Deadly Deceptions

by Linda Lael Miller

  I gave in. “Your place,” I said.

  We were at his condo in Scottsdale in three minutes, not five, but we didn’t get any farther than the garage the first time. Tucker got out of the SUV, came around to my side, helped me down, since my knees were wobbly.

  I thought we’d go inside, but Tucker opened the rear door of the SUV, got me around the waist and hoisted me onto the backseat.

  “What—?” I began, need-fogged.

  He laid me down sideways on the seat, and then I knew what.

  He pushed my dress up around my waist, tore off my shoes and yanked down my panties. I was groaning by then, writhing on the seat like a first timer on prom night.

  Tucker set my heels on the seat, held my knees apart and started kissing my bare belly. His hands moved farther up under the dress, under my bra. It was going to be the full treatment, and the need I felt went way beyond the physical, into something much deeper.

  I began to buck beneath him, my body making pleas I was too proud, even then, to put into words.

  I felt his breath on me and tried to raise myself to him, and he parted me then, and flicked me with the tip of his tongue. I gave a strangled shout of pleasure and spasmed.

  He chuckled. “Entrapment, huh?” he murmured hoarsely. “Can’t have that.”

  “Tucker,” I gasped.

  He rolled my swollen clitoris between his lips. Tongued it a little. “Hmm?” he asked.

  He made me tell him what I wanted. No, sirree, no entrapment here.

  I plunged my hands into his hair and pulled him to me, held him there.

  Tucker chuckled again, but then he got down to business in earnest. I moaned as he alternately teased and feasted, shouted when he brought me to the first raw orgasm.

  I hoped the neighbors weren’t home. I must have sounded like a she-wolf howling at the moon, but I couldn’t help it.

  While I lay shuddering in the sweet aftermath, I was vaguely aware of Tucker taking off my dress, and then my bra. I started to scoot backward on the seat, so he could climb into the SUV and take me, lover’s lane-style, but he stopped me. Brought me back to the edge, draped my limp legs over his shoulders and started nibbling at me again.

  I gasped his name. Grasped at his shoulders. Tried to tug him upward, on top of me.

  I needed him inside me; as shattering as that first real release had been, it hadn’t satisfied me. Nothing would, except the long, powerful strokes of what was probably pressing hard against the front of his jeans by then. The spill of warmth inside me when he finally let go.

  But it didn’t happen that way.

  I came again.

  And then again.

  When he finally reached the point where he couldn’t wait any longer, I was dazed, everything inside me warm and soft and loose.

  I watched his face, his magnificent face, as he opened his jeans, freed himself, and I crooned in stupefied anticipation as he took me by the waist, sat me up and then lowered me onto him.

  I’d made love with Tucker a hundred times, but it was always a shock how big he was, how hot and hard. Wide awake, all my senses suddenly back on hyperalert, I wrapped my legs around his middle, clasped my hands behind his neck and leaned back slightly, ready for the ride.

  And what a ride it was.

  We started out slowly, every stroke something to be savored, but as the friction increased, so did our pace. Tucker pressed me back against the seat and slammed into me until, in the same moment, like two universes on a crash course, finally colliding, the whole order of the cosmos was changed.

  Tucker gave a low, hoarse cry.

  I clawed at him with both hands, drowning in fire.

  After the Big Bang, there were a few more implosions as I descended, convulsing against Tucker each time. When it was finally over, I fell back on the seat, utterly exhausted, and he lay half on top of me, gasping for breath.

  While we recovered, I wound my fingers in his hair and cried.

  Presently he lifted his head from my stomach. “What?” he asked gently.

  “You know what,” I told him.

  He sighed, lifted me again, set me on my feet on the cold garage floor, and gathered me into his arms. “It’ll be okay, Moje,” he told me in a ragged whisper, his breath like a warm breeze against my temple.

  It was a lie, of course.

  But I wanted—needed—to believe it, so I did.

  We shared a shower after that, soaping each other up and kissing and groaning a lot, but neither of us had the knee power to make love standing up, not after the episode in the garage.

