Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  But as she contemplated the picture Troy painted and weighed the truth of his words, Evangeline did feel some of that oppressive load of fear recede a bit. The Davison case might be on a level no one in the county had seen or experienced, but she had lived with stress. Professionally, absolutely.

  And if she also considered how she’d grown up—in a highly emotional atmosphere with her father’s behavior—she could add additional stressful situations to the tally of examples Troy had provided.

  Yet in every one of those situations, hallucinations had never been a part of how she handled things. With any of it. Instead, she just put one foot in front of the other and tried to work through the answers.

  “You’ve been coping with everything, Evangeline. There’s no reason to think otherwise.”

  Troy’s kind words—and the sudden realization she was still in his arms—had her pressing her hands against his chest. It felt so good to stand here with him, surrounded by his gentle strength. But there was no way she could come to depend on this. She’d already taken up far too much of his time.

  And he was increasingly taking up too much space in her thoughts.

  “Thank you.”

  She knew she should back away. It was the right thing to do, here in the midst of an emotional meltdown. Yet as she stood there, feeling both safe and confident for the first time in weeks, Evangeline found she couldn’t move away.

  Instead, she lifted her head as her gaze never left his. And when her mouth met his, she found that same quiet strength in the press of his lips to hers.

  CHAPTER 8

  He needed to walk away. Troy knew that. Felt it down to his marrow. Yet as Evangeline’s lips met his, soft and warm, he could no sooner move away from her than he could stop drawing breath or force his heartbeat to still.

  He wanted her.

  It was the wrong time in the wrong place, but he couldn’t quite find it in himself to care.

  Where their kiss the night before had been tentative movements and a dive into the forbidden, this time it was different. This time, he knew how good she’d taste and how badly he’d wanted to kiss her again.

  To hold her in his arms.

  Even if he shouldn’t.

  Actions that should have been motivated solely by a protective urge had turned on him. He knew she needed comfort and he’d believed himself capable of giving it. Only now, he knew a hunger he couldn’t deny.

  Yes, he wanted her safe. And increasingly, he believed himself the only one who could keep her that way.

  But he also wanted her.

  Mouths merged, a soft sigh—his? hers?—mingling between them. Troy trailed his fingers down her spine before settling at the enticing curve of her lower back. Pleased with the way his hand fit there, nestled in the arch, he found his need turning wanton, and in seconds he’d fisted the material of her blouse in his hand.

  Had he wanted like this before?

  And how had he waited this long to taste her? To feel her?

  Could he have known how neatly they’d fit together, her tall, lithe figure pressed to his? She was strong. He could feel that in the long lines of her body, in the firm sweep of muscle down the back of her arm, in the play of subtle strength beneath her shoulder blades.

  He wanted.

  In the end, it was really that simple.

  And in the simplicity of that knowledge, Troy knew he needed to stop. To step away from Evangeline and the increasingly desperate desire to be near her.

  Lifting his head, he stared down at her. Her thick eyelashes swept up from lids that were half-closed, the irises underneath dark with desire. “Troy?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve come into your home—” he glanced around “—your kitchen no less, and taken what I shouldn’t have.” He held onto her shoulders to keep her from swaying, but took a firm step back. “I’m sorry.”

  “For kissing me?”

  “For taking advantage when you’re vulnerable and scared.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He kept his gaze on hers, sharing the only truth he had. “I’m not.”

  “Oh.”

  She stepped back and he let his hands drop, satisfied she had her footing. He sensed that a wholly unnecessary apology sat on her tongue before she seemed to think better of it. “I’m going to go check if the remaining cops are still outside.”

  “I’ll do it. And then I’d like to talk about something. I had an idea earlier, talking to Melissa. I wanted to run it by you.”

  It wasn’t an out-and-out lie, exactly, but it was a slight prevarication. One that, while a bit spur-of-the-moment, increasingly made sense as Troy turned it over in his mind. He followed Evangeline to the living room, then moved to look out the front windows toward the parking lot.

  “Is anyone there?”

  “No. They’re all gone.” He let the curtain fall back in place in front of the large window framing her living room.

  “Good. I can’t begin to imagine what my neighbors must think.”

  “Let them think. Maybe it’ll get them to pay attention a bit more, too.”

  Her head tilted, a soft waterfall of black hair skimming down over her shoulder. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “Maybe it’s time to. The challenge of living in a complex like you do is that it’s not quite as easy to notice strangers. But the benefits are that there are a lot more eyes, all focused on the same places. Someone lurking around your home should get noticed if they do it too often.”

  He hated using scare words like lurk and stranger, but there was no help for it. And more to the point, he wanted to stress those things so Evangeline would understand she wasn’t alone. The quicker she understood that and recognized it, the better off she would be. She lived in a crowded housing complex and it was time to try and use that to their advantage. Especially since the threat to her seemed so ephemeral.

  “What was your idea?”

  “Before, when I was talking to Melissa, we talked about my cousins.”

