“Look at you.” Sam hung his arm around the dog’s neck and patted his side. “He’s so big now. Is he a good guard dog?”
“The best. Can’t you tell by the greeting he gave you?” She tugged on Chip’s collar. “C’mon, you silly boy.”
She widened the door, but Chip wouldn’t budge until Sam rose and strode over the threshold.
Shutting the door behind them, she placed the extra key on the table in the entryway and hung up her wet purse on the peg next to the umbrella she could’ve used earlier. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Just water.” He pulled the shirt of his uniform out of the waistband of his pants. “You know what I’d really like?”
Her heart fluttered and her mouth got dry as she watched Sam’s fingers undo the top button on his shirt. She couldn’t go there with him again, no matter how desperately her body yearned for his touch.
He raised an eyebrow. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to borrow your dryer for about twenty minutes before I go back to the station. This wet shirt is really uncomfortable.”
“Of course, yes.” She ducked down to pet Chip, letting her hair shield her warm face.
“The T-shirt, too?”
She glanced up at Sam, his shirt gaping open over a white V-neck T-shirt.
“I’m soaked to the skin.”
“No problem.” She scratched Chip behind one floppy ear. “I don’t have anything you can wear unless you want to put on a robe. It’s black but it does have flowers on it. I won’t take pictures, I swear.”
“It’s not exactly cold, is it? I’ll pass—not that I don’t trust you.”
She flicked her hair over her shoulder. What did he mean by that?
He shrugged out of his shirt and yanked at the hem of his T-shirt, peeling the wet cotton from his torso.
With the T-shirt over Sam’s head, Jolene drank in the sight of his lean, muscled body. Her fingertips tingled with the memory of his smooth, warm flesh and the need ached in her gut.
He pulled the shirt off his head, and she turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll get you that water and stuff those things in the dryer for you—as long as you don’t expect me to iron anything.”
“Lucky for both of us, the uniform doesn’t need ironing.” He followed her into the kitchen, holding his damp shirts in his hands in front of him, like an offering, facing her across the small center island.
“You can put those on the counter.” She nodded toward the island as she reached for the cupboard and grabbed a glass. “We never got to finish our chili, did we? Are you hungry?”
“I’ll pick up something on my way back to the station.” He perched on a stool, only his bare chest visible above the edge of the counter.
If anyone had told her this morning she’d have Sam Cross half-naked in her kitchen by the afternoon, she’d have...thanked them.
She filled the glass with ice and water from her fridge and set it before him with a tap on the counter. Wiggling her fingers, she said, “Why are you still holding those wet things? Give them to me.”
“Didn’t want to get your gleaming counter all wet.” He held out the bundle of clothes to the side, and she circled the island to take them, her gaze avoiding all that bare male flesh in front of her.
She took the shirts with both hands and walked back through the kitchen to the laundry room. “Perfect timing. I have some things in the wash that need to go in the dryer. We can save on electricity.”
“I don’t want my shirt to get your stuff dirty.”
“It’s fine. It’s just a few towels and...other things.” She tossed Sam’s shirts in the dryer and then piled her own clothes in after. She plucked a dryer sheet from the box and threw it in with the rest. She jabbed a few buttons, took a deep breath and returned to the kitchen.
“You never told me what you were doing in Paradiso? Some case you’re working?”
“Yeah, a case.” He ran the side of his thumb down the sweating glass. “And that’s why I want to thank you, Jolene.”
“Thank me?” She poked a finger into her chest. “For what? How did I help your case?”
Sam gulped back the rest of the water and smacked the glass on the counter. “By planting those bones at the construction site.”
Chapter Four
Sam narrowed his eyes, as he watched a rosy flush creep up Jolene’s face. She’d just confirmed his suspicions.
“You think I planted those bones at the construction site? That’s what you think I was doing there the other night?” Her long lashes fluttered with every blink of her eyes. “Wh-why would I do that?”
“C’mon, Jolene. What do you take me for?” He crossed his arms over his chest, probably losing a little of the high ground without his shirt. “You’re out there in the middle of the night, a shovel in the bed of your pickup and a set of bones appears on the day of the ground-breaking for a casino you detest.”
“That’s crazy.” She swept his glass from the counter and spun toward the sink. “Where would I get bones, anyway?”
“You’re a resourceful woman. I’m sure it didn’t take you long to figure out how to get your hands on a set of bones. And—” he leveled a finger at her “—you made sure we found the skull, because you knew it was there.”
Pulling back her shoulders, she tilted up her chin. “You can’t prove anything.”
“Give me a month or two, and I’m sure I could prove it.” He rested his arms on the counter and hunched his shoulders. “But I’m not interested in nailing you for planting bones. I’m not sure that’s even a crime.”
“Why not? Why even bring it up if you don’t care?” She set the glass in the sink and turned, gripping the edge of the counter behind her.
“I didn’t say I didn’t care. Didn’t I thank you for doing it?”
“You’re not making any sense. I’m not admitting to anything, but why should you be happy if someone left bones there?”
