When Night Falls

by Cait London

  “They loved each other, Mitchell, and sometimes life just isn’t sweet. He didn’t want her working, and she wanted to help. They had a growing family, a piece of land that was a luxury to farm, her husband was killing himself trying to work it, and work at the garage, and she loved him.”

  “I don’t want to talk with her. I’m not rehashing this.” He felt backed into a corner.

  “You’re going to have a hard time ignoring her. The attachment with Dani is already strong. Dani needs her, and Everett has agreed to rent Grace his house. He’s staying in Denver for a time. He didn’t give a woman there a chance, and he’s trying to work through that. Grace is staying because of Dani and Shelly and me. Roman and you will just have to adjust.”

  “Not likely. You’re saying that all you women are united on this. You’ve unionized and you’re the spokesperson.”

  “I’m saying that you wanted to unravel what is inside you, and until you understand the past, you won’t have the total package. I want that total package very much, not just pieces of you.”

  Uma forged on, her low voice slamming into him. “Children make a difference. You know how the baby you delivered touched you, reached inside you, and made you want to understand yourself? You’ve closed off the past and it’s coming after you. Pride kept them apart, pure and simple. And children did make a difference in their marriage. She wanted more for you and Roman—”

  “And herself. She left us, Uma. She left a husband and two sons for a better life. You like to fix things. Try justifying that.”

  He was feeling ugly and bitter and wounded. When he’d come into the house, carrying Uma, the gray cat had hurried in front of him. Now it leaped to the counter behind him, nudging and purring softly against his back.

  Mitchell elbowed the cat away, and it gave way to sitting on the counter, watching him solemnly.

  He thought he felt a gentle warning, but the storm between Uma and himself brewed hot and tight. “You started this.”

  He opened a drawer and took out a file folder of Charis Lopez clippings. “I’ve been doing some reading. The Smooth Moves List, too. You’ve got a real talent for ideal situations and how to fix them—in fairyland, where everything is perfect, but not in reality. Try dealing with reality sometime, Uma, and staying out of other people’s business. I enjoyed the column ‘Why Men Bristle.’ It reminded me of a certain dinner at your house…the one with your ex-husband. You must just travel through life, viewing it from a distance, and coming up with these goodies. Like in the ‘Single City’ chapter, where like people will gravitate to each other—or opposites, and then the individual has to choose if they want to give up something to share with that person, or if they want to remain single.”

  When she turned pale, he regretted striking out at her. That was what he knew how to do best, wasn’t it? Protect himself?

  The cat leaped to the floor and wound around her legs, then the animal sat beside her, staring at him with yellow eyes. Mitchell had the feeling the cat had found him guilty of total insensitivity. Great. Now he understood cats and dead women.

  “How long have you known?”

  He disgusted himself, attacking her, like a wounded bear trying to take down everything in its path. “From the first. Your penchant for fortune cookies…Charis’s neat little one-liners. Don’t worry. I haven’t told anyone.”

  “I wrote that when I was trying to sort out why it wasn’t working with Everett. I had to have something to do in those hours at the hospital, after Dad’s heart attack. So I outlined a book from some articles I’d stored away.”

  “Your relationship with Everett wasn’t working, because of chemistry. He’s perfect and so are you. You need flaws to fix. You need me—raw material to mold. I’m attractive to you. You can’t help yourself. You’re a do-gooder. You want life to be nice and sweet. And you need me to fix. Well, honey, what happened to my family can’t be fixed.”

  “Of all the arrogance—”

  She looked so defenseless, and instead of holding her as he wanted to, Mitchell jerked open the refrigerator and uncapped a bottle of water. “Here. Drink this.”

  “It’s a natural consequence to relive or dissect mistakes when a marriage fails, I suppose,” she said dully. “I wrote what I thought might happen.”

  “You did a good job of projecting,” he murmured, remembering how after they had argued, they had made love—feverishly, hungrily.

  Uma slowly sipped the water. “You think I’m trying to fix you, do you?”

