by Karen Rock
“You’re confident. Not selfish. Or needy. Thank God.”
His deep chuckle sent tingles through her body. “A man has some needs. I’m no saint.”
She raised her hips against him, and he grew hard inside again. “I wouldn’t want you to be.”
His eyes darkened with the same new need she felt. “Are you sure you can again?”
She groped for her nightstand drawer, opened it, and yanked out a condom. “Let’s say best two out of three.”
“I might be up for that,” he drawled, freshly sheathed a moment later.
“Might?” she laughed, her eyes closing as he slowly began moving inside her again with tantalizing, toe-curling strokes.
* * * *
An hour later, they lay on their backs, breathing hard. “I think I’ll die.”
Nash grinned. “But what a way to go.”
“Can you imagine what my obit would say?”
“Died with a smile on her face?”
“Obviously.” She purred happily when he pulled up the covers, spooning her against him. “You’re always warm.”
“I come in handy sometimes,” he said wryly and chuckled when she wriggled her hips against him.
“Indeed.”
He turned off the nightstand lamp and they lay in the dark, neither of them even close to sleeping. Who needed sleep, he thought as she rolled over and snuggled against him. He’d do without it for Katherine every day of the week. His hand trailed down the silkiness of her arm, physical contentment settling deep inside. But his mind churned with unanswered questions.
“Katherine, if I don’t pass the test tomorrow, get an interview with the police department—”
“You will…”
“But if I don’t,” he persisted, needing to hear her answer. “And I keep dancing, could you accept that? Will it make you jealous?” He’d been full of hot, mad fury when he’d watched other men drool over her tonight. Now he fully understood how hard it’d be to love a dancer.
She went quiet a moment. “Probably. I’m human. But I’d never ask you to stop. I trust you, Nash. And I believe in us. Besides, it’d be hypocritical to resent your job when mine’s the one you’ll come to hate.”
Her words eased his heart some. “Because it’ll keep you away from me?”
She drew a breath and let it out. “Yes. I’m not sure if I can balance you and work. I already have a poor track record.”
“I’d rather have a life with whatever time you can spare than a life without you at all. Plus, the time we have together will be all the sweeter.”
She made a small sound of gratitude. “Even if you don’t mean it, thank you.”
“I mean it.” He kissed her temple. He respected her career and, if he passed his test, interview, and background check, he’d have one in law enforcement, too.
She rolled over and peered up at him. “You make it sound easy.”
“It’s not, but I promise to never quit, to work hard to make us both happy. I’m stubborn that way.”
“Or just an idiot,” she said, laughing lightly.
“A fool for love,” he teased back.
She cupped his jaw in her palm. “Then that makes two of us. I love you, Nash Hawkins.”
“I love you, too.” He hesitated. It was too soon to ask it, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to know, before he fell past the point of no return. “What about the future? Do you want to get married again? Have kids?”
She met his eyes in the darkness. “What happened to Mr. No-Commitment?”
“You did.”
Her warm fingers threaded through his. “I didn’t think I’d ever have a partner who’d be there for me—someone who’d make me want to be there for him. You do that, Nash. No one else. Ever. Any other questions?” she asked through a long yawn.
“No. I’m good for now.”
“Then go to sleep,” she grumbled, a smile in her voice.
Chapter Sixteen
“Happy birthday!”
Katherine gaped at a grinning Robby the following day, her fingers clenched around her front doorknob as she stood on her doorstep.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Robby’s brown curls dangled over his forehead as he studied his Apple watch. “You said twelve-thirty, right? When I stopped at the precinct to pick you up for lunch, they said you’d gone home.”
Katherine jerked her hand loose and stepped back, ushering Robby inside her apartment. “No. You’re right. With everything going on, I totally forgot.”
“Didn’t you get my text this morning?”
“I—uh—forgot my cell when I left for work.” Heat rose in her cheeks as she recalled this morning’s decadent antics with Nash. She’d rushed to the precinct, slightly late and without her phone. A first. Luckily, persistent Robby tracked her down. If she’d blown off this overdue lunch date, she wouldn’t have forgiven herself.
“Did you forget it was your birthday, too?” Robby produced a bouquet of yellow roses, her favorite, and tromped after her to the kitchen.
“Yes.” She smiled at him. “Thank you.” How sweet he’d remembered. She rose on her tiptoes to grab a vase from one of her cabinets. “It’s been a crazy week.”
And life…. Everything would change if she dared let Nash be a part of it.
“I read you took a person of interest into custody. The article named a preacher…?”
“Can’t comment, Robby. Sorry.” She flipped on the cool water and filled the crystal receptacle halfway, her mind on the morning’s disappointing events. Search teams at Father Frank’s property came up empty, and she’d had to let her only suspect go. The last she heard, he was accompanying the women back to Alabama to help with their legal issues.
Would her unsub leave his carefully selected victim behind?
No.
Father Frank was not the Last Call Killer, and in a matter of hours, Brittany Reins would be dead if Katherine didn’t unmask the serial killer’s identity.
