Heroes In Uniform (270 page)

John walked up to the group and slipped his arms around Katelyn’s waist. No one seemed surprised by the move, and she guessed the Evers grapevine had already spread the news they were seeing each other.

“You’ve lost weight and you didn’t really have any room to lose it, Kate,” John said with a frown.

Ashley leaned forward, not even remotely trying not to let the room hear her stage-whispered words. “Somebody’s trying to get laid tonight!”

Katelyn would have laughed but before she knew what was happening, Mrs. J. was there with her purse bashing poor John over the head with it and chasing him out of the house behind all of the other guests. She kept saying something about “God-fearing men waited” and “not in her town.” Katelyn stood shell-shocked as John’s cruiser pulled away from the house and she was left with Mrs. J. ushering her up the stairs to her room.

She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her phone. Would it be needy to call and ask him to come back? He was probably tired of running home for clean clothes every morning and living his life without any of his things around. Maybe now that her father was gone and the threat to her seemed to be over, it was time things went back to normal. Time he went home. Katelyn eyed the phone and debated.

Clack, clack, clack.

She swung around at the sound of stones hitting her bedroom window. Even as her head told her it couldn’t be John, her heart flipped over in her chest.
Please be John. Please be John.

Katelyn shoved the window up, the old, stiff tracks making it hard to get it up more than half way. She stuck her head out and laughed at the sight of the county’s sheriff whispering and watching over his head for any sign of Mrs. J.

“Open the back door,” John hissed up at her, and Katelyn had to stifle a laugh as she pushed the window down and ran to the stairs. She felt like a teenager sneaking around, but didn’t care. He was here. He’d come back before she’d even had a chance to call him.

“Where’d you leave your car?” she asked as John pushed in and lifted her off the floor with one arm around her waist and the other shoving the door shut. He didn’t answer. His mouth was busy laying a track of heat and hunger down the side of her neck. He traced his way across her collar bone and her body responded instantly, heating and aching with need.

He walked to the kitchen table and set Katelyn down on it, never breaking contact with her skin. His mouth moved back to capture hers, engulfing her and wiping away memories and pain. She wrapped her arms around his neck and sank into him, reveling in the feel of his strong arm around her, his mouth hot and needy on hers, letting her know he needed this as much as she did. After a kiss that turned her mind to nothing more than mush, John broke away long enough to answer her question, making her wish she’d never asked.

“I parked around the corner and snuck through the backyards.”

Katelyn couldn’t stop the laugh this time. All she could picture was a neighbor calling the police, and one of John’s own deputies showing up to catch him in the act of sneaking into her house. “Maybe we should move upstairs so no one spots us and calls the police.”

“Or worse, Mrs. J.,” John said, wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifted her and walked up the stairs to her bedroom. The feel of his muscles cradled in the heat between her legs, heat he’d created, only ignited her body all the more.

Katelyn didn’t spare a second thought for Mrs. J. after that. John didn’t let her. His assault on her senses was all-encompassing and overwhelming in the best possible way. He whispered things that made her blush as he stripped her of her clothes before undressing himself. Then he followed through on a lot of those whispers until Katelyn cried out his name again and again.

His fingers inside of her as his mouth lapped at her clit sent her spiraling over the top, every muscle in her body clenched as she exploded. Her orgasm claimed her as strongly as John had and when she felt the head of his cock pressing into her, she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her hips into him, all but begging for more.

She wanted more of the connection they’d built. Wanted to be closer to him, to be one with him as their bodies raced toward completion again. His eyes didn’t leave hers as he sank into her again and again, drawing rasping breaths from her. His length plunging into her lit every nerve ending, bringing pleasure so pure she found herself praying it would never end, but wanting to feel his release just the same.

And then they were there. John cried out and tensed beneath her hands, just as she felt the rippling ecstasy of another orgasm hit her. They came together, the erotic power of knowing she’d brought him to this racing through her even as her own body sang and tingled and melted in his arms.

