by Linda Wisdom
“Home?” he asked.
“Not just yet.” She looked at a point just past his shoulder. “I want to stop by the Realtor’s first.”
“The Realtor’s?”
She nodded. “I’m going to put the house up for sale.”
Sam opened his mouth, ready to ask why she was making this impulsive decision, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Because if Keely put the house up for sale, she would have no reason to stay here and he wasn’t about to let her go.
Chapter I7
Keely was in pain. Remembering the night of her parents’ murders was bad enough, but reading the objective newspaper accounts of the crime and trial that followed tore her apart inside.
She knew she could never live in the house. The memories would now be too strong.
She spoke to the Realtor, explained she wanted the house listed for sale as is and then asked Sam to drive her back to his house.
Steffie and Lisa were anxious for their return. She gently put off their questions and explained she was tired.
“I’m going to take a nap,” she said quietly, pausing to hug each girl before walking to the guest room.
“Dad?” Lisa looked at her father.
“Sam?” Steffie asked at the same time.
“I can’t tell you all of it,” he said, after herding them into the family room. “That’s up to Keely, but she had a great shock today and she needs to work it through before she can talk about it, so how about giving her a break, okay?”
They both nodded. They then looked at each other and turned back to him.
“We know you and Mom are sleeping together,” Steffie said without preamble, “and it’s okay with us. We know you didn’t want us to know since it’s something you wouldn’t want us to do, but don’t worry. We just wanted you to know we’re all right with it.”
Sam had been floored before but never by two teenage girls.
“Thank you,” he said for lack of anything else.
Steffie grinned cheekily. “You do make a cute couple.” She giggled as they bounced back to Lisa’s room.
Sam sat there for a long time. After shaking his head at the memory of what he’d just been told, he stood up and headed for the guest room. He eased the door open and found Keely curled up on the bed. He walked over to the side of the bed and carefully sat down. He brushed his knuckles across her cheek.
“Had a talk with the girls,” he said softly. “They gave us their seal of approval.”
She looked up questioningly.
“They said they know we’re sleeping together and that it’s okay and they don’t plan to do it themselves.”
A watery chuckle erupted from Keely’s lips as if she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She sat up, punching her pillow behind her back.
“What are they trying to do?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious.” He kept his hand near her shoulder. “It has been from the beginning.”
Keely didn’t look at him. “If you don’t mind, Sam, I’d like to be alone.”
He wanted to be angry with her. He wanted to demand she open her eyes and realize what was important; that they were important. Then he wanted to make slow sweet love to her and take all her pain away by taking it inside him. He wanted her to know just how important she was to him and that he couldn’t let her go now.
Instead, Sam edged away and stood up.
“Just remember it was done for your good,” he reminded her. “A lot of people kept quiet about it because they didn’t want you hurt. Now it’s best if you try to go on.”
“Considering that there’s a good chance this Edgar Willis is after me, I can’t imagine that happening,” she said bitterly. “I don’t see why you can’t find him. Doesn’t the prison have any more recent pictures of him? Or even age that mug shot you have of him?”
“Since he isn’t accused of a crime, I can’t do anything about it. Plus, that old picture won’t do any good. He had to have plastic surgery since then and he doesn’t look the same,” he admitted.
“Why am I not surprised?” she muttered, looking away.
“You’re safer here than you would be in a big city,” he offered.
“They’d lie to me there, too.” She continued to refuse to look at him.
Stung by her reply, he walked out.
Keely curled up in bed in the fetal position. She couldn’t understand the pain and confusion racing through her mind. One more problem piled on top of the others.
Was it this Edgar Willis trying to hurt her now? Why? He had served his time in prison. While she hated the idea he’d been set free, she couldn’t imagine his bitterness would be so strong he’d risk another prison sentence. The newspaper picture still stuck in her mind. Especially his sullen expression on his face and the dark secrets in his gaze. He would be thirty years older now. Hair would be gray or white. Lines in the face, but even if he’d had plastic surgery she couldn’t imagine the angry eyes would change. She rolled over onto her back and tried to envision how the face would look thirty years older.
Instead, her mind veered off and the face in her mind changed into Sam’s. Sam who had stood by her. Who held her while she cried and relived an old pain. Sam who vowed to protect her with his own life. She knew it would take time for her to come to terms with what had happened today, but it wasn’t something she needed to worry about right away. The last thing she should do is punish him for helping her.
“Be a grown-up, Keely,” she told herself. “Don’t do anything that might make you lose what’s turned out to be the best thing to come into your life since Steffie was born.”
Sam was relieved to see Keely had pretty much returned to her old self when she came out of the guest room an hour later. There were still some shadows in her eyes but nothing like before.
“It’s just going to take time,” she admitted to him, as she walked past him toward the family room, where Steffie and Lisa were watching television.
She asked Steffie to come with her and they walked outside to the patio table. Steffie looked apprehensively at her mother.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. “Sam wouldn’t say anything after you guys got back.”
