That was all it took. He groaned as he exploded with one last thrust, the aftershocks rippling through his belly and his legs until he was shaking.
With one unsteady step backward, they were on the bed, sweaty and panting, and he grabbed at the blankets when the reality of the chilly air hit him.
Lanie snuggled against him, a warm, comfortable weight. As his head fell back on the pillow, she whispered, “I don’t know about you, but I think I definitely deserve an A for that,” and as he drifted into a boneless, sated doze, he realized he was laughing.
Eight
“So he doesn’t work?” Lanie whispered. “I mean, didn’t?”
Will grunted and pulled her closer, still drowsy, but Lanie edged away, propping herself up on her elbows to look down at him. She couldn’t see much—it had been too cold to sleep for long, at least under one blanket, and when she woke up shivering she’d lit one of the candles and shaken Will until he climbed under the covers, sheets, comforter, extra blanket, and all. The gentle, flickering light cast eerie shadows across his face, and she’d lain beside him, thinking, until the question she’d just asked—and several others—had occurred to her.
“Will, wake up.” She nudged him again. “What was your father doing here, and for so long?”
He opened one eye and frowned. “I don’t know. That’s what’s weird. He doesn’t have family here anymore. I mean, except for me.”
“Exactly.” She tapped his chest with one finger. It was so beautifully firm. Chiseled, in fact. Construction was clearly a good way to keep in shape. She dragged herself back to the conversation and added, “But he didn’t call you, right? Didn’t leave any messages on your machine while you were away?”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “No. That’s why I was so shocked when I saw him. Aside from the fact that it was his dead body, not him. What are you getting at?”
She sighed and sat up, wrapping herself in the extra blanket. “I’m not sure. But it just seems odd to me that he would come all the way up here from where, North Carolina? Then not even give you a call, and then wind up dead.”
“Well, when you put it that way, yeah.” One of his hands snaked under the blanket to fasten on her calf, his thumb tracing lazy circles on the skin. “I stopped caring what was going on in his head a long time ago, mostly because what was usually up there was the easiest way to score groceries and rent money from a new girlfriend, or mooch off me and my mom. The truth is, I don’t know what he was doing up here, but I can practically guarantee it was something slimy.”
“Hmmm.” She nodded, but she was still thinking, trying hard to ignore the sensation of his fingers on her skin, climbing higher now, venturing into the ticklish spot behind her knee. The whole thing was too coincidental. They were missing some connection, and she was never going to figure it out if Will kept distracting her. Like that. Oh, God, and like that ...
And with a phone ringing?
“What is that?” Will said, sitting up and squinting into the darkness beyond the circle of candlelight. “It’s not the room phone.”
“It sounds like a cell,” Lanie said, twisting to move her ear closer to the headboard. “It’s down there somewhere.”
“Let me see.”
She moved to the foot of the mattress, swathed in the blanket, while he dug between the headboard and the mattress. The phone was still ringing, but the voice mail service was bound to pick up soon.
“An old”—he made a face—“Oreo.” Tossing the stale cookie to the floor, he dug deeper, cursing when the shrill electronic ring stopped. “A lighter. What did you say about Clarice cleaning in here? And, too late, the phone.”
He held it up, a slim silver flip phone.
“Oh, it’s so pretty. I wanted one like that,” Lanie said, taking it from him to scroll through the call log. They’d never be able to figure out the voice mail password. “Where’s the two-five-two area code?”
“Two-five-two?” Suddenly, he sounded very serious, and not at all happy.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because that’s a North Carolina number.”
She glanced up to find his eyes wide and dark. “You think it’s your father’s phone?”
“He stayed in this room last. And it’s obviously still charged, so it was left here recently. And someone—someone who doesn’t know he’s dead—is calling him.”
“Oh, God.” There wasn’t much to mourn about the man himself, according to Will, but for a moment she pictured some unknowing girlfriend, wondering when her man was coming home, and she felt a momentary stab of pity.
“Let me see if there are any local numbers in there.” Will took the phone back and scrolled through the call log himself, his brow creasing.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, he called Petey ... I don’t know, two dozen times? What the hell?”
The frustration in his voice was sharp enough to cut glass. But there was something beneath it—anger, and what sounded like betrayal. She crawled back into the bed and pulled him with her, nestling under the covers beside him. The temperature in the room was rapidly moving from uncomfortably chilly to meat-locker worthy. And the chill running up the back of her neck as her thoughts raced was practically icy.
“Petey’s the one you fired, right?”
“Yeah.” He met her gaze, understanding her meaning. “And I think I know where I might be able to find out what he’s been up to this week.”
She grabbed her own clothes while Will pulled on his pants and socks. She was searching the floor for her shoes when Will turned around, tugging his sweater into place, and frowned at her. “What are you doing?”
She ignored this and asked him, “I assume we’re getting on the snowmobile again. God, I wish I were an Eskimo.”
“I don’t think you’d look good in fur.” He put a hand on her arm as she reached for her coat, which was draped across the bureau. “And I’m asking again, what are you doing?”
“Getting dressed.” She folded her arms over her chest. If he pulled a he-man macho act now ... “Why?”
