Uncovered: A Hearts of the South story

by Linda Winfree

  “Tell me something,” Tick said as she shrugged into her coat. “You said they wanted you because you had access to me. What the hell did you get out of the deal?”

  She flipped her hair over her collar. “People who didn’t expect more than I could give.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets as they strode out the side door. “It was bad, even before what happened with us, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not talking about it with you, Calvert.”

  “Never asked you to, Holton. It was one question.”

  “That’s usually where it starts.”

  He laughed, and for once, the deep rumble didn’t set her hair on end. Once in his truck, she held out a hand. “Let me borrow your cell. I want to call and check on Ash.”

  With a frown, he handed it over. “Where’s yours?”

  “In my desk. I’m still getting calls from men who want to do more than play footsie with me, remember?”

  His mouth tight, he fired the engine. “Yeah. I remember.”

  Since he was in the driver’s seat and she didn’t have to worry about it for once, she slumped in the passenger seat and dialed through to the hospital and asked for the nurse’s station on Ash’s floor. Minutes later, she returned Tick’s phone, smiling all the while.

  He slanted a grin in her direction. “That looks like good news.”

  “He’s out of surgery, and it went well. He’s in recovery, and the nurse said he should be back in his room sometime after lunch. If everything looks good, he can go home tomorrow.”

  “That is good news.” The grin continued to flirt about his mouth. “He’s probably going to need someone to, um, take care of him for a couple of days until he’s completely mobile. Monroe, our deputy who had the same surgery, did. You’re not going back to your mama’s yet, right?”

  Madeline narrowed her eyes at him, but if he saw, he ignored it. That sounded suspiciously like…matchmaking…which was weird beyond belief.

  Lips pursed, she folded her arms and didn’t reply.

  “What?” He half-chuckled and lifted his hands from the wheel for a split second. “I just made a suggestion. A pretty damn logical one.”

  She hitched one eyebrow.

  “You’re telling me you didn’t already think of it?”

  “No, I didn’t. I’ve been a little busy, chasing down leads on a twenty-year-old murder case and dealing with the fallout from your crazy ex-girlfriend’s idea of an Internet prank, remember?”

  “At least you said ‘ex’ this time,” he muttered.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me Falconetti has waited on your ass hand and foot at some point while you recuperated?”

  “I wouldn’t call it ‘hand and foot’, exactly.” He rolled his shoulders. “I had pretty major surgery the day after Lee was born, and she was on her feet before I was. I needed her those first few days at home, believe me.” One corner of his mouth quirked in an affectionate smile. “There’s something about having the woman who loves you take care of you. It’s not the same having someone else do it.”

  “I’m not the…” She swallowed, hard, against a sudden lump in her throat, Ash’s quiet “I love you” resounding in her ears. “I’m not the woman who loves him.”

  “Really?” Tick looked at her askance. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  “We’re friends and we’re dating casually while I’m here. That’s all.”

  His disbelieving snort bordered on rude.

  “You don’t—”

  “Know what I’m talking about, yeah, yeah, sure.” He flicked a dismissive gesture between them and slowed for the turn into the chicken plant’s long drive. “All I’m saying is that since you got here, if you haven’t been working, you’ve pretty much been with him. Since the day he got hurt, if you haven’t been working, you’ve been at the hospital, right at his side. Yeah, that looks like casual dating and friendship to me.”

  She opened her mouth on a smart rejoinder, but he stopped at the guard shack, forestalling her. He didn’t know what he was talking about. Love? She didn’t know the first thing about loving someone. She wouldn’t even know where to start.

  “Then there was the way you kissed him at Henry’s the other night.” He jockeyed the truck into a visitor’s parking spot.

  “Oh my God. So I kissed him. Big fucking deal.” She unsnapped her seatbelt and slung the door open with a little more force than necessary. He really needed to shut up.

  “Yeah. You kissed him, all right.” He tucked his hands in his jacket pockets as they strode up the sidewalk. “The way Cait kisses me when we’ve been apart for more than a day.”

