Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  “Not here.” If he kissed me here, I wasn’t sure I’d make it out of bed today.

  His lips curved. “Who are you afraid of, darlin’? You or me?”

  “Both,” I answered honestly. “I know how… persuasive you can be. And I’m at something of a disadvantage at the moment.” In his bed, in my nightgown. And because I was really, really happy to see him. So happy that I couldn’t be trusted to remember all the reasons why getting involved with him was a bad idea.

  “You’re gonna be the death of me one of these days, darlin’.” He took the hand I had planted against his chest and lifted it to skim a chaste kiss over my knuckles. I smiled, but then caught my breath sharply as he turned the hand over and pressed another kiss against my palm. And there was nothing chaste about this one. His eyes caught mine, and the rest of the world receded until there was just him.

  I was in his arms before I had any recollection of having moved. Mouth to mouth, chest to chest, my arms tight around his neck. I could taste coffee on his breath, and surprise, before desire knocked them both out of the way in a headlong rush. And then it was like being back in my dream from last night, all blistering need and desperation: a frantic rush to kiss, to touch, to caress.

  I was vaguely aware of my back hitting the bed, of him following me down, the weight of him heavy on top of me. He had both hands fisted in my hair, the slight sting keeping me in the present instead of letting me step back, emotionally check out, the way I usually do when I’m this close to him. I’ve always thought it was from terror, but maybe it’s just simple self-preservation. Now that I wasn’t guarding myself, determined not to feel anything or remember this later, the sensations were overwhelming. I was drowning in need. His lips slanting over mine, his tongue licking into my mouth, his body, hard against mine, even through the padding of the comforter. Smooth skin, like hot silk under my hands. A thunderbolt of pure lust hit me low in the stomach, making me shiver, and I could feel his lips curve against mine. If I’d had any sense of decorum, of self-preservation left, I would have been upset by the fact that I’d given myself away, that he knew I wanted him when, as a properly brought-up Southern Belle, I should be above such base desires, but I couldn’t muster the proper outrage at my own weakness. Not even the knowledge that I’d given him ammunition he could use against me if he chose, was enough to make me feel ashamed of my need for him.

  The phone rang.

  “Let it go,” Rafe murmured against my mouth.

  I turned my head to the side, which only served to allow him access to my neck instead. I didn’t recognize my own voice. “What if it’s important?”

  “They’ll call back.” He ran the tip of his tongue down my throat as the phone continued its rendition of the Alleluia-chorus. I didn’t want to think about how embarrassingly appropriate the ringtone was, under the circumstances.

  “They’ve already... oh, God...” He was moving south, pushing the comforter away, his hands bunching fistfuls of my nightgown, pulling it up and out of his way. If I were going to do something, it had to be now. Another minute of this, and there’d be no return. “They’re already calling back.”

  The phone had rung earlier, and I’d ignored it in my shock and surprise that he was here. But if whoever it was, was calling again, it might actually be something important.

  I made a superhuman effort to get my hands up to his chest. I didn’t push hard enough to budge him—with his hands on me, and his lips on mine, I had no strength left to speak of—but I managed to show him that I wanted him to move. He rolled over onto his back as I scrambled out of bed and snatched up the phone, adjusting the nightgown with my other hand. My fingers were shaking when I pushed the buttons, my eyes still on Rafe, unable to look away.

  He lay back against the pillows, breathing hard. Pushing a hand through his hair, he scooped it back and off his forehead. He must not have had it cut in the past six weeks, because it was longer than I’d ever seen it, at least since high school. And it was a shade lighter than I remembered, too: not black but brown, like espresso. The same color as his eyes, which were hot and liquid. “Come back to bed.” His voice was rough, husky with heat and promise.

  I swallowed, scared by how much I wanted to ignore the phone and do as he said. “Hello?”

