“I’m not going to talk,” he said, which was probably shooting himself in the foot, but he was saying it anyway. “I already told you. I took care of it. You either trust me to tell you the truth or you don’t. I can’t do anything about that.”
“Then why are we here?”
“So you can tell me which it is.”
Her eyes searched his face, and he leaned back against a table, breathed in and out some more, and tried not to let it matter as much as it did.
“Why did you come here?” she asked. “Why this job? You said you left San Francisco. You told me why you left, too. But why here?”
“Ah. Well.” It wasn’t an answer to his question, but it was pretty clear that she needed her own answers. He considered how much to tell her. “It’s another story, but for now—I wanted a change. Another change. I’d spent some time in Spokane, remember, and the area seemed . . . right. Quiet. Peaceful. I wanted peaceful, at the time. I looked at some pictures online, and maybe I remembered that I’d met somebody from Paradise once. Maybe.”
“Somebody you hadn’t looked up.”
“Didn’t know her name. But I thought maybe I’d find her again. And I did.”
She was silent, and he stood and waited, because he was a patient man. Finally, he tried again. “If it helps, I think I get it.”
“No,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “You don’t. You don’t know what it’s like to run a gauntlet in high school every time you go to your locker. You don’t know how it feels to trust that maybe this time, it’ll be different, and to get it thrown back in your face. You don’t know what it’s like to feel like a piece of meat. A piece of ass. To know that looking good or having good sex with a man will make him think you’re trash. You know one reason I stayed married as long as I did? Because at least I got some respect when I had that ring on my finger.”
“You’re right,” he said when he could manage it. “I don’t know. But that doesn’t mean I’m that man.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Why shouldn’t you? What have I done to make you doubt me? Besides the obvious,” he said, his smile a bit painful. “But since then.”
“A man will do a lot to get into my pants.”
This time, he couldn’t control himself. His palm came down hard on the table beside him. Which didn’t help anything, so he picked his hand up again and ran it through his hair. “Right,” he said. “Right.” He looked down between his feet and breathed out, slow and steady, then looked back at her. “You’re bitter. I get it. It sounds like you’ve got plenty of reason to be. But—you know, from where I sit, it looks like that bitter’s trying hard to drown out all your sweetness, and that’s just a crying shame. It’s got to be tough to reach out and grab hold of somebody new when you’re carrying all that baggage.” Which he had no right to say, but once again, he was saying it anyway, because he liked her too much not to try.
She stood there, and he could see the movement in her throat as she swallowed. “But,” she said, “you’re leaving.”
“That’s true. I am. But people find ways to work things out. At least so I hear.”
He waited a minute, but she didn’t answer, and finally, he sighed and pushed off the table. “Hell, Rochelle. I don’t know what would happen. Neither do you. All I can promise is that I’ll tell you the truth.”
“We’re going to go slow,” she said, and his heart started to hammer even harder than it had when he’d first seen her walk into the break room. When he’d first wondered why he hadn’t headed up to her office the second his class had been over. And whether it was at all because he’d been scared himself. Scared of what he felt.
“You bet we are,” he said. “You bet.”
“And I’m not promising anything.”
“Got it.”
“And I’ve got to get back to work.”
She didn’t move, though, and he took one step, two, until he was almost touching her, the tips of her generous breasts nearly brushing his chest.
“Did I mention,” he said quietly, “that you look beautiful today? And that I missed you?”
She swayed the tiniest bit toward him, and when her body touched his . . . that was all it took. His hands were in her hair, holding her head, and he’d backed her up against that table and was kissing her hard. Taking that lush mouth he’d been torturing himself with remembering for three days now, and devouring it. He wasn’t holding back one bit, and she was opening up and urging him on. Her hands were on his shoulders, then sliding down his back and up again as if she wanted to feel him the same way he was dying to feel her.
He couldn’t stand it. He dropped his head to her neck and took a bite. There, right at that tender spot at the side. She gasped aloud, and the fire burned hotter. One hand settled over the curve of her gorgeous ass, and he pulled her in closer, higher, harder. He was kissing her neck now, and she was making some noise.
He needed to be inside her. He needed to show her. That was all.
He didn’t register the sound of the key in the door at first. It was the throat clearing that had him leaping back.
“Uh . . .” A young, bearded guy in jeans, holding a backpack. Grad student. “Sorry.”
Travis had stepped instinctively in front of Rochelle, but she moved right around him, shoved her hair back from her face, nodded at the guy, said, “No problem,” and walked out of the room without glancing at Travis again.
He followed her, grabbing the door as she was pulling it open and holding it for her, then heading out himself.
He should have given her a hug and left it at that. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking, that was what. Not with his brain, anyway.
“See,” she said, striding down the hall in those heels, tall and magnificent, her appearance offering no hint of the fragile, tender pieces inside, “that’s exactly why I can’t do this. I’m not going to be that person anymore. The one he’ll tell all the other grad students about, so they’ll be thinking how they’d like to do me, too. I have to live here. I have to work here. My job matters. To my family. And to me.” The words were running away with her, the sentences short and choppy, not like Rochelle at all. “I’ve clawed my way right up from the bottom, and I’m not falling back down. That’s why I tried to be careful last year with Wes. To keep it quiet. And you heard how that worked out. I can’t afford this.”
