“I’m wide-awake now.”
“And it looks like I have another call to make before asking my friend to run a few tests for me.”
“What call would that be?”
“Security system. I’m getting cameras installed—arson, burglary. What next?”
Clenching her teeth, Savannah raised her shoulders to her ears. “I don’t want to think about what’s next.”
“What’s next for you is setting up that meeting and then taking a nap. You look run-down.”
“Do I?” She ran her hands over her face, still beautiful even with dark circles beneath her eyes and tension in every muscle.
“Tired.” He touched the end of her nose with his fingertip, even though he wanted to do much more than that.
She blushed and coughed. “I’m going to grab my laptop, compose and send out that email and then curl up like a cat.”
She slid from the kitchen stool, and he grabbed his phone and parked himself on one end of the couch. He had someone in mind already to set up the security system. He’d been planning to have one installed for the winery anyway. It just got fast-tracked.
His head jerked to the side when Savannah sat next to him and took his hand.
“You believe me now, don’t you, Connor?” She squeezed his fingers. “You believe that I didn’t kill Niles—in self-defense or otherwise? You believe that someone is trying to set me up?”
Curling his other hand around the back of her neck, he drew her close and touched his forehead to hers. “I do—the knife, the pen, the break-in.”
“I—I mean it’s clear that someone’s trying to set me up, right?”
“It looks that way.” Her lips were so close to his he could feel their warmth.
She broke away from him on a sigh. “You don’t know how much I needed to hear that.”
He raised a finger. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to still see Thomas tomorrow. If you can remember what happened at Niles’s, it might help to ID his killer.”
“I’m fine with seeing Thomas.” She pushed up from the couch. “Looking forward to it, actually.”
Through narrowed eyes, he watched her disappear down the hallway to get her laptop.
That was a lie. She was looking forward to seeing Thomas about as much as he’d be looking forward to a root canal. What other lies did she have on the tip of her tongue?
There was definitely something she wasn’t telling him. This smelled like a setup all right, but who was setting up whom?
* * *
EARLY THAT EVENING, after Savannah had scheduled her meeting and taken a nap, she joined Connor on the floor in front of the TV and a pizza box.
She crossed her legs beneath her and grabbed a paper plate. “You got all your stuff done?”
Connor held up a hand and ticked off one finger at a time. “Set up an appointment to get a security system installed. Contacted A.J. about testing the blood on the knife and the bottle of scotch. Hid the knife in a different spot and did some winery work. Just a typical day.”
Savannah nudged his foot with her toes and held up a slice with cheese hanging off the edge. “Vinny’s is still the best pizza in town.”
“It is, and I didn’t even need to consult you to know you’d want the pepperoni and Italian sausage—despite your vow to cut red meat from your diet. Now is not the time to stick to diets...or any other resolutions.” He held up the bottle of red wine. “Another glass?”
“Just a half for me.” She raised her index finger and thumb to give him the measurement and he dumped in a little more.
So much for those other resolutions.
“A.J. told me he knows a guy who can test that scotch for any added substances.”
“And the knife?”
“He’s working on it. That one’s a little harder.”
“No kidding.” She swirled the ruby liquid in her glass.
“You look better already after that nap.” He cocked his head and his blue eyes did a quick inventory of her features.
She didn’t tell him that his admission that he believed she wasn’t responsible for Niles’s death went a long way to lifting the burden she carried on her shoulders. One burden down, one to go.
“I needed the rest. Now I need this pizza.” She bit into the corner of the slice, the spiciness of the pepperoni exploding on her tongue.
“Any blowback from the meeting you called?”
“No, several members of upper management responded with their support. I can count on Nick Fresco and Lucy Shepherd and Hector Villalobos to have my back—Dee Dee, too. She was Niles’s right hand...and his left, come to think of it.”
“Would Dee Dee know about that file?”
“Maybe.” Savannah dropped some crust on her plate and wiped her greasy fingers on a napkin. “I think I can ask her about it discreetly.”
“Be careful while you’re there, Savannah. This could all be work-related. Maybe you were supposed to die along with Niles.”
“Thanks.” She dusted the pizza crumbs from her fingertips and took a swig of wine. “That’s just what I needed to hear. Someone’s either trying to set me up for a murder I did not commit, or they’re gonna kill me.”
He pinched her knee. “Not while I’m around.”
“Do you want to come to the office with me day after tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there if you want.”
“I want.” She tore off another piece of pizza. “You can even accompany me to Thomas’s office tomorrow, if you promise to wait outside.”
“Savannah, Thomas is a professional. What goes on between the two of you is strictly confidential.” Connor put the wineglass to his lips and then pulled it away. “Makes me wonder, though.”
“Wonder what?”
“Why you’re so nervous.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She dropped the pizza slice. “We’re both lying about where I was the night my ex-husband was murdered. I think I have a little to worry about.”
“We’ll get through this.”
