She pulled her shoulders back, her eyes glinting with determination. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll prove it. Try and get me in a head lock.’
He looked at her incredulously. ‘You’re surely not serious?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Go on, Chief Inspector. Give it to me. I’ll show you how I can—Oomph!’
Eloise realised later she’d really had no hope of getting out of that particular hold. She didn’t even think of trying. As soon as Lachlan’s mouth came down and captured hers, every single self-defence manoeuvre was wiped from her brain like a virus did to a computer hard drive.
His lips moved over the surface of hers with almost lazy intent, as if he had all the time in the world and he knew no one—least of all her—was going to stop him. His tongue stroked for entry, just the once, and her lips opened on a sigh, her belly quivering at that first deliciously intimate intrusion. She felt each delve and dive of his tongue as it searched every corner of her mouth before mating with her tongue, stabbing at it, stroking it, sucking on it, sweeping over it until she was sagging against him with legs that refused to hold her upright.
His hands moved from the tops of her shoulders to her waist, pulling her closer so she could feel the hard surge of his body against her.
It had been so long since she had felt a man’s response to her and it both thrilled and terrified her. She wasn’t ready for this. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Not now. Not here. Not in Cornwall when she was working on what could turn out to be the biggest case of her career. She was supposed to be in control. She wasn’t supposed to go all weak and watery at the knees just because a very attractive man decided he wanted to prove a point. Although he was proving it rather convincingly, she had to admit. Her mouth felt as if someone had set it alight. Fireworks were going off in her head and her body was melting like ice cream left out in the hot midday sun.
His tongue did another round of her mouth, but this time his hands moved from her waist and cupped her bottom and tugged her even closer to his hardness. She had no hope of resisting that little manoeuvre either. She rubbed herself up against him, her inner thighs trembling at the thought of him driving between them and exploding with the blistering passion she could feel was banked up in him.
‘I hate to interrupt, but can you do that somewhere else?’ Poppy’s voice sounded from the doorway leading into the kitchen. ‘It’s totally gross.’
Eloise sprang out of Lachlan’s arms so quickly she almost fell over. She clutched at the nearest surface and steadied herself, but she had no hope of controlling the rapid tide of red-hot colour that stormed into her cheeks.
Lachlan ran a hand through his hair but unlike Eloise he seemed totally at ease with the situation, which made Eloise wonder how many women he’d brought home before.
‘I thought you were staying overnight at Fiona’s?’ he said. ‘You should have called and I would have picked you up. I hope you didn’t walk home alone.’
‘Da-ad.’ Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘I do know how to protect myself, you know.’
‘Well, I certainly hope you aren’t considering taking self-defence lessons from Dr Hayden,’ he quipped, with a teasing glance in Eloise’s direction.
Eloise glared back at him. ‘You took me by surprise, that’s all,’ she said hotly.
He gave her a playful grin. ‘You didn’t even put up a token fight.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ she said, scowling at him. ‘I could have blackened your eye or broken your wrist or something.’
‘While you two get on with pretending you’re not seriously attracted to each other, I’m going to bed,’ Poppy announced.
Lachlan frowned as he noticed how pale his daughter looked. ‘Are you all right, sweetheart?’ he asked gently.
Poppy’s eyes began to water but she quickly brushed at them with the back of her hand. ‘I wanted to talk to Mum,’ she said. ‘I called her earlier but she was busy and hasn’t bothered to call me back.’
‘Honey, you know how hard she works,’ Lachlan said. ‘She probably got tied up with some important clients or something.’
‘You don’t have to pretend with me,’ Poppy said churlishly. ‘I know you hate her so there’s no point in playing the understanding ex-husband.’
‘I do not hate your mother,’ Lachlan insisted. ‘We’ve been through all this before, Poppy. I know it’s hard getting used to living with just me instead of both of us but you have to move on. We both do. Your mother and I are not getting back together. We weren’t even together all the years we lived here, not in the real sense.’
