Besides, he wasn’t ready to let go. He wasn’t at all sure hanging on to her wasn’t the only thing keeping him standing.
“I’m sorry.” It was barely a whisper. She kept her head bowed, forehead resting against his chest. “I’m not very good at this. I didn’t mean to be a tease.”
He slid a knuckle beneath her chin and forced her head up.
“Sweetheart, that was not a tease.” And if he ever found out who’d told her it was, the guy was in for a serious hurt. But he supposed growing up with an alcoholic prostitute for a mother gave a girl strange ideas. And if her foster father had been like most cops, he would have had a rather jaundiced view of human relationships.
“No?” Lucy’s blue eyes finally met his.
“No. That was the highlight of my day. Hell, of my year.” Of more than three years, but he had no intention of saying so.
“You really don’t mind?”
“I’m not going to lie to you.” At least not about this. “Do I want more? Hell, yes. But it’s your hand, Lucy. You play it however you want.” He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He was going to need one long, cold shower when he got home. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Now, I do believe we were discussing the lateness of the hour. So walk me out and lock up behind me.” At the door, he pressed a quick, hard kiss on her lips. No point in pretending he wasn’t coming back for more later, because he for damned sure was. “I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can talk about your mother’s case, since we didn’t get to it tonight. And Lucy?”
She looked up at him.
“Don’t think you’re not on the hook for not calling me about the drive-bys. I told you, I want to know when things happen. Especially to you.”
• • •
LUCY HAD TO force herself out of bed the next morning. Ethan’s hands, and his mouth, had haunted her dreams, and she had woken twice, her breathing ragged, her body aching for fulfillment. The man turned her inside out, and part of her relished the new, super-feminine sensation. But she still didn’t trust him.
Why had he kissed her? A man who looked like Ethan Donovan, especially one whose position of authority announced his acceptance by the Hollow’s elite, could have his pick of women. Of course, lunching with convicts and outcasts probably knocked him out of the running for a few ladies in town, but it only served to further arouse Lucy’s interest.
What if Ethan’s friendship with Josh was merely a way of keeping track of a potential troublemaker? And what if his kisses were designed for the same purpose? Or, more disturbing still, what if he simply believed she’d fall into bed with him based on Cecile’s reputation? Still, he’d been more than gentlemanly when she’d pushed him away.
She was sipping coffee and trying to banish the memory of Ethan’s kiss by MapQuesting directions from Dobbs Hollow to Palo Pinto when Tim came downstairs. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and peered over her shoulder.
“You’re going to check out where Cecile grew up?” For Tim, Karen would always be “Mom,” Cecile a faint and distant shadow. Even as a baby, he’d been closer to Lucy than to their mother, and he’d been Karen’s “precious baby boy” for almost three years before her death.
“Tomorrow. Today, I’m going back to the library to pull anything I can find on the town and see whether anything strikes me as a reason for her to leave. I’d love to get hold of the papers from Palo Pinto itself, but I’ll probably have to settle for references to Palo Pinto, town or county, in the larger press. Still, you never know unless you try.”
“Uh-huh. So what did the chief want last night?”
Heat crawled up Lucy’s body and she raised her mug as a shield against her brother’s speculative expression. She took her time blowing on the hot liquid before taking a swallow.
“He wanted to apologize for missing dinner without calling. And TJ, damn her eyes, told him about the car that kept passing by here the other night.”
“Ah. So he didn’t stick around, then?”
“We discussed the murder a bit. He’d been to see the victim’s parents. That’s why he couldn’t make dinner.”
“He seems like a good guy.” Tim’s tone held both speculation and approval.
“It’s not like that.”
“No? Maybe it should be. After that bastard Sean and that wuss David, you could do with a good, solid guy in your life.”
“What was it TJ called you? Toddler boy? Stay out of my love life.”
“Jeez, Luce, I wasn’t talking about your love life. I was talking about your sex life.”
Lucy choked, sputtered. “Tim! You’re my little brother, for God’s sake! You’re not supposed to be thinking about sex at all, let alone as it relates to me.”
“Uh, Luce? I’m twenty-one. Everybody knows guys my age think about sex nonstop. And since I’m here with you, rather than in Dallas with my girlfriend, I can’t spend much time worrying about my own sex life or I’ll get really depressed.”
“Wait. Back up. You have a girlfriend? What’s her name? Why haven’t I met her?”
“Who do you think I spend all night with online? Her name is Amy. But quit trying to change the subject. We’re talking about you. You need to get your head out of the past and take a look at the present before it passes you right by.”
No wonder her brother approved of Ethan. They thought alike.
“I am not having this conversation with you. I’m going to the library.” She printed out the directions and stuffed them into the folder with the rest of the papers she’d accumulated. “Actually, get your shoes on. Since I don’t feel like replacing the tires again so soon, you can drop me off in town. I’ll walk home.”
“With everything that’s been going on, is that a good idea?”
“Hmmm. If you don’t think so, I guess you’ll have to pick me up.”
“You witch! You never had any intention of walking.”
