“I only fight you when it’s necessary.” Or when it was going to wreck his head, heart, and life.
But he didn’t know that for sure, right? If she was offering what it felt like she was offering, the best thing Colt could do was take it. One night, maybe two. A few memorable romps, some mind-numbing sex, and he’d get this out of his system and be on his way.
Wouldn’t he?
“You’re going to miss the turn,” she said.
He wrenched the ATV to the right, turning into the path between the pines to the bog house. Dusk was coming fast, the trees blocking the setting sun almost completely. He parked at the side of the house, able to see the back porch where the entrance to the drainage pipes had been thoroughly examined by the other agents and blocked off with yellow tape.
“They left the front door unlocked,” he said. “Let’s go in that way.”
As they climbed the two steps to the tiny front porch, Vivi stopped and turned to look at the view. “This is exactly what that painting looks like,” she said, a little awe in her voice. “If she really painted that, then the woman has talent. She has heart.”
“She doesn’t seem like she has enough heart to fill in a coloring book,” Colt said, opening the door. “And for all we know, she could be sending us on a wild goose chase or worse.”
“Worse?”
“The house’ll blow up while we’re in it.”
Vivi froze with a gasp. “You think?”
“No, but keep the door open in case we have to run.”
After he did a thorough check of the tiny house, they went directly to the fireplace and started looking. It had been searched by the agents, but not cleaned out, so they might have missed whatever this key fit. If the key fit anything in the fireplace.
He felt around the mantel, but Vivi stepped right into the hole and looked up to the chimney, coughing a little.
“Can you lift me?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Looks like there’s something blocking the chimney, like a false wall. Maybe it locks. You’ll need to hold me up while I check it out.”
“I’ll go up there,” he said.
“Your shoulders won’t fit, stud.” She ducked out, a few soot marks on her cheeks. He brushed at one.
“You’re dirty already.”
“It’s a fireplace. Dirt is expected.”
“It’s cute.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You know, you haven’t called me cute since I donned the Cara clothes.”
“Only because I don’t want to make you mad.”
She grinned as they dragged the iron grate out of the way. “You live to make me mad.”
He wanted to kiss her. Right then and there, halfway in a fireplace, with dirt on her face and trouble in her eyes. He wanted to kiss her so much it actually hurt.
“Kneel down,” she said. “I’ll get on your shoulders.”
For a moment he didn’t move. He just stared at her smudged, cute face. He adored that face. It made his heart do stupid things. It used to just make his dick go off the deep end, but now—it was more than that.
Goddamn it all.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “All right, Lang, just let me have it.”
“Have what?” Because if she gave him the go-ahead, he would. Right now, right here, all night.
“I can tell you’re about to fight me on this again. I can always tell when you have that look in your eyes. You’re lining up an argument. What about this don’t you like, exactly?”
Nothing. He liked nothing about this. “I just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
She gave him a shove into the fireplace and onto his knees. “Then hold on to me and don’t let me fall.”
“All right.” Someone was going to fall, though. And he had a feeling it was going to be him.
He cradled his hands and helped her climb up, her knees braced against his shoulders, one of her hands flattened against the chimney wall to stay steady. With the other, she reached up and started feeling around the metal panel that closed off the chimney.
“It doesn’t move.”
“Push harder—they usually release with some pressure.”
She grunted, her weight pressing on him as she used all the force she had. “Nope. Let me see if I can find a—got it! Keyhole.” She stabbed into her jeans pocket and produced the key, then stretched to unlock and release the panel.
“How are you going to get up there?”
“On your shoulders.”
“That’s what I thought you might say.” He maneuvered her legs and she stepped up to his shoulders, her head popping through the hole.
“It’s a way into the rafters,” she said between coughs. “Disgusting, dark, abandoned and no doubt full of rat shit.”
“We can get someone up there tomorrow.”
“Like hell you can.” She grabbed hold of something and her weight lightened on his shoulders. “This is what the Guardian Angelinos do, dude.”
He laughed a little, his whole being warmed just by her. Her voice, her style, her reckless determination. He’d never met anyone like her. Anyone. This went past mourning for a woman he’d lost.
This was wanting a woman he might never have.
As she hoisted herself up, her weight disappeared from his shoulders. But something else pressed so heavily on him, he could hardly breathe.
“Long rolls of paper,” she announced, her voice muffled as she got deeper into the attic. “Looks like blueprints. Probably for the remodeling Joellen talked Cara out of because of nutcase mother. Just a wild guess.”
Two tubes came tumbling down to his feet.
“There’s something else up here. Hang on.” Her feet disappeared from view as she went farther.
“Be careful,” he said.
No answer.
“Vivi?”
Still no answer. “Vivi!”
“Relax, Lang.” She stuck her head through the opening, her words nearly lost in the rush of relief in his head. “I found something.”
“What?”
“A dead guy.”
Vivi shined the light of her phone on the skeleton, yellow white, and perfect in his form. This dude had clearly been dead awhile. There was not a remnant of skin or hair, only some tattered rags that might have once been clothes.