  She stopped short. “That doesn’t mean anything. None of that means anything. I like him. We’re friends. Yes, I kissed him, and yes, I’ve been worried about him but…it doesn’t mean anything.”

  He halted where he’d continued a few steps ahead of her and simply looked at her, an expression of extreme patience on his face. He didn’t say a word.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” she repeated. When he still didn’t respond, she narrowed her eyes and swept by him. “Oh, shut up.”

  His quiet laugh only infuriated her more. She ignored him as he fell into step beside her again. In love with Ash Hardison? Ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous. It was…it was…

  Absolutely true?

  Tick held the door open for her, and she glared. “You’re insane.”

  He shrugged. They crossed the lobby, and he punched the button at the elevator. She gave him an airy look. “You’re crazy, Calvert, I mean it. Absolutely fucking nuts.”

  Eyebrows raised, he lifted both hands in a “whatever” gesture. The elevator arrived with a soft ding and inside, she leaned against the opposite wall, arms folded. He laughed and threw out his hands. “What?”

  She glowered. “You and this…this…love idea of yours. You’re crazy.”

  “I think you’ve covered that topic, ad nauseam, Holton.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You think about him at weird times, don’t you? Like in the middle of the day, out of the blue, when you’re supposed to be focused on the job.”

  “Uh, no.” She rolled her eyes and waited for lightning to strike her.

  He nodded, a slow bob of his chin, a knowing smirk lurking about his mouth. “And of course, you don’t feel like you want to pounce on his ass when you finally do get to see him.”

  “That’s just lust.”

  “Probably can’t carry on a decent conversation with the guy outside of bed, either.”

  Just about books. Or music. Or life experiences and what was important.

  God, how slow was this elevator, anyway? They were only going up two floors.

  Tick’s smirk widened to a grin. “And he doesn’t make you laugh or just make life a hell of a lot of fun, either.”

  “You read women’s magazines, don’t you?”

  “No. I wake up every day next to a woman I can’t stop thinking about or keep my hands off of. We talk about everything, she makes me laugh when I don’t want to, and my God, living with her is fun, even when we’re fighting and I can’t win to save my life. The hell of it is, she loves me too, and I thank the good Lord for that every damn day of my life because I came this close”—he held his thumb and forefinger a millimeter apart—“to losing her for good. When you find that, Holton, it’s precious, and you hang on to it. You don’t throw it away, and you sure as hell don’t walk away like it’s nothing.”

  The elevator shuddered to a stop. She finally managed to close her mouth as the doors slid open. He wrapped a hand in front of one and caught her gaze, his own dark and serious. “Think about it.”

  Think about it? Like he hadn’t completely destroyed her concentration. Like she’d be able to think about anything else.

  Tick whistled as they walked down the hallway to the offices. Madeline chewed on the inside of her cheek and tried to ignore his obnoxious ass.

  Was that it? Did she love Ash? Surely it couldn’t be that simpl
e. Hell, she’d always envisioned love as this insurmountable expectation, more trouble than it could possibly be worth.

  Well, she just wouldn’t think about it now. They had this interview to do, and she’d focus on that. She could think about Tick’s insane ideas later.

  What if he was right? What if she did love Ash? That would change everything. She bit her thumbnail, tearing at her skin, welcoming the small pain as a distraction. She couldn’t very well go—

  “Holton?” On a weary sigh, Tick propped the office door open with one hip. She caught his eye and flushed, heat flooding her neck and face at the amused gleam in his dark eyes.

  Oh, shit damn fuck, her focus was gone. She brushed by him. Donna looked up from the files she was putting away. Her gaze tangled with Madeline’s, and her face twisted, annoyance and dislike flaring in her blue eyes. “What do you want?”

  Madeline straightened her shoulders but put on a nonthreatening smile. “Just to talk.”

  Donna snorted. “We don’t have anything to talk about. There’s no way the three of us have anything to discuss.”

