There was one person who would have had a better opportunity than anyone else to orchestrate events, creating the parallels pointed out by Aunt Beck.
There was a single man who had the best possible reason for influencing public opinion, making her appear both immoral and guilty of murder.
The reason was money.
The man was Reid.
Cammie didn't go home, but turned her car toward the Fort. She would have no rest until the maddening suspicions were answered. And if the answers soothed her heart, there were things Reid should know about Lavinia and Justin.
No one answered the bell. She left the front door and rounded the big log house, to see if Reid's Jeep was in the garage. It was then that she noticed the drift of smoke in the air, hanging in a gray-blue veil touched with lavender from the evening twilight.
She stood still, gazing around her. The house seemed all right, as did the garage with its shop addition. The thickest smoke haze seemed to be coming from down a slope toward the back of the property, near the woods. With a frown between her brows, Cammie moved in that direction.
The air was cool, yet with currents of balmy warmth that was the last remnants of the sun's heat wafting from the earth. In the quiet, insects and tree frogs sang their spring songs. The woods were shadowed with the approach of darkness. She breathed in the scents of honeysuckle and damp earth and green growing things, and also the acrid tang of smoke. It was almost enough to bring peace. Almost.
She saw the red heart of fire first. It was a fairly large blaze, burning with resolute brightness. The ground around it had been raked clean to prevent sparks and embers from escaping. A man moved toward it from the shadows at the wood's edge, tossing an armful of dried limbs and green brush onto the flames. As it leaped and crackled, snapping sparks toward the sky, Reid's face and bare arms and chest reflected the yellow-orange light with a bronze sheen.
He was clearing the tangle of undergrowth at the edge of the tree line that crowded the Fort. An axe and a small chain saw lay nearby. She should have known he would be in control of whatever was in progress there.
Her steps easier, she moved forward until she stood within the golden-red nimbus of the firelight. She halted, waiting.
“I thought,” he said in tones laced with half-exasperated amusement as he reached for another load of brush without looking at her, “that we were supposed to act sensible and not be seen together. If I had known you were coming, I'd have cleaned up.”
She had almost forgotten, or rather, it had been driven from her mind by other things. “I won't stay long. I just needed to talk to you.”
“I'm not complaining.” He made a gesture with one arm toward the cleared space behind him. As she moved in that direction, he dumped the brush he held on the fire, then stepped to where his shirt hung on a tree limb. Shaking it out, he spread it on the ground under a great pine a few feet inside the tree line. When she moved in nearer, he said, “We could walk back up to the house, but I should stick close to the fire until it burns down a bit.”
“Won't you be cool?” She allowed her gaze to rest an instant on the width of his chest, with the musculature burnished with the faint sheen of perspiration and the fine mat of curling gold hair tipped red with firelight.
His smile was rueful as he met her gaze. “I've been working,” he said. “Besides…”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He avoided looking at her as he touched her arm briefly, indicating she should take the seat he had made for her. As he dropped down on his heels beside her, he kept a little space between them, not enough to be obvious, but enough that there was no chance of an accidental touch.
He had meant that she warmed him. It was nice to know, since she felt the physical attraction between them like the low vibration of an electrical charge. Dragging her mind away, she explained the things Aunt Beck had told her, then waited for what he would say.
“She's a smart old lady.” His tone was without inflection.
“Yes, but is she right?”
He picked up a dead twig, breaking off tiny pieces and dropping them. He glanced up at the fire then back at what he was doing with a wide, unseeing gaze. “How do you expect me to answer that, Cammie? I don't know.”
Nor did she. Why had she come, then?
Because she couldn't stay away. Because she refused to allow others to dictate to her. Because she had an insuppressible urge to live dangerously since she had always been so safe.
All these, and more.
What she wanted, she saw, was reassurance rather than answers. And she was not sure that could come from words, after all.
There was a piece of trash in his hair, a curling dead leaf. She reached up to flick it away, then trailed her fingertips through the fine blond strands above his ear, which were damp and darkened by perspiration. The ache of longing she felt was intense, almost painful, though it was not possible to tell whether it was physical or only emotional.
That he had some understanding of what drove her was plain in his face. He caught her hand, pressing a quick kiss to the fingers before touching them to his chest. Beneath the heated skin, she felt the heavy throb of his heart. “I'd like to hold you,” he said on a husky note, “but I'm too dirty.”
There was a fine dust of ash across the width of his shoulders, and he smelled of wood smoke and healthy, warm male. But the freshness of the outdoors and fresh-cut oak and new grass also clung to him like natural aphrodisiacs.
“I don't mind,” she said, and spread her fingers wide over his chest, absorbing his heat and the feel of him as she leaned to offer her mouth for his kiss.
The contact was brief, yet tingling. He drew away with a smile. “You taste like tea and cake. I could eat you in a single bite.”
“Do,” she murmured, and smoothed her hand across his collarbone to his shoulder, clasping, drawing him to her.
He came willingly, settling to the ground beside her. There was more than humor in his voice as he warned, “Careful. We have some unfinished business in a spot like this.”