  He was bare-chested, with a pair of faded jeans low on his hips. I had a vague recollection of running my hands over naked skin, smooth and hot, but I couldn’t remember helping him off with the T-shirt. It was on the floor, several feet away, and I crossed to it on unsteady legs.

  “Ms. Martin?” the phone said.

  “Detective?”

  Just the other day, I’d imagined Rafe in this bed, his skin warm against the white sheets, his eyes simmering with desire when he looked at me. Now I was looking at my vision, and I realized just how woefully inadequate my imagination had been.

  “Did I wake you?” the voice in my ear asked.

  I grabbed the T-shirt off the floor and tossed it toward the bed. It landed on the comforter, a white blotch against the black satin, but Rafe made no move to put it on. His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Come here.” He crooked a finger. His low voice had the roughness of velvet, trickling over my skin, raising goose bumps.

  “No,” I said, my voice a little too loud. He smiled, damn him. “No, you didn’t wake me. I was... um... up.”

  The smile turned to a grin, and I had no problem reading his thoughts. Yeah, he was up, too.

  I turned my back on him, deliberately. How was I supposed to think when he looked like that? When he looked at me like that? “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I wanted to give you an update.”

  At—I pulled the phone away from my ear and squinted at the display—seven twenty-eight in the morning? “Has something happened?”

  “You might say that,” Detective Grimaldi said.

  “What? Did someone try to break into my apartment again? Have you figured out who did it? Arrested someone?”

  “No, no, and no. This is about something else.”

  Uh-oh. “What?”

  “Remember yesterday, when you suggested I ask Sheriff Satterfield in Sweetwater to send someone to check out that trailer park where you told me Mrs. Johnson had grown up? Where Mr. Collier grew up as well?”

  “Of course I remember.” I snuck a glance at Rafe. He still hadn’t put his shirt on, and all those muscles against the black satin were distracting, but the heat was gone from his eyes. His face was serious.

  “Deputy Johnson drove out there first thing this morning.”

  Oh, God. “Did he find anything?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Tamara Grimaldi said. “He found his wife’s body. Still in her car. Which was parked out of the way, behind one of the trailers.”

  Mobile homes, in my new professional lingo. I didn’t bother correcting the detective’s phraseology. “Which trailer?”

  Grimaldi’s voice was carefully neutral. “I’m not sure it matters, but it was Mr. Collier’s old place. Deputy Johnson remembered.”

  Of course he did. And why I had expected anything different, I didn’t know.

  I swallowed. “How...?”

  “She was shot,” Detective Grimaldi said. “Once, through the head. Entry wound at the right temple. Close range, most likely by someone sitting in the passenger seat.”

  “Someone she knew, then?”

  “If not, it was someone she trusted enough to let him or her into the car with her. As far as we can tell, it must have happened a few days ago. Most likely the same day she left Nashville, or perhaps the following day. We’ll know more when the M.E. is finished.”

  “God.” I closed my eyes against the picture her words painted. Over on the bed, Rafe grabbed the T-shirt and pulled it over his head. “Did she... um...?

  “Do it herself?” Grimaldi suggested. “It’s possible, but too soon to tell. We’ll have her brought up to Nashville for examination, along with the car. My team will be cooperating with Sheriff Satterfield’
s staff in Sweetwater. We’ll investigate on our end, they’ll investigate on theirs, but because our facilities are better for crime scene and forensic investigations, we’ll be handling that end of it.”

  “Plus, she lived here.” I watched Rafe uncoil from the bed, smoothly as a panther. I had to force myself to stay where I was and not to step back when he moved into my personal space, and didn’t stop until our bodies brushed. Then he grabbed my wrist and adjusted the phone so he could hear the detective, too. I wondered if he could feel my pulse tripping under his fingers.

  “That, too,” Detective Grimaldi agreed. “I’m going to need you and Mrs. Jenkins to come in this morning and make a formal statement about the last time you saw Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Of course.” Gracious, how would this affect poor Mrs. J? Yet another person she cared about, another presence in her life, gone. Yet more violence heaped on violence for the old lady.