“Get the hell down here!” Lang ordered, all kinds of panic in his voice.
“I’m coming, believe me.” She scrambled to the edge, took one more look at Bones, then let her legs drop back into the lower half of the chimney. Her feet hit Lang’s shoulders and he eased her down and they both crawled out of the fireplace into the air.
She was shaking a little when he grabbed her and pulled her closer. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, but…” Was Lang shaking, too? Something had him unnerved. “I saw the remains, not you.”
“Let’s go. We’ll get CSI in here tomorrow morning. I have to call in—”
“No, wait.” The words were out before she really thought about why. “Let’s talk to Mercedes first.”
“Oh, we’ll talk to Mercedes. She practically led us here.” He was already pulling her toward the open door, carrying the blueprints she’d found in one hand. “She knows way more than she’s saying and I’m taking her in, whether it freaks her out to step into the open air or not.”
Something unsettled inside her. Something about Mercedes.
If you have a heart, you’ll leave this be.
“Why would she hide this?” Vivi said.
“Because she had something to do with it. Because he was murdered. Because her daughter—who she doesn’t admit is her daughter—is a famous movie star who also, I might add just for color, has some connection to a guy at the helm of a human trafficking ring.” He finally took a breath and got her out the door. “That could just be a dead Laotian farm worker up there. We’ll talk to her in an official capacity. And then we’ll put her ass in jail.”
“Let me talk to her, Lang.”
She didn’t argue, choosing instead to climb onto the ATV and hold him as he took them through the darkening night light, back to the house.
She’d just come face-to-face with a dead body and yet what troubled her most was Mercedes. Was this what had turned her into an agoraphobic? Vivi had to find out, and she knew she could, if Lang didn’t interfere.
They went to Mercedes’s apartment together, without even stopping for water, which she desperately needed. The woman opened her door with a look of sadness, and as soon as she saw the soot and dirt on Vivi, her shoulders slumped in resignation.
“Who was he?” Vivi asked before Lang could even get in there in his damn official capacity.
Mercedes clasped her hands, wringing them, pain distorting her face. “A farm worker.”
Behind her, she felt Lang tense. A Laotian farm worker, exactly as he’d predicted. But so far he’d stayed quiet, and Vivi took the lead.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
Mercedes backed up, silently inviting them into her cold, drab, dungeon of a world.
“No.” She swallowed hard. “Joellen did.”
“Why?”
She brushed an imaginary hair from her face, glancing from Vivi to Lang. “Could I talk to you alone?” she asked Vivi.
“No,” Lang said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Just tell us what happened.”
She shuddered a little and perched on the edge of her sofa. Vivi sat next to her, fighting the urge to reach out and calm the waves of dread and terror and pain rolling off her.
“Just tell us, Mercedes,” she said softly. “Please.”
Putting her hands to her mouth, she closed her eyes, obviously gathering scattered, wild thoughts. Her whole body trembled, all her cold control evaporating more with each passing second.
“I know you’re their mother, Mercedes.”
Her eyes flashed open for a second, then closed again. “I kept a shotgun for the possum and animals. Jo came home from school, and… shot him.”
Vivi stifled a slight gasp. “Why?”
“Because he was…” She barely managed a breath. “He attacked me.”
“Oh.” Vivi let out the word and lost the battle not to take Mercedes’s hand.
“I was alone in the house and he came in off the bog—it was out of season, just a few workers. He was looking for water and I got him some, even though I never liked to give the workers anything because—well, my husband was dead, and they could take advantage of me.” She ran out of breath.
Vivi squeezed her hand, her own throat closing, her stomach tightening, her intuition warning her to brace for the worst.
“He raped me.”
That was the worst. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, vaguely aware that her voice cracked.
“Joellen walked in while he was…” She looked down at the ground.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to say.”
“But I do,” she whispered. “I have to say it because my girl killed him with that shotgun and she shouldn’t be in trouble for that. But we had to hide him. And we had to leave because I was so scared and so… so…”
So ruined.
“We left. I took the girls and we left the bog and let the farm die out and then… I had to come back. It was the only place I could just hide.”
“But did you sell it while you were gone?” Lang asked.
“No.” She looked up at him. “I would never sell it.”
“So you still own the property.”
“I put it all in Cara and Joellen’s name years ago. Lawyers handled it. But it’s still in our family.”
Vivi and Lang shared a look. Could Chessie’s information be wrong? Why would Roman Emmanuel’s name be on the deed for the bog house and farm?
Mercedes took a long, slow breath. “Are you going to make me… go somewhere? Because… I can’t go outside.”
“Not tonight,” Vivi said gently, grateful that Lang didn’t contradict her. “When did you stop going outside, Mercedes?”
“It happened little by little,” she admitted. “Every day, after… that day… I could do less and less. Face less and less. I tried to get help, but the fears won out. When Cara became a star, she made it so I never had to go anywhere. I just do whatever my girls ask of me, because they made me safe.”
