As though she had reeled him back to reality, he stopped and looked down at his shirt. He chuckled as he must have realized the state he was in.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling back from her.
Her towel slipped and she moved to grab it, but stopped and let it fall to the floor atop his utility belt.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she said, her voice high and airy with lust.
She slipped the buttons free as he stared at her body. Under her fingertips, she could feel the erratic beating of his heart and his short, choppy breaths as her hands worked lower. She pulled his shirt from him and dropped it to the floor away from her towel.
Bits of hay were still stuck to his tank top from his digging through the compost pile. She pulled a piece from his shirt. He was such a good man. How could she have ever let him go?
She had regretted her decision in the past, but never more than right now. If she had just followed her heart and not her head or the pressures of the people around her, she could have been with him all these years. They had missed so much time together all because she had made a major miscalculation.
There was only moving forward.
She reached down and unbuttoned his pants. He took her hand and lifted them to his lips and kissed them.
“Are you sure?” he asked, kissing the inside of her palm. “Are you positive that you want to take things down this road again?”
“I am sure, but are you?” She wrapped her free hand around his neck and leaned back against the wall, letting him glimpse her in full glory.
She wasn’t playing fair and she knew it, but she didn’t care. All was fair in love and war. Not that she loved him.
No. Definitely not love.
Probably.
She pushed the thought from her mind as she led him to the shower and stripped off his shirt. There was a piece of hay in the sparse hair that adorned the center of his chest. She liked a man with a little brown sugar. As she pulled the hay off him, she ran her fingers through the little patch and giggled.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, a grin on his sexy face.
“Nothing. It’s just a little thicker than the last time I saw it.” She pulled at the single gray hair that was mixed in the patch. “And it looks like you are starting to get a little salt in the pepper.”
“It’s not gray,” he said, looking down at his chest and pulling at the hair. “That is summer blond, baby.”
She laughed, the sound warming her from the inside out.
How she had missed him.
She turned the water on in the shower as he slipped his pants off. He stood there in his boxer briefs, looking at her as she turned back around.
“Did anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?”
She waved him off. As much as she loved hearing the compliment, she didn’t quite know how to respond.
“No, really. And if you turn around again...” He leaned around, trying to catch another glimpse of her behind.
“What?” she said, playfully turning away from him.
He gave her an impish grin. “Do you really want to find out?”
She giggled and stepped into the shower, pulling the curtain just far enough closed that it covered her body, but she could see out. “Only if you meet me in here.”
Just when she thought he couldn’t get any hotter, his impish grin grew into a full smile, making a dimple appear in his right cheek. He reached down and slipped his fingers under the edge of his underwear and wiggled his hips.
It felt so good to see him being playful.
“I like it. Dance for me, baby,” she teased.
He laughed as he swung his hips in a full circle and lowered his underwear, exposing the edge of his pubic hair.
“Lower...”
“How low?” he said, continuing to swing his hips.
“All the way.”
He raised his brow and stopped dancing. He paused for a minute, then pulled the boxers down his legs and stepped out of them.
She sucked in a breath as she looked at all of him. She had felt him against her, but she hadn’t quite expected what faced her.
He stepped into the shower and pulled her back into his arms. The water splashed on him, creating rivulets that streamed down his body. It was strange, but she couldn’t help but think that being in his arms was the one place where she truly belonged.
They let the water run over their bodies as he pushed her against the water-warmed tile of the shower wall and kissed her. He tasted savory in all the right ways.
He traced her curves with his fingers until he found his way to her backside. He cupped it, and his kiss moved deeper, harder with want. His hunger for her made every inch of her body scream to be touched, to be felt and tasted. She opened her legs and pulled him closer to her, so close she could feel all of him against her.
The sensation of him against her wet skin made her prickle to life. Every dream she had envisioned and every thought she’d had about this time with him was nothing in comparison to the reality of feeling him between her thighs.
He leaned down, pulling her nipple into his mouth and making a sucking noise. She loved that noise, the pop of his mouth on her sensitive nub. She moaned his name and his kiss hardened on her.
She could live in this moment forever.
There was the sound of the phone ringing somewhere from beneath the pile of clothes just outside the shower. She tried to ignore it, but the Gary Allan song “Get Off on the Pain” continued to sound, and it pulled her from her euphoria.
“Is...is that your phone?” she said, drunk with want.
“Huh?” He stopped kissing her and she immediately regretted having spoken.
“Your phone.”
It stopped ringing. For a moment they stood there in silence, just letting the water rush over them. Then the phone started ringing again, persistent with its need to be answered.
“Son of a—”
“What?”
“It’s probably the medical examiner. He promised he would call.” He gave her a look that said he had to take the call.
