A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense

by EC Sheedy

  “Yeah. Okay.” The older man pulled himself a few feet down the hall to where the three of them huddled, Trent like a rag doll, Camryn and Kylie in a tight hug.

  Dan checked the gun. Two rounds left. He was damn sure the shooter was gone, but he intended to take a look anyway. He glanced around; except for a couple of decorative panels in the front door, a combination of obscure and stained glass, there were no windows, no sightline into the hall. He went to the phone stand, grabbed the phone, and brought it back and handed it to Camryn. “Call 911.”

  She nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take a look.”

  “You think that’s smart?” Her voice was a little high, he noticed, but nowhere near panic. Good.

  “I think it’s probably a waste of time. I’m pretty sure your dad’s wild-west routine scared them off. But it won’t hurt to make sure.”

  Camryn, hugging a sobbing Kylie to her breast, looked as if she were going to protest but then said, “There’s some security lighting between the porch and garage. The switch is outside the door. To your left.”

  “Okay. Make that call.”

  To Camryn it seemed as if the police were there in seconds. She guessed they didn’t get too many shootings on North Lake Washington in the middle of the week. They were fast enough that they picked Dan up outside the house—with her father’s gun dangling from his hand. Her heart had stopped when they’d walked him into the house, guns drawn, while Dan calmly explained the situation and waited for her and her father’s corroboration.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said to Dan, feeling numb and sounding stupid. She should have noticed before. His shirtsleeve was soaked with blood. She walked over to him and took his hand; the blood had dripped down to between his fingers.

  “It’s a scrape. We’ll deal with it when this is over.”

  “We’ll deal with it now,” she said. “Can you hold Kylie?”

  He took Kylie with his good arm, kissed her cheek. “Always.”

  Kylie, sucking her thumb, something Camryn hadn’t ever seen her do before, put her head on Dan’s shoulder.

  Camryn headed for the bathroom, where she foraged for her meager first-aid supplies and did some steady breathing to calm herself down. Hurrying back to the living room, she saw Dan still in conversation with the officer. He continued answering questions while she tore away his shirtsleeve. She took a good look. He was right; it wasn’t much more than a scrape from the grazing heat of a bullet intended for . . . who? She shuddered, concentrated on the job at hand, and started patching him up as best she could.

  “And you have no idea who might have fired the bullets?” the officer asked Dan for at least the third time.

  “Nope,” Dan answered, wincing when Camryn applied antiseptic, then a bandage on his upper arm.

  “Nor you, ma’am? This is your house, I understand. No neighbor problems? Kid problems? Anything like that?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help, but I haven’t a clue.”

  He flipped his notebook shut. “Okay.” He nodded at Dan’s arm. “Best get that looked at. Gunshots, even minor ones like that, can get infected.”

  Dan nodded, put his hand over the bandage.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, but I could use a glass of water.”

  When she handed him the water, she took Kylie from where she was sitting on his lap and watched him down half the glass. “Thanks.”

  The police worked the property for another good hour; she could see their flashlights crisscrossing over her poor excuse for a lawn and farther out along the lake shore.

  By the time they left, Kylie had finally fallen asleep in Camryn’s arms, and even though her arms ached from her weight, she momentarily resisted when Dan finally came to take her. He placed Kylie on the sofa and put a blanket over her. Unable to let her go, Camryn sat at the other end of the sofa, one hand resting on her tiny, purple-socked feet.

  She could have been killed.

  Kylie could have been taken from her. Terror, until now submerged by events, rose and settled into her brain. Paralyzed her. Through the open doorways of the living room and hall, she had a view of her kitchen. Her mouth dust-dry, she stared unseeingly through the glass teeth now framing her shattered window and into the darkness beyond.

  She grew cold, colder . . . Overwhelmed by the sick, sharp truth that she couldn’t have protected her child. There was nothing she could have done to stop the evil beyond the glass. She rubbed her arms, tried to warm them.

