‘I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t taken you up on that challenge at the rifle range yesterday.’
‘That’s just because you still owe me those beers.’ Hawk was standing behind her. He watched her rubbing her shoulder. Then, almost without thinking, he placed his own hands on Charlotte’s shoulders.
‘Now, that’s something I can cure,’ he informed her.
His fingers anchored themselves above her collarbones while his thumbs kneaded the muscles on either side of the base of her neck. He increased the pressure gradually and Charlotte groaned.
‘Oh…yes! That’s the spot. Ouch! Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Hawk?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m sure.’
But he wasn’t. He was good at giving neck and shoulder massages but what he was doing right now was probably a big mistake. He had his hands on Charlotte Laing and the messages his fingers were relaying to his brain—not to mention other parts of his anatomy—had very little to do with anything therapeutic.
Charlotte had become very still and quiet, and Hawk found the movement of his hands slowing. He dropped them to the back of her swivel chair and found himself turning her to face him. The expression on her face made him wonder whether the physical contact had had just as disturbing an effect on her as it was having on him.
She sat looking up at him with a vaguely dreamy expression clouding her eyes. Her lips were slightly parted and it was the sight of the pink tongue tip that was Hawk’s complete undoing. He had to lean down a long way to reach Charlotte’s mouth with his own but within seconds he was no longer stooping. Had he dragged Charlotte up to her feet or had she risen to follow his lips? It didn’t matter. The movement and the contact were so seamless he couldn’t tell where his own body finished and Charlotte’s started.
And he had never, ever experienced a kiss anything like this one. He was in danger of drowning in the flood of sensation it provoked. Or suffocating because his body would not obey his brain and come up for air.
Charlotte was equally breathless when she finally pulled away. Her gaze was as wild as the desire still building in Hawk.
‘This isn’t going to happen, Hawk.’ The words were punctuated with a gasp for air. ‘It can’t happen.’
Hawk caught her shoulders again but this time he didn’t pull her towards him. He knew she would resist, and trying to persuade her by physical means would spell definite failure. Instead, he spoke softly.
‘Jamie’s not here any more, Charlie, and I’m sorry about that for your sake.’ He wasn’t sorry for his own sake. No way. ‘But you can’t lock all that passion away. Something inside you is going to wither and die if you deny it for too long. You’ll end up with only half a life.’ His fingers eased their hold and then squeezed again gently.
‘I’m here,’ he whispered. ‘I want you, Charlie. More than I’ve ever wanted any woman.’ His gaze locked with Charlotte’s. ‘And if that kiss is anything to go by, I think you want me, too.’
Charlotte shook her head but Hawk wasn’t going to give up just yet. ‘You need to start living again.’ His smile felt curiously crooked. ‘And I’d like to be the person you start your new life with.’
‘It’s not going to happen, Hawk.’ Charlotte pulled away. In an instant she had grabbed her bag and in another she was gone, with the echo of her words following her. ‘It can’t.’
Hawk was left standing in the office with only the memory of that kiss.
‘Oh, it’s going to happen,’ he murmured. ‘It’s just a question of when, Charlotte Laing. Not if.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘I HATE these jobs.’
‘Hit and runs?’ Charlotte glanced up only briefly from the map she was consulting. ‘Take the next left, Hawk. McGuire’s Road.’
Hawk slowed down a little. The blue and red beacons of the squad car were flashing but the siren was silent. The lights were enough to warn any other traffic on the dark roads of a quiet rural area.
‘Some bastard clipped someone walking down the side of the road and just kept going.’
‘Maybe he thought he’d hit a sheep or something.’
Hawk didn’t seem to have heard her. ‘Or, worse, maybe he stopped and had a look and then got back into his car and took off.’
‘Panic can make people do things they otherwise wouldn’t.’
‘Ha!’ Clearly, Hawk wasn’t going to find any excuse plausible.