“Nope,” Lucy grinned, unrepentant. “How about we meet at the diner for lunch at noon, when Eulie locks up for an hour. You can talk to Maxie about a job.” And she could find out why Buddy had been on Al Pike’s list of men to question about Cecile’s murder. “And here’s a thought: Dallas is practically on the way to Palo Pinto, so I can drop you at home tomorrow to pick up your own car. And check to be sure everything’s okay at the house.”
“You mean in case Barry, Hal, and Jessup wrecked the place in the three days we’ve been gone?”
“Exactly.”
• • •
EULIE HAD COMPANY at the library. A girl of ten or twelve sat a near the check-out desk, writing with painstaking care in a school journal with a fountain pen. Perhaps the child would help to break through Eulie’s icy reserve? Lucy pulled her pen case from her bag and extracted the Sheaffer Karen had given her on her sixteenth birthday. The same pen the child was using. She held her own up and smiled at the girl.
“That’s a great pen. And I can see you’re taking really good care of yours, so it should last a long time.”
“Yours is real pretty. Is it old?”
“Cassandra. Don’t talk to strangers.”
The child dropped her eyes. “Yes, Aunt Eulie.”
“Oh, I’m hardly a stranger, Eulie.” Lucy’s friendly tone belied the rage burning the back of her throat. “I’ve known you since we were kids.” She studied the child, who’d returned to her work. The lack of new writing, however, indicated she was following the adult conversation closely. “And unless I miss my guess, this must be your sister Pam’s daughter.” She should have noticed the resemblance immediately.
“You knew my mom?”
“Cassandra!”
“But, Aunt Eulie, she knew my mom!”
Lucy recognized the look, the desperation, and her heart broke. How long had Pam been dead? Ignoring Eulie’s outrage, she pulled up a chair, sat beside Cassandra, and
introduced herself.
“I didn’t know your mother well. She was a year older than me. But shall I tell you what I remember about her?”
“Yes, please.”
“The first thing is that she was very beautiful. Just like you.” Lucy tucked a lock of corn-silk hair behind the girl’s ear. “And even though she was beautiful and popular, which can make people a little spoiled or self-centered—you know what that means?” Cassandra nodded. “Well, your mom was neither of those things. She was kind to everyone, even people she didn’t know very well.”
“Like you?”
Lucy swallowed. Hard. Not all the residents of Dobbs Hollow deserved to be tarred with the same brush, and she’d do well to remember it.
“Exactly like me. And she was smart, too. In tenth grade, she won the state spelling bee. I was so impressed. Some people teased her about it, though. And you know what she did? She said she had aspirations. And then she spelled aspirations for them.”
“My daddy says next to me my mom was the best thing that ever happened to him and that he’ll love her forever.”
“I’m sure that’s true, honey. The nice thing about love is the more you give, the more you have. So you love your daddy and you love your Aunt Eulie, and if you meet someone else—like if your Aunt Eulie gets married”—or your father does—“you’ll have plenty of love left for them, too.”
“My daddy says that, too.”
“He sounds like a very smart man.” Lucy glanced over at Eulie, whose expression had softened slightly.
“Pam married a man she met at college in Houston. You wouldn’t have known him. She passed two years ago. Breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
Eulie shrugged, then gestured to the lab. “You should get on with your ‘research.’” The bitch was back. Lucy said good-bye to the child and headed for the glassed-in enclosure.
Lucy couldn’t find much information about Palo Pinto in the Dobbs Digest. Palo Pinto came up a few times when the two towns had either cooperated or competed. One headline blared, Communities Unite to Hold off Developers. The story featured not only Dobbs Hollow and Palo Pinto, along with several other small towns in the northern part of the state, but also the as-yet-unknown Andrew Dobbs, who decried State Senator Sheldon Byrnes’s efforts to keep a pair of discount mall chains from taking over rural land.
Lucy put a question mark next to Sheldon Byrnes’s name on one of the pages she’d printed out. He’d made the papers frequently in the two years before Cecile had arrived in Dobbs Hollow. His high profile might be irrelevant, but if Cecile had been politically aware, one of his rallies might have enticed her to Dobbs Hollow.
She was slipping the spool of film into its box when she heard the lab door open. Jed Martin slid a chair far too close to her and sprawled in it, one of his legs touching hers. Great. Not likely to get close to Eulie with Jed in the way.
“Long time no see. I heard you’d come home.”
Lucy deliberately scooted her chair away. “I imagine everyone’s heard.”
“I wanted to be one of the first to welcome you home.” He laid a hand on her knee and goose bumps of disgust crawled up her thighs beneath her jeans.
“Jed?” She lifted his hand, using her thumb and forefinger as if she were picking up a particularly distasteful piece of garbage. “Did you know there are twenty-seven bones in the human hand?” Shifting the position of her hand, she applied a little pressure to his ring finger and he paled. “I can break every one of them in under a minute.”
“Shit!” He stuck both hands protectively under his armpits. “You didn’t used to be so picky.”
“You know nothing about me. You never did and you never will.”
“Oh, I didn’t have personal experience of your many charms, but that doesn’t mean they escaped my attention.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But she had a sick feeling she did.
