Mean Streak(57)

Grange nodded. “She would be either way, though.”

“Either way?”

“If she’s a friend to both, then, in these circumstances, naturally she would be concerned about them both. Extremely. But she would also be concerned if her lover had gotten rid of his wife—with or without her prior knowledge—in order to clear the way for them to be together.”

Knight mulled it over for a ten count. “Tomorrow, while I’m babysitting Jeff, you drive down to Atlanta, canvass her neighbors, ask if she had any visitors on Friday and Saturday while Emory was out of town.”

Grange grinned. “Bet you a twenty that there will have been sightings of Jeff’s fancy car with the custom leather interior.”





Chapter 19



Doc?”

Emory tilted her head down to the hand resting on her shoulder and rubbed her cheek against the back of it.

“Are you going to wake up or sleep through?”

“Hmm?”

She came awake slowly and opened her eyes. The hand she was resting her cheek against was attached to a long arm covered in ivory cable knit, attached to a broad shoulder that blocked her view of the ceiling.

He was bent over her, his face close. Firelight cast his features in sharp relief, highlighting his cheekbones and strong chin, accenting the silver strands in his hair but etching deeper the lines bracketing his stern lips and making mysterious lairs of his eye sockets.

She wanted desperately for him to kiss her.

He withdrew his hand and backed away from the bed. She sat up. The window shades were still down, but there was no daylight limning the edges of them. Groggy and disoriented, she asked, “What time is it?”

“Six thirty. You pretty much slept the day away.”

“I can’t believe I slept that long.”

“You had a rough go of it last night. I didn’t know whether to wake you or not.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Your tights.” He passed them to her.

She threw off the covers, got up, and went into the bathroom. She used the toilet, pulled on her tights, rinsed her mouth out, and ran a hand through her hair, which had dried crazily and in tangles because she had gone to bed with it damp.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was standing in front of the bookshelves, perusing the titles. She went over to the fireplace and checked her running top and jacket. “Still damp,” she said. “I’ll have to wear your shirt for a while longer.”

He didn’t say anything. There was a broodiness to his silence that compelled her to fill it. “In fact, I’m a right mess. No moisturizer for three days. My hair a riot. If you ever saw me looking like my normal self, you wouldn’t recognize me.”

Keeping his back to her, he said, “I’d recognize you.”

His somber tone and standoffishness implied a subtext to his simple statement, and when she realized what it was, dejection settled over her as heavily as his coat had felt earlier. “But that will never happen, will it? Once I go home, we’ll never see each other again.”

“No.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t make it conditional. He declared it as a foregone conclusion.

She didn’t know what to say, and even if she had, she wasn’t sure she could speak. Her throat was tight with an emotion she shouldn’t be feeling. At the prospect of returning home, she should be experiencing a sense of relief and happy anticipation. Instead, she felt desolate.

Of course, once she resumed her life, she would get over this silly and inexplicable sadness. She loved her work and her patients. She had the marathon to look forward to. People were counting on her. Once she got home, she would have no time to waste. She would need to plunge right in and make up for lost time, for the time she’d spent here.

Soon, these past few days would seem like a dream.

But why did she feel as if she were waking up before the dream reached a satisfying conclusion?

Breaking into her thoughts, he said, “If you want something to eat, help yourself.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Apparently he wasn’t either. The kitchen area was dark. He pulled a book from one of the shelves and carried it with him to the recliner.

She said, “Perhaps you aren’t as confident of the Floyds’ intentions as you wanted me to believe.”

When he looked up at her, she nodded down at the pistol that was on the end table, the lamp shining down on it, well within his reach. “No sign of them,” he said. “But I might have been wrong.”

She sat down on the sofa. “How did you know it was Lisa’s brothers?”

Absently, he ran his fingertips over the title embossed on the book cover. “I didn’t until she told me. She was so dead set against anyone knowing about the baby, even though she’d lost it. I guess any fifteen-year-old in that situation would be afraid of being found out. But she was particularly insistent that Pauline not know about it.

“Meanwhile, those two jackasses were drinking beer and actually seemed amused over her situation. Suddenly I realized why. It was their inside joke. I hoped I was wrong. But when I asked Lisa straight out, she started crying and told me.”

Emory hugged her elbows. “Was it an isolated incident?” she asked hopefully.

“No. Been going on for a long time, she said.”