Why did I fight so hard to resist him? Damn it, why didn’t I just give in to what I wanted? Because you knew it would be more than sex with Caleb and you were afraid to love another man. Fucking is one thing but loving is another.
Jazzy bit into the sandwich. Delicious. God, she hadn't realized how hungry she was. As she savored every bite, she groaned with satisfaction.
"If you react that way to eating a sandwich, I'm wondering how you react to real pleasure," Caleb said.
Jazzy gasped, then laughed and licked her lips. "I bought you were asleep."
I was until somebody started moaning and groaning." You should have gone on home," she told him. "You didn't have to stay."
He yawned and stretched, then looked point blank at her. "Yeah, I did."
''Thanks. I'm glad you stayed. I really don't want to be alone."
"We're going to make sure you're never alone," Caleb said.
"We?"
"Genny, Sally, Ludie, and I. Whenever I can't be with you, one of them will be."
"Who decided I needed a full-time babysitter?" Jazzy gobbled up half the sandwich, then wiped her hands on the napkin beside the teacup.
"It was a unanimous decision. Even Jacob and Dallas voted in the affirmative."
Jazzy stood up and walked around the coffee table that separated the sofa from the chair where Caleb sat She stood over him for a minute, then leaned down and placed her hands on his shoulders. "So does this mean you're spending the night?"
Caleb removed her hands from his shoulders, pushed her back, and stood. "Consider me your personal bodyguard."
Standing so close to him, she could feel his heat. And could almost hear the beat of his heart. Although she was five-eight, she had to look up at him because he was a good six inches taller. She draped her arms around his neck and gazed into his whiskey-golden eyes.
''Just who are you, Caleb McCord, and where have you been all my life?"
"Don't you know, sweetheart? I'm your prince charming, and I've been waiting for you to wake up from an evil spell so I could come riding in on my white horse and take you to live happily ever after with me in my castle."
Jazzy laughed. And God, it felt so good to laugh. She kissed him. Just a happy-to-be-alive kiss. A prelude to something more. He didn't take advantage, didn't press for anything else. Inside that rough and rugged exterior beat the heart of a true gentleman.
"I can sleep on the sofa," she told him. "Why don't you take the bed?"
"No, way. No white knight worth a damn would let a true princess sleep on the sofa."
"Is that the way you see me… as a princess?" Her heart fluttered wildly, as if it had never heard a compliment before tonight.
"Actually, Jasmine Talbot, you're not a princess." He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand as his gaze locked with hers. "You're a queen."
Tears misted her eyes. "Damn you, McCord. You're not real. You know that, don't you? You're too good to be true." 'Yeah, that's what all the ladies say."
With tears glistening in her eyes, she laughed again, and when Caleb put his arm around her waist and led her to her bedroom, she knew he wouldn't come in and stay. He was simply walking her to her door. He would sleep on the sofa. Like the true prince charming he was.
* * *
Chapter 19
When Caleb pulled his '57 Thunderbird, which he had personally restored a few years ago, onto the asphalt drive, he saw her putting her bag in the trunk of a dark blue classic Mercedes.
No doubt when she'd found herself ordered not to leave town, she'd sent someone from Chattanooga with another car. Odd how that at a distance she could easily pass for Jazzy, especially if her hair was shorter and a brighter red. At the same time, Reve Sorrell resembled Jazzy less from far away because she was probably a couple of inches taller-about five-ten, he'd say-and out weighed Jazzy by a good twenty pounds. He parked the car and got out. She ignored him completely as she headed back toward the rental cabin.
"Ms. Sorrell," he called to her.
She paused, but didn't turn around.
He'd made it here just in time. Another ten minute and she'd have been on the highway headed back to Chattanooga. Of course, if he'd found her gone, he would have followed her-down Interstate 75, all the way home, all the way back to that big fancy house she owned on Lookout Mountain.
"We need to talk," he told her.
She glanced over her shoulder and pinned him with a don't-bother-me glare. "What could we possibly have to talk about, Mr. McCord?"
"Your sister."
"I'm an only child. I don't have a sister." She walked toward the cabin.
"You were adopted," Caleb said. "When you were an infant."
