hold, but we’ll need to keep an eye on it. No more than a light snow coming down now. Forecasters say this system’s going to head west, so we’re probably in the clear.”
He drank down half the coffee, held the mug out to Charlene for a refill. “It’s flooded over on Lake Shore. Peter and I put hazard markers up there and across from the east edge of Rancor Woods.”
“Those two spots are a problem if too many people piss on the side of the road,” Otto told him. “The system goes west, we won’t have a problem in town.”
“We’ll keep an eye,” Nate repeated and turned toward the stairs.
“Just one damn minute. Chief.” Meg stood in the doorway, a dog on either side. “I’ve got some things to say to you.”
“I need a shower. You can say them while I’m cleaning up, or you can wait.”
Her lips peeled back into a snarl as he carried his coffee up the steps. “Wait, my ass.”
She stomped up behind him, the dogs in her wake.
“Who do you think you are?”
“I think I’m chief of police.”
“I don’t care if you’re chief of the known universe, you don’t get off snapping at me, ordering me, threatening me.”
“I did get off. But I wouldn’t have had to do any of those things if you’d just done what I told you.”
“What you told me?” She shoved into the room behind him. You don’t tell me. You’re not my boss or my father. Just because I’ve slept with you doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do.”
He yanked off his soaked jacket, then tapped the badge on his shirt. “No, but this does.” He peeled off the shirt on the way to the bathroom.
He was still someone else, she thought. The someone else who’d lived behind those sad eyes,
just waiting to muscle his way out. That someone was hard and cold. Dangerous.
She heard the shower start up. Both dogs continued to stand, their heads cocked at they looked up at her.
“Lie down,” she murmured.
She marched into the bathroom. Nate was sitting on the toilet lid, fighting off wet boots.
“You sic Otto on me like some sort of guard dog and leave me waiting damn near three hours. Three hours where I don’t know what’s going on.”
He looked at her, dead in the face, with eyes like flint. “I had work and more important things to do than keep you updated. You want the news?” He set the boots aside, rose to strip off his pants. “Turn on the radio.”
“Don’t you talk to me like I’m some sort of whiny, irritating female.”
He stepped into the shower, ripped the curtain shut after him. “Then stop acting like one.”
God, he needed the heat. Nate pressed his hands to the tile, dipped his head and let the hot water pour over him. An hour or two of it, he estimated, it might just reach his tired, frozen bones. A bottle or two of aspirin, parts of him might stop aching. Three or four days of sleep might just counteract the fatigue that trudging through icy flood water, hauling barricades, watching a grown man and woman weep over their murdered dog had drenched him with.
Part of him wanted the quiet, the quiet dark that he could sink into where none of it really mattered. And part of him was afraid he’d find his way back there, all too easily.
When he heard the curtain draw back again, he stayed as he was, arms braced, head down, eyes shut. “You don’t want to fight with me now, Meg. You’ll lose.”
“I’ll tell you something, Burke, I don’t like being shuffled off like a petty annoyance. I don’t like being ignored. Ordered around. I’m not sure I like the way you looked outside Town Hall tonight. So I couldn’t see anything I recognized on your face, in your eyes. It pisses me off. And . . .”
She slid her arms around him, pressed her naked body to his so that he jerked straight. “It stirs me up.”
“Don’t.” He clasped his hands over hers, prying hers apart before he turned to hold her at arm’s length. “Just don’t.”
Deliberately she looked down. Deliberately she smiled as she looked up again. “Seems to be a contradiction here.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, and I would, the way I’m feeling right now.”
“You don’t scare me. You got me all churned up, spoiling for a fight. All of a sudden, I’m spoiling for something else. Give me something else.” She reached up, ran her hand down his chest. “We’ll finish fighting after.”
“I’m not feeling friendly.”
“Me, either. Nate, sometimes you just need something else. Just need to go somewhere else and forget for a little while. Burn up some of the mad or the hurt or the scared. Burn me up,” she murmured. She gripped his hips now, squeezed.
She’d have been better off if he’d pushed her away. He was sure of it. But he yanked her toward him, so that warm, wet body collided with his, so he could find her mouth, ravage it.
She clamped around him, hooking her arms up his back so her fingers could dig into his shoulders. Nails biting flesh. The heat pumped out of her, and it reached his bones, seared through them, scoring away the tired and the cold line of anger.
Her hands streaked down him again, wet against wet, and her head dropped back to invite him to feast on her throat, her shoulders, anywhere he could find that soft, warm flesh.
The sound she made, the sound that simmered against his lips was one of erotic triumph.
“Here.” She slid the soap out of the slot. “Let’s clean you up. I like the feel of a man’s back under my hands. Especially when it’s all wet and slippery.”
She had a voice like a siren. He let her use it on him, use her hands on him, let her think she was guiding him. When he pushed her back to the shower wall, the sleepy look in her eyes sharpened with surprise.
When she started to smile, he crushed his mouth to hers.
She’d been right, she thought dimly. He was someone else, someone who took control, ruthlessly. Who took away choice, who could make her surrender it.