“I think you should stay here, Lanie. Really,” he said, his shoulders sagging in exasperation when she raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “Look, it’s freezing out ...”
“Oh, yeah, and it’s really toasty in here. Think again, Will DeMaio. And don’t think I won’t use ‘William’ if you really piss me off.”
“Lanie ...”
“You’re getting close now,” she warned, wagging a finger at him. “What do you think is going to happen out there? I mean, worse than taking a chance on a one-night fling and waking up to find a dead body on the back steps? You can’t seriously think you’re protecting my delicate sensibilities here.”
“Actually, I’m rethinking the issue of your sensibilities right now,” he said, shaking his head as he zipped his jacket. “All right, but I don’t like this. This is a murder, for Christ’s sake, and I don’t want you in any danger. You know, I never thought I’d actually say that to a woman. Not as a carpenter living in Churchville, at least.”
She grinned as she put on her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Think how much more macho it would have sounded if you’d said ‘I’m coming out firmly against this.’ ”
“Funny,” he said, and lightly slapped her bottom on the way out the door.
The worst thing was, she thought as they climbed on the snowmobile and she wrapped her arms around him, she didn’t mind it at all.
The Black Bear was past Churchville center in the other direction, set off a winding county route in a converted barn. In the dark, it hulked beneath the bare trees like something out of a horror movie, only three pickups parked haphazardly in front. Lanie took a deep breath as they climbed off the snowmobile, which wasn’t easy—even her lungs seemed frozen.
“Why are we here?” she asked, trying to make out the vague path of footprints in the snow. The moon was only a thin sliver in the black sky. “There’s no power out this way either, is
there?”
“Nope.” Will jerked the heavy door open, and she caught sight of five men gathered at the long bar, where lit candles and old-fashioned oil lamps threw warm light on the wood. “But blackout parties are kind of a tradition at the Black Bear.”
“Hey there, Will,” one of the men called, raising a mug. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Lanie Burke,” he answered, winding a heavy, protective arm around her. She didn’t protest. Everyone looked fairly tame, but it was frigidly cold in here, too. “She picked a hell of a weekend to visit, huh?”
“You can’t count on spring up here till the end of May, honey,” an older man said with a sympathetic smile. His hair was the color of polished steel, pulled off his neck with a leather band. “But the snow sure is pretty if you like this kind of thing. How about a beer?”
“I’d love one,” she said, making her way to the bar and hoping she’d regain the feeling in her feet while they were inside. “Petey’s not here, is he?” she asked Will under her breath.
“Not unless he’s in the men’s room.” He pointed toward the back of the bar, where a rough wooden sign with a bear seared into it hung above a door. Over the door next to it, the bear on the sign was carrying a purse.
They settled into a booth near the bar, and the older man brought them an oil lamp and two very frosty mugs. “What are you doing dragging this pretty little thing out here on a night like this, Will?”
Pretty little thing. Against her better instincts, Lanie smiled at him—he was old enough to be her grandfather, and his old-fashioned charm seemed part and parcel of the little town with its antique shops, statuesque trees, and quaint clapboard farmhouses. If you discounted the murder, of course, she thought, taking a thirsty swallow of her beer. It was icy and bitter, like too many things this weekend.
“There’s been a little ... trouble,” Will told him, examining a deep gouge in the tabletop with interest. “And I think Petey Petrowski might be part of it. Has he been around lately? Today, even?”
The older man scraped a chair away from the table with a sigh and sat down heavily. In the dusky light, Lanie noticed a silver scar on his cheek that looked suspiciously like something a knife had left. Okay, maybe a little less her grandfather and a little more aging Hell’s Angel.
“Normally, what gets said in here stays in here,” he began, his gaze shifting between her face and Will’s, “but in this case ...”
“Has he been around, Ray?” Will’s tone had lost its warmth and taken on a distinctly let’s-get-on-with-it edge.
“Does this have to do with your dad, Will?”
“Could be.”
Lanie swallowed hard, her stomach twisting in dismay. Whatever Ray had to tell them, it wasn’t going to be good, she knew it.
Ray shook his head with another rueful sigh. “They were here Thursday, and Petey was drunk. Well, they both were—they’d been ordering kamikazes all night. They were arguing for a while, and at one point Carter had to give them a warning because your dad got up and shoved Petey clear into the pool table. They then switched to straight J.D., no chasers, and I was getting ready to throw them both out ...” He looked up and caught Will’s impatient stare. “When your dad left, Petey started babbling, you know the way he does sometimes, about the ‘plan.’ How it was going to work, and he was the man to do it, and something about how he wouldn’t get caught because it was all figured out, and it damn well sounded like ...” He turned his faded blue eyes to Lanie momentarily. “It sounded like he was talking about killing someone.”
It certainly did sound like a guy talking himself up, convincing himself he could commit murder. That much Lanie agreed with. But now she wasn’t sure whom he’d intended to kill. She held her tongue as Will downed half his beer in a single gulp and stared out the black square of the window.
“So what was the trouble?” Ray asked, his voice as low as Will’s. At the bar, the others were arguing the relative merits of cable and satellite dishes, noisily.
