The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  God. “More.”

  Declan growled, swore baldly.

  The rawness, the grittiness of it thrummed in her blood as his hips surged and retreated. Denim scraped her skin, and flashes of heat shot off like sparklers. She nipped at his jaw, cursed the bandages she wore because she wanted her hands in his hair.

  His breath was hot in her ear – and sweet, who would have guessed it? – coming in pants that sounded erotic as hell.

  Her skin went slick beneath the hand that wrenched up her shirt to cup her breast.

  Then his mouth was on hers again, tongue plunging, lips crushing and Sadie squirmed, frantic with need. Her pulse scrambled, hitched, then roared through her veins as the taste of him flooded her mouth.

  Rain drummed steadily against the window glass in tempo with her heartbeat.

  She wrapped a leg around his hip but when they rolled she cried out in pain.

  “My shoulder,” was all she could think to say.

  Breaking the kiss, Declan slowly removed his hand, pushing himself up onto his elbows. The steam rising from their bodies all but clouded the heavy air.

  For a moment they just lay there, both of them struggling to breathe.

  Then accompanied by a scowl and absolutely no eye contact, Declan’s long fingers began to undo her jeans. Sadie thought well, isn’t this interesting, and then what the hell do you think you’re doing, but her jeans were off before she could find the wherewithal to say either. The painkiller suggested there really wasn’t a problem.

  The painkiller thought that maybe Dec would like to step out of his jeans as well.

  Lifting lids that had gone heavy as stones, Sadie watched him climb to his feet, all long legs and messy hair and bad attitude. Just like the boy she remembered.

  But the curve of his very grownup bicep as he yanked the quilt from the end of the bed had admiration stealing her breath.

  Then the quilt settled over her, rather wetly. Oh it was dry, of course, but simply not what she’d been expecting. Honestly, she’d been anticipating about a hundred and eighty-odd pounds of aroused male. Not that she was in any condition, or anything. And she certainly didn’t want that to happen. But you know, given the way he’d just inspected her tonsils and tried to suck them into his own throat, she just sort of –

  “Good night, Sadie.”

  And with that he closed the door.

  Sadie lay there, stunned into insensibility. Had she actually made out with Declan Murphy? And had he actually just… walked out? In possession of a full-on stiffy? She replayed the course of events since they’d come home, and that was pretty much the way things had happened. She ran her tongue over her lips, tasted him there, and experienced a pang of intense disappointment. It was almost more difficult to comprehend than the fact that she’d nearly been robbed. Or raped. Or possibly even murdered.

  Well okay, maybe not. This whole night was one big conundrum. Sadie shivered, no longer warm, and glanced furtively out the window. The electricity seemed to have been restored next door. She could just see into the bedroom, the tops of the bed’s four posters made blurry from the rain.

  And the thought of what had almost happened there had big fat tears rolling out of her eyes, shock and horror rushing back in to replace lust.

  Dear God. She’d almost been killed tonight.

  A sob ripped out of her throat, and she muffled it against the pillow. One more reason to be glad Declan had vacated. Because she absolutely wouldn’t want him to see her crying. And the other thing, that notion of sex she’d been entertaining, well it was a good thing he didn’t understand the language of painkillers. Because that certainly would have been a mistake.

  Her tears eventually dried, and a huge yawn cracked her jaw.

  She’d have to think about this stuff tomorrow. Right now the Percocet, or whatever it was they’d given her, was telling her it was lights out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SADIE awakened to the logging of the rain forest.

  Seriously, that’s how it sounded. A chainsaw buzzed loudly enough outside her window to wake Elvis. She tried to move to a sitting position, groaned loudly over various aches and pains, and finally managed to creak and mince effectively enough to identify the cause of the ruckus.

  Declan was decimating the privacy fence.

  Clad in worn jeans, protective goggles and a gray T-shirt, which sweat had darkened where it clung to his broad back, he wielded the power tool like a man possessed. Or possibly one who was off his medication. Why else would a seemingly reasonable human being be chopping that fence post into a bunch of little toothpicks?

