Whispers at Midnight (26 page)

“Have a nice life,” she said, giving him another of those saccharine smiles, apparently not one whit discomposed by his rocketing fury.
Then, while he swore and stomped and shook his head and splattered icy droplets all over the place, she set her now-empty cup down on his desk and turned her back, clearly intent on marching right out the door.

“I don’t think so.”

He grabbed her by the waist, not sure what he meant to do but knowing that he was not just going to let her walk out with that smug little smirk while he stood there like a cold, dripping, lemon-scented fool. But she solved his problem for him by suddenly swinging around in his hold, no longer smiling that maddening smile but now as furious as he was, her eyes blazing, that soft wide mouth tense and thinner than he could ever remember seeing it as she stretched herself up to her full sixty-two inches of height and matched him glare for glare.

“Did I say your romantic technique sucks?” She started out low but by the last word she was yelling at him, so mad that she was practically jumping up off the floor as she sought to get in his face. His hands were on her hipbones and to keep her down he had to tighten his grip and put a little weight into it. “That’s not the only thing that sucks. You suck, Matt Converse. Did you hear me?
You
suck.”

Suddenly it struck him as almost funny, Carly so small and cute and madder than he had ever seen her, shooting sparks all over the place and grabbing hold of his shirtfront and screaming at him, while he, almost twice her weight and a foot taller and a uniformed officer of the law, for God’s sake, stood there with his head soaked in lemonade doing his best to hold her off.

God, he’d missed her. God, he wanted her. Wet and cold and sticky as he was, furious as he’d been until just a second or so before, he was suddenly consumed by an attack of lust so fierce that the sheer ache of it was almost enough to bend him double. What he wanted to do right at that moment more than he had ever wanted to do anything in his life was kiss her senseless and sweep his arm across the top of his desk and lay her down on it and—

“Who do you think you are, that you can treat people like that? That you can treat
me
like that? I—”

She was in full spiel, and he cut her off by the simple expedient of kissing her.

She tasted like lemonade, but the inside of her mouth was hot so it was hot lemonade, hot and sweet lemonade and he couldn’t seem to get enough of it, so he slanted his mouth across hers and thrust his tongue deep, taking her mouth as his body wanted to take hers. His arms closed around her and he pulled her so tight up against him that he could feel her nipples poking into his chest even through the layers of their clothes. He could feel the soft curve of her mound pressing against him, the whole intoxicating female shape of her, the heat of her, the sudden shivery yieldingness of her as she let go of his shirt and wrapped her arms around his neck and melted against him and started kissing him back.

His heart pounded. His blood turned to pure steam. He was on fire for her, burned for her, had to have her. She wouldn’t stop him, he knew, knew she was his for the taking, that all he had to do was …

Kissing her greedily, he bent her back over his arm, ready to sweep her up and carry her to his desk and lay her down and damn the consequences.

A collective gasp made him open his eyes at just about the same instant as her ridiculous cap fell off.

Matt found himself looking at all three of his sisters, as well as Antonio, Shelby, Collin, the Andy kid he’d kicked out of his house only a couple of nights before, and the Craig guy that Dani had been dating. They were crowded around the open doorway, some of them inside, some of them still outside in the street with passersby thronging past behind them. To a person their eyes were wide and their mouths were agape.

Shit.

Carly obviously realized that something was amiss, because she went all tense and quit kissing him just about a nanosecond before he straightened both of them back up, pulled his mouth from hers and lifted his head. His instinct was to shield her, to protect her from the curiosity and amusement and in one case at least outright hostility of their audience, but she was already looking around and it was too late
for that and anyway, short of trying to stuff her up under his shirt, there wasn’t much of anything he could do. The lights were bright, the room was open, and there was no possible way to mistake who was who and what was what.

“Sorry,” Erin offered weakly just as, from the corner of his eye, Matt became aware that their largest audience was not their only one. Anson was sitting bolt upright in his bunk observing them with evident amazement. Glancing around even farther, he found Sandra watching with what looked very much like awe.

Matt couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt embarrassed. It was so long ago that he couldn’t immediately pull the occasion to the forefront of his mind. But being caught passionately kissing a woman while lemonade dripped from his hair and his clothes was enough to make him recall with perfect clarity how it felt.

Carly discovered their audience and said, “Oh, hi,” with what he considered really admirable aplomb. Of course, being fair-skinned, her embarrassment was less easy to conceal than his. The degree of mortification she felt was easy to gauge as her face turned almost the color of her shirt. She let go of his neck and pushed at his chest in a discreet but imperative signal that she wanted him to let her go.

He would have. He really would have. He agreed with her one hundred percent that stepping away from each other at this moment was the correct thing to do. Unfortunately, he had a problem. There in that open room with the fluorescent overhead fixtures providing merciless light, without her to shield him it was going to be obvious to even the most casual observer just how turned-on he was.

Which should ratchet up the embarrassment quotient considerably for all concerned.

“Want to give us a minute here?” Matt asked with as much ease as he could muster.

