Sweeter Than Sin

by Shiloh Walker

A heavy sigh escaped him, forcing her thoughts back on-target.

  “So,” he said, drawing the word out.

  She looked at him just in time to see him crossing his arms over his chest, the muscles in his arms bulging, flexing under that inked skin.

  Wary, she rocked back on her heels.

  If this was the way he got ready to open up the game of twenty questions, too bad. She wasn’t ready to play.

  A sardonic smile curved his lips and he pushed off the counter. “You disappear for twenty years. Nobody knows anything. And then you show back up.… What’s going on, Lana?”

  “I can’t really talk about it yet.” Yeah, not much on wasting words, was he? She looked away, swallowing the knot in her throat, wishing she could just explain, just tell somebody. But it wasn’t as easy as that. How could she explain anything? Most of that night was a fog. The next few days were blurred by the pain from her concussion and fear, adrenaline as she took off running, chased by that quiet, solemn voice. You can’t stay here.…

  The solid memories she did have were based on what came before and then almost a week later, when she finally slowed down enough to think.

  How could she explain any of that to Adam? How could she explain anything when she didn’t really understand herself?

  “I think you need to talk about it; otherwise, I’m going to make a phone call and tell a detective I know that I saw you. That’s going to throw all kinds of wrenches into things,” he said, his voice silky.

  Jerking her chin up, she stared at him. “I’m not doing anything wrong by being here, you know.”

  “No. You just did shit-all wrong by disappearing and letting everybody who cared about you think you were dead. Raped, murdered, who knows!” he snapped. He closed the distance between them, glaring down at her. “You have any idea what your dad went through? Noah?”

  * * *

  Me?

  Adam wanted to grab her. Shake her.

  He’d always loved her.

  Always.

  And when she reached out to him, he hadn’t realized in time, hadn’t understood … until it was too late. All this time. Staring at her face, he searched for some sort of sign, some lingering echo of the girl she’d been. That girl who’d been ready to fight the whole damn world and change it.

  So little about her was the same. He remembered the vibrancy of her hair, almost painfully. He’d dreamed about that hair, red and rich and beautiful, so often, wrapping it around his fist as he kissed her the way he’d always wanted to. Lying down with her and feeling it across his skin as they slept. Crazy dreams, hurtful dreams, dreams that would never happen.

  Now her hair was a soft, quiet brown and it irritated the hell out of him, because he knew she’d done it deliberately.

  Her eyes were the same … mostly. Sadder and harder, a misty shade of grey, framed by spiky lashes. Her chin was up and she glared at him, all but daring him to do something, say something.

  He could think of a lot of things he’d like to do, and that monthlong dry spell of his was catching up to him. He had no problem imagining her naked and spread out under him, but he’d imagined that a hundred times.

  What he wanted the most was answers.

  And she was quiet.

  Her mouth stayed closed, and when he edged closer, all she did was arch a brow.

  Daring him.

  “Didn’t you think about any of us or were you just that determined to take off with David?” he asked softly.

  Something flashed in her eyes and then she shrugged. “If you think you already know what happened, then why should I bother to answer?”

  “How about you tell me what happened and then I don’t have to speculate?”

  She went to turn away.

  He caught her arm.

  She spun around, fist flying.

  He barely managed to block it, and the force she had behind that blow left his arm numb. “What the—”

  Instinctively he spun them around and trapped her between his body and the island, his hands trapping her wrists, holding them behind her back. For one long volatile second, they both held their breath.

  Then, slowly, she blew out a breath. Her skin was pale, her mouth tight, as she glared at him. She tensed, her skin pale, her mouth tight. “I don’t like it when people touch me,” she warned.

  “I noticed.” Her pulse was racing. Bounding against his fingers like a mad thing. And just what happened? he wondered. Because the Lana he remembered had loved touches. She had been a hugger, even from the time she’d been a kid.

  He’d adored her then.

  He’d loved her then.

  He’d known her when she was just a rough-and-tumble tomboy, only five years old, when she moved in across the street into the little house where her dad had lived until his stroke.

  Adam had loved her when she went from tomboy to coltish teenager, even when he’d been too old—already in high school when she was just in middle school—and because he knew it wasn’t right he’d avoided her, putting a sad light in her eyes when he acted annoyed when she came over. Bit by bit she’d pulled away, and he hated it, but he knew it wasn’t right for him to want her the way he had.

  But that age difference wouldn’t have made a difference forever.

  And it hadn’t stopped him from noticing everything.

  The way she threw her arms around her father’s neck when he got home from work. The way she hugged her friends. The way she hugged Adam’s parents when she saw them. The way she hugged her boyfriend or a teacher she liked.

  The way she’d rested her hand on David Sutter’s shoulder one day after school. It wasn’t the kind of touch a girl gave a guy she liked. Adam had known that then. It was the kind of touch a person gave a wild animal, the kind you gave to a scared child: Calm down; everything is okay.… I’ll take care of you. The slim girl, all of five feet four, with the heart of a giant.

  Adam had seen it, even if nobody else had. David had been in trouble, and Lana had known. She’d reached out, ready to help.

  Three weeks after that, both of them were gone.

