Lady Killer

by Kathleen Creighton

  “You mean Lonnie.” He got his arm around her waist again and began walking her back toward the barn.

  She nodded and sniffed, then threw him a look along her shoulder. “You heard what he said. He said he’d be back, and he won’t wait for a judge’s order, either. I know him. And when Rocky told me about his cousin-”

  “What about his cousin?” Tony prompted when she paused as if she’d said too much.

  She hissed out a breath. “He said he saw a sheriff’s SUV again. He said it drove by the house several times. Slowly. I know it was Lonnie-probably trying to see if I was home or not. I think when he saw your car, he must have decided not to risk it. But that’s not all.” She paused again to look at him, and her eyes were dark with anguish. “Tony, Isabel said some of the deputies are involved in some kind of extortion ring. Involving the illegals, you know? A lot of them come through here, because it’s right on the way from the border to the big cities, like Dallas and Fort Worth, but off the interstate, where most of the patrols are. These deputies, if they catch them, they make them pay money so they won’t get sent back or put in jail, and if they can’t come up with the money…” A shudder ran through her, and she threw him a bleak look. “Isabel says they kill them, Tony. She said Duncan was in on it, too. Do you think…could that have anything to do with why he died?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. He was frowning, thinking he needed to get this information to Holt as soon as he possibly could, although he still couldn’t imagine why, if Duncan Grant had had a falling out with his partners in crime, they hadn’t just shot him and dumped the body somewhere out in the vastness of West Texas. He was also thinking he needed to tell Brooke everything, and wondering if this was the right time.

  He’d about decided it was never going to be the right time, and this was probably as good as it was going to get, when Brooke suddenly gasped and said, “Oh God-Hilda. I hope she hasn’t broken the door down,” and took off running for the house.

  Giving his heart time to settle back into a normal rhythm, Tony followed at a more sedate pace. He was crossing the yard when Hilda came galloping out to give him a lick and collect the fur-ruffling hug that was her due, then loped off to the pasture to see how the rest of her flock was faring. And he went on to where Brooke was waiting for him on the porch steps, drawn now by the tractor beam of her eyes.

  “We shut her up so she wouldn’t scare Lady away,” she said, and the quick-time thumping of her heart and the hitch in her breathing made the words jump in an unrhythmic pattern. She pressed a closed fist against her chest and tried not to let her feelings show.

  This wanting was new to her. Even without going further into her sexual past than her marriage-no, I’m not about to go there!-she’d never wanted, not like this. It wasn’t that she hadn’t sometimes enjoyed herself with Duncan, although not nearly as often as she’d pretended to. She’d even initiated the lovemaking once in a while, because she’d known it made Duncan happy when she did. But every time, when she’d known it was going to happen, there had been that moment of fear. That little clenching in her stomach, that flash of thought she tried not to notice because it seemed shameful and unnatural, and she dared not let Duncan or even herself know it was there. Just that teensy little, there-and-then-gone-again no!

  But with Tony, she wanted. Wanted him, with a hunger that astounded her. Astounded, because it didn’t embarrass her at all, but only made her want to smile.

  Watching him bend down to ruffle Hilda’s neck fur, seeing his hands, so dark against the dog’s white-and-fawn coat, she hungered for those hands, wanted them touching her body again the way he’d touched her this morning. Was it only this morning? It seems like forever ago. And how can I be so hungry for him already?

  Watching him straighten and come on across the yard, seeing his mouth curve in that honey-sweet smile, she wanted his mouth kissing her, kissing her everywhere, wanted it the way a starving person wants, smelling the delicious aroma of food. Juices pooled in her mouth, so that she had to swallow and lick her lips, and her lips burned in spite of the moisture she’d put there.

  Watching him reach the bottom of the steps and pause to look up at her, seeing his eyes glow golden at the sight of her, she felt her body grow heavy and hot, and pulses jump in places still tender from their earlier union with his body.

