He wasn’t going to do it. This close, having come this far, he wasn’t going to take the last millimeter necessary to taste her. His body was tight. Every muscle held still against movement. The stairs hadn’t stopped him. The beam hadn’t held him back. It was his will. He willed the kiss not to happen. And his will might win. Because he might be seduced by the hope he saw in her, but he was still trapped in the shadows of a nightmare he wouldn’t allow to end.
He hadn’t been able to save his partner. She hadn’t saved Gracie. But what she believed was that death would never win as long as she could plant a flower in a loved one’s name, as long as they still took joy in the sun on their faces or bright shellac on her fingernails or a garden reclaimed from weeds.
Or a kiss.
They both wanted and needed to press their lips together like a flower opening its petals to the day.
Maddy tilted her chin and lightly brushed her lips to his, softly braving his tension. She did it once with her eyes open so their gazes could meet, her green to his blue—wide with surprise. Then once more with her eyes closed giving herself over to a deeper taste.
When her tongue teased against his lips, urging his mouth to open, Constantine groaned. He pulled her away from the wall and into his arms. They were strong around her under her jacket, his tension evident in the ferocity of his grip. The heat of his skin scorched hers through the silk that separated them. She forgave sore ribs in her desire to be near him.
Maddy reached to thread her fingers into his hair and the move changed him. His grip loosened. His lips softened. His hands gentled on her back. Now he caressed. He slid his palms down the silk of her tank to the crinkled velveteen of her skirt. He cupped the slight swell of her muscular bottom. He kneaded and the pressure brought her forward fully against the heat of an impressive arousal.
Their lips came apart on Maddy’s gasp of surprise.
“I wanted to see you like this,” he said. She looked up and the ferocity from his grip had transferred itself to his face when his hands had gentled. She still had her hands in his hair, but now she held fistfuls of tousled waves. When their lips had parted, she hadn’t wanted him to go far.
“For a long time I’ve done my job and nothing else. Then I started seeing your work all over town. Everywhere I turned. When I touched you, when I tasted you, it was like those colors exploded in my body and my brain.” Constantine tipped his head back and swallowed. “If you want me to let you go, I will. But I’ll hate every second of you walking away.”
He was all business, all the time. The sudden and surprisingly raw vulnerability of his confession made her ache.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Maddy said. She pulled him close for another kiss to illustrate her pleasure with her current position. She slid her hands down to his chest while their tongues twined so she could push him back toward one of the upholstered chairs. When the back of his legs hit, he sat down and she followed. He sank into the chair and she sank into him.
Constantine smiled against her lips, an actual smile, and then groaned when she settled herself into his lap with her skirts billowed out and her heat hovering over his.
“I wish it was summer,” he said as his hands burrowed beneath velveteen to find smooth soft cashmere. But it didn’t take him long to peel the cashmere down exposing her to his questing fingers.
He found her ready, already heated from his kiss and closeness. His fingers teased her until she was gasping. Her soft urgent sounds were muffled against his lips when he slipped a finger, then two, into her welcoming heat.
Her body tightened against the sensual invasion. Her hips gently rocked and he moaned approval.
They weren’t truly alone. Anyone could interrupt at any time. It was a stolen moment taken without thought to “should not.” But Maddy didn’t care about a step on the stair or what moments might come awkwardly after. She only cared about his hand. His mouth. The grip of his other hand in her tangled hair. The feel of his warm chest beneath her kneading fingers and his lean hips between her thighs.
She drew back for air, but her hips didn’t care about her need for oxygen. They undulated, riding his touch, not needing permission. His head was thrown back against the chair. His blue eyes focused intensely on her face. He watched her pleasure to gauge every nuance of her reaction so he could adjust his touch to please her.
“Yes, Maddy. God, yes. Give this to me,” Constantine said hoarsely but in a whisper for her ears alone.
She was no longer perfect, poised and groomed to fool the world. Her hair was tousled. Her clothes rumpled and tights torn. Her composure seemed a distant memory. She was taken over and claimed by the need to open everything to him—even her most vulnerable secrets.
Maddy cried out and her voice echoed.
She called him Constantine, like it was a safety word to pull her back from the edge of needing him more than she needed the armor she’d relied on since she was seventeen. He didn’t laugh or correct her. Maybe Jackie had called him Will or William. Constantine seemed like hers. All hers.
Gradually, Maddy came to her senses. He held her with warm hands on her back, but neither of them spoke. She eased back and he let her. She stood. She smoothed her tights and her skirt and shifted her jacket back into place.
Constantine watched.
He always watched, didn’t he?
And he noted everything he saw.
No doubt he saw that she needed to right her appearance. She needed to step away. Not because someone might come up to the loft to clean up the leftover tea service, but because she had come back to reality following her orgasm to find herself far too vulnerable and messy in his arms.
He stood up to straighten his own clothes and smooth his hair. He rolled his shoulders as if to dispel residual tension.
