All the stress of the night melted away when she broke the kiss and whispered in his ear. “Let’s get you into bed.”
He’d never been happier to obey nurse’s orders.
Chapter Nine
Evie’s thoughts blanked the moment Tanner’s fingers found bare skin beneath the hem of her shirt. He wrapped his hands around her waist and guided her backward into his bedroom while his lips explored hers.
Instinct told her he was making up for the scare he’d had. His relief and happiness that his best friend wasn’t seriously hurt had given him a craving for human contact, for something to affirm life. She might have been bothered by that, except she wanted it as much as he did. From the moment she’d found him in the ER, she’d wanted to be touching him, lending her strength to him. She’d never felt that for anyone and maybe later, when the physical sensations weren’t clouding her brain, she would be scared by the intensity of that feeling, but at the moment, she knew only that she wanted him in every way.
They fell together onto his bed, which creaked a little from the impact. She might have laughed or been self-conscious, but he immediately rose up and pulled off his borrowed shirt, revealing all those muscles she’d been running her hands over, and she forgot how to breathe.
She sighed, reaching for him. “You’re beautiful…”
“Men aren’t beautiful,” he responded before feasting on the spot where her shoulder met her neck.
Tingles raced across her skin, intensified by the sensation of his body settling over hers. “Of course they are…you are. You’re stunning…you’re perfect.”
He opened the top button of her shirt and kissed the spot it had covered. “I should be telling you that.” The next button succumbed and the next and the next, and Evie moaned when the shirt fell away, leaving only her bra between them.
“You smell amazing,” he told her. “You taste like…more.” He kissed her again, deeply, searchingly. She made a sound at the back of her throat in response to him deftly unclasping her bra. Not long after, they both lay naked, legs entwined, their gazes locked.
“Stay with me all night,” he said. “I want to wake up with you.”
“Who said we’d do any sleeping?” She kissed him once, then worked her way down his chest, laughing as his skin pebbled under her touch. “Do you have condoms?”
“In the drawer,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. She looked where he pointed and found a box. There were three inside. That would probably get them through the night. “I see you’re running low.” She arched a brow as she handed him one of the packets.
“I’ll get more. I’ll have a case delivered tomorrow…”
“That’s more like it. Now…” She helped him tear open the foil. “Nurse’s orders…”
Evie noticed his hands shaking as much as hers were, so she helped him with the condom, then straddled him. Her heart raced with anticipation, and she pushed any doubts to the back of her mind. They both needed this moment, it was exactly right, and whatever happened after, would happen.
Leaning forward, she kissed him. “Let me take care of you tonight.”
He groaned and grasped her hips to pull her down over him. “I’m all yours…Evie…God, I’m yours forever.”
Satisfaction filled her, made her lightheaded and shivery, but she began to move, to show him how much she wanted him. “Forever is a long time.” She moved to match the rhythm of her words, and he closed his eyes and moved with her.
His grip on her waist tightened, and his muscles stiffened. On the verge of her own climax, Evie smiled. She leaned forward to kiss him and whispered against his lips. “Let’s just concentrate on right now…”
And she was his.
* * * *
Hours later, Tanner stirred from a deep sleep. He hadn’t planned on letting the exhaustion take him, but once Evie’d had her way with him, he’d been too satisfied to stay awake. He woke with the thought in his mind that he owed her in kind, and he was more than ready to pay his debt.
Sliding one arm across the cool sheets, he expected to find her supple curves waiting for him, but she was gone. He sat up groggily and listened, but he heard nothing from the rest of the apartment. Had she left?
He rose and left the bedroom, not stopping to retrieve the pants he’d sloughed off in such haste before. A petite silhouette at the living room window turned when he approached.
Relief made him shiver as she slipped into his embrace. She wore the scrub shirt, which hung down to her thighs. Beneath the thin material, her warm body molded to his. “I thought you’d left me.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“What’s wrong?” He pushed strands of dark hair away from her eyes. In the moonlight filtering through the window, her skin was like porcelain, her eyes midnight blue. A sudden pressure in his chest made him hungry for a deep breath of air. What had she done to him? He rubbed the spot above his breastbone, suddenly worried she’d tell him she regretted what they’d done.
“I was just thinking about tonight and how lucky you all were. What happened could have been…”
“But it wasn’t. It’s okay.”
“Audrey said she worries about Max. He goes to all these…incidents that Chad covers for the newspaper, and they’re dangerous.”
“Yeah, sometimes they are. He got hit by a Buick a few months ago…you remember the car that got stuck on the drawbridge?”
She nodded. “And tonight Quinn. I was just letting myself wonder how I’d have felt if it was you.”
He cupped her face in his hands and made her look at him. “It wasn’t. Don’t think like that or you’ll never sleep again. Come back to bed. You took care of me when I needed you. Now it’s my turn.”
“Oh? And what are you going to do to make me stop imagining the worst?”
He smiled and scooped her up in his arms. “I’m going to make your forget your own name. How’s that?”
