by Diana Palmer
While he was trying to, his car phone rang. He pushed the speaker button and Jones’s voice came clearly over it.
“Brannon, it’s Alice Jones at the medical examiner’s office. I’ve got your cause of death.”
“Okay, Jones,” he said, pausing for a traffic light.
“Mrs. Jennings was killed by severe blunt force trauma to the back of the head. There’s an odd indentation in the skull…”
“Oval?” he asked at once. “Like a blackjack might have made?”
There was a pause. “Come to think of it…”
“Jones, check back in the records for the autopsy results on Henry Garner, June, two years ago. You may find a match in that odd indentation.”
“G-a-r-n-e-r?” She spelled it out.
“That’s it. And let me know what you find, would you?”
“Will do. But don’t get used to me calling you like this, Brannon,” she added in a husky tone. “You’re not bad-looking, and you have that sexy Texas Ranger badge and belt buckle, but you have to remember that I have hunky movie stars standing in line just to hear the sound of my sultry voice… Hello? Hello?”
Brannon had already hit the switch and was laughing himself sick.
“There is only one Alice Jones,” Josette mused. “I miss talking to her since I moved to Austin.”
He glanced at her whimsically. “I’ll mention you in my will if you can get her to move there, too.”
She chuckled. “Sorry. I’ve got a Phil Douglas in my own office. I don’t need an Alice Jones in the Austin medical examiner’s office to drive me even battier.”
His eyes went back to traffic. “You seem to fit in well with the district attorney’s staff here.”
Josette nodded. “I can fit in most places. And they’re a great bunch of folks to work with. But, I like Austin.”
“Why?” he persisted. “Because I’m not there?”
Her hands gripped her briefcase. “You haven’t been here for two years, either, Brannon,” she reminded him.
“You know why I left,” he replied. His silver eyes glanced in her direction and his deep voice dropped softly. “When you feel really reckless, you might ask why I came back.”
“Not my business,” she said firmly. She wasn’t going to open that can of worms.
Unexpectedly Brannon turned off the highway onto the paved service road that led to his apartment building through a back street, his expression taut and uncompromising.
“I want to go home,” Josette protested.
“I want to talk.”
“Use the phone.”
He ignored that. He pulled into his usual parking spot in the underground garage and cut off the engine, turning to her.
“Aren’t you tired, just a little, of running from the past?” he asked seriously.
He made her uncomfortable with that level stare, even though she couldn’t see it clearly under the wide brim of his Stetson in the darkened garage.
“I’m only here to help solve a murder,” she said. “Afterward, I’ll go back to Austin, to my own life…”
“You’ll go home to a lonely apartment with only the television for company,” he interrupted. “You’ll eat TV dinners or takeout. You’ll spend your evenings working through computer files of information, and during the day you’ll talk to other people in law enforcement and it will be business. Just business. When you go to bed, maybe you’ll dream, but you’ll still be alone. What sort of life is that?”
“Your sort,” she threw back curtly.
His face tautened and then relaxed. His shoulders moved. “Touché.”
“You’re happy enough,” Josette pointed out.
“Do you really think so?” he replied. “I live for my job. It’s all I’ve lived for during the past fourteen years, with minor encounters that wouldn’t even qualify as romance. Except for the brief time I spent with you two years ago,” he emphasized, “I’ve lived like a hermit.”
Her heart jumped. She couldn’t manage a reply.
“And you’re still a virgin,” he said doggedly. “Why?”
She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t get any words to come out.
“Don’t bother trotting out that tired old story that you have principles,” Brannon said before she could speak. “You want me. You wanted me then, and you want me now.”
“We all have these annoying little weaknesses that we can’t quite overcome,” she shot back with ruffled pride.
He lifted an eyebrow and let his gaze drop to her mouth. “Why try to overcome it?”
“I don’t want to have an affair with you.”
He shrugged. “I’m not much on affairs, myself.”
