by Paula Graves
Trask suspected she’d long ago given up on true love and was still married to the old man much for the same reason he’d married her in the first place—neither of them wanted to go through life alone.
He picked up his phone and dialed his parents’ number. His mother answered, her voice warm, “Archer, how are you?”
With some embarrassment, he realized it had been at least two weeks since he talked to his mother. “I’m good,” he said quickly, realizing she might be wondering if he was calling with bad news.
Of course, in a way he might be.
“I heard you’re workin’ that murder case at the church.”
“Yeah. I can’t really talk about it.”
“Oh, I know. Your daddy’s always tryin’ to get Virgil to spill the beans about his cases, too, but Virgil tells him just enough to make him want to know more, then laughs and says it’s police business and he can’t spill the beans.” Even though there was laughter in his mother’s voice, Trask could tell she didn’t like Virgil’s form of teasing. “Makes your daddy crazy.”
“Speaking of Virgil, have you seen much of him lately?”
“Some, here and there. He’s been spendin’ a lot of time with Ty Miller. You remember Ty, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I remember Ty. What are they doing, hunting and fishing?”
“No, they just seem to hang out in Ty’s garage with some of their friends, smokin’ and talkin’ if he’s not on duty.”
“Really?” That didn’t sound much like Virgil, who’d never been much of a joiner. “Who’s he hanging out with besides Ty?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think I saw one of the Hanks boys there a couple of weeks ago, and Chad Gordon. Jenny Pruitt mentioned to me at church Sunday that her boy, Dawson, was hanging out with Ty, too.” His mother’s voice darkened. “She sounded a little worried about it, to tell the truth.”
“Why’s that?”
“I don’t rightly know. I told your daddy about it, but he said not to worry, Virgil’s a deputy now and we don’t have to mind his business anymore.” Lena laughed. “Thank goodness for that. He was a handful.”
“I suppose we both were.”
“Oh, you had your moments,” Lena said, “but I never had to worry about bailing you out of jail in the middle of the night. Listen, I know it’s a little late, but I’m betting you’re calling from work, aren’t you? I have some leftover supper—we had fried chicken, green beans and mashed potatoes. Your favorite. You want to drop by on your way home?”
“That’s real tempting,” Trask said, meaning it. “But I’ve got to work for a few hours longer tonight. But I’ll definitely take you up on the offer the next time you cook my favorites.”
“Oh, okay, then.”
The disappointment in her voice almost made him give up on his idea of confronting Ty Miller at work tonight. What would it really accomplish? So far, even the accusation against Virgil was third hand. He had yet to speak to Tara or Owen Stiles, face-to-face or otherwise. Hell, the only reason Ty Miller was on his radar at all was that Virgil had unwittingly named him as his alibi.
But Archer needed to hear that alibi himself, read Ty Miller’s face and decide whether or not he was lying for Virgil.
“I’m really sorry,” he told his mother. “I’ll drop by and see you just as soon as I get a minute of free time.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said, her tone loving. He felt an ache of love for his mother throbbing deep in his chest. He didn’t know if she was living the life she wanted, but she was the sort of person who made do with what she had and looked for the bright side of every situation.
She deserved a more thoughtful son than he had been lately.
“Love you, Mama. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“I love you, too, sweet boy. You be careful, all right?”
“Will do.” He hung up the phone, his eyes going toward the clock.
A little after nine. Almost showtime.
* * *
THE COLD SHOWER had done nothing to calm the urgent throb of heat at her core or the itchy, unsettled feeling that she was walking into the heart of danger with so many important things left unspoken.
If they were right that Robert’s murder was about keeping Tara on the run, then they might encounter someone armed and very dangerous at her office tonight. She, Owen and Quinn had gone to great lengths to tie up all the loose ends and make tonight’s break-in go as smoothly and safely as possible, but even Quinn had acknowledged the risk.
She had no family to say goodbye to. Her friends were mostly people Robert had known or a handful of women she’d gone to high school or college with and rarely talked to anymore now that their lives had gone in different directions.
Owen was her family, her circle of friends, her rock. And she had denied him the only thing he’d asked of her in all the years of their friendship.
He was a man. They were attracted to each other. She was asking a lot of him to deny those feelings while continuing to be her friend.
But she couldn’t bear life without him. He was her true north.
The heat in her core spread up into her belly and breasts, sending a quiver down her spine as the door to the small bathroom opened and Owen stepped out, wearing only a pair of jeans and a towel around his neck. His hair was still damp from the shower, a trickle of water sliding down his chest to follow the dark line of hair that dipped beneath the waistband of his jeans.
Friends with benefits. Wasn’t that what people called it these days? She knew there were other terms for it, vulgar terms, but what she felt with Owen wasn’t vulgar or base. She loved him. She just wasn’t ever going to risk being in love with him. That complicated everything beyond hope.
But being his best friend, who he happened to sleep with now and then—that was something she could handle, wasn’t it?
