The Trouble with Temptation (26 page)

She groaned when she felt him tearing at the button on his jeans, fumbling with the zipper and then she tensed in anticipation when he rocked back and forth against her mound. She was already wet and the sensations had her crying out, arching closer.

He came inside her in one hard, driving thrust and her whimper of shock was smothered by his kiss.

It was bliss and it was hell and it ended far too soon.

Wet trickled down her thighs as he lowered her feet to the ground.

Hannah’s legs wobbled and she clutched at his shoulders, trying to steady herself.

He’d come inside her.

No rubber.

She mentally groaned, even as she thanked the irregular periods that had eventually forced her to start taking the pill. That much, at least, should be okay.

Brannon stroked his hand down her back, easing in closer, his breathing still heavy and fast.

“We didn’t use a rubber.”

*   *   *

Hannah was still and quiet.

He wanted to hear her say it.

He had no right to expect it of her.

But he wanted to hear her say it.

Eyes closed, he stood in the main area of the winery, listening to the water running in the bathroom as she cleaned up.

Neither of them had spoken.

Hannah had lapsed into a taut silence and he recognized that look in her eyes by now. She was remembering something. Or trying to. And there he was, struggling with the guilt that still choked him over the things he hadn’t shared with her.

He was falling in love with her, so hard and so fast. He needed to fix the mess he’d made of things, but he didn’t know how.

She’d told him she loved him, but she didn’t remember it.

She’d told him she loved him and he’d thrown it back at her.

The water came to a stop and he pushed off the counter, trying to force some sort of coherent thought into his head.

The door opened and he turned to look at Hannah.

She was fiddling with the buttons on her dress, smoothing her hair down, making it clear she would look at anything and anybody but him.

He cleared his throat.

She darted a look at him.

He took a step toward her.

She headed for the door. “I need to get going,” she said, her voice overly bright. “I’m barely going to have time to shower and change before I’m due in my shift this evening.”

Brannon opened his mouth.
Say something, dumb ass.

“I love you.”

*   *   *

Hannah crashed into a wire rack of cards.

They were all done by local artists, everything from Americana to medieval, mythical looking fairy creatures. She tried to catch the rack, keep it from falling, but it slid out of her fingers and toppled, sending colorful bits of paper flying.

Surrounded by hand-drawn steamers and lovely inked fairies, she just stared.

Hearing the scuff of a shoe on wood, she slowly looked up and found herself staring at Brannon.

He was moving closer.

She backed away, one hand coming up.

Her blood roared in her ears and her heart pounded like thunder.

And beneath all of that, she heard a vaguely familiar voice.
Her
voice … maybe.

I’ve been in love with you since I was in high school.

She had loved Brannon since high school—almost half her life, she thought.

But he’d never …

He cupped her face and his hands were rough, yet so gentle. He used his thumbs to tilt her gaze to meet his. Hannah swallowed, the knot in her throat large, all but choking her. “I love you,” he said again. “It could have happened yesterday. Maybe it happened a year ago—five years ago. It could have happened in the past five minutes. I don’t know. I just know I love you.”

She thought maybe her heart had stopped, wondered if she should be worried about that.

But then he kissed her and the only thing she could think about was that—Brannon was kissing her and he’d just told her he loved her.

Did anything else even matter?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I say we bring the senator in and sweat him.”

Gideon looked over at Tank, a headache pulsing at the base of his skull. His eyes felt like sand-covered golfballs—inflamed sand-covered golfballs—and they were burning holes in his sockets. He hadn’t slept worth shit. He rarely did, but the past few days had been particularly lousy. “We bring him on what evidence?”

“Two deaths.” Tank shrugged. “Loosely connected to him, but there is a connection.”

Gideon rubbed the back of his neck and went back to staring at the murder board. “Well.… I got some money in the bank. House is paid off now. If I end up out on my ass, I’ll be okay for a while. You got two ex-wives and a kid, though.”

Tank snorted.

“Yeah, laugh it off, you jackass.”