“That makes it even worse, Brannon,” she said icily. “I’m even less in the market for a one-night stand.”
“I don’t do those, either.”
Josette frowned. She stared at him evenly. She couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying.
Brannon sighed. “You don’t have a problem with abstinence yourself, but it doesn’t occur to you that anyone else might have the same ideals—especially a man. Isn’t that a little sexist in itself?”
She lifted both eyebrows. “I will never believe that you’re a virgin, Brannon,” she drawled.
“I’m not,” he replied solemnly. “But I’m not promiscuous, either. And, as I mentioned already, for the past two years I haven’t touched a woman.”
Her worried eyes searched his hard, lean face, looking for answers.
“Why?” she blurted out.
“Why haven’t you ended up in some other man’s bed?” he threw the words right back at her. “I don’t want anyone else.” Brannon paused and his eyes narrowed. “And neither do you, whether or not you’re willing to admit it to me.”
Her body clenched at the insinuation. It might be true, but, then, she didn’t have to go around admitting things like that to the one man in the world who’d been nothing but an endless headache to her. Conceit was a character-destroying vice in a man. Besides, he’d be insufferable if she admitted that she wanted only him.
“Why did you bring me here?” Josette asked, avoiding an answer.
He pursed his lips and his eyes began to twinkle. “Because in addition to meat loaf, I can make chicken and broccoli crepes,” he said unexpectedly.
It was the last reply she expected. “Excuse me?”
“You always wanted to go to the same French restaurant when we were dating,” he reminded her, “because you loved those crepes. The restaurant’s gone out of business, but I found the chef and got him to teach me how to make the crepes.”
“Why?” she exclaimed.
His lips pursed. “A little flattery, a little exquisite cuisine, a little classic tenor sax music…” He leaned toward her with a suggestive smile. “A little minor surgery…?”
She flushed and whacked him with a newsletter.
Brannon sighed. “Ah, well, there’s always tomorrow.” He got out of the SUV and went around to open the door for her. “You can leave those files in here,” he said, putting her briefcase in the floorboard. “I’m not talking business over my crepes.”
He eased her hand into his and held it all the way up the elevator. When he opened the door to his apartment and pulled her inside, he nudged her body up against the closed door and propped his lean hands on either side of her head. He looked down into her eyes for a long time, watching the telltale signs of her attraction as they broke through her reserve.
“Nice,” he murmured. “After two years, you still start trembling when I come close, like this.” He leaned down, so that his powerful body was touching hers from breast to thigh. He felt her intake of breath on his lips. “I can feel your heart beating against my chest,” he murmured, and his hips began a slow, sensuous revolution against her own. He stiffened with the arousal that was instantaneous.
“Marc!” she exclaimed, embarrassed.
His teeth nibbled at her upper lip and his eyes closed so that he could enjoy the taste of her. “Mint and c
offee,” he breathed, nudging her lips apart. “You always tasted of coffee and smelled of roses.” He levered even closer. His own heart was racing now, and one long leg eased between both of hers. She didn’t even protest this time.
Her nails bit into his chest helplessly as her mouth followed the open, teasing pressure of his hard lips.
“Hell, don’t play. Touch!” Brannon guided her fingers to the snaps that held his creamy Western-style shirt together.
Josette didn’t need prompting after that. Her fingers ripped it open to the shiny silver and gold metal of his belt buckle with the Texas Rangers logo embossed on it. Her hands found thick, rough hair over the warm, damp muscles of his chest and burrowed into it even as her mouth pushed up at his to tempt it into longer, deeper contact.
He smiled as he kissed her with slow enjoyment. “Grier may be something with a K-Bar,” he whispered into her yielded lips, “but I’m in a class all by myself with you. Open your mouth a little more, Josie….”
His leg began to move seductively between hers and made her tremble. She kissed him back helplessly, with a tiny little moan of pure pleasure as her arms reached up and around his neck.