  Twenty years later, she was in front of Adam, yet again, and everything was different, but her eyes were the same and his heart still raced as she looked at him, but she didn’t like being touched.

  “Why?”

  She stared at him like he’d spoken another language.

  Lowering his brows, he dipped his head and demanded, “Why? You used to touch everybody. What happened? Where did you go and why did you let everybody think you were dead?”

  “I already told you, I’m not ready to talk about it ye—hey!”

  He let go of her so abruptly, she lost balance. Guilt punched him, but he shoved it aside as he started to pace. From the corner of his eye he watched her. “Do you know where your dad has been the past year?”

  Something in her flickered.

  She knows—

  Adam stopped pacing and turned to face her, readied himself to hear at least some small truth.

  Then she shrugged and glanced past him. “No. You said he wasn’t across the street anymore. When did he move?”

  Liar. Adam kept it behind his teeth. Then he shrugged. She knew. Somehow she knew. But how?

  He figured he’d keep this close to his chest … and he’d watch her.

  Since she wasn’t going to give him any answers, he’d have to find them for himself.

  Easily he said, “I lost track of him.” Then he turned around. “Come on. I’ll show you where you can sleep. You look exhausted.”

  He could practically feel the daggers she glared into his back.

  “Hasn’t anybody ever told you that’s the last thing you should say to a woman?”

  “Oh, sure. But since when did I ever listen to that sort of thing?”

  He bypassed the little guest room he should give her. It was on the first floor, quiet … close to the door.

  He wanted her upstairs. Where he’d hear if she tried to leave. Not that he’d be able to stop h
er, but at least he’d know.

  * * *

  He’d never sleep.

  Adam knew it, as sure as he knew his own name.

  Sleep was an elusive thing for him, something he’d chased after for the longest time, until he realized that the harder he chased it, the harder it was to catch. But he did need to rest, his dragging, tired body screaming at him to just stop.

  Not entirely trusting himself to stay upstairs, just twenty feet or so from the room where Lana slept, he settled down on the couch, his gaze locked on the ceiling over his head.

  Now she was maybe thirty feet away, but she was separated from him by a flight of stairs and the solid construction of the floor.

  Far enough, he thought, that he wouldn’t be tempted to go and open the door, stare at her as she slept just to convince himself this was real. That he hadn’t started hallucinating again.

  He’d done that before, back when he quit drinking—cold turkey is a dangerous thing for a hard-core alcoholic and the DTs had come on hard, followed by freaky-ass hallucinations that were yet another deterrent. That wasn’t the only time he’d ever had that pleasure, though. Sometimes he’d go two or three days without sleep, and that was when it hit him really hard. He’d thought for a minute down by the river that he was doing it again. Hallucinating, imagining that he was seeing what he wanted to see, just because he did want it so bad and he was so fucking tired.

  But then he had reached out, grabbed her glasses and felt the satin smoothness of her skin and the shock of it went through him like a jolt of pure electricity. He might as well have shoved his hand into a transformer or something, it was so powerful, and it managed to clear the fog of exhaustion from his head.

  She’d been real.

  She’d said his name.

  And now she was in his house, in the bed over his head.

  She was in that bed, too. That bedroom had a creaky, noisy floor, and if she’d been walking around he’d have heard every single step. Now the only sounds he heard in the still, quiet house was the occasional sound she made as she shifted in the bed.

  Where have you been? He wanted to demand she tell him, but he knew Lana, or he had known her. Demands had never worked well with her and he doubted that had changed. If he pushed her now, she’d just shut down. If he pushed too hard, she might disappear again.

  He heard a faint squeak and closed his eyes as a cold sweat broke out over his forehead. Every time she moved, he had a vision of her shifting on that bed, her sleek, pale body spread across the mattress. Did she still have those freckles? Was her hair still as silky as it had always been?

  And even though he knew it was a dye job, he was all but burning to strip her naked and find out for certain, preferably by settling between her legs and studying the curls between her thighs.

  Right before he took the things he’d never had the right to take before.

  Things he didn’t have a right to take now.

  Swearing, he reached down and pressed the flat of his hand to his erection.

  “You like to torture yourself,” he muttered.

  Under his hand, his cock pulsed, throbbed. But this was Lana. Whether he wanted to think about her like this or not, it was going to happen. Eyes wide open, he focused on the ceiling and freed the button of his jeans. It was this now or walk around hobbled until he gave in. Dragging the zipper down, he winced as he freed his dick, his flesh painfully sensitive.

  When he closed his hand around his shaft it pulsed, almost viciously. Dragging his palm up, then down, he let himself pretend, even if it was never going to happen, that it wasn’t his hand.

  It was Lana.

  Riding him, her sleek thighs gripping as she slid up and down, her hair spilling down around them, hiding them in the darkness, while those sexy glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

  His muscles tensed, went rigid.

  Breath sawed in, out, of his lungs.

  Jerking his fist harder, fast, he clenched his teeth against the ragged groan that rose in his throat, choking him. Her cool grey eyes going smoky with hunger, her mouth parted on a broken cry.

