by Sandra Owens
She snuggled her face into her pillow. “Mawh wah.”
“Is that so?” I slipped my fingers between her legs and then inside her panties. It only took a few minutes of playing with her before she was wet and ready. She turned her face toward me, peeking at me with one eye half open.
“You got something in mind this morning, Dylan?”
“I sure do. Panties off.” She lifted her sexy ass so I could pull them down. “Sorry I fell asleep on you last night.”
She gave me a sleepy smile. “That’s okay. I think you’re about to make it up to me.”
“I’m going to do my best. Turn over on your side with your back to me.” She pushed her body against me, and I put my hand on her hip as I slid into her. “I wish you could be me for a few minutes so you’d know how good it feels to be inside you.”
“I don’t think it could possibly be better than how I’m feeling.”
Maybe, but I didn’t think so. She took my hand and moved it to her breast. I buried my face against her neck and breathed in her scent as I made love to her. There was no rush to reach the end, no need for hard and fast. That was what I loved about morning sex, the softness of it.
“Dylan,” she whispered.
That was it, just my name spoken softly as she came. It was sexy as hell, and I let go, climaxing with her. I kissed her neck, holding her close. She fell back to sleep, and lying there next to her, I wondered if I liked her in my bed a little too much. She had plans that didn’t include me, and I didn’t want to be left behind, missing her. One woman I’d loved had already left me, and I had no desire to lose another.
The trick was to not fall in love with Jenny, and I’d thought I could guard my heart against that happening. Now I wasn’t so sure I could do that if I kept seeing her.
Disturbed by my thoughts, I slipped out of bed. After dressing, I took Daisy for a long walk. I honestly didn’t know what I wanted to do about Jenny. I liked being with her. She was funny and caring, and then there was the sex. We were good together, whether we were going at it like frenzied got-to-have-it-right-now bunnies or like the sensual half-asleep coupling this morning.
“What should I do, Daisy?” She paused in sniffing a bush to look up at me, gave me what appeared to be a doggie shrug, then went back to sniffing things that were more interesting than my girl problems.
We were on a nature path that circled my complex. It took a good twenty minutes to walk it, and we were five minutes from making it back to where we’d started when Daisy growled. Her fur rose in a razor-sharp line down her back, and she stepped in front of me, forcing me to stop.
“What’s wrong, girl?” The dog’s behavior was scaring me, and I regretted that I hadn’t brought my gun with me. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Daisy let out another growl as she pushed against me, forcing me to step back.
Then I heard it. A sinister shhhhhhhhhh sound, something like dried beans being furiously shaken in a paper cup. The leaves in the path two feet from where we’d been moved, and the pointed head of a snake lifted, his tongue flickering in the air. Behind him his tail rose, the rattlers making their get-away-from-me-or-you’ll-die warning. The middle part of the body was still hidden by the leaves, but the head was large and it looked to me like it was a big, full-grown bastard.
“Fuck me,” I whispered. Daisy pushed me back again, and I gladly let her. Two more steps and I would have gotten way more up close and personal with a snake than I ever wanted to be. Having grown up in a big city, the only snakes I’d ever seen had been in a zoo behind glass. I hadn’t even liked them then, and I sure as hell didn’t like having a close encounter with one.
Daisy and I kept backing away. The snake slithered out from under the leaves, and I estimated it to be a good four to five feet long. It disappeared into the brush, leaving me with a pounding heart. As soon as it was gone, Daisy started back down the path. I debated going back the way we’d come, but we were almost to the end. Daisy didn’t seem concerned, so I’d trust her instincts, especially since she’d kept me from ending up in the hospital.
“Good girl, Daisy.” I scratched around her ears, where she loved it the most, making her feathery tail wag. We finished our walk with no further deadly encounters. As we emerged from the woods, I looked up to see Jenny standing on my balcony, watching us. She smiled and waved, and all I could think about was getting her back into bed.
