Deeper Than Need: A Secrets & Shadows Novel

by Shiloh Walker

  “I heard about Lee,” Noah said after a minute.

  “Preach, you don’t need to be worrying about me any,” Hank said, his voice slow and raspy. “You got enough worrying, trying to take care of half the town the way you do. I’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t worry about half the town.”

  With a halfhearted smile Hank murmured, “Just about. How many nights you stay up late trying to take care of those kids on those forums?”

  “I don’t pay that much attention.” Restless, he shrugged. “Hank, why are you here? Go on home to Tina. You got a good man who can help with your crew for a day or two and I’ll help out as much as I can. They’re doing fine right now. Why don’t you take a day or two, let your mind settle, okay?”

  “Let my mind settle.” He nodded slowly. “I could do that. Maybe. But I can’t stop seeing it. Why…?”

  Abruptly he clapped his hands over his eyes like that might block out some horror that only he could see.

  Noah wished he could take it from Hank. The man had enough nightmares to last him a lifetime. He’d never gone into detail about what had happened or who had done it, but a few times they’d talked. Some bad things had been done to him as a boy. Very bad. Noah would like to make somebody pay for that, but by the time Hank ever mentioned it years had passed and the man wouldn’t give up a single name.

  The nightmares, though, Noah knew the man had nightmares. More than anybody should ever have to bear. He didn’t need any more.

  Rubbing his palms together, Noah blew out a breath. Finally, he looked over at the other man. “Hank, if you’re looking for answers, you know there are times when there just aren’t any. Looking for them isn’t going to make this any easier for you to understand.”

  Hank’s shoulders, wide and sturdy, shuddered as he gulped in a ragged breath of air. “Why did he take off running like that? I just don’t get it.”

  Noah had finally gotten a full recount of what had happened last night, thanks to one of the EMTs who’d worked the scene. They attended church together and the EMT had been nursing a cup of coffee at the café before he went home to try to sleep. The knowledge didn’t make it any easier to know what to say to Hank, though.

  Sometimes there just wasn’t any easy. Nothing about death was supposed to be easy, though.

  “The only man who could answer that question for you isn’t with us anymore, Hank. But it’s a good possibility that he just wasn’t thinking. Lee had a history of trouble. You know that as well as I do. Whatever possessed him to go into Trinity’s house last night? I guess he didn’t want to get caught. He spent a long time running from whatever demons he had. Last night, they were running a little faster than normal.”

  “Running from his demons…” Hank closed his eyes. “This fucking town. It’s lousy with them.”

  The venom in Hank’s voice caught Noah off-guard.

  “Hank, what happened last night was an accident. The Tremble kids—”

  “Fuck it. I ain’t talking about those kids.” Hank surged upright. “Stupid mistake and now they live with that stupid mistake their whole lives, although their dad was told time and again he needed to get them in line. He didn’t and now what? A man is dead, they were drunk when they hit him … but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  He turned and stared off down the street. His mouth flattened out into a thin, straight line and rage seemed to pour from him. “Monsters,” he muttered. “They are every-fucking-where you turn here, Noah. I need to get the hell away from here. Me, my wife, my kids…”

  He slid Noah a look. “If you were smart, you’d get the hell out of this town, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  A car came idling down the road, a long, black town car, the windows tinted, the paint polished to a mirror shine. It slowed just a bit as Hank turned his head and glared hard in the direction of the driver’s window.

  Then Hank looked back at him. “Nothing, Preach. My head’s fucked up. That’s all. I gotta get out of here. Walk home. Get some air. I’ll be back on the job tomorrow, make sure we get our part of the project finished.” He nodded and turned away, striding down the street, shoulders rigid, hands jammed in his pockets.

  * * *

  “Think he’ll be all right?”

  Noah looked over his shoulder and saw Trinity a few feet away. She held a white bag in her hand.

  “I thought you-all were getting some lunch.”