“Look what happened to your momma when she got too big for her britches.” He paused, letting his gaze roam over her. “Wouldn’t want to see history repeat itself.”
Lucy tensed, forcing herself to remain calm, not to lunge at Jed. God, but she wanted to hurt him. Physically. She had to get a grip before she could question him, but the threat had shot him right to the top of her personal to-do list. Did he really have firsthand knowledge of what had happened to Cecile, or was he merely taking potshots?
“I suggest you leave. Now. Before I show you once and for all how much stronger I am than my mother was.”
His mouth tightened, and Lucy thought, had they not been in the library with Eulie watching avidly through the glass, he might have spat.
“I hear you’ve taken up with the new police chief. No matter what a prude you pretend to be now, you’ll only fool him for so long. You don’t have friends here in Dobbs Hollow the way you do in the big city.”
Jed stormed from the microfiche lab and Lucy watched as he brushed past Eulie without stopping on his way out of the library. An adrenaline rush composed of equal parts fear, relief, and fury left Lucy trembling as she stared after him. She’d expected people to be threatened by her return, but Jed’s attack, so publicly confrontational, had thrown her.
Her concentration shot, she stuffed her printouts into her bag. She had more than an hour before her lunch with Tim, but perhaps she could spend a little more time with Maxie.
“Miz Sadler?”
She was in no mood to talk to Cassandra, but she forced away her own concerns. “What’s up?”
“Aunt Eulie says you’re a writer, but your books are too grown up for me.”
“She’s right, sweetie. They’d probably give you nightmares. Heck, they give me nightmares.”
“I’m going to be a writer when I grow up.”
Lucy smiled, remembering how often she’d heard similar statements from Tim as a child, each time with a different career in mind.
“Well, I can see you’re off to a good start.”
“Could we talk again sometime?”
“Of course. You just check with your Aunt Eulie. I’ll be here a couple of days a week.”
Eulie stopped her on her way out. Lucy braced herself for another attack and was unprepared when the woman thanked her for her kindness to Cassandra.
“No thanks necessary. She’s a lovely child.”
“She is.” Eulie shifted, took a deep breath. “About Jed. He always was an ass.”
The statement startled Lucy into a laugh. “It’s true what they say: hindsight really is twenty-twenty.”
She waved at Eulie and Cassandra on her way out the door. Maybe she would get up the nerve to ask Eulie about the rumors from high school and whether they were still floating around. Wouldn’t it burn Jed’s ass to know that Lucy’s first real bonding moment with one of her suspects had come because of his behavior?
Lucy pushed open the door of the diner, glancing down at the hinge she and Tim had installed. Still working. Now that she knew Ethan better, she couldn’t help wondering what he would have done if there hadn’t been a hinge to fix. Certainly, he was the kind of man who would have found a way to get her to comply with his plan. The memory of their shared intimacy flooded through her, heating her blood all over again.
She looked toward the back stall, and all the heat she’d been feeling fled. Ethan was there, but he shared a table with Billy Pike. Acidic bile rose to the back of her throat and set her stomach on fire. Seeming totally engrossed in his conversation with Ethan, Pike barely glanced in her direction, so she settled into a booth halfway down the aisle and pulled a pad from her bag.
A chubby, teenage waitress stopped by the table to take her order.
“I’m meeting my brother here in a bit. Is it okay if I just get an iced tea for now and work for a while?”
“No problem,” the girl said with a smile.
“You do your thing. I’ve never known a real writer before.”
If Lucy hadn’t been so tense, she would have laughed at the comment. What made a “real writer” anyway?
The waitress brought her the tea, and as she sipped at it she tapped her pen against her pad, considering strategy for her time in Palo Pinto. She already planned to use the newspaper there for more than its morgue; she’d been successful in the past placing ads asking for information. Some achieved results long after she’d left town.
Ad copy, however, presented a challenge, as a simple request rarely sufficed. She had to offer enough of a reward to entice the knowledgeable to reveal their secrets without drawing attention from greedy fabricators. Although focused on the page before her, Lucy kept a thread of attention on the table in the back, glancing up as often as she could without being obvious. When Pike rose, she ignored his approach, keeping her eyes fixed on her notes until he paused next to her.
Still, she kept her eyes trained on the paper until he spoke.
“How’s the investigation coming?”
“Well as can be expected, I suppose. Things can be slow in the beginning.” She finally met his eyes. “But they do tend to pick up speed.”
“Just remember you’re not an officer of the law. You’re a writer. You go ahead and write, but leave the real investigating to the pros.”
“I’ll do what I think is necessary. But don’t worry, I promise not to give you an excuse to arrest me.”
He sighed. “You need to quit being so paranoid, Lucy. No one’s out to get you. Whoever killed your momma is long gone.”
“Whatever you say.”
Shaking his head, Pike walked away from the table. When the door closed behind him, Ethan beckoned.
“Figured you’d want to be farther from the door,” he said as she laid her things on the table.
“But you won’t give up your seat against the wall.”
“Not on a bet.” He winked. “’Course, you could come over and sit beside me.”
“Not on a bet.” But she couldn’t prevent a grin, no matter how severe she tried to keep her tone.
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