“Several spots like this,” she agreed, thinking of the wild attraction that had sprung between them that first evening when she ran away from Keith, and later, when she had found him in the woods behind her house and they sat talking in the dark. They were fully as memorable as the afternoon they had been discovered.
“You, too?” he said on a low laugh as he reached to span her waist with his large hand. “What a waste.”
“Don't waste this time,” she whispered, and turned against him, fitting her body into his, wanting, needing, the touch of him along its entire length, needing to feel his strength against her.
He came to her, rolling her to her back, giving her what she needed. As she felt his hard maleness, his weight, desire spiraled up within her in hot coils. Refusing to think, avoiding all doubt, she buried her face in his shoulder, holding him with tight, desperate hands, wrapping her legs around his with taut muscles. The yearning for him to be everything she thought him, everything she needed, was a hollow emptiness at the center of her being that only he could fill.
Concern threaded his voice as he whispered, “Cammie, what is it?”
“Nothing, everything. Oh, Reid — just kiss me please, and don't stop. Don't ever stop.”
She felt his hesitation, knew he realized the suspicion she was trying to escape. Felt, too, the instant that his angry despair turned to passion. Then he lifted his weight from her to lie with his broad shoulders blocking the fading light, and also the view from the Fort.
His hands upon her were hard and sure. He knew her now, knew the caresses that drove her mad, the touch that turned her bones to jelly and left her mindless and pliant under him.
She was the same. She knew how to tease and torment him, how to drive him to the last, gasping edge of control.
He pushed his hand under the denim skirt she wore with a periwinkle cotton sweater, resting his hand on the soft mound he found there. Following its crease with firm
strokes of his long fingers, he inserted a knee between her legs, opening them wider, extending his access. She gave way with consummate grace, gasping with the shock of pleasure as he slid a finger under the elastic of her panties to seek more perfect contact.
She dipped her head, finding the buried coin of his pap, nipping it, laving it with her tongue, suckling. At the same time, she wrenched the copper button of his jeans from its hole and slid the zipper down. Pushing under his briefs without ceremony, she grasped the heated firmness of him, tugging, rubbing, inciting.
He pressed a finger into her hot, moist softness. Convulsions of fierce pleasure fluttered her abdomen muscles, and she clenched around the finger, which probed and aroused. He ground the heel of his hand against her with slow, steady intent.
She lifted her head. He took her parted lips, tasting them with laps of his tongue, thrusting between them with tender friction that made them tingle with sensitivity. He pressed deeper, invading, retreating in a firm, sure double rhythm that stimulated and promised.
A soft moan sounded in her throat as heated wetness seeped from her, and she lifted her hips, fitting herself more firmly into his hand. He made a rumbling sound of rich satisfaction in his throat. Leaving her mouth, he bent his head to take the nipple of her breast between his teeth, searing it with his hot breath through layers of cotton and silk.
Suddenly, it was too much and not enough. They stripped impeding clothing away, leaving what did not matter. Hot and hard, heated and giving, they came together in fluid, interlocking connection. He twisted his hips, reaching deeper, driving into the beating core of her. She opened to her greatest depth, taking him to the exquisitely tender center of her innermost self.
It was a passionate trial by combat, a fury of competitive ecstasy, of supplicating lust, an anguished craving to make right by might. Flesh against flesh, they drove each other in an unrelenting quest for answers that remained elusive. Yet it was a splendid clash, a fine meshing of mind and spirit with the melding of bodies.
It was glory. It was sensuality incarnate. It was an entanglement from which there was no surcease, no surrender.
And no defeat.
18
CAMMIE WAS COMFORTED YET DEPRESSED as she drove away from the Fort. She had made love to Reid, and accepted the love he made to her, as if there were no tomorrow. But there was always a tomorrow.
Maybe that's what she was afraid of: she didn't want tomorrow to come.
She hadn't wanted to leave. Reid had insisted. He thought it best, for her protection. As if it mattered.
He had done his job of protecting her too well. She no longer felt safe unless he was near.
What did that say for her common sense?
She still hadn't got a straight answer from him about Janet Baylor. Fear, that was what kept her from pressing the issue. What would she do if he confessed to getting the paralegal out of town, either through threat or bribery?
Then there was Keith. She was haunted by images of how terrified he must have been when he knew he was going to die. Courage had never been his long suit; he would have begged to live. Or maybe not; it was impossible to judge, and more than a little presumptuous.
The headlights appeared in her rearview mirror almost immediately after she left the private road leading to Reid's house. Whoever was in the car came on at speed, moving in close behind her. They hung on her back bumper.
Tailgating of that kind was unsafe anywhere, but out here on the dark and winding game reserve road, with its many blind curves and deer crossings, it was downright homicidal. There was no excuse for it; the chances of being able to pass were nil. It had to be a joyriding idiot, or else some teenager showing off for his friends or some girl he had brought out into the woods.