  “We did … to go.” She smiled a little as Micah swung their hands.

  “We’re going to go eat by the fountain,” Micah said. “You can come if you want.”

  “I’d love to, but I’m already running behind today, Rocketboy.” Noah gazed down the street, but Hank was already out of sight. What had he been going on about? “Maybe we can do a rain check.”

  “What’s a rain check?”

  “It means we’ll do it some other time,” Trinity murmured, stroking his hair back. She bent down and murmured in his ear, pointing to the window of the bookstore.

  Micah’s eyes rounded and he took off, running to press his face against the glass.

  “You are a pro at misdirection,” Noah mused.

  “Comes with the job.” She studied him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve had better days. But I’ll be all right.”

  She nodded. “What about your friend Hank? Will he be okay? He was looking pretty rough.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was.” Still slumped on the bench, Noah rubbed his hands down his face. “Those two were friends a long, long time.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Lee?” Noah glanced up at her. “Not so much. Just to say hi is all. But he was close to Hank.” Sighing, Noah forced himself to stand up. It seemed like he’d aged twenty years in the past twenty minutes. “I need to get back to work.”

  “You forgot your phone.”

  Noah looked back, eyed the phone on the bench. “It’s not mine.” It looked familiar, but he didn’t think it was Hank’s. He picked it up and tucked it into his pocket. “I’ll check with Hank, make sure it’s not his. If it’s not, I’ll turn it in to the police once I’m done for the day. They can figure out who it belongs to.”

  Trinity leaned in.

  His heart stopped beating, for one painful moment, and then it slammed against his ribs, doing double time, as she pressed her lips to his cheek. “You try and take it easy if you can,” she murmured. “You look like you’re having a rough one there, Noah.”

  A rough one … maybe that was why he did it. Reaching up, he touched his fingers to her cheek when she went to pull away. She stilled.

  The voice of reason, rational thinking, restraint … the voice Noah expected to hear whispering to him from the back of his mind was silent as he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers.

  Just a light, easy kiss. Almost impersonal.

  Impersonal … if anything could be impersonal when a man had spent so many nights dreaming about a woman. If anything could be impersonal when the heat of her skin reached out to tease him, even though inches separated them and the scent of her, sweet woman and lavender, rose up to taunt him. If anything could be impersonal when her lips parted on a gasp and he caught the first hint of her taste.

  If anything could be impersonal when he lifted his head and saw her staring up at him, her gaze smoldering, smoking, as if it held all the heat of the sun. It was almost too much and he had to fight to keep from hauling her back against him.

  Another kiss, just one more, he thought.

  Deeper, harder—

  A car sped by and he heard Micah’s voice bounce off the glass as the boy called for his mother, but the words made no sense.

  Trinity licked her lips, her lids drooping down to shield her lashes.

  Aw, now that wasn’t helping at all. “It just got a little bit better,” he murmured, stroking his thumb over the path her tongue had taken.

  She eased back, a slow blush rising up to stain her cheeks pink. But she didn�
��t look away.

  “Should I apologize?” he asked.

  She reached up and closed her hand around his wrist. “I’m hoping you won’t. If you do, my day is probably going to take a turn for the worse.” She squeezed lightly and then let go.

  Before she turned away, she gave him a faint smile.

  Then she was gone, catching Micah’s hand in hers before they disappeared into the bookstore.

  Well. That had been unplanned as all get-out, Noah thought.

  But all in all, it went pretty well.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was just a kiss.

  A simple kiss.

  That was what she told herself as she got ready the next morning. Just a kiss. Didn’t have to mean anything. It definitely didn’t mean she had to stand in her borrowed bedroom, fussing with her clothes, while her belly went tight and her breasts ached just thinking about that simple, mind-blowing kiss. Her hands had gone all damp and sweaty, from that simple kiss.

