Her eyes shone with sadness. “I know, son, but you have to understand…a woman like Emberlyn…what she’s been through–”
“You know?”
“Her grandmother had filled me in over the years,” she said.
I nodded. “She’s been hurt so much. She’s had enough.”
“She’s tough, Shane. After what she’s experienced, I suspect she needs to be in control of major decisions.” She snorted. “She may not always make the right one—case in point, leaving you in the night—but that’s something you both can work on, if you want it to work. Compromise, Shane. It’s something you haven’t had to do with a partner in years. Maybe if you learn to hear her out, you’d both be better equipped to make decisions that’ll benefit the both of you.”
I chuckled. “I think I’ve already figured that much out.”
“There might still be hope for you yet, then,” Mom said. “Your father never really clued in, God rest his soul. Oh, he let me think I had control at times, but I’ve always suspected he had a hidden motive that met his own wants in the end.”
I grinned. That really did sound like Dad.
Grabbing hold of my mother’s shoulders, I stared into her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled, then leaned up to kiss my cheek. “Now give me that towel and go make things right.” Yanking the thing from my hand, she snapped it playfully at me once she’d stepped away.
Just as I was about to exit the kitchen, I turned and watched as my mother went back to her task, mumbling to herself in a satisfied fashion about sons needing their mothers to set them straight, no matter how old they were.
Wasn’t that the truth!
Chapter 30
Emberlyn
Drowsy from sleep, the blurry vision of a man coming into my room had me bolting to a sitting position.
Had it not been for the bedside lamp still being on, I’m sure I would have been halfway to a coronary at this point.
“Shane?” I croaked, wiping the sleep out of my eyes.
“I have something for you,” he whispered.
Looking at the bedside clock, it was just after midnight.
“Shane, it’s late,” I yawned. “Can’t we do this tomorrow?” That’s when I noticed the familiar looking file in his hand. Nodding to it, I asked, “What’s that?”
“Something I believe you can help me with,” he said, as he took a seat on the edge of the mattress next to my hip. “I spoke with Will, and we both agree that we could use your help with that photomo…Whatever it is you said it was.”
“Mosaic,” I supplied.
“Yeah, that thing,” he said, then licked his lips, his eyes bored into mine. “I’m sorry, Em. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to what you had to say before shutting you down; and I’m even sorrier for treating you like you couldn’t handle yourself after we got back from the station. You did more than prove that you could at the range earlier.” I took the file from him, dropped it on my bedside table, then reached for his hands. “You’re so strong, but you’ve been doing it alone for so long that I simply wanted to be of use to you.”
“Shane–”
“And I’m sorry for eavesdropping on you and Rosie too, even though I’m not really sorry I heard the end of that conversation, despite getting busted like a novice on his first case,” he grinned.
It was so soon; maybe too soon, but after being overheard earlier, it’s not like I couldn’t fess up to my feelings. Hell, they’d become clear during my talk with Lana Rose earlier, but the fact that he’d come to me—in the middle of the night—and was taking the help I wanted to hand out, without him knowing that this was exactly what I’d been offering to do for him…I was seeing things that much clearer.
We’re a team.
Team.
Unit.
Family…
“I do,” I croaked.
Shane’s brows furrowed. “Huh?”
“L-love you.”
“I’m kind of easy to love, aren’t I?” he smirked.
Snorting a short laugh, I playfully tried to smack him.
He blocked my efforts, gripping both my wrists before throwing his weight forward to force me onto my back, where he came to hover over me with that sure-of-himself grin of his.
“What’s funny is I told Lana Rose the same thing earlier,” I studied his expression, “that she was easy to love, I mean.”
His eyes warmed. “You did?”
“Mmhmm.”
His grip squeezed my wrists as his face leaned forward. “Em?”
“Hmm?”
Lips rubbed lightly over mine before pulling back. “I…”
My lids had drifted shut when I thought he’d deepen his kiss, but when he didn’t, I opened my eyes.
“For the record, I feel the same way.”
His kiss may have stolen my breath, but his words sealed the deal and stole my heart; even if he didn’t quite come out and say the exact words.
Shane
I woke to a warm body pressed up against my front, my arms wrapped around said form, one hand flat against satin skin, the other cupping a mound that all of a sudden had my mouth watering to taste.
“Morning,” I whispered against the back of Emberlyn’s neck.
“Indeed,” she hushed, then attempted to move but I held her against me.
“Just like this, beautiful,” I groaned, thrusting my hips against her rear so she knew what I meant. Immediately her breathing pattern changed. “Nice and slow.”
“Please.”
I released my cock by simply shifting my underwear down, using my upper thigh to part Emberlyn’s. My fingers pulled aside the lace I loved seeing her wear so much, as her hand reached back to grab onto my length and guide me to her heat.
Once settled at her entrance, she let go, grabbed my hand, intertwining our fingers before bringing them up underneath her nightshirt. She proceeded to guide me through a sultry tutorial on how she wanted me to handle her cleavage as I thrust deep into her.