  “Donna, we need to ask you a few questions. About Kelly Coker.”

  With a small shake of her head, Donna rolled her eyes heavenward. “Why would you come asking about…oh.” Her expression shifted and she bit her lip. “The body under Allison’s house? That’s Kelly?”

  Madeline nodded.

  “Oh my God.” Donna felt for the nearest chair and sank into it. “I don’t believe it. I always thought…she said she’d been in Florida and I thought she just went back…”

  “She said she’d been in Florida?” Intensity hovered in Tick’s voice.

  Donna lifted her gaze to his, with a confused nod.

  “You saw her after she ran away.” Madeline leaned on the waist-high counter. She didn’t miss Tick’s hey-sometimes-it-is-this-easy expression.

  “Yeah. At a party one weekend, about a year after we graduated. Hell, she showed up at my house, looking for Allison. I knew Allison would be at the party, and I told Kelly to come on. Thought it would be like old times.”

  “A party at Jon Williams’s house?”

  Donna nodded and looked between them, perplexed. “What is this about?”

  Madeline sifted a hand through her hair. “You just left her there?”

  “No. I went looking for her sometime around one in the morning. I was ready to go, but Allison said she’d already gone.”

  “Allison talked to her?” Tick rested his elbows on the counter, his gaze intent on Donna’s face.

  “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Kelly was talking. Allison was yelling and bitching.”

  “Do you remember what they were arguing about?” Madeline asked.

  Donna gave her a “duh” look. “No. That was twenty years ago almost, and I’d had two or three wine coolers. Besides, you know how Allison was, always going on about something.”

  “Yeah,” Madeline said, voice soft. “You actually saw them together?”

  “Didn’t I just say that? They were fussing. Kelly got upset and she went in the bathroom. Allison followed her. That’s the last I saw of her. Kelly, I mean.”

  The bathroom. Allison followed her in the bathroom, and at some point, Kelly stumbled out and into Nick Hall’s life.

  To be savagely murdered within an hour. Except, if Ford was to be believed, she’d already been on her way to bleeding out from a slow brain hemorrhage.

  “Thank you for talking to us.” Madeline pushed away from the counter. Catching Tick’s eye, she tilted her head toward the door. “We’ll let you get back to work.”

  In the hallway, she punched the elevator call button savagely. “Well, there’s a circumstantial link. We know they were together, in that bathroom, before Kelly stumbled into Nick Hall and he took her home and killed her. You know that’s the best we can do. She’ll get away with it.”

  “Maybe.” He pushed a hand through his hair and squinted up at the numbers. “I don’t know what the precedence is. We can’t charge her with murder because she didn’t cause the death, but maybe we could do an aggravated assault charge. Maybe a contributing charge.”

  “It’s not good enough.” Madeline stalked into the elevator. “Kelly’s dead, and without adequate medical attention, she’d have died from that head wound. We both know how she got it, even if we can’t prove it. Again, Allison gets away with everything.”

  “Maybe not.” Tick rubbed a hand over his jaw. “We’ll run it by the DA, see what he has to say, and go from there.”

  Madeline pushed open the door to Ash’s room and stopped, surprised. Ash rested on the edge of the bed, dressed casually in a T-shirt and sweats. An Ace bandage encased his knee. A pair of crutches leaned against the bed.

  Warmth flashed in her while Tick’s questions rolled through her head. She clutched the door handle, a tentative smile curving her lips. “Hey.”

  He grinned, despite the lines of pain bracketing his mouth. “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?” She cringed at the inanity of the inquiry. “You’re up.”

  “Yeah. I’m damn glad too.”

  “How do you feel?” Did you mean it when you said you loved me?

  “Pretty good.” One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I convinced Mackey to let me out of here today.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” Her voice emerged breathy and a little tremulous. “How are you getting home?”

  “Well, I was going to call Stan, but now that you’re here…” His fabulous grin flashed. “Want to give me a ride?”

