He felt so good. So safe. She pressed against him. Rubbed against him. If she could have crawled inside him, she would have.
He angled his head and used his tongue. Zings and tingles raced up her spine and shorted out her busy brain. He glutted her senses. He filled her mind. As long as she was kissing him, she didn’t have to think about tomorrow.
And then his hands came up and gripped her hands. He straightened his arms, forcing her away from his solid, aroused body.
“Enough,” he said.
THIRTEEN
B
AILEY stared at him, her eyes unfocused and her lips swollen from the force of their kiss.
Steve inhaled sharply. She looked like his personal sex dream come true. Beautiful. Vulnerable. Available.
She looked like a big mistake.
He had kissed her as a sign of truce, a gesture of comfort. And because he really wanted to kiss her. But what he’d intended as an exploratory fresh start exploded when she detonated in his arms. Her response had completely blown him away. She blew him away. He was still reeling from the aftershocks. His blood pounded in his head. His erection pressed against the zipper of his jeans.
“Enough,” he said roughly.
Her mouth, her sweet, slick, kiss-swollen mouth, dropped open. “Are you kidding me?”
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to jerk her into his arms and finish what they’d started. He shook his head instead, not trusting himself to speak. If he spoke, he might do something else impulsive and stupid, like beg her to trust him or invite him to his room to have sex or ask her to have his babies.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I don’t mix sex with the job,” he said.
Pompous ass.
“You could have fooled me.”
He wasn’t fooling either one of them.
“That wasn’t sex,” he said.
Not only sex. He had feelings for her. He hadn’t figured out yet what those feelings were, or what he was going to do about them, but they definitely elevated that amazing, full-body-contact, no-holds-barred kiss above simple sex.
Bailey stopped tugging against his grip and glared at him, the kiss-dazed, cloudy look fading from her eyes. “What are you, one of those Bill Clinton, it-has-to-be-penetration guys?”
His control frayed. His breathing was ragged. “No, I’m one of those I-shouldn’t-fuck-a-woman-when-she’s-vulnerable-and-came-to-me-for-protection guys.”
Hot color swept her face. “Oh.”
Shit.
This time when she tugged at her hands, he let her go.
She looked at the ceiling, at her shoes, anywhere but at his face. “Sorry.”
She was taking responsibility again for something that wasn’t her fault. He’d kissed her. He started this. And it was killing him not to finish.
“My mistake,” he said.
She grimaced. “Yeah. Thanks. That makes me feel lots better.”
Damn it,
he didn’t mean it like that. “Bailey . . .” He reached for her.
Her chin came up. “Don’t.”
He stopped cold. “No. I won’t. I just . . .”
Fucked up. Big time.
“Didn’t want to take advantage,” he said.
Not after the way Ellis had used her and betrayed her. She’d been taken advantage of enough.
“Thanks,” she said again. “I’m sure I’ll appreciate your restraint in the morning.”
Frustration balled in his gut. “At least one of us will.”
This time she managed a smile.
Thank you, Jesus.
“Well.” She hugged her arms, still not quite meeting his gaze. “It’s late. I should go.”
He didn’t want her to leave. Not now. Not like this.
Not ever.
He pushed the thought away. He had obligations, to his daughter and to his job. He couldn’t pursue a relationship until he figured out how it fit into the rest of his life.
“Are you too tired to drive?” he asked.
“I’m fine. You have to stay with your daughter.”
He did. At least Bailey recognized Gabrielle was his top priority. That didn’t mean he couldn’t make sure she got home okay.
“I could call you a cab,” he offered.
“In Stokesville? At three-thirty in the morning?” She shook her head, making her dark hair swing against her cheek. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll call you.”
She smiled wryly. “Yeah, that’s what all the boys say.”
“I will. When I get back from Raleigh. I don’t want you to go into the station alone.”
“All right.”
“And don’t go to Ellis’s house,” he said.
Her head snapped up. Well, what did he expect? He’d kissed her, rejected her, and now he was ordering her around like he had some kind of right. Gabby was right. He
was
out of practice.
“Won’t Paul suspect something if I don’t show up at work?”
Steve hid his relief at her mild tone. “It’s Saturday. Do you usually work weekends?”
Her silence answered for her. Of course she did.
“Jesus,” he said.
“Only for a couple hours in the morning. I’m baby-sitting for Leann in the afternoon.”
“Well, tomorrow morning stay home,” Steve ordered. “Maybe he’ll figure you’re still upset over . . .”
Too late, he saw the pit he’d dug for himself.
“. . . upset over a kiss?” Bailey finished for him.
Now
she met his gaze. “That would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it?”