Keely took a deep breath. “This won’t be easy for me to say, so I hope you’ll stay quiet until I finish. If you stop me to ask questions, I may not be able to go on.”
Steffie nodded, but her gaze was still troubled.
“It has to do with my parents’ deaths and why I got so upset the first time I walked into their house.” Sometimes Keely’s words were halting, sometimes she had to stop and shore up her inner strength to go on, but she managed until she finished the story.
Steffie sat across from her, tears running down her face. “Oh, Mom,” she sobbed, grabbing hold of her mother’s hands. “How sad for them! But I’m so glad nothing happened to you. No wonder you seemed to hate the house.”
“That’s why I think I’ll put it up for sale.”
She stilled. “But you said the owners we’re leasing from don’t want to sell their house. What are we going to do?” She suddenly brightened. “Stay here?”
“Don’t go there, Steff,” Keely warned.
“I think Sam’s in love with you,” she confided.
“I mean it, Stefanie. Don’t try anything.”
Steffie jumped up and ran around the table to throw her arms around Keely’s shoulders.
“Oh, Mom, no wonder you had those horrible nightmares,” she consoled. “Still, people up here must be really nice if they kept this all a secret. It’s nothing like L.A., where people don’t seem to care as much. We did right in coming up here.” She kissed her on the cheek and ran back to the house.
Keely closed her eyes. She felt so drained she wasn’t sure she could move. When she looked around she noticed Sam standing at the door. She felt bereft when he turned away and didn’t come outside to join her.
She told herself she shouldn’t have been surprised. He was going to leave it all up to her. She w
ould have to make the next move. She just hoped she would make the right decision.
Sam was hazily aware of Keely slipping into his bed much later that night. She curled up against his side while he put his arm around her shoulders. She rested her cheek against his chest
“Just sleep,” she whispered after pressing her lips against the skin covering his heart
Feeling easier in his mind, he drifted back to sleep. But he was aware of her wakefulness. He finally felt her ease her way from his arms and heard the soft slide of the glass door opening then closing. He opened his eyes and watched Keely sitting on the step just outside the door. He climbed out of bed and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders before walking outside.
“Hey,” he said softly, sitting down with a leg on either side of her hips. He opened the blanket and wrapped it around her. She leaned back against his chest, resting her hands on top of his.
“It’s so peaceful here.” She sighed. “No cigar smoke, either.”
“It’s against the law to smoke in the woods anyway, but there shouldn’t be any of those worries,” he said, resting his chin on top of her head.
“Sam.”
“Hm?”
“I love you.” She could feel the tension in his arms surrounding her.
“I loved you first,” he whispered against her hair.
She wondered if he could sense her smile. “I love you more.”
“I’ll love you forever.”
She turned around in his arms, kneeling on the step and looping her arms around his neck.
“Are we crazy?” she whispered. “Does this have something to do with all the hell going on in my life? Or can we trust ourselves for knowing what’s real and what isn’t?”
Sam kissed her forehead. “You feel real to me. What I feel for you is very real. What was going on between us started even before the other stuff began. We’ll finish it together and go on from there.”
Her expression was hopeful. The expectancy seemed to sparkle in her eyes as the moonlight bathed her face in a pearly glow.
“We will?” she asked.
“We have to,” Sam said with a teasing lilt in his voice. “The girls gave us their seal of approval, remember?”
Keely laughed as she hadn’t laughed in a long time. She hugged Sam tightly.
“I’m afraid to hope,” she confessed.
“Then just remember that as long as I’m with you, you can hope all you want to.” Sam pressed butterfly kisses against her closed eyelids. “But what starts out as hope will soon turn into reality.”
He stood up, easily picking her up with him, her legs wrapped around his hips.
“I think what comes next should go on behind closed doors,” he muttered. “No use in letting the bears find out what we humans do.”
“Lions and tigers and—” She nibbled on his ear. “If I’m going to confess any of my uncontrollable urges to you, I’d rather do it in private.”
Sam took a deep breath. “I’m sure glad I take my vitamins,” he said as he closed the sliding glass door behind them.
A figure stood down among the trees looking up at the couple as they sat on the deck and as they returned to the house’s interior. This time there was no cigar burning in his hand.
She had been out to her parents’ house today. Then she had gone to the newspaper office. She would only have gone there if she remembered everything. That wasn’t good news. That also meant she’d have to be watched more.
It was more than clear she and the sheriff were lovers. Perhaps the best way to get to her was through him, but Sam wasn’t any small-town sheriff who was given the job because everyone liked him. He had been a big city cop working Homicide. He’d worked some major league cases and had plenty of contacts if he wanted information. Information was the last thing that should be retrieved right now. So it was a question of watching and waiting until the time was just right.
“What shall we do today?” Steffie asked, collapsing in a chair and swinging her leg over the arm. She quickly straightened up when she noticed the warning light in her mother’s eye.