“A timber rattler,” Gene Lanier said. “They’re common in this area.”
We were sitting in my office that afternoon, going over the Gertie Jansen case. I’d told him about my early morning encounter, and didn’t at all like hearing timber rattlers were common. Daisy and I liked that path, but I didn’t care for meeting up with another snake.
“All I know is that’s the last time I’ll walk in the woods without my gun.” I glanced at Daisy, curled up in her dog bed in the corner of my office. She was my hero of the day, and I’d given her extra treats when we’d gotten inside my place, and then I’d sweet-talked Jenny back into bed.
“People don’t usually smile when talking about rattlesnakes, Chief.”
Thinking of loving on Jenny tended to make me smile, but I wasn’t about to share that. “So you don’t think the prosecutor’s going to press charges against Gertie?” I hoped not.
“That’s the vibe I’m getting.” Gene stood and closed the door. “Moody’s raising all kinds of stink about Gertie not already being in jail.”
“Screw Moody. He’s in my doghouse for too many things to count.”
“I stopped by Gertie’s on my way home last night,” Gene said. “The guilt of what she did is eating her up.”
“The man about killed her. She was justified in doing what she had to do to protect herself.” From what we’d learned, Jansen had beat on his wife on a regular basis. I’d seen too many battered women in my line of work who’d lost their lives because they’d let a man treat them like a punching bag. As far as I was concerned, good for Gertie Jansen.
“I’ve made an appointment for her with a therapist who specializes in helping battered women. My wife’s taking her this afternoon.”
“You’re a good man, Gene.” Truthfully, other than Jansen and Moody, I had a pretty damn good police force. Jansen’s fate I wouldn’t have wished for, but I planned to do whatever I could to see that his wife stayed out of prison and got the help she needed.
Gene shrugged as if he’d not done anything out of the ordinary. “She was my babysitter, so I’ve known her a long time. She should have left Jansen years ago.”
“Unfortunately that’s too often the case where battered women are concerned.”
“Sadly true. At least we settled a long-running dispute yesterday, so not every situation turns out to be tragic.”
I eyed him with a smirk. “I was pretty impressed with your tree-climbing skills.”
His cheeks turned pink. “How much to keep that to yourself, Chief?”
“There’s not enough money in the world.” I chuckled when he narrowed his eyes. “Besides, Hamburger Harry and Granny witnessed your ass hanging out of your torn pants, so it’s not just me you have to worry about.” I had no intention of repeating the story—other than to Jenny, and I trusted her not to spread it around.
“Won’t matter if you do.” He let out a sigh. “Hamburger’s a storyteller. He’s probably already put his own spin on it and telling anyone who’ll listen.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, no one will hear it from me. If those dogs had come after me, I would’ve been up that tree with you.”
My phone buzzed, Kim Payton’s name coming up on the screen. The information my officer gave me wasn’t surprising. “Stephanie Jenkins tested twice the legal limit,” I told Gene after disconnecting.
“I figured she would. How do you want to handle it?”
This was the touchiest of the situations we had going on. “We’re going to have to charge her with a DUI, of course. Let me talk to the mayor first, tell him what’s goin
g to happen.” Jim John definitely wasn’t going to be happy.
What I’d rather do was find Jenny, take her back to my place, and lock the door against the world for at least a week. Even that wouldn’t be enough time with her, though. Gene left, and I swiveled my chair to face the window, my gaze on the mountains rising up behind the town. I loved it here, wanted to make a home here, a wife, kids, all that jazz.
If Jenny weren’t leaving soon, I’d want to explore that possibility with her. But she was, and already there was going to be a small hole in my heart that she was going to leave behind. I think if I asked her to stay, she would consider it, but I wouldn’t. If she did, a year from now, ten years, or twenty, she’d regret not following her dream. Nor would I tell her I’d wait for her. She needed to go, free of any baggage. If she met someone on her travels and fell in love, I wouldn’t have her feeling guilty over me.