“Understandable,” Steve corrected. “He betrayed your trust.”
“He did.” She took a step toward him. He took a step back. “You didn’t.”
Raising on tiptoe, she kissed him, her soft, warm lips pressing his clenched jaw, her soft, warm breasts brushing his chest.
His hands curled into fists at his sides. He was in charge here, he reminded himself. He was in control.
But he couldn’t breathe.
“Well.” She lowered slowly, her gaze searching his face, watching, waiting for a response. A response he wasn’t prepared to give.
She sighed. “I’ll talk to you in the morning, then.”
He let her out of the house, opened her car door and watched her drive away, leaving him staked out between his code as a cop and his need as a man. Aching, unsatisfied . . . and alive again.
He stood on the porch and watched her red taillights disappear in the dark.
REGAN steadied herself against the kitchen counter, still dressed in her cami and boxers, fumbling for the coffeemaker’s “on” button. She should have slept in this morning. But her body clock was set for work. At six forty-five, her system jangled awake, and never mind the vodka and valium cocktail she’d downed the night before.
In consequence, she felt like five miles of bad road. Her eyeballs were gritty, her tongue coated with gunk. A headache jackhammered her skull. Even her muscles felt sore, like she’d been bounced over speed bumps or smashed into a concrete retaining wall.
She needed caffeine. At least when dweeb girl was around, she switched on the fucking coffeemaker.
Resentment flared, inescapable as loss and deep as sorrow. Regan hugged it to her. Anger was easier to cope with than grief.
She didn’t regret for one second throwing her stepfather’s little love interest out of the house. As soon as she was fortified with some coffee—and maybe a shower—she was getting rid of Paul, too.
She slopped the one-percent milk into her mug, ignoring the spill on the counter. Clutching her coffee, she padded toward the stairs.
And saw a black shoe, sticking out from one of the big leather chairs.
He was up already. Paul.
Or maybe he had never been to bed.
She hoped so. She hoped his night was as lousy as hers. Worse.
She stood in the study door, nursing her coffee and her grievance. “Hey.”
He didn’t answer.
“Paul?”
He had better be asleep. He’d better not think he could ignore her.
Balancing on one bare foot, she nudged his shoe with the other.
“Hey.”
And noticed the gun. In his lap, his hand half curled around the butt.
Her heart stuttered. She took another step forward. “Oh, hey, Paul . . .”
He slumped in the chair, his chin on his chest and a neat, dark hole in the side of his head. A dark line of blood ran down his cheek. More blood flecked his shirt.
Her breath deserted her.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
How could he do this to her?
“JIM’S okayed the request,” Walt told Steve over the phone. “You think maybe you have the actual murder weapon this time?”
The chief’s displeasure vibrated clearly through the line. Steve couldn’t blame him. Walt’s last call to the DA to rush through lab tests hadn’t yielded results. And with the council screaming about damage to the town’s image and the Channel Five news van parked at the curb, Walt needed results. They all did.
“No reason for Ellis to plant it on Bailey otherwise,” Steve said. “He got it out of the house before the search, and if anybody found it, it would be in her possession.”
“In an evidence box, you said?”
“That’s right. From the Dawler trial.”
“So now her boss is dead, she can write the book for him.”
Steve felt savage. “She’s writing a book. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Dawler case, though.”
“But she has the evidence.”
“What’s your point?”
“No point. Except she could benefit from Ellis’s death.”
“I don’t see Bailey Wells murdering her employer on the off chance she might get a book deal.”
“Guess not,” Walt said. “Well, you’ll have to take this—what did you call it? Opti Award—to the lab yourself. I can’t spare an officer to drive down to Raleigh every time you turn up a new piece of evidence.”
“Not a problem,” Steve said, which wasn’t strictly true.
If he couldn’t find an obliging neighbor to keep an eye on Gabrielle, he would need to take his daughter with him. But he wasn’t about to plead another special circumstance to Walt.
“I’ll be back by ten to take Bailey Wells’s statement.”
“You think you’re the only one who can conduct an investigation around here?”
Not the only one. Just the best. Bailey had come to him. She trusted him. He’d be damned before he let her down.
He set his coffee mug on the hall table. “I’m the one who took her original statement,” he said.
Continuity was more important in solving cases than the most sophisticated lab results. That was one of the pluses of small-town police work.
“As long as that’s the only reason,” Walt said.
Steve stiffened. “What other reason could there be?”
“You tell me. Tom Sherman saw Dorothy Wells’s car parked in front of your place last night.”
Steve’s gut tightened. And that was one of the minuses. “I told you Bailey brought me the evidence.”