“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t really. Her body glowed. But she should have been.
“Stop. You don’t need to feign regret or pretend it didn’t happen. I know you wanted my touch as much as I wanted to touch you and neither one of us is going to forget it,” Constantine said.
There was a narrow gap between them and her body brushed his when she made to move to the top of the stairs. The contact made her pause. Their gazes met—his searching and intense—hers wide and very nearly overwhelmed.
“Are you coming to the Gala as a guest?” Constantine asked. His eyes shifted away from hers, looking unfocused into the empty shadows behind her.
“I’m not sure,” Maddy replied.
It had been a long time since she’d been sure of anything at all.
Chapter Six
The grounds of the Stewarts’ bed-and-breakfast were a multiphase project Maddy had begun almost a year ago. She’d arrived to see to her stepsister’s belongings and she’d never left, though she’d spent only a couple of nights at the B and B herself. It had made her claustrophobic with its myriad of interconnecting rooms and hallways. There were multiple stairways and doors that, when opened, seemed to lead to nowhere but another narrow hallway. “Charming,” “quaint,” “interesting” and “eccentric” were all descriptions she’d heard applied to the sprawling erstwhile mansion.
She found it dark, creaky and disconcerting with no rhyme or reason to its jumbled floor plan.
Maddy had rented the simple craftsman cottage across town, but not before giving her card and portfolio to the bed and breakfast’s owners. The Stewarts had been her first clients in Scarlet Falls and she’d tackled their wild gardens with a ferocity spurred on by loss and uncertainty over Gracie’s disappearance. She’d battled weeds, overgrowth and neglect all over town. Her efforts hadn’t changed her stepsister’s fate. But they had helped her to hold on. She couldn’t control the life and death struggles of people around her, of loved ones, but she could at least influence the fate of every plant she worked with in her gardens. There was comfort in that—some measure of peace and empowerment.
Today, as winter dormancy approached on a sudden bite lurking in the late autumn breeze, Maddy raked deadfall and s
pread mulch over the more recent plantings to protect them from the first frost.
She was intent on the earth beneath her feet, studiously ignoring the distant black speck of the crow circling high overhead. It had become a constant companion, a shadow that followed her in sun or clouds so even though she was aware of it she never looked its way. Instead, she raked over the rich black soil and was thinking about what she would do for the Stewarts come spring when a pair of polished black oxfords stepped close to her boots.
Maddy looked up from the ground, up a long length of khaki-uniformed leg to a lean chest clothed in more khaki. Even before she’d seen “Deputy” on the bronze star her heart had slowed because the man beside her wasn’t Sheriff Constantine. He was around the same height, but Constantine had a muscular athletic build recently gone thinner. This deputy had a runner’s build, fit, angular and sharp.
She straightened and met the man’s neutral gaze. She’d spoken to him on the phone the day her stepsister’s body was discovered. She’d seen him at the crime scene and often since, but she especially observed him now because his notice of her negated his everyman, fade-into-the-background appearance. She’d learned his name was Mark Smith. The common last name hadn’t surprised her. It fit him perfectly.
“Ms. Clark,” Smith said instead of “hello.”
He couldn’t be as unfeeling and reserved as he appeared. He always seemed stiff, distant and switched off. Sheriff Constantine and some of his other deputies seemed to be much more in tune with the community. Then again, a certain amount of disconnect was probably necessary, especially if Smith was heavily involved in crime scene investigation.
“Be careful, you’ll spoil your shoes,” Maddy warned. Smith’s shiny oxfords looked like they’d just been taken from a box. She didn’t call him by his first name. She felt comfortable calling his sad-eyed colleague “Tom” but she didn’t feel comfortable with Smith at all.
His eyes were gray, a silvery gray that startled when you got past their blank expression. The gray stood out against black hair and a lightly tanned face with cheekbones that cut and lips that didn’t smile.
“I’ve seen you here often.… You’ve transformed the garden,” Smith noted. It didn’t sound appreciative. It was a mere observation. No more, no less.
Smith had placed his hands in his pockets, but his attitude wasn’t one of relaxation. While his face was unexpressive in the extreme, his body seemed tight and tense as if every discrete muscle was flexed.
Maddy moved to put her rake in the utility wagon nearby. She wished it were parked farther away. Something about Smith made her wary. Widening the gap between them helped, but only slightly because it could be narrowed in a flash by the man if he chose. He was obviously fit and muscular, if not bulky.
“One of the bigger jobs I’ve taken on in town,” Maddy said.
She wanted her work to be seen and enjoyed. Having Mark Smith watch her work with his shuttered eyes was a different prospect and one that left her nervous for reasons she couldn’t explain.
Smith still didn’t smile, but he did choose to narrow the gap. He stepped closer, following her to the cart. It was broad daylight. He was a sheriff’s deputy. He gave her no outward reason to cringe as he approached and yet some instinct shuddered beneath her skin telling her Mark Smith wasn’t as safe as he tried to seem.