‘I know…’ Poppy’s shoulders slumped as she turned away. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘You could at least say goodnight to Dr Hayden,’ Lachlan said.
‘It’s fine,’ Eloise said. ‘Let her be, Chief Inspector.’
Poppy turned to face Eloise. ‘You called him Chief Inspector. Don’t you know his name?’
‘Yes, I do but I—’
‘If you’re going to sleep with him, you should at least know his first name,’ Poppy cut her off rudely.
‘I wasn’t planning on sleeping with your father,’ Eloise said with deliberate firmness. ‘I only met him for the first time earlier today.’
‘That didn’t stop you from kissing him.’
‘He kissed me,’ Eloise said somewhat defensively. ‘I had no intention of—’
‘Was he any good?’ Poppy cut her off again.
‘Poppy, I hardly think—’ Lachlan began.
Eloise lifted her chin and held the young girl’s challenging brown gaze. ‘Yes, he was, actually,’ she said. ‘Better than good.’
Poppy’s eyes went wide. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ Eloise answered. ‘Up there with the best, actually.’
Poppy turned to her father. ‘Are you going to have an affair with her?’ she asked.
‘I’m seriously considering it,’ he answered with a tilt of his mouth.
‘Ahem…’ Eloise gave them both a pointed look. ‘I think I might be the one to decide that.’
‘Have you decided?’ Poppy asked.
‘No, and I don’t think I—’
‘If you do happen to sleep with my father, don’t assume we’re going to be best friends or anything,’ Poppy said. ‘I don’t need another mother—I have a perfectly good one of my own.’
‘Lucky you,’ Eloise said. ‘I don’t have a mother or a father.’
Poppy’s expression visibly softened in contrition. ‘Oh…sorry…I didn’t realise…’
‘It’s fine,’ Eloise said. ‘I learned to accept it a long time ago.’
‘You must think I’m a spoilt brat,’ Poppy said, shifting from foot to foot.
‘I understand that you are dealing with some pretty heavy stuff right now,’ Eloise said. ‘The divorce of your parents and the unexpected death of an acquaintance is hardly a walk in the park.’
Poppy chewed at her bottom lip without answering, but Eloise observed how the young girl’s cheeks had heightened in colour at the mention of Ethan Jenson’s death.
Lachlan bent down to kiss his daughter on the cheek. ‘I’m just going to walk Dr Hayden back to the guest-house. Will you be OK while I’m gone?’
Tears shone in Poppy’s eyes as she looked up at her father. Eloise saw the way the girl’s throat moved up and down and the way her body began to tremble.
Lachlan enveloped her in his arms and held her close. ‘What is it, Poppy? Has someone upset you? Or hurt you in some way?’
She shook her head against his chest. ‘No, I’m just a bit emotional right now. Everyone’s talking about Ethan Jenson’s death. There are rumours going about that he was murdered.’ She lifted her head and looked up at him. ‘He wasn’t, was he, Dad?’
‘You know I can’t discuss police business with you, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘But so far the verdict is death by drowning.’
‘Drowning is bad enough,’ Poppy sniffed. ‘But murder is much worse. It means someone
is out there who wanted him dead. What if they want someone else dead? Who is going to stop them?’
‘Do you want to go and stay with your mother for a few days until things settle down?’ he asked.
Poppy gnawed at her bottom lip again, looking more like a child of six than a well-developed sixteen-year-old. ‘No,’ she said on the back end of a sigh. ‘I want to spend some time with Robert. I sort of promised him we’d go on a picnic to the smugglers’ caves.’
‘I thought you weren’t seeing him any more?’ Eloise said before she could stop herself.
Poppy frowned as she turned to look at her, her expression colouring again. ‘Did he tell you that?’
Eloise nodded. ‘Your father and I spoke with him earlier this evening. He had a slight altercation with some youths in the alley behind the Penhally Arms.’
Poppy looked worried. ‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine,’ Lachlan answered. ‘Nick Tremayne had to give him a couple of stitches but apart from that he’ll be as good as new in the morning.’