“Wait…just a minute…” His hands were busy and all at once, she felt cool air on bare skin. But she was too far gone to care. Brannon looked down at bare silky breasts with hard, dusky little nubs. His hands smoothed over them and she moaned again. “Yes,” he breathed, drawing her against his bare chest. “Oh God, yes…!”
“It’s been…so long,” she whimpered as he kissed her.
He pulled her up even closer, groaning against her soft, tremulous mouth. “Yes,” he whispered huskily. “Too long! Come closer, baby. Come…closer…closer!”
His hands went to her rounded hips and jerked her roughly, hungrily against the visible evidence of his desire. A shock of pleasure shot through his powerful body like fire and he groaned harshly.
Josette felt tears sting her eyes as her hands moved helplessly into his thick blond-streaked brown hair, dislodging his hat as she tore her mouth from his and pulled his head down to her breasts. She arched backward, whispering, pleading.
He couldn’t resist her. His mouth opened over a hard nipple and began to suckle her in a hot, tempestuous silence that was like the flash before a thunderclap. She cried out softly as her body throbbed with hunger. It had been two years since he’d handled her like this, since she’d lain in his arms all but nude on his sofa and begged him not to stop.
Brannon lifted his head and looked into her wide, hungry eyes. “I had your clothes off,” he said harshly. “Do you remember? I stripped you out of your clothes and you fought mine out of the way. I was over you, my mouth on your mouth, my legs between yours…” His mouth ground hard against hers. “And you cried out. I could barely breathe by then. I was shaking, I wanted it so much. But I couldn’t get…inside you! For a few seconds, I didn’t even realize why. Not until you started sobbing and begging me to stop. It was like having a bucket of ice thrown on me.”
Josette moaned and hid her face against his chest. Her eyes closed as she, too, relived the memory.
“You turned every shade of red when I pulled away and looked at you,” he recalled huskily. “I knew then, without a word, that you’d never been with a man. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t even speak.”
“But you did,” she reminded him painfully. “You said…plenty!”
“Josie, I really hope you’ve seen at least one X-rated movie by now, so that you begin to understand why I was upset!”
She was blushing, she knew she was, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Well, I do, sort of,” she stammered.
Brannon laughed gruffly. His hands moved in her hair, removing hairpins, until the wealth of the golden mass fell around her shoulders. “No, you don’t,” he murmured dryly. “But I remember too well how it felt to want to repeat it. So this is as far as it goes. For now.”
All at once, Brannon moved away from her jerkily, his hands hard on her waist as he held her at a faint distance and dragged air into his lungs, a faint tremor in his body as he fought the demons of his own headlong hunger.
“I’m sorry about that,” he added huskily, and he smiled. “I didn’t mean to get in over my head so fast.”
The apology was unexpected, like his nonexistent restraint toward her. Slowly it began to dawn on her numbed senses that he wasn’t playing. Apparently he wasn’t exaggerating his length of abstinence, either, because he was visibly shaken.
His very vulnerability made her curious and chased away her own embarrassment at her abandon in his arms. Josette stared at him with quizzical affection, a little shy, even now.
He saw that, and he liked it. She was so capable in her job that she seemed impervious to temptation. She wasn’t. If he was a slave of his passion, so was she. He relaxed.
“I realize that you must feel like the main course. But I actually meant it when I promised you crepes,” he said dryly.
“That’s okay,” she replied, and smiled gently.
The smile made his chest swell. Her eyes were luminous, soft, full of secrets. He looked down at her bare breasts, making a meal of them until she laughed a little nervously and started doing up fastenings. He did the same, but without the least sign of anger.
Brannon glanced at her ruefully. Her mouth was swollen from the hard pressure of his lips. She looked disheveled and off balance. She also looked happy. He smiled, too. Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps…
Brannon did cook crepes, and Josette made a salad to go with them, and an egg custard for dessert. She was walking around in her stockings, he in his socks. He had on jeans and a black T-shirt, and she was in her suit slacks and a scoop-neck beige blouse with her long hair loose down her back. They worked in quiet harmony as if they’d lived together and worked in the kitchen together forever.
