Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

  Steve stopped. Shit. The last thing he needed now was to go another round with his boss.

  “You all take care,” Walt said to a patient. “This heat’s killer . . . Margaret, how’s that grandbaby of yours?”

  He saw Steve with Bailey, and his expression hardened.

  “Miz Wells.” He nodded. “Sorry about your daddy.”

  “Thank you. Is he—”

  “This way,” the nurse said.

  Walt’s gaze cut to Steve. “Stick around a minute.”

  “Later.”

  “You go ahead,” Bailey said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Steve didn’t want to leave her. But she wasn’t asking for his support, was she? On the contrary.

  He let her go.

  “Pretty girl,” Walt observed as she followed the tall black nurse down the curtained row. “But damned if she don’t remind me of that L’il Abner character. You know the one? Little guy in black with the bad luck cloud following him around.”

  “Before my time,” Steve said tersely.

  Walt shook his head. “Seven years I’ve been chief, and only one homicide. She comes back to town, and within three weeks I’ve got two dead bodies and a felony assault on my hands.”

  Unease slid through the temper. “That’s not her fault.”

  “Maybe not,” Walt said. “In fact, she did us a favor last night.”

  Steve balanced on the balls of his feet, waiting for the punch.

  “Just got off the phone with SBI. Their lab boys found traces of the deceased’s blood in the crack of the base. I’d say we have ourselves a murder weapon.”

  Steve didn’t think Walt had pulled him aside to tell him he was right all along.

  He struggled to get his head back in the job.

  “Prints?” he asked.

  “Wiped.”

  He expected that. Paul Ellis was too smart to plant the weapon on Bailey without carefully wiping his prints first.

  “So we still can’t prove Paul Ellis killed his wife,” Steve said.

  Or that Bailey didn’t.

  Walt rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand. “Well, now, I talked to Jim in the DA’s office. We know Ellis had the opportunity. He had the financial motive, and now we’ve got the means.”

  “But it’s all circumstantial.”

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have liked to get Ellis’s confession. But him killing himself like that . . . it’s damn near the same thing. If Miz Wells will cooperate, we can make this whole thing go away. I’m asking Jim in the DA’s office to rule the deaths a murder/suicide.”

  Which would leave Bailey cleared, both cases closed, and everybody happy.

  Except Steve.

  And Bailey, who was too damn honest for her own good.

  He should let it go. He had come home to Stokesville to make a better life for his daughter. He wasn’t here to make news, to make waves, or to make enemies. But something about this whole setup nagged at him like an open window in a ground floor apartment.

  He jammed his hands into his pockets. “What else did the lab boys tell you?”

  “About what?”

  “About Paul Ellis. Sherman did swipes on his hands. Did you get results yet?”

  Walt pulled in his chin. The corners of his mouth pulled down in displeasure. “I told you I’m making my recommendation to the DA. I’ll have your case file on my desk Monday morning.”

  He didn’t add, “If you know what’s good for you.”

  He didn’t have to.

  “AND behind curtain number three . . .” The nurse winked at Bailey and slid back the striped curtain around Frank Wells’s bed. “Mr. Wells, your daughter’s here to see you.”

  Bailey caught her breath, her already raw emotions scraped by the sight of her father under the harsh hospital lights. His bluff red face was all eyebrows and nose, his skin slack and gray. His big frame seemed shrunken under the white sheet. Even his hair seemed thinner.

  “Hey, Daddy,” she said softly.

  His mouth curled. One big hand lifted before it fell again to his lap. “Hey, Bailey girl.”

  Her eyes welled. Her throat clogged with snot and tears.

  They had never had much to say to one another. Now she was speechless.

  Her mother wasn’t.

  “Doesn’t he look good? You should have seen him before. I thought he’d never stop bleeding. Dr. Andrews says head injuries do that. And he has staples, actual metal staples, in his head. Like Frankenstein. Show her, Frank.”

  “Girl doesn’t want to see my staples, Dotty.”

  “Well, but it was very interesting. I thought they’d use stitches. But Dr. Andrews put in those staples with me sitting right here. Pop, pop, pop.” Her voice shook slightly. She twitched the rough white sheet over her husband’s chest, smoothing it with trembling hands.

  “Don’t fuss,” Frank grumbled. But he patted her hand as he said it.

  Dorothy turned her palm over and clasped his hand compulsively.

  Bailey felt as though she’d caught her parents kissing. She cleared her throat. “Can I get you anything?”

  Her mother blinked rapidly. “I need a few things from home. Dr. Andrews wants to keep an eye on your father overnight because he was unconscious for so long. But I can spend the night with him.”

  “Damn fool idea,” Frank said. “You should go home. Go to bed.”