  “We’re not going to be one big happy family. I came here to find what was missing, why I’m so different. I needed to prove that I was as good as anyone else. That I could earn a good paycheck and respect myself. My father didn’t in the end, and I had to have that respect. But I’m not management and I don’t like being cooped up in a city office. I like outside work, simple work with my hands—and not ranching on a two-bit place, either. You’re complicating a basic man-woman relationship.”

  He didn’t trust her narrowed look and that assessing “mmm.”

  Then Uma spoke slowly. “So you’re afraid to talk with her. You’re afraid you’ll learn the truth and that frightens you. You’ve built a lifetime hating a mother who didn’t deserve it. Gee whiz, what would you do without that bitterness to cling to?”

  “Let’s cut to the basics, shall we? The bottom line?”

  “Mmm. Without the foreplay, the afterplay?” she taunted.

  “You can sure hand it out, lady.” Unable to resist, appreciating her determination and frustrated, Mitchell reacted. He reached to cup her chin and lift her face to his. Those smoke-gray eyes said she wasn’t afraid, she wasn’t backing down, and he admired her all the more.

  Uma pushed his hand away and brushed away the tendril dancing along her warm cheek. “Now you’re confusing the issue.”

  He noted that fascinating telltale little quiver that rippled through her. The air sizzled between them. He reached to smooth her cheek, to feel the passion in her. It licked at the ends of her hair, twining around them as her lids lowered, the light shimmering on her lashes as she met his stare. His body was already full and hard, needing her. Their physical bond was the truth that talking couldn’t provide; he trusted that bond and what went with it, that river of deeper emotion.

  “I don’t feel like talking any more,” she whispered unevenly as she flattened against the wall, watching him.

  “Neither do I,” he returned rawly as he braced his hand near her head and let the other hand slide downward, over the warm curves he needed against him. The hem of her T-shirt lifted to her briefs, and he smoothed his finger beneath the elastic, finding her warmth, stroking her gently, intimately.

  Her body heated and melted beneath his touch, her hips moving against him, her lips ripe and hot against his. Her hands flattened to him, smoothed his shoulders, his throat, his chest. Her fingers rummaged through the hair on his chest and her mouth was on him, burning…she was his, a part of him, his hunger to complete them growing. Oneness…the word twined around him, the woman who was the other part of himself, completing him.

  There was the passion they created, hot and feverish. She made him come alive, all his feelings storming, circling him—tenderness, need, desire, the completion he’d never known possible. Erotic and scented and soft, she was his other part, not gentle now, but hurrying to lift her T-shirt away, to find him with her hands—

  Primeval? Basic? Truth in motion? Fire burning away all else, each touch raising the burn, the hunger?

  Only for her, only for this one woman, Mitchell thought, as their hunger enveloped him, and he tore away his jeans.

  Only for her…Uma…the only woman he had ever wanted…a special woman…Oneness…

  On the edge of her passion, Uma’s eyes were slitted, watching him, waiting as their bodies burned for each other, skin against skin.

  Precious…gentle…valiant…truthful…feminine…

  Oneness… Inside him, the words turned and gleamed and warmed
. Passion and hunger rode them now, but Mitchell wanted more, wanted to give more—

  Just there, before entering her, he saw everything—her quickening pulse, the hunger, the anticipation, the truth, the bonding. Uma could only give herself to a man she trusted and wanted as a part of her life. Her nails dug lightly into his shoulders and she closed her eyes as he moved his chest against her breasts, slowly, erotically, smoothing her body with his open hands.

  He enjoyed the flavor of her, the nip of hunger, heat beating from her, the scent of her skin, the contours and softness, the way her breast fit into his hand, the peak rising at the brush of his thumb.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered as he slowly moved around her, fitting himself to her, letting the curve of her bottom nestle against him, his face brushing against her shoulder, his tongue tasting her, both hands cupping her breasts, smoothing and caressing downward.

  “I don’t know, but it feels right.”

  He eased aside her hair to find her ear, sucking it gently, stroking, making her a part of him without the completion. There was more to their relationship than sex, more…

  She turned slightly and he took her kiss, moving around to lift her in his arms. “I don’t know what this is, but I like it,” she whispered as he simply stood and held her against his chest.