What had she missed? What angle had she failed to explore?
When the warm-iron taste of blood flooded her mouth, she realized she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.
“If you’d rather postpone, this can wait. You look preoccupied.”
She smiled weakly into Robby’s concerned eyes. “That’s okay. I have a short break if you don’t mind eating here instead.”
Robby pulled open drawer after drawer before he produced a pair of scissors. “I’m just glad to hang out. No worries.” Light, streaming through her window, bounced off the sharp blades. “Want me to cut the stems?”
She plucked the fragrant roses from the water, buried her nose in them, and inhaled deeply before handing over the bouquet. “Forgot that trick.”
While Robby snipped, she tore open a packet of plant food granules and dumped them into the vase’s water. Green fizzed and popped merrily, at odds with her mood. “You’re not working today?”
“I’m almost done at Dallas Heat, so my time’s more flexible. Tomorrow’s my last day.” His shoulder brushed hers when he joined her at the counter and arranged the roses in the vase.
He’d cut them to precisely the same height, she noted. Meticulous as ever. He used to line up their Legos in color and size order, alphabetize their Matchbox cars, and bathe their action figures before putting them away every night. When he deftly snipped a couple of the roses’ stray leaves, a strange urgency to slide away, to distance herself, seized her.
She shook her head clear. “Are sandwiches okay?”
“Peanut butter and banana?”
The light in Robby’s eyes as he named their favorite sandwich drained her shoulders of tension. This case was crawling under her skin. Big time. “You got it. Why don’t you wait in the living room while I make them?”
To save Brittany, she needed to redo
uble her efforts, focus, and stop letting her personal history distort her perceptions. Her past was bleeding into her present, making things murky.
“Mind if I give myself a tour of the place?” Robby called.
“Go ahead, although it’s a little messy.” Heat rose in her cheeks as she envisioned her bed, stripped of the linens she’d dumped in the laundry this morning. She and Nash had made good use of those sheets all night. Their “best out of” game continued until dawn and turned into three out of five…only all five had been incredible.
She grabbed a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and plunked them on the counter. Plates followed, along with a knife.
“Do you want chips?”
“Sounds good,” hollered Robby, his voice muffled. Was he searching her closets? She shook away the crazy thought.
As she spread the peanut butter across the bread, her mouth watered and stomach grumbled at its rich, nutty scent. How long since she’d eaten? Nash had cooked eggs, but she’d refused them, unable to dally.
Her heart fluttered at the memory of Nash standing in this very spot, his hair wet from the shower they’d enjoyed, nothing but a loose towel hanging around his waist, his eyes full of laughter and love.
He loved her.
The knife gleamed as she cut slippery banana slices and plopped them onto the bread. No matter how many times he’d said it, the many times she’d thought about it, the words still didn’t seem real.
Was it because of her insecurity? Her fear that no matter how much he promised otherwise, her work-driven life would ultimately break them apart? Nash vowed to help her find balance in her life. Yet deep down, she knew it was her responsibility to achieve it; no one else’s.
“Ouch!” She dropped the knife and red welled on her thumb tip.
“What happened?” Robby skidded into the kitchen, took in her dripping finger, and ripped a paper towel from a roll. He wound the makeshift bandage around her digit. “Too tight?”
“A little.” Numbness replaced the sharp sting.
“I’ll grab a Band-Aid.”
“They’re in the cabinet above my bathroom vanity,” she shouted after him. Red seeped through the white wad. Did she need stitches? She leaned against her sink and waved a hand in front of her face, flushed and light-headed.
“Here. Let me.” Robby expertly applied the bandage all while keeping the edges of the seeping cut pressed together. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”
She rolled her eyes at their old joke. “No thanks, Mrs. Bowden,” she mocked, using her mother’s falsetto. Her mother had been a firm believer in the healing power of a maternal kiss, something she’d demonstrated in full view of other kids, to Katherine’s utter humiliation.
“I’ll make these.” Robby nudged her aside, finished the sandwiches, and dropped chips onto the dishes.
When she sat, Robby served her plate with a bow. “Mademoiselle.”
“Mercy buckets, Mister,” she drawled. They chuckled at another childhood joke, the rhythms of their old friendship returning, as he grabbed a couple of cans of pop and joined her at the table.
Her eyes drifted to her cell phone.
Twelve forty-five.
“How much time do we have left?” Robby asked through a mouthful of peanut butter gooeyness.
“Fifteen, twenty tops. I’m really sorry, Robby.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. It’s not.” She dropped her untouched sandwich, no longer hungry. This apology was long overdue.
“It’s just lunch.” His denim-blue eyes peered behind frameless spectacles.
She steeled herself, then blurted, “I’m sorry about what happened at Wheaton Prep.”
“You mean Summer? That wasn’t your fault. It was late and the woods were dense. We could hardly see each other, and we were lost. There’s nothing you could have done to save her.”
She hung her head and stared down at her clenched hands. “I can’t shake the feeling that there is something I could have done…but that’s not what I’m apologizing for.”