“Sometimes I feel like I can get through anything as long as I have you by my side.” She cupped his strong jaw with her palm, the bristle from his five o’clock shadow tickling her skin.
“You only feel like that sometimes?” He twisted his head to the side and pressed a kiss against her palm. “I know having you here can make anything better, but you’re not here, are you? Even when you’re here, you’re a million miles away. Be here. With me now.”
Her eyes blurred with tears and Connor’s face swam before her eyes. She couldn’t love this man any more than she already did, but she could show him how much even if she couldn’t tell him.
Curling her arms around his neck, she pressed her cheek against his and inhaled his masculine scent—mixed with pepperoni and red wine.
He plowed one hand into her hair and tugged back her head. He slanted his mouth across hers and caressed her lips in a soft, spicy kiss.
She answered with a sigh. She’d been waiting for that kiss ever since she’d thrown herself at him in his driveway, her hopes and her anxiety level high. And he’d helped her in every way, despite breaking the law, putting himself in jeopardy and not quite believing in her.
He pulled her against him in an awkward embrace, but really, nothing was ever awkward between them. They were made for each other.
She settled into his lap, hanging on with an arm wrapped around his waist, and he finished that kiss, pressing his lips against hers, invading her mouth with his tongue.
She toyed with his tongue as she slid her hands beneath his T-shirt and smoothed her fingertips across the muscles of his defined chest. “Your body is as perfect as I remember.”
“And yours—” he ran a hand up her belly and tucked his hand inside her bra, cupping one of her breasts “—I never forgot.”
She
slid from his lap and his warm touch. “I don’t want to do this on the floor with a pizza box as my pillow.”
“We’ve done it in a lot of crazy places.”
“Oh, I remember, Wells.” Using his shoulder as a prop, she struggled to her feet and held out her hand. “But it’s been over four years and I want to take my time with you.”
And it could be another four years.
He grasped her hand and stood up beside her. “Then I want to brush my teeth and wash this pizza from my hands.”
“You first.” She bumped his hip with hers.
As he ran the water in the bathroom, Savannah grabbed a candle from the living room, lit it and placed it on the nightstand in Connor’s bedroom, then turned down the covers on his bed.
When he emerged from the bathroom, she was perched on the edge of it in the darkened room in her underwear.
His eyes burned with a heat as hot as that candle flame. “Nice—and I don’t mean the candlelit room, although that’s a nice touch, too.”
She patted the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. I’m going to brush my teeth, too.”
Connor strode to the bed, braced his hands on the mattress on either side of her and kissed her flat against the bed. “I don’t mind pizza breath.”
“Not fair.” She pressed her hands against his chest and he relented.
As she got up from the bed, he smoothed a hand across her bottom. “Hurry back.”
When she got to the bathroom, she washed her hands and brushed her teeth. She combed her fingers through her hair and whispered to her reflection, “Just this once.”
She practically skipped back into the bedroom and stopped short when confronted with the image of Connor stretched out on his bed, in the buff, the candlelight flickering across his sculpted form.
“Ooh, you didn’t even give me the chance to take your clothes off, piece by piece.”
He sat up, folding his arms behind his head. “I can get dressed again if you want.”
“Don’t you dare.” She rushed toward the bed and jumped on the edge on her knees. She then straddled him and rained kisses across his shoulders and chest.
Connor reached up and unhooked her bra. He caressed her breasts, running his thumbs across her peaked nipples. “Mmm, talk about perfection. Your body is as lithe and beautiful as ever.”
She fell against him, and he rolled over, pinning her beneath him. He trailed his hands down her sides, hooking his fingers in the waistband of her panties and sliding them off.
He left a path of scorching kisses from between her breasts to her stomach, twirling his tongue in her navel until she giggled.
She slapped his shoulder. “Don’t make me laugh. This is serious business.”
“I like to make you laugh, and you haven’t done much of it in a while.” He slid his hands beneath her derriere, and she raised her pelvis.
“You can make me laugh later. Right now, make me sigh, groan, moan.”
He buried his head between her legs and made her do all those things and more. When her orgasm claimed her and she reached her peak, she even screamed out his name.
He kissed the echoes of that scream from her lips as his erection skimmed her belly.
She brushed her fingers along his tight flesh, and his frame shuddered. As he stretched out beside her on the bed, she continued to caress him and he took over the moaning and groaning and sighing.
He stifled a gasp and cinched her wrist with his fingers. “Ahh, I want to be inside you.”
“I’m yours for the taking—always was, always will be.”
He reached for the drawer on the nightstand and yanked it open. He withdrew a blue foil square and held it up between two fingers. “You wanna help me with this?”
She swallowed and pasted a smile on her face. They hadn’t been together for years, but she’d been willing to make love to him without a condom. But he wasn’t.
“Any excuse to touch you there.” She snatched the condom from his fingers and ripped the foil open with her teeth.
