Spring River Valley: The Spring Collection (Boxed Set) (8 page)

She sighed, reaching for him. “You’re beautiful…”

“Men aren’t beautiful,” he responded before feasting on the spot where her shoulder met her neck.

Tingles raced across her skin, intensified by the sensation of his body settling over hers. “Of course they are…you are. You’re stunning…you’re perfect.”

He opened the top button of her shirt and kissed the spot it had covered. “I should be telling you that.” The next button succumbed and the next and the next, and Evie moaned when the shirt fell away
, leaving only her bra between them.

“You smell amazing,” he told her. “You taste like
…more.” He kissed her again, deeply, searchingly. She made a sound at the back of her throat in response to him deftly unclasping her bra. Not long after, they both lay naked, legs entwined, their gazes locked.

“Stay with me all night,” he said. “I want to wake up with you.”

“Who said we’d do any sleeping?” She kissed him once, then worked her way down his chest, laughing as his skin pebbled under her touch. “Do you have condoms?”

“In the drawer,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. She looked where he pointed and found a box. There were three inside. That would probably get them through the night. “I see you’re running low.” She arched a brow as she handed him one of the packets.

“I’ll get more. I’ll have a case delivered tomorrow…”

“That’s more like it. Now…” She helped him tear open the foil. “Nurse’s orders…”

Evie noticed his hands shaking as much as hers were, so she helped him with the condom, then straddled him. Her heart raced with anticipation, and she pushed any doubts to the back of her mind. They both needed this moment, it was exactly right, and whatever happened after, would happen.

Leaning forward, she kissed him. “Let me take care of you tonight.”

He groaned and grasped her hips to pull her down over him. “I’m all yours…Evie…God, I’m yours forever.”

Satisfaction filled her, made her lightheaded and shivery, but she began to move, to show him how much she wanted him. “Forever is a long time.
” She moved to match the rhythm of her words, and he closed his eyes and moved with her.

His grip on her waist tightened, and his muscles stiffened. On the verge of her own climax, Evie smiled. She leaned forward to kiss him and whispered against his lips. “
Let’s just concentrate on right now…”

And she was his.

* * *
*

Hours later, Tanner stirred from a deep sleep. He hadn’t planned on letting the exhaustion take him, but once Evie’d had her way with him, he’d been too satisfied to stay awake. He woke with the thought in his mind that he owed her in kind, and he was more than ready to pay his debt.

Sliding one arm across the cool sheets, he expected to find her supple curves waiting for him, but she was gone. He sat up groggily and listened, but he heard nothing from the rest of the apartment. Had she left?

He rose and left the bedroom, not stopping to retrieve the pants he’d sloughed off in such haste before. A petite silhouette at the living room window turned when he approached.

Relief made him shiver as she slipped into his embrace. She wore the scrub shirt, which hung down to her thighs. Beneath the thin material, her warm body molded to his. “I thought you’d left me.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“What’s wrong?” He pushed strands of dark hair away from her eyes. In the moonlight filtering through the window, her skin was like porcelain, her eyes midnight blue. A sudden pressure in his chest made him hungry for a deep breath of air. What had she done to him? He rubbed the spot above his breastbone,
suddenly worried she’d tell him she regretted what they’d done.

“I was just thinking about tonight and how lucky you all were. What happened could have been…”

“But it wasn’t. It’s okay.”

“Audrey said she worries about Max. He goes to all these…
incidents that Chad covers for the newspaper, and they’re dangerous.”

“Yeah, sometimes they are. He got hit by a Buick a few months ago…you remember the car that got stuck on
the drawbridge?”

She nodded. “And tonight Quinn. I was just letting myself wonder how I’d have felt if it was you.”

He cupped her face in his hands and made her look at him. “It wasn’t. Don’t think like that or you’ll never sleep again. Come back to bed. You took care of me when I needed you. Now it’s my turn.”

“Oh? And what are you going to do to make me stop imagining the worst?”

He smiled and scooped her up in his arms. “I’m going to make your forget your own name. How’s that?”

“I dare you to try.”

“I’ll take that dare,” he said and he carried her, giggling, into the bedroom to make good on his promise.

At nine a.m. the next morning, Evie sat at her desk, lost in thought. She’d woken up in Tanner’s arms, and she’d still be there if he hadn’t gotten a call from his commander asking him to go to the station. The warmth of his parting kiss still lingered on her lips, and she smiled every time she thought about how they’d spent the night.

She couldn’t wait to call him, but she didn’t want to interrupt any official business, so instead she had to find a way to concentrate on her work. She had to call Mrs. Moriarty to reschedule her interview and e-mail Max with the date and time of the official ribbon-cutting ceremony and the Women’s Auxiliary Bachelor Auction, which would be raising funds for some specialized equipment for the new wing.

Details, details. She’d just opened up her e-mail when Janet appeared and plopped the morning edition down in front of her. “Read me this headline.”

Confused, Evie pulled the paper closer. There was a shot of a two-story home in flames, and the image stabbed at Evie’s memory. The collapsed porch where Quinn Preston had almost lost his life was clearly visible. “
Stanton house fire leaves three hospitalized
.”

Janet nodded curtly and tossed a national paper on top of the
Herald
. “Now read
this
headline.”

Evie sighed. The take from the national paper was decidedly different. “
Senator and mistress rescued from fiery suicide pact
. Oh, wow.”

“Do you see the difference?” Janet tapped the pointed toe of her designer shoe expectantly.