  “I think you may have a plan, Mitchell,” she teased, nipping at his shoulder as he carried her into the bedroom.

  “It’s a new strategy,” he answered as he eased her onto his bed and came down beside her.

  “A very erotic strategy,” Uma whispered as Mitchell’s hands and mouth and body claimed every inch of her without completion. He took her higher, only to ease the driving hunger, then slowly higher again. Intent on her pleasure, Uma sensed that he was taking her into him, into his pores, his senses, his rushing bloodstream, the heavy beat of his heart. In return, he was giving her everything he had protected from all others.

  She couldn’t breathe, holding the pleasure inside her, waiting for him to make them one. Then, as his face nuzzled and lips heated and suckled and tongue tasted, Uma held herself in check, wanting to give him as much, the slow, thorough erotic journey.

  His breath stopped and held as she began to move slowly, brushing her body against his, moving her thighs, her hands open on him, feeling the strength he restrained when holding her, that burning rough skin, the friction rising between them.

  Each touch lifted and seduced and burned, until Mitchell groaned deeply, rawly, and turned her beneath him, entering her fully.

  Poised above her, Mitchell stared down at her, his hands taking her hair, holding her, though there was no need. A part of him now, lock and key, Uma moved boldly against him, watched his struggle to slow their journey, and cherished the pounding of his heart. Instinctively she knew that Mitchell had never given another woman this slow, erotic pleasure that she knew was meant only for her. Every touch was truth from his heart, opening for her, giving…

  She’d waited a lifetime for him, she thought hazily, as her body began toppling over the edge…

  Oneness…the word was her last clear thought.

  Pearl glided the tiny black Miata that Pete had stolen for her into its garage, the space between the old motel’s units. In a fury, she hurried outside to close the wooden doors and lock them. Always cautious, she glanced at the silhouettes of the small oil drills pecking at the earth, outlined by the moon, and then punched the hidden digital locking system’s buttons.

  Pete Jones wasn’t much of a shooter, but he was handy enough to remodel this room with a battery-powered lock and several hidden panels in the walls and floors while he waited for Pearl. When the lock released, Pearl tore inside the motel unit and slammed the door behind her.

  She jerked open a hidden cabinet and replaced the deadly bow in its holding place. She added a hunting arrow to the two already labeled “Uma and Shelly,” and resting on prongs. Beneath the new arrow Pearl scribbled on the wall, “Mitchell.”

  This was where she could be free. This was where Clyde could come to her, no restrictions, no confining family, no endless daily routines—no Walter. No fat, disgusting, drunk-after-eight o’clock, rutting Walter.

  How dared he father Shelly’s baby? How dared he taunt her with Dani?

  How dared Lauren grab the scarf intended to mark Shelly for Pete’s bullet?

  How dared Uma take up with a Warren?

  Pearl ripped off her man’s hat and rummaged her fingers through her hair, loosening it. She glanced around the masculine room—a plain cot, a table, and a lantern with matches. She sailed the hat to the cot and struck a match, lighting the kerosene lantern carefully and adjusting the wick.

  Her daughters would be coming home next week from Walter’s sister in Connecticut. She would take them to New York for school clothes shopping, and Pearl’s roaming at night would have to stop—until school started.

  Pearl kicked off her shoes, loosened her wide, masculine tie, and lit one of Walter’s best black-market Havana cigars. She straddled a chair and placed her arms across the back as she smoked the cigar Walter thought was designated only for him.

  Walter responded well to drugs at night, just a drop or two added to his usual whiskey sour to make him sleep heavily as Pearl moved around as she wished.

  She blew a perfect circle of smoke in the air, then smaller ones. “No more perfect Pearl. Pearl is going to be strong now. Old pitiful, weak Pearl has to go, and new Pearl will handle her life as she wishes. First Uma—an accident, somehow—then grief will make Shelly’s distraction fatal, and then Pearl. It’s perfectly logical, and all before the last petal falls on the last rose…I see no problem at all, Clyde.”