  Sadie worried over that just as a knock sounded on the bedroom door.

  “Come in,” she called, or tried to. The drugs had left her vocal cords a little rusty. Or maybe it was all the screaming she’d done last night.

  Kathleen’s head peeped around the corner, her expression one of obvious concern. “Okay if I come in?”

  “Sure.” Sadie waved her in with a Q-tip, which elicited a wave of pain in her shoulder that had Sadie swallowing a groan. Kathleen, however, was on top of it.

  “Declan said it was time for your pain meds.” She offered some of the pills they’d given Sadie at the hospital and a tall glass of water to wash them down.

  “Thank God.” She sucked both the pills and the water down greedily. Kathleen also produced an antibiotic and she popped it dutifully as well. Then she ran a hand over hair that hadn’t been brushed since her bout with the storm, deciding it best not to contemplate her appearance.

  “So. Did you break a mirror or something before you left Denver? Because your luck’s been for shit since you got here.” Kathleen planted herself on the end of the double bed, cross-legged, just like she’d always done when they were kids.

  “Thank you for those warm words of comfort.”

  “Seriously though, Sadie, I talked to Dec and the Mount Pleasant PD, but you know I have to ask you some questions about last night, simply for my own peace of mind.”

  “Okay,” Sadie said with a sigh, although she’d already told the cops everything she could remember.

  “You sure Rick had nothing to do with this?”

  Sadie could only blink, mouth gaping.

  “It’s not as crazy as you think,” Kathleen insisted, correctly interpreting the look. “A guy like Rick’s not used to having the rug pulled out from under him, so maybe he thinks he can shake you up a little to get you to come running back. Believe me when I tell you, I’ve seen that kind of stunt before.”

  “Rick would never stoop to something so… dramatic, Kathleen. Hiring thugs to break in and terrorize me?” It was so B movie, and Rick was so not. “That’s just completely out of his realm.”

  Kathleen looked doubtful, so Sadie continued. “Look, he certainly wasn’t happy when I broke things off, but it’s not like he went crazy or anything.” He hadn’t really even tried to talk her out of leaving. “I think those guys were there to burgle the place, and didn’t realize that anyone was home. My car’s in the shop, remember? And the only light on was in the bathroom.”

  “Okay,” Kathleen said, her tone remaining skeptical. “But the thing is there haven’t been any reports of burglaries in the area recently. Which doesn’t mean anything, of course, except that from the evidence I’ve seen these guys weren’t amateurs. Your back door has glass in it, but instead of breaking the glass and reaching in, they picked the lock. And your power was dismantled from the line outside the house. If these guys were that good, why – no offense – would they have picked your place to break into? Simply because they thought it was empty? Anybody with eyes could have seen that there probably wouldn’t exactly be a wealth of big ticket items in the house. I think we may need to consider the possibility that you were targeted, specifically.”

  Sadie blew out a frustrated breath, but Kathleen continued before she could protest. “And they went after you, Sadie. What professional burglar in his right mind is going to attempt to run down a home
owner fleeing the scene? They don’t. Trust me. They just cut their losses and move on. Unless there was some very specific reason they didn’t want you to get away.”

  “Maybe they were rapists,” she countered, wondering how that thought was supposed to be better than the idea that this had something to do with Rick.

  Kathleen’s nose wrinkled in disagreement. “It’s a pretty rare thing for sexual predators of that sort to operate in pairs. Not unheard of, just rare. And I’m not saying that burglars haven’t stumbled upon a lone female during their forays and taken advantage of the situation, and a number of rapists do start their ‘careers,’ so to speak, with breaking and entering. But still, chasing you down like that…” She shook her head. “If they didn’t know you were there then rape wouldn’t have been on the initial agenda, and if rape wasn’t on the initial agenda why did they bother to run you down? Why not just let you go and vamoose while they had the chance? There’s something here that’s just not right.”