  Dan picked up a soft napping blanket from the chair across from Kylie and draped it over Camryn’s shoulders, squeezed. “Can I get you something?” He sat on the arm of the chair, put his hand on her upper back and rubbed gently.

  “No, I’m fine. Thanks.” She pulled the blanket tight, welcomed the warmth of it . . . and welcomed his touch. “All I want is for this to be over. Better yet, to have had it never happen.” She looked up at him. “Who could have done such a thing? And why?”

  “The police think it’s a random shooting. Maybe kids on a boat coming off the lake, leaving the same way.”

  “What do you think?”

  His face turned hard. “I don’t think there’s anything random about it.”

  “You can’t— You think it has something to do with Adam.” Her mind closed over the idea, but couldn’t take it in.

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “If that’s what you think, why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “What I think and what I know are two different things.” He stood. “Morning’s soon enough to talk about it.”

  “You’re wrong, you know.” Adam was bad news, selfish and arrogant, but shooting into her house, endangering his own child? She couldn’t accept that. He was devious and faithless, but violent? No. “You’re singling him out because you’re still angry about—”

  “Him sleeping with my wife?” The look he gave her was intense and unreadable. “You know, whatever that guy’s got that makes women shut down their brains and start operating from the same place a man does, I want it.”

  “That’s insulting.”

  “And your accusing me of irrational jealousy isn’t?”

  She eyed him. He eyed her.

  “Checkmate,” she said. “For now.”

  “Good enough. Because what we believe—or don’t believe—doesn’t matter. Kylie being in harm’s way does. And generally speaking, when someone fires a gun they aim to kill someone.” He paused. “And you know the drill, if at first you don’t succeed …”

  Camryn’s hand tightened around Kylie’s foot, and the little girl protested with a kick. A wave of nausea threatened, but she quelled it. “You think whoever did this will come back?”

  “Bet on it. And you should reconsider your opinion of Dunn. We need to know what he’s doing here. Why your friend is harboring him.”

  She looked at her sleeping child. While she still couldn’t visualize Adam Dunn standing outside her kitchen window and firing into her home, for Kylie’s sake, they needed to be sure. They needed to find out what was going on in Delores’s sad, forlorn house. “You’re right.”

  “Good to know we can agree on something.” He took a couple of steps toward the door, stopped. “Does your father have a permit for that gun?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Her father, saying he wasn’t feeling well, had gone to his room as soon as the police finished questioning him. When she’d checked on him fifteen minutes later, he was already asleep, still in his clothes, on top of the bedcovers. She’d pulled a quilt over him, turned his light out, and left him. “I didn’t even know he had a gun.” And she didn’t know how she felt about that. She’d been glad enough when he’d used it to get rid of whoever was outside that window, but she didn’t like the idea of a gun in the same house as Kylie.

  “He doesn’t. Not after tonight. I’m putting it in my truck.”

  When he came back, he carried Kylie
to her bed, then went to work boarding up the window with some plywood he found in the garage. Camryn stayed with Kylie, woke her enough to get her into her PJs, then sat with her until she was sure she was deeply asleep.

  Camryn was back in the kitchen sweeping up broken glass when Dan came in. It was close to midnight. “I made some sandwiches,” she said and gestured to the table. “Do you want coffee?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll revisit the wine.” He went to the table, lifted the bottle in her direction. “You?”

  “Yes. A much better idea than coffee.” She put the last of the broken glass in the trash and took a seat at the table. He poured them each a glass of wine.

  The silence in the kitchen was deep and cold from leftover fear. Drafts whistled in around the edges of the plywood.

  Dan sat across from her, sipped some of the wine, then leaned back in his chair. He looked relaxed enough, except for the thunder in his eyes. A controlled man, she thought, confident, a man able to hold it all in, deal with it. But impatient, too. Perhaps too quick to rush to judgment. And a man who loved Kylie as much as she did, and whose hands, when they’d placed a blanket around her shoulders, were big, sure, and gentle.

