“I don’t want you to sleep outside my door.”
Something taut hummed in the air. And her eyes locked with his.
“I want you to sleep in my bed,” she said softly. “I need you, Cole.”
I need you. Not, I need this. This time it was, I need you. His pulse hammered. He needed her, too. But…
“Bryn, you’re hurt.”
“I’m not that hurt.”
Still his chest felt tight, painful. “I have so many things to regret in my life already, and when I leave Azalea Bend, I don’t want there to be more. I don’t want you to have any regrets, either.”
He couldn’t bear to see regret in her eyes. Not again. And he didn’t know where all of this was going—the investigation into Aimee’s murder, or his feelings for Bryn. She was scared now, but when this was over, she’d remember that it was Cole who’d brought all this grief back to her.
“The only thing I’ll regret about tonight is if I don’t spend it with you.”
Her eyes shone with raw need and everything inside him responded, and suddenly it didn’t matter how she might feel later. What mattered was how she felt now. She needed him.
His legs were shaking as she took his hand and led the way upstairs. He shut the door of her lamplit room behind them and when he turned back, she’d pulled apart her robe. Beneath, she wore only lace panties.
The robe fell in a soft spill at her feet, then she stripped away that last lacy barrier.
He stood there stunned, taking in the curve of her breasts, the narrow waist, the long legs. She stepped out of the piled material and came directly toward him, slid her hand around the back of his neck, and kissed the last shred of his sanity away. His heart nearly leaped out of his chest when she gently pushed him down so that he fell backward onto the bed, tangling with her. He twisted so that he was half on top of her, feeling all the soft, silky heat of her.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said huskily, but even as he spoke he couldn’t resist the feel of her flushed skin under his hands. The mist of desire slid through him and he wanted nothing more than to sink into that mist. Sink into her.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she whispered against his mouth. But he forced himself to take it slowly. He wanted to be careful with her, so careful. He shifted so that he lay beside her then he got off the bed.
“Cole—”
“Wait.” He forced himself to do at least one thing right. He left the room, went down the hall, rummaged through the drawer for the purchase he’d made in foolish hope he’d barely let himself believe would be fulfilled. He came back with the protection that they should have had the first time.
She reached for his jeans and tugged them off his hips. It was awkward and sweet and incredibly arousing, this passionate hunger of hers that couldn’t wait. Then she straddled him, the rigid peaks of her bare breasts brushing his chest. He reached between them and she was hot and wet, ready and blinding; intense heat filled him. Leaning up into the pale globes of her breasts, he took one hard nipple into his mouth, raking it gently with his teeth as his fingers continued their tender torment inside her. She quivered over him, and he felt the hot surge of her release, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Not now. Not ever.
“Please, Cole, now please.” And she fumbled for his erection, sheathing him inside her.
He wanted this to be slow. He wanted to please her and take her so gently, but she rocked over him, and all he could do was focus on the gut-wrenching sweetness of her need, and how much he needed her in return. She cried out as he plunged higher inside her, holding tightly to him, her breaths as raspy sharp as his own. Then she let out a helpless moan and covered his mouth with hers.
He came hard and fast, and there was no stopping it. They clung together in the desperate aftermath for uncounted beats before, shockingly, he felt himself grow hard inside her and he pushed her over onto her back.
“I can’t get enough of you, Bryn,” he told her.
Her kiss was her response. She pulled him over her and he thrust into her again, felt her tightening around him. Carefully, he rested his weight on his hands on either side of her so as not to crush her. This time, it was softer, gentler but no less soul-consuming.
He left the earth in a splintering of sensation and emotion to the sound of her crying out his name. Then he wrapped her in his arms and held her close.
And nothing, but nothing, was going to hurt her tonight.
If she could have, Bryn would never have left her bed. She woke to Cole’s arm draped over her heavy, sated body, holding her curled up against him. She lay there in dreamy half awareness remembering the explosive need and reckless passion of their night together, and she didn’t regret one single second they’d shared.