Owen gave her an odd look as he swiped the towel down his chest a couple of times before he tossed it aside and met her in the middle of the small room. “Is something wrong?”
She nodded, trying to find her voice. But her mouth was dry and her heart was pounding, drowning out all her thoughts.
“What is it?” Owen asked, his voice dropping to a gravelly half whisper.
“I was wrong,” she said, her own voice coming out raspy. “I was wrong about us.”
His brow furrowed, but he waited for her to speak.
Instead of words, she chose action, rising to her tiptoes and curling her fingers through his damp hair. She moved closer, sliding her other hand up his chest, reveling in the crisp sensation of his chest hair beneath her palm.
Owen opened his mouth as if to speak, but she didn’t let him get that far. With a sharp tug of her hand, she pulled his head down and covered his mouth with hers.
Chapter Fifteen
She tasted like honey and heat, her lips soft and her tongue insistent, parting Owen’s lips and demanding entry. He was powerless against her, just as he’d always known he would be. Tara was his soft spot, his Achilles’ heel. In the end, he could never deny her anything, and that was why he was still by her side, long after a sane man would have walked away to find greener pastures. Tara was his one and only, and for all his talk of walking away, he now understood he never would do so.
Her hands seemed to be everywhere—on his shoulders, his sides, the tips of his fingers and the skin just above his hip bones. He was on fire, an unquenchable heat that seemed to grow and spread wherever she touched him.
Finally, her fingers dipped to the zipper of his jeans, and while every inch of his flesh seemed to sing with joy, a mean little voice in the back of his head asked a question.
What is she really offering you?
As if she’d heard the sudden note of discord, Tara stilled her hand and pulled back to look at him, her eye
s dark with desire. “What’s the matter?”
He wanted to tell her nothing was wrong, to proceed with what she’d been doing. Everything would work out the way it was supposed to.
But he’d never been a guy who worried about the future when the future came. He was the guy who had his week planned on a spreadsheet. He was that much like Tara, he supposed, or maybe all these years of friendship had made her control freak side rub off on him.
He had to know what she was really offering before he agreed to take it. For better or for worse.
“What are we doing here?” he asked softly.
She gave him a quirky half grin. “Been that long?”
“Been forever, but that doesn’t really answer my question.”
Her fingers fluttered lightly against his rib cage, sending shivers down his spine. “I’m seducing you.”
“I thought you were against our pursuing a romantic relationship.”
A small frown creased her forehead. “I’m not against a sexual relationship. I think we could handle that, don’t you? Solves the sexual tension problem, but we don’t muck up our friendship with other kinds of expectations.”
His heart sinking, he pulled her hands away from his body. “Sweetheart, that won’t solve anything.”
“Why not? People do this all the time. Friends with benefits.”
“That never ends well.”
“We could make it end well.” She rose to her tiptoes to kiss him again.
And he let her. Drank in the sweetness he found there, the passion and the promise of pleasure. Drank and drank, losing his will to resist. Maybe this could work, he told himself as he wrapped his arms around her waist and dragged her closer, flattening himself against her so he could feel all the soft curves and strong edges of her body. He had known her intimately for years, except for this part of her, the seductress with a wicked imagination and an unimaginably sweet touch.
But what happens when she’s ready to start a relationship with someone else again? the mean little voice asked.
With a low growl of frustration and regret, he pushed her away.
“No, Owen, don’t do this...”
“I have to,” he said, sinking onto the edge of the nearest bed. “Someone has to be sensible about this.”
“No, don’t you see? We’ve been too sensible about this for too long. We should have known we could figure out a way to have what we both want. We always have.” She sat beside him on the bed, too close. The scent of bath gel on her heated skin was intoxicating.
He caught her hands before she touched him again. “I don’t want sex from you, Tara.”
She looked confused. “But isn’t that the problem?”
“No, sweetheart, it’s not. Sex is just a part of what I really want.”
Her eyes flickered with annoyance, so very Tara-like. She hated when someone contradicted one of her plans. And nine times out of ten, if he was the one thwarting her will, he’d have gone along with her just to see her beautiful smile when she got her way.
But this was too important a decision to give in to Tara just to see her smile. Their friendship was on the line. One way or another, something had to give, because he couldn’t bear to be just her bed buddy and her best friend.
He wanted what she’d been so ready to offer Robert Mallory, even though Owen had known all along she’d never loved Robert enough to spend forever with him. He knew it because he knew, deep down, that he and Tara were supposed to be together.
But what he knew, or thought he knew, didn’t matter at all if Tara didn’t see it, too.
“I don’t want to be your best friend forever or your friend with benefits, because that will never be what you are to me.” She started to speak, but he touched her lips with his fingertip, stilling them. “Tara, I love you. I have loved you since the time you pantsed Jason Stillwell for stealing my lunch money. That love has never faltered, even through your snotty cheerleader years and the time you decided that dating only frat boys at Virginia was the best way to reach your life goals.”