  Tick’s suggestion that Ash would need someone to take care of him insinuated itself into her brain. The scary thing was she wanted to take care of him. Nurturing had never been part of her makeup, so it had to be him. Could she add “wants to take care of him” to Tick’s definition of being in love?

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Of course I’ll take you.”

  If anything, his grin widened. “So get over here and kiss me.”

  Her stomach lifted and turned over in a nervous little roll. Releasing the door, she crossed to stand before him, in the vee of his legs, injured one canted to the side. He rested his hands at her hips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned in to cover his mouth with her own. Beneath hers, his lips were warm and pliable, and his fingers flexed at her hips. Aware of his stitches, she kept the kiss light and teasing, gentle and loving. Curling closer, she laid a hand along his jaw, a hint of stubble abrading her palm. The sheer volume of emotion coursing through her, the absolute rightness of being with him, all swirled within her, coalescing into a solid core of emotion.

  She pulled back, framing his face with hands that shook wildly. “I don’t want to love you. It scares me to even think about it.”

  “Then don’t think about it. We’re not in a rush. We’re just together.” He rubbed his lips over her temple. “Take me home, Mad.”

  “All right.” She managed to firm her lips enough to produce a tremulous smile. “Let’s spring you, Hardison.”

  From the passenger seat, Ash studied Madeline while she drove. He was thrilled to be out of that hospital bed and on his way home. He was even more thrilled to have Madeline with him.

  I don’t want to love you.

  Her shaky statement trickled through his consciousness. She hadn’t said she didn’t love him. She’d said she didn’t want to love him—as in maybe she did.

  It was enough to give him hope.

  Relief washed through him when she turned into his driveway. Damn, he was glad to be home. Glad to have this woman with him at his side.

  After she parked next to his truck, as close to the porch as she could get, she came around to open the door and assist him in extricating himself from the car. Once he was on his feet with the crutches keeping him steady, she didn’t move away, the constant warmth of her palm on his back burning all the way through him.

  She used his keys to open the front door. “You should go to bed and rest.�
�

  He canted an eyebrow at her. “I’ve been in bed long enough. I might sit my ass on the couch, but no way am I going straight to bed.”

  He hobbled into the foyer. In the dim light, the spare key gleamed on the hall table, tangible evidence that she’d planned to leave him because of Allison’s stunt. He ignored the piece of metal and swung into the living room. She followed, hovering at the doorway.

  “Are you hungry?” She fiddled with the hem of her jacket. “Should I get you something to drink?”

  “All I want right now is you.” A smile quirked his mouth. “Get over here so I can hold you for a while.”

  “Don’t think I’m following orders,” she said, crossing the room to settle beside him on the couch. He curved an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into his side. Contentment suffused him.

  “Hmm, that feels good.” He rested his cheek on her hair and drank in the way she relaxed into him. “I’ve missed this. Missed you.”

  She laughed. “I haven’t been anywhere, Ash. Most days, I’ve been with you, remember?”

  “But not like this.” He smiled against the silk of her hair. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes.

  He woke, not coming through layers of sleep, but jerking into a heart-pounding awareness, the way he sometimes did when he dreamed of Iraq. He stared at the ceiling, swallowing against the metallic taste of drug residue, fighting off a sudden wave of nausea. The angle of late-evening sunlight slanting in from the western-facing windows told him several hours had passed. He was alone, stretched out on the couch, his injured leg propped on two pillows from his bed.

  “Hungry?” Madeline’s soft voice drew his dulled attention to the kitchen doorway.

  “You can’t cook.” The inane words popped free, and he grimaced. His brain was on the fritz.

  She laughed. “No, but I make a mean sandwich, and I do know how to microwave soup.”

  “Sounds good.” Maybe food would settle his stomach, kick-start his fuzzy thought processes. First though, he needed to take care of another, more pressing biological need. He pushed himself to a seated position and swung his legs to the floor.