She wondered what it would be like to wake every morning in Cole’s arms, and knew how quickly she could grow accustomed to it. A wash of sadness had her opening her eyes, staring at his dark-lashed closed eyes.
I have so many things to regret in my life already, and when I leave Azalea Bend, I don’t want there to be more.
His life was in Baton Rouge and hers was tied to Bellefleur, hundreds of years of Louvel history, and her mother. Azalea Bend was a town of ruin to him and there was no way she could be selfish enough to expect him to make it his home. And even if she was willing to leave Bellefleur and go with him, would she forever remind him of everything that had happened fifteen years ago, bringing him more pain than joy? She and Cole had a track record of always destroying each other, and she didn’t know how that could change.
She squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden burn of tears and took a deep, steadying breath, choking back the emotion in her throat. One day at a time was all she could handle. She was walking an emotional tightrope as it was. And there was someone out there who’d like to see Cole, or maybe both of them, dead. How could she even be thinking about the future at all?
“Bryn.”
She opened her eyes to find Cole’s tender morning gaze searching her face.
“Hey,” she whispered shakily.
“Are you all right?” He looked so worried.
“I’m fine.” She didn’t know how to explain what she was feeling without putting him on the spot. “I’m fine as long as you’re here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised softly.
“Tell me about your life in Baton Rouge,” she said.
His hard lips twisted in a half smile. “You want to hear about my job?”
“No. Your life.” She wanted to know where he lived, who he saw, what he did.
“I bought an old steamboat gothic house downtown and I fix it up when I’m not working. I go to the museum every once in a while. I run in the park. I work. A lot.” He watched her with his serious, impenetrable eyes. “Why?”
“You have girlfriends?”
He smiled again. “Are you going to be jealous if I say yes?”
Her stomach clenched but she tipped her chin at him. “Of course not,” she said loftily, but she noticed he hadn’t answered her question.
He laughed and pulled himself up. It should have been criminal for a man to look so sexy first thing in the morning, but there he was, all naked and wonderful in her bed. And all she could do was stare at his bare, powerful shoulders, sliding her gaze down to his flat, muscular stomach, and lower… A tight heat hit her and she lifted her eyes to find his hungry, hot look pinning her, telling her he knew just what she was thinking. He had bed head, and it made him so deliciously, dangerously, sexily vulnerable. Then there was nothing vulnerable about him because he was kissing her and touching her in all the warm, heavy places he’d touched her last night, setting her body on fire all over again. He focused his gaze on hers as he entered her in tortuous increments.
She reached up, cradled her hands around his neck, and held on to him for dear life as he began to thrust into her. She arched to meet him and he responded to the eager motion of her hips with a slow, scorching kiss that stole her breath and
her senses. And he rocked her into that perfect, searing sweetness that somehow, this time, wasn’t enough to fill the empty, aching spaces inside her.
Cole hated the petrified light that flashed in Bryn’s eyes as he checked the rental car thoroughly before they headed out an hour later. She still held herself with a slight stiffness, a hold-over from the bruising accident, and that made his heart crack a little every time he looked at her.
They caught Lizzie Cornelius on her way out the door. She lived in a comfortable new neighborhood of small tract homes on the Baton Rouge side of town.
In her denim dress embroidered with daisies, her auburn hair pulled back in a neat style, Bryn’s childhood friend looked every inch the elementary-school teacher.
“I don’t have much time this morning,” she said when Bryn planted herself firmly in front of her on the small bricked front stoop of her ranch-style house. “It’s good to see you, Bryn.”
She gave Cole a more unwelcoming look. She hadn’t had much to say when he’d interviewed her over the weekend.
“I don’t know what I can tell you about Aimee,” Lizzie told Bryn.
“You spent as much time with her that summer as I did,” Bryn said. “Maybe more.” A flicker of something dark shadowed her eyes. “Was Aimee seeing anyone that summer? Anyone special? A boy?”
“Aimee didn’t have a boyfriend,” Lizzie said immediately.