“Hey.” He took her shoulder and swung her gently around, and she turned with him and looked straight at him, and that was Rochelle. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I missed you, and . . . well. But I shouldn’t have grabbed you. My fault, and I’m sorry.”
Her gaze was level. Steady. “I grabbed you back. There were two of us there. There have been all along. But we’ve got nothing to build here. I can’t do this.”
No. He wasn’t letting this go without a fight. “If you can’t, you can’t. But if that’s why? Then I say, screw letting them take away our good thing. And screw letting fear do the same thing. So we go out. What’s everyone going to be seeing? A guy who’s crazy about a woman and is doing his best to impress her, hoping and praying she likes him half as much as he likes her, and not keeping it one bit quiet. If anybody’s got something to say about us, they can say it to me, because I’m going to be standing right there beside you to hear it. And to deal with it, too. That’s a promise.”
“For what, three months? Three and a half? You think that’s going to work?”
He reached out to touch her cheek, because he wanted to hold her so badly, and he couldn’t, not there in the hallway in front of her office. She leaned her face into his palm for the barest instant, and this time, it made his heart turn over.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think it is.”
BACK UNDER CONTROL
Rochelle was still shaken, but she wasn’t going to show it any more than she could help. The way he’d kissed her, and the look in his eyes just now . . .
“I’m so bad at slow
,” she said, then forced her feet to take her back into the office, where she seated herself behind her desk and stuck her sign back in the drawer. Back to work. Back under control.
“So is that a yes?” He had his thumb hooked into the front pocket of his jeans again, and one hip canted like a rodeo rider. How was she supposed to resist that?
“That’s a maybe.” The words came out, just like that. Because of how he’d touched her face. Because of what he’d said. Screw letting them take away our good thing. Those were her kind of fightin’ words. And because he cared about his parents, and . . . She was going down. She could feel it.
He’s leaving, she told herself desperately, but her sensible self was losing ground all the time.
“I’ll take maybe,” he said. “But if slow’s really what you want, we’re going to have to be creative here. I don’t seem to have much restraint.”
“Well,” she said, firing up her computer, “I like creative.”
“You’re not helping.”
She smiled, feeling a whole lot better. “Let’s see what you’ve got, big boy.”
“And again. Not helping.”
She put her elbows on the desk, plopped her chin on her folded hands, and looked up at him. It would have given him a look down her cleavage, if she showed cleavage at work, which she didn’t. But she could tell it was an effort to keep his eyes up high all the same. “Well?”
“Uh . . . dinner tonight?” he tried. “Someplace nice?”
She sighed, sat up straight, and picked up the catering list for tonight’s reception. “A, not all that creative, and not exactly the slow lane, either. It’s the way you look at me. Someplace nice? Candles? Mmm . . . too tempting, don’t you think? And B, Dr. Olsen’s got a function I have to start getting ready for in half an hour. Not tonight.”
All right, she was messing with him. Too bad.
“Thought you didn’t think in outline form,” he said.
“Hey. I learned from the best.”
“All right. Dancing Friday.”
“We didn’t do so well with that last time. Going-slow-wise.”
“No. We didn’t. Anyway, you’re right, let’s save that up. That’s dessert. That’s the prize, once we’re not going slow anymore, because we’re going to get there if I’ve got a single thing to do with it. OK, then. Saturday. I’m going to call you with the plan.”
“Am I going to be impressed?”
“Well,” he said, “let’s hope.”
“A bike ride,” Stacy said flatly on Friday night. “To Ithaca. Thirteen miles. And back.”
“Yep,” Rochelle said, doing her perky-cheerleader thing again. “It’s a beautiful path.”
“And you’d know this how?”
“All right, so I’ve never done it. And I don’t usually ride that far. But everybody says it’s a beautiful path, and it’s not supposed to be as hot on Saturday. I’m sure it’ll be great. And here’s the deal. I’d like you to come.”
Stacy looked up at her with the one eye that was visible. She was lying facedown on her bed after her shift working the drive-through window at Macho Taco. “No.”
“Come on.” Rochelle sat down beside Stacy and ran a hand over her long brunette hair, stroking her the way she had when her sister had been six. She’d been impatient plenty of times then, all the mornings she’d had to get five reluctant kids out the door and onto the school bus, resenting that it was her job, that her parents had had so many kids and so little money. Now, the impatience had turned to worry for her bright, studious little sister. “You don’t have anything going on until the evening tomorrow. Why not do something healthy, instead of . . .” Winding yourself up until you’re halfway to crazy and then going out and staying gone until the bars close, she didn’t say.
It wasn’t Stacy’s job she was worried about, and it was only partly Stacy’s classes. It was what was happening between those times.
Stacy had always had a tender heart, though. Rochelle would appeal to that. For one thing, she did want to spend time with her sister. And for the other, she needed reinforcements. “It would really help me if you came.”
Stacy rolled over onto her back. “Really? Why?”