At just about that same time Carly shoved harder against his chest in a silent demand to be released and Erin said, “Uh, we’ll just come back.”

Matt’s appreciation for his sister increased tenfold as she managed to shepherd the largest part of his audience back out through the door. Of course, that still left Anson and Sandra as interested onlookers,
but there wasn’t much he could do about them. He therefore elected to ignore them.

“Curls, look,” he began seconds after the door clicked shut, gazing down at the woman he still held in his arms. She was glaring fiercely up at him, he saw with some surprise, notwithstanding the hot, heavy and absolutely, without a doubt, totally mutual kiss they had so recently shared.

“Jackass,” she said, kicking him in the shin. Then she pulled herself out of his arms and stomped off toward the door.

“Ow!” That hurt. Matt hopped backward, grabbing at his leg. Seeing where she was headed, he straightened and went after her, limp and all. “Carly, what the
hell?”

“I never want to see you again as long as I live. Just stay away from me, do you hear?” She threw a nasty look over her shoulder at him.

“What?”

She answered with her feet and he was too slow to catch her before she whisked herself out the door. Remembering the audience that probably still lurked on the sidewalk and not wanting to make any more of a fool of himself than he had already, he stopped short and watched as the door shut in his face.

“Goddammit,” he said bitterly, hobbling back toward his desk. His leg hurt, his self-respect hurt, and he was wet and sticky and suddenly aware of how very cold the air-conditioning really was. Without realizing it he put his foot down on the lemon half and slid precariously, recovered without quite going down, then kicked the offending thing into a wall. When it bounced and ended up on top of a pile of very important papers on his desk, he faced the fact that the night had somehow gone to hell on a slide and let loose with a string of curses the likes of which he hadn’t put together in years.

“Thanks for letting me use the bathroom,” Sandra said. Damn, he’d forgotten all about her, Matt realized, and Anson too. She sidled on past him, eyeing him as if she feared he was losing it, and cast a single, assessing glance at the cooler before apparently deciding it wasn’t worth it. Then she, too, was out the door.

“And I thought
I
had woman trouble,” Anson said as Matt turned to grimly eye the mess Carly had left behind. Glancing around, Matt
discovered that his prisoner was shaking his head at him. “My woman trouble is nothing compared to the woman trouble you got, believe me.”

“Shut up, Anson,” Matt said. “Or I’ll take you home to your wife.”

Spying Carly’s cap lying upside down on the floor, he scooped it up, walked over to his desk, deposited it beside Carly’s now empty cup and surveyed the damage to his documents. The lemon half rested on top of an arrest warrant scheduled to be served first thing in the morning. On such a document, the dried remains of a wet, citrusy circle should be barely even noticeable. Or at least, if it was noticed, no one would know what the hell it was. With that comforting thought, Matt gingerly picked up the offending piece of squashed and sticky fruit and dropped it into the trash. Then he headed into the back for a mop.

18

W
AS THE DAMNED
woman never alone? The man stayed back, in the dark, watching as Carly Linton came around the front of the van she’d been driving. His heart pounded, his breathing quickened, and his palms grew moist. From adrenaline, he knew. He felt like a hunter catching sight of his prey. He was primed, ready to take her down—but then that other woman, that big black woman, slid out of the passenger seat to join her.

He gritted his teeth in frustration. Two was too many. Even if the other woman had been as petite as Carly, he still would have made himself hold off. Grab one, the other would run off screaming. Of course, this place was isolated, and it was late at night and dark, except for right up there around the house. If he attacked now, while they were still down near the road…

But no. That would be stupid. All the other obstacles in his path had been removed. Carly was the last one.

He would remove her too. When the time was right. When luck turned his way again, as it was bound to do.

But in the meantime he would have to be careful. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her, so that she would start looking over her shoulder. He had already scared her into getting new locks and an alarm system for her house, although that had been a complete accident
on his part. At the time he hadn’t even known she was anywhere around. The amusing thing was, he hadn’t even had to attempt another break-in to find out about the new security precautions. He couldn’t help but laugh. He had come by the knowledge in a far simpler way.

But his new knowledge left him with a problem. If breaking into the house was no longer an option—at least, not an easy one—he would have to catch her unawares outside the house.

He’d suspected that she would go to the fireworks display. Most of the town usually did. So he’d gone to it himself, and had actually seen her there. He’d thought about following her on the off chance that she would wander off somewhere on her own, but then he’d realized that there were too many people; the chance that he would be seen was too high.

Instead he’d left early and taken up position in her yard. It would be much easier, much safer to grab her when she came home.

If she came home alone.

Which she hadn’t, of course.

On a positive note, the dog didn’t seem to be anywhere around. At least, he hadn’t seen it, and he hadn’t heard it barking. Maybe it had wandered away. Or maybe the coyotes had finally picked it off.

Maybe that was a sign that his luck was turning up again.

Maybe, if he really applied himself, he’d be able to spirit Carly away from a locked-up-tight house without setting off the alarm system.

If he could pull that off, Benton would really have something to talk about.

19