Even as his mouth took possession of hers, he twisted the soap from her hand. He ran it over her breasts, long, teasing strokes that had her nipples aching. Her breath trembled out in a sigh.
The tickle low in her belly told her she was ready. That she wanted. She needed. Rubbing her lips down the side of his neck, she murmured to him. “It’s good with you. It’s good. Be inside me now. Come inside me.”
“You’ll scream first.”
She laughed, nipped—not so gently. “No, I won’t.”
“Yes.” He hauled her arms over her head, cuffed her wrists with one hand. Pinned them there. “You will.”
He slid the soap between her legs, rubbing it, sliding it, watching her as her body shuddered to orgasm.
“Nate.”
“I warned you.”
Something like panic lit inside her, panic quickly tangled with razor-edged pleasure as his fingers dipped inside her. She twisted, looking for freedom, for more. For him. But he drove her, past the point she could hold it, past the point she thought she could bear it. Her breath sobbed out, half-mad pleas as the water poured hot over her shaking body, as the steam blurred her vision.
When it burst in her, ripping a line between sanity and madness, he muffled her scream with his mouth.
“Say my name.” He had to hear it, had to know she knew who had her. “Say my name,” he ordered as he hoisted her by the hips and buried himself inside her.
“Nate.”
“Again. Say it again.” His breath was raw in his throat. “Look at me, and say my name.”
“Nate.” She fisted a hand in his hair, dug her fingers into his shoulder. She looked at his face, looked into his eyes. And saw him, saw herself. “Nate.”
He took her, took her, took her until he was empty, until she was limp as water, her head dropped on his shoulder.
He had to brace a hand on the wet wall to catch his breath, to catch himself. He fumbled for the tap to shut off the shower.
“I need to sit down,” she managed. “I really need to sit down.”
“Hold on a minute.” Because he wasn’t sure she would, he boosted her up, half slinging her over his shoulder as he levered them out of the shower.
He grabbed a couple of towels, though he imagined with the heat they’d generated, the water would steam off them in a matter of minutes.
The dogs got to their feet when he walked into the bedroom with her. “Better tell your pals you’re okay.”
“What?”
“The dogs, Meg. Reassure your dogs before they decide I’ve knocked you unconscious.”
“Rock, Bull, relax.” She all but dripped out of his arms when he laid her on the bed. “My head’s buzzing.”
“Better try to dry off.” He dropped one of the towels on her belly. “I’ll get you a shirt or something.”
She didn’t bother to dry off, but only lay there enjoying the used, lax sensation weighting her body. “You looked tired when you came in. Tired and mean, with a thin coat of ice over it all. Same look you had outside Town Hall. I’ve seen it a couple of other times—a quick glimpse of it. Cop face.”
He said nothing, only pulled on an old pair of sweats, tossed her a flannel shirt.
“It’s one of the things that stirred me up. Weird.”
“The road’s dicey out to your place. You’re going to need to stay here.”
She waited a moment, letting her thoughts coalesce again. “You shrugged me off. Before. Before when we were outside.” She could still see Yukon, the slash in his throat, the knife buried to the hilt in his chest. “You shrugged me off, and you gave me orders, a kind of verbal strong-arming. I didn’t like it.”
Again, he said nothing, but picked up the towel to dry his hair.
“You’re not going to apologize.”
“No.”
<
br /> She sat up to draw on the borrowed shirt. “I knew that dog since he was a puppy.” Because her voice wanted to break, she pressed her lips together. Controlled it. “I had a right to be upset.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t.” He walked to the window. The snow was barely a mist now. Maybe the forecaster was right.
“And I had a right to be worried about my own dogs, Nate. A right to go see to them myself.”
“Partways there.” He stepped away from the window but left the curtains open. “Natural enough to worry, but there was nothing to worry about.”
“They weren’t hurt, but they might’ve been.”
“No. Whoever did this went for a solo dog, an old dog. Yours are young and strong and have two sets of healthy teeth. They’re practically joined at the hip.”
“I don’t see—”
“Think for two seconds instead of just reacting.” Impatience snapped in his voice as he tossed the towel aside. “Say somebody wanted to hurt them. Say somebody—even somebody they knew and let get close—tried to hurt one of them. Even managed to do it. The other’d be on him like God’s own fury and tear him to pieces. And anybody who knows them enough to get close, knows that.”
She drew her knees up to her chest, pressed her face against them and began to cry. Without looking up, she waved a hand to hold him off when she heard him move toward her.
“Don’t. Don’t. Give me a minute. I can’t get the picture out of my head. It was easier when I was mad at you or turning that mad into sex. I hated sitting there waiting, not knowing. And I was scared for you, under it. I was scared something was going to happen to you. And that pissed me off.”
She lifted her head. Through the blur of tears she could see his face, and that he’d shut down again. “I’ve got something else to say.”
“Go ahead.”
“I . . . I have to figure out how to say this so it doesn’t sound lame.” She dragged the heels of her hands up over her cheeks to dry them. “Even being mad and being scared and wanting to plant my boot up your ass for making me both, I . . . admire what you do. How you do it. Who you are when you do. I admire the strength it takes to do it.”