She savored every bite of the unexpected treat, surprised at his proficiency. He’d actually made the crepes from scratch, not from a mix.
“You’re impressed,” he mused with a grin. “I can tell.”
“I’m very impressed,” she replied, finishing the last bite of her crepe and eyeing the last bite of his with helpless envy.
Brannon chuckled, forking that last bit and offering it at her lips. “No need to thank me,” he murmured. “Flattery is quite adequate.”
“They really are delicious,” Josette admitted sheepishly, and with a smile.
“And just think, if we lived together, I could make you crepes all the time.”
She paused with her coffee cup halfway to her lips and stared at him, uneasy and uncertain.
Brannon wasn’t smiling. His pale eyes glittered as they stabbed into hers with determination and something else, something even deeper.
The sudden jangling of the telephone was more than enough to shatter the tension between them. He got up, muttering, to answer it.
“Hello?” he said shortly. He hesitated as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. He glanced toward Josette and frowned. “Why now? Can’t it wait until in the morning?” he asked impatiently.
There was another hesitation. He let out a long breath. “Okay,” he replied. “If it’s that important. Sure. Twenty minutes.”
He hung up, staring at the telephone blankly for a few seconds before he faced Josette. “Bib,” he said slowly. “He’s at their San Antonio place. He wants me to come over. Some enterprising reporter has a new angle on the Garner case and seems to know the reason behind the murders. The reporter approached Becky with his theory and now Bib’s scared to death.”
“What does he want you to do, arrest the reporter?” she asked.
“He wants to ask advice. And considering the nature of the story, I think you’d better come along.”
“Why?”
“Because the reporter says that someone in the local underworld has found a damaging piece of evidence against him and is planning to blackmail him with it.”
Her eyes lit up. “At last! The evid
ence and maybe even the culprit himself!”
“A break, at least, if we’re lucky. Come on.”
He drove them quickly to the spacious estate where Bib Webb lived when he wasn’t in the state capitol. Josette thought, not for the first time, what an empire he’d inherited when Henry Garner was murdered.
There were two cars in the driveway that wound up to the front door. One was a small gray VW Beetle, the other was a stately late-model dark Lincoln.
“Is his wife here?” Josette asked curiously, indicating the VW.
“Silvia drives a Ferrari,” he remarked idly, noting the little German-made car. “That’s Becky’s car.”
“Another scandal in the making?” she mused.
“I think you’re going to find that Bib’s tired of living a lie,” he said enigmatically. “A scandal over Becky is the least of his worries right now.”
“You’re not thinking that he was mixed up in Garner’s death at this late date?”
“Not a chance,” he replied with conviction.
“Aren’t you going to tell me why we’re here?” she persisted.
“I’ll let Bib do that.”
He cut off the engine and came around to open her door for her.
“You have nice manners, Brannon,” Josette remarked with a smile.
“My mother was a stickler for them. Just like yours,” he added gently.
He took her hand in his and pulled her along to the front door. When he rang the bell, Bib Webb himself opened the door. He was holding a can of diet cola and he looked worn to the bone. His jacket and tie were off, and the top buttons of his shirt were undone. His hair was ruffled, as if he’d been running a nervous hand through it. There were dark circles the size of apple slices under his eyes. He looked miserable.
“Come on in,” he drawled. He managed a smile for Josette. “Nice of you to come, Miss Langley, under the circumstances.”
“Nice of you not to mind, Mr. Webb,” she replied pleasantly.
Becky Wilson was standing nervously in the center of the living room, looking uneasy. She was wearing a long, patterned dress that came to her ankles. It had a neat white collar and long sleeves. Her dark hair was in a bun, and she wore glasses. She was the exact opposite of Silvia Webb, right down to her nondescript flat shoes.