Poppy’s shoulders drooped with exhaustion as she headed for the stairs. ‘Sorry for disturbing you. You can get back to what you were doing now. I’m going to bed.’
‘We weren’t doing anything,’ Eloise felt compelled to say.
Poppy’s mouth stretched into a little smile. ‘Maybe I will book in for some self-defence classes with you, Dr Hayden,’ she said. ‘They look like fun.’
‘Go to bed, you obnoxious brat,’ Lachlan growled.
Eloise picked up her bag for the second time once Poppy had disappeared upstairs. ‘I really must go,’ she said. ‘Beatrice Trevallyn will think I’ve come to a perilous end, like the last Australian to visit the village.’
Lachlan opened the door for her. ‘Can you swim?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mean the English Channel but enough to save yourself.’
‘Of course I can swim,’ she answered. ‘I can assure you, Chief Inspector D’Ancey, that I am in absolutely no danger of drowning.’
‘That’s good to know,’ he said as he led the way down the path to the street. ‘The last thing this place needs is another accidental death.’
She waited until they had walked a few paces before speaking again. ‘Poppy seemed very upset. Do you think it was just about the rumours about Ethan Jenson’s death?’
He took a moment to answer. ‘I think everyone is upset about Ethan Jenson’s death, rumours notwithstanding. The sooner this case is wrapped up, the better.’
Eloise couldn’t help thinking he was keen to get rid of her, irrespective of his kiss. It might not take him long to forget about her once she was back in Sydney behind her cluttered desk, but she knew it would very likely take her the rest of her life to forget how it felt to have his mouth on hers.
‘About that kiss…’ he said into the silence broken only by the whisper of the silvery sea as it stroked against the shore in lace-fringed waves.
‘I’ve forgotten all about it,’ she said.
‘Liar.’
‘You only did it to prove a point.’
‘It was extremely enjoyable.’
She turned to glance at him. ‘The kiss or proving the point?’
He grinned down at her. ‘No harm in a little bit of both, don’t you think?’
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I felt extremely embarrassed in front of your daughter.’
‘Don’t worry. She’s used to it.’
Her disapproving frown increased. ‘Used to you proving a point or bringing home strange women and kissing them senseless in your kitchen?’
He stopped and smiled down at her. ‘Did I kiss you senseless?’
She pursed her lips. ‘I’m not going to answer that.’
He chuckled and began to move on, taking her by the elbow with the cup of his palm. ‘If you didn’t send out all those sexy signals all the time, I wouldn’t dream of kissing you.’
She snorted derisively. ‘That is just so typical of men like you. You think because a woman comes over for a drink or a meal it means they want to hop into bed with you. I haven’t hopped into bed with a man for longer than I can remember and I’m not going to do it just because you’re…you’re…’
He grinned down at her. ‘I’m what? Single and available?’
‘Single and attractive.’
‘You think I’m attractive?’
‘You know you are,’ she said. ‘You’re tall and dark and handsome. I know it’s a cliché but a lot of women really go for that look.’
‘Anything else?’
‘You care about people—your daughter, for instance. I don’t even know who my father is and he’s certainly made no effort to find me in the last thirty-two years of my life, so in my book you rate pretty high on the good father monitor.’
‘What else?’
She turned to look up at him again. ‘You’re divorced from your wife but you’ve never once said a bad word about her. I admire that in a man. So many of the men I’ve met take every opportunity to vilify their ex-partners.’
‘Wow, praise indeed from the uptight Dr Eloise Hayden from Australia.’
She frowned at him. ‘You think I’m uptight?’
‘I think you need to chill out a little, Eloise,’ he said.
‘I suppose by chilling out you mean I should have a full-on fling with you while I’m here to make things really interesting.’
His brown eyes twinkled at her. ‘It would certainly make things very interesting for the locals.’
‘I don’t want to be the subject of local gossip.’
‘You’ve definitely come to the wrong place if you want to avoid that,’ he said. ‘It will be all over the village by morning that we had dinner together. Most people will assume our dinner led to other more satisfying activities.’
