Interesting. Devin didn’t seem like the good-hearted type to remove suspicion from a man he hardly knew.
Unless he did know him.
“Is it possible Devin and Billy were working together?” Caitlyn asked. “Because there was something...private in the threats I received.”
She looked at Harlan at the same moment he looked at her. You’ll always be my first, Caitlyn. Yes, definitely private and intimate. Too bad just the reminder brought back other recollections. Of that night. Of the recent kisses. Memories of everything she shouldn’t be remembering.
Great. Her body reacted. The heat swirled through her. Slow and easy.
“Private?” Dallas questioned.
No way would she spell it out for him, so Caitlyn settled for an explanation that wouldn’t make Harlan and her squirm. “Something that could have possibly been overheard by someone at Rocky Creek and then told to the person who’s trying to kill us.”
Dallas made a sound of agreement. “Someone like Billy. I’ll look into that, but again, I doubt it’ll be enough to hold him. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.”
Harlan clicked the end-call button, and even though he didn’t say anything, Caitlyn felt his frustration. It helped her a little because it kept her tears at bay. Tears and crying would only add to his frustration. Hers, too.
He made another of those sounds, part huff and part groan, and his gaze met hers. Her gaze of him was a little distorted, however, because she was literally seeing him through tear-speckled lashes. She didn’t dare wipe her eyes again because it would only draw attention to something she didn’t want him to notice.
“You should really think about getting some rest,” he said. “You heard what Dallas said. Even when Billy’s lawyer shows, it’ll probably be just to get him released.”
“And maybe a rightful release,” she muttered.
He lifted his shoulder but didn’t break the stare they had locked on each other. He did move, though. He reached up and brushed the pad of his thumb over those tears. “All those bad times at Rocky Creek, I never saw you cry.”
“I’d rather have eaten glass. Tears are a sign of weakness.”
Another shrug. “They’re normal in situations like these.”
“You aren’t crying,” she pointed out.
The corner of his mouth lifted just a fraction. “Wouldn’t go with my image.”
The corner of her mouth rose, too. Not a smile exactly. The fear and emotion from the shooting were too close to the surface for that, but it felt good to share a moment like this with Harlan. A moment that didn’t involve her crying on his shoulder.
But the moment changed when he didn’t pull back his hand. He kept it there. His fingers rested on her cheek while his heavy-lidded gaze melted all over her. Okay, the melting was her interpretation. Harlan certainly didn’t look on the verge of kissing her again.
“Why me?” he asked.
Caitlyn blinked, shook her head.
“Why did you really give yourself to me at Rocky Creek?”
Oh. That. She didn’t miss the really part of his question. After all, she’d already told him she had offered up her virginity because he was a good guy. That was true, but it was more than that.
“Why not Wyatt?” Harlan pushed. “He had the hots for you.”
Caitlyn couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t noticed Wyatt’s attention. She had. “Wyatt certainly had the looks,” she confessed. “But you were the total package.”
Ouch. That seemed way too relationship-y, and Harlan got that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Time to put this right back on him.
“Why me?” she fired back.
His hand moved from her cheek to her chin. So near her mouth. And his touch felt so good that she wanted to move into it. And maybe would have, but coming on the heels of her total package slip, the timing sucked.
He shook his head. “Doesn’t work that way for a guy. You offered, and I accepted.”
Now it was her turn to give him the skeptical eye. “Plenty of girls offered, not just at Rocky Creek but at the high school, too. The gossip mill worked pretty well in those days, so if you took up anyone else’s offer other than Amy Simpson and that cute cross-country runner with the big boobs, I didn’t hear about it.”
And Caitlyn would almost certainly have heard, because she hadn’t exactly hidden her feelings for Harlan. Also, since she was somewhat of a pariah, people would have loved to have thrown in her face the fact that Harlan was into someone else.
This time, the sound he made was of agreement. “Old water,” he mumbled. “Old bridge.”
“Yes, except this old water still feels...a little warm,” she settled for saying.
The corner of his mouth lifted even higher, and while they truly had nothing to smile about, that helped with her raw nerves, too.
She figured that would do it. No way would Harlan keep touching her and staring at her after that comment. Things were no doubt getting too trip down memory lane for him. But he surprised her—and judging from the profanity he mumbled, surprised himself—when he leaned in and put his mouth to hers.
That brief jolt of surprise vanished. Tears, too. In fact, it was as if his mouth took her on a supersonic ride to another place, another time.
Of course, it didn’t stay just a kiss. They were stupid and weak when it came to each other. Caitlyn wrapped her arms around him, moved in closer and bam! She got what she’d been fantasying about but knowing it shouldn’t happen. She got Harlan’s shoulder, arms and chest.
Oh, and pretty much everything else, too.
Now body to body, they deepened the kiss, and the ache it created felt just as necessary as air.
The feeling only got worse when Harlan ran his hand between them, touching parts of her that were begging for attention. She remembered this touch. This raging insane need that he could create inside her.