  “I was a witness,” Sadie pointed out. “Maybe they were worried that I could identify them.”

  “After having encountered them at night, in a darkened house, in the middle of a thunderstorm? By your own descriptions to the officers last night, they were ‘large lumbering shapes’ and ‘one of them was wearing work boots.’ They had to know you couldn’t see shit. Hell, it was so dark you couldn’t even see the privacy fence until you rammed yourself into it.”

  The doorbell rang, interrupting their conversation. “I’d better get that,” Kathleen said. “From the sound of things Declan is still out back assuaging his guilt.”

  Assuaging his… Sadie turned to look out the window, where the high pitched whine of the chainsaw had grown more distant as Declan moved farther down the fence.

  Kathleen thought he was chopping down the fence because he felt guilty? About what? Surely not what had happened last night?

  Sadie’s eyebrows snapped together. Honestly, she knew her friend was really good at her job and everything, but she was starting to wonder if being a cop hadn’t warped Kathleen’s brain. She was awfully suspicious of things that Sadie thought were obvious: she’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time when a couple of burglars had broken into her home, and Declan Murphy was completely off his rocker.

  No real mysteries there.

  And the idea that Rick had anything to do with it – Sadie would have laughed if several ribs didn’t feel like they’d been cracked during her nosedive from the roof last night. She poked at a couple of them with her puffball of a hand until Kathleen reappeared in the doorway. “The detective you spoke to last night is here with a couple of questions.” She checked Sadie out with a critical eye. “Do you need some help getting dressed or doing… something with your hair?”

  Sadie frowned and darted a glance at the mirror over the dresser. Ugh. Just as she thought. Her hair was a fright wig.

  “I, uh, think I can manage.” Although she wasn’t entirely sure she could. “But I might need to borrow a brush. And some… clothes.” She looked down at herself in horror, realizing that she was wearing only a T-shirt. With absolutely nothing on underneath it. The elastic in her underwear had been torn during her trek through the window. She’d managed to salvage the wet, filthy jeans for the ride home from the hospital, but…

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Kathleen looked up from where she was rooting something out of the closet.

  “Nothing.” No way was she going to admit that Paul Bunyon out there had stripped her of her jeans – getting a crotch shot to beat the band – right after she’d inadvertently sucked his face.

  Sadie had forgotten until just that moment.

  How the hell could she have not remembered? Percocet or no, that was like seeing Bigfoot, or experiencing an alien abduction, and then letting it slip your mind. A freak experience that rare and horrifying should have been emblazoned upon her psyche.

  Maybe she’d blocked it, like a trauma.

  “What do you feel like wearing?” Kathleen asked, oblivious to Sadie’s crisis. “This dress looks like it would be easy to get on – the armholes should be big enough to poke your hands through.”

  It took Sadie, in her traumatized state, a moment to realize what Kathleen was saying. Then she glanced at the dress her friend was holding up, recognizing it as her own. “That’s mine,” she said blankly, wondering how it had come to be in Declan’s guest room closet.

  Kathleen looked at her like she was mentally deficient. “I know it’s yours, Sadie, which is why I suggested that you wear it.” She shuffled around and produced a thong. “Do you own no other kind of underwear?” Shaking her head, she tossed the garments onto the bed. Then she continued foraging like a small woodland mammal until she came up with Sadie’s brush.

  “How did my stuff end up over here?” Sadie wondered, spying more of her clothes hanging in the closet.

  “Declan went over and grabbed your suitcase last night. Here,” she knelt on the bed beside Sadie, “let me see if I can manage your hair.”

  Between them they got her dressed and presentable, though Sadie still felt like Alice after she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. She followed Kathleen down the stairs, gaze so vacuous and dazed that she almost blundered into a wall. “Are you all right?” Kathleen asked, turning to steady her with a hand on the shoulder.

  “I’m fine.” Demented, maybe, but coherent. Because unless her memory was faulty, she’d damn well enjoyed that kiss. Kisses, that is. And all the other stuff that had gone with it.