Seconds later, Connor eased into her and she closed around him. She wound her legs around his torso as he drove into her over and over, and the only thing pounding into her brain along with the rhythm of his thrusts was he doesn’t trust you, he doesn’t trust you.
Panting, he balanced on his elbows above her and peppered her face with feverish kisses. “Are you going to come? I can wait.”
She dribbled her fingertips across his flushed face, damp with sweat. “Go ahead. I already experienced my paradise.”
He kissed her again and moments later his body stiffened before he plowed into her hard and fast, gasping out his release.
He lay motionless on top of her for a few seconds before rolling off her body. He stroked the side of her breast. “Was I smothering you?”
“Only in the best of ways.” Her fingers traced the outline of the muscles on his flat stomach.
He removed the condom and put it on a tissue on the bedside table. Reclining on his back again, he took her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “Just like old times. Better.”
“Except for the protection.”
His fingers tightened on hers for a second. “It’s been a while since we’ve been together, Savannah.”
Her heart began pounding, and she placed a hand against her chest in a lame attempt to steady it. “I killed him.”
Chapter Twelve
The warm glow encasing him turned to ice and he jerked, Savannah’s words like a physical jolt to his body.
His fingers, still entwined with hers, froze. Blood pounded in his ears and his jaw locked.
“Did you hear me?” Her voice, soft as a whisper, tickled his ear.
It broke the spell and he snatched his hand away from hers and bolted upright, the sheen of sweat on his body from making love to Savannah now giving him a chill.
“I heard you.” His own voice came out like gravel on the pavement. “You killed Niles.”
Savannah shot up against the headboard. “God, no. I didn’t kill Niles.”
Connor jerked his head to the side. What kind of games was she playing? “What the hell are you talking about? You told me you killed him.”
“Not Niles. I killed Manny. I killed my stepfather.”
A second jolt zapped his body, but this one juiced him with adrenaline, and he scrambled from the bed. “What do you mean? My father killed Manny for your mother, and then you and Georgie lied for him, telling the cops it happened in a self-defense, life or death struggle between my father and Manny.”
She raised those violet eyes to his, her fingers twisting into knots over her naked body. “No. It didn’t happen that way, Connor.”
He shook his head. “You lied to me. He lied to me. My father paid with his life for killing Manny.”
“I know that.” She dropped her head, and her dark hair fanned out over her breasts.
He grabbed his boxers from the floor and stepped into them. “Tell me everything. I want the truth—if you’re capable.”
Her hair swung in front of her face as she flinched. “Of course. I wanted to for the longest time.”
She slid from his bed and pulled on her underwear, her back toward him. Then she grabbed the T-shirt he’d been wearing that day from on top of his dresser and pulled it over her head. She sat on the edge of the bed, stuffing her hands beneath her thighs.
“Not here.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “In the living room.”
He turned his back on Savannah and the awful truths flowing from her lips. How could she be responsible for Manny’s death? Why? Had she been trying to protect her mother, as Connor’s father had claimed he’d been trying to do?
His anger and sense of betrayal fogged his brain, but he had to get past it long enough to listen to her, to find out what had really happened.
He collapsed on the couch amid the wreckage of their night and kicked the half-empty pizza box out of his way.
Savannah, twisting the hem of his shirt in her hands, followed him, and sank into the chair across from the couch. “I wanted to tell you so many times, Connor, but I didn’t know how.”
“You figured the best time was while I was providing an alibi for you for another murder and after we’d made love? That makes a lot of sense.”
“The time seemed right—necessary.”
He sliced a hand through the air. “Tell me how it happened.”
“Manny had been harassing me.” She licked her lips. “Coming on to me.”
“Sexually?” He swallowed, the tightness in his throat almost unbearable.
“Yes.”
“Since when? Not when he first married your mother? Not when you were fourteen?” His hands curled into fists on his knees. If Manny weren’t already dead, he could kill him himself.
“No, at least he wasn’t into young teens, but as soon as I turned eighteen he started making moves. It began the first time I came home from college, at Thanksgiving.”
He remembered that time. He’d been so happy to have Savannah home, and any changes in her behavior he’d put down to college life.
“Did you tell Georgie?”
“Of course I did, and I told Manny off in no uncertain terms.”
“What was your mother’s response?” Connor clenched his jaw. He knew Georgie and could figure out how she’d react to her husband of five years, a husband showering her with cars, gifts and money, showing interest in her beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter.
Savannah twisted her lips. “Mom didn’t like it and she even talked to Manny, but she told me to grow up and handle it. There was no way she was kicking Manny out.”
“Didn’t think so.” Connor raised his eyes to the ceiling. “This started when you were eighteen and went on for three years before...before you killed him?”
“His interest in me would wax and wane. Sometimes he’d come on hard, putting his hands on my body, trying to kiss me, and other times he hardly noticed my presence.”
Connor’s stomach churned. “And Georgie was okay with all of this?”
Her Alibi Page 13