Thank goodness oxygen soon became an issue, because they had to break the kiss and gulp in deep breaths. During those brief seconds their gazes met again, and Caitlyn was sure Harlan would realize the mistake they were making.
But nope.
They went right back to each other, the kiss even more intense. The touching harder and crazier. They grappled to get closer and knocked each other off balance. Harlan’s shoulder slammed into the wall, but that still didn’t loosen the grip they had on each other.
Or the precise alignment.
Harlan’s beefcake chest gave her breasts some mind-blowing pressure. Ditto for the rest of him. Every part of them aligned so that his sex was against her. Yes, there were clothes between them, but she could still feel every last inch of him.
There was a serious problem with their being former lovers. Her body was trying to convince the rest of her that a round of quick sex with Harlan would be good for both of them.
Very good.
But afterward...well, afterward would be awkward and would likely put some distance between them. She didn’t need distance when they were essentially fighting for their lives.
Caitlyn reminded herself of all that. Three times. And even though it took every ounce of willpower, she gripped him by the shoulders and pushed herself away from him.
Oh, mercy.
She instantly felt the loss, and regret of a different kind. The realization, too, that she was just as attracted to Harlan now as she had been sixteen years ago.
Caitlyn groaned. Stepped back even farther.
“I need to apologize,” he mumbled.
She shook her head. “It’s not that. I’m just trying to keep myself from going back for another round. Because we both know where this will lead if we keep kissing.”
He stayed quiet a moment, giving that some thought, and giving her the look. The one that had melted her too many times to count
. Caitlyn felt the tug, as if they were connected by a big rubber band that might snap her back to him at any second. And it probably would have.
If Harlan’s phone hadn’t buzzed.
Neither of them seemed relieved by the sound, but Caitlyn thought that later—when her body had cooled down some—they might be thankful for the interruption.
Might.
Harlan took out the phone. “It’s Slade.” And like the other call, he put this one on speaker.
“Hope you’re sitting down,” Slade immediately said, “because you’re not going to believe what’s just happened.”
Caitlyn automatically groaned. Slade’s tone always sounded the same to her—drenched in a gallon of gloom and doom—so she braced herself for more bad news.
“The Rangers killed the warrants for your arrest,” Slade announced.
Harlan and she stared at each other, and even though it wasn’t much to process, just one sentence, it didn’t seem to make sense.
“Why?” they asked in unison.
“Still digging for the details, but whatever evidence they thought they had, it was discredited.”
She shook her head. “How?”
“By someone unexpected. Farris.”
That was the last name on earth she’d expected Slade to say. “How?” she repeated.
“Don’t know all the facts there either, but what I do know is that Farris claims he sent those threatening emails to Sherry.”
The surprise caused her stomach to flip-flop. Not that she’d thought for one second that Farris was innocent in all of this. Nope. But the surprise was that he would admit any wrongdoing.
And why would he?
“What does Farris want?” Caitlyn had meant the question more for herself than Slade.
“Who knows, but he’s here at the Rocky Creek sheriff’s office, and he’s talking,” Slade told her. “My advice? Since the law’s not after you, both of you should get down here now and hear what this little viper has to say.”
Chapter Twelve
Even though Caitlyn and he were walking into the Rocky Creek sheriff’s office, Harlan didn’t exactly feel safe.
For a darn good reason.
They’d been shot at less than two miles from here.
Plus, they were about to face down two of the men who could be responsible for the shooting. Harlan wanted Caitlyn far from here, tucked away someplace safe. But someplace safe might not exist, and right now his best bet was to keep her by his side. He hoped like the devil that his decision didn’t have anything to do with their recent kissing session.
But it probably did. And that riled him to the core. Attraction and kisses shouldn’t be playing into any decision about her safety.
He got Caitlyn inside the building and immediately came face-to-face with not just Sheriff Sheldon but three uniformed deputies. Normally the uniforms wouldn’t have made Harlan uneasy, but it had been less than a half hour since the Rangers had dropped the charges against Caitlyn and him. It might be a while before he trusted anyone with a badge unless it was one of his brothers.
And speaking of family, both Slade and Declan came up the side hall toward the reception area. Slade greeted them with his usual no-greeting that included zero change in his expression, but Declan’s forehead bunched up, showing his concern.
“You two okay?” Declan asked, but his question seemed more for Caitlyn than Harlan.
Or maybe that was just Harlan’s overactive imagination. He was still nursing a twinge of jealousy over the whispered conversation that Declan and she had had back at the hospital.
“Fine,” Caitlyn lied, and she repeated it, sounding less of a lie when Declan gave her arm a gentle pat.
Harlan felt a rumble of jealousy over that, too, and wondered if he should just hit himself in the head with a big rock. It might knock some sense into him.
“Billy Webb’s in the first room down the hall,” Sheriff Sheldon informed them. “With his lawyer. That’s my way of saying he’s probably not gonna be talking much, but it doesn’t matter, I guess, since we got nothing to hold him. He said he’d be leaving as soon as he spoke to you.”
Well, at least Billy had waited around. Harlan didn’t know if that proved his innocence or if he just didn’t want to look guilty. “And what about Farris?”