  “If you don’t quit thinking about it, you’re going to be a mess when you go in there,” she muttered as she pulled her bra on. She was already a mess, as evidenced by the way her nipples all but stabbed into her bra as she adjusted it. The tips were so sensitive, the silk felt like a new form of torture, and she was glad she’d switched to padded bras a long time ago.

  She slid out of the bathroom a few minutes later, allowing herself only a couple of extra minutes in front of the mirror. It’s not a date. I’m going to work.

  Of course, she’d already gone to work three days that week. But she’d told Noah he really needed to get caught up and he said if she needed to do a little extra at first to get him caught up that was fine.

  She wasn’t going in purely to see him.

  He needed to get his office straightened out.

  “We gotta go to work again?”

  Micah lay flopped on the bed, his head upside down, and the look on his face was pure torment.

  “We?” She lifted a brow at him. “I think you go and play. And I work.”

  “But it’s boring.”

  “Life will somehow manage to go on.” She passed by the bed and reached over, poked him in the belly. “It will get better once we can go home and you have more of your toys you can take with you, okay?”

  He rolled over and stared at her, his mouth puckered in an unhappy scowl. “When do we go home?”

  She sighed. “Soon. We were just waiting for the door and a few other things.”

  She’d have to ask Noah about that. And soon. He had so much he was dealing with, but she couldn’t take advantage of Ali’s kindness forever.

  * * *

  “You don’t look like you slept.” Trinity eyed Noah as he came into the shop, his eyes heavy, his face shadowed with a light growth of beard.

  Just the sight of him made her heart race. Okay, thinking about him did that, but he looked particularly … biteable today. Whether it was the stubble, the taut look on his features or the memory of that kiss she could almost feel she didn’t know.

  He paused in the door, his gaze meeting hers for a long, lingering moment before dropping, ever so briefly, to linger on her mouth.

  Her heart jumped up to her throat.

  Under the table, she closed her hand into a tight, clenched fist as need settled low in her belly, vicious and hot.

  This … this was so messed up.

  Why in the world did the first man she’d noticed in years have to be somebody like him? It wasn’t as if Noah was the sort she could just have over for a night and then be done with it.

  She wasn’t ready for anything more than that, and even if she was, one night wasn’t going to do it.

  She’d seen the way he looked at her.

  She knew how she felt when she looked at him.

  This wasn’t a one-night, get-it-out-of-your-system kind of thing. It wasn’t a friends-with-benefits thing, either.

  She hadn’t felt friendly about Noah since day one.

  There you are. I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?…

  Everything in her entire world had just realigned when she had seen him. That very first time. Everything had changed when she looked at him.

  But the thought of anything more terrified her.

  He took another step and she shifted in the chair, her chest aching because she’d been taking nothing but shallow breaths since he’d come into the room.

  “I didn’t sleep much,” he finally said, his voice low, rougher than normal. His gaze traveled up and their gazes locked once more.

  Silence drew out, heavy and tight, while she fought the insane urge to crawl over the desk and just wrap herself around him. Kiss him again, a deeper kiss. A real one. Cup his face in her hands and feel the scrape of his stubble against her palms, maybe her neck, the curves of her breasts, as he bent his head down to kiss her.

  “I—”

  The phone rang and she jumped. A nervous laugh escaped her and she only felt a little better to see the dull flush creeping over Noah’s cheek. It was oddly charming. He was blushing. How … adorable.

  The phone rang again.

  She looked at the caller ID and grimaced. Talk about a splash of cold water. “It’s the detective … ah, Sims.”

  Noah shrugged. “I’m not awake enough to talk to him yet. I’ll call him back later.” He dropped into the chair across from hers, a heavy sigh escaping him as he rubbed his eyes.

  “So how much sleep did you get?” she asked softly.

  “A few hours. Spent some time over at Hank’s last night. Other stuff I’m handling. Then…” He shrugged as his voice trailed off. “Just couldn’t sleep.” He flicked a look at her, a faint smile on his face. “You won’t believe it, but this is normally a very boring, quiet town. The past few weeks are not the normal around here.”

