Home Before Midnight (43 page)

Read Home Before Midnight Online

Authors: Virginia Kantra

Tags: #Contemporary Romance, #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #epub, #Fiction

BOOK: Home Before Midnight
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“Will they let you see the records?”
 
“I’m still a cop,” Steve said evenly. “Clegg hasn’t taken my shield.”
 
Yet
.
 
The unspoken word dropped between them like a stone.
 
“I can’t do this,” she said in panic. “This could cost you your job. I don’t want to be responsible for screwing up your life.”
 
“You’re not responsible for my choices.” His eyes were steady on hers. “Someone I trust told me that.”
 
Emotion tightened her chest. She could barely breathe. “Chief Clegg ordered you not to get involved.”
 
Steve advanced on her. “Too late. I’m already involved. With you.”
 
“Then your timing sucks.”
 
“Bailey.” Just the sound of her name in his deep drawl brought her heart to her throat. “Teresa tried to teach me there is no good time or bad time for love. All we have is the time we’re given. I wasn’t ready to learn that then. But now . . . I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to lose you.”
 
“Oh,” she cried, torn between hope and despair, “how can I think when you talk to me like that?”
 
Leaning over her chair, he drew her to her feet. “Maybe I don’t want you to think. Maybe we both think too much.”
 
He pressed a kiss to the ridge of her brow, to the corner of her eye, to the tip of her nose. He flattened her hand against his chest. Beneath the soft white cotton, she could see the shadow of his chest hair. His heart thudded under her palm, steady and strong.
 
“Let’s just feel for a while.”
 
She could feel
him,
hot and hard against her. Desire uncurled in her belly. He didn’t mean . . . He didn’t want . . .
Now?
 
“You’re out of your mind,” she said breathlessly, as his mouth cruised the line of her jaw.
 
“Mmm.” He nuzzled beneath her ear, and she sagged against him. “Go crazy with me, sugar.”
 
She was crazy for him. She had fallen hopelessly for this tough, terse, intense cop, committed to his daughter and a dozen years her senior.
 
Maybe she was out of her mind, too. Because this didn’t feel crazy. It felt . . . right. Better than anything had in a long time.
 
He brushed his lips over hers, tempting, teasing. She opened to him on a sigh. He kissed her again, slower, deeper, longer. Her fingers slid between the buttons of his shirt. His hot skin, his rough hair, filled her with delight. His big hands skated over her, stroking her back, rubbing her shoulders, kneading her behind. She’d never imagined she was the type of woman who could be appreciated for her body, but under his hands she felt beautiful. She was beautiful.
 
He molded her breasts while he lavished her with more slow, wet, devastating kisses. She floated on a current of sensation, tugged along by his expert touch. He nudged his thigh between both of hers, and she gasped.
 
She had wanted him before, but this was different. Everything was different now. She eased his buttons from their holes. He slipped her shirt straps down her shoulders. They uncovered one another, standing face-to-face with the last light of day edging the motel curtains. Her heart pounded in her chest. His breath rasped in her ears.
 
The air was humid, the room lost in shadow. It was like making love underground or under water. Each kiss spun them down another level. Each touch took them deeper, like water falling, flowing, seeking. They sank down onto the bed. He was open to her, unguarded, his heart and his eyes naked. She was open to him, languid, lifting, her body and her soul bare.
 
The room swam. Her heart filled to overflowing.
 
“Inside me,” she whispered, holding him. Loving him.
 
“Let me . . .” He rolled away from her, breaking the connection.
 
She clutched at him. “Stay.”
 
“I’ll be back,” he promised hoarsely.
 
She watched, wanting him so much, loving him so much, as he sheathed himself with a condom, resenting even that thinnest barrier that kept him from her.
 
She ran her hands over his broad, heavy shoulders, down his smooth back, wanting him with her, needing him inside her, thick and hard inside her, filling her with his passion and his strength.
 
“Now.”
 
“Yes. Oh, God, Bailey.”
 
He plunged to her and into her. She shuddered and he groaned. They met and moved together. His hands sought hers on either side of the pillow. Their fingers laced and linked. Their eyes caught and held.
 
“With me,” he said through his teeth.
 
“Yes.”
Always
.
 
Joined, connected, they tumbled together into the deep, into the dark, into the pulse beat at the heart of the world.
 
 
 
 
“I don’t want to move,” Bailey said.
 
She was sunk, mired with this man in this bed at this moment, their bodies plastered together, every nerve tingling and every muscle limp with satisfaction. She could stay this way forever.
 
He grunted. “I can’t move. So that makes us even.”
 
Even. Equal. Matched
.
 
She snuggled closer. Except, of course, they couldn’t stay like this forever. He had to get back to his daughter. To work. To his life. And she had to get back to . . .
 
There wasn’t anything she was eager to go back to. She wanted to look forward. Only now, when she envisioned her future, she saw Steve. Steve and Gabrielle. Bailey smiled. Steve and Gabrielle and Stokesville, which was a nice town, really, unless you didn’t particularly want to stay the person you had been in high school for the rest of your life.
 