‘I feel sorry for the person who ran over the victim later.’ Charlotte shook her head as she sighed. ‘He had no chance of avoiding a body lying in the middle of the road.’
‘He could have still been alive until that second vehicle got him.’
Charlotte could see Hawk’s knuckles, pale against the dark steering-wheel. She could imagine the tension in his hands…how tight the grip was. She tried to concentrate on the map again. Hawk’s hands were becoming an obsession.
Ever since he’d kissed her—three days ago now—she had been at pains to avoid any length of eye contact or the temptation to watch his mouth when he spoke, but that meant her gaze invariably settled on his hands. Charlotte would recognise those hands in isolation anywhere now, and she could have drawn them quite accurately from memory had she any inclination to do so. She knew the length of his fingers, the shape of his nails, that scar on the third knuckle of his left hand that looked like a tiny fork of lightning. She knew the way they moved when he picked something up, the way they held a pen and the way Hawk used them to massage his forehead when he was ill at ease about something. She also knew, thanks to that shoulder massage and…and that kiss, the sensations those hands were capable of evoking in her.
And that was driving her nuts. It had only been a massage. The kind of physical contact any friends, or colleagues, could indulge in. OK, the kiss had been more than that. A hell of a lot more but Charlotte knew beyond a shadow of doubt that there was still a lot she didn’t know about what those hands could do. For three nights now she had done her best not to imagine what sensations they might conjure up by touching her breasts, stroking that spot on her inner thighs or actually…
‘Have they moved the body yet?’ The question came out very abruptly but Charlotte had to keep her mind on the job somehow.
‘Not yet.’ Hawk’s response was equally terse. ‘They’re waiting for us to check the scene.’
‘We’re not too far away, now.’ Charlotte was keeping her gaze and her mind firmly on the map she held. ‘We should be there in ten minutes or so.’
It didn’t help that it was nearly 10 p.m. and the call from home which meant they would be spending extra time together had been unexpected. It was a forty-minute drive at high speed into an isolated rural area. The return trip at normal road speed would take a lot longer but it was still not far enough away to warrant having to stay overnight close to the scene.
The thought that it could have been had been disturbing enough when the call had come in. Sometime, probably in the not-too-distant future, they would be stuck overnight in some motel. The opportunity to satisfy her curiosity would be there again and Charlotte was beginning to seriously doubt any ability she had to resist the temptation.
And why should she? They were both adults. They were both quite capable of knowing what they wanted. And what they didn’t want. If they wanted to play—out of sight or knowledge of anyone who might disapprove on a professional level—then why not? Did Hawk still want to? Charlotte had been so careful to avoid any communication, spoken or otherwise, that could be misinterpreted she had no idea what Hawk might be thinking. She had been very definite that nothing was going to happen between them when she’d walked out after that kiss, and he’d said nothing in the last few days to make her think that her edict was about to be challenged in any way.
Surely Hawk hadn’t given up that easily?
Only three vehicles marked the whereabouts of the fatal incident but the flashing beacons of the local police officer’s car made it visible several kilometres down the long, straight road. Hawk w
as aware of a vague sense of disappointment in locating the scene. If only this job had been a bit further away, they would have had to stay the night somewhere. Hawk would have given rather a lot to add another thirty kilometres or so to their journey at that point. The thought of how different things might have been gave him cause to suppress a small smile.
Charlotte had been so busy being careful to avoid giving him any encouragement for the last three days, she had made it as obvious as a neon sign that she was thinking about him just as much as he was about her. If she had carried on as normal, he might have given up any hope of winning this challenge. If she’d been able to brush that kiss aside and not let it make any difference to the way they interacted, then he would have known she wasn’t interested. Charlotte probably imagined she was playing it cool but Hawk was quite sure that the effects of that kiss had lingered on both sides. He was perfectly confident in his opinion that it was a matter of when and not if—but it wasn’t going to be tonight, dammit!
