Arizona Heat

by Linda Lael Miller

  Greer nodded numbly. Even without seeing her face, I knew she’d disconnected. Tucker was no more real to her than the dead greeter at Walmart would have been.

  Tucker’s eyes connected with mine, held.

  “You see Detective Darroch out,” Jolie told me, briskly efficient. “I’m going to help Greer upstairs. She needs to rest.”

  I nodded, watched as Jolie got Greer on her feet and steered her toward the curving stairway.

  Tucker could have found his own way out, of course, but he waited for me.

  “We need to talk,” he said, repeating what had become his stock phrase, when we were outside, with the door closed behind us. “Your place? Or we can get some dinner somewhere.”

  I knew Gillian or Justin, or both of them, might be in the guesthouse, waiting for me to come back. I could have dealt with that, but adding Tucker to the mix was just a shade more than I could handle.

  “Dinner,” I said. “If you’re buying.”

  He grinned wanly, looking sort of like the old Tucker, but not quite. I wondered if it was the new job that had changed him, or sharing a house with Allison and the kids. I longed for the good old days, before I’d started seeing dead people, before—well, just before. “I’m buying,” he assured me. “Things a little slow in the detective business, Sheepshanks?”

  “I have to give back Greer’s retainer,” I admitted. He knew my sister had advanced me five thousand dollars to find out if Alex was being unfaithful, with another five grand to follow if I got the goods on him—I’d bragged about it. After all, it was my first case. Since I didn’t want to tap in to Nick’s insurance money, I’d probably have to hit the casino and work the slot machines for some ready cash. I have a talent for making them pay, but I’ll get to that later.

  We’d reached Tucker’s SUV, and he opened the passenger door for me, waited while I climbed in and snapped the seat belt in place.

  “I guess Pennington’s getting killed sort of threw a wrench in the works,” Tucker said. “But at least now you know he’s not cheating on your sister.”

  I didn’t answer until he’d rounded the SUV and gotten behind the wheel. Started the engine. “Isn’t it a little soon for you to be questioning her?” I asked tightly. “After all, they only found the body this morning.”

  “Write this down and hide it in the secret compartment of your magic detector ring, Moje,” Tucker answered, backing out onto the street. “It’s important to question everybody who might have been involved in a homicide, or have any knowledge that might be helpful for the case, before they’ve had a chance to think about it too much.”

  I folded my arms. “You did notice, didn’t you, that Greer has a cast on her arm? How do you figure she could have muscled Alex out into the desert and then shot him?”

  “She didn’t have to do all that,” Tucker pointed out, watching the road. “She could have hired somebody.”

  “So could the other Mrs. Pennington,” I said. I felt a pang. I’d have to call Beverly in a few days and offer my condolences. We weren’t friends, or even acquaintances, really, but she’d wanted to hire me. While my reasons for not showing up for lobster salad were obvious, and thus required no explanations or apologies, I wanted to acknowledge her in some way.

  “Scottsdale PD is on that one,” Tucker replied, “and Phoenix is checking the Biltmore angle.”

  “It’s a joint investigation, then?”

  “More like a cooperative effort,” he said. “Can we not talk about this?”

  “What do you want to talk about?” I asked, and maybe I sounded a little terse. “My sister’s estranged husband was found in the desert, strafed with bullets. A seven-year-old dead girl is following me around, and I don’t really know what she wants. Excuse me if things like that tend to distract me from the really important issues, like how you want to live with your ex-wife and boink me in your spare time.”

  Tucker whipped the SUV to the side of the road so suddenly that the tires screeched, and dust billowed all around us. I was glad the windows were rolled up, because I didn’t want to have to wash my hair again.

  “I am not living with Allison!” he snapped. Then he thrust out a sigh and shoved a hand through his hair. “Not the way you mean, anyway.”

  “Okay,” I said calmly. After all, one of us had to keep it together. “Let’s assume you’re telling the truth. You’re sleeping on the couch, or in one of the guest rooms. Except for holding Allison when she cries, because she’s so upset over what happened to Gillian—and who wouldn’t be?—you haven’t touched her. I can buy all that, Tucker. I really can. And I wouldn’t ask you to do any of this differently. But while you’ve got one foot in your marriage to Allison, you’re not putting your boots under my bed.”

  “Who’s going to hold you when you cry, Moje?”

  The question broadsided me, with an impact that literally knocked the breath from my lungs.

  Tucker leaned across the console, caught my face in both his hands and turned my head so I had to look at him. “Who, Moje?”

  Another shiver went through me, stronger than the one I’d felt a few minutes before, in Greer’s living room. Strong enough to rattle my bones. “Nobody,” I said bleakly.

  Someone swerved out around us, honked impatiently.

  We ignored them.

  And Tucker kissed me, gently at first, then with tongue.

  I know I should have pushed him away, but I didn’t. Because I’d cried a lot in my life, and just once, I wanted someone—Tucker—to hold me. To say everything would be all right, even if it was a lie. I just wanted to believe it for a little while, until I could get my equilibrium back.

