Waking up along with the dawn and beside a sleeping Kell, Jamie realized her canopied bed now held secrets of its own—secrets she would keep close, share with no one, relishing them in private when life left her lonely.
Sure, she would fill her days with work, and have her mother, her friends and neighbors for company. And she would not feel sorry for herself, embracing instead every moment of joy that came her way, even creating them. But this time with Kell would never be far from her mind.
Their paths had crossed on this one particular road, but wishing for more would be folly. His knowing about her past didn’t mean he wanted to live with it, to have to face down her ghosts when they drifted in, unannounced and unexpected, to haunt her.
Still, she’d be forever grateful for the way he’d helped her connect to lost pieces of Stephanie, for the way he’d helped her find the answers to the lingering questions about the night of the murders.
And he’d given her so much more…laughter and deep conversation, tenderness and fiery passion, honesty and hard truths. With every fiber of who she was, she knew she would never get the same from any other man.
She turned onto her side to watch him. He lay beside her on his back, the sheet she clutched beneath her chin draped across his torso, leaving his chest bare. One of his arms rested on top of the bedclothes between them. The other hand was spread low on his belly.
He wasn’t a cuddler, she’d discovered, and that was okay. Just knowing he was there during the night had made her dreams serene, and every once in a while when she’d adjusted her position, she’d brushed up against him, her knee, her heel, her fingers when she’d stretched, and she’d roused enough to smile, somewhere between wakefulness and sleep.
Now that she was awake, she refused to allow herself to drift off again and miss any more of this time. She wanted to move closer to him, to enjoy his warmth, his weight sinking into the mattress, his bulk beside her lifting the sheet when she was so used to it lying flat around her.
She scooted toward him, quietly, an inch at a time, doing her best not to rock the frame or pull the covers. She watched his chest rise and fall, felt the heat of his body as she drew near, and then he moved the arm blocking her way, and mumbled, “I’m awake, you know.”
“I know,” she whispered back, though she hadn’t been certain.
“Hard to sleep with you thinking so hard over there.”
She laughed to herself, a soft sound that came out on her next breath. At least he couldn’t hear
what
she was thinking. She didn’t want to scare him away.
“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “I’m not going to shoo you off and roll over.”
Or could he hear it all? His eyes were still closed, his lips barely parted. His cheeks were covered with a dark shadow of beard, and she liked this scruffy, disheveled Kell as much as the clean and pressed Texas Ranger version. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”
He peered at her through one slitted lid. “Too late. I’m disturbed.”
A tingling set up in the pit of her belly. “Maybe I’ll just stay where I am—”
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, and reached for her, tugging the sheet out of the way as she climbed on top and straddled him. “My disturbance needs attention.”
So she’d noticed. “A trip to the facilities maybe?”
“I made one an hour ago,” he grumbled. “This is all you.”
Hmm. She hadn’t even heard him get out of bed. “Feels to me like it’s all you.”
“Then you’re obviously not doing enough feeling.”
She was feeling with her inner thighs, with her belly. The head of his cock pushed there, hot, sticky with the moisture of his arousal. She knew this would be their last time, and she didn’t want to rush through loving him.
The sheet was white and cool on her back, a contrast to the warmth and dark hair she encountered along her front as she moved down his body to take him into her mouth. He exhaled, a long slow potent groan that thrilled her, rumbling beneath her, a rocky surface, as it did.
He tasted like rich wine and salt and dark earthy musk, and she savored him, breathing him in, finding the seam that split the underside of his glans, her fingers ringing around him just beneath. She teased him with the tip of her tongue, curled it and cradled him.
He reached for her hair, tugged, biting off words that were gritty and raw, sex words, nasty words. She felt her sex swell and open, her juices ready to ease the way. She wanted him now and forever, filling her, beside her, with her.
Holding her mouth just so, she took him to the back of her throat, pressing her lips tight to his shaft as she pulled her way back to his cock’s head. She stayed there, circling her cupped hand and her tongue over and around until she felt his balls tighten, his thighs and ass clench.
It would be so easy to give this to him, to let him finish, to come in her mouth, a pleasure they had shared last night, but she didn’t. She let him go, crawling over his body, dragging her breasts, her belly, then her sex the length of his engorged cock.
“You’re a cruel woman, Jamie Danby,” he told her as she nuzzled his throat, his right armpit, his closest nipple that was as hard as hers. She flicked her tongue over it, massaged the muscle around it, the tips of her breasts skating through his chest hair as she moved from side to side. “Know I’ll be getting back at you for this.”