“Why don’t you tell anyone you’re their mother?”
“If it ever comes out, I’m afraid the bad publicity could ruin Cara. Her career, her life, her ability to watch out for Jo.” Mercedes tried to swallow. “Jo has her way of dealing with what she did.”
Booze. Everybody compensated somehow. Vivi hid, too, in her own way. Hid from the pain and fear, letting them win.
Wasn’t that what she’d done every time a man ever tried to get close to her?
She looked up at Lang, her heart filling. Every man except this one. He would be the one to break her out of her prison. She would not live like Mercedes, old and alone and without sunshine and air. Or sex and love. They were just as essential.
“It’s okay,” he said, holding up a hand as if he thought Vivi was about to launch into an argument. “She can stay. For tonight.”
He’d misread her expression. He thought she was pleading for Mercedes. But she was pleading for herself.
“Thank you,” she said to him, turning to the other woman. “Just rest now, Mercedes. Don’t worry. There’s no reason anyone in the world needs to know your secret. I promise.”
For the first time since they’d met, Mercedes smiled, her blue eyes blurred with unshed tears. “Thank you.”
Vivi reached out and hugged her stiff shoulders, and got a loose, light, partial embrace in response.
“Don’t let him win,” Vivi whispered into her ear.
And it was time she took that advice for herself.
CHAPTER 17
As they left the basement apartment, Vivi took Colt’s hand, threading her slender fingers between his, her gaze full of gratitude, affection, and intimacy. Or maybe that was just a reflection of everything he felt for her that moment.
“I really like it when you don’t fight me,” she said. “Thanks for letting me take the lead with her, when I know that’s not what you wanted to do.”
“You were very… gentle.” Masterful, in fact. Which only made him admire her more. “I don’t know why it took me so long to see it.”
“To see what?” she asked as they walked down the hall, toward the stairs.
“To see your tender side, your feminine side.” All the things he craved in a woman and had been so certain Vivi lacked.
She laughed softly, tugging him up the stairs. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, baby.”
He slowed his pace, then stopped with her two steps above him. She turned to meet him eye to eye.
“What happened to you in the last hour?” he asked.
Her smart-ass expression flickered away, and her whole face softened. “Other than finding a dead body and unearthing old secrets?”
“Yeah.” Because something was suddenly different in her. “You came… alive. Is that just because you love the search so much? The investigation and interrogation and digging up the truth?”
She smiled. “I’ve always liked that stuff—that’s why I do what I do. But, no, that’s not what changed in the last hour.”
“Then what did?”
She answered by putting her hands on his cheeks, bringing him closer until their lips nearly brushed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “I came alive. And you know what’s going to happen now that I am well and truly alive?”
Of course he knew what was going to happen, like he knew he was going to take his next breath. And he was going to love every single minute and deal with the aftermath later. Hell, maybe there wouldn’t be an aftermath.
“You’re going to kiss me?” he asked.
She let their lips touch j
ust enough to spark. “And then?”
“We’re going up to your room?”
She opened her mouth, let their breath exchange. “And then?”
“We’re taking a shower?”
She laughed into the kiss, flicked her tongue over his, added enough pressure to almost knock him backward off the stairs. “No dirty sex with you, ever.”
He pulled her into him, wrapping his arms around her and returning the kiss with maximum force. Her hands slid from his face, down to his neck, clinging for life as their tongues entwined and teeth touched.
“Plenty of dirty sex,” he said gruffly, his whole lower half hardening against her. “In the bathtub.”
“The bathtub?” She leaned back to get a good look at him. “Is this my rule-following, golf-playing, old-school traditionalist Colton Cautious Lang?”
“Yes, Vivi Poison Angelino. That’s who’s about to make love to you and damn the torpedoes.”
She giggled in his mouth. “Damn the torpedoes? Yes, this is definitely my Lang.”
Her Lang. “Move it.” He backed her up the stairs.
“We’re going to do it in the bath?”
“In the bath.” Two more steps. “On the floor.” One more step. “In the closet. On the bed. Against the wall. Hanging from the damn chandelier, if we can.” They reached the landing and he pushed her toward the door, his mouth on hers again. “Wherever the hell I can get inside you and stay there all night long.”
“Oh, yeah.” She practically melted in his arms, surrendering to the kiss and nearly tripping as he guided them into the room and locked the door behind him. “I love the way you roll, big bad Fed guy.”
He had to laugh at that, grabbing at her shirt to pull it up. She raised her arms and he stripped it off, reaching around to unhook her bra.
A grunt came from deep in his chest at the sight of her creamy, womanly body, his hands covering her instantly. He wanted to touch everything, kiss every inch, own every cell in Vivi’s body.
She gave it right back, electrified and hungry. They kissed and undressed, laughed, groaned, and gave each other assistance all the way to the bathroom, leaving a trail of T-shirt, shoes, jeans, underwear—the Glock he left on the dresser. The only thing he took was his wallet, for the condom he knew he had in it.
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