  As Tucker deepened the kiss, fiery sensations shot through me, hardening my nipples, making me squirm on the car seat. We both had all our clothes on, but I was already expanding to take him in. I was moist and achy, and my nerve endings jumped and crackled under my skin. My skeleton began to melt from the heat.

  It was Tucker who drew back, still holding my face between his hands, and said, “My place is five minutes from here. Do you still want dinner?”

  I hesitated.

  He lowered one hand to cup my breast, rubbing the side of his thumb slowly back and forth across my nipple. “Moje?” he rasped.

  I whimpered, arched my back.

  Tucker dropped his hand from my breast to my thigh. Bunched the soft, skimpy fabric of my sundress and pushed it up. Caressed me through my panties before slipping his fingers inside to play with me.

  “This—is—entrapment,” I protested, dizzy.

  “I want to put my mouth where my fingers are now, Moje,” he told me. “And suck on you until you come. And then come again. And again—” He began a slow, swirling motion with his hand. My knees fell apart, and I thought about his lips and tongue on me, and I stiffened with a small, sharp orgasm, over too soon. Instead of satisfying me, it left me desperate for more.

  I gave in. “Your place,” I said.

  We were at his condo in Scottsdale in three minutes, not five, but we didn’t get any farther than the garage the first time. Tucker got out of the SUV, came around to my side, helped me down, since my knees were wobbly.

  I thought we’d go inside, but Tucker opened the rear door of the SUV, got me around the waist and hoisted me onto the backseat.

  “What—?” I began, need-fogged.

  He laid me down sideways on the seat, and then I knew what.

  He pushed my dress up around my waist, tore off my shoes and yanked down my panties. I was groaning by then, writhing on the seat like a first timer on prom night.

  Tucker set my heels on the seat, held my knees apart and started kissing my bare belly. His hands moved farther up under the dress, under my bra. It was going to be the full treatment, and the need I felt went way beyond the physical, into something much
deeper.

  I began to buck beneath him, my body making pleas I was too proud, even then, to put into words.

  I felt his breath on me and tried to raise myself to him, and he parted me then, and flicked me with the tip of his tongue. I gave a strangled shout of pleasure and spasmed.

  He chuckled. “Entrapment, huh?” he murmured hoarsely. “Can’t have that.”

  “Tucker,” I gasped.

  He rolled my swollen clitoris between his lips. Tongued it a little. “Hmm?” he asked.

  He made me tell him what I wanted. No, sirree, no entrapment here.

  I plunged my hands into his hair and pulled him to me, held him there.

  Tucker chuckled again, but then he got down to business in earnest. I moaned as he alternately teased and feasted, shouted when he brought me to the first raw orgasm.

  I hoped the neighbors weren’t home. I must have sounded like a she-wolf howling at the moon, but I couldn’t help it.

  While I lay shuddering in the sweet aftermath, I was vaguely aware of Tucker taking off my dress, and then my bra. I started to scoot backward on the seat, so he could climb into the SUV and take me, lover’s lane-style, but he stopped me. Brought me back to the edge, draped my limp legs over his shoulders and started nibbling at me again.

  I gasped his name. Grasped at his shoulders. Tried to tug him upward, on top of me.

  I needed him inside me; as shattering as that first real release had been, it hadn’t satisfied me. Nothing would, except the long, powerful strokes of what was probably pressing hard against the front of his jeans by then. The spill of warmth inside me when he finally let go.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  I came again.

  And then again.

  When he finally reached the point where he couldn’t wait any longer, I was dazed, everything inside me warm and soft and loose.

  I watched his face, his magnificent face, as he opened his jeans, freed himself, and I crooned in stupefied anticipation as he took me by the waist, sat me up and then lowered me onto him.

  I’d made love with Tucker a hundred times, but it was always a shock how big he was, how hot and hard. Wide awake, all my senses suddenly back on hyperalert, I wrapped my legs around his middle, clasped my hands behind his neck and leaned back slightly, ready for the ride.

  And what a ride it was.

  We started out slowly, every stroke something to be savored, but as the friction increased, so did our pace. Tucker pressed me back against the seat and slammed into me until, in the same moment, like two universes on a crash course, finally colliding, the whole order of the cosmos was changed.

  Tucker gave a low, hoarse cry.

  I clawed at him with both hands, drowning in fire.

  After the Big Bang, there were a few more implosions as I descended, convulsing against Tucker each time. When it was finally over, I fell back on the seat, utterly exhausted, and he lay half on top of me, gasping for breath.

  While we recovered, I wound my fingers in his hair and cried.

  Presently he lifted his head from my stomach. “What?” he asked gently.

  “You know what,” I told him.

  He sighed, lifted me again, set me on my feet on the cold garage floor, and gathered me into his arms. “It’ll be okay, Moje,” he told me in a ragged whisper, his breath like a warm breeze against my temple.

  It was a lie, of course.

  But I wanted—needed—to believe it, so I did.

  We shared a shower after that, soaping each other up and kissing and groaning a lot, but neither of us had the knee power to make love standing up, not after the episode in the garage.

  Tucker’s bed was neatly made when we got into it. Hours later, when something awakened me, the covers were on the floor and the pillows were in odd places.

