CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (21 page)

             
He cradled her neck in his hands. Her heart beat rapidly against his fingertips, her breath hurried through her lips. He kissed her and she kissed him back, giving everything, keeping nothing.

             
She was pliant, leaning into him, her hands tangled in his hair, her fingers palpitating with some inner rhythm he recognized as akin to his own. Her tongue pulsed in his mouth; she was aggressive and yielding at the same time.

             
The slow, wet kiss tested the limits of his endurance. He'd watched her all night. When he had discovered she was nude beneath her gown, each step she took became torture for him. He had imagined touching the silk of her gown and the more intriguing silk of her bare shoulders, imagined sliding one slender strap down and freeing a taut breast.

             
Now with his eyes half closed, he smoothed his palm across her back. His fingertips skated across her shoulder blades. He moved along each vertebra, worshipping the strong muscles and sinews of her back. With each touch, an anguish of anticipation shot through him.

             
And her, for she broke away. Her voice was breathless, husky, dangerous. "Are we going to have sex in here? Because if we are, I get the top. That gearshift would be murder." She was laughing, yet she was serious, too.

             
"Do you want to have sex in the car?" His mouth watered as he imagined immediate payback after the hours of torture.

             
"I don't know . . I don't know if I can wait any longer."

             
Her admission allowed him to take a long breath. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She was as desperate as he was, and that . . . that gave him the power to break free of the enchantment that bound him.

             
"Come on," he said roughly. "We've got to go in. I want to make love to you all night long. I can't do that here."

             
And it wasn't safe. Her stalker was still at large. Since Teague had come on the job, there had been no contact at all. That made him hypervigilant. Before he lay down with Kate, he needed to be somewhere protected by locks and alarms. For once he slid into the depths of her body, he would be blind and deaf to every threat.

             
All his life, oblivion had beckoned. He had challenged death, taunted death, not caring whether the darkness took him or not. But now . . . he wanted to live with a fierceness that burned his soul. He had to have this chance with Kate. He had to taste her once before he died.

             
And then, if he was lucky, he would taste her again.

             
Once more he surveyed the parking lot. Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved.

              "Come on," he said again, and started to open the door.

             
She grabbed his lapel, jerked him back, and kissed him. My God, how she kissed him! Her tongue separated his lips, took his mouth with a thunderstorm of brilliant, superheated lightning. For too many long seconds, the only thing in the world that existed was Kate Montgomery and the way she branded him with need and lust.

             
Pulling away, he leaped from the car. The weight of sexual desire was so heavy he almost staggered as he moved quickly to her side to help her out.

             
She let him assist her, sliding her legs from the car and standing in one graceful exercise.

             
She strode toward her building and didn't look back, appearing regal and cool. Yet he knew the grip of excitement carried her along. As he watched her the reality hit him—he was going to press her into the mattress and take her, and when they were done . . . his whole life would be different. He didn't want that change, knew it would result in anguish for him, but damn it, he couldn't resist her.

             
He hurried to catch up with her, herding her with his hand in the middle of her back. She leaned into him, surrendering to him as completely as he surrendered to her. Her breathing, her warmth, her beauty overwhelmed him.

             
Yet . . . his instincts could never be completely subdued. As they passed the Dumpster, he went on alert.

             
A blur of motion drew his gaze to the right.

             
A blade flashed in the dim light.

             
Someone rushed at them. At Kate.

             
This was it. Her stalker.

             
Sexual frustration transformed into rage.

Teague shoved Kate out of the way. He whirled and met her attacker, knocking the knife away, taking the oncoming body down with all the finesse of a linebacker.

At once he registered the thin, fine bones of a woman. He couldn't halt his rush, but he didn't twist and break her wrist as he had intended. He only held her as they bounced on the grass.

             
She screamed, a thin, high-pitched sound of terror that was cut off as his weight momentarily crushed her. She smelled of fine perfume, velvet, and vodka. He flipped her on her stomach, arms behind her back.

             
"Who is it?" Kate demanded from beside him. Then, "Mrs. Oberlin!"

             
Yes, of course. He held pathetic, tearful Evelyn Oberlin. The senator's wife began weeping violently, tears pouring out of her as if a dam had broken. "I'm s-s-sorry." Her teeth were chattering. She shuddered in great convulsions. "I'm s-so sorry."

             
"Me, too, lady." Grimly, Teague ran his hand down her body, looking for more weapons. She had none. He found nothing more than a fine silk bag hung on a string around her neck.

             
Taking it off, he handed it to Kate. "What's in there?"

             
Kate glanced inside. "Pills. A lot of pills."

             
"Yeah." This lady was so skinny she was on the verge of starvation. She shook like she had the DTs, and he would bet if they checked her medical records, she'd been in a dry-out facility more than once.

             
"I d-didn't mean t-to hurt you." With her free hand, Mrs. Oberlin clawed at Kate. "I just . . . I just didn't want him to kill you again."

             
Teague exchanged a significant glance with Kate. This lady was an alcoholic drug addict, and crackers to boot.

             
"So you tried to hit her with your car?" he demanded.

             
"A few b-bruises are better than dying!" Mrs. Oberlin managed to make that sound like good sense.