  Pushing that little nugget aside like some cud she’d have to chew on later, Sadie mustered up some reassurance. “Let’s go talk to Detective Miller.”

  They met up with the detective in the kitchen, where Kathleen had deposited him with a cup of coffee, and the man rose from the table as they walked in. “Ms. Mayhew.” He extended one meaty paw for Sadie to shake, before looking awkwardly at her bandaged hands. “Uh, sorry.”

  “No problem.” Sadie lowered herself gingerly into a chair, careful to rest her weight on her unscathed butt cheek. Miller resettled his hefty bulk while Kathleen said something about making some toast for Sadie so that she had something in her stomach with the medication. “Kat… uh, Detective Murphy said you had a few more questions about last night?

  “Yes.” He pulled a little notebook from his pocket. “You said that you were alone in the house – cleaning the bathroom – when you heard the noise downstairs.”

  “That’s right,” Sadie nodded, “just after the power went out.”

  The detective proceeded to run through events as she’d relayed them, and Sadie kept nodding along, correcting him a time or two when he seemed to have the timeline confused. She was wondering where the new questions were in this when he pulled a plastic zip-lock bag out of his pocket. “Are you sure you were alone?” he asked, amiable tone hardening.

  Just as Sadie was about to assure him she had been, two things happened simultaneously: the door to the kitchen opened to reveal Declan and Detective Miller tossed the bag on the table. Sadie wasn’t sure which appearance was more horrifying, Declan’s chest gleaming sweatily sans shirt, or her erstwhile renter’s dirty underwear. Then, another bag containing the unfurled Trojan XL landed on top of the tightie-whities, effectively settling that question.

  Suddenly, she found herself the cynosure of three pairs of eyes.

  “Oh no,” she sputtered, realizing where this was going. “This is not what you think.”

  Declan moved in close behind her, and she could smell his musky scent, which did strange things to her Percocet-hopped hormones. Having him listening to her attempts to explain the condom was simply too much after what happened last night, and her left eye began to twitch. She sent a panicked glance toward Kathleen.

  Get him out of here she telegraphed madly, using the universal heavy-blink-and-head-jerk system of Friendship Code.

  But Kathleen just sipped her coffee, gaze laughing across the rim of her cup as she leaned against
the counter beside the toaster, no sympathy in evidence whatsoever.

  “Why don’t you tell me what this is, then, Ms. Mayhew?”

  Sadie returned her attention to the cop, who was no more compassionate regarding her embarrassment than Kathleen. Must be something they taught at the academy.

  Sadie sniffed, and gestured toward the baggies, determined not to let them see her sweat. “The underwear belong to my old renter – at least I’m assuming they do, as I found them discarded in a corner of the bedroom – and, uh, probably the condom also. I found the box under the sink.”

  “The condom appears to have been opened recently. And incidentally, wasn’t used. Are you certain it was your… cleaning that got interrupted?” He cast a meaningful glance toward Declan.

  Sadie bristled while Kathleen choked on her coffee. God only knew how Declan reacted. The implication was about a thousand times more embarrassing because of that little incident in the guest room last night. Thank God neither of the cop types knew about that.

  The detective raised his brow in the face of her obvious ire. “Look, I understand that you, uh, left your fiancé recently and maybe don’t want people privy to your personal matters, but from our standpoint we really need to know exactly what happened, if we want to close the case. You’re sure this wasn’t some kind of…” he waved a hand vaguely “domestic dispute that got out of hand?” Another glance at the looming Declan. “Maybe your ex stumbled upon something he wasn’t too happy to see?”

  Sadie rubbed her eyes with one of her Q-tips. Why was everyone trying to bring this around to Rick? What, did Miller think she’d just concocted the whole story? Maybe she and Dec – with whom he obviously thought she was embroiled in some kind of raging affair – actually had killed Rick last night and buried him in the garden. And this was their brilliant cover.

  Did she look like a complete moron?