  Tucker’s bed was neatly made when we got into it. Hours later, when something awakened me, the covers were on the floor and the pillows were in odd places.

  I realized the unwanted thing prodding at me, nudging me out of a semicomatose state, was a ringing telephone.

  With a muttered curse Tucker raised himself onto an elbow and groped for the cordless receiver on the nightstand. Stuck it to his ear.

  “Darroch,” he growled.

  Lying beside him, facing his back, I knew, even before his spine stiffened, that it was Allison calling. I couldn’t make out her words, just the hurried, slightly shrill tone of her voice.

  Tucker listened. I wanted to touch him, but I knew he’d flinch if I did, and I couldn’t have borne that.

  What he said to Allison surprised me, though. Big-time.

  “I’m with Mojo.”

  I blinked.

  Silence on Tucker’s end, a diatribe on Allison’s. I can’t describe the sound—it was more of a feeling, like a stripped live wire twisting and crackling on the ground in a pouring rain.

  “We’re not married anymore, Allison,” Tucker said when she gave him a chance.

  Something else from Allison.

  “No,” Tucker told her. “I will not put her on.” More listening, followed by a sigh.

  I got up, wishing my dress and underwear weren’t scattered all over Tucker’s garage. It’s hard to make a hasty exit gracefully when you’re nude and every ounce of tension has been driven out of you by three or four hours of intermittent, headboard-banging sex.

  “Mojo,” Tucker said when I got to the threshold of his bedroom. I heard him crash the receiver back onto the charger. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I stopped, turned. Actually, I hadn’t thought that far. I’d just wanted to get away. Now I remembered I didn’t have a car; I’d ridden with Tucker. I didn’t even have my purse, because I’d left it in the Volvo, which was still parked in Greer’s driveway.

  “To find my clothes?” I said.

  He threw back the tangled covers, sat up. “I’ll get them,” he replied, sounding resigned.

  I took a short shower while he was gone, and when I came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, my dress and bra were lying on the bed, the dress carefully folded, my sandals beside them. The panties were missing in action, evidently.

  I put on what I had and followed the smell of cooking food into the kitchen.

  Tucker stood at the stove, barefoot, wearing only his jeans and stirring something in a saucepan. “Chicken pot pie,” he said, giving me a sidelong glance that made me remember certain peak moments in our lovemaking and blush a little. “The frozen variety. The microwave is broken, so I’m reduced to using the stove.”

  I wanted to say I wasn’t hungry, but the truth was, I was ravenous. Hungry enough to eat chunks of chicken pot pie warmed up in a saucepan, actually. It didn’t occur to me to ask why he didn’t use the regular oven—I had reason to know he was the innovative type.

  I came as far as the table, but didn’t sit down.

  “Why did you tell Allison you were with me?”

  “Because she needs to know.”

  “Why? Why does she need to know?” I could put myself in Allison’s place all too easily, I found. She had two children by Tucker. They’d been lovers, and built a life together.

  Tucker stopped stirring the mess of crust and veggies and chicke
n chunks and turned to look at me. “The divorce was Allison’s idea. I was a long time getting over it. Then I met you. Now, because she’s scared and she’s grieving, she thinks she wants me back. I want her to know it isn’t going to happen, Moje.”

  I pulled back a chair, fell into it. “Where are my panties?” I asked.

  Tucker grinned. “Damned if I know,” he said. “I searched the garage, but they’re gone.”

  I blushed, imagining some meter reader, or the kid who mowed Tucker’s little patch of lawn, finding them behind a dusty box.

  Tucker’s grin broadened. “You won’t need them anyway,” he told me.

  “Braggart,” I said.

  He took the food off the burner, scraped heaps of the stuff onto two plates and got out a couple of forks.

  The concoction looked bad, but it tasted all right. We ate in silence for a while.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who is grocery challenged,” I said, because I was starting to feel really embarrassed about the way I’d carried on, serving myself up like a meal in the backseat of his car, for pity’s sake. And when I’m embarrassed, I chatter.