Snuggling into him afterward, their legs linked together under the sheets, Katelyn couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt more content, and she knew coming home to Evers had been the right choice after all.

Everlasting: Chapter Nineteen

Charlie Hanford looked up as his housekeeper entered his office. She always seemed to come just when he was getting settled into his work. But he had to hand it to her, she’d kept this place running like clockwork for almost thirty years. She had a rigid routine. She performed all of his routine weekly cleaning on Fridays, but on Mondays, she had her “list.” It was not to be disrupted regardless of weather, his schedule, or any other outside force he’d ever been able to find.

On the first Monday of every month, she moved the refrigerator and cleaned behind it and dusted all the blinds in the house. On the second Monday, she vacuumed all of the upholstery and dusted the air vents and ceiling fans. The third Monday was reserved for cleaning the windows and sills. This must be the fourth Monday of the month because she appeared in his office, sandpaper in hand. Time to sand the inside of his cedar chest.

He’d tried to tell her she needn’t worry about the cedar chest. But she was adamant. She’d tell him that was where she kept extra blankets and the spare linens for the holiday party, and did he want those all moth eaten every year when they took them out to use them? According to Mrs. Bloom, the way to preserve your cedar chest is to sand the inside a bit each month to maintain the cedar smell.

His look must have told her what he was thinking again. She actually tsked-tsked him, something she did quite frequently. “When you go to sell this place someday, you’ll thank me for maintaining it,” she said as she lifted the lid. The chest was built into the bay window of his office and really was a nice feature to the room. Maybe she was right. Charlie didn’t say anything as she leaned in and began to sand the inside of the cedar planks.

“It was a nice funeral they had for old Alan,” she continued her chatter and Charlie nodded. It had been nice.

Mrs. Bloom stood and looked at him. “Had to be hard for you, I suppose. Burying Sam and then Alan so quickly, one right after the other like that.”

Charlie frowned and nodded again. What do you say to something like that? It was true. He’d just buried the two men he’d been closest to all these years.

Mrs. Bloom bent to her task again, jabbering as she worked. Charlie almost tuned out as she started talking about poor Katelyn having to bury her father, but the next thing she said stopped his heart cold.

“I remember the way little Katelyn Bowden used to play in here when she was young. She’d tag along with her mama and climb in here to play hide and seek. I’d find her asleep in here sometimes while her mama worked. Good thing she wasn’t in here the day poor Caroline was murdered.”

Charlie shuffled papers on his desk as the implications of what she’d just said sank in. Alan had never told anyone why he’d sent Katelyn away. Even when Charlie had asked him, he hadn’t told him anything more than she belonged with her aunt in Austin. Mrs. Bloom continued to chatter to herself as his mind raced over the details of the day long ago when Caroline had died.

There wasn’t a detail of the day Charlie didn’t remember, but suddenly one detail meant more than it ever had. Alan had asked to be alone with his wife before the coroner took her away. No one, including Charlie, had thought anything of it. Of course a man would want a minute to say goodbye to his wife.

Charlie had volunteered to stay with him, but Alan had insisted on being alone. Alan had stayed in the office with Caroline’s body alone for a long time before leaving with his sister. That might not mean much, but Charlie recalled one fact that hadn’t seemed odd at the time. Alan’s sister had picked him up at the back door—the door that led out of Charlie’s office and straight into the backyard. She’d pulled the car right up to the back and picked him up. Charlie, and everyone else at the time, assumed Alan hadn’t wanted to see anyone. Hadn’t wanted to face the large group of neighbors and friends gathered at the scene as he crumpled under the weight of his wife’s murder. Hadn’t wanted them to see him fall.