She grimaced. “Don’t remind me,” she said against his fingertip. He dropped his hand and she flashed another quirky half smile at him. “I love you, too, Owen. You know that.”
“I do. But do you love me enough to marry me?”
Her expression froze, and for a moment, she turned so pale that he thought she was going to pass out. But then her color came back, rising to fill her cheeks as if she’d pinched them.
“Marry you?”
“Yes. Rings, cake, children, forever and ever and ever.”
“No. I can’t marry you.” She pulled away from him, pacing across the floor to stand near the kudzu-draped front window. She stared into the greenery, clearly seeing something else. “You know why I can’t.”
“Just because your parents’ marriage was a mess doesn’t mean yours will be. You were willing to marry Robert.”
“Because he ticked off everything on my list,” she said, her voice rising with distress. “It felt like a sign. This is the one.”
“But he wasn’t.”
Her face fell. “No, he wasn’t.”
“Because I am.”
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak.
With a sigh, Owen retrieved his watch from the small bench beside the table and checked the time. Getting close to eleven. In an hour, they should be just outside the Security Solutions compound, sneaking in through a small back gate that most employees knew nothing about. Even Tara hadn’t realized the gate existed until Quinn showed her where to look on the property.
“We’ll have to table this for now,” he said. “Let’s get dressed and packed up. We have a long walk to the SUV. If we wait too long after the guards do their check on the office buildings, we won’t have as much time to look for evidence before we have to leave.”
She turned away from the window, her expression composed. She walked past him to the other bed and sat on the edge to pull on a pair of thick socks. “Dress warmly,” she said. “Judging by the air I felt coming through that window sash, it’s getting really cold out.”
He pulled on a long-sleeved black T-shirt and shrugged a thick black sweater over it. The jacket Quinn had supplied was also black, a medium-weight Windbreaker that should keep him warm enough as long as the clouds scudding overhead didn’t start spitting out snow rather than rain.
The hike to the SUV was painstakingly slow in the dark, and the heavy silence that had fallen between him and Tara didn’t help to make the forward slog any more enjoyable. He finally spotted the SUV’s gleam through the trees about a hundred yards ahead and breathed a sigh of relief.
He handed over the SUV keys to Tara. “Your company. You drive.”
She took them without a word or even a smile and climbed behind the steering wheel. He rounded the vehicle and got in the passenger seat, looking at Tara’s grim profile as he buckled up. “I don’t think we can accomplish this mission without talking to each other.”
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing else to say about us, is there? You’re not willing to risk our friendship for something more, and I’ve come to the conclusion tonight that I can’t walk away from you, even if I know deep down it’s what I should do. So we go on the way we always have.”
She looked at him. “Can we?”
“I don’t know what else we can do. Do you?”
She shook her head and faced front again. For a moment she didn’t move at all, just sat still and silent, her gaze fixed on something outside the SUV. Then she released a soft breath and put the key in the ignition. The SUV’s engine roared to life.
Moving forward in the deepening night, they fell back into silence again.
* * *
THERE. JUST WHEN A
rcher Trask was beginning to think the receptionist from the security staffing company was wrong, Ty Miller’s black pickup truck turned into the driveway of the Security Solutions compound and parked near the gate.
Trask was reaching for his door handle when he realized that Miller wasn’t alone.
Easing his hand away from the latch, Trask leaned over to open his glove compartment and retrieve the small set of binoculars he kept there. He lifted the lenses to his eyes and took a closer look at the passenger seat of Miller’s truck.
His stomach twisted as he recognized his brother’s craggy face.
Damn it, Virgil.
* * *
THERE WAS NO good place to park the SUV, but Tara pulled the vehicle as far off the road as she could, hoping the darkness and the trees that lined the access road would be enough to hide the vehicle from any curious eyes that might pass by at this late hour.
The only real perimeter to the Security Solutions compound was an aging chain-link fence about eight feet high. Razor wire twists had been added at some point in the recent past, but there wasn’t any real security outside of the kiosk just inside the front gate, and even it wasn’t manned after hours. Employees had a key card that would allow them to enter through the automated gate, and anyone else would have to wait until morning for the daytime crew to arrive.
Getting in without going through the front gate, however, would seem to require a climb over the tall fence and braving the vicious edges of the razor wire. But somehow Alexander Quinn had uncovered a utility gate near the back of the property that made it possible for public utility repairmen and also law enforcement to enter the property after hours if necessary. It was a convenience not known to many in the company, Tara was certain, because she’d never heard a thing about it, and she was placed fairly high in the company’s hierarchy.
“I’d guess he learned of it from your bosses themselves,” Owen opined when she remarked on Quinn’s knowledge of the back gate. “Or maybe from some of his law enforcement contacts. Quinn always seems to know where to find information he needs and how to exploit it.”