Overkill(81)

The crisis with Rebecca had dilated it and had continued to scoop it out incrementally over the past four years, until it had become an aloneness that went soul-deep.

He knew now that what had been missing wasn’t an abstract. It was a person. A woman. No, not a woman. The woman. And she had a name.

“Kate.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until she responded with a muffled, “Hmm?”

He didn’t tell her what he’d been thinking. A declaration this soon and that serious might scare her off.

And he couldn’t rightly make any sort of profession because of the issue, and all its tentacles that kept him entrapped. Until he was free of it, he couldn’t invite Kate or anyone to join him in that snare of moral ambiguity.

Instead he said, “I was just wondering why both of us are still half-clothed?”

“Because you were impatient. Primitive. Practically an animal.”

“Animals mate naked.”

She raised her head and stacked her hands on his sternum. “Excellent point. Do you actually have a whirlpool bath, or was that an empty boast?”

“It’s big enough for two.”

“In order to avail ourselves, we’d have to get unclothed.”

Seconds later they were on their way upstairs, the throw from the sofa bundled up along with their boots and the garments they had discarded in haste. He hustled her through his spacious bedroom, promising to let her explore it to her heart’s content. But later. He rushed her into the bathroom and turned on the tub’s faucet.

“Temperature is preset,” he told her as he shucked his jeans. Turning to face her, he pulled her sweater over her head. Her bra was barely hanging on; he freed her of it. His hands went directly to her breasts, supporting them in his palms. There was a whisker burn on the slope of one. He stroked it tenderly. “Sorry about that.”

“Not me.”

He smiled, but only partially. He looked up from her beautiful breasts into her so-blue eyes. “What’s your dad like?”

“My dad?” she repeated, laughing. “He looks nothing like me.”

“Does he own a shotgun?”

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “We’re naked, at last, and this is what you choose to talk about?”

He took a deep breath and exhaled, saying quietly, “I might have gotten his daughter in trouble tonight.”

When comprehension dawned, her cheeks turned pink. “Oh. No. You’re safe.”

“Wasn’t me I was worried about. I’m okay if you are.”

“I’m okay.” She looped her arms around his neck. “Actually a lot better than okay.”

He pulled her to him and held her, his chin resting on the top of her head. He ran his hands down her back, over her smooth, shapely bottom. He couldn’t get enough of touching her, but eventually, he eased back and checked the water level in the tub. “If it fills up any more, it’ll be over your head.”

She took his hand and raised it to her lips. She kissed the bumpy knuckle of the index finger that had been broken three separate times by big-footed linemen. Tilting her head back to look into his face, she said softly, “I’m already in over my head.”





They languished in the bubbly hot water, hands and lips idly exploring terrain previously undiscovered. They frequently changed positions, each indulging the other’s curiosity. While not canoodling, they talked, but about nothing of consequence. Eban Clarke wasn’t mentioned. Nor was Rebecca. They took a time-out from the crisis that had brought them together, and which could well keep them apart.

When they got out of the tub, they were weak from the extended time they’d spent in the hot water. After drying off, he led her into the bedroom, where he lit the gas fireplace while she turned down the bed.

Under the covers, they kissed and petted until he turned her to face away from him, and they spooned. As he nuzzled the back of her neck, he mumbled, “Be sure to wake me up when you want to do it again.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

They slept. But it wasn’t a pang of sexual desire that woke her an hour later. It was her noisily growling stomach. They hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, roughly fifteen hours earlier. Surely she could scrounge up something. If nothing else, she knew he had energy bars.

She slipped from the bed without disturbing him and retrieved her slacks from the pile of clothing he’d dumped on the floor when they’d entered the bedroom. She pulled them on along with her sweater, which was anything but sexy… unless Zach’s hands and mouth were marauding underneath it.

She couldn’t find her socks without turning on the light, so she left the bedroom in bare feet and started downstairs. The lamps were still on. The fire had burned down to embers. She padded into the kitchen and flipped on the light.

And came face-to-face with the muzzle of a pistol.

Her eyes tracked the barrel of the gun past the hand holding the grip and up to the handsome face of Cal Parsons.

“Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t say a word.”

She did neither.

She screamed bloody murder.





Chapter 34





Bing had married young because that’s what people did back then. His bride had been pretty in her way. She knew southern etiquette forward and backward. Her family’s reputation was free of scandal except for an uncle who was a drunkard and had been banished from the bosom of the family years before. She was a good cook who kept a spotless house and an even temperament.