“I dare you to try.”
“I’ll take that dare,” he said and he carried her, giggling, into the bedroom to make good on his promise.
Chapter Ten
At nine a.m. the next morning, Evie sat at her desk, lost in thought. She’d woken up in Tanner’s arms, and she’d still be there if he hadn’t gotten a call from his commander asking him to go to the station. The warmth of his parting kiss still lingered on her lips, and she smiled every time she thought about how they’d spent the night.
She couldn’t wait to call him, but she didn’t want to interrupt any official business, so instead she had to find a way to concentrate on her work. She had to call Mrs. Moriarty to reschedule her interview and e-mail Max with the date and time of the official ribbon-cutting ceremony and the Women’s Auxiliary Bachelor Auction, which would be raising funds for some specialized equipment for the new wing.
Details, details. She’d just opened up her e-mail when Janet appeared and plopped the morning edition down in front of her. “Read me this headline.”
Confused, Evie pulled the paper closer. There was a shot of a two-story home in flames, and the image stabbed at Evie’s memory. The collapsed porch where Quinn Preston had almost lost his life was clearly visible. “Stanton house fire leaves three hospitalized.”
Janet nodded curtly and tossed a national paper on top of the Herald. “Now read this headline.”
Evie sighed. The take from the national paper was decidedly different. “Senator and mistress rescued from fiery suicide pact. Oh, wow.”
“Do you see the difference?” Janet tapped the pointed toe of her designer shoe expectantly.
“Well, yes. Our headline doesn’t read like a cheap tabloid.”
Janet crossed her arms. “My dear, you’ve missed the point. This headline sells papers. Tons of them. Our headline reads like local news.”
“It is local news.”
“Evie. This is a disgrace. Every paper on the East Coast is running versions of this suicide pact story. A married senator who
ran on a platform of family values is found unconscious in the bedroom of a woman half his age to whom he’s not married. The reports state that she never even told the rescue workers he was in the house. They’re insinuating she wanted him to die in the fire and that she had caused the gas leak herself.”
“That’s not true. Tanner said she told him the man was upstairs.” The words came out before Evie could stop them. She closed her eyes, praying Janet hadn’t actually heard her.
Of course, she had. “What? Tanner?” She picked up the Herald and scanned the article Chad had written. “Tanner Croft—he was one of the first responders. He’s the instructor you interviewed at the rec center, right?”
Evie nodded.
“You talked to him last night?”
“A little. I was…at the hospital.”
“Why…oh, the children’s wing. The press conference. The interview with the chairwoman of the fund-raising committee. And you saw the EMT there? You were in the ER?”
Evie couldn’t explain why she felt like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She didn’t want to confess to Janet that she’d spent the night with Tanner.
Janet was silent for ten seconds, during which Evie imagined she could see the steam building up inside the woman’s skull. When she blew, it was just as bad as Evie could have predicted.
“So where’s my front-page story? I get a run-of-the-mill house fire. A rescue worker is injured, two people are rescued, everything’s fine and dandy. Every other paper in the state gets a freaking suicide pact! Evie, you wanted the front page. You wanted to be a journalist, for God’s sake. This was your shot.”
“I wasn’t there to cover the story. Tanner is…we’re friends, and I was with him for moral support.”
“How does that preclude you from getting the goddamned story? The Herald is the only paper in a fifty-mile radius. Stanton doesn’t have a local paper. None of the towns around us do. We are the news around here! We are at ground zero of a major political scandal, and you were holding hands with one of the principal players?”
“Tanner was not a principal player in anything. He was called to help a woman who had passed out. That’s all. He never even went upstairs.”
“Who called?” Janet leaned in, her eyes widening. “The paper—the other paper—says the call was anonymous. People are speculating the senator changed his mind about the pact and called for help when his lover passed out. But he didn’t know about the gas leak that she’d planned to make sure neither of them survived.”
“I don’t know about any of that.”
“What does Tanner know?”
“Nothing.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there with him, he never said anything about what happened except—”
Janet was practically on top of Evie now. “Except what?”
“I shouldn’t repeat anything he told me; it was all off the record. Ask Max Shannon. He was in the ER too. He knows more than I do.”
“Fine, I will.” Janet backed off. “Evie, I’m begging you. Get me a story. If there’s more to this, if there’s something the other papers don’t know that we do, we can pull this out of the crapper. You can have a front-page byline. Don’t you want that?”
“I don’t have any information that you want.” Evie tried to keep her features neutral, but her mind went to what Tanner had said about the woman telling Quinn the man was upstairs. She couldn’t have been planning for him to die if she told Quinn where he was the moment she regained consciousness.
Janet tried to stare her down. “I don’t believe you. How long were you in the ER? You didn’t overhear anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Evie, what don’t you get? You can help us, help the paper, help yourself. We can print a confirmation of these rumors—or better yet, a counterpoint. If the woman actually spoke, if she said the senator was in the house, well, that could be the evidence to clear her name. They’re speculating she could be charged with attempted murder. You could help her.”
