by Kay Hooper
“I was gathering my strength,” she said instead.
He chuckled, his lips trailing over her cheek and down her throat. “I wonder if you’ll ever tell me the truth instead of just what you think I want to hear,” he murmured.
Damn him, he is reading my mind!
“Only in business, sweetie,” she said, her tone flippant. Deliberately bringing the conversation to an end, she slid her hand down his side, over the smooth, hard flesh of his hip and thigh, then up the front until her fingers found and grasped even harder flesh. It didn’t surprise her that he was already aroused, and it didn’t particularly flatter her; in public and when they were businesslike, he might have been made of stone for all the reaction she earned from him, but when they were like this, it was almost unconditional how instantly and lustfully he responded to her.
She had more than once wondered if that seemingly primal drive to mate was the price he paid for being so controlled so much of the time.
“This is not smart,” he said. “Acrobatics in the shower like a couple of kids.” But even as he said it, he was pressing her back against the chilly fiberglass of the stall. The hot water streamed down over her breasts, and he stared down at her, his hands shaping and lifting, thumbs rubbing over her nipples rhythmically.
Those magic hands … Her mouth opened under the hungry pressure of his, and she caressed him, stroking him with the quickening rhythm he initiated in her body with his skilled fingers and oddly possessive mouth. It was as if he had been granted absolute knowledge of what would please and arouse and compel, as if nature had given him that as well. Her heart thudded and tension coiled tighter and tighter inside her, and the need to have him became a blind necessity.
She barely felt the wet slide of the wall at her back as he lifted her, or the shower spray beating against her arm and shoulder like tiny fingers. Her legs opened and cradled him, and she whimpered in relief when he came into her. It was an aching completion so consummate it was terrifying, as though this act with this man was the only moment of wholeness she had ever known.
It made panic wash over her even as pleasure did, and she pressed her closed mouth against his shoulder in the effort not to cry out, because she was afraid he’d understand and despise her for it. Almost silent, she took him and the pleasure he gave her, despising herself for the gratitude she felt.
Lyssa was almost limp when he finally eased her back onto her feet, and he had to steady her even though her back was still against the cool fiberglass wall of the stall.
“Whose idea was this, anyway?” she managed, still breathless but trying very hard to stick to her expected flippant role.
“Yours.” He kissed her, taking his time about it. Then he gave her one of his small smiles as he reached up and adjusted the spray nozzle.
She sputtered and turned her face away from the spray. “Bastard!”
He chuckled. “Turn around and I’ll wash your back for you.”
She obeyed, and by the time he was finished with her back and her front and had washed her hair for her as well, Lyssa was feeling limp again and more than a little bit resentful. Damn him, anyway. Him and his damned magic fingers!
She returned the favor, hoping he couldn’t feel how shaky her hands were as she washed his back. He didn’t comment if he did notice, and by the time he turned off the shower and opened the stall door, Lyssa was feeling calmer.
She wrapped a large towel around her body and a smaller one around her hair and went to sit on the edge of the bed as she towel-dried her hair and then combed through it absently with her fingers. He was dressing, and she couldn’t help but watch him.
God, I’m really pathetic.
“I heard you had a little confrontation with Griff in town today,” she said, trying to distract herself.
Scott didn’t ask where she’d heard; in Cliffside, the source rarely made much difference. “It wasn’t a confrontation,” he said, tucking his shirt into his pants. “He was just asking about that tourist who was killed a few months ago.”
Lyssa frowned. “Butler? But that was back in May, wasn’t it? I thought Griff had his hands full investigating how that girl came to fall last night.”
Scott sat down in a chair by the window to put on his socks and shoes, but paused first to look at Lyssa. “I thought so too. He said he may have closed that other investigation too soon.”
“Meaning what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t even know Butler, did you?”
“No.” Scott turned his attention to putting his shoes on.
Lyssa waited for a moment, and when he said nothing more, said, “He is investigating that girl’s death, though. Does he think there’s some connection between the two deaths?”
“Apparently,” Scott said calmly, “he thinks the connection might be me.”
“What?”
“He asked me where I was last night, and not because he thought I might have seen something helpful. I can’t think of another reason why he’d ask that unless he suspected I was somehow involved.”
“Did you tell him you were here?” Lyssa asked.
“No.” Scott got up and shrugged into his casual jacket.
“You were here until after midnight,” she said slowly.
Scott stood looking down at her, that little half-smile playing around his mouth. “As I heard it, that girl died hours later, sometime before dawn. So it should hardly matter to the sheriff where I was before that. When she died, I was at the house. That’s all he needs to know.”
After a moment, Lyssa said, “It’s your business, of course. But if you should need to tell him you were with me part of the night, go ahead.”
“Don’t you think I’d sacrifice your reputation without a second thought if I needed to save my own skin?” he asked as if honestly curious.
“No,” she replied calmly, “I don’t.”
His smile widened just a bit, but Scott didn’t comment on her faith. Instead, he merely said, “I’ll tell the sheriff as much as he needs to know, and no more than that.”
“Because you have no intention of making his job easier?”
“Something like that.”