  He could picture himself sliding his palms up that slim torso, cupping one small breast in his hand. He’d always loved those pretty, elegant tits, the way they curved under the tanks she’d wear in the summer as she worked the garden. Just enough to fill his hands, and he’d spill her onto her back, discover her taste, the color of her nipples—

  A hot, twisting chill raced down his spine and he arched his hips up, meeting the thrusts of his fist. A second later, hot pulses of semen splattered across his belly.

  Sucking in a breath, he tried to calm the erratic beating of his heart, tried to catch his breath.

  Then, reaching down for the shirt he’d dropped down on the side of the couch, he couldn’t resist the bitter laugh that bubbled out of him. How long had she been home … a few hours? A day?

  And here he was, already in a hot, miserable mess, just like he’d been twenty years ago.

  “Welcome home, Lana.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Every morning, Margaret Troyer got up and took a long bath, then got dressed and put on her face. She did love her baths. She also took a nice long, hot soak before she went to bed. After Harlan had put in this fancy bath with the jets, she sometimes thought she might spend a little too much time in here, but he spent so much of his time in his office, she didn’t see the harm.

  She’d enjoy her baths and her books, as long as she didn’t have to deal with his temper, and it was awful. Especially the past few weeks. She understood, of course, that most people in town were feeling a little snappish, what with everything going on in town, but she didn’t see why that had to affect her.

  It had nothing to do with them, as far as she was concerned, but Harlan certainly did seem worked up over something.

  She simply put it out of her mind as she soaked in the tub, head on a little specially designed pillow she’d ordered from the Internet. None of that nastiness needed to darken her “me” time, not as far as Margaret was concerned.

  A woman who worked as hard as she did deserved her me time, after all.

  Halfway through the bath, it occurred to her, though, that it was still rather quiet in the house. He hadn’t so much as come bothering her for coffee, hadn’t nagged her for a shirt.

  A mild frisson of worry slid through her, but she pushed it aside. He was probably just worn-out. He’d spent so much time brooding the past few weeks, it must have caught up with him. Worrying about the town. Just like everybody else.

  She swallowed, suddenly chilled in the water as a familiar, unwelcome thought pushed itself into her mind. His boys. Harlan used to talk about his boys a lot. The weekends he planned once a month, weekends for just him, the other guys and the boys they mentored.

  But … that was mentoring. Nothing else.

  None of this had anything to do with Harlan.

  It couldn’t.

  Her enjoyment gone, she hurried through the rest of the bath and climbed out, drying off with a fat, fluffy towel, ignoring the body that had gone plump over the years. Her once blond hair had turned gray and it was just … well, hard to see how old she’d gotten.

  A lot of things were hard these days. Just thinking about Harlan made her worry anymore.

  The club.

  The boys.

  “Stop it,” she told herself, her throat tight and thick. Sniffing, she grabbed a towel from the rod and started to rub at her hair. “Don’t be silly. Harlan is hardly the sort of man to be involved in this.”

  The sudden surge of ragged emotions eased back and she calmed herself enough to finish her hair, fix her face and dress, settling on a bright, cheerful dress of red checks. She’d make them a big breakfast, see if he wanted to go out for the day. They could both use it.

  He hadn’t been in bed when she woke up, hadn’t even come in to sleep with her, but that wasn’t unusual. Sometimes he slept in his office, and that was getting more and more common, the foo
l man. He needed to take it easy, rest. She’d see that he did it, she told herself as she pushed the door open.

  For the first few moments, she was able to tell herself he was still sleeping.

  But then she saw the blood.

  And the knife in his chest.

  Margaret Troyer passed out, striking her head against the doorjamb as she hit the floor, her pretty red-checked dress billowing out around her in a crazy circle.

  * * *

  “Their housekeeper called it in.”

  As the paramedics rolled Mrs. Margaret Troyer away on a stretcher, Detective Jensen Bell continued to study the note that was none too subtly stuck to Mr. Harlan Troyer’s chest. The knife was just a plain, simple hunting knife. She’d be able to buy that thing at any Walmart or sporting-goods store—she even knew the brand, although she didn’t know if this was this year’s model or last year’s. It wasn’t anything special or unique, and that would make finding the buyer a problem, unless of course they were lucky enough to find prints.

  And that wasn’t going to happen.

  She already knew it. Jensen was a small-town cop, but she was still a cop and she already knew what she was dealing with—a killer who had thought this through all too well.

  There was no sign of a struggle.

  Harlan had been sitting down when he was attacked. Knew him, didn’t you?

  There was a bottle of scotch on his desk—Crown Royal—and she suspected that was what was in the glass, too. She’d get a sample of the whiskey, from both the bottle and the glass. It was possible the whiskey had been doctored. Either that or Harlan had been really plastered, because it didn’t look like he’d so much as put up a fight.

  One would think you’d struggle a bit when you saw somebody with a big-ass knife pointed at your chest.

  And the knife went through both his chest and the note.

  “Think he was drugged?”

  She looked over her shoulder at the newly minted Detective Thorpe. To say he had been rushed into his position as detective would be a bit unfair, but they definitely hadn’t taken their time. A few weeks ago, he’d been a uniform, brushing up and hoping he’d hit detective.

  And now she was training him.