Evie mulled this over. How much did she really know, other than the details Tanner had mentioned? Could she pull together a story from so few facts? “Help her? Or help our circulation?”
Janet scooped up the papers and backed away, her lips pursed in annoyance. “So you like the Lifestyle section a little better today? Does it seem like the place you want to spend the rest of your career? I hope so.”
Before Evie could respond, Janet whirled and walked away, her heels clicking on the linoleum.
Evie dropped her shoulders and sighed. The rest of her career suddenly didn’t seem like a very long time.
* * * *
“They should have put some of this plaster on your head.” Tanner rapped on the cast Quinn now sported on his right wrist. His partner was sitting up in bed, looking pale but much more alert than the night before.
“It’s not even plaster. Do you believe that? They don’t even use real plaster anymore. I’m sort of bummed about that.”
“Only you would be. You’re lucky it’s not your whole arm, or your leg or your back.”
“Yeah. I’m lucky.” Quinn made a face and struggled for a few seconds to open the container of red gelatin he’d been given as a snack. Finally Tanner took it from him and peeled off the foil lid.
“Sorry, man. It’s gonna suck for a while,” he said, handing the container back.
“Yeah.”
Tanner eyed his partner. In light of his situation, six weeks out of work and limited mobility, anyone would be depressed, but Quinn had never been the type to feel sorry for himself. Something else was bothering him. “What’s needling you, besides the nurses? You look down.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Come on. I know you too well. They didn’t find something on the X-rays? Like that dime I dared you to stick up your nose when we were ten?”
Quinn laughed half-heartedly. “Nah…that’s gone for good. My brain juices melted it.”
“Okay, what, then?” Tanner was getting worried. Nothing bothered Quinn. Blood, stitches, broken bones, he almost seemed to revel in the danger of his job and took every bump and bruise in stride.
“It’s stupid.”
“Tell me. It can’t be dumber that sticking a dime up your nose.”
“Gary put me on probation.”
Tanner sat forward, wondering if he could hide his emotions from his partner. Their commanding officer, Gary Sands, had mentioned on a couple of occasions that he was concerned about Quinn’s penchant for getting injured on the job. Tanner had felt guilty about trying to downplay Gary’s fears in an effort to spare Quinn this type of action. Now he wondered if he’d done the wrong thing by trying to convince Gary he was worrying needlessly. “When did this happen?”
“Late last night, after you left. He stopped by to see how I was, and he told me he was afraid I’m getting too reckless.”
“You are reckless, but what happened last night wasn’t your fault.”
“I don’t think Gary believes that.”
“So how long are you on probation?”
Quinn sighed. “Six months. Not including my six weeks of recovery time.”
“Six months?”
“With no injuries on the job or I’m out of the corps.”
Tanner let out a long, slow breath. He’d expected Gary to caution Quinn but never to threaten his job. “Man, I’m sorry.”
“He’s starting to think I’ve got some kind death wish.”
“That’s ridiculous. And I don’t think he really believes that, even if he said it. He’s just worried about you.”
“Well, nobody needs to worry about me. I’m fine.”
“I know but—”
A knock on the door of Quinn’s room interrupted Tanner, and a second later, Gary walked in. The older man glanced at Quinn who only scowled in response. “Quinn, you’re looking a little better than last night. Tanner, I’m glad I caught you here.”
Tanner eyed the t
wo men. He considered bringing up Quinn’s probation, but Gary didn’t look like he was the mood to defend his executive decisions. His features looked drawn and his jaw was tight. Clearly there was more on his mind than a reckless EMT. “What is it?”
Gary took a seat across from the bed. “I know you heard all this last night, but I wanted to make sure Quinn was aware that we’ve been asked to say nothing about the Stanton fire. There’s a police investigation going on to determine who rigged the gas leak and why. Not that I expect you to go running your mouths. I trust you, but there’s a lot of rumors around and a lot of reporters.”
Quinn’s bleary gazed bounced to Tanner. “Fill me in, guys. All I remember about last night was the room spinning and people shining lights in my eyes.”
Gary gave Quinn the sketchy details about the senator and the woman who was now reported to be his mistress. “You’ll both have to speak to the detective assigned to the case, but other than that, our department has no official statement on what happened. You know nothing and you answer no questions. Got it?”
Quinn shrugged. “Easy for me. The last thing I remember was going into the house, smelling gas. Then someone shouting my name in my ear until I woke up.”
“That was probably me,” Tanner said. “Gary, I don’t remember much myself, but I’ll tell the police whatever I can.”
Gary nodded and rose. “Thanks. Someone will be contacting you. Quinn, get some rest and stay out of trouble. Tanner, can you pick up a couple of extra shifts?”
“Sure, whatever you need.”
With another pointed glance at Quinn, Gary rose and left the room.
Tanner sighed. “He’s just worried, like we all were yesterday. You’re not going to lose your job.”
Spring River Valley: The Spring Collection (Boxed Set) Page 6