  “I wouldn’t sleep a wink. I’d be too worried about you.”

  Frank harrumphed. “You won’t sleep here, either. Not in that chair.”

  “Do you want me to stay?” Bailey offered. She was already so tired it was an effort to stand, let alone think straight. But her mother vibrated on the edge of exhaustion. “You could go home and change, maybe get something to eat.”

  “They have a cafeteria here,” Dorothy said. “And a gift shop.” She sounded pleased.

  Bailey looked at her father.

  “You go on. You’ve got better things to do than stick around here.” He smiled at her crookedly. “You always did.”

  “Oh, Daddy.” The tears escaped. Dripped.

  “Go on,” he repeated. “We’ll be fine.”

  “But bring me my toothbrush and a sweater,” Dorothy said. “The blue one, in my middle dresser drawer. And I could use my back pillow.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Mom.”

  “That’s my girl,” Frank said.

  Startled, she met her father’s gaze. And he smiled.

  “YOU don’t need to wait,” Bailey said to Steve on the porch of her parents’ house.

  She could handle this herself. She could handle anything.

  She sighed. Except, apparently, him.

  Ever since she had trespassed onto his personal emotional territory, he had retreated into Robocop mode. Professional. Polite.

  Dangerous.

  Under his mechanical courtesies, temper radiated. He hadn’t forgiven her for calling him on his little guilt trip.

  Brooding again, she thought, but the sneer didn’t make her any less miserable.

  “I’m just going to grab a few things and go back to the hospital. I can drive myself,” she said.

  Steve ignored her, plucking the keys from her hand to unlock the door. “You’re too tired to see straight. I’m not letting you drive.”

  Let her?

  “Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done. The ride home and . . . and everything. But you can’t chauffeur me around indefinitely like a drunk in the back of a squad car. You need to get home to your daughter.”

  “My daughter is fine. My mother picked her up from your sister’s an hour ago. I don’t need you to lecture me about my obligations.”

  Ouch.

  “Maybe not.” Bailey stuck out her chin. “But I don’t have to put up with being treated like one of them, either.”

  His head snapped around. “You are not an obligation,” he said through his teeth.

  Her heart thundered. “No? What am I, then?”

  “You�
�re a damn nuisance.”

  Disappointment swelled her chest and closed her throat. When she could speak again, she said, “Thank you. Another magnificent nonanswer from the king of emotional evasion.”

  He glowered. “Damn it, Bailey, what do you want me to say? We’ve known each other less than a week.”

  She was shaken. He was right.

  But she was tired of investing herself in no-yield relationships, sick of holding back, of saying nothing, of playing it safe.

  “I want you to talk to me. I need to know what you’re feeling. I don’t want to get into another relationship knowing from the beginning that it’s not equal and it’s not going anywhere.”

  Not again. Not ever again.

  “I’m not Paul Ellis.”

  “No, you’re not,” she agreed readily. “You could hurt me more than he ever did.”

  “Shit. All right. All right.” He didn’t look lover-like. He looked annoyed. “You want feelings? You make me feel . . .” He stopped, apparently at a loss for words.

  Bailey held her breath as he tottered on the brink of real disclosure. All it would take was one word, one push, from her.

  And God help her, she couldn’t do it.

  Maybe she didn’t want to know how he really felt.

  Maybe hope and cozy self-deception were preferable to rejection after all.

  “After Teresa died, I shut down,” Steve said. She watched him with painful attention, as if she could find her way by the light of his expression. His eyes were dark as night. “I had a job to do, and a kid to raise. I figured that was it for me. But you make me feel . . . You. Make. Me. Feel.” He repeated it slowly, emphatically. “Is that what you wanted to know? Is that enough for you?”

  Bailey moistened her lips. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I haven’t decided.”

  His expression changed. Excitement shivered along her nerves. He didn’t look like a frustrated father, a grieving husband, a laid-back Southern lawman anymore. He looked like the cop he must have been in D.C., his eyes sharper, his mouth harder.

  “Let me help you make up your mind,” he said and reached for her.

  SEVENTEEN

  STEVE jerked her toward him.

  Bailey lost her balance, grabbing at him, before she fell flush against his big, solid body. He kissed her, deep and slow and long, until her mind spun and her fingers flexed on the muscle of his shoulders. His hand fisted in her hair, holding her head for his kiss, while the other slid down her back and pulled her hips to his.

  His mouth was hot, hard, and hungry. His hands gripped and took. Temper and need pumped through him, fueling his desire, feeding hers. Her nerves jangled. Her brain shut down. His earlier testing, tasting, exploratory kisses hadn’t prepared her for this.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for this.