Cammie tried increasing her speed. It didn't help; the other car clung like a burr. She tapped her brake pedal a couple of times. The car behind her fell back for an instant, then came on again.
It was a relief when the main highway to Greenley appeared ahead of her and she turned on it. She expected her tailgater to pull out to pass at the first empty stretch of road. She slowed and pulled over closer to the shoulder to make it easier.
It didn't happen. The other car barreled along behind her, almost touching her back bumper. She speeded up again.
For the first time, fear brushed her. There seemed to be something personal in the high-speed hazing. Who would do such a thing? The possibilities were wide, if she thought about it. It could be the same person who had killed Keith. Or it might be any one of the dozens of people who resented her opposition to mill expansion. She held her speed steady while she tried to decide what to do.
She realized after an instant that there was no need to panic. The outskirts of Greenley, with its streetlights and business signs, would be showing up any second. She would be able to see whoever was back there then. If they did not drop farther behind her, there would be too much chance of being recognized.
Unless the driver decided to fall back from easy view, then follow her home after she passed through Greenley.
The big convenience store and truck stop at the edge of town was lit up like an airport at Christmas. Cammie flipped up her signal blinker, hit the brake, and wheeled into the entranceway. Rocketing between the gas pumps and the front door, she came to a halt.
Behind her there was the shriek of brakes, then the other car shot around the gas pumps on the far side, swung in a tight curve and slammed to a stop. The driver wrenched himself from behind the wheel and swung in her direction.
Cammie was half out of her car on her way toward the store door when she saw who had been driving the other car.
Gordon Hutton.
Anger swept through her with the force of a wildfire in dry woods. She didn't wait for her brother-in-law to reach her, but stalked toward him. “What in the world do you think you're doing? You could have killed us both!”
“I was trying to chase you down,” Gordon said with a sneer on his round face. “I've been needing to talk to you for days, while you've been flying high, all over the country. I saw you leaving Sayers's place just now and decided to stick to your tail till you stopped.”
“You could have called to set up a meeting,” Cammie said in cold distaste.
“I've left a half-dozen messages with your housekeeper, for what good it did me. It's my belief she only passes on what she wants you to know.”
Cammie had not checked with Persephone, though she saw no reason to tell him so. “So what did you want?”
He moved closer, curling his big, too-white hands into fists. The fumes of bourbon wafted toward her along with stale body odor and the sickly, bitter sweetness of some cheap men's cologne. It was all Cammie could do not to take a step back, if only for the fresher air.
“It's about time,” he said, “that we come to an understanding, now that you've got your hands on a piece of the mill. Your meddling with the sale got my goat before, but I was willing to overlook it because I knew it was a silly female way of getting back at Keith over the divorce business. Now I want it stopped.”
The contempt in his voice was enraging; his calm assumption that he could tell her what to do destroyed any hope he might have had of persuading her to listen to him. With chill disdain in her eyes, she said, “This may come as a shock to you, Gordon, but I've never been particularly interested in what you want.”
“Bitch,” he said, and clamped his teeth together so hard his jowls shook. “You always were selfish, never gave a damn about anybody or anything. It's no wonder Keith had to leave home to find the kind of woman he needed.”
Cammie wondered, for a bare instant, if he was right, if her lack of caring had driven Keith away. Then memory and sanity returned. Her smile was grim. “You can turn that around, you know. Maybe I learned to care about myself because no one else ever did.”
“That's a crock. Half the men in this town have been drooling over you for ages. And you know it.”
There was something in his flesh
y face that made her skin crawl. It wasn't the first time she'd noticed it, though it was the first that she had acknowledged its source. Gordon Hutton coveted his brother's wife; he always had. She lifted her chin as she answered, “It isn't the same thing.”
He snorted. “You've solved your little problem, though, haven't you? You've got Sayers where you want him — in your favorite position, on his knees.”
Keith had been a sullen drunk. Gordon, it seemed, turned crude when he had too much. Alcohol didn't change character, it only brought out traits usually kept hidden. The results could be instructive.
“I don't have to listen to this,” she said, distaste congealing on her features in the blue-white fluorescent light from inside the convenience store. “If you want to discuss the mill, call Fred Mawley when you're sober. I'll meet with you in his office.”
Gordon's eyes widened in shock. “Why, you—”
Cammie didn't stay to listen. Ducking into her car, she slammed the door and put the Cadillac in gear. She reversed in a wide, fast swing, then pulled away.
The squeal of tires behind her told her Gordon was coming after her again. That he actually thought he could get away with harassing her like this turned her anger into a clear-headed rage she had felt only a few times in her life. She wasn't going to stop again for him. But neither was she going to run away. And if he had the gall to follow her all the way to Evergreen, Keith's brother just might hear a few home truths he would prefer not to know.
Gordon's headlights still glared in her car mirrors when she turned into the drive. Though she parked in the garage, she thought he was going to ram into the Cadillac before she could get out of it.
He piled out of his own vehicle and stood blocking her way as she stalked from the dark garage interior. Gordon's stumplike legs were spread and he had his hands on his hips.
Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) Page 27