Now Charlie stared at the papers on his desk, not seeing anything as the blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy with the realization that big, tough Sheriff Alan Bowden probably hadn’t been hiding his anguish that day. He’d likely been hiding a secret he hadn’t even wanted his best friend to know. Charlie would be willing to bet that little Katelyn Bowden was most likely in the room when Caroline had been killed. Most likely in the chest that Mrs. Bloom stood over right now.

* * *

The house was quiet. Even though her father had been in the hospital the entire time Katelyn had been back in Evers, somehow, after he died, the house became still and silent in a way it hadn’t been before. As if somehow, just knowing her father wouldn’t ever come back, had conveyed finality to the emptiness. Katelyn looked around at the living room with her father’s worn easy chair and the coffee table that had seen better days a very long time ago. She couldn’t decide what to do from here, whether to sell the house and find something newer for herself or whether to settle in and stay. And if she stayed, should she soak up the feel of being surrounded by her father’s things, or re-do the house to her tastes.

She walked into the small office her father had off the living room. It was cluttered with stacks of old newspapers and magazines he’d felt the need to keep for one reason or another. There was a shelf behind his desk that held the only pictures of her mother left in the house other than the one on her nightstand. For some reason, her father never seemed to want pictures of her mother around. Katelyn didn’t know if it had been too hard for him to see the reminders of the woman he’d loved, or if he’d thought it would be hard on Katelyn on the few occasions she came to visit. The picture of her father and mother on their wedding day and a picture of them holding Katelyn on the day she was born were the only ones he displayed.

John planned to come back and pick her up for dinner at the end of his shift. Katelyn looked at the face of her phone. Two more hours, at least, assuming his shift went smoothly. That was a big “if” for the sheriff of such a large county. So, at a minimum, two hours to kill before dinner with John. Katelyn sighed and pulled open one of the drawers of her father’s desk. His lawyer had already come by the day before. The will was clean and easy. Everything was left to her. The house, his small bit of
savings, his old truck. Things would be tied up a bit in probate proceedings, but the lawyer expected that all to go seamlessly. There wasn’t anyone to contest anything.

Katelyn’s phone rang, pulling her from her thoughts.

“Hi, Charlie,” Katelyn said after looking at her screen and reading the contact saved as Charlie Hanford. She had saved his information in her phone when her father’s dementia got really bad. Charlie had been great about coming by when Katelyn called to say her father was having a rough day. He’d been able to calm her father in a way others hadn’t and she was grateful for the friendship he’d given them both in her father’s last month.

“How are you doing, Kate? You holding up okay, sweetheart?”

Katelyn smiled sadly. She supposed Charlie was all she had now as far as family, although even as she had the thought, a flash of John’s face caused her to warm inside. No, she had a lot more than just Uncle Charlie left. She had new friends, and she had John. She had a home here in Evers.

“I’m doing pretty well, Charlie. Better than I thought I would, anyway,” Katelyn said, with a genuine smile. She was sad for her father and missed him, but his pain and confusion had been so clear at the end. She’d been relieved for him when it ended. Her sorrow was really for herself when she thought about it. For what she’d lost. But isn’t that always the way death was? Harder on those left behind?

“Good, that’s good, Kate. You know I’m here for you if you need anything, right?” he asked on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, Charlie, thank you. I’ll let you know if I need anything.” Katelyn looked around the room and wondered if Charlie might know where to start on her father’s belongings. What do you do with the things a person treasured during their life after they died? Should she donate them or select gifts for the people he cared about most?

Surely, there was something here Charlie might want of her father’s as a memento? Something that held some memory for them?

Katelyn opened her mouth to ask, but Charlie cut in. “Listen, Katy, I’m looking at the plans Sam drew up here for your studio.” Katelyn cringed at his use of the name Katy, but didn’t respond. “I’m turning all of his projects over to my new foreman, but I thought I’d take care of your studio myself, personally, that is. For you.”

“Oh, um, okay. Thank you, Charlie. I appreciate that.” Katelyn knew the work on her studio had stalled with Sam’s passing, but she had been too focused on her father to mind much.