  “I hope not. I … well.” She shrugged. “I was able to deal with the body they found in the car they pulled out of the river. That’s weird, but we see stuff like that in New York, so I could handle that. But lately, I’m starting to feel like I moved to Amityville or something.” She managed to uncurl her hands from the armrests and leaned forward, striving for a casualness she didn’t quite feel. Looking down, she studied the pile of work on her desk. Invoices. She needed him to sign off on them. She grabbed the file and went to give it to him as a shadow fell over her desk.

  Looking up, she met his eyes.

  Those dark, hypnotizing eyes.

  Why was he so damned beautiful?

  Why did he have to dominate almost every other thought she had?

  Why did she have these insane urges to just throw the invoices across the room and crawl across the desk and curl herself around him? She wanted to see what he’d do if she pressed her lips to his and kissed him again. Really kissed him.

  Heat flared in his eyes and the intensity of that gaze set her blood to boiling and she was already having trouble thinking. She was still having trouble even breathing.

  “Ah…” She licked her lips and looked away from him before she lost her mind. Still clutching the folder full of invoices, she pushed it into his hand. “Here. If you want to take a look at some of these, I’ll get them sent out.”

  He took them and rose, moving to settle behind the other desk. His sigh drifted through the room; then he mumbled something.

  “Pardon?”

  He just shrugged. “Ignore me. I get by doing as little paperwork as I can and then have to spend hours on the weekend trying to fix things. You come in and get things straightened up in no time. You really do know your way around an office.”

  “Told you.” She tried, and even managed, a casual smile. “I wouldn’t even begin to call this place straightened up, though. Not even close.”

  “Closer than it was. I’d forgotten about some of these.” He grimaced and flipped through them, scrawling his initials down at the bottom. “Were you able to check and make sure nothing got taken or damaged the other night?”

  “Yes.” She lifted a brow.
“I also noticed that the door had already been replaced. I thought that was going to be one of the last things.”

  Noah shrugged. “I went out there to work on the floor for a while with the crew. Lee … well. He tore the old door and the frame up pretty bad when he went in. Since we had to replace it anyway, we went ahead and just put the new one in.”

  “You don’t need to be killing yourself with sixteen-hour days out at my place right now, you know. Is that why you’re so tired?”

  “Nah. I don’t always sleep well anyway.” He continued flipping through the folder, signing off on invoices, making a note occasionally, scowling every so often. “How in the world did I forget that one? Anyway, mostly I’m worn-out because I was out so late at Hank’s. I think he’ll be okay. Planning on working today.”

  “Is it going to be a problem on the job if he took a few days?”

  “He’s got a small company. If he’s not there to keep things going…” Noah shrugged. “His crew can hold it together a day or two without him, but beyond that? I don’t know. They don’t get paid if they aren’t working. I could try to cover for a bit, but Hank doesn’t want to hear it anyway. He’d probably do better if he got his mind off it.”

  Noah stopped signing for a minute, staring down at the sheets of paper in front of him, but she knew he wasn’t seeing the numbers or anything else. He just shook his head. “I know I wouldn’t want to sit around and keep seeing that.”

  Trinity felt a little queasy, just thinking about it, herself.

  “I had to talk to the cops,” she said softly, glancing over at the room where Micah was playing. “Ali kept an eye on Micah for me while I went over there and spoke with Detective Sims.”

  Noah lifted a brow. “He got much to say?”

  “No. He’s just hung up on the idea that I somehow had some sort of connection to Lee Brevard.” She winced. “That sounds terrible, considering what happened after. The detective said he had to be there when I went through the house. I wasn’t there too long, but it doesn’t look like anything was taken. He asked about the door.”

  Noah cocked a brow. “The door?”

  “Yeah. Said it looked new. I told him it was and let it go at that.”