She was immediately brought back to reality. Their stolen moment was over... No matter how badly she wanted to fall into the daydream, the nightmare of the real world waited.
Chapter Seven
He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten so lucky to find himself alone with her in the shower, but he would give just about anything to get back in and not have his phone ring. He’d never thought of himself as unlucky, but when he’d been forced to step away from her, he couldn’t help but think the universe had it out for him.
He pulled the device from his utility belt as it sounded again. “Deputy Fitzgerald,” he answered, irritation filling in his voice.
“Fitz, how goes it?” the medical examiner asked, either ignoring or completely oblivious to his tone.
Wyatt looked at Gwen, who had already turned off the shower and wrapped her body back in the towel he had watched hit the floor only minutes before. He walked to the rack and grabbed his own towel, wrapping it around his waist as modesty dictated, though his body wanted something entirely different.
He could have sworn a look of disappointment swept over her face, but he couldn’t be sure. Then again, she had been the one who had tried to seduce him—though admittedly she didn’t have to try too hard. It had taken all of his willpower to turn her away the first time because he had thought her too raw from grief to make a good decision about their being together. But the second time, when she dropped that towel...well, he couldn’t say no. A man could only resist and listen to his head so much before his body and its desires took over.
“Fitz?” the woman asked.
“Yeah, so... Find anything?” He forced himself to look away from Gwen and the perfect curve
s of her body. With a body like that, round and soft in all the right places, there was no way he could pay attention to the woman on the other end of the phone.
Though he tried to look away, he could still see her in the mirror, bending over and running the edge of her towel down her legs.
Dang, she was so flipping sexy.
He left the bathroom and gently pulled the door shut behind him so he wouldn’t be tempted to look back. He had to focus.
“The syringe you brought us was quite helpful. Upon closer inspection, we did manage to find a small mark on her neck that was consistent with the mark that would be made by a large gauge needle.”
“Did you test the syringe’s contents?”
“That’s really why I was calling.” The woman paused. “We found something interesting. Something that I didn’t even know we tested for, to be honest. Have you ever heard of the drug Beuthanasia?”
“What?” he asked, struggling to imagine what exactly the woman was talking about.
“Beuthanasia, it’s used on animals...to put them to down.”
“Are you kidding me?”
The woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Once my techs learned about the syringe and the victim’s job, it was one of the next chemical compounds that they tested for. If it wasn’t for them and their ability to put two and two together, I can’t say we would have figured out exactly what killed her. With the amount of phenytoin and pentobarbital in her system, I can say that without a doubt it was what killed her.”
“Who has access to it?” Wyatt asked.
“Well,” the medical examiner started, “anyone who is registered with the DEA has access. They can order the drug, but they have to have a good record-keeping system. Actually, most veterinarians keep the drug on hand—especially the large-animal vets who may be called to a scene in which they can’t transport a hurt animal and have to humanely end its life.”
“So it could have been Bianca’s medication?”
“Certainly... She was a vet, correct?”
“Is there any way to track where the drug could have come from? You know, which vial or something?” Wyatt asked.
The woman snorted into the phone. “No. We aren’t some crime show. It’s not something that’s DNA based. The solution from one company is pretty much the same as the solution from another company. And truthfully, not knowing much about veterinarian medicine, I would assume there isn’t a whole lot of diversity as far as who would carry and distribute the medicine.”
“Huh. Okay. Did you manage to pull any prints from the syringe?”
He could almost imagine the lady shaking her head. “Unfortunately, due to its condition, we couldn’t pull any full prints that would be usable. However, the partial prints appeared to have a ridge pattern that wasn’t that of your vic—ruling out any possibility that she may have killed herself.”
“You are sure that it was the implement used in her death?”
“You’re the one who would have to prove it in court, but thanks to the size of the needle and the size of the mark on your vic’s neck, added to the fact that it was filled with the same chemical that killed her, I’d say you’d be more than likely to prove that it was what killed her beyond a reasonable doubt.”
There had to be something he could use here. Maybe even something that could point him in the direction of who wanted Bianca dead—and why.
“Thanks for the information. I appreciate it. And, hey, if you find out anything else about this med, or about her death, please let me know. I’m at a bit of a loss with this one. Few known enemies and she was pretty well liked within the community.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll let you know if I run across anything more,” the medical examiner said.
He hung up the phone. From inside the bathroom, he could hear Gwen’s footsteps as she moved around the room.
He set the phone down on his dresser and moved toward the door, but stopped at taking the handle. Undoubtedly, she would want to know what the examiner had found, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell her. Not yet. Not when they could finish what they started.
The handle turned in his hand and he let go.
