Controversy (2 page)

F
or the first time in months, Michael enjoyed an erotic dream—and with someone other than her ex-husband. In fact, she didn't know who the mysterious dark-chocolate, hard-muscled man in her dreams was, and honestly, she didn't care. She just loved the way his nice, firm butt pumped and gyrated between her legs, causing her to inch up a large fantasy bed covered in black satin.

The heat this man generated had Michael kicking the sheets off her real bed and made every sensitive part of her body tingle and throb. As the dream stretched on, Mr. Fantasy tossed and flipped her into positions that would, in real life, require a team of engineers to pull off.

Damn, they were having a good time.

The bed started jumping and banging against the floor.

Michael's head tossed among the pillows as she drew toward her dramatic crescendo. The banging grew louder and somehow seemed out of sync with the wild sex performing in her head.

Then the banging became a distraction and she wanted whatever it was to stop.

It wouldn't.

Instead, it caused the throbbing between her legs to cease and her temples to hammer.

Someone was at the door, trying to break it down from the sounds of it.

Michael flopped over in the bed and buried her head beneath the pillows.

Still her insistent tormentor pounded away and made it clear that he/she/it wasn't going away anytime soon.

“Fine. I'm coming. I'm coming,” she grumbled. Sitting up, she raked her acrylic nails through her hair before swinging her legs over the side of the bed. When she stood up, her scratching went from her head to her belly and then legs while she stepped over piles of clothes, books and whatnot.

She really did need to clean the place up and try to make it look like someone actually lived there.

When she finally neared the door, the pounding felt like a jackhammer against her skull and she swore if someone wasn't dead or dying, she would personally kill the SOB for waking her up at this hour.

Hell, what time was it?

“Who is it?” she snapped, ready to give whoever it was a
big
piece of her mind.

“Police! Open up!”

At the authoritative bark, Michael's hands stilled on the top lock. She was suddenly completely sober. A million questions raced through her mind while fear clogged her throat. By the time she turned all the locks and swung the door open, she was in a state of panic.

The first shock was that she recognized the man on the other side of the door as the dark-chocolate fantasy that had just been screwing her brains out upstairs in her dreams.

“Mrs. Michelle Matthews?” the sinfully deep baritone asked. His sharp onyx gaze impaled her.

“Michael,” she corrected him hoarsely. Was she still dreaming? Would she invite this
cop
inside her house only for him to start a striptease in the living room that would lead her to being handcuffed to the bedposts?

God, she hoped so.

“Michelle Michaels?” He glanced down at his small pocket notepad.

“No. It's Michael Matthews—well, it was. It's now Michael Adams,” she rambled. “I'm divorced. Recently. Happily—sort of.”

He frowned, his gaze traveling from the top of her hair, which she suspected was standing straight up from its roots, to the tips of her chip-painted toenails.

“Your name is Michael?”

“Friends and family call me Mikey or Mike.”

His gaze returned to her figure, this time paying particular attention to her voluptuous curves.

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I
am
a woman.” His powerful gaze traveled back to her face and warmed it considerably.

“Yes, ma'am. You most certainly are.”

The compliment took her by surprise and him, too, judging by how quickly his eyes diverted back to his notepad.

“I'm Detective Kyson Dekker and this is my partner, Detective Robert Griffin.” He indicated a lanky white cop in black jeans and a T-shirt.

Up until that moment, Michael hadn't noticed the flaxen-haired detective. She gave him a cursory nod and then dismissed him to stare at this fantasy man.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, anxious again about why they were there and why they'd been about to break down her door.

“Yes, um.” Dekker cleared his throat as he crossed his arms in a V in front of his body, planted his legs wide and darted his eyes around her own.

The man might as well have socked her in the gut; his sudden change in demeanor confirmed he carried bad news.

“It's one of my sisters, isn't it?”

“Um, no, ma'am. We—”

“My baby brother?” But wait. He's in Georgia.

“No, ma'am. We—”

She gasped. “My father! It has to be my father. What was it—heart attack? Stroke? I told him about mixing that Viagra with his heart medication. But he never listens.”

Detective Dekker's frown deepened. “No. That's
not
it.”

“Stepmother? Though I'm not too crazy about her. I'd call her a gold digger if my father had any money,” she added absently. “No one knows that much about her, she just popped up—”

“Ms. Matthews—”

“Adams.”

“Right,” he snapped with impatience.

She caught the underlying hint and shut up—but, damn, he was fine.

“Ms.
Adams,
we're here regarding your husband—”

“Ex-husband.”

He drew a deep breath. “Right. Mr. Matthews is missing and his, ah, lady friend suspects foul play. She suggested we come and talk to you.”

Lady friend?
“I knew it.” She swore under her breath. “I'll kill him.”

Detective Dekker's brows jumped and crinkled his forehead.

Embarrassment burned Michael's face. “I'm sorry. Figure of speech. You were saying?”

Dekker glanced over his shoulder at his partner and then returned his attention to Michael. “Ma'am, do you mind if we come in?”

It was Michael's turn to glance back over her shoulder and assess her pigsty of a house. Why, oh, why hadn't she cleaned up?

“Ma'am?”

“Um…sure.” Reluctantly, she stepped back, pulling the door with her and allowing the two officers to enter.