“Because that helps my case.” He scratched his jaw. “Can I have some more water, please? All this explaining is making me thirsty.”
“That’s funny. I don’t hear you explaining much of anything. You’re throwing around accusations and talking about some case. You still haven’t told me why you’re here.” She snatched up his glass from the sink, and his leftover ice tinkled as she filled it again.
“Missing people.”
Her hand jerked as she set the glass down, and the water sloshed over the side. “Missing people?”
Drawing an invisible line on the counter with this finger, he said, “There was a cluster of missing people southeast of San Diego at about the same time we saw an influx of a particularly pure form of meth, pink meth. We saw a similar pattern here in Paradiso from a few years ago. As I’d worked in this area before, my commander sent me here to look into it.”
“I don’t get it.” She dabbled her fingers in the puddle of water on the counter. “People go missing all the time. Why do these folks warrant closer scrutiny than all the other missing people?”
He formed a circle with both of his hands. “This is a cluster. It’s a higher than average number of people who have gone missing. They all disappeared close to the border—here and in San Diego—and they vanished at a time when we started seeing this new meth on the street.”
“How is the discovery of bones in the desert going to help your investigation?”
Sam rubbed his chin. “On the border in California, out in the desert, we found a graveyard of bones. We’re still identifying them, but so far they belong to the people who disappeared at the same time the pink meth showed up. It makes me think there’s a similar graveyard out here, and I want a chance to do some digging, literally, before that casino comes in and covers it all up.”
“What makes you think it’s in that location?” Jolene hugged herself and rubbed her arms.
He’d gladly hold her in his arms to do the hugging, but even though she’d been the one who had insisted he return to his pregnant wife, she hadn’t forgiven him for leaving...yet. He swallowed. “A tip I received.”
“You’re not going to tell me what it was?”
“I’d rather not, but now I can use the discovery of the bones you dumped there to turn this into more than a wild goose chase. Question.” He shoved his glass toward her and splayed his hands on the countertop. “What’s your plan once the experts figure out the bones you buried don’t belong to some ancient member of the Yaqui tribe? That the land is not a sacred Yaqui burial site?”
Her full lips parted, and her lashes swept over her eyes. Then she squared her shoulders and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. My goal was to halt the immediate ground-breaking—and I did.”
Progress. Sam eased out a breath. He’d had no proof that Jolene had planted the bones at the construction site, so the fact that she’d admitted it to him signaled a thaw in the icy chill she’d maintained since seeing him again.
“That you did.” He winked at her. “I’m not going to ask you where you got them because I know you have friends in high places...or at least academic places, but how’d you know the exact place to put them? They could’ve started digging anywhere.”
A small smile twisted her lips. “I have a map of the construction site, which includes phases, including where the first hole was going. It’s all very specific.”
“Let me guess.” He ran a hand over his chest, and Jolene’s gaze followed the movement like a feather across his skin. It made him hard. If just a look from her luminous dark eyes could do that to him, he was in more trouble than he’d expected coming back here.
“Yes? What’s your guess?” She quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Umm...” he shook his head “...that you got it from your cousin somehow.”
“I did. Gran is always using Wade’s phone. I took a peek at it, saw the plans and printed them out from his phone. I hadn’t formulated my scheme yet, but seeing those plans gave me a few ideas.” She snapped her fingers. “And it worked.”
“For now. It’s not going to take forensics long to figure out those bones are not part of a Yaqui graveyard, especially with Wade and his backers pushing for results.” He nudged a sleeping Chip with the toe of his boot, and the dog thumped his tail once.
“Nash Dillon? Do you think Nash will be pushing him?” She wrapped a lock of hair around her finger. “Do you think Nash can do anything to stop the casino? Would he?”
“I don’t know if he would or not. Most people around here think the casino is a good idea, Jolene.”
“Most people don’t have a father who was murdered out there.” Her bottom lip quivered, and Sam pushed up from the stool.
He skirted the counter and cupped her face with one hand. “I know. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry nobody was ever brought to justice for that crime. Is that the reason you’re against the casino?”
“If Joe Blackhawk were alive today, there would be no question of a casino going on that land.” She cinched his wrist with her fingers. “Don’t you see, Sam? The two events are linked. My father was murdered to clear the way for the casino.”
“What are you saying? You think Wade killed your father?”
“I don’t know.” She released his arm, made a half turn and braced her hands against the counter. “It’s like your missing people. It’s just too much of a coincidence.”
He reached out to touch her back, and then pulled away at the sound of the buzzer on the dryer. “The authorities put your father’s murder down to the drug trade—he saw something or someone he shouldn’t have seen out there.”
“I know what they say.” She straightened up and squeezed past him, her filmy blouse brushing against the bare skin of his chest. “I just don’t believe it.”
He watched the sway of her hips in the floral skirt as she walked away from him, and he squeezed his eyes closed. What would Jolene think of him if she knew he was consumed by visions of her in his bed while she was talking to him about her father?