             
"Good Lord," Kate blankly said to Teague. "I didn't think she'd really done that."               "Did you see the knife?" Teague asked. "That wasn't a bouquet she was holding."               "You don't understand." Mrs. Oberlin's tears dried. Her voice rose to a shriek. She struggled to get up.

             
Teague wouldn't release her wrist.

             
"What doesn't Teague understand?" Without a care for her expensive, sexy dress, Kate knelt beside Mrs. Oberlin. "Tell me."

             
"Kate, this is no time for a goddamn interview." Teague was so furious he could scarcely speak. He wanted to crush Mrs. Oberlin into the dirt for threatening Kate. If she hadn't been a woman, hadn't been impaired, he would have. As it was, he could scarcely contain his rage. "Call the cops."

             
"In a minute." Kate stayed on the grass, her voice so kind Mrs. Oberlin stopped fighting and pressed her head to the grass. "What doesn't Teague understand?"

             
"He was going to kill you again. He did it before." Mrs. Oberlin enunciated each word with painful clarity. "I wanted to chase you away, that's all, because otherwise he was going to kill you again."

             
"Damn it, Kate!" Teague fumbled in his jacket for his cell phone.

             
"You're not the only one, you know." Mrs. Oberlin kept her gaze fixed on Kate.               Softhearted Kate, who listened as if she could make sense of that mumbo jumbo.               Teague dialed 911 and instructed the operator to send a squad car
now
.

             
"Mrs. Blackthorn realized it first. Before I did, even. She thought . . ." Mrs. Oberlin panted as if she were hyperventilating. Then she pulled herself together. "The old woman thought she was invincible, so when I came home, she was at the . . . at the . . . at the . . ."

             
"Take a breath." Kate stroked Mrs. Oberlin's hair back and waited while she did as she was told. Then she prompted, "Where was Mrs. Blackthorn?"

             
"At the bottom of the stairs. Her skinny neck was broken. They said . . . the sheriff said . . . he said she smelled like whiskey, that she was a secret tippler. But she wasn't. Then when I said so, the sheriff said"—Mrs. Oberlin stopped, groaned as if she were recalling some great pain—"he said maybe I pushed her. But I didn't! I wasn't home!"

             
"I believe you," Kate said soothingly.

             
Teague couldn't decide if Mrs. Oberlin knew something or had a marvelous imagination. Then he decided he didn't care. This damned crazy Evelyn Oberlin had interrupted his night with Kate.

             
"Then he said he wasn't there when she died." Mrs. Oberlin looked around as if she were afraid someone would get her, and she whispered, "But he was."

             
"Senator Oberlin?" Kate questioned.

             
Mrs. Oberlin screamed so suddenly Kate jumped back. "Of course, Senator Oberlin!"

             
Teague tightened his grip.

             
Mrs. Oberlin struggled briefly, then subsided.

             
As if she'd never exploded in excitement, Mrs. Oberlin said, "Then . . . then . . . then I started to be afraid . . . and I knew it was my fault."

             
"What was your fault?" Kate signaled to Teague to let the old lady up.

             
He refused with an emphatic shake of the head. He'd seen cases like this before. People so berserk and strung out on drugs they could rise from frailty to attack and tear and maim. This old lady admitted to stalking Kate—for Kate's own good, of course. Now she was blaming her husband—who Teague knew to be a pompous ass, but without a whiff of scandal attached to his name—for her problems, and babbling about how she had prevented him from killing Kate again.

             
"That he killed you. I should have known." Mrs. Oberlin closed her eyes as if she were in agony. "I should have told them, but I love him." She started blubbering again, and her words were so slurred Teague had to struggle to understand her. "I love him so much. So I try not to think about it, but the ghosts are always there, staring at me, their flesh all ragged and their eyes . . . their eyes . . . their eyes empty . . . Lana, I'm sorry Please . . . I'm so sorry."

             
Mrs. Oberlin gazed into thin air as if she saw a ghost now, stared so fixedly the hair rose on the back of Teague's head.

             
He couldn't help looking, also. Nothing was there.

             
Kate looked, too, and shook her head.

             
Spooky.

             
In the distance, he heard the wail of sirens.

             
"He's going to kill me. He hates it when I . . . when I . . ." Mrs. Oberlin started to convulse beneath him, and at last Teague let her go.

             
Bleakly, he and Kate watched her vomit in the grass.

             
"Go upstairs." He didn't look at her. "Put on some jeans, make some coffee—the cops will want it. I'll take care of her."

             
"What's going to happen?" Kate whispered.

             
"She's going to a hospital to dry out. There'll be a big scandal. Oberlin's going to let it die down; then he'll divorce her." All of Teague's latent cynicism came out. "She's a liability to his position."

             
"She thinks he's a murderer." Kate watched her with sorrowful eyes. "Do you think . . . ?"

             
"Damn it, Kate, she thinks he killed
you
. She's been stalking you
for your own good."
Teague didn't want to touch Kate right now, but he had to take her hand. It trembled in his, and her fingers felt like ice. "Honey, she is so crazy, and he is so fastidious. I don't know why she fixated on you, but she's hallucinating. You saw her do

it
. She thought she saw a ghost standing right there." He pointed. "You know she did. Go upstairs. Make yourself comfortable, and settle yourself in for a long siege because the police are going to want to question you for quite a while."