  “What does your family have to do with today?”

  “I might have mentioned it yesterday, but my sister, as well as various Colton cousins, have had some strange experiences so far this year. Run-ins that have necessitated law enforcement involvement.”

  “We do have crime here, Troy. I see the caseload that regularly comes into the DA’s office and while we’re not rolling in it, we’re hardly crime-free.”

  Her quick assessment was a good sign that her earlier fear had receded and Troy was pleased to see how deftly Evangeline questioned his points. It was a far cry from the shaken woman he and Melissa had found less than an hour ago.

  “It’s disappointing,” she continued, “but we live in a big enough jurisdiction with a big enough population that we deal with our fair share of bad things happening.”

  She sat down, clearly engaged in their discussion, and Troy took his first easy breath since their kiss. While he would like nothing more than to keep kissing her, he knew they needed to stop. More, he knew he needed some physical distance from her. The easiest way to get back on common ground was to talk about a subject they could both wrap their heads around.

  A subject that her legal brain would quickly assess in a way he might be more likely to miss.

  “I heard about Melissa. When something happens to the chief of police, that’s big news. She and Arielle are friendly, as well, so my boss shared some of the details as she knew them, too.”

  “The stalker that went after Melissa was pretty big news.” News that still shook Troy down to the marrow. It wasn’t something he liked to dwell on, but knowing his cousin had experienced that situation had lit a fire under him to catch Len Davison. “And a cop discharging their weapon, even in self-defense, is even more news. Ever since, the Davison case has consumed us all. It’s also given her the head space to work through her act of sel
f-defense with a bit of distance.”

  “That’s good. I’m sure it helps that she’s planning a wedding, too.”

  “You do have a pulse on the Grave Gulch grapevine.”

  A light blush colored her cheeks. “Like I said, Melissa and Arielle are friendly. And there’s little a group of women love to talk about more than wedding plans. With Antonio Ruiz owning the Grave Gulch Hotel, well, it’s hot gossip.”

  “Well, if we’re talking weddings, personally, I’m a tulle guy.”

  The joke was enough to get a quick laugh before her smile faded. “That’s not news to me about Melissa but you said ‘cousins’ as in plural. What else has happened?”

  In careful detail, Troy walked her through all his family had experienced. Other than the few details intersecting with the ongoing Davison investigation, which he skipped, he gave her the unvarnished truth.

  “How is your family holding up?”

  “We’re managing. We’re Coltons and when bad things happen, we tend to close ranks and watch each other’s backs. They did that years ago for my father after my mother was killed. And the next generation is committed to doing the same.”

  “Her death impacted all of you.”

  “It did.”

  “I don’t mean that in an offhanded way, either. Obviously, losing your mother at any age is hard. What you and your sister had to endure is unimaginable.”

  He’d lived with it for most of his life: the knowledge that a stranger—one who had never been caught—murdered his mom. He had coping mechanisms and the love of his father, sister, half siblings and stepmother, as well as his extended family, to manage the grief. But until that moment, Troy hadn’t realized how much it meant for someone who was basically a stranger to simply acknowledge his mother.

  Her value.

  Her worth.

  Even her death.

  “Troy, I’m sorry. I said the wrong thing.”

  “No, actually you didn’t. You said the exact right thing. Thank you.”

  Her direct gaze was as skeptical as Melissa’s had been earlier. “The right thing? Really?”

  “Yes, really. My sister and I have talked about this through the years. People don’t typically know what to say when you tell them that your mother has passed. That is only more real and more acute when the reason for death is murder. It’s out of the ordinary and people don’t know how to handle it.”

  “She was a person, Troy. She mattered. She doesn’t deserve to be erased.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  To the Colton family, Amanda McMahon Colton had never been erased. Her memory and the desire to seek justice for others drove all of them. But that still didn’t mean that others outside the family understood it.

  But Evangeline did.

  The ever-present knot of grief that was usually tied so tightly around his heart eased at that revelation. And for an impossible moment, he was able to sit with another person and celebrate his mother’s memory fully, instead of simply trying to erase the pain.

  * * *

  Evangeline still wondered if she’d said the wrong thing about Troy’s mother, but couldn’t find any hint of anger in his face. She knew how to read anger. She’d gotten good—very good—at reading her father’s anger cues until she could pinpoint what would put him into a rage.

  But Troy seemed calmer, somehow. As if talking about the horrible death of a loved one could calm instead of enrage.

  It made little sense and she still mentally braced for some blowback, but as their conversation shifted once more, this time as Troy spoke of his sister and her wedding plans, Evangeline began to suspect he wasn’t upset at all.

  Although she had listened to everything Troy said, that clamoring sense of the threat faded. As it did, she keyed in more closely to what he was saying, only to be surprised once more when he stood up, crossing the room in two long strides. “I don’t know how I missed this. Why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  Before she could even ask what he had missed, Troy had his phone in hand. “Dez, it’s me.”