Her smile faded.
 
Steve threaded his fingers through her hair, smoothing it behind one ear. “You’re thinking again.”
 
“I know. Bad habit.”
 
“I like it,” he said, surprising her. “What are you thinking about?”
 
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. How could she tell him she was worrying about marrying him and spending the next fifty or so years in Stokesville when he hadn’t even said the L word?
 
But she knew that was an excuse. After what they had shared, he didn’t have to tell her. He cared for her. She felt it, in the marrow of her bones, in every cell and fiber.
 
She was simply afraid.
 
At her continued silence, his eyebrows raised. “It wasn’t a trick question.”
 
She flushed. “I was just thinking you probably need to get home soon. Gabrielle will be expecting you. You don’t want to be late.”
 
“Yeah. She’s already sulking because I didn’t bring her today. She wants to see you when all this is over.”
 
“That’s nice, because I want to see her,” she said honestly. And then, even though she had told herself she didn’t need the words, she heard herself ask, “What about you? Do you want to see me, too?”
 
His gaze narrowed on her face.
 
“Oh, yeah,” he said softly. “I want.”
 
She felt the muscles of her womb contract.
 
So he was late getting out the door after all.
 
“I’ll call you,” he said, as he slung on his shoulder holster and adjusted his jacket.
 
That awoke some old, bad memories. Bailey briefly felt like teenage Tanya getting the brush-off from her high school crush. But Bailey wasn’t Tanya. And Steve wasn’t like any other man she’d known. His job would always interrupt the daily rhythm of their lives, would always put him at risk. If they were going to be together, she had to get better at good-bye.
 
“Are you going to the prison in the morning?” she asked.
 
He nodded.
 
“Well, good luck with that.”
 
He frowned. “I don’t like leaving you alone.”
 
“Don’t worry. I told you, I don’t intend to be the dumb dead girl.”
 
He smiled reluctantly. “Glad to hear it. This guy is escalating. He’s getting closer to his victims and he’s apparently convinced he won’t be caught. He worked on Billy Ray to kill Tanya, and he may have arranged for Billy Ray’s death in prison. But he pulled the trigger on Ellis himself. He waltzed into your parents’ house in broad daylight and attacked your father. You be careful.”
 
“I will,” she said, and thought about adding,
I love you
. But after all his warnings it sounded too final, as if she didn’t believe she would see him again.
 
As if they wouldn’t have another chance to say it.
 
And maybe a small part of her still wished he would say it first.
 
“You be careful, too,” she said.
 
This time he didn’t ask her why.
 
 
 
 
ON Monday morning at eight o’clock, the prison reminded Steve of the ant hills that erupted in his front yard every summer. Uniformed guards patrolled like worker ants, crossing the yard, marching purposefully through the corridors, while hordes teemed out of sight.
 
Leaning against the front counter of the main building, Steve missed the familiar weight of his gun. He had turned it in at the main gate. The lockbox key rested in his pocket.
 
He showed his shield to the female deputy on the other side of the glass. “Steve Burke, Stokesville PD. I’d like to see William Ray Dawler’s visitor list for the past month.”
 
The young woman examined his ID and then his face. She was pretty in a severe kind of way: no dangling earrings or long hair for an inmate to grab hold of.
 
“You’ll have to ask the warden.” She gave him another once-over. “I could place the call for you if you’d like.”
 
“I’d appreciate that,” he drawled.
 
The warden was genial and incurious. “Go talk to the ladies in Records. They’ll take care of you.”
 
The ladies in Records, bless their hearts, tried. But when they brought Steve the list of Billy Ray’s visitors, he saw at once the only person to visit in the past thirty days was Paul Ellis.
 
Another dead end. Frustration balled in his gut.
 
He had been so sure Paul’s killer would have attempted to reach Billy Ray. But then why wasn’t he on the visitor list? All friends and family members at the prison needed an appointment. Only officers of the court, law enforcement personnel and attorneys, could come and go as they pleased.
 
Only officers of the court . . .
 
The hair rose on the back of Steve’s neck. He spoke through the glass. “Could I see the professional log, too, please?”
 
Unlike the visitor lists for each individual inmate, the professional log consisted of a daily log sheet at the front counter where all officers of the court who visited the prison were required to sign in.
 
“Those are filed separately,” the female deputy said.
 
“Is that a problem?”
 
“Not really.” She smiled at him through the glass. “Wait here.”
 
He waited, his impatience firmly in check.
 
Eventually the deputy returned with a stack of scrawled on sheets which she slid to him under the pass-through.
 
Steve raised his eyebrows at the size of the stack. “I might be a while.”
 
“Take your time. Nobody here is going anywhere.” She smiled at her little joke.
 
“Right. Thanks.”
 
Each day’s log recorded visitor’s name, inmate’s name, time in, time out, and the nature of the visitor’s business. One day, one sheet, one line at a time, Steve studied the scribbled columns, searching for Billy Ray’s name.
 
He didn’t find it.
 
Occasionally he recognized another name: a cop pursuing a lead in an investigation, an attorney visiting a client. Macon Reynolds was there.

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