  She knew he was watching her, seeing her eyes grow slumberous and her smile seductive, seeing the way her nipples beaded in sharp outline beneath her shirt, and she didn’t feel even a flash of fear or self-consciousness, not even a faint echo in her mind of no!

  He’d come to the step below hers and, without a word, reached out and hooked an arm around her waist, pulled her to him and lifted his face for her kiss.

  But she didn’t kiss him, not right away. She took his face between her two hands and gazed down at him, stroked the broad planes of his cheekbones with her thumbs and marveled at how beautiful he was, and that just looking at him could make her feel so…happy.

  What did I do to deserve this? Especially now, when I have no right at all to be happy.

  “Are you going to kiss me, or what?” Tony said.

  She gave a faint whimper of a laugh. “I was afraid it might be too soon.”

  “Hey, I’m a guy-when it comes to sex, we have short…mmm…”

  It was all the encouragement she needed. She let herself sink into his kiss and felt her body grow weightless and her mind go floating off into a pale pink haze. Yes…this is love. I…adore…this…man.

  She was barely aware when he came up to her step, then tangoed her backward through the door and onto the porch…then into the kitchen. There he paused to look into her eyes and whisper, “Your place or mine?”

  “Mine…” She murmured it without opening her eyes, and they were moving again, and she couldn’t have cared less where they wound up as long as it was together.

  They undressed each other standing up this time, not in a frantic hurry, but not too slowly, either. When they were both naked, Brooke placed her palms on Tony’s chest and watched her fingers fan on his smooth mahogany skin, and she shivered, not with cold, but with a surfeit of feelings.

  “So beautiful,” she whispered, lost in the miracle of him.

  He lowered his forehead to hers. “What is, love?”

  “You…your skin…your body. You are.”

  “Me?” He gave a little gulp of laughter. “Man, that’s a first. I mean, I am many things, some of which I’m even proud to admit to, but beautiful?” He shook his head in a dazed kind of way and, holding her waist with his hands, took a small step back from her so he could rake her body with his eyes. “You, on the other hand-”

  “Hush.” She shuddered and slipped between his arms, brought her arms around him and stopped his words with her mouth. Then laid her head on his shoulder. “As long as I am to you,” she said huskily, and tears seeped between her lashes. “That’s all that matters.”

  She felt a ripple pass through his strong, solid body, and his fingers glide through her hair with the delicacy of a harpist coaxing beauty from the strings of his instrument. His lips moved against her temple. “You are…more so than you can possibly imagine. And…I’d like to make love with you now. If you’re ready.” He cupped her head between his hands and tipped her face so he could look into her eyes. “Are you ready, sweetheart? Do you want me? Do you want me to love you now?”

  Oh, yes…if only you would. Could you love me, Tony? Not just my body, but…me?

  She drew a shaken breath and whispered, “Yes…please.”

  And as he had given the reins to her this morning, now she gave them, and herself, over to him. To his skilled kisses and artist’s hands that made every nerve in her body shiver with delight…and to his tenderness that made her ache inside with longing. He took her to places she’d never known existed, gave her glimpses of joys she’d never imagined, lifted her to heights of ecstasy that terrified her, then gave her release that seemed to go on fo
rever. And afterward, she wept and couldn’t tell him why.

  She couldn’t tell him she was crying because it had ended too soon, and she was afraid she’d never feel anything so wonderful again. And because she was in love with him. Loved him desperately, irrevocably, with all her heart and soul, and had no idea whether he might…if he could ever…love her back.

  I think I love this woman.

  It slipped into his mind while his guard was down, while he lay relaxed and spent, with her head gently rising and falling with the movement of his chest and her tears cooling on his skin. And once it was there, it seemed pointless to try and deny it. It didn’t even seem as frightening as he’d always thought it would be. In fact, acknowledging it was an almost giddy relief, like finding unexpected rapport with someone he’d been dreading to meet.