Her body tensed for a millisecond, barely long enough for him even to notice the pause in her quick steps.
"Spencer and Lesley Sorrell adopted a baby girl who had been thrown in a Dumpster and left for dead in Sevierville twenty-nine years ago. The birthday they gave you is only a few days different from Jasmine Talbot's birthday. Do you really believe it's nothing more than a coincidence that you two look enough alike to be twins?"
"We are not twins!" Reve halted and turned to face him. "I don't know how you found out such personal things about me, but I am not that Jazzy person's sister. I couldn't be."
"I think you are."
''Then you think wrong."
"When Jamie Upton told you about Jazzy, you were curious enough to hire a private detective to check her out. And once he provided you with information and pictures, you must have thought there was a chance you two were related or you wouldn't have come to Cherokee Pointe to see her, to check her out in person."
"I made a mistake," Reve said. "If you'll excuse me, I need to lock up before I leave."
"Why are you in such a hurry?"
"I have been delayed here for several days against my will by that barbarian sheriff of yours because I bear a vague resemblance to a woman who murdered her lover and because I don't have an eyewitness to my whereabouts when the man was killed." Reve's cinnamon brown eyes flashed with anger. He'd seen that same expression on Jazzy's face countless times and couldn't help but wonder if, beneath those green contacts Jazzy wore, her eyes were as fiery dark as Reve's.
''Jazzy didn't kill Jamie," Caleb said. "She was with me part of the time that morning. She's been framed, and she needs a really good lawyer."
"What she does or doesn't need has absolutely nothing to do with me."
"Jazzy's blood type is AB negative." He paused to allow that bit of information to sink in, then said, 'The same as yours."
She shrugged, but he caught a look of surprise she wasn't able to disguise. "So?"
"So that's a very rare blood type."
"It's just another coincidence." '’Jazzy's right handed and you're left handed. That's a trait many identical twin
s have."
"Go away, Mr. McCord. Nothing you say will persuade me to stay and become better acquainted with that woman."
"Is that why you think I'm here?"
"Isn't it?"
He shook his head. "Nope. Stay. Go. I don't care."
"Then why are you here? What do you want?"
"I want you to hire Quinn Cortez to defend Jazzy if the grand jury hands down an indictment."
She looked at him incredulously. "The Quinn Cortez?"
"Yeah, the Quinn Cortez."
"And why would you think I'd pay Mr. Cortez's enormous retainer for a woman I don't even know?"
"Because she's your sister."
"She is not-"
"Do you want all your highfalutin friends in Chattanooga and all your business associates to know that you were found in a Dumpster as an infant? Do you want them to know that your sister owns a honky-tonk, has a reputation as a loose woman, and is now on trial for killing her ex-lover? And do you want them to know that you hired a PI to check her out and, even after learning what sort of person she was, you still wanted to meet her?"
"Are you threatening to blackmail me?"
"I don't think I mentioned the word blackmail. I'm just telling you that if someone doesn't come up with the cash to pay Quinn Cortez, then-"
"What do you want me to do-write you out a check?"
Caleb grinned. Finding out how important the Sorrells' social standing was to Reve-and her own sterling reputation as well-had given him an advantage. He owed his old buddy Joe for coming up with the dirt on Ms. Sorrell so quickly.
"I'll call Cortez," Caleb said, "since I know him and he owes me a favor." When Reve opened her mouth to say something, Caleb shook his head. "Long story. No time for it now. Anyway, when I call Cortez, I want you to get on the phone, tell him who you are and that you'll be glad to pick up the tab for Jazzy. Then give him a credit card number or whatever the hell he requires."
"I could say no."
"Yeah, you could." Caleb's grin broadened into a wide smile. "But you won't"
"She must mean a great deal to you for you to resort to strong-arming me into paying you hush money."
"Don't look at it that way," he told her. 'Just think of it as helping your sister."
"I told you that she is not my sister."
"Okay, have it your way. Jazzy is not your sister. But you two are definitely flip sides to the same coin. You pretend to be sugar, while Jazzy is definitely spice. You come across as being cold, calculating, snobbish, and unemotional. Jazzy's the exact opposite." Caleb walked over, grasped her arm, and said, "After we go inside and call Cortez and you put him on retainer, you can leave Cherokee County and never look back."