“This isn’t anything to laugh off.” Tank shrugged and settled down on the chair in front of Gideon’s desk. “Look, we can connect him to Shayla. So what if he was flat on his back in the hospital? I don’t think he killed her, either, but he doesn’t have to know that. But you and I
both
know he’s involved in the death of Alison Maxwell. You can take it to the bank. We’ll bring him in, sweat him, and see what happens.” Now Tank’s smile turned cagey. “The man’s spine is made up of wax and straw. He’ll melt. All we have to do is put a little heat on him. Do it the right way and even his lawyer won’t shut him up in time.”

“The lawyer will fuck us if we aren’t careful.” Gideon curled his lip.

“The way I see it, we’re fucked now. At least this way, we have a chance.” He shrugged with practiced casualness as he added, “All we need is one decent lead and we can push for a warrant—climb all over his bank records, phone records. The son of a bitch is arrogant. There’s a trail somewhere.”

Gideon had to agree, but his thoughts drifted back to Shayla. “He won’t lead us to her,” he murmured. “I know he won’t.”

Tank didn’t speak, but Gideon suspected they were both thinking the same thing. Sometimes you just had to take what you get and right now, Alison Maxwell’s killer might be the easier one to pin down. It was a sad fucking state, because pinning a crime on a politician was always a pain in the ass. Their money and position made it a dance of politics and eggshells.

“It’s not making sense,” Gideon said, his hands going to his hips. So far, they’d talked to almost everybody on their list, and of those people, the few they could see with the capacity or
ability
to strangle a woman, neither Tank nor Gideon could see them killing Shayla in cold blood.

The one woman who might have been able to do it just out of sheer meanness was Tessie Foreman, and that old bat was seventy if she was a day and didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. She also liked to do inappropriate things with her farm animals and she had more cash hidden away on her farm than Croseus. She wasn’t quite up there with the McKays, but she wasn’t hurting for money.

But she’d bluntly told Gideon,
If I was going to kill that bitch, I’d have done it in town—right on Main in front of everybody.

Gideon could believe it.

“What’s not making sense?” Tank asked.

He gestured to the board. “The people who had the most reason to kill her? They are the ones we can’t see doing it.” Moving to the list, he skimmed the notes he’d made.

Most of them had to do with affairs and while the people involved thought they were being discreet, half the people in town knew. Shayla was just the one greedy enough to cash in and the people with their pants down were foolish enough to think they were still fooling everybody else.

“I can see Jimmy Bradshaw killing over this.”

Gideon looked over at Tank. “Then you haven’t ever been in the pub on a Friday or Saturday night. That man has been known to pass out at the sight of blood.”

“Shayla didn’t bleed.”

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Splitting hairs. He’s big and loud and has a temper, likes to get in your face.” Shrugging, he went on to the next name. “But I’ve seen kids half his age back him down. He just can’t handle fights or confrontation.”

They brooded over the list for another fifteen minutes before Gideon turned to Tank. “Know what bothers me about this list? If it was somebody on here, they did it out of rage or desperation, wouldn’t you think?”

“Stands to reason.”

Gideon moved to the folder that held the autopsy photos of Shayla Hardee. “She wasn’t killed with any rage. There was no desperation. She was just … disposed of.”

He looked up to meet Tank’s eyes but the other man was studying the images.

Gideon passed them over, already knowing what Tank would see. A body, pale, waxen and bruised from the quick, brutal death. Mouth slack and eyes closed. Nothing had been done to her before or after death, other than the injury that had ended her life.

“She was in the way,” Gideon murmured, more to himself than anything else.

Tank glanced up. “Pardon?”

He went to shake his head and then stopped. “He disposed of her. It wasn’t about any of this … or if it was, it was just a nuisance. She was a nuisance, so he just eliminated her.”

Gideon thought back to the body. “She was just disposed of,” he murmured. “Done away with. This was cold-blooded, planned.”

“What makes you think that?” Tank asked.