  “I want to talk about tonight,” she said. “What happened here.”

  “I don’t.” He picked up a sandwich, bit into it.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Eat this sandwich.” He took another man-sized bite and another drink of wine, then added, “And go to bed.”

  “Here?”

  “Here.”

  “And you want to stay here because …”

  “My daughter asked me to. I promised her I’d be here when she woke up.”

  “You can do that by going to your motel and coming back early in the morning,” she said, trying on some logic that something in her hoped he’d ignore.

  “True. But that would mean leaving you.” His gaze drifted over her face. A face she knew was drawn and tired and one that warmed under his scrutiny. “I don’t intend to leave, Camryn.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. Stayed there. “And I don’t think you want me to.” He lowered his head, looked at her across his wineglass. “Do you?”

  Chapter 17

  With that two-word question, Camryn’s kitchen shrank in size, its oxygen depleted by half, and its perimeter blurred. All that remained was a man, a woman, and a razor-sharp awareness, a high-voltage sensual jolt that caught Camryn wildly off guard. She hadn’t planned on this, hadn’t seen it coming—hadn’t seen Dan Lambert coming—over six feet of man and muscle who turned into mush when he looked at the little girl who called him Daddy, yet somehow turned into a potent, seductive male when he looked at her. A male who left everything to the imagination.

  “I repeat, do you want me to go, Camryn?”

  Her breathing, uncertain under his steady gaze, leveled off. She told herself not to forget he had an agenda, just like Paul Grantman . . . like Adam. She told herself she was a fool for feeling anything, sensual or otherwise, for a man who’d come here solely to take his “daughter” from her. All these rattling emotions were aftershocks from the evening’s events, nothing more. Perhaps he was as opportunistic as Adam and saw her weariness as weakness, a chance to shorten that straight line he was so keen on. She told herself all of that, looked into his quietly waiting eyes, and said, “No. I think you should stay.” She swallowed, rose from the table, and picked up her plate and glass. She gave him another glance when she added, “After tonight, Kylie needs all the reassurance we can give her.”

  “Is there a but, at the end of that sentence?” He stayed seated, following her with his eyes as she walked to the dishwasher.

  When she’d put her dishes away, she rested her hip against the counter. Her gaze, when it again met his, was level. “Yes, and what follows that ‘but’ is this—your staying here doesn’t mean I want you messing with my head, or my hormones.”

  He stood and, wineglass in hand, walked toward her. When he was solidly in front of her, he reached around her and set his glass on the counter. He was so close the scent of his clean skin, the lingering hint of his aftershave, musk and cedar, drifted up her nose. All of it man-scent, strong and primal. Even though hemmed in by his size and strength, she had no desire to cut and run.

  He trailed the back of his hand along her cheek and followed its path with a reflective, focused gaze, finally smoothing her hair gently behind her ear. “You were right, you know, about my ulterior motives.” His eyes met hers, dark green and intense, faintly sorrowful. “I’d do anything to keep my daughter. And I did consider the idea that seducing you might be the way to do that.” His lips curved briefly into a smile, but it left his face as quickly as it had come. “I thought it would be less time-consuming, a way to avoid a messy and complicated legal battle, and that Paul Grantman wouldn’t stand a chance against the two of us.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, caressed her throat with his thumb. The gesture both heated and idle. “But now . . .”

  When he didn’t go on, Camryn waited, then raised a brow. “Now?”

  “Now all I want to do is mess with those hormones you mentioned—without a base motive in sight.” He leaned toward her and kissed her, a lingering kiss that touched her lips like a shadow, an inquisitive kiss that slammed those hormones she was so worried about into overdrive. “Well, maybe a little base,” he whispered over her lips.

  She took his face in her hands, held it, and pulled back to look at him, wanting to see his eyes. “You know all this . . . wanting is caused by trauma and delayed stress, don’t you?” God, she sounded like second-rate therapist.