  Evangeline listened to Troy’s side of the discussion, but it wasn’t hard to piece together his sister’s responses.

  “I need you to do a sketch for me.” He paused as he got some answer before adding, “Can we come over?”

  We? Come over? Troy wanted her to come to his sister’s house?

  “Me and Evangeline Whittaker.” He nodded, adding, “Yes, from the DA’s office.” She heard the hard laugh as well as a more distant one through the phone before he pressed on. “Yes and yes. I will bring dinner. See you at six.”

  Yes to what? Dinner was one yes, but what was the other?

  Troy shoved the phone into his pocket, the rapid-fire call obviously at an end. “We’re going to my sister’s for dinner.”

  “We can’t. I mean, I can’t. I mean, why?”

  “She’s a sketch artist. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner but I want you to work with her to sketch out the man you saw in the alley.”

  “But I didn’t see him. I have impressions of him, but I never saw his face.”

  “That’s Desiree’s job. She’ll pull out of you what she needs for the sketch.”

  “But we’re intruding.” Evangeline looked at her watch, frantic for some excuse that would keep her from meeting the no-doubt practiced—and discerning eye—of Troy’s sister. “And it’s four already. She wasn’t expecting company.”

  “She is now.”

  “But she’s got a little one. And a new fiancé. She doesn’t need a stranger intruding on her personal time.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “But I can’t. What if I don’t remember anything?” What if that makes you think I’m an even bigger phony than you already do?

  The fear was irrational—it had to be. But the idea of sitting with someone and trying to scrape her brain for any memory of a man whose face she’d never seen anyway felt tantamount to losing any and all credibility.

  Troy had already dropped back onto the couch, his pose relaxed. Confident, even. And why wouldn’t it be? He had nothing to lose.

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “It will work.”

  “But I didn’t see his face.”

  “But you saw something. Likely more than you realize, actually. Desiree is trained to do this. She has a way of bringing an image to life. You just have to trust the process.”

  Trust it? How?

  * * *

  The sense of looming disaster didn’t fade, but strangely, as she and Troy walked up the front walkway of Desiree Colton’s home, it wasn’t getting worse. Maybe, Evangeline thought, it was the small scattering of toys on the front lawn that calmed her. Or perhaps the warm, welcoming smile on the face of the woman who held the door open for them.

  “Troy.” Desiree Colton held out her hands to her brother, enfolding him in a tight hug before turning to face Evangeline. “I’m Desiree. It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

  Evangeline took the proffered hand, and Desiree’s slim fingers—what Evangeline thought of as artist’s fingers—clasped hers. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m sure my brother railroaded you into this seeing as how we only spoke a few hours ago. So come on in, we’ll have a glass of wine and some dinner and relax a bit.”

  “I’m on the clock, Dez,” Troy said as they followed her into her home, his hands full of the tray of lasagna they’d picked up in town.

  Without skipping a beat, Desiree tossed a look over her shoulder for her brother. “No wine for you, then.” She reached out and gave Evangeline’s hand another squeeze. “More for us, then.”

  In a matter of minutes, Desiree had taken the hot tray into the kitchen, poured two glasses of wine and a seltzer for Troy and settled them all in the living room. Evangeline had no idea how the woman had done it, but every
thing moved seamlessly. Effortlessly, really.

  And Desiree managed this all while looking picture-perfect at the end of a long day and keeping up with a toddler.

  One whose toys were all over the room but who was nowhere in sight.

  Before she could ask, Troy beat her to it. “Where are Danny and Stavros?”

  “Danny had a late nap and if we don’t wear him out a bit he’ll be up until midnight. Stavros ran him down to the park for a bit to run out the wiggles.”

  Evangeline could only assume she’d given Desiree a blank stare, because the woman smiled and added, “Also known as some serious two-year-old energy.”

  “Ah.” Evangeline nodded, the picture in her head of an energetic child suddenly making much more sense.

  “I’m also not above admitting I had another motive, as well.”

  “Subtle, Dez,” Troy said, glancing at his sister from where he sat beside her on the couch.

  “Subtlety went out the window with this whole year.” Desiree leaned forward, her expression eager. “Troy mentioned some of the things that you’ve been dealing with. I’d like to help however I can.”

  “I appreciate that.” While she had initially said the words as a platitude, as they came out, Evangeline quickly realized they were completely true. She did appreciate the help. More, she appreciated the idea that someone besides Troy might believe her. Especially since her own doubts had begun to waver since that afternoon with the incident on her front porch. “You need me to tell you everything that’s happened?”

  “Yes, that will help. I’d like to get a sense of what you’re dealing with. It will also help you later, when we try to work through the images.”

  Evangeline took a sip of her wine, Desiree’s kind eyes and steady manner more of a relief than she ever could have imagined. “I’ve only ever been on the other side of it, looking at police sketches after they’ve been generated. But Troy said that you’ll be able to pull images from me, even if I can’t remember what the man I saw looks like.”