Lyssa heard herself give a little laugh that didn’t sound very amused. “There’s no love lost between you two, is there?”
“None at all.” Abandoning that subject abruptly, he said, “Don’t forget to go by City Hall tomorrow morning before you come to the house and pick up those papers from the mayor.”
“I won’t forget.”
“I’ll let myself out,” Scott said.
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night, Lyssa.”
He didn’t kiss her good-bye, or even touch her. But Lyssa hadn’t expected him to, because he never did. Just as he never told her all or even much of what he was thinking. And just as he never slept here, but always returned to that beautiful, lonely house on the cliffs he had shared with Caroline, and to the bedroom he had not shared with her.
One discovered such things about a lover.
JOANNA GOT OUT of her car and studied the place. Neat, very neat. And quiet. So quiet, in fact, that the silence seemed a physical thing, scraping over her nerves. It was fairly early Tuesday morning, and as far as she could see, she was the only visitor to the greenhouse. McKenna’s Roses it was called, according to the sign. As she had been told, it was the only one of his businesses that Scott McKenna had chosen to put his name on. Or … Caroline’s name, perhaps?
It was actually a sprawling collection of three large greenhouses and a small building presumably containing the office and sales space for plant supplies and equipment, and was located roughly between downtown Cliffside and The Inn, situated well back off the coast road and surrounded by woods. And judging by the neatly lettered signs above each greenhouse door, the business wasn’t limited to roses.
There was no one around that she could see, and when Joanna found the door of the nearest greenhouse unlocked, she went inside. Th
is one had been marked Perennials and was filled with healthy, fragrant plants and flowers. The variety was unusual in Joanna’s experience with greenhouses and nurseries, and everything was in excellent repair. As with all his other businesses, it seemed Scott had hired only the best, most responsible and skilled employees to make certain his property was in superior hands.
She left that greenhouse and went into the next, this one marked Annuals and filled with bedding plants and flowers in all stages of growth. Joanna looked around only briefly, again seeing no one, then went back outside and to the third greenhouse, this one marked Roses.
Joanna had always loved roses, but when she walked through the front door of this greenhouse, her first reaction was that so many roses in an enclosed space—even one as large as this—were a bit too much. The scent of them filled the air with a cloying sweetness, and she found herself breathing through her mouth for several minutes to lessen the impact. But the flowers were stunningly beautiful nevertheless, bred in every color nature allowed and quite a few created by inventive humans.
As in the other two buildings, the place was immaculate and the plants bursting with health, so despite its seemingly being deserted at the moment, someone obviously took excellent care of the business.
She walked slowly toward the opposite end along a comfortably wide aisle, studying shelves that were staggered in height to give the plants maximum room and light, and noting the complex and undoubtedly expensive sprinkler system. Then, realizing that each rose bore a little brass nametag, she began paying attention to those, reading with an intentness she wasn’t even aware of.
Some of the names were familiar to Joanna: Scarlet Knight, Queen Elizabeth, Love, French Lace, Cherish, Tiffany, Peace. But most were strange and exotic, making her wonder who had chosen them and why. Complicata, Sparrieshoop, Madame Hardy, Old Blush, Bewitched, Lady X, Mon Cheri.
She was halfway up the second aisle and moving back toward the front door again when she came to an abrupt stop, staring. The plant was set just a bit apart from those around it and was in a decorative blue ceramic pot rather than black or green plastic like all the rest. And though she hadn’t seen a single fallen petal anywhere in the greenhouse until now, a few petals lay about this neat rosebush on the shelf, just as petals had lain around the vase of roses in Joanna’s dream. And like those roses, these were a deep, vivid pink, beautifully shaped and just slightly different from any other rose she had ever seen.
She reached out slowly to touch a satiny bloom, and that was when she saw the little brass nametag. For Caroline.
“Hi, can I help you? Sorry I wasn’t around when you got here, but—”
The man broke off abruptly when Joanna turned to face him, his eyes widening and mouth left open in obvious shock. He had come in from the rear door of the greenhouse and stopped now no more than a couple of steps away from her. He was about forty, with a pleasant face and a stocky build, only his pale blue eyes unusual. He wore faded jeans and a denim shirt, both as immaculate as the greenhouses, and though there was no dirt under his fingernails, Joanna knew he was the green-thumbed expert who ran this place.
“Jesus,” he said softly. “They said you looked like her, but…”
It had been a few days since Joanna had encountered shock at her appearance, so she was taken aback for a moment. But just a moment. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Joanna Flynn.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. Uh—sorry for staring, but—”
It was Joanna’s turn to nod. “It’s okay, this has been happening to me for a week now.”
“You don’t sound like her,” he murmured, then shook his head and shifted his shoulders as though throwing off something bothersome. “I’m Adam Harrison. I manage the greenhouse.”
She shook hands with him, then nodded toward the rosebush. “I was just admiring all of them, but especially this one. And I couldn’t help but be curious about the name. If I remember correctly, roses are named by whoever creates them. Do you happen to know who created this one?”
“I did,” he said. “When we opened this place a few years ago, I promised Scott that I’d name the first new plant we developed for Caroline.” He shrugged slightly. “So that’s what I did. She was the inspiration, after all.”
