Authors: Carla Cassidy
He returned to the kitchen moments later, dressed and obviously eager to be on his way. "Just wanted to say thanks again."
"It was no problem." She got up and walked with him to the front door. "You need to take care of yourself, Clay, I know you're under a lot of pressure with your work, but you can't work yourself to death."
He nodded, his gaze still dark and impenetrable. "You know, you're always welcome here if you need a place to unwind," she continued. "It is a peaceful place, that's why I love it."
His eyes seemed to grow darker, but with a spark of fire in their centers. "If I come here again and you welcome me inside wearing that yellow robe and nightie, it won't be sleep I'm looking for." His voice held both seduction and warning.
He didn't wait for her reply, but stepped out of the door and into the early morning sunshine. It was a good thing he hadn't waited for a reply from her. Her mouth had gone so dry she couldn't have formed a single word.
She watched as his car pulled away from the cottage, then closed and locked the door behind her. For a long moment she leaned against the door, fighting against the river of want that flowed through her.
Paint. That's what she needed to do. Painting would take her mind off the man she shouldn't have. Painting would still the haunting question of what it might be like to make love to a man like Clay.
Chapter 8
A
ppalled. Clay was appalled by his actions of the night before. What had he been thinking? To show up on Tamara's doorstep numb and depleted both physically and emotionally. He should have gone home or crawled into a hole until he was once again ready to face the world.
He'd still been able to smell the scent of the oil she'd used the night before when he'd awakened and he hadn't been able to wait to get home and shower it off. He'd needed not only to sluice off the flowery scent, but also the feel of her hands on his back.
Even now, after showering and leaving his own house, his back still seemed to retain the memory of her strong, yet soft fingers. He felt the whisper of silk against his side and remembered there had been a moment when he'd wanted nothing more than to turn over, take her into his arms and lose himself in making love to her.
Thank God he hadn't followed through on that particular weakness. It was bad enough that she'd seen him in the condition he'd been in when he'd arrived at her house. That would never happen again.
Sunday mornings the police station worked on skeleton crew, with only five officers on duty and nobody working in the lab. The good people of Cherokee Corners seemed to honor the Sabbath and kept their crimes spree to the weekdays.
It had been his intention when he left his house to go into the station, but instead he found himself heading toward Jacob Kincaid's place near the center of town.
If there was a grand mansion in the entire state of
The millionaire left the house half-finished and put in on the market for a song. Jacob's grandfather had bought it and finished the building.
The stately brick home set in the middle of a perfectly manicured three-acre lot. A long half-circle driveway led to the front of the house.
As he parked in the front, he checked his watch, noting that it was just before eight. Jacob should be home. He never worked on the weekends.
Considering the grandeur amid which Jacob lived, he was a surprisingly simple man with a taste for beautiful things. Clay wasn't surprised when Jacob greeted him at the door clad in a plaid bathrobe and slippers.
"Clay! Come in … come in. I've got a cup of coffee with your name on it."
"Thanks. I just thought I'd drop in for a quick cup and a short visit before heading into the station." Clay stepped into a foyer the size of his own living room. The gray marble floor beneath his feet shone with a luster and instantly reminded him of Tamara's eyes.
He followed Jacob quickly across the foyer and into the living room, which was actually a misnomer for what was actually Jacob's collection room.
Although the room had a sofa, love seat and coffee tables, the items of furniture were merely incidental to the true viewpoints in the room—the massive lighted display cases that lined every available wall.
Fabergé
eggs, bronze statues, jeweled snuffboxes—Jacob liked flashy, beautiful things and the house was a testimony to that fact. Clay knew there was a room upstairs devoted entirely to priceless original oil paintings and another of antique furniture of museum quality.
Jacob led him into a huge, airy kitchen. This was the only room where there weren't items of interest or obsession. It was an ordinary kitchen and the one place in the house Clay had always felt at home.
The morning paper was stretched out on one side of the glass-top table along with a cup of coffee. Jacob gestured toward the table as he grabbed a cup from the cabinet and poured coffee for Clay then joined him at the table.
"You look better than you did when I stopped in the station. Did you finally get a good night's sleep?"
"Yeah, I did. I guess that the past few weeks finally caught up with me and I crashed hard." He didn't mention where he'd slept. There was no reason to talk about Tamara, no reason to even think about her. "We thought we had a lead to Mom last night."
"Really?" Jacob leaned forward, his gaze intent. "What happened?"
Briefly, Clay told him about the trip to Shadow Hills and the pawnshop. When he told Jacob about discovering that it had been Sammy who had pawned the jewelry, Jacob leaned back in his chair with the expression of one whom had eaten something sour.
"Doesn't surprise me a damn bit. Sammy never had a good sense of right and wrong," Jacob said gruffly. "The man has been nothing but heartache for your father. Your uncle Sammy makes me grateful I'm an only child."
"Lately I feel like an only child," Clay said dryly. "Since Bree got married and now with
Savannah
engaged to Riley, I feel like the odd man out."
"You aren't getting any younger, Clay. You should be married and with a family of your own."
"That's not in my plans." Clay took a sip of his coffee, then continued. "Being alone hasn't seemed to bother you." Clay eyed the older man curiously. "Why didn't you ever marry, Jacob?"