“Maybe someone who wasn’t a boyfriend,” Cole interjected. If Aimee hadn’t mentioned anything about a pregnancy to Bryn, maybe her liaison had been secret. But still, someone might have seen her somewhere, sometime, with someone and not realized what they were seeing. A lot of people had seen him on occasion with Bryn and had never known they were dating. They’d kept it that secret. Only Aimee had ever known.
Would Aimee have had a secret romance and not even have told Bryn?
Lizzie shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone.”
“I wonder if you knew any of these boys.” Aimee was a homebody, and if she hadn’t met a boy from school, then that left Bellefleur. He dug out the list of yard boys and showed it to Lizzie.
“Hmmmm.” Lizzie stared at the list. “Actually, she did tell me once that she had a crush on Tommy Navin. But they never dated.” She dragged her keys out of her purse. “I’ve got twenty third-graders waiting for me.” Lizzie gave Bryn a quick hug.
Bryn and Cole sat down in the car and watched Lizzie Cornelius drive away down the neat, tidy neighborhood street.
Cole stuck the key in the ignition. “Emile Brouchard said Tommy Navin was trouble.”
Bryn flashed him a determined look. “I never even heard Aimee mention Tommy Navin’s name. I barely remember him. Even Lizzie said they weren’t dating.”
Edward Navin lived in a white clapboard frame house with flaking paint that exposed chunks of graying wood. A beat-up Ford pickup in the carport suggested he was home.
Which didn’t do them much more good than the first time Cole had knocked on his door. Navin was tall, skinny, with a thatch of silver-streaked black hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed lately.
“We want to talk to you about your son,” Cole said.
“I already told you I’m not talking about Tommy,” the man growled.
“We just want to ask Tommy a few questions,” Bryn said. “Can you tell us where he is?”
Navin’s narrow face tightened. “I know what you’re after. I heard about him in town.” He jabbed a finger at Cole. “Been asking questions about that girl who got killed.”
“Is Tommy still in Azalea Bend?” Cole asked. He tried to keep his voice polite, but something about the man was getting under his skin.
His flat icy eyes turned mean. “Keep asking questions about Tommy and you’ll regret it.”
The chipped wooden door slammed in their faces.
Their meeting at the police station wasn’t till mid-afternoon. Cole used his cell phone to contact Ken Bryant and ask him to work on the Tommy Navin angle. He wanted to know ASAP if Tommy Navin was in Azalea Bend. They grabbed a quick lunch between repeat visits to old friends of Bryn’s and Aimee’s. Most of them weren’t much more forthcoming than they’d been in their first interview with Cole, though they were a hell of a lot friendlier. So were the yard boys.
Griff Bonner ran a transmission shop out of a huge shed behind his house outside town. A sign out front advertised swamp tours on the side. In the liquid heat, he wiped sweat off his chiseled features with a greasy towel and gave Bryn an appraising look as he came out of the shadows of the garage shop.
He gave Bryn a cocky smile. “Miss Bryn Louvel,” he said. “I’ve been just waiting for the day you’d come see me.” He didn’t bother with Cole.
“You remember the summer you worked at Bellefleur?” she asked.
Bonner shrugged. “Sure. He already asked me about it.” He jerked his head at Cole, but he didn’t take his eyes off Bryn. “I don’t know who killed her. Always thought it was that Dempsey guy. My dad saw him in the bar that night. He said he was nuts.”
“What I was really wondering was whether you knew if she was involved with anyone,” Bryn said coolly. “Did you ever see her around Bellefleur with anybody?”
“You mean like a boyfriend?”
“Like that,” Cole said tightly. “Like Tommy Navin, maybe.”
Bryn shot him a glance.
“Sure,” Bonner said. “She hung out with Tommy.”
Bryn blinked and her head swiveled back to Bonner. “She did?”
“Yeah. He used to brag about doing her.”
Chapter 15
Harlan Michel’s office was dominated by faded black-and-white photographs of spillway construction, lumber trains cutting through swamps and oil rigs heading downriver for the Gulf. The St. Salome Parish police chief kept them waiting twenty minutes in the outer office before he sauntered out to usher them in.