Another vehicle could be seen approaching from the opposite direction, a sleek, dark station wagon that had to be a hearse. The reminder that the covered shape they could see as Hawk pulled to a halt was the innocent victim of a hit and run was enough to pull his mind back to the job at hand. This was no time to indulge in any fantasies of what he would do if…no, when, he got Charlotte into his bedroom. No doubt the drive home would be harder to cope with but for now it was easy to file the whole issue under the same category as other pleasurable activities for out-of-work hours. Like squash and target shooting. They had an unpleasant job to get on with here and the sooner it was completed, the better.
It was easy enough to begin with.
‘I’ll see what information I can get about the injuries to the victim,’ Charlotte offered. ‘Unless you want to?’
Hawk shook his head. Charlotte was far more qualified than he was to make sense of whatever she found out. He stayed where he was to continue the discussion with the local police officers.
‘Where’s the driver who called in the incident?’
‘Down at Maggie’s. He’s having a cup of tea.’ The senior constable was fishing a notebook from his pocket. ‘His name’s Ivan Colleridge. We’ve got all his details and a statement, here.’
‘What did he have to say?’
‘That he didn’t see anything. He slammed on his brakes after the bump and then didn’t think to shift it before he ran for help.’ He waved a hand at the stationary vehicle still on the road on the other side of the victim. ‘It’s lucky nobody ran into his car when he went off and left it like that.’
‘There was no coverage for his cellphone here,’ the junior officer added.
Hawk had already noted another set of brake marks. On his side of the victim. Whoever had clipped the pedestrian had at least made an attempt to stop. Had that been before or after the impact? Hawk returned his gaze to his companions.
‘Who’s Maggie?’
‘Maggie Shaw,’ he was informed. ‘She used to be a nurse. Mr Colleridge went in to use her phone after the accident and she came out to see if she could do anything. She says Jim was stone cold. She reckons he’d been dead for quite a while.’
Hawk just made a mental note of the information. Charlotte would probably be able to estimate time of death. He could see her out of the corner of his eye. The cover had been removed from the body and Maggie was wearing gloves, obviously checking the injuries being described by the paramedics holding torches beside her. The crew of the hearse were standing at a discreet distance, their trolley prepared and their protective gloves and plastic aprons reflecting a glimmer of the faint moonlight.
‘We’ll need to talk to them both,’ Hawk said.
‘They’re not far away. Maggie’s house is just up the road a bit. Huge old house—one of the original homesteads around here. She runs a homestay business these days. Bed and breakfast, you know?’
Hawk nodded. ‘Did she notice anything unusual earlier this evening?’
‘She reckons she heard something. And her dogs were kicking up a bit of racket about eight o’clock but she’s rather hard of hearing and she was a bit upset herself after finding Jimmy.’
‘The victim?’
‘Yeah. His name’s Jim Patterson but everybody calls him Jimmy. He’s a bit of a local character, really. He’s got himself into more than one scrape over the years and this won’t be the first time he forgot to fill up and ran out of petrol on his way back from town.’
‘He’d forget his head if it wasn’t screwed on.’ The younger officer’s grin faded rapidly after an admonishing glance from his senior colleague.
‘So where’s his car?’
‘About two kilometres down the road. You must have passed it.’
Hawk blinked. Had he been so preoccupied with thoughts of the woman sitting beside him that he could have let a major piece of evidence like that go unnoticed? And why hadn’t Charlotte spotted an abandoned vehicle? What had she been thinking about?
‘Easy to miss,’ the local police officer said kindly. ‘It’s well onto the verge and it looks like a wreck, anyway.’
‘You sure it’s Mr Patterson’s car?’
‘Oh, yeah. I had to write him out a ticket for not having a warrant only last week. He said he forgot but I’d reminded him more than once in the last three months.’
‘And the petrol tank is empty?’
‘Yep. His petrol can’s on the side of the road in the grass. We haven’t moved anything. Want me to show you where it is?’