  “You haven’t heard from Mr. Collier, have you?”

  My eyes shot up to Rafe’s. His lips thinned, and he shook his head.

  “No,” I said into the phone, “I haven’t heard a word.”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer.

  I added, “Surely you’re not thinking that he...?”

  “I’m not thinking anything. But I do need to talk to him. So when you see him, please tell him to get in touch.”

  I promised I would, looking up at him the whole time. His face was grim, and those eyes that had been filled with simmering heat just a few minutes ago were cold and hard.

  “I’ll expect you around nine.” The detective hung up the phone, over my babbled assurances that yes, I’d be there, with Mrs. Jenkins in tow.

  Chapter 7

  Rafe’s face might have been carved in stone for all the expression it showed.

  His voice was equally neutral. “She’s dead.”

  It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, a jerk of his shoulders. The lack of grace told me more about how he was feeling than any words of his ever would.

  Or maybe not. He looked at me. “Is this on me?”

  I bit back an automatic, Of course not! “You mean, is it your fault?” I asked instead. “How could it be? You didn’t shoot her. You weren’t even here. Were you?”

  He shook his head. “But she worked for me. Lived under my roof. Someone mighta...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Someone might have killed Marquita to send Rafe a message. Someone like the man from yesterday.

  “What have you gotten yourself into now?” I said.

  He hesitated for a moment before he answered. “Nothing you need worry about.”

  “What do you mean? If someone killed Marquita because of you, what’s to stop them from...”

  I managed to bite my tongue before I blurted out something I’d regret. But if someone had killed Marquita just because she worked for him, how much more satisfying would it be to kill me, who had been one phone call away from getting naked with him just now?

  He looked at me in silence for a moment. “You should get outta here.” He turned away.

  “Rafe...”

  But I didn’t know what more to say.

  I’m sorry we didn’t get to finish what we started?

  I’m sorry we started anything in the first place?

  Now that I was away from him, out of the magnetic pull of his body, it was almost unbelievable that just a few minutes ago, I’d been tangled in bed with this man. What had I been thinking? If word of this got back to Todd—or God forbid, to my mother...!

  Moving blindly, I grabbed a set of clean underwear from the suitcase in the corner, and a skirt and blouse from the closet. Rafe didn’t watch me, just walked to the rumpled bed and laid down, folding his hands across his stomach like an effigy on a tombstone, looking up at the ceiling. It was the most awkward morning-after atmosphere ever, especially considering that nothing had happened earlier. Nothing I couldn’t get over. And it wasn’t like I knew much about mornings-after, anyway, but I could imagine that they must feel like this. He acted like he couldn’t wait for me to get out of his space. So maybe what had happened hadn’t meant anything to him. Maybe he was glad we’d been interrupted before anything more had happened. Something we couldn’t come back from.

  Feeling horrible inside, I went across the hall into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth, and then came back into the bedroom to put my nightgown in the suitcase. May as well pack, since I wouldn’t be spending another night here.

  Rafe still hadn’t moved. If it weren’t for the fact that his eyes were open, I’d have thought he’d fallen asleep. Frankly, he looked like he could use some rest. His face was drawn and the circles under his eyes almost black.

  I hesitated next to the bed. To talk, or not to talk? Leave without a word, or break the silence?

  Before I could make up my mind, he turned his head to look at me. Took in the change from rumpled nightgown and tangled hair to primly buttoned blouse and tight chignon without comment. His eyes lingered on my tidy hair for a second, though, and I could see the shadow of memory in his eyes: how he had driven his hands into my hair earlier, holding me in place so he could kiss me. My cheeks heated as I remembered his mouth on mine, the feeling of his hands in my hair, angling my head for the perfect fit...

  So much for my attempt to take control of the situation by taming my hair.

