The Girl in Blue (7 page)

Her arms had loosened around his lean torso. She moved them now. Placing her palms against his chest, but gently, very gently because she hadn’t decided if she was going to go along with the pause or urge him out of it.

She could feel the air flowing in and out of his lungs and the steady, hard beat of his heart.

If possible, the light movements of her hands on his chest caused his face to go tighter and his jaw to clench. He closed his eyes and opened them again before he went on.

“I’m trying to warn you….You remember how I was by the lake that night….That’s how you remember me. But I’m not dead….I’m not frozen. My God, Trinity, I
burn,
” he said.

“Show me,” she said without weighing the consequences.

She’d thought she was the one with life in her hands, but all caution and nerves and hesitancy wasn’t life. It was life interrupted. Not living at all.

Creed exploded into movement again. He swept her up into his arms in a dizzy rush while she held on tight for the seconds it took for him to stride to the bed and drop her on it.

Then he paused again, and she had to rise on her knees to meet him and brush the shirt from his warm, broad shoulders. He watched her with the darkest of eyes as she followed the light dusting of hair with her lips and teeth and tongue to his waistband.

She didn’t pause.

She loosened the button and zipper of his trousers, and pressed her lips lower and lower still. Creed moaned, spreading his knees against the mattress for better balance. He threaded his hands into the wild tangle of her hair when she took the velvet length of him into her mouth to intimately discover how much he wanted her.

There had been adolescent fantasies for her. Had he had them, too? For years, he’d been a dark and dangerous possibility on her horizon. One she feared as much as she desired.

He shuddered as she plied him with her lips and then the pause was over once more. He pressed her back into the mattress, easing satin up her body to reveal her flushed nudity beneath.

“I’ve wanted to see you like this,” he breathed against her trembling stomach.

Trinity buried her hands in his hair as he parted her legs to take a wicked, deep taste of her moist heat. She cried out when his tongue teased and plunged in a rhythm that left her shaken and wordlessly begging with urgent thrusts. All of her focused on his head between her legs and the loving attention he paid her just where she needed it most.

Tension built, claimed her, carriedher until she was stretched taut with it to the point of breaking. And then she did break into a thousand shattered pieces, but Creed gathered her and held her, his strong hands on her shaking thighs when she was finally able to open her eyes.

He looked up at her with heavy lids. His lips swollen. His pupils had gone big and black in the darkened room.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

And Trinity reached for him even though she was afraid of the ragged deepness in his voice.

But before he could rise up and lay in her arms, his eyes widened and sharpened, and he jerked his head toward the door. Trinity smelled it, too. Smoke. While she’d been distracted, had The Girl in Blue decided to come out and play?

Chapter Six

Creed stiffened and Trinity reached for her discarded gown.

“Be careful,” she warned as Creed stood up. He fastened his pants as he stepped across the floor.

With one hand he tested the knob, and with the other placed flat on the wood he tested the door itself. It must have been cool to the touch because he opened it.

Smoke immediately began to roll into the room, sucked into the vacuum of oxygenated space from the choked hallway.

“Quick,” Creed urged.

Trinity ran to his side and took his outstretched hand. He pulled her into the hall. Through the windows, she could see the roof of the wing where it stretched out behind them. Flames had already eaten their way up through the attic spaces and they now scaled the night sky.

“This wing is burning!” Creed shouted.

As they ran down the hall to the doors she’d left open to the landing, they left smoke behind. Creed had grabbed his phone. He yelled into it as they ran, summoning help.

Trinity coughed. Acrid smoke had been sucked into her lungs and moisture trailed down her cheeks as her body sought to clear her vision. She stumbled, but eagerly tried to suck fresh air into her lungs as they ran down the stairs, farther and farther from the fire.

Creed felt her falter. He lifted her, easily taking the stairs in a rush. Soon she was breathing outside air between coughing fits. The smoke they’d encountered had been enough to re-aggravate her airways.