Gideon suspected their minds were in sync but he understood how important a sounding board was. “Gut instinct. She never went out to the park. I’ve talked to a dozen people, more, who hang there, run there, fish … some of them have a houseboat out there like Hannah does. None of them ever saw Shayla. She was lured out there or she asked him to meet her there. Privacy.”

The picture came together in his head. Tank was nodding and Gideon knew he could see it, too. “A new mark, maybe?”

“Fuck.” It felt right. Gideon went back to staring at his list. He blew out a breath between his teeth.

Tank made a low grunt, echoing Gideon’s frustration. “You know … I still say we bring the senator in, sweat him. See what happens.” Then he smiled thinly. “If nothing else, it will make me happy. The guy’s an asshole and we have a motive.”

Gideon’s response was cut short when he caught sight of a sleek, silver convertible just as it turned onto the road. His heart slammed against his ribs. Moira.

She climbed out and although it was quick, he saw her dart a glance toward the police department. Did she see him?

Judging by the way her steps faltered, he thought maybe she did.

His hands flexed and although it was just sensory memory, he found himself thinking of how smooth her skin had felt. How soft. Just as smooth, just as soft as she’d been all those years ago.

And more, she still responded the same.

She responded like she was still his.

But she didn’t want to be his. She couldn’t have made that any more clear if she tried.

And he needed to yank his head out of his ass.

“Alright. Let’s do it. Let’s bring him in.” He gave the sheriff a thin smile. “Since the murder happened out on your turf, you get the honors. I hope you’ll give me the courtesy of sitting in.”

*   *   *

“I hope you have a good reason for this.” The lawyer Crooks gave Tank a bland look before shifting his attention to Gideon. “Well, hello, Chief Marshall. I didn’t realize this was an interdepartmental exercise.”

“I’m just observing,” Gideon said easily, glancing toward the silent man walking alongside Crooks. “Naturally you can understand how concerned the people in my town are. I’m just looking to provide them with answers.”

“Then maybe you should be out looking for the real killer instead of hassling an innocent man.” Crooks said nothing else, just stepped aside as they came to the door so the senator could enter.

They’d wasted three hours already, first hunting the man down and then convincing him that it really was in his best interest to come down to the station. After all, if they went for a warrant, it would become public knowledge that much quicker.

Crooks had tried to insist they take that route.

But Roberts had seen something in Gideon’s face and had smiled that genial politician’s smile. “Now, now,” he’d said. “I do like to cooperate with officers of the law.”

How kind of him. Gideon wondered what he was up to, but now that they had him in the station, he realized that Roberts was
nervous
. Crazy nervous, a shiny film of sweat dotted his upper lip and his eyes kept bouncing around.

If somebody leaped out and shouted
boo
at the man, Gideon might be putting his first responder skills to the test. He really didn’t want to have to perform CPR on this old goat. As Tank shut the door behind him, he glanced over at the sheriff, arched a brow.

The corner of Tank’s mouth twitched. That was the only reaction, but Gideon knew the man. He’d picked up on the senator’s jumpiness as well.

Something was eating at the man.

“Let’s get started,” Tank said, moving to sit at the table. “We just have some things we’d like to clear up.”

The senator had the hands of a working man, which was odd because he’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and if he ever had to do something so menial as changing a tire or raking the leaves in his yard, Gideon thought he might break out in hives. As Tank took a chair, Henry Roberts put those big, workingman hands on the surface of the table and smiled his big, easy politician’s smile.

“I think I can clear all of this up.” The senator was known for his powerful, persuasive speeches, his voice warm and soothing, echoing with the warmth of his southern upbringing, but not overpowered by it. He was what probably would have passed for nobility in America’s Deep South, had such a thing existed, and Gideon was in no way fooled by the affable manner or the smile.

The senator was playing a game, of that he had no doubt.

In the plain white room with bright lights reflecting harshly back at them, there was barely room for the four of them and Roberts took the time to look at Tank and Gideon in kind. It was so quiet, Gideon could hear the faint ticking of his watch.