  “I was going to make scrambled eggs,” Tucker said, his green eyes twinkling, “but I was afraid one of them might hatch.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “for that image.”

  He set down his fork. Reached out to caress my cheek, the gesture so gentle that it made my throat hurt. “As soon as school lets out,” he said, “Allison’s taking the kids to Tulsa for a month, to visit her folks. Then I can move back here. By the time they get home, Allison should have regained some of her perspective, and Daisy and Danny will have calmed down, too.”

  I closed my eyes, opened them again. Tried to smile. “Or not,” I said.

  Tucker closed his hand over mine. Squeezed. “I know things seem pretty impossible right now,” he said quietly. “But I—care about you, Moje. Have a little faith, will you?”

  He cared about me.

  Had he been about to say he loved me?

  If he had, I would have bolted, and he probably knew it.

  “You still care about Allison, too,” I said.

  “And you still care about Nick,” Tucker replied.

  “I do not,” I protested. “Nick and I had been divorced for a long time when he was killed. I was so over him.”

  “Until he came back and haunted you. I saw your face when he did the final fade-out, Moje, and I know you miss him.”

  I wanted to say it wasn’t so, but it was. I just hadn’t realized that until Tucker brought it up.

  “It’s okay,” Tucker said, and he sounded as though he meant it.

  “He was a lying, cheating bastard,” I said.

  “He also saved your life,” Tucker answered. “And you must have loved him a lot if you married him, especially considering all the secrets you were keeping.”

  I pushed my plate away. Pulled it back again. Took another forkful of chicken à la weird.

  “I’m coming to your place tomorrow night,” Tucker said. “And we’re going to make love again. We’ve got some catching up to do.”

  Sitting there pantyless, I felt myself moisten at the prospect. “We can’t,” I said. “Because of the kids.”

  “Kids?”

  “Gillian and Justin.”

  Tucker’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Who is Justin?”

  “Didn’t I mention him?”

  Tucker shook his head.

  “He was killed six years ago, waiting to cross the street after a concert. Drive-by shooting.”

  I saw Tucker go into cop mode, knew he was riffling through mental files. Before he’d worked for the DEA he’d been a homicide cop with Scottsdale PD. Although Justin had died in downtown Phoenix, the departments traded information all the time.

  “Last name?” he asked.

  “Braydaven,” I said.

  He nodded. “I remember that,” he said. “When the trial began, his mother tried to bring a pistol into the courtroom. Phoenix didn’t charge her, but a judge ordered therapy.”

  “I have a feeling it didn’t work,” I said sadly.

  “Why?”

  “Because Justin’s still here,” I answered. “If he wanted his killer found, like I think Gillian does, it would be more clear-cut. But the guy who shot him is in the pen.” A wave of sadness came over me, because there were lost children in the world, and between worlds, too. I wanted to hammer at the doors of heaven and demand to know who was in charge. “He told me he’s waiting for his dog,” I choked out. “Pepper’s old, and Justin’s afraid the poor thing will get lost between here and the afterlife, but I think that’s only part of it. His mother is holding him back somehow.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know—maybe it’s the intensity of her grief. I want to go and talk to her, but what do I say? ‘Stop mourning your son’?”

  Tucker reached over, pulled me onto his lap. Pressed my head against his shoulder. There was nothing sexual about it, but his tenderness overwhelmed me in ways his lovemaking never could have. I felt swamped with sorrow and consolation, clogged with tears, and not just in my sinus passages, either. In my whole body, and even my soul ached.

  “Stay,” he said quietly. “I’ll call Allison, and the kids can get by without me for one night.”

  I shook my head. As much as I would have loved to lie in Tucker’s arms until morning, he had responsibilities, and so did I. My sister’s husband was dead. She was on the edge, between that and the blackmail, and I wanted to be nearby in case she needed me. “Greer,” I said, trying to explain.

  “Jolie’s with her,” Tucker said.

  “Jolie doesn’t understand,” I told him. I knew I should get off his lap, stop acting like a baby and make him take me home. But it felt too good, having his arms around me, strong and protective. Plus, I loved the smell of his T-shirt.