  The fact that she’d cried didn’t surprise him. It wasn’t the first time a woman had cried in his arms after making love. What did surprise him was the way he felt, which was not like crying, of course-because he didn’t do that sort of thing, at least not very often-but rather so full of feelings he didn’t know what to do with that his chest hurt. For a moment he wondered if telling her how he felt would help, but decided it would probably only make things worse. After all, she had enough on her emotional plate right now, the last thing she needed was to have to deal with the burden of some stranger falling in love with her.

  Then he thought about what she’d said about him being beautiful, and the fact that she’d seemed utterly sincere when she’d said it. That she could think such a thing about someone-he had no illusions about this-as flat-out ugly as he was just about took his breath away.

  Of course, she was beautiful to him-okay, obviously, she was beautiful to anybody who wasn’t completely blind-but beautiful to him in ways that couldn’t be captured on film or a digital memory chip. Was it possible she saw something similar when she looked at him?

  Could she? What the hell does it mean?

  A strange shimmering sensation had begun to dance beneath his skin, raising goose bumps just about everywhere, when Brooke stirred and lifted her head to say groggily, “What time izzit?”

  He lifted his arm and peered at his watch. “Hmm…’bout three. Why?” Then, before she could answer, he thought, Daniel! and went rigid. “Oh, hell. I forgot. What time does-”

  “About three-thirty.” She stretched languidly and kissed his chest. “Don’t worry. Plenty of time. We could even take a shower.” She looked up at him from under her lashes, and her smile was impish.

  “Brazen hussy,” he growled, giving her bottom a gentle pat. “Tempting…but you’re forgetting something.” He shifted her off to one side and sat up, then turned to look at her and smiled. He couldn’t help it, given the way she looked lying naked on her side, propped on one elbow, with her head slightly tilted and her hair feathered across one flushed and tanned cheek, lips still swollen from his kisses…The camera in his mind went click.

  He said gently, “There’s a cougar cage sitting in the back of your pickup, remember? Are you sure you want to try and explain that to Daniel?” She lay back with a groan and put an arm over her face. He laid his hand on her flat stomach and stroked downward, chuckling when she gasped and squirmed. “Come on, sweetheart-upsy-daisy. Let’s do this. If the three of you managed to get that thing up there, I think you and I can probably get it down. Especially since we have gravity on our side.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, then gathered up his clothes and left her. And deep in his heart, he was grateful for the distraction that had made it possible for him to avoid answering the question that had popped into his mind just before she asked him the time.

  It turned out not to be too difficult a job, with the help of the ramp and roller bars she used to transport cages full of goats and alpacas in and out of her truck.

  “When you’re a woman alone, you learn to find ways of doing things that don’t rely on brute strength,” Brooke told him after they’d wrestled the cougar’s cage back through the compound gate. She dusted her hands and paused to catch her breath. “Of course,” she added, smiling at him, “I never say no to brute strength when it’s offered.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Tony said when they were back on the outside of the compound and Brooke was locking the gate in the chain-link fence. “Where were you going to take her? Do you have any idea how big a wild mountain lion’s range is?”

  “I do, actually.” As she so often did, she laced her fingers through the chain-link and gazed beyond it, to where the cougar now lay relaxed in the shade of the oak tree, seemingly without a care in the world. He saw Brooke’s eyes squint a little and knew it wasn’t from the brightness of the sun. “The truth is, I didn’t know exactly where I was going to take her.” Her voice roughened. “Just knew I had to try and save her from Lonnie. Somehow.”

  She threw him a look, and the wistful longing in it kicked at his heart. “It was my big dream. I wanted to turn this place into a refuge for big cats. We’re crowding them off the planet, you know. I have the room. The part you see here, the house, barn, pens and pasture-that’s only about five acres. I have another twenty over there.” She made a sweep with her arm. “That’s all mine. I could do it-thanks to my parents’ will, I have the money-but I don’t suppose it’s possible now. Not after this. Especially if I go to-” She swallowed convulsively, and it hit him suddenly-not a little kick, but a wallop that took his breath away-what she was facing and how terrified she must be.

  He said gruffly, before he could stop himself, “Look, don’t give up. And don’t do anything stupid, okay? Holt and I-please, just give us a little more time.”