Kyson crossed the threshold and made a sweeping glance around the quaint, although cluttered, house.

“I just moved in,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am. Um, like I was saying, Mr. Matthews's place of residence appears to have been ransacked pretty badly, so our department concurs with Ms. Delaney's assessment and believes there's foul play at work here.” He walked farther into the house, not sure what to make of the place.

Delaney—probably a hooker. “I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” she said, closing the door behind Dekker's partner.

Grudgingly, Kyson returned his attention to the striking beauty, despite the bed-tossed hair, smudged makeup and mismatched plaid and polka-dot pajamas. The woman must've had one hell of a night.

“Ma'am,” Griffin said when Dekker couldn't stop staring, “can you tell us where you were last night?”

“Yes. With my sisters. We went out for drinks at the Peppermill.”

“All night?” Kyson asked, his voice returning.

“Until it closed,” she said. “We were out celebrating.”

Kyson lifted an inquisitive brow.

“My divorce,” she answered the unasked question. “It was made final yesterday,” she supplied.

Kyson reached for his pen and flipped open his notepad again. “And your sisters will verify this?”

“Yes,” she clipped with a hint of anger.

“Their names?” Griffin asked.

“Sheldon, Frankie, Joey and Peyton.”

Kyson glanced at his partner.

“Yes. Yes. We all have boy names. Next subject.”

“What time did you return home?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. I passed out in the backseat of my sister's car. They put me to bed and I didn't wake until you guys started pounding down the door. For which, by the way, if there are any damages, I'll be suing the department.”

The partners exchanged weary looks.

“When was the last time you spoke to or heard from your husband?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me,” Kyson said. “Your
ex
-husband.”

“I don't know.” She shrugged again. “A week ago—maybe two.”

“Ms. Delaney says you were stalking Mr. Matthews,” Griffin tossed in. “Any truth to that?”

“Absolutely not!” she shouted, but then followed it up with, “I was spying on him.”

Kyson suspected someone had spiked his morning coffee—either that or he'd stepped into the twilight zone.

“You weren't stalking, you were spying?” Griffin asked with his pen poised above his notepad, just like Kyson's.

The woman nodded. “I suspected he was having an affair, but I couldn't catch him. I take it that this
Ms. Delaney
is his elusive ho.”

Kyson chuckled.

“Ms. Delaney just identified herself as ‘a friend,'” Griffin informed her.

“Uh-huh,” she said, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.

“Do you mind if we sit down and ask you a few more questions?” Kyson asked, not ready to leave.

She considered the question and then shrugged again as if to say “why not?”

He and Griffin followed behind her as she led the way to the living room. Kyson's eyes locked on the way her hips rolled and her butt swayed with every step she took. She was the kind of woman Southern men like him would just sop up with a biscuit and suck on the bones for a few hours.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“No,” Griffin said, casing the room.

“I'd love some,” Kyson contradicted, mainly because he wanted to see her walk some more.

She caught on; but instead of calling him on it, she flashed him a smile. Two dimples winked back before she disappeared into the kitchen.

Kyson's heart jumped while his erection pressed against the line of his pants. He needed to sit down.

“So what do you think?” Griffin whispered. “You think she's hiding something?”

“Don't know,” he answered, and took a seat.

“She's sort of an odd bird, don't you think?” Griffin asked. “When she opened the door, I thought we'd arrived at Pee-wee's Playhouse. Plaid and polka dots?”

Kyson's mouth curled. “I saw that and then some,” he said, remembering the sight of her overflowing breasts. She certainly had more than a handful. He licked his lips. His mouth was dry as a desert.

Griffin chuckled. “Didn't know you had a thing for crazy women.”

“They keep life interesting.”

 

Michael searched all of the cupboards and cabinets and came up empty. Just her luck. She was out of coffee. An amazingly gorgeous man was in her house and she couldn't even offer him a decent cup of coffee.

“Maybe there's some downstairs,” she muttered.

Last week, Michael's father had given her boxes of canned food and whatnot from his overflowing Costco stock. There had to be some coffee down there.

“Just a minute, guys.” Michael exited the kitchen with a pasted-on smile and raced to the door leading down to the basement. “Make yourselves comfortable, I have to get a new can of coffee.”

“That's okay, ma'am,” Detective Dekker said. “We don't want to put you through any trouble.”

“No trouble,” she lied. “Be back in a moment.” Michael took off down the stairs. “C'mon, girl. Get it together,” she coached. If she played her cards right, she might get Detective Fine's phone number. She clicked on a light.

“Where the hell did all this mud come from?” Michael glanced around and noticed the back door cracked open. “What in the hell?” She went and closed it. “Just more work that needs to be done,” she mumbled and made a beeline to the piles of boxes from her father.

“Coffee. Coffee. Where's the coffee?” She dug through the canned goods and spotted the familiar burgundy canister. “Gotcha!” She smiled.

Pivoting on her heels, her gaze scanned across the basement and crashed into a horrific sight.

She jumped, screamed and dropped the can of coffee.

There, sitting before a cinder-block wall, looking bruised and battered, not to mention, tied in a wooden chair with his mouth duct taped, was her missing ex-husband, Philip Matthews.