Will didn’t answer, and the tension at the table suddenly seemed strung taut enough to snap. This weekend was feeling more like a noir movie every minute. She should have been wearing heels and a kicky little suit, with her hair piled up under a hat.
“You know it’ll be all over town by tomorrow, once the land lines are up again,” Ray reminded him, and Lanie squirmed. Will was missing his cue, and suddenly she was worried the scene was going to end in, if not violence, something equally unpleasant. The old guy wanted his gossip, and now.
When Will finally finished his beer and set it down, she could tell he was going to cave, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“My father’s dead.” The words were punctuated with a bark of laughter that didn’t sound anything like the low, amused rumble she was used to. “How about that? All these years, I’ve wanted him gone, to leave my mom alone, and now he’s dead.”
Lanie’s heart squeezed as the rigid line of his jaw trembled with rage or grief, or maybe both. But he wasn’t finished. He gave Ray a mirthless smile as he added, “And the fucked-up thing is, I think I was the one who was supposed to die.”
Nine
This whole thing was crazy, Will thought as he steered Lanie out to the snowmobile. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been anticipating his usual weekend—odd jobs left over from the work week, watching whatever game was in season on TV, knocking back a few beers with the guys, and possibly finding someone nice and soft and female to share his bed. It was all starting to seem like a far-off, really happy dream.
Well, he’d gotten the soft female part right, and more.
A lot more. Lanie was sexy as hell, and somehow made to fit against and around him like the last piece to a puzzle, but for the first time in a long time, the two parts of him that usually took a vacation when he had a woman in his bed were the two parts demanding his attention—his head and his heart. Lanie fascinated the first, and had, to be completely greeting card corny about it, stolen the second.
And instead of lying next to her in his bed at home, exploring every inch of skin and every funny, slightly off center thought in her head, he was dragging her around on the back of a snowmobile in the freezing cold. Rather than enjoying the lazy, fuzzy glow of good sex, he could feel the beginnings of a pure, icy rage that would put last night’s storm to shame.
All because his father, apparently, had asked Petey Petrowski to kill him. And Petey, major fuck-up that he was, had screwed up and killed his father instead.
“Will, talk to me.” Lanie’s voice was muffled against his shoulder as he coaxed the starter to life. “What are you thinking?”
He’d hustled her out of the bar so fast, she’d barely had time to zip up her coat, and when he twisted around to look at her now, he could see that the upturned tip of her nose was red with cold, and her hands, when he reached to take one, felt brittle even beneath her mittens.
She didn’t get it. Hadn’t made the connection. Couldn’t imagine that a man would want his own son dead. And that was just one of the reasons he wished like hell he could start this damn thing up, drive her away somewhere warm and safe, and love her until she was weak with it.
“It was my father, Lanie,” he said, feeling his heart sink as she frowned in disagreement, her brow screwing up more adorably than was probably possible for a woman on the back of a snowmobile in the middle of the night. “Really. Think about it.”
“I did,” she said, shaking her head. “They were arguing, had been seen together a couple of times. There were all those calls to Petey’s number on your father’s cell phone. I think we were wrong—I think they cooked something up that went bad, and Petey decided to kill your dad.”
“You don’t know Petey.” He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “He fucked up, Lanie. That’s all. My dad wanted me dead, for whatever twisted reason went through his head that day, and Petey got drunk and killed him by accident.”
She swallowed hard—he could see the muscles working in her throat as he
r eyes filled with tears, glistening in the weak moonlight. She didn’t want to believe him.
“Think about it,” he said. “Think about where we found him, the empty bottle and the ashtray at the Seavers’. He had a front-row seat. He expected to watch Petey find me and kill me, and Petey just ... fucked up.”
“Oh, God, Will.” She twined her arms around him, and even through their coats he could feel her warmth, the strength of the comfort she was trying to offer. “But that means that Petey could have realized his mistake by now. He really could be looking for you. We should go to the police right now. Stay there. They’d give us a cell, right, just to sleep in? Do they have a cell, even? I don’t know how big the station is—”
“Lanie.” Then he shushed her with his mouth, pressing his lips to hers firmly. “You’re going to the police station. I’m going to take you there right now, before we have to defrost you.”
“What do you mean, you’re taking me?” She wriggled away, careful not to stamp down too hard in the snow. The feeling in her toes was only a fond memory. “Are you going to start that macho woman-in-danger stuff again?”
“Lanie ...”
She supposed his low, rumbling tone was meant as a warning, but it wasn’t as if she’d paid much attention to those lately. And she wasn’t going to start now, “danger” or no danger.
Will DeMaio made her feel a thousand things it would take her weeks to list individually, but among the important biggies were whole, sexy, and, above all, competent. Despite every horrible thing that had happened since she arrived—and the revelation that Will’s father had been the one scheming to kill his own son was so far past horrible, she didn’t even know how to categorize it—she didn’t feel like a walking bad luck charm when she was with Will. She felt good. She felt ... powerful. A woman who knew what she was doing and what she wanted.
It had been a long time since she’d felt that way.
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