“Then what?”
Her eyes rose and met his. “For being an idiot follower in high school. For letting those girls use you. Abuse you.”
“You stuck up for me.”
“Not enough. Not hard enough. I was an asshole.”
“You were trying to fit in, same as me, except you were better at it.”
“Only because I never really went against anyone.”
“Neither did I.” A bitter note entered Robby’s voice, deepening it. “It wasn’t your job to make them quit. I let them walk all over me. I should have stopped them.”
“But—”
“Besides, that’s ancient history. I hardly think about those days now.” He shrugged and dug back into his food.
He didn’t want to dwell on the past. Unlike her, he’d moved on. She decided to switch subjects. “Tell me more about your business. Do you just install here in Dallas?”
He shook his head and held up a finger while he chewed then swallowed. “I’ve been doing installations across the country. Atlanta, Boise, Lincoln, Shreveport…” Robby’s shoulders squared and his jaw firmed. There was a confidence she’d never seen before in him. He was nervous about the personal stuff, like their past, same as her, but he was completely secure in his work. “Actually, I started the company in Virginia.”
“Virginia? When I was in Quantico?”
He nodded.
“You didn’t tell me you were there.”
Robby’s stare never wavered as he sipped his pop.
She snapped her mouth closed and squeezed her eyes shut. “Then again, I never kept in touch with anyone, either. I made it pretty clear I wanted to cut ties.”
His cool hand gripped her own. “Hey. It’s all right. I understand.”
“No. It’s not. I’m sorry for walking away so completely. After Summer, I just couldn’t…it was hard to even think about that time, and I associated you with it, which wasn’t fair. I don’t know if I ever even thanked you for saving my life.”
Red stained Robby’s cheeks. “You don’t have to thank me. You knocked down Ted Turnbull when he punched me on the playground in third grade. So, let’s just call it even, okay?”
“It doesn’t come close to even, but okay.”
Katherine picked up her sandwich again, eyed it, then lowered it. Robby had moved on from the past, and maybe he could help her do the same. “We’ve never talked about that night.”
Robby’s mouth froze midchew. A moment later his Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced down the bite. “No.”
“I still have unanswered questions. I never wanted to ask them before but now…now, I think I’m ready.” Somehow this case, and its similarities to her past, had helped open her up, to pain—yes—but to healing, too, she hoped.
“Okay.” Robby folded his thin arms across his dress shirt. “Ask away.”
“Do you remember anything about the person who hit me and took Summer?”
His eyes bored into hers. “No. It was too dark.”
“Right. Yeah. Of course. But I mean. Did you see a shape? Get an idea of his height? Hear his voice?”
“His voice?”
“I feel like there was something about it. Something I recognized.”
“The doctor said you had situational amnesia.”
Her paper napkin pulled apart in her hands. “I do, but lately, I’ve been having flashbacks.”
“Your memory’s coming back?”
“Not fully, but I have this image of Summer bleeding. I hear her calling for me.”
“That’s impossible.” Chips fell from Robby’s clenched hand in a shower of crumbs. “You were hit before the attacker got Summer.”
“Then why do I have that memory?”
“The power of suggestion?
”
“And why didn’t she call for you?”
“I only heard her scream. Then I was running, carrying you back to school.” His mouth worked as he fought to contain his emotions. She grabbed one of his arms.
“I’m sorry, Robby. I—I’ve been so preoccupied with my own pain, I didn’t consider how you must be feeling.”
“Do you know how often I wish myself back in those woods with Summer?” he asked, voice tight. “Wishing I could have saved both of you?”
She shook her head, her heart banging in her chest.
“Every. Single. Day.”
“Robby, I’m sorry.”
He stood and stalked to the chair where he’d left his jacket. He retrieved a card and a small, wrapped box and returned.
“Happy birthday.” He slid them across to her.
“No. I don’t deserve this.”
“Like I said, Katherine. None of it was your fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault, either.” When she grabbed his hand, it was ice-cold. “Believe me.”
“I want to,” he whispered, then yanked off his fogging glasses and rubbed them with a napkin. After clearing his throat, he forced a tight smile. “Now, open your present or it’ll turn to coal.”
“That’s Christmas.”
“And you’re starting to annoy me.”
“Fine,” she laughed. Out came a card decorated with a pair of fluffy white dandelions against a blue sky. The image twisted her lips into a wistful smile. As kids, they’d made many wishes on dandelions, confessing their secret dreams.
When she opened the card, she read the card’s preprinted wording three times until their meaning began to sink in.
To my wish-come-true friend -R.
“This is beautiful.”
“Too bad I didn’t come up with it.” A self-conscious smile twisted on Robby’s lips. “But I bought it, so that counts.”
“It definitely counts!”
“I liked the message. If I hadn’t had you growing up…especially when I was little…” Robby stared off into space, his mouth turned down at the corners.
“How is your mother?” It startled her that she’d forgotten to ask him before now.
“Dead,” he said flatly. “Overdose. It’s a better end than she deserved.”