“I hope so,” she said as she reached for a condom from those remaining on her nightstand. Throwing off the sheet, she sat on her knees and rolled the protective sheath to the base of his shaft. “If you don’t, I’ll have to hunt you down like a rabid dog.”
He laughed, a guttural blast of sound, and grabbed both cheeks of her ass, urging her to take him, no, demanding that she did until she lowered her hips. Softly, she sat, impaled. Then she began to move, bracing her hands on his knees behind her, grinding, rotating, using her hips and her pelvis to dance, her clit sliding through the springy hair surrounding his thickness.
Sensation consumed her, sent her flying. Kell bucked his knees and she fell, planting her palms on either side of his pillowed head. He cupped her breasts, pushed them together, bit and kissed and licked his way from one peak to the other while she pumped up and down.
And then his eyes caught hers, held hers, refused to let her look away. All the things she saw…It was too much, the hope and the longing and the wishing and the want. How was she supposed to survive without him in her life? How was she supposed to pull out this memory years down the road and be happy when he wasn’t with her?
Because she had no answer, she came, completely, giving herself up to the physical bliss of their joining. It was the most glorious pain, a beautiful ache.
She had him, but she didn’t, and when he growled out, “Hands and knees,” she gladly did his bidding, crawling off of him and onto the bed, punching a pillow beneath and anchoring her arms around it.
He knelt behind her, dug his fingers into her hips to position himself, then slid his palm over her sex, cupping her, slipping a thumb inside of her. His cock nudged his hand away, and he pushed into her slowly, releasing a groan that rattled her as his cock filled her up. He slid deeper, deeper, withdrew and returned, then reached around to toy with her clit, seeing to her pleasure while finding his own.
His strokes grew swifter, his breathing shallow; when he pulled his hand away to hold her hips, she replaced it with her own, working herself to completion as he came. He shuddered, stiffened, cursed coarsely and called her name. It made her cry, that sound, those words, though she buried her sobs in the pillow, hiding them.
Seconds later, the muscles of his thighs relaxed, and he moved away, easing himself from her body, then wrapping an arm around her waist and lowering them both to spoon.
They calmed together, no other words spoken, and then they showered, cleaning each other, Kell rinsing her, toweling her off, dressing while she dried her hair, fixing breakfast while she donned her weekend wardrobe of a tank top and shorts, and when time could no longer be forgotten, kissing her goodbye in her driveway.
It was a kiss full of tenderness, beauty, and she pressed her fingers to her lips to hold it there when he put his SUV into gear and backed into her street. He lingered, shaking his head as he settled his sunglasses in place. And when he finally pulled away, he burned strips of rubber into the pavement in front of her house.
A long black reminder of what she’d had and lost, one she’d see every day when she left for work and when she came home.
She returned to the cottage and spent the rest of the day—Saturday and Sunday, too—doing next to nothing but missing him. She didn’t call her mother to tell her she was home. She did little more than move from the bed to the bathroom to the refrigerator, opening the door and staring inside.
When Monday morning arrived, she gathered her things, then exited through her half-acre backyard, opening the gate that led into Mr. Floyd’s equally large yard behind and walking down Paul Revere Street instead of Lamplighter Lane.
Mr. Floyd wouldn’t mind if she used his property as a shortcut in order to avoid the mark Kell had left in front of hers. It was either that, or never leave her cottage again.
She didn’t even want to think about what was going on today—or had over the weekend—with the investigation into the Sonora Nites Diner murders. She wanted to think about the unpaid insurance claims and their deadlines staring her in the face. That was all.
She’d finally gone over everything about the trip and the hypnosis with her mother when Kate had stopped by the pediatrics clinic on her way to work. At least everything but the sex. Though Kell had called Jamie’s mother while Captain Greenley had been conducting the exit interview following the session, Kate had wanted to hear the details firsthand.
As much as Jamie wanted to leave the last few days behind, she couldn’t blame her mother for her curiosity or her concern. And though Jamie was certain her mother knew things with Kell had gone as they had, Kate didn’t say a word. She just handed Jamie her coffee refill and told her they’d have dinner at Buck’s Burger Barn tonight.
A burger sounded great, Jamie had to admit, heading to the lobby to cover the phones while Roni went on break. A burger wasn’t a steak. A burger wasn’t a bacon sandwich with Cheetos and tomato soup. A burger wouldn’t make her think of Kell standing at her stove frying fresh-cut potatoes.
In fact, she was hungry enough that she didn’t know how she was going to make it the two more hours until the clinic closed and she could get dinner, return to her sleepathon and start picking out names for her future cats. Gah, she had to stop. She was getting on her own nerves now.