Gwen opened the door. She was wearing the Yankees T-shirt that he had kept from his very limited days attending NYU. That shirt was about the only thing, besides maybe the baseball games and the food, that he’d really enjoyed in the monstrously huge city.
“You look cute,” he said, putting his hands on the top of her hips and leaning back to take her in completely.
She stepped out of his hands, but the movement wasn’t out of rejection. Rather, thanks to the faint pinkness in her cheeks, he assumed it was out of embarrassment. Was she upset about the choice she had made in the bathroom?
For him, what had just happened would probably go down in the books. He had loved it. It had been the first real thing that had happened in a long time. He was always working and moving. It was just an endless, habitual cycle that he had come to accept was his life—until yesterday and the moment he had seen her standing in the doorway in her red flannel nightgown.
That was the moment he’d sparked back to life. And he would forever be thankful for having her back in his world—it was just too bad it had to come under some terrible circumstances. If only he had listened to Bianca one of the million times she had tried to tell him to go after her sister, he could have come back to life a long time ago.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have fallen into the trap of complacency.
“Who was that?” she asked, looking at him with the raise of her brow.
“Just some girl,” he said, almost teasing as he tried to put off having to tell her what he’d found out.
“Oh, yeah?” From her tone, it wasn’t just an innocent question; there was almost a fleck of jealousy.
He had to have been wrong. There was nothing for her to be jealous about.
He must have misread her. He was making something out of nothing, he’d probably heard something in her voice that wasn’t even there. Regardless, their moment was over. He moved to his closet and pulled out a fresh uniform shirt and pants.
“That,” he said, motioning to the cell phone on his dresser, “was the medical examiner. She was calling about your sister.”
Her jaw went slack and her questioning expression disappeared. “What did she say?”
“You were right about the syringe and its tie to the case. It was filled with a compound they use for euthanizing animals. Someone ended up using it on your sister.” He tried to say the words slowly, so each syllable wouldn’t come as a slap to the face, but there was little he could do to lessen the fact that her sister really had been murdered.
Her gaze fell. Thankfully, unlike when he’d first told her of Bianca’s death at the Widow Maker, she didn’t sink to the floor.
“What does it mean for the case?” she asked, the words coming so slow it was like each was its own sentence.
“It means that this just became an official homicide investigation.”
She leaned against the wall, trying to regain her balance.
“Are you okay?” he asked, throwing his clothes over his arm as he moved toward her. When he got close she turned away, hiding her face.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she walked out the door of his bedroom, closing it in her wake before he could say anything else.
He grumbled. Women were so complicated. He loved them, but, man, sometimes they were like a giant puzzle. Just when he thought he had gotten something figured out, another piece went missing.
He threw on his clothes and utility belt and slipped his phone into his pocket. Gwen was sitting at the island in his kitchen. She’d poured herself a glass of water and, as he approached, she was running her finger around its edges.
The sight of her there, looking brokenh
earted, pulled at him. The first time he’d seen her looking like that had been the day she had learned about her father’s death. Why did he always seem to come to her in moments of disaster? Was he her personal angel of death?
If he was, it was no wonder she was always pushing him away—that is, until they had been in his bathroom. His body tingled with unreleased desire, but he forced himself to ignore the sensation.
That had been a onetime thing. Heck. It had barely even been a thing. They had only seen each other naked. Though, it had been very, very naked and a bit more than simply just seeing. He thought of her pulling him between her thighs. At the thought, he could almost feel the heat of her again. She’d been hot, so hot. At sixteen, he had dreamed of being there—both of them naked and her body begging for him.
He snorted as he thought of how, no matter how old they were, or their situations, life always got in the way.
He stepped around the island and stood in front of her. “I know you said you’re doing fine, but you know, you can talk to me about this...about anything.” He motioned toward the bedroom. Not that he was exactly sure that he wanted to talk about what had happened in there, but he didn’t want to let it go either—not if there was a way he could somehow make sense of what she wanted.
She didn’t look where he motioned, almost as if she was purposefully ignoring his reference. “I...” She sighed, taking a moment. “Look, I’m sorry. For...that. You know, in the bathroom. I just... I don’t know. If you have a girlfriend or something... I didn’t have any business acting like that. Not that I didn’t like it, but...” She stumbled over her words.
So that had been her problem? She thought he was dating someone? The thought made him laugh out loud. Sure, he’d dated, but none of them had ever compared to the memory of her.
He raised his hands from the counter, an action almost like that of a person surrendering. “Whoa. Stop. Babe.” As he said the pet name, he wished he could have pulled it back. In the light of the kitchen, and with them both dressed, it just sounded out of place and awkward. “Gwen, I don’t know why you’d think I have a girlfriend. I haven’t had one in a long time.” Her face brightened and some of the light seemed to return to her eyes.
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