The sheriff tipped his head toward the hall again. “He’s in the room next to Billy Webb. No lawyer yet, but he’s got a couple on the way. I figure he won’t be leaving any time soon. It’s gonna take us a while to sort through all of this, and the Rangers want to talk to him, too.”
No surprise there. “I want to question Farris. You got any problems with that?”
Sheldon shook his head. “If you get him to confess to firing those shots, I want to know about it. Rocky Creek ain’t the wild, wild West, and I don’t want anybody thinking they can come in here and start shooting up the place.”
Harlan doubted Farris would confess to anything that serious. In fact, this could all be part of the cat-and-mouse game he was playing with Caitlyn. Still, sometimes people spilled things they didn’t intend.
“There’s a camera in the interview room,” the sheriff added. “Already turned on. I read Farris his rights, told him everything was on the record, so whatever he says I can and will use against him.”
Harlan thanked Sheldon and considered asking Caitlyn to wait with Slade or Declan. It would save her from facing down Farris again, but before Harlan could even make the suggestion, she was already walking in the direction of the interview rooms.
Harlan caught up with her, and they stopped in the doorway of the first room. The moment Billy spotted them he got to his feet.
“Caitlyn, Harlan,” Billy greeted, and he came to them and shook their hands. His lawyer, a bald bulky man, got up, too, and stood behind him. “Wish this was under better circumstances,” Billy added.
There was no trace of the stutter that Billy had once had. No trace of the painfully shy kid who’d kept to himself. Heck, he was wearing a Rolex, for heaven’s sake, and from the looks of it, he’d had a recent manicure.
Yeah, he’d come up in the world, all right.
But Harlan knew that money didn’t make a man innocent.
“You think Devin Mathis set up the shooting?” Billy came right out and asked.
Harlan had to shrug. “Who set up the meeting—you or Devin?”
“I did, but he’d been trying to find me for weeks. Even hired a P.I. So did Sherry’s business partner, Curtis Newell.” Billy looked at Caitlyn then. “And you.”
She confirmed that with a nod. “A lot of people have been looking for you, especially me. Any reason you didn’t want to be found?”
“I have a new life now,” he said without hesitation. “I didn’t want to get caught up in the old memories and a past I’d rather just forget.”
“But something changed your mind,” Harlan pointed out.
“Yes.” He gave a weary sigh. “I started reading about the investigation of my father’s death. About Tiffany’s car accident and Sherry’s disappearance. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that those things were happening so soon after my mother’s...incident at your family’s ranch.”
The incident had nearly killed Harlan’s brother Dallas and Dallas’s wife, Joelle. Sarah Webb had hired armed men to make sure no one uncovered the fact that she’d murdered her husband. Sarah had been seriously injured in the attack that she’d orchestrated and had lapsed into a coma before she could name her accomplice.
Was Harlan now looking at that accomplice?
“Who helped your mother kill your father?” Harlan asked.
“I honestly don’t know, but it wasn’t me.” Again Billy didn’t hesitate. “If you remember correctly, I didn’t have much of a backbone in those days.”
&n
bsp; Caitlyn stared at him. “Or maybe you did. Webb was beating your mother nearly every time his temper blew, and from what I remember, it happened often. You must have wanted to see him get his due.”
Billy shrugged. “I didn’t say I didn’t have motive. I did. Just like the rest of you. My father had gotten approval to keep Rocky Creek open, and none of you wanted that—especially Kirby. Plus, Declan had been on the receiving end of Dad’s fists that day. Joelle, too, if I remember correctly. All of that is motive for wanting him dead.”
Harlan couldn’t argue with any of it. Joelle had been a resident at Rocky Creek, and Webb had slapped her for some piddly infraction. Dallas and Joelle were just teenagers then, like the rest of his foster brothers, but they’d also been lovers. And Dallas was beyond protective of her, giving him a big reason to go after Webb.
But Harlan figured someone beat Dallas to it and put that knife in Webb.
The only thing Harlan was certain of was he hadn’t killed the headmaster, and he was sure Caitlyn hadn’t been involved either. For argument’s sake, if he ruled out members of his family—and he intended to do that whether he should or not—that left Billy, Devin and Curtis.
Maybe Sherry, too, if she’d faked her disappearance.
Harlan took a business card from his wallet and wrote down the number for the prepaid cell he was still using. “Call me if you find out anything.”
“I will.” Billy took out a card, too. “And I ask you to do the same for me.” He pulled in a long breath. “My father was a despicable man and deserved to die, but I’ve spent a decade and a half getting away from the muck that he caused in my life and others’. I don’t want to be pulled back into it. That’s why it’s important that I find whoever’s behind these attacks so my name will be cleared.”
“I?” Harlan challenged. He didn’t like the sound of that. “What are you planning to do?”
“Something that should have been done years ago. I intend to find the person responsible for my father’s death.”
Billy didn’t wait for Harlan to respond to that. He eased past them, barely sparing them a glance, and he and his lawyer walked away.
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