  “Holt.” She turned to look at him, still holding on to the chain-link fence with one hand. “That would be…”

  “The guy I’ve been sharing a room with-yeah. He’s-”

  “Obviously not a traveling salesman.” She said it with a hint of a smile on her lips, but no humor at all in her eyes.

  Tony felt a sickening dropping sensation in his stomach. He knew it was finally here-the moment he’d been dreading, the moment he’d known would have to come. And he knew it was going to be worse than he’d imagined, even before she said the words, in a voice that chilled him to his core.

  “So, who is he, Tony? And while we’re at it, who are you? And why are you really here?”

  Chapter 10

  The amazing thing, Brooke thought, was that she felt nothing. Except for a strange quivering in her stomach, she was numb. She remembered she’d experienced much the same sensation the day they’d come to arrest her for murder, so she understood that this was some kind of shock, and that it would wear off eventually, and when it did, the pain would bury her. She could only hope she’d be alone when it happened.

  In the meantime, in the calm and unreal world she lived in now, she watched Tony’s face, and it seemed to flicker and shimmer like the images on an old-time movie screen.

  “I’m exactly who I told you I am,” he said in a voice that seemed unnaturally calm. Then he paused, and his eyes flared golden for an instant before he closed them. “As for why I’m here…”

  “Who’s Holt?”

  He let the breath out with a hissing sound. “A private investigator.”

  “A private investigator.” The shivering inside her was spreading through her body, and she wrapped her arms across herself in a futile effort to contain it. “So, who’s he investigating? Me?”

  “Not exactly…”

  “Who hired him? Was it you?”

  “No! Brooke, listen to-” He reached for her, and she threw up her arms to fend him off and stepped back, violently cringed away from him.

  “So, what then? Let me guess. He hired you to come out here and spy on me, right? Who put him up to it, the sheriff? The state’s attorney?” Now her voice had begun to shake. The shell was cracking. She gathered its remnants around her as best she could and whispered desperately, “You better tell me, Tony. Right now. Who, dammit?”

/>   “It’s nothing like that. It’s got nothing to do with Duncan, or what happened here the day he was killed. It’s-” He ran his hand over his scalp, something she’d never seen him do before, and his face contorted with what looked like pain. “Look, it’s complicated. Can we go someplace-”

  “No. I want you to tell me now.”

  “Brooke-”

  “Now, Tony.”

  He reached for her again but pulled his hand back before it touched her and jammed it into his pocket instead. He frowned, then cleared his throat, as if in preparation for a profoundly important declaration. “Okay. You know you were adopted, right?” He grimaced, as if in pain. “Of course, you do. Okay. So…what do you know about your birth parents?”

  “Only that they’re both dead. What’s that got to do-”

  “Hold on. I told you it’s complicated. What about siblings? What do you know about them?”

  “I told you. I have a twin sister.”

  “Well-” he whooshed out a breath…dragged in another…gave a small laugh “-actually, you have more than that. You also have a brother.”

  He watched the blood drain from her face. She seemed to sway, and she put out a hand to grope for the support of the chain-link fence as she whispered, “I have…a brother?”

  “Three…actually.” He tried to smile. Air seemed in short supply suddenly, and gulping it didn’t help much. “The way I understand it is, you were all separated when you were children, after your parents died. You and your sister were the youngest, just toddlers at the time. So you probably don’t remember at all. But your oldest brother, Cory-well, a couple of years ago, he hired Holt Kincaid to find you-the four of you. He finally located your brothers early last summer. He’d just found out where you were and was coming into town to see…uh, to talk to you, when…all this happened. He got here the day of your bail hearing.”

  He stared at her and she stared back, not saying anything. Her eyes were like chunks of obsidian.

  He threw up his hands. “Well, jeez, Brooke, what was he supposed to do? He didn’t know you from Adam. For all he knew, his client’s baby sister was a cold-blooded murderer! Both your brother and his wife were unreachable at the time-another long story-so he called me, since I happen to be a good friend of both Cory and Sam’s, and…so, here I am.”