Already, Trinity could hear sirens in the distance. Horrible memories assailed her. Screams and pain and the stench of her own burned flesh. There was no one left in the house. No one to save.

* * *

Sheriff Constantine asked only a few questions. Hillhaven was old. Its wiring hadn’t been updated as it should have been. She allowed him to go down that path without protest. He would have thought she was crazy if she’d brought up The Girl in Blue. Although, as they talked, she could have sworn his piercing blue eyes had narrowed in his handsome face. He was more perceptive than he seemed, at first. Scarlet Falls’ sheriff would have to be.

He stood watching the fire department wet down the old wing for a long time before he finally turned back to Trinity. Creed had gone inside to see what he could salvage. She was alone with Constantine and he looked at her for a long time, assessing, maybe summing up the difference between integrity and discretion. He was a tall man, more muscular than Creed and maybe only a year or two older. The love of outdoor sports was written in his tanned skin and sun-kissed hair that showed in waves from the edges of his broad-brimmed trooper’s hat. He wore a pressed khaki uniform with a shiny badge even at thishour, but Trinity thought maybe he wore deck shoes and shorts on weekends with that hat off and ropes in his large calloused hands. Something about the crinkles around his eyes spoke of sun reflected off of water and a sail pointed to the horizon.

But, here now, he stood in the darkness with Trinity as if he didn’t shy from it. On the contrary, the coiled energy of his presence seemed to hold the shadows at bay.

“We’ll comb through the debris tomorrow to make a definite assessment. It’s probably safe to gather some things, but you’ll want to wait for an inspector to deem it habitable again,” the sheriff said.

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t safe, but she didn’t. He already knew it. She could read his frustration in his tight jaw and his narrowed eyes.

“Thank you,” Trinity said instead.

He nodded. He didn’t tip his hat or call her ma’am. In spite of his uniform and his hat, he gave off an air of being ultra-aware and not given to meaningless gestures. In fact, at 2a.m. with the fire out and everyone as safe as could be expected in Scarlet Falls, Sheriff Constantine seemed on edge, prepared even if he also seemed like he knew he could never be certain of what it was prepared for.

With one last penetrating look, he turned away and walked back to the large SUV he’d left by the curb. Trinity watched him climb into the vehicle, slam the door and rev its idling engine to life.

“He’s in over his head,” Creed said. He’d silently come up behind her. Now, he draped an old trench coat over her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” Trinity replied. “He’s pretty damn tall.”

She smiled slightly at the man beside her who was even taller.

* * *

There were firefighters milling around, winding hose and politely not staring at the outline of Trinity’s legs through thin satin. The fire hadn’t touched her room, but smoke had. She would definitely have to stay elsewhere for the night and possibly longer.

Creed disappeared again while she shoved a few things into her backpack. When she came out the front door, she was surprised to see a late model sports car come around the side of the house to pick her up. It was low and silver and sexy—so like Creed—but a far more modern choice than she would have expected from him. Yet, when she sank down into the passenger seat, he was very at home behind the wheel.

“Don’t worry. I don’t drink while I’m writing,” Creed said.

Trinity hadn’t thought to ask. His eyes were bright. His movements brisk. At times, he might depend on the Scotch more than he should, but it was obvious this wasn’t one of those times.

They drove away from Hillhaven.

She would have to call her parents, and once the damage was assessed in the daylight, she would. For now, she struggled to hold back memories of another fire. She also fought the feeling of being hunted and flushed from one shelter after another.

“I have a cottage by the lake. We can stay there until it’s safe to return to Hillhaven,” Creed said.

By the lake?

Trinity looked up and out the window. She recognized the road and the ascent. Sure enough, the town was below them and the black waters of High Lake gleamed, getting closer, ever closer.

She looked at the man behind the wheel.

Creed’s eyes gleamed, too, black and deep, as he drove them to the place that had nearly killed them both.

Chapter Seven

The cottage appeared after they’d left the hard top for a long, winding gravel drive that snaked through a dense evergreen thicket on the south side of the lake. It wasn’t dense enough. As Creed took his car around bumps and curves with surprising ease, Trinity could glimpse the occasional black shine of still waters through the trees.