“So it’s true that he went into the greenhouse business because Caroline loved roses?” Joanna asked.
Adam Harrison smiled as though he found the subject somehow amusing. “Yeah, it’s true. When they were first married, he sent all the way to Portland for roses a couple of times a week. But sometimes they were hard to find, or the variety wasn’t good. So he decided Cliffside needed a plant nursery, and brought me up from San Francisco to run it. I’d done some work for his family there, so he knew what he’d be getting.”
Another one from San Francisco.
“I see.” Joanna couldn’t be sure how deeply she could or should probe with this man, but she felt an odd sense of urgency to keep going, to keep asking questions. Because she had dreamed of roses and now found one named for Caroline here, she assumed. Because somehow this place—or perhaps this man—was important in her search for information about Caroline and her death. Otherwise, why would the vase of roses have been a part of the dream? “You seem to find that amusing, Mr. Harrison.”
“Adam. Miss Flynn, I find it a scream.”
She blinked in surprise at his sardonic tone. “Uh—call me Joanna, please. Forgive me, but—you didn’t like Caroline?”
He looked at her for a moment as though weighing her curiosity. Not guarded, as so many others had been, just thoughtful. “I heard you were asking questions about her. Mind telling me why?”
Joanna hesitated, but then, as she so often had since arriving in Cliffside, and, really, for most of her life, she followed her instincts. “Because I look like her. Because ever since I got here, people have assumed things about me, things Caroline would have found familiar. I … need to know who she was, what she was like. I need to know more than just her favorite color or the perfume she wore.”
He nodded, then shrugged as if the subject hardly interested him. “Makes sense. Okay, then—I’m in the minority, I know, but no, I didn’t like Caroline. For all her sweet smiles and soft voice, she was a cruel, destructive woman who did whatever was necessary to get what she wanted, and she didn’t care who she hurt.”
Joanna heard bitterness in his voice, a lot of it, and it didn’t take intuition to tell her a likely reason for it. “So what was it she wanted from you?”
He let out a short laugh. “Complicity. She got it too.”
“Complicity in what?” Joanna asked, not sure he’d be willing to tell her that much. But whether it was because she looked so much like the woman he had such strong feelings about or because he had held it all inside him for too long, it was obvious he wasn’t going to stop talking now.
“Cheating on Scott. She needed a place to meet her lover, you see, a place unlikely to cause her problems. And I have no doubt she enjoyed the irony of doing it here—a place her husband built for love of her.”
Joanna hardly knew what to say. The picture he was drawing was not of the woman so many others in this town had seen, and so she had to believe his view was either twisted by his own emotions or else that only he had seen an ugly side of Caroline’s personality—which seemed unlikely but not impossible, depending on just how well he had known her. And Joanna had a very good idea how well he had known her.
“The office has a back room,” Adam went on flatly, as if he saw or sensed her doubt, “used mostly for storing the supplies we’ve no space for out front. She kept a blanket there on an old cot of mine and came here to meet her lover a few times a week.”
The storage room of the greenhouse—and the old barn? It felt wrong to Joanna, and so she asked, “You mean before Caroline was killed she came here several times a week?”
Adam shook his head. “No, not then. It was about a year ago. Only lasted a few weeks, but hell, cheating is cheating, as far as I’
m concerned. She wanted to hurt Scott, that was her reason. Wanted to use this place to hurt him.”
“And did she? Hurt Scott?”
Adam let out another short laugh. “You see, Joanna, the problem with Caroline was, she was a coward. Couldn’t stand confrontations. So even though she wanted to hurt Scott, she wasn’t brave enough to tell him about her affairs. I don’t know, maybe just having them satisfied a sick need inside her, that secret knowledge that other men were getting what was rightfully his. Maybe that was what she got off on.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I doubt she ever told him. Probably expected her lover to after she’d finished with him. Probably figured he’d be mad enough to want to get even with her after she’d dumped him.”
Joanna asked the question quietly. “And did you?”
He didn’t seem surprised by her perception. “No.” His voice was flat, his face wearing a faint smile that held no amusement. “But maybe one of the others did. I was only one of many, I knew that. I asked her once if she always bedded her lovers in dingy back rooms or cheap motels because of the contrast between that and her husband’s fine house on the cliffs. She laughed.”
Questions swirled around in Joanna’s mind, and she chose one at random. “Why did it end?”
“Because she got tired of me. Because it didn’t excite her anymore. Because I couldn’t satisfy her. Because she was ready to move on to the next lover. Take your pick.”
“And you weren’t tempted to tell Scott?”
Adam’s sardonic amusement faded, and he looked away from Joanna at the rose named after his onetime lover. He took a step toward it and almost unconsciously reached out a hand to gently groom the plant, removing a dying petal. “I was tempted. If it had only been a matter of getting back at Caroline, I would have. But I like Scott, and I owe him a lot.” Those pale blue eyes, miserable now, shifted their attention back to Joanna. “That’s why she picked me, you see. It wasn’t just this place she wanted to use to hurt him—it was me too. I was his friend, and I betrayed him as surely as she did.” His mouth twisted.