  I realized the unwanted thing prodding at me, nudging me out of a semicomatose state, was a ringing telephone.

  With a muttered curse Tucker raised himself onto an elbow and groped for the cordless receiver on the nightstand. Stuck it to his ear.

  “Darroch,” he growled.

  Lying beside him, facing his back, I knew, even before his spine stiffened, that it was Allison calling. I couldn’t make out her words, just the hurried, slightly shrill tone of her voice.

  Tucker listened. I wanted to touch him, but I knew he’d flinch if I did, and I couldn’t have borne that.

  What he said to Allison surprised me, though. Big-time.

  “I’m with Mojo.”

  I blinked.

  Silence on Tucker’s end, a diatribe on Allison’s. I can’t describe the sound—it was more of a feeling, like a stripped live wire twisting and crackling on the ground in a pouring rain.

  “We’re not married anymore, Allison,” Tucker said when she gave him a chance.

  Something else from Allison.

  “No,” Tucker told her. “I will not put her on.” More listening, followed by a sigh.

  I got up, wishing my dress and underwear weren’t scattered all over Tucker’s garage. It’s hard to make a hasty exit gracefully when you’re nude and every ounce of tension has been driven out of you by three or four hours of intermittent, headboard-banging sex.

  “Mojo,” Tucker said when I got to the threshold of his bedroom. I heard him crash the receiver back onto the charger. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I stopped, turned. Actually, I hadn’t thought that far. I’d just wanted to get away. Now I remembered I didn’t have a car; I’d ridden with Tucker. I didn’t even have my purse, because I’d left it in the Volvo, which was still parked in Greer’s driveway.

  “To find my clothes?” I said.

  He threw back the tangled covers, sat up. “I’ll get them,” he replied, sounding resigned.

  I took a short shower while he was gone, and when I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, my dress and bra were lying on the bed, the dress carefully folded, my sandals beside them. The panties were missing in action, evidently.

  I put on what I had and followed the smell of cooking food into the kitchen.

  Tucker stood at the stove, barefoot, wearing only his jeans and stirring something in a saucepan. “Chicken pot pie,” he said, giving me a sidelong glance that made me remember certain peak moments in our lovemaking and blush a little. “The frozen variety. The microwave is broken, so I’m reduced to using the stove.”

  I wanted to say I wasn’t hungry, but the truth was, I was ravenous. Hungry enough to eat chunks of chicken pot pie warmed up in a saucepan, actually. It didn’t occur to me to ask why he didn’t use the regular oven—I had reason to know he was the innovative type.

  I came as far as the table, but didn’t sit down.

  “Why did you tell Allison you were with me?”

  “Because she needs to know.”

  “Why? Why does she need to know?” I could put myself in Allison’s place all too easily, I found. She had two children by Tucker. They’d been lovers, and built a life together.

  Tucker stopped stirring the mess of crust and veggies and chicken chunks and turned to look at me. “The divorce was Allison’s idea. I was a long time getting over it. Then I met you. Now, because she’s scared and she’s grieving, she thinks she wants me back. I want her to know it isn’t going to happen, Moje.”

  I pulled back a chair, fell into it. “Where are my panties?” I asked.

  Tucker grinned. “Damned if I know,” he said. “I searched the garage, but they’re gone.”

  I blushed, imagining some meter reader, or the kid who mowed Tucker’s little patch of lawn, finding them behind a dusty box.

  Tucker’s grin broadened. “You won’t need them anyway,” he told me.

  “Braggart,” I said.

  He took the food
off the burner, scraped heaps of the stuff onto two plates and got out a couple of forks.

  The concoction looked bad, but it tasted all right. We ate in silence for a while.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who is grocery challenged,” I said, because I was starting to feel really embarrassed about the way I’d carried on, serving myself up like a meal in the backseat of his car, for pity’s sake. And when I’m embarrassed, I chatter.

  “I was going to make scrambled eggs,” Tucker said, his green eyes twinkling, “but I was afraid one of them might hatch.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “for that image.”

  He set down his fork. Reached out to caress my cheek, the gesture so gentle that it made my throat hurt. “As soon as school lets out,” he said, “Allison’s taking the kids to Tulsa for a month, to visit her folks. Then I can move back here. By the time they get home, Allison should have regained some of her perspective, and Daisy and Danny will have calmed down, too.”

  I closed my eyes, opened them again. Tried to smile. “Or not,” I said.

  Tucker closed his hand over mine. Squeezed. “I know things seem pretty impossible right now,” he said quietly. “But I—care about you, Moje. Have a little faith, will you?”

  He cared about me.

  Had he been about to say he loved me?

  If he had, I would have bolted, and he probably knew it.

  “You still care about Allison, too,” I said.

  “And you still care about Nick,” Tucker replied.

  “I do not,” I protested. “Nick and I had been divorced for a long time when he was killed. I was so over him.”

  “Until he came back and haunted you. I saw your face when he did the final fade-out, Moje, and I know you miss him.”

  I wanted to say it wasn’t so, but it was. I just hadn’t realized that until Tucker brought it up.

  “It’s okay,” Tucker said, and he sounded as though he meant it.