  Yearning shuddered through her. His hand slid over and around her body, closing on her breast. He palmed it, shaped it, found the nipple and rubbed it to a tight, aching point. She made a choked sound—not a protest—into his mouth.

  He tugged her hair, forcing her head back. Their faces were inches apart. Their lower bodies pressed together, belly and sex. He was hotly, heavily, gloriously aroused.

  “Is that enough for you?” His voice grated.

  She blinked and licked her swollen lips. “No.”

  The hand on her breast stilled. Could he feel the crazy thump of her heart? “No?”

  “I meant . . .” She tried to get her mind and lungs to function. Raising her hand, she skated her fingers over his rough jaw and soft lips, the smooth, flushed skin high on his cheek, and the tender corner of his eye. Inside her everything clenched and then loosened. Softened.

  “More,” she said.

  Steve’s gaze narrowed dangerously. “I’ll give you more.”

  His mouth descended, crushing out thought, blanketing her in sensation. He took her over, his strength supporting her body, his breath supplanting her breath, his tongue possessing her mouth. Bailey clung to him, buffeted by emotion, swamped by craving.

  It was too much.

  It wasn’t nearly enough.

  Desperate to touch him, to feel skin, she ran her hands down the solid muscle of his back, working her fingers under his belt, reaching for the hem of his shirt.

  He started at her touch and broke away. “I’m too old for this,” he muttered.

  Her jaw dropped. Her heart failed. “Not again.”

  He scowled. “Not again, what?”

  She was shaking, scared of the way he made her feel, afraid of the things he made her long for. Terrified he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. Needed. Now.

  “I am not going to let you turn this into another I-don’t-mix-sex-and-the-job moment. I don’t care if—”

  He stopped her with another kiss that made her raise on her toes and clutch him.

  “I am too damn old,” he said, “to take you on the stairs. Where’s your bed?”

  Speechless, she pointed toward her room. And gasped, thrilled and off-balance, when he hauled her off her feet and carried her up the stairs like Rhett Butler making off with Scarlett O’Hara.

  The door was open.

  He strode with her into the blue flowered bedroom with the girl rocker posters on the walls. Shifting his grip, he let her slide down his broad, hard body onto her feet. His erection dragged against her, nudging the bare skin of her belly. They both shuddered.

  But the transition had given Bailey time to think, time to second-guess her instincts and his intentions.

  Glancing at the narrow white bed, she bit her lip. “It’s kind of small.”

  Steve’s mouth quirked. “I sure hope you’re talking about the mattress, sugar.”

  Startled, she chuckled. “I was. I was worried how we would, um . . .”

  “Fit?” he suggested, his eyes wicked.

  She nodded.

  “Let me show you.”

  He bent and nuzzled the curve of her jaw, the line of her throat, while his hands grasped the hem of her tank top, working it up and over her head.

  She reached to help him. Gently, he lifted her hands away and stared down at her breasts in their black demi-bra.

  Her mouth dried. Her nipples peaked.

  With one finger, he traced the swell of her breasts along the line of plunging black nylon. Sliding his thumbs into the satin cups, he dragged them down. Her breasts popped free.

  Bailey closed her eyes, turned on and embarrassed. And jolted with shock and need when his hot mouth closed on one breast. He suckled her, hard. She squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed by sensations: the brush of his hair, the scrape of his beard, the hot, sweet suction of his mouth. Fever and chills chased over her body. She swayed on her feet.

  His fingers fumbled with the drawstring at her belly before he slid her pants over her hips and down her legs.

  His breath hissed. His hands stilled.

  Bailey opened her eyes, misgiving dancing in her stomach. “What is it?”

  “I didn’t figure you for the thong type.”

  What was he expecting? Granny panties?

  “They’re actually very practical,” she said defensively. “They don’t show under my clothes, and they’re—”

  “Sexy as hell.”

  He took two fingers and rubbed them slowly over the tiny satiny triangle. It was already damp. She sucked in her breath. Her knees wobbled.

  “Very sexy,” he said.

  He stripped rapidly, T-shirt, shoes, belt, jeans. She watched, nervous and enthralled, as clothing hit the floor and his body was revealed. Powerful, hairy chest. Broad, smooth shoulders. Strong, hairy thighs. He left his underwear on, navy briefs that clung and stretched over his very male, very aroused body.

  Oh, wow.

  “This is a first for me,” she said brightly.

  He froze stepping over his jeans on the floor. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m twenty-six years old, and I finally get to have sex with a football player i
n my bedroom while my parents are out.”

  “Ex-football player. But if you have some high school fantasy thing going, sugar, that’s fine by me. I was afraid you were going to say I was your first, period.”