  His hands, which were resting on her shoulders, slid down to grip her waists, tug her close. “Maybe. But right now I’m more concerned with the effect than the cause.” He kissed her again, this time harder, deeper.

  And . . . she liked it.

  She loved it.

  She wanted more. More of his mouth, more of his heat, more of his strong body flush to hers.

  She pushed him back, leaned heavily against the counter, and said, as evenly as her shaken nerves allowed, “If we do this . . . thing, we’ll regret it in the morning.” She swallowed hard, gulped for a deep breath, air enough to fill her lungs, air that had been in short supply from the moment his lips touched hers. When she leveled off, she tried to clear her mind while looking into a face with a hard jaw, a map of unknown lines and hollows, and eyes the color of a dark forest. “This is insane,” she blurted out. “And so— God, I don’t know—ill-timed, I suppose.”

  “Wanting someone usually is.”

  “Then there’s the I-hardly-know-you side of things.”

  “What’s to know?” His eyes narrowed, questioned.

  About a million things . . . She put more space between them. “You’re not going to give me that ‘me man, you woman, and we’re both over twenty-one’ speech, are you?”

  This time he did smile. “I was thinking about it. Would it work?”

  “Not tonight, Tarzan.”

  He studied her a second or two, again ran his knuckles lightly across her cheek. “Fair enough. You have questions. I’ll answer”—he took another step away—“but not tonight.”

  “Because you know they’ll be about . . . Holly.” Voicing her unease made her feel lighter, more surefooted in her retreat from this potent man.

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his jaw. “So, if you’ll get me a blanket and a pillow, I’ll give your couch a try.” He headed for the living room, stopped, and turned back to meet her eyes. He took his time before asking, “Ever make a mistake, Camryn?”

  Craig, cramming his clothes into a red sports bag jumped to mind, the initial pain of it . . . but then how quickly the pain had subsided. And there was Adam. Who could forget Adam? She nodded.

  His chin dipped slowly, thoughtfully. “So did Holly. So did I.”

  When he walked out of the room, Camryn sagged against the counter as if she were weighted down with wet sand. When she thought about
Dan Lambert—his effect on her—she told herself to leave the thinking for another day. Falling in “like” with a man two minutes after her kitchen window had been shot out was plain dumb. She was never dumb.

  What she was, was addled and fuzzy-minded, no doubt from the adrenaline cocktail delivered via gunshots.

  Pushing away from the counter, she headed to the linen closet at the far end of the hall. She’d think about Dan, what happened tonight, in the morning when her head was clear, and there was a chance of making sense of things.

  In the meantime, she’d get the man some bedding. Not that he’d get much sleep on that old couch; he was a big man, at least six inches longer than her sofa. It would probably fit him like a medieval rack.

  She touched her lips, remembered his mouth on hers, and shuddered, suddenly sure her bed would feel the same to her.

  Paul Grantman’s eyes jerked open, and he glanced at the thin gold watch on his wrist. Close to two a.m. The fire he’d lit earlier in the grate was in its death throes, a few glittering embers giving little defensive warmth against the miserable rain-filled night. He thought he’d heard her car, the splash of tires on the driveway, but cocking his head and listening brought nothing except the sound of rain hitting the windows and the wind whipping through the tall cedars at the side of the house.

  He rubbed one eye and straightened in the leather wing chair, one of two that flanked the fireplace in his wood-paneled study. He was surprised he’d dozed off at all, even though it had been for less than twenty minutes. He seldom slept when Erin was away from home. Always tense and vaguely terrorized by the thought that this time she wouldn’t come back, he rarely let her go out on her own. But earlier tonight she’d begged him, and he’d allowed it.

  Damn, I’m such a fool. He picked up the glass on the table beside his chair, twirled the last of his cognac, watched it catch a sudden flicker of flame from the dying fire, then downed it.

  Yes, a fool. He shouldn’t give a good goddamn where she was—he should toss her out on her junkie ass.