  “What doesn’t she understand?” Tucker persisted.

  “How scared Greer is. She didn’t see her in that bus station….”

  Tucker eased me back a little way, so he could look into my eyes. “You’ve lost me,” he said. “What bus station, Moje?”

  I’d never told Tucker the complete story of my past. He knew I was really Mary Josephine Mayhugh, that I’d seen my parents murdered when I was only five years old and that I’d been kidnapped soon afterward by a neighbor, Doris Blanchard, who promptly changed her name to Lillian. And mine to Mojo, though I’d come up with the “Sheepshanks” part on my own.

  I explained how Lillian and I had met Greer in Boise. I didn’t say she’d been hooking, nor did I mention what I’d recently learned—that she borrowed an alias from an actress on the late show. He’d ask what her real name was, and I didn’t know.

  Suddenly it bugged me that I didn’t know. All these years my adopted sister had simply been “Greer” to me. Now I wondered who the hell she really was, and what she’d done that made her run away at such a young age, and turned her into a viable target for blackmail.

  There was always the possibility, of course, that Greer hadn’t done anything wrong. Maybe she was the victim of someone else’s evil deed.

  While all this was running through my mind, Tucker absorbed what I’d told him about how I’d met Greer in the first place.

  Because I was distracted, he caught me off guard when he asked, “What’s Greer’s real name?”

  There it was. Cop mode.

  I stiffened.

  Tucker chucked my chin. “Bad question?” he asked.

  “Bad question,” I confirmed.

  “You don’t want to answer?”

  “I don’t know the answer.”

  I could see by the look in his eyes that he believed me, and I got all emotional again. I wasn’t used to people believing me, mainly because so much of my life had been a lie. I’d lied about my name, and what I hadn’t remembered about my past. So many things.

  Maybe that was why I understood Greer’s need to keep secrets.

  “I�
�d better take you home,” Tucker said with a wicked light in his eyes. “Because it’s getting to me, knowing you’re not wearing underpants.”

  I laughed, but it came out sounding sniffly.

  He kissed me. Lightly. No tongue. If there’d been tongue, I’d have been in trouble, because I was even more aware of my missing underpants than Tucker was.

  “Tomorrow night,” he reiterated.

  “What about the kids?” I was referring to Gillian and Justin, but then Daisy and Danny came to mind, too.

  “Maybe they won’t be around,” Tucker said, nuzzling my neck.

  I jumped to my feet. Much more nuzzling and we’d be back in bed. “Thanks for the chicken stuff,” I said.

  He grinned up at me. “Just the chicken stuff?” he drawled.

  “Hey,” I protested. “You had fun, too.”

  He laughed, but it was a dry sound, with something broken in it. “It shouldn’t be this hard, Moje,” he said. “I’d give just about anything to wake up next to you in the morning.”

  I leaned down, kissed his forehead. “Put on some clothes, Detective Darroch. The party’s over.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  TUCKER DROPPED ME OFF at Greer’s guesthouse on his way back to Allison’s.

  I tried not to think about what might happen when he got there, but I couldn’t help it. Earlier, in his bed and—gulp—the backseat of his car, I’d been fiercely, ferociously female, queen of the Amazon warriors, engaged on every level of my being, not just the physical. Giving as good as I got. (And believe me, it was good.) Now I felt subdued, even a little shy. Intellectually, I understood that Tucker was protecting his children, and even that I wouldn’t have wanted him at all if he’d been willing to turn his back on them. It was a primal responsibility, and I knew that.

  I had a solid Dr. Phil take on the whole situation.

  My heart, however, was 180 out from sensible. Being intimate with Tucker invariably opened a vast vacuum inside me, an emotional black hole, powerful enough to suck in entire star systems, swallow them whole, without so much as a burp. And that terrified me.

  It was fine to want another person.

  It wasn’t fine to need them the way I was starting to need Tucker. I’d been in less danger looking down the barrel of a killer’s gun.