Best Kept Secrets(80)

A long silence followed. Reede regarded her with the concentration

of a hunter who finally has his quarry in the cross

hairs. The sunlight streaming through the blinds glinted in

his eyes, on his hair, on his eyebrows, which were slanted

dangerously.

Very quietly, he said, "Good try, Alex, but I'm not admitting

anything."

He tried to move away then, but she caught his arms.

"Well, weren't you her lover? What difference does it make

if you say so now?"

"Because I never kiss and tell." His eyes slid down to her

pulsing throat, then back up. "And you should be damned

glad I don't."

Want surged through her, as warm and golden as the morn





ing sunlight. She craved to feel his hard lips on hers again,

the rough, powerful mastery of his tongue inside her mouth.

She became dewy with desire and tearful with remorse for

what she desperately wanted and couldn't have.

Eyes locked, neither realized that they were being observed

from across the street. The sun was as good as a spotlight

on them.

Willing herself out of the dubious present and into the

disturbing past, she said, "Junior told me that you and Celina

were more than just childhood sweethearts." It was a bluff,

but she gambled on it working. "He told me everything about

your relationship with her, so it really doesn't matter whether

you admit it or not. When did you and she first . . .'" you

know?"

"Fuck?"

The vulgarity, spoken in a low, thrumming rasp, sent shafts

of heat through her. Never had that word sounded erotic to

her before. She swallowed and made an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment.

Suddenly, he hooked his hand around the back of her neck

and pulled her against him, placing her face directly beneath

his. His eyes bore into hers.

"Junior didn't tell you shit, Counselor," he whispered.

"Don't try your fancy, courtroom-lawyer bluffs on me. I've

got eighteen years on you, and I was born smart. The tricks

I've got up my sleeve, you've never even heard about. I'm

damn sure not ignorant enough to fall for yours."

His fist clenched tighter around the handful of her hair he

was holding. His breath felt hotter and came faster against

her face. "Don't ever try to come between Junior and me again, you hear? Fight us both or f*ck us both, but don't

tamper with something outside your understanding."

His eyes narrowed with sinister intensity. "Your mama

had a bad habit of playing both ends against the middle, Alex.

Somebody got a bellyful of it and killed her before she learned

her lesson. You'd do well to learn it before something like

that happens to you."



The morning was a washout in terms of discovering new

clues. Nothing diverted her mind from the disturbing conversation

she had had with Reede. If a deputy hadn't knocked

on the office door and interrupted them, she didn't know

whether she would have clawed at Reede's eyes or yielded

to her stronger urge to press her body close to his and kiss

him.

At noon she stopped trying to concentrate and crossed the

street to have lunch at the B & B Cafe. Like most people

who worked downtown, that had become her habit. No longer

were conversations suspended when she went in. Every now

and then she even merited a greeting from Pete if he wasn't

too busy in the kitchen.

She dawdled over her meal as long as possible, scooting

the yellow ceramic armadillo ashtray back and forth across

her table and leafing through Pete's printed brochure on the

proper way to prepare rattlesnake.

She was killing time, loath to return to the dingy little

office in the basement of the courthouse and stare into space,

recounting unsettling thoughts and reviewing hypotheses that

seemed more farfetched by the hour. But one thought kept

haunting her. Was there any connection between Celina's

death and Junior's hasty marriage to Stacey Wallace?

Her mind was steeped in speculation when she left the

cafe. Ducking her head against the cold wind, she walked

toward the corner. The traffic light, one of the few downtown,

changed just as she reached the corner. She was about to step

off the cracked and buckled concrete curb when her arm was

caught from behind.

"Reverend Plummet," she stated in surprise. Subsequent

events had quickly dismissed him and his timid wife from

her mind.

"Miss Gaither," he said in a censorious tone, "I saw you

with the sheriff this morning." He could have tacked on any

number of deadly sins to account for the accusation smoldering

in his deep-set eyes. "You've disappointed me."



"I fail to see--"

"Furthermore," he interrupted with the rolling intonation