When the front door opened, she welcomed the distraction from her depressing thoughts, smiling at the Hispanic man who approached. “May I help you?”
A shock of black hair falling over his forehead, he looked around, leaning his forearms on the reception counter, then finally gave Jamie his attention. “This office. It’s the only kid doctor in Weldon? Me and my son, we just moved here.”
Jamie nodded. “We are, yes. There’s a general practitioner here as well, but you’ll have to go to Alpine or Fort Stockton for another pediatrician. Were you wanting to make an appointment for your son?”
“School’s coming up. He’s going to need shots and things,” he said, frowning, distracted, his dark eyes flitting but never to hers.
Jamie wondered if he was on drugs. “Sure. Do you have records from his last doctor? So we can see what he’s had and what he needs?” she asked, opening the appointment-scheduling program and pulling the keyboard in front of her, prepared to input his information.
“His mother did all that. In Midland. I’ll have to check.”
“Did you want to go ahead and make the appointment? With school starting soon, we don’t have a lot of openings in our schedule.”
He shook his head, reached up to push back the fall of hair. “I’ll just wait.”
O…kay. She grabbed one of the clinic’s cards and handed it across the counter. “Here’s our number. Just give us a call when you’re ready to come in.”
He nodded, took it with a shaking hand, making Jamie think again of drugs. Or at least she thought of drugs until the cuff of his sleeve slipped up as he reached for the card and she saw his tattoo. The tattoo. The snake. Then she couldn’t think of anything but not giving herself away.
For one short second, she considered asking for his name for their records, then thought better. She wouldn’t do that with any other parent who wasn’t ready to bring his child to see Dr. Griñon. This man might know that. This man might have been in here previously, before the hypnosis, and know that. And so she smiled and waited for him to go.
He studied the card, tapped it on the counter, then finally pushed away and headed for the door. Once he’d left the building, Jamie counted to thirty. She didn’t want to jump up while he was right outside. She didn’t want to start digging through the desk drawers for a letter opener or knife. She didn’t want to pick up the phone and call for help until he couldn’t walk back in and catch her.
Just as Jamie hit twenty-nine, Roni returned from her break. The other woman hadn’t taken but one step into the lobby when Jamie whispered, “Lock the front door. Now. Turn the sign to Closed. And shut the blinds.”
Roni frowned, but hurriedly did as she was told. Jamie picked up the phone, searching the desk for a weapon while she waited for Kell to pick up.
It took four rings before he did, and she could hear laughter in the background. His own voice sounded buoyant, upbeat. “Jamie?”
“He was here,” she cried out with before he could say another word. “Here. In the office. I saw his tattoo.”
“What? When? Maybe it was similar or—”
“Kell, it was it. The same one. I remember.”
“Shit. Are you there alone?”
“No. Roni just locked the front door, and I’m holding a letter opener.”
“Was he driving? Walking?” he asked, and Jamie could hear him shuffling his phone, slamming drawers.
She shoved out of Roni’s chair and rushed to the door, flattening herself against the wall beside it to peer through the slats of the blinds. “There’s a car pulling out of the lot. The glare’s bad and the angle’s wrong. I can’t see if he’s behind the wheel, but it’s the only one.”
“Can you get the tag numbers?”
Jamie gestured toward Roni who’d been standing and listening to her side of the conversation wide eyed. “Roni, help! Can you read the plates on that car?”
They talked over each other, Jamie seeing an eight where Roni saw a six, a three where she saw a five. It didn’t matter. She rushed back to the desk, leaned across the counter, scrambled for a pen and wrote all of them down on her hand.
Then she read them to Kell. “I’m sorry. He was pulling away. That’s the best we could do.”
“You did good, sweetheart. We’ll see what a mix and match turns up. Hang on a sec—” More shuffling sounds, cabinets banging, footsteps pounding, keys jangling, muffled voices in the background, until Kell came back. “You still there?”
“I’m here.” She leaned her elbows on the counter, one hand holding the cordless phone, the other rubbing the bands of stress squeezing her forehead. She felt like a tomato ready to pop in a spray of red flesh and seeds.
“Okay. Troopers are on the way. No more than fifteen minutes. You stay in lockdown until they get there. Make sure all doors are secured. No one comes in or goes out.”
She turned around, met the worried gazes of Roni and Honoria, who’d joined them, knew Mrs. Hernandez and her four-year-old-son would be right behind. “We’ve got patients here—”
“They can wait. No one, Jamie, you hear me? That door opens for no one unless they have a gun and a badge.”