When the white walls and a high-pitched roof of an A-frame house came into view around a final bend, she wasn’t relieved. It should have been welcoming. A neat oasis of careful landscaping and mulched plantings held back the encroachment of nature while at the same time gave off an air of being a peaceful part of it. Yet, the cottage left her uneasy. It seemed vulnerable. Its cheerful aspect perched on a rocky hill above the tangle of undergrowth surrounding the lake itself.

Creed braked to a stop in front of a steep path cobbled with stone steps that led to an impressive redwood deck and the cottage’s front door. She could see a similar path leading down the back of the house to disappear into the shadowy trees and she thought possibly beyond all the way to the water’s edge.

Trinity straightened her back against the apprehension that threatened to tighten her shoulders.

When Creed opened his door, she followed suit and stood beside the car with her backpack while he rummaged in the trunk for a hastily packed box.

“I keep the kitchen stocked because I come here to work sometimes,” he said. “Nothing fancy. Canned food and crackers.”

She didn’t ask him if he had a stuffed crow or a ragdoll in his box. She didn’t want to know. Instead, she headed up the path with him close on her heels. Here, close to the lake, the air held a metallic bite from the iron water, but it was softened by fir trees and the loamy dirt their fallen needles created beneath their boughs. Still, the bite was there, reminding her of something unpleasant she couldn’t quite place.

She was relieved when Creed unlocked the sliding glass door to let her inside. The cottage’s interior scent was much more pleasant. Books and papers, aged leather and cedar blended together with a warm hint of Creed’s scent—ink and whiskey and sandalwood—very male.

Creed didn’t follow her inside right away.

He stood on the deck and looked out at the trees, and possibly at the black sheen of water peeking out here and there.

Trinity wanted to shut the door.

She wanted to shut the chill black waters out and pretend for a little while that they weren’t even there.

Finally, Creed came inside and placed his box on the wide marble counter which separated the kitchen from the den. Trinity looked away from it, trying not to wonder what was inside. She was relieved when he turned to slide the door closed, but not for long. She stepped into the den to face a floor-to-cathedral-ceiling wall of glass windows that did very little to shield them from the night and the lake outside.

There were no blinds or curtains.

Only polished glass with the black night pressing against it, so dark that it seemed impenetrable and thick.

Trinity told herself it would be dawn in a few hours. The sun would rise.

Then Creed came up behind her, his solid body against her back, and the boxes and the night and what might be in them became the least of her concerns.

“I didn’t think you’d come with me,” Creed said into her tangled hair. “I should have offered to drop you at the Stewart’s bed and breakfast, but I was afraid you’d think it was a good idea.”

He slid her coat down her arms and dropped it on the floor. Not even stepping away long enough to hang it up.

It would have been. The best idea. They’d passed it on the way, a pretty and polished Victorian renovated to within a crooked shingle of perfection. She had been afraid he would offer to stop there. As much as she didn’t want to be near High Lake, she did want to be near Creed. Nearer even than this.

She demonstrated her desire by bumping back against him, bringing herself into full contact with him. His hands came back to her arms, to hold her still or hold her in place, she couldn’t be sure.

But he didn’t push her away.

She could feel the swell of his desire pressing close to her bottom, growing hotter and more insistent.

Trinity nudged her hips back again and he groaned. He buried his face in the side of her neck, finding skin with his lips and tongue. Then he lifted his hand to push her hair aside to find more.

The night was still there. The night and the gleam of the lake in the distance. She no longer cared.

He pressed her forward until the leather sofa met the front of her thighs and then her sensual teasing became serious. She allowed him to press her over the back of the couch, its cushiony firmness supporting her, while he moved his erection more intimately against her—teasing, suggesting—making her ache with the need to pull off his trousers.

“I can still taste you. It’s driving me mad,” Creed said and there was an unsteady quality to his voice as if he was ready to break.