She frowned at him sourly. ‘Because of your womanising reputation?’
‘No,’ he said, running his gaze over her stained vest top and close-fitting jeans. ‘Because you don’t fit the stereotype of the career-woman at all.’
‘I look completely different when I’m dressed in a suit.’
‘I’d prefer to see you in nothing at all.’
Eloise’s jaw dropped open. ‘Chief Inspector D’Ancey you are being highly inappropriate.’
‘I know, but I enjoy seeing you blush,’ he said with a teasing smile. ‘That was some kiss, though, wasn’t it?’
She had to look away from his dancing-with-merriment eyes. ‘It was all right, I guess.’
‘All right?’ He made a sound of affronted pride. ‘I gave it my best shot. If Poppy hadn’t turned up when she did, I think we might have taken it a step further.’
She gave him a schoolmistress sort of look from beneath her brows. ‘You think.’
He gave her a tiny tap on the end of her uptilted nose with one finger. ‘I know, Dr Hayden,’ he said with a confident smile. ‘I know.’
CHAPTER NINE
ELOISE’S INABILITY to fall into a decent sleep had nothing whatsoever to do with her lingering jet-lag, she decided as she tossed and turned till dawn. Lachlan had delivered her to the door of the guest-house and under the cover of darkness had pressed a barely-there kiss to her mouth before leaving her standing there aching for more.
She gave the pillow another hard thump and groaned in frustration. Her lips still felt tingly and her body restless and the sound of Mr Price’s laptop computer being pecked at in the early hours of the morning certainly hadn’t helped her to relax.
Peck. Peck. Peck. Peck.
It reminded her of Lachlan’s pen as he’d sat opposite her…had it really only been a few hours ago? So much seemed to have happened since then.
The pecking of the computer finally stopped and she closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep, when she heard Mr Price speaking into what she assumed was a Dictaphone.
‘The killer had stalked the victim relentlessly for months, day and night, like a shadow of evil cast over her, always there, always invisible but always there. She
knew it. She felt it. She sensed it. She even smelt it.’
Eloise buried her head under another pillow and gave another groan.
The County Coroner’s Office was located in part of the police headquarters complex in Wadebridge. Eloise had declined Lachlan’s offer the night before to drive her there as she wanted to familiarise herself with the area. She also felt the need to re-establish her professional persona. Spending so much time with him the day before had upended her normally rigidly adhered-to priorities.
Dr Peter Middleton, the chief pathologist of Wadebridge County, greeted Eloise as she arrived and introduced her to his assistant, Dr Grant Yates.
‘I am sure you have been sent on a bit of a fool’s errand, Dr Hayden,’ Peter Middleton said as he led the way to the autopsy room. ‘I found nothing to suggest anything other than death by drowning.’
‘I’m not necessarily here to prove you and Dr Yates wrong,’ Eloise said. ‘The family deserves to have a second opinion, even if it proves in the end to be the same as yours.’
‘I am very sure it will be,’ Peter Middleton said with the type of arrogance Eloise loathed seeing in a colleague. ‘Morning, Chief Inspector,’ he added, as Lachlan peeled himself away from the wall where he had been waiting for them to arrive. ‘This is wasting your valuable time as well.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ Lachlan said, exchanging a quick glance with Eloise.
Eloise pressed her lips together and followed them into the autopsy room where Peter handed them both theatre scrubs.
‘You can show Dr Hayden where the change rooms are,’ he said to Lachlan.
‘Come this way,’ Lachlan said and led her to the corridor outside. ‘It’s the first door on the right. I’ll wait for you here.’
Eloise changed into the scrubs and left her things on the hooks behind the door. She allowed herself one quick glance in the mirror and then wished she hadn’t. She looked younger than Poppy with no make-up on, her hair flat and her eyes shadowed with tiredness.
She blew out a little breath and went back out to the corridor, where Lachlan was standing dressed in scrubs, again leaning against the wall in that lazy, I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world manner of his.
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