Rochelle shrugged. She wasn’t used to showing vulnerability to her younger siblings, and it felt plenty awkward. “Because I like him too much to make good decisions, maybe.”
“Huh.” Stacy looked slightly more interested. “You didn’t seem like you did. When he planted that bush and you kicked him out.”
“I didn’t kick him out. I just didn’t invite him in. Would you come? Please?”
Stacy heaved a sigh. “OK. But I’ve ridden twenty miles lots of times. You’re going to whine.”
“I never whine.”
“Yeah? We’ll see.”
“It’s not that hilly. I’ve driven out there plenty. And we’re having lunch in between. How hard could it be?”
BREAKTHROUGH
Jim Lawson’s phone buzzed, and he picked it up without taking his eyes off the computer screen. “Lawson.”
“It’s Francine.” At the front desk. “I’ve got a girl on the other line who wants to talk to the person in charge of the murder investigation.” She didn’t have to say which one. They only had one. Murder wasn’t exactly common around here, especially murder with any kind of mystery attached. “I can’t reach Detective DeMarco, and he’s off duty. I asked about putting her through to his voice mail, but I think we could lose her. She sounds pretty skittish.”
“Put her on.”
A click, a pause, then another click and Francine saying, “Ma’am? You’re connected to Deputy Lawson.”
“Hello?” The voice was young, a little sullen, and a lot wary.
“Deputy Sheriff Lawson here, ma’am,” he said. “I understand you have some information for us.” He hoped so. Guys killing their exes—it wasn’t exactly new territory. But that didn’t make it any less evil.
Some men didn’t believe in good or evil. He wasn’t one of them.
“I don’t want to get in any trouble,” the girl was saying now.
Nobody ever did. “If you know something,” he said, “please tell me. A young girl is dead here, and we’d like to catch her killer. If you’re calling me, I’m guessing you’d like us to do that, too.”
“I don’t really know anything,” she said, and he waited. Two beats. Three. “But I think I might know who she is.”
HOW HARD COULD IT BE?
I’ve driven it lots of times, Rochelle had told Stacy. How hard could it be?
Really, really hard.
It started out just fine, with her looking Saturday-morning good in a trim, sleeveless yellow blouse that still didn’t show too much, but could maybe get a man thinking that if she unfastened just one more button—or he did—that situation would change. And another skort, a dark-blue one with flowers this time, since she could tell Travis liked looking at her legs.
He showed up right on time, and he didn’t exactly look her up and down, but he noticed. Oh, yeah. He did.
He stood on her front porch, said, “Hi,” and smiled at her, slow and sure, and she just about melted. He had the most smiling eyes she’d ever seen, he was dressed in shorts and a gray T-shirt that stretched across about an acre of long, lean, hard muscle, and she wanted to take a bite out of him.
“Come on in,” she managed to say. “We’re almost ready.”
He followed her inside and said, “We?”
“Yep,” she said. “I forgot to mention, I asked Stacy if she wanted to come along.” And then she held her breath.
“This would be some more going slow, then.”
“That’s would it would be.”
He seemed fine with that, too. If it hadn’t been for the way he’d kissed her earlier in the week, she’d have thought he didn’t even care.
But he had kissed her like that. His mouth had been so deliciously firm against hers. Before he’d bitten her neck, that is. Before he’d pressed her against th
e table and hauled her up with one hand, letting her know that in another thirty seconds she’d have been sitting up there with her skirt around her waist.
That was why they were riding bikes today. With her sister. Which, after the first hour, she was more than ready to be done with.
Rochelle’s bike, which she’d been delighted to use for errands around town after years of living off gravel roads out in the boondocks, was fat-tired and upright, as opposed to Stacy’s and Travis’s much faster models. Travis, though, seemed ready to accommodate that. In fact, by the time he’d looked back to find her missing and slowed to allow her to catch up for about the twelfth time, she’d had enough. She told him, as brightly as she could manage, “You go ahead and ride with Stacy. I’m fine.”
“Not really the idea,” he said. “The point isn’t how fast we do it. The point is doing it together.”
“Thanks for not bringing the testosterone. But please. Go on. I’ll meet you at the end. I’m just . . . taking in the scenery.”
All right, it was true, it was beautiful. The hills rolling like an inland sea—stubble fields, now, the remnants of harvested wheat and barley—glowing gold in the sunlight. Blue sky, puffy white clouds, the buzz of insects beside the path, and the foothills rising toward the low mountains to the east.
It was home, and it was good. But “foothills” meant “hills,” which were one heck of a lot steeper than they seemed in a car, even on a day that wasn’t too hot. And “hills” meant hard pedaling, not to mention something you could call . . . pressure. Which she didn’t need Travis to notice.
Stacy had been right. Rochelle normally didn’t ride more than a few miles at a time, and she was discovering that an exercise bike at the University Fitness Center also wasn’t quite the same as this. Her bike saddle, although it had plenty of padding as far as her butt was concerned, was contoured fairly . . . interestingly for the rest of her. Which she’d noticed before, and not in a bad way. Hey, a girl had to get her sexual stimulation somehow.
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