“I realize this is more than a little boring,” Keely apologized. She was sitting at the dining room table, with her computer in front of her. The cursor had been blinking at her as she tried to concentrate on a new sales pamphlet for a candy company. Usually the idea of making the delicious confections had her imagination running overtime.
Not today. Enforced confinement for the past week had been slowly wearing and tearing on everyone’s nerves. Sam had tried to console Keely by saying it was a good way to see if the two girls could handle it She reminded him he wasn’t the one spending the days with them.
Keely wondered what a chocolate drop would look like wearing a sun hat, sunglasses and lounging on a beach chair.
“Can we go to Connie’s this afternoon?” Lisa asked. She had been lying on the floor with a book in front of her. She hadn’t turned a page for the past half hour.
“I had no idea my company was so boring,” Keely said dryly.
“Connie is having some friends over for a barbecue. Couldn’t our baby-sitter drive us over then pick us up later?” Steffie asked “You need to get your work done and maybe it would be easier if we weren’t around.”
Keely settled back in her chair. “Your concern is gratifying,” she teased. “All right, you can go, but you do not leave Connie’s house for any reason or with anyone but Rob, me or Sam. Understood?”
Both heads bobbed up and down before they jumped up and ran back to the bedroom. Within ten minutes they were gone, promising to remember every one of Keely’s warnings.
“Peace and quiet is perfect for me,” Keely said to herself, returning to the keyboard and the idea of mocha chocolates hanging on a coffee tree.
She started the design when the phone rang. She stiffened at first even though she hadn’t received any more calls. She had hoped that meant her tormentor was deciding to leave her alone.
“Hey there,” John greeted her. “How about coming into town for lunch? You’ve been hiding out so much that we rarely see you around here.”
Keely made a face. “I’m sorry, John, but I’m working on an important project I need to finish today.”
“I had hoped you’d give me a chance before deciding to hook up with the sheriff,” he joked, but it fell false on her ears.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, John, but I don’t think it was meant to be,” she said gently.
“How can you say that when you never gave me a chance?”
She could feel the trembling start deep down inside her as his anger lashed out at her. Was he the one after all? Was it nothing more than a man who felt she was for him? It wouldn’t be the first time. She licked her dry lips.
“John, please don’t say anything like that,” she suggested, keeping her voice even. “I hope we’ll still be friends.”
“I wanted more than your friendship, Keely,” he snarled in a low tone still vibrating with anger. “Just don’t come crying to me when he dumps you.” He slammed the phone down.
Keely winced at the loud sound in her ear. She started to punch out the sheriffs station phone number, then stopped. What could she tell Sam? That John acted like a rejected suitor? No, she’d wait until he got home.
She returned to her work, but trying to make chocolates look festive for the summer wasn’t as easy now as it was before.
“I want a raise,” Freda declared, striding into Sam’s office.
“You do, huh?” He grinned. “For what?”
“For coming up with more than your damned deputies did.” She plopped down in the chair and tossed two sheets of paper in front of him. “In fact, I probably came up with a few goodies none of us would have thought of.” She smiled, sure of herself.
He picked up the first paper and studied names typed neatly on the white surface, with penned-in notations next to each name.
A couple of lines furrowed between his brows when he looked up. “What
exactly are we talking about here?”
Freda rolled her eyes at what she considered the innate stupidity of the male.
“You wanted to know who remembered Edgar Willis,” she stated. “I figured if we needed to find out about Edgar, we might as well find out about his wife and children, too. After the divorce, she moved to Utah. Kids had some trouble there. Oh, if a Detective Vetter ever calls for Samantha Barkley, it’s only because it was easier to use your name.”
“Freda!” He threw up his hands. “You represented yourself as a peace officer?”
“You weren’t here, it was easier and he was ready to talk.” She shruffed.
“There are deputies who could have talked to him,” Sam reminded her.
She snorted her opinion of that. “It was much easier this way. You’ll see my notes about my talk with him on the second page.” She tapped the paper with a lavender-tinted fingernail.
Sam picked up the sheet and read. The more he read, the more clouds of anger darkened his face. “There was no way we could have known this before,” he said, crumpling the paper in his fist.
She shook her head. “No way at all. It was pure luck I happened to talk to this guy. He remembers the family pretty well. Kids were in and out of trouble from high school on and they blamed Keely for every misfortune they had. Edgar’s ex-wife died ten years ago and the kids had already left home.”
Sam smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper and reread it
“I had no idea,” he murmured. “There isn’t any resemblance.”
“Read on,” she urged. “I think you’ll find that part pretty interesting, too.”
As Sam’s eyes wandered down the page, his blood chilled.
“I’ve got some questions to ask,” he muttered, standing up. He grabbed his hat and started out of the office. He stopped when he reached her chair. He pulled her out of the chair and planted a smacking kiss on her lips. “You’ve got the raise.”
Freda’s squeal of delight was the last thing Sam heard as he stormed out of the office.
Chapter I8
Keely stared at the computer monitor. She was almost finished. She felt it didn’t have the sparkle previous brochures had, but it was better than she expected.