As hard as it was, I’d left Emberlyn at home alone for my shift at the precinct. Pending any call-outs, tonight was going to be a long shift—my first night shift in a month—and I hoped I’d be able to put a dent in the mountain of incident reports I should have cleared off my desk at least two weeks ago.
At eight, my cell rang, and I was glad for the small reprieve. Even more so when the caller ID announced that it was my daughter calling.
“Daddy!” I heard as soon as I’d connected the call.
I smiled at her excited voice. “Baby girl.”
“Ugh…Dad!” she whined.
I cringed. “I don’t think I’m ready to hear you call me that just yet.” I could hear Emberlyn giggling in the background. “How was your day, honey?”
“Good. Miss Amelie said I was getting better at my multiplications, Maddie isn’t friends with Sarah anymore, but she called me her bestie, and we started on our Christmas project!”
I chuckled. “Sounds like you had a long day.”
“Uh-huh!” she paused. “Daddy, is it okay if Emberlyn and me have a sleepover tonight?”
“What about Grams?” I asked. Normally, when I went onto my night shift cycle, Mom would spend the first night ‘sleeping over’ which meant they slept together in her bed.
“But Ember is our guest, Daddy. And Grams said that she’d be okay so long as I give her the next one,” she explained.
“It’s okay with me so long as it’s okay with Em.”
“More than okay,” she said. Obviously, the girls had me on speakerphone, which explained why Emberlyn’s giggle had come through so clearly earlier.
“Did you brush your teeth…take your bath?” I asked, dutiful father and all that.
“I did. Ember let me use some of her special stuff too! I smell like flowers!”
My smile turned into a full grin, while parts of me shouldn’t have reacted the way they did, the memory of Emberlyn’s scent was far too strong to subdue thos
e baser instincts of mine.
“So my bed’ll smell like a beautiful garden?” I said, shaking my libido’s reaction to the side.
“Mm-hmm.” I heard the two whispering in the background. “Daddy, Ember wants to talk to you. I’m going to go give Grams my goodnight kiss, because Ember says it’s bedtime.”
“Good call. I love you, honey.”
“Love you!”
The discernible click that told me that I was now off speaker was a sign that the phone was officially in Emberlyn’s control.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I husked on the line.
“Hey.” Her voice came out breathy.
“Good day?” I inquired.
“Productive. I got a bit of work done for you. It’s proving to be more difficult than I could imagine,” she announced.
I groaned. “I wish you didn’t have to do that. If I had it my way, I’d have you, Rosie, and Mom so far removed from this case.”
She sighed. “I know, but do you really know of anyone else who knows the process of doing these?”
I didn’t, but that didn’t mean Will and I couldn’t have scoured various museums and galleries in the area to see if we could find someone who could.
“You have to keep in mind that we don’t have all of the pieces, sweetheart,” I said.
“I’m not so sure of that,” she told me. “We need to talk about what I’ve managed to get together. I think you might be closer to your man than you think.”
She had no idea. I didn’t talk about my ongoing investigations, so it was fair enough to say that Emberlyn wasn’t privy to the fact that we already knew who was behind these murders. The problem was getting our cuffs on the guy. She also had no idea that we also suspected that her attacker was one and the same with the murderer.
“We’ll talk some more about that tomorrow,” I told her. “Right now, I want to know how you’re doing.”
“Tired.” She yawned as she said this. “I think your daughter’s homework wore me out more than it did her.” Her voice carried a tone of happiness, despite her exhaustion.
“I swear they seem to have more work than we ever did at their age,” I stated.
“Yeah.” A pause. “Listen, Rosie is barreling up the stairs, which means I should probably let you go and put her to bed.”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“When will you be home?”
I smiled. “Miss me?”
“Only a little.”
I harrumphed. “I miss you too, sweetheart. In any case, I should be home around four.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Wake me when you get here? I want to know that you’re safe.”
“I will.” I’d have given anything to be with her and Lana Rose right then. “Sleep well, and give my baby a big wet kiss on the cheek for me, will ya?”
“I will. Goodnight, Shane.”
“G’night.”
Disconnecting the call, I saw that I’d been on the line for near on fifteen minutes.
Yeah, it was going to be one fucking long night.
Chapter 31
Emberlyn
With Shane on the night shift over the last week, it was safe to say that we rarely got to spend time together. Whenever we did, it was all about the photomosaic. The one I’d been all too excited to work on; incidentally, I had also begun to resent it too.
I’m not sure if it was the fact that we had so little alone time together, or that when we did have time, Lana Rose were underfoot, but I was beginning to feel more like Shane’s workhorse and live-in nanny—now that Nora was staying with an ailing friend for the next few weeks—more than his girlfriend.
Girlfriend.
Shit!
Come to think of it, we’d never really labeled what it was that we were, yet we’d smoothly coasted into a relationship that bordered closer to married and family life, than one with any kind of wooing.
Strong arms came to wrap around me, pulling my body into a warm hard one.
I wanted so badly to turn around and embrace the fact that Shane had come home early, but I was still nursing my snit. One he’d caused, and I’d told him so earlier when—like every night he’d worked this week—Lana Rose and I had called him to wish him a good night.