“Well, yes. Our headline doesn’t read like a cheap tabloid.”

Janet crossed her arms. “My dear, you’ve missed the point. This headline sells papers. Tons of them. Our headline reads like local news.”

“It
is
local news.”

“Evie. This is a disgrace. Every paper on the East Coast is running versions of this suicide pact story. A married
senator who ran on a platform of family values is found unconscious in the bedroom of a woman half his age to whom he’s not married. The reports state that she never even told the rescue workers he was in the house. They’re insinuating she wanted him to die in the fire and that she had caused the gas leak herself.”

“That’s not true. Tanner said she told him the man was upstairs.” The words came out before Evie could stop them. She closed her eyes, praying Janet hadn’t actually heard her.

Of course, she had. “What? Tanner?” She picked up the
Herald
and scanned the article Chad had written. “Tanner Croft—he was one of the first responders. He’s the instructor you interviewed at the rec center, right?”

Evie nodded.

“You talked to him last night?”

“
A little. I was…at the hospital.”

“Why…oh, the children’s wing. The press conference. The interview with the chairwoman of the
fund-raising committee. And you saw the EMT there? You were in the ER?”

Evie
couldn’t explain why she felt like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She didn’t want to confess to Janet that she’d spent the night with Tanner.

Janet was silent for ten seconds, during which Evie imagined she could see the steam building up inside the woman’s skull. When she blew, it was just as bad as Evie could have predicted.

“So
where’s my front-page story
? I get a run-of-the-mill house fire. A rescue worker is injured, two people are rescued, everything’s fine and dandy. Every other paper in the state gets a freaking
suicide
pact! Evie, you wanted the front page. You wanted to be a journalist, for God’s sake. This was your shot.”

“I wasn’t there to cover the story. Tanner is…we’re friends, and I was with him for moral support.”

“How does that preclude you from getting the goddamned story? The
Herald
is the only paper in a fifty-mile radius. Stanton doesn’t have a local paper. None of the towns around us do. We
are
the news around here! We are at ground zero of a major political scandal, and you were holding hands with one of the principal players?”

“Tanner was not a principal player in anything. He was called to help a woman who had passed out. That’s all. He never even went upstairs.”

“Who called?” Janet leaned in, her eyes widening. “The paper—the other paper—says the call was anonymous. People are speculating the senator changed his mind about the pact and called for help when his lover passed out. But he didn’t know about the gas leak that she’d planned to make sure neither of them survived.”

“I don’t know about any of that.”

“What does Tanner know?”

“Nothing.”

“How do you know?”

“I was there with him, he never said anything about what happened except—”

Janet was practically on top of Evie now. “Except what?”

“I
shouldn’t repeat anything he told me; it was all off the record. Ask Max Shannon. He was in the ER too. He knows more than I do.”

“Fine, I will.” Janet backed off. “Evie, I’m begging you. Get me a story. If there’s more to this, if there’s something the other papers don’t know that we do, we can pull this out of the crapper. You can have a front-page byline. Don’t you want that?”

“I don’t have any information that you want.” Evie tried to keep her features neutral, but her mind went to what Tanner had said about the woman telling Quinn the man was upstairs. She couldn’t have been planning for him to die if she told Quinn where he was the moment she regained consciousness.

Janet tried to stare her down. “I don’t believe you. How long were you in the ER? You didn’t overhear anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Evie, what don’t you get? You can help us, help the paper, help yourself.
We can print a confirmation of these rumors—or better yet, a counterpoint. If the woman actually spoke, if she said the senator was in the house, well, that could be the evidence to clear her name. They’re speculating she could be charged with attempted murder. You could help her.”

Evie mulled this over. How much did she really know, other than the details Tanner had mentioned? Could she pull together a story from so few facts? “Help her? Or help our circulation?”

Janet scooped up the papers and backed away, her lips pursed in annoyance. “So you like the Lifestyle section a little better today? Does it seem like the place you want to spend the rest of your career? I hope so.”

Before Evie could respond, Janet whirled and walked away, her heels clicking on the linoleum.

Evie dropped her shoulders and sighed. The rest of her career suddenly didn’t seem like a very long time.

* * * *

“They should have put some of this plaster on your head.” Tanner rapped on the cast Quinn now sported on his right wrist. His partner was sitting up in bed, looking pale but much more alert than the night before.

“It’s not even plaster. Do you believe that? They don’t even use real plaster anymore. I’m sort of bummed about that.”

“Only you would be. You’re lucky it’s not your whole arm, or your leg or your back.”

“Yeah. I’m lucky.” Quinn made a face and struggled for a few seconds to open the container of red
gelatin he’d been given as a snack. Finally Tanner took it from him and peeled off the foil lid.

“Sorry, man. It’s gonna suck for a while,” he said, handing the container back.

“Yeah.”

Tanner eyed his partner. In light of his situation, six weeks out of work and limited mobility, anyone would be depressed, but Quinn had never been the type to feel sorry for himself. Something else was bothering him. “What’s needling you, besides the nurses? You look down.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on. I know you too well. They didn’t find something on the
X-rays? Like that dime I dared you to stick up your nose when we were ten?”

Quinn laughed half-heartedly. “Nah…that’s gone for good. My brain juices melted it.”

“Okay, what, then?” Tanner was getting worried. Nothing bothered Quinn. Blood, stitches, broken bones, he almost seemed to revel in the danger of his job and took every bump and bruise in stride.