‘Thanks, but I’ll find it. The fewer people walking around the scene the better from now on. There could be other important evidence that shouldn’t be disturbed.’
‘There’s only been me and Will, apart from the ambulance guys. And Mr Colleridge and Maggie, I guess.’ The officer looked sideways to where the staff from the funeral home were transferring the body to the hearse. ‘And them,’ he added slowly. He shook his head sadly. ‘Poor old Jimmy. Place won’t be the same without him. ‘’Specially the pub.’
‘Did he drink a lot?’
‘Nah. That was where he went for company. He could nurse the same pint for hours.’
‘Unless someone bought him one,’ his colleague added. ‘Then he’d finish his own in a flash.’
Hawk made another note. If the victim had been intoxicated he might well have wandered away from the safety of the wide grass verge. Not that that could excuse the driver who had hit him initially for not stopping to render assistance. It was not just illegal to leave the scene of an accident. It was downright immoral and Hawk was determined that the offender would be brought to justice, no matter how difficult that might prove to be.
Charlotte had marked the position of the body carefully before it had been removed.
‘He definitely wasn’t killed by the second vehicle,’ she informed Hawk. ‘Track marks over both legs but it was the chest and head injuries that were fatal.’
‘How long ago?’
‘I’m no expert. I was talking about it with the paramedic who filled in the “life extinct” form, though, and we think it was at least a couple of hours ago.’
‘There’s a petrol can in the long grass over there, apparently. He was on his way to get some fuel.’
‘So where’s his car?’
‘We passed it a couple of kilometres back from the scene.’
‘Did we?’
Charlotte’s eyes were wide as her gaze caught Hawk’s, and his resolve to keep his obsession well away from the job went out the window. Even in this dim light the flash of guilt in the depths of her eyes let him know that she had been preoccupied for exactly the same reason he had been. He tucked that piece of information into the mental file that should be remaining firmly closed as he turned to go and locate the position of the petrol can. It could be the most important clue they had in relation to whether the driver of the offending vehicle had seen the victim before hitting him.
‘Just once,’ he found himself muttering under
his breath. That would be enough to stop himself getting distracted like this. Just one night with Charlotte Laing and he could get her out of his system, he was sure of it. This was a physical obsession. He knew he’d never be able to compete with the ghost of Jamie Forrest and he didn’t want to. It made Charlotte even more attractive in a way.
Hawk had no desire to make himself vulnerable to the emotional tentacles a long-term relationship sent out. He just wanted to satisfy his curiosity, that was all. She was so unlike any woman he’d ever known. All he needed to do was prove it was not really so different between the sheets and he’d get over it. It was the curiosity that was eating him alive. Wanting to know what it would be like.
Wanting Charlotte.
He could have found out tonight if only they’d been a bit further out of town. Shame the car was maintained so well. No chance of them running out of petrol like poor old Jimmy. Although there was always the kill switch under the dashboard which prevented the car being started even if the keys were left in the ignition. Would Charlotte think to check that if they were last on scene and the squad car refused to start?
Probably. And it was pointless to scheme in any case. The scene would have to be protected overnight and they were close enough to the city for assistance to be despatched if it was deemed necessary. Hawk’s breath was expelled in a heavy sigh as he sprayed fluorescent paint around the petrol can to mark the piece of evidence and then straightened to see what Charlotte was up to.
They spent another thirty minutes on scene and Charlotte was excited by the latest evidence the beams from their powerful torches had revealed.
‘There’s heaps of pieces from an indicator light. Have you checked the second car?’
‘It’s not damaged.’
‘Look!’ Charlotte held up a piece of coloured plastic, using the beam of her torch as a pointer. ‘This bit’s got part of a serial number.’ The torch raked the rest of the scattered shards still lying on the tarmac. ‘If we can find the rest of the number, it’ll give us the make and approximate year of the vehicle we’re hunting for.’
The Recovery Assignment Page 12