I had two choices. Stop seeing her or make sure I guarded my heart. Since I didn’t want to stop seeing her, guard my heart it was.
29
~ Jenny ~
I licked my candied apple, glancing up when Dylan groaned. “What?”
“It’s the way you close your eyes when your tongue slips out and licks that thing.” He leaned his mouth to my ear. “Puts dirty pictures in my mind.”
“Men.” I rolled my eyes.
He chuckled, bumping my shoulder. “We can’t help ourselves.”
We were at our town’s annual Christmas Festival. Every year on the last weekend in November, we blocked off the main street of town. Artisans and food vendors set up tents, and the merchants decorated their storefronts for the Christmas season. We kicked it off on Saturday morning with a parade, which delivered Santa to his throne, and ended the festivities Sunday night by lighting the large tree in front of town hall.
Usually it was cold and everyone would be bundled up, drinking hot cider. But not this year. We’d only reached sweater weather temps. A cold front was headed our way, though, and I looked forward to it finally feeling like Christmas.
We drew thousands to the event, some from as far away as Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Dylan had been the officer in charge yesterday, but today he was playing tourist. Even so, his eyes were constantly scanning the crowd, watching for trouble. We’d been doing the festival for twenty-three years now and had never had a problem. I guess his Chicago cop’s mind was used to always being on alert.
We crossed paths with one of his officers, and Dylan stopped to talk to him. I’d eaten my candied apple down to the core and looked around for a garbage can. My gaze fell on a man standing at the corner of a nearby tent, staring at Dylan. Something about the expression on his face caught my attention. My first thought was, if looks could kill… Disturbed by the hatred I saw in the man’s eyes, I tugged on Dylan’s sleeve.
I glanced up at him. “Do you know that guy over there?”
“Where?”
When I turned back, the man was gone. I shrugged, figuring I’d imagined he was glaring at Dylan in particular. “He’s gone. Let’s go see how much money Autumn talked Brian into spending on that carved herd of horses.” They’d come with us but had stopped to talk to an artist about doing a special-order wood piece for their new home. Still disturbed by what I might or might not have seen, I kept my eye out for the man but didn’t see him again. It had to have been my imagination.
Spending the day at Dylan’s side, seeing him at work even when he wasn’t supposed to be working, gave me new insights into the man. It seemed he’d already learned the names of most of Blue Ridge Valley’s residents, and he stopped to talk to each one when we came across them, asking about their kids or grandchildren or even their dog.
Everyone had apparently heard about Daisy, the new police dog, and wanted to know where she was. Unsure how she’d react to crowds, Dylan had left her home. That seemed to be a disappointment to all those wanting to meet her.
It was obvious that the town loved their new police chief. As for me being with him, I was getting mixed reactions. No one said anything, but I was good at reading people’s faces. By the stink eye the single women gave me, they didn’t like that he’d been claimed. I didn’t blame them. What they didn’t know was that they’d have their chance with him once I was gone. That made me want to gouge their eyes out.
“How do you already know everyone’s names and stuff about them?” I asked after a while.
He slung an arm around my shoulder, tugging me closer. “Homework, Red. I’ve done my homework.”
“Well, I for one am impressed.”
“Come over tonight after you get off, and I’ll really impress you.” He peered down at me and waggled his eyebrows, making me laugh.
Too soon it was time for me to go home and get ready to go to work. Dylan walked me to my car, as I’d driven so he could stick around and keep an eye on things. He backed me up to the door, then gave me a searing kiss.
“Will I see you tonight?” he asked when we came up for air.
I put my hand on his jaw. “Looking forward to it.”
He pressed his face against my palm. “Not as much as me.”
I walked out of Dylan’s shower, wearing nothing but a towel. He wasn’t in the bedroom, so I went looking for my sexy man. I found him in the living room, sitting in a leather chair, wearing nothing but the black lounge pants I loved on him.