"And you won't tell anyone-"
He made a zipping-my-mouth gesture.
"Very well. Come inside and let's contact Mr. Cortez. The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can leave and put this entire nightmare behind me."
"Yeah, sure." Caleb loosened his hold on her arm and followed her into the cabin. Maybe she thought that once she went back to Chattanooga she could forget all about Jazzy, but he'd bet his old age pension-if he had one- that sooner or later Reve Sorrell's curiosity would bring her back to Cherokee County.
Jim Upton lay in the queen-size, pine sleigh bed, his breathing calm, his body relaxed. For the past hour, he had been able to forget that today was the day of Jamie's funeral, that this afternoon he would bury all his and Reba's hopes for the future. It was wrong of him to be here with Erin, to have made love to her with more passion than he'd felt in quite some time, when he was in mourning for his grandson. His wife was at home making preparations for the after-funeral reception at their home. Not only would three-fourths of Cherokee County's population wander in and out of their house later today, but friends and business associates-as well as the governor and both U.S. senators-would come by to pay their respects.
Erin caressed him, her slender fingers twining around the thick white hair on his chest "It's all right, you know," she told him. "You mustn't feel guilty about our making love. The death of someone near and dear to us makes us need to reaffirm that we're alive." She propped herself up beside him, then leaned over and kissed his mouth in that sweet, tender way of hers.
"I can't leave her, you know," Jim said.
"Are you talking about Miss Reba?" Sighing, Erin lay back down alongside him and snuggled close. "You've told me before that you won't divorce her, so why bring that up now?"
He flipped over on his side and looked into her eyes. 'That morning… before I found out about Jamie being murdered, I came here to talk to you."
"You came here? Why haven't you said-"
"You weren't here."
"No, I wasn't."
Where were you? Who were you with? Did you spend the night in another man's arms? "I came here to tell you that I had decided to ask Reba for a divorce. I wanted us to have a few years-however many I've got left-together. As man and wife."
"Oh, Jim. I-I don't know what to say."
"That's changed now. You see that, don't you? How could I ask her for a divorce now that we've lost Jamie? He was all-"Jim clenched his teeth. "I don't want to lose you, but I'll understand if you don't want to continue our affair."
Erin wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. "I'm not going anywhere. I love you. I want whatever you can give me."
He caressed her naked back. Soft, pale skin, dotted here and there with small, dark moles. He knew every inch of her. Had kissed those little moles, had memorized their locations. "Where were you?" 'The morning you came by here and I was gone?" She reached down and grasped his hand.
"If there's someone else-"
"Don't."
"You're still young and-"
"I went to Knoxville. I spent the night with a friend. And before you ask, the friend is female. She's a doctor."
Jim tensed, fear zipping through him like a fast-acting drug. "Are you ill?"
"No, my heath is fine. This friend is a gynecologist. I had called and asked her to put together some information for me about in vitro fertilization. About using a donor egg and a husband or lover's sperm."
"I don't understand." Jim rose into a sitting position.
Erin came up beside him, looked him in the eye, and said, "I'm too old to give you a child, as much as I wish I could. I knew how disappointed you were with Jamie, how much you wished there had been other grandchildren. I thought that if-"
"My sperm, a donor egg, and you'd carry the child in your body." Jim reached down and laid his hand over her flat belly. "You love me that much?" Tears misted his eyes.
"Now I have more reason than ever to want to give you-"
He cupped her face with his hands and kissed her. "You don't know what your offering to try something like that means to me. But you're not the only one too old to have a child. I'm seventy-five. Even if I'm not shooting blanks these days, do you kn
ow how old I'd be when our child is ten? Eighty-five. Eight-five fucking years old. It wouldn't be fair to the child."
"Yeah, I know." Tears trickled down Erin's cheeks. "What ten-year-old would want a sixty-year-old mother?" Jim hugged her to him, loving her more than he'd loved anything or anyone, at this moment loving her even more than he'd loved Melva Mae Nelson all those years ago. He kissed her forehead and asked in a whisper, "Will you come to Jamie's funeral?"
The Last To Die Page 26