  I cleared my throat. “We have to talk. Someone broke into my apartment two days ago. Searched my bedroom, went through my stack of mail and my laptop, and slashed my nightgown with a knife. We think whoever it was, was looking for you. And there was this man yesterday...”

  His eyes returned to mine. “Who?”

  “He was Hispanic. About thirty five. Six feet one, muscular. Scary. Also looking for you.”

  Rafe shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “I know. It could be anyone. Detective Grimaldi said the same thing.”

  He nodded. “You really oughta get going, darlin’. You don’t wanna keep Tammy waiting.”

  “You do know that she doesn’t like it when you call her that, right?”

  He smiled. I sighed. “I’ll be back later to drop off Mrs. Jenkins and pick up my things. Are you planning to be around for a while?”

  “Figured I’d have to be.”

  Great. “If you’ve got your grandmother taken care of, I’ll move out. Maybe go to Sweetwater for a few days, until the police are finished with my apartment.”

  His lips curved. “You’re more than welcome to stay here, darlin’.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said primly. “For either of us.”

  The smile widened. “You afraid you won’t be able to keep your hands off me if you stick around?”

  Something like that. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I said, deliberately ignoring the question.

  “I’ll be here.” He closed his eyes. I watched his lashes, long and thick and dark, make shadows against his cheeks in the sunlight streaking through the slats in the blinds, and then I walked to the door and out.

  Giving Tamara Grimaldi my statement didn’t take much time at all. I hadn’t seen Marquita the day she left for Sweetwater, and the last time I did see her, a day or two earlier, she hadn’t said anything about leaving, and hadn’t been acting any different than she always did.

  “She didn’t like me,” I explained. “The first time I met her—since high school, I mean—was in the Bog in August, and she thought Rafe had brought me there. So she took against me from the start.”

  And some of it, admittedly, had been my own fault. Instead of being gracious to someone who was clearly less fortunate than I, I had chosen to take offense at her behavior, and had retaliated by being condescending and snarky. As well as by patronizing Rafe, and essentially dissing Marquita to him. Yes, I knew why she hadn’t liked me. Of course, she hadn’t liked me before I’d done any of those things. And she had certainly let me know it,
before and since.

  “So she wouldn’t have told you about anything that was going on in her life.”

  I shook my head. “Our conversations pretty much always went the same way. I knocked on the door and she told me Rafe wasn’t there. I said I was there to see Mrs. Jenkins. Marquita told me I couldn’t. I insisted, and pushed my way inside. She grumbled until I left.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. I don’t know anything about her personal life. Other than that she used to be married to Cletus Johnson, and they separated a while back. There are a couple of kids.” Who were now motherless. “She had a crush on Rafe. He swears there has never been anything between them, that they needed a nurse and she needed a job, and that’s it. She was pretty good at what she did. For as long as she was taking care of Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. J has been clean and well-fed and taking her medication regularly.”

  Detective Grimaldi nodded. “You can’t think of any reason why she’d want to kill herself?”

  “Is that what happened?”

  The detective didn’t confirm nor deny, just kept looking at me across the desk, and I said, “No, I can’t. But I wouldn’t. As far as I knew, everything was fine.”

  “You don’t think the pressure might have gotten to her? Being alone with Mrs. Jenkins for all those weeks while Mr. Collier was gone?”

  I thought about it. “I suppose it might have. Although if she couldn’t handle being alone with her patient, why would she have taken the job?”

  I knew the answer before I’d finished asking the question. Because it brought her closer to Rafe, during those times when he was around.

  I’d spent the past two days with Mrs. J, so I had a pretty good idea what daily life with her was like, and now I tried to imagine what it would be like to spend weeks like that. I had known that my tenure was limited, that sooner or later Rafe would be back to relieve me. But if I’d been looking at an eternity of reminding Mrs. Jenkins to take her medication, of making her coffee and laying out her clothes and combing her hair, with no end in sight, I might have started to feel a little claustrophobic, too.