“Come here, Red.”
“Give me one good reason.”
He cocked a brow, spread his legs, and pointed between them.
I cocked a brow right back at him. “Are you saying there’s something between your legs I might be interested in?”
He smirked. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
Truth. I walked halfway to him, then stopped and dropped the towel, swallowing my own smirk when his breath hitched. Power over a man was a heady thing, and right now, based on how hard he was gripping the arms of his chair and by the heat shimmering in his eyes, I had the power.
“Jenny Girl,” he murmured when I stepped between his legs.
He put his hands on my thighs, pressing his fingers into my skin. His touch, the heat seeping into my pores where Dylan’s palms pressed against me, the way he looked at me… All of it almost brought me to my knees. I didn’t love him. I didn’t.
How many times had I told myself there wasn’t a man in the world who could keep me from making Natalie’s and my dream come true? Not even this man. I did not love him. But I could someday. If he was still around when I came back.
Words tumbled from my mind to the back of my teeth, words that would beg him to wait for me. I somehow managed to stop them. It wouldn’t be fair to ask such a thing from this beautiful man who deserved more than a promise that I’d return to him someday.
Dylan couldn’t know that all he’d probably have to do to get me to stay was ask. I blinked away the tears that were burning my eyes, forcing a smile. “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” I said, doing my best to imitate Mae West’s voice in whatever that movie was I’d watched with Autumn.
“It’s definitely not a gun.” Dylan pulled me onto his lap. “Did you have fun today?”
“Yes.” He settled one hand under my hair on the back of my neck while his fingers caressed my breasts, moving from one to the other. It was impossible to think when he touched me like that. I settled against him, resting my head on his shoulder.
His eyes deepened to a dark, shimmering brown. “You’re so damn gorgeous, Jenny Girl.”
“You’re not so bad yourself, Chief.”
He leaned toward me, melding our mouths.
His kiss was hot and possessive, and after a few minutes he pulled away, staring at me. It seemed as if he wanted to say something, but then he gave a little shake of his head before standing with me still in his arms. He carried me into his bedroom and made the sweetest love to me, as if I were a precious treasure.
When he fell asleep, I lay there, listening to him breathe. Although I
rarely allowed myself to think of the night Natalie died, I let the memory come back. I needed to do it to strengthen my resolve to keep my promise to her.
I knew the end was close, and I spent every second with my twin. I’d crawl in bed with her at night and hold her in my arms. Sometimes we’d cry, other times we’d talk of our dream to travel as soon as she was well. Although I knew better, I desperately wanted her to believe she would. To have hope for a future.
“When we get to Scotland, I want to sneak into a haunted castle,” I said one night, snuggling in bed with her.
“Who’s haunting it?” she asked.
“A sexy, kilt-wearing Highlander lost in time, trying to find his lover. He stands on the castle wall every evening playing his sad song on his bagpipes, hoping she will hear and come to him.” I held a cup of hot chocolate to her lips, letting her sip. “The minute he sees you, though, he’ll forget all about her.”
She laughed, then began to choke. I scooted behind her and massaged her back and shoulders. I’d gotten certified soon after we’d learned she was sick so I would know how to ease the pain in her failing body with soothing massages. “Take a deep breath,” I whispered, moving my hands to her head and neck.
“Maybe we can be ghosts together, him and I.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn of tears. “No, he’s going to take you back in time with him, where you’ll become a hearty Highland lass.”
“Jenn?”
“Yeah?” I didn’t like the sadness I heard in her voice.
“Promise me you’ll travel the world for me, see all the things we’ve talked about. Promise you’ll make our dream come true.”
I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her back against my chest. “I swear it, Nat. I’ll make our dream come true if you’ll promise you’ll be with me.”
“I swear it,” she said. “We’re a part of each other. No matter what happens, I’ll always be with you. You’ll feel my spirit with you in all those places you’re going to go. I just know it.”