Chief Michel creaked into the chair behind his nicked metal-framed desk, gesturing Cole and Bryn toward a pair of tattered orange seats pulled up on the other side. The chief’s massive size dwarfed the small room. The fluorescent light overhead gave a sheeny glare to his bald head.
Bryn hadn’t said anything on the drive over from Griff Bonner’s. Cole had let her be. Truth was, he didn’t know what to say, how to break through that brittle shell of guilt she was building around herself in regard to Aimee’s death.
She got right down to business. “I want the investigation into my sister’s murder reopened.”
Harlan Michel leaned back and propped his broad hands on his equally broad stomach. “Now, Miss Louvel, that case was closed a mighty long time ago. I already told Mr. Dempsey here that we aren’t going to be reopening it.”
“Fifteen years,” Bryn cut in. “But Wade Dempsey didn’t kill Aimee.”
“You remember this.” Cole handed a copy of the forensic report to the chief. He leaned forward, took it in his thick fingers and examined it.
“Yes, I do, you already showed me this. It doesn’t mean much if Randol Ormond is in such bad health he can’t testify.” Michel eyed Cole with his heavy gaze. “Where is the original, by the way?”
“I’m in the process of retaining an expert to examine the original, then it will be turned over to your office,” Cole explained. “An expert can testify that it wasn’t tampered with. As I told you, I spoke to Randol Ormond in Florida at a rest home and he gave this document to me. I believe the forensic report was suppressed on the order of Hugh Cavanaugh, and replaced with a version that removed any mention of the scrapings from beneath Aimee’s nails that would have cleared my father.”
“And I told you that wasn’t enough to reopen the case,” Michel said.
“I’m now prepared to have Aimee’s body exhumed,” Bryn added, her voice steady, too steady, masking the anguish the taut set of her mouth revealed. “New tests will prove that she didn’t struggle with Wade Dempsey that night and can be used to connect the real killer to the crime.”
“Ma
ybe.” The chief’s expression was noncommittal. “We don’t have a budget for dredging up old crimes—”
“This isn’t an old crime,” Bryn said, heat entering her voice. “I’m sure you know someone cut the brake lines on Cole’s car a couple of nights ago. He’s been asking questions around town about Aimee. Someone doesn’t like that, and whoever that is might be the person who killed Aimee.”
The chief was shaking his head, but Bryn didn’t give him time to speak.
“Aimee might have been pregnant when she died,” she said in a low, husky voice that Cole knew meant she was on the verge of tears. “And she might have been seeing Tommy Navin. Do you know if Tommy Navin still lives in St. Salome Parish?”
Harlan Michel frowned. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Look, Miss Louvel, this still isn’t much to go on.”
Bryn lifted her chin, and Cole could see her drawing the battle lines, fighting back the emotion that brimmed so near the surface. “There’s a murderer walking the streets in Azalea Bend, Chief Harlan. Cole’s brake lines—”
“You don’t know that’s connected,” the Chief interrupted.
“You don’t know it’s not,” Bryn said. Her voice shook and she took a breath to even it. “Surely the possibility that there’s a murderer stalking free in this town is important enough for you to squeeze at least one officer out of your budget to assign to this case. And just so you know, I’ve been in touch with an investigative reporter at a cable network who’s interested in showcasing Aimee’s murder on an upcoming program. Frank Skelly was the police chief who bungled this case fifteen years ago. You have a chance to be the one who makes sure it’s not bungled this time.”
Well, she had a couple of calls in to some cable networks, so it wasn’t a complete lie even if they hadn’t called back. The challenge in her eyes was enough to hold the chief silent for a tense beat.
“The Louvel name still means something in this town, Chief Harlan.” She tossed in her final card. “And it means something in this state. This story is going to get coverage. Big coverage. You don’t want it to reflect badly on you when it does.”
Cole Dempsey’s Back in Town Page 13