  Uma’s fingers prowled up Mitchell’s chest and he lazily captured them, and brought them to him. “I think we should go hunting—”

  “I agree—”

  “Not there!” she exclaimed laughingly as he tossed the sheet over their heads and foraged downward. He nuzzled and made growling noises as Uma pulled his head upward.

  She sat up, pressing the sheet against her as Mitchell lay back on the pillow, his arms behind his head, the picture of a very satisfied male. He traced a finger over her bare shoulder and Uma recognized that sultry, hungry look. “I was going with Shelly, but you’ll do.”

  “Great. I’m second choice.” He eased upright slightly to nuzzle at her breasts, suckling through the material.

  Uma closed her eyes and let the warm, moist tugging zip through her body, lodging low in her. “Don’t distract me.”

  “You are the distraction.” Mitchell drew a line over her breasts and eased the material away.

  “I can’t think when you look at me like that.”

  “That’s the general idea, hot stuff.” There was that devastating, pure male grin flashing at her.

  She caught his hair and bent to give him a raw, open kiss. “I need your complete attention.”

  Mitchell sat up and looped his arms around her, laughing as he dragged her back on top of him. “What’s up?”

  She could feel what was up and quite ready. “Not that. We need to talk.”

  He withdrew just that wary bit, and she sensed his shields shimmering, warding off any talk of his mother.

  “Roman knows that I’m with you, and he’s watching my house, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Mitchell’s tone was flat and cautious.

  “Mitchell, listen. It’s just an idea, but we have to do something about whoever caused Lauren to be killed, and Rosalie, and the rest. I know this town better than anyone. You lived in the country and couldn’t know the hidden places in Madrid, but as girls, we loved them—they were our secrets. The old root cellars, used to keep jars and potatoes, and our protection against tornados. There is an old root cellar behind our house. There are doors on the outside of old houses that no one in Madrid ever locks. They lead to basements. And anyone can hide in the root cellars, the basements, and hide deep in the overgrown bushes. Shelly and I put together a map of Madrid,
and it is literally possible to cross from rooftop to rooftop through town. You can see everything that happens from on top of Mike’s bar. If someone knew this town well enough, they could come and go as they pleased.”

  Mitchell was on his feet, striding out of the bedroom. Wrapping the sheet around herself, Uma hurried after him. “What are you doing?”

  Nude, striding through the house in a gleaming flow of powerful muscles, Mitchell jerked open the back door and gave a low whistle. Several neighborhood dogs started barking, and Roman suddenly appeared from the shadows. “What’s up?”

  Mitchell turned to Uma. “Where is that root cellar?”

  He was standing there, absolutely naked and as casual as if he were dressed, plunging through a business meeting in which he intended to win. Uma struggled to answer his question. “In the backyard, out in the brush between the field and the old rose trellis.”

  “Get on it, Roman. There’s a passage that leads into the house.”

  “Holy—” Roman nodded curtly and slid into the darkness.

  Mitchell waited a moment, and then closed and locked the back door. He paced the length of the kitchen, his big body tense and coiled. Uma stood back, stunned at the picture of Mitchell, nude and scowling, haunches hollowed with muscles, broad shoulders narrowing down to his waist, his masculinity shadowed as he stalked back again, looming over her. “Whoever it is could have come into your house and killed you in your sleep. You should have told me.”

  “Are you with me, or not?”

  “As a backup to Shelly? Sure. Love to. Thanks for the invitation.”

  “Then get dressed and I’ll get some clothes from Lauren’s room. We were the same size. I don’t want to alarm the neighbors, but if the house has been watched, maybe whoever it is doing this has left something on the rose bushes that are everywhere. I thought we could check the neighborhood without upsetting anyone, then work our way to Rosalie’s house. I’d prefer that no one knew we were snooping through her house for clues.”

  Mitchell uttered a low curse, and Uma said, “No, it isn’t a dingbat idea. If you’re not up for it, Shelly will help me. Pearl is pretty shattered at the moment. I had to defend you against her.”