“I don’t think you’re going to have much luck with Nash. His family business is part of some consortium that makes investment decisions over which he has little to no control. He just sits back and reaps the profits.”
She floated back into the kitchen with his shirts draped over her arm. “It was just an idea. Nash has always been so easygoing—and I know his fiancée’s father was also killed, in the line of duty. I thought she might be sympathetic.”
“I’m sure she would be. I’m sure they both would be, but like I said, Nash is carried along with the business with little control over the decisions. His parents set it up that way, as neither Nash nor his sister had much interest in the day-to-day running of the corporation.”
She dangled his shirts from her fingertips. “All dry.”
As he swept them from her grasp, a pair of black lacy panties loosened from his T-shirt and drifted to the floor. He plucked them up between two fingers and waved them in the air. “Damn, busted. I didn’t think I’d taken these off, too.”
She snatched them back from him and crumpled the silky material in her fist. “Very funny. I told you I put your things in with my laundry.”
Chuckling, he pulled the warm T-shirt over his head. As he poked his head out of the neck, he said, “I think I can help you with the second part of your plan.”
“You’re going to use the discovery of the bones to launch an investigation into that construction area as a possible burial site for those missing people.”
“Exactly.” He shook out his uniform shirt and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. “It won’t carry the same weight as a sacred site, but it will definitely cause delays in the construction.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to tell anyone that I dropped those bones there?” She swept her tongue along her bottom lip.
“Why should I? The interruption you caused will give me some time to poke around that land. Then when forensics discovers the bones are...whatever they are, I’ll have another reason to halt the project. Maybe I’ll make a similar discovery in Paradiso as we did south of San Diego.” He put his finger to his lips. “And you won’t tell anyone about my plans, either, right?”
“My lips are sealed.”
He stuck out his hand. “Then we have a deal.”
“Deal.” She curled her hand around his, her smooth flesh sending tingles up his arm.
She started to pull away, but he held fast, running the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand. “How have you been, otherwise? You look good.”
She left her hand in his. “I’m fine. I still enjoy my work. The extended family is doing well. Chip’s my constant companion.”
He’d already asked around about Jolene’s marital and dating status, and he’d been relieved to find out she was single and not dating anyone special. He squeezed her hand before releasing it. “Happy?”
“Outside of the garbage going on with the casino? Yeah, happy. And you? What happened to your marriage?”
He shrugged. “What didn’t happen? I knew it was doomed the minute I moved back there...or at least after the birth of Jess.”
“Aimee didn’t change after Jess was born?” Jolene placed a hand against her heart.
“Nope—still the life of every party.”
“Is she still using?” Her fingers curled against her blouse. “Not while she was pregnant?”
“She stopped at first, but I think she was taking drugs at the end.” He slammed a fist on the counter. “I should’ve seen it, but she hid it from me. Lied.”
“And Jess?” Jolene’s eyes widened. “Is she okay?”
“She was premature and low birth weight. She’s been a little slow with certain milestones. That’s when I knew for sure Aimee had b
een using, even though she still denied it. She made a show of attending NA meetings, but that all fell apart when I followed her once and caught her in some guy’s car smoking meth after the meeting.”
“Oh, my God, Sam. I didn’t realize it was so bad. What about Jess now? Is she with Aimee?”
“Aimee’s mother is staying at the house while I’m gone. Aimee dumps Jess on her mom most of the time it’s her turn to have her, anyway. I can trust Aimee’s mom. Jess is in good hands.”
“That must be so hard on you, Sam. So hard for Jess.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
He flinched. He didn’t want Jolene back because she felt sorry for him.
“It’s my fault. I should’ve known what I was getting into when I married Aimee, but then I was her partner in crime in those days.”
“But you changed. You gave up the drinking. You grew up, and she didn’t.” Jolene tucked her hair behind one ear. “Do you think you could ever get full custody of Jess? Is that something you’d want to do?”
“I’ve started looking into it. We’ve been separated over a year, and the divorce was finalized a few months ago.” He held up two fingers. “I swear.”
“I believe you.” She dipped her head once. “Maybe you could give me a ride to Gran’s house, so I can pick up my car. I don’t know what she was thinking taking off like that.”
“I hope she wasn’t feeling ill.” Sam flicked his shirt off the chair, not unhappy with the abrupt change of subject, and punched an arm through one sleeve. Granny Viv was most likely scheming to get him and Jolene back together. She was always solidly rooting for the two of them—until he’d betrayed Jolene by lying about the last time he and Aimee had slept together.
He hadn’t thought that detail would matter. He’d been trying to make himself more marketable to Jolene by distancing himself from his marriage. He never dreamed Aimee would get pregnant, especially as she’d assured him she’d been on the pill during her recovery.
That had been one of the hardest things he’d had to do in his life—tell Jolene that the wife he was separated from, the wife he supposedly hadn’t been intimate with since their separation six months before, was three months pregnant with his baby.
Buried Secrets Page 4