“I know you’re awake,” he whispered against the soft skin, right behind my ear. “Your body reacts to mine, even when you don’t want it to.”
Dammit!
“You’re early,” was all I could manage to say.
“You needed me,” was his reply, to which I shrugged. “And for what it’s worth, I felt the need to be here…with you.” He gave me a squeeze. “I need you to turn around and look at me, sweetheart.”
Fuck. I hadn’t heard that pet name for most of the week. Realizing that just then brought tears to my eyes, and before I knew it, I sniffled.
“Em?” I still hadn’t moved. “My beautiful Em, please turn around so I can apologize properly.”
I couldn’t deny him when he was this sweet. So I turned in his arms and burrowed my face into his bare chest, wedging my arms between us. He immediately tightened his grip on me.
“I know I’ve been working you hard this week. I’ve thrown you straight into family life. You’ve been looking after my daughter, helping with homework, getting her off to school, cooking…cleaning. It’s more than what you signed on for when we started seeing each other; and to boot, I’ve been treating you like one of my slaves for this case.”
“I volunteered to look after Rosie when your mother told us that her friend needed someone to help her out after her surgery,” I mumbled against him.
He kissed the top of my head. “It still doesn’t make it right. We haven’t even been together for a month, yet you’ve jumped into playing mother and housewife.”
I pulled my face back and tilted it to look up at him. “Shane–”
“Let me finish.” His eyes stared deep into mine. “Sweetheart,” his hand reached up to brush away a strand of hair that had fallen into my face, “if this is all too much, I understand if you want out. I don’t want you to be here because of need. I want you to be here because you want to be.”
“I do.”
His lips pressed briefly against mine before he pulled away continuing, “I don’t want to be your boss. I hate that you’re working on this case, and quite frankly, your involvement has me freaking out because it’s hitting too fucking close to home.”
“Eva?” came spilling out of my mouth. When Shane’s body grew taut, I knew my suspicions had been right. I’d seen far too many hushed conversations ending abruptly, as soon as I’d made my presence known, between mother and son, let alone one when Will, Shane’s partner, had dropped in for an impromptu visit with belated birthday gift for Lana Rose.
Shane took a deep breath, then relaxed. “What do you want to know?”
“She was one of his victims, wasn’t she?” I blurted out. “I…couldn’t help but notice how the victims all look alike.” It hadn’t been until my third night looking over Rosie that I’d noticed the similarities between the victims and Eva Peters.
“His first,” he supplied, then tightened his grip on me as if he sensed my next thoughts.
He was obsessed with avenging his dead wife first and foremost.
No wonder he’s been treating me like a–
“Don’t even finish that thought,” Shane commanded on a low growl. “You are not Eva.”
“No…I’m not.” I swallowed hard. Was he using me as a replacement for the wife he still loves?
“No, you don’t understand,” Shane argued. “You’re not Eva, Em.”
“I know, Shane.” He was pissing me off.
“You don’t look like her. You don’t mother Rosie like she did. You don’t act like her–”
“If you’re trying to–”
“Stop interrupting me, Emberlyn.” His mention of my full first name made me freeze; or maybe it was his tone that brokered no argument that did it.
“Then get to the fucking poi
nt so I can pack my shit and get out, Shane,” I spat. “If all you needed was a babysitter, you could have just said so. I’d have gladly done the job.”
Shane’s jaw tightened, his lips having thinned into a straight line. “I’m not saying any of this right.” He sighed, then loosened his grip.
It didn’t take me long to make my way out of his grasp, then out of his bed, reaching for the old flannel shirt of Shane’s I’d adopted as my housecoat in the mornings. He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing at his face in frustration before crossing his fingers behind his head in a defeated gesture.
“I’ll go sleep in the spare room,” I told him. “Stan called a few days ago and he’s done with the alarm systems. I think it’s best that for the next week, while you’re still working nights, that Lana Rose comes and stays with me; that’s if you still want me to look after her.”
My hand was on the doorknob and I had yet to hear any kind of refusal or argument from the man. As the door pulled inward, silence was broken.
“You’re more.”
Chapter 32
Shane
Thank God!
Two words. Apparently that’s what it took to make her stop and turn around to look at me.
“What?” she whispered, shutting the door, then leaning against it, forehead to the surface.
“You heard me, Em.” Getting up, I headed toward her, stopping a step away from her. “She was a great mother, but you…you’re the best friend Lana Rose never had. She confides in you, respects you. You make her smile the way I’ve never seen her smile before. Not even for me.” I swallowed hard. “Yes, I still love my dead wife. She gave me the best of herself in our daughter, but the way I feel for her doesn’t even compare to the way you make me feel.”
“How is it that I make you feel, Shane?” her voice quivered.
“If I’m going to pour my heart out to you, at least please look at me,” I said, feeling slightly annoyed that when things got serious, this wonderful yet complex woman seemed to run.
Emberlyn turned to face me, despite not making eye contact.
Night Shift (Nightshade Book 2) Page 12