"Never found a perfect woman." He took a drink of his coffee, his eyes filled with reflection. "That was always a problem with me. I'd see a woman for a while but it didn't take me long to realize that what I believed was a perfect diamond was actually flawed. Too picky for my own good." He gestured toward the living room. "So, I've built a life collecting perfect pieces … flawless gems, surrounding myself with beauty instead of children."
"And you never regretted not having a family?"
"I'm a man at peace, Clay. I'm a man more comfortable alone. You, on the other hand, are far too young to make that kind of decision. From everything I've heard, there's nothing better for a man than the love of a good woman."
Clay finished his coffee, uncomfortable with the talk about good women and love. What he wanted to do was go by his parents' house and check on his father.
He wanted to make sure that the emotional turmoil of Sammy's betrayal hadn't destroyed his father more than he was already devastated by Clay's mom's absence.
"I think I'll head over to the house and check on Dad," Clay said as he rose from the table.
Jacob looked at him in surprise. "This was a fast visit."
"Sorry. I just feel like I need to stop by there, then I need to get to the lab. Sundays are quiet days and I can usually get a lot done."
Jacob stood as well and as they walked back through the living room, he clapped Clay on the back. "I'm sorry, son … about your uncle … about the hopes that I'm sure you felt as you drove to that pawnshop."
Clay shrugged with a nonchalance he didn't feel. "False leads and blind alleys are all part of the job."
"You'll keep me posted of any breaks in the case?" Jacob asked.
"Of course. Thanks for the coffee."
"Anytime."
As Clay left the house and walked down the flower-bordered walk to his car, he tried not to think of the woman who had opened her house to him in the middle of the night, a woman who hadn't questioned why he was there or what he might want. She'd simply opened her house and done what she'd thought was best for him.
A good woman. Perhaps Tamara was a good woman, but he wasn't in the market. He roared away from Jacob's house and headed toward the ranch, trying to keep his focus, his thoughts, his emotions in check.
He needed to check on his father, then get to work. Work would erase any crazy thoughts he might have about Tamara Greystone. Work would banish the memory of her wearing that little silk robe that he knew hid the tiny nightie beneath, would cast out the memory of her strong, yet gentle touch against his bare skin.
It took him only minutes to pull up in front of his parents' home.
Savannah
's car was out front. "Hey, brother," she greeted him as he walked into the living room.
Clay had always thought both his sisters were pretty, but each had blossomed with the new love in their lives.
Savannah
's eyes held a shine of happiness he hadn't seen in a long time and he knew it was Riley Frazier who had put the shine back into her eyes.
"Hey, sis. What are you doing here?"
"Dropped off a casserole. You know Uncle Sammy isn't much of a cook and Dad still isn't navigating the kitchen too well."
"Where are they?"
"They went to church." She swiped a strand of her long dark hair behind her ear. "Dad told me … about the jewelry."
Clay fought against the burst of anger that threatened to swell inside him. "Stupid ass didn't even use a fake identification."
She smiled wryly. "That's always been Uncle Sammy's problem. He's as inept at being a criminal as he is at being an upstanding citizen." Clay didn't return her smile. His blood still boiled as he thought of what Sammy had done.
"Well, I was just on my way out,"
Savannah
said. "Riley is waiting for me at home."
Clay walked out on the front porch with her. "How long are you planning on commuting from Sycamore Ridge to here?" he asked. He knew the hour drive to and from work must be tiring for her.
Her dark eyes held his gaze. "Until Mom is returned to us. I don't want to leave the Cherokee Corners Police Department until we've got her back. Until then, I'll continue to drive in for work from Riley's place in Sycamore Ridge."
Clay nodded. He understood her desire to maintain status quo until they had all the answers where their mother's disappearance was concerned.
"Gotta run." She raised up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
He watched her get into her car and waved as she pulled away and for just a moment he felt as alone in the world as he'd ever felt.
He turned and walked back into the house. It no longer smelled like home. His mother's scent was absent and the very absence created an ache inside him.
As always when he was in the house, he eyed things critically, looking for things that might have been missed in the initial sweep right after the crime. Even though he knew the crime team had done a good job and he'd gotten in to pick up anything they might have missed, he never stopped looking.
He wandered the living room, then went down the hallway to his parents' bedroom. The bed was neatly made, probably thanks to
Savannah
, and the room looked just like it always had, but it felt different.
Instead of smelling like his mother's sweet perfume, the room smelled of his father's grief. He walked to his mother's side of the bed and stretched out on the blue floral spread.
He closed his eyes and tried to conjure up the sound of his mother's voice … not like he'd last heard it, when it had been filled with disappointment and aggravation, but rather her voice when she sang and laughed.
He'd taken for granted that he had many, many years with her. She was only fifty-five years old … still young but ready to welcome in the golden years of sharing love and life with her husband as well as her grown children.
It was the natural way of things that parents passed into the spirit world before their children, but not like this. Not stolen away and vanquished … not kidnapped and murdered … not found in a shallow grave in a field years later.
Again he was assailed with a wave of loneliness, mingling with the terror of the possibility that he would never see his mother alive again.
He sat up and shook his head, refusing to allow the tenor to take hold. He had to believe that they'd find her alive. He had to believe that this was like Riley Frazier's mother's case.