“I like the challenge,” Maddy continued.
Smith was clean and neat compared to her dirt-smudged coveralls. He was shiny from his dark hair to his polished shoes. His uniform was immaculately starched and pressed. And maybe that was the problem. His appearance seemed too perfect, carefully constructed, as hers often was to hide the chaos she dealt with on the inside.
What did Mark Smith hide beneath his polish? A chaotic past or a tumultuous present?
“Are you ever afraid that you’ll take on too much?” Smith asked.
She met his gaze then with a sudden startled flick of her lids. He didn’t take his hands from his pockets. He didn’t smile or frown. His silvery eyes were as blank as before, but Maddy’s heartbeat quickened.
It was daylight but they stood sheltered from view by a large boxwood hedge that grew higher than their heads. The hedge led into a labyrinth maze she’d trimmed and pruned and reclaimed from weeds this summer. Up above them, the great house loomed. Many windows faced their way, but several oak trees hunched with dead leaves still caught high in their branches stood between them and the house.
Suddenly, Maddy knew she was alone with a stranger who wasn’t made less strange by the badge on his chest.
“I can handle myself,” Maddy said. Before she thought about whether it was an overreaction or not, she pulled a long handled shovel from the cart. Its stainless steel spade glinted in the afternoon sun. “I’ve had to for a long time.” She’d been taking care of herself since her mother died. She’d been completely independent at seventeen. She’d refused to be a victim then. She was even more equipped to avoid victimization now.
The move made Smith’s eyes widen, an almost imperceptible slip of emotion. Then, as he looked from the tool she wielded to her set jaw and back again, he smiled. It was a small smile. Like the glimmer of a crack in shatterproof glass.
“You can’t carry a shovel to the Harvest Gala,” Smith said. His eyes glinted much like steel in the sun, lighted by his humor but not warmed by it at all.
“Are you suggesting I’ll need one?” Maddy asked.
“Don’t go. Not a suggestion. Just advice. Don’t go.” Smith narrowed the gap between them even more and placed his hands over hers on the shovel’s handle. She could feel the strength in his fingers and arms backed by the strength and tension she’d suspected in his lean runner’s form. “I know you bought a dress and shoes. The works. Wear them in Boston. Wear them for someone besides William Constantine. Scarlet Falls is no place for dancing.”
Maddy didn’t try to pull the shovel from Smith’s grip. She was pretty sure that, even with the muscles she’d acquired from years of manual labor, Smith would win a tug of war between them. Emotions swirled in his eyes that she couldn’t identify. She’d learned one thing: Mark Smith was far from blank and empty.
Suddenly, while she was trying to read the darkness and depth in his eyes, Smith let her hands go. He backed away from her so quickly she almost fell forward. He smoothed his perfect hair as she caught herself. He put his hands back in his pockets and slowly walked away. His back belied his casual pose with a stretch of tension between his shoulders that seemed ready to part the seams of his shirt.
No, Mark Smith wasn’t disconnected at all.
Chapter Seven
The day of the Gala was foggy and dark, weak afternoon light from the sun muted by mist and November. Maddy prepared for the event trying not to read into why her hair, makeup and nails should matter more than usual. She knew why she normally liked to be polished and put together. It soothed her. It made her feel composed after years of feeling ramshackle on the inside. When she’d left home after her mother’s death, she’d had to struggle and scrape. Structure and order, even in her personal appearance, helped keep her feeling steady enough to survive.
For the Gala, she took extra time to create smoky evening eyes with liner and shadow and lush long lashes. She carefully applied coordinating polish to her nails. She curled and pinned her hair up high with careful tendrils falling down around her cheeks and neck. She pulled delicate lace underthings in pale lavender over her skin.
Then she stepped into a silk chiffon dress in a slightly darker shade of lavender. The bodice was sleeveless and cut to a deep V. She was acutely conscious of the exotic sweep of the dress over sheer stocking-covered legs unaccustomed to long dresses.
The trip to Boston for the dress had been a capitulation to a feminine impulse she probably should have recognized and resisted. It had been accomplished in a daze as a to-do item on a list without really acknowledging why she had shopped for something special and new. That Smith had noted her trip bothered her because
she’d barely noted it herself at all.
Maddy slid her feet into the heels that would give her several added inches in height and still only bring her to Constantine’s shoulders. He would be there. Would he ask her to dance? Would she say yes if he did?
The flush of heat in her cheeks gave her a reply.
She hadn’t bought the dress for Amelia Glass or Mrs. Jesham. Or Samuel Creed and his new wife Trinity Chadwick.
She’d avoided the vanity mirror on the dressing table in her room since she’d found the second bouquet of forget-me-nots. The second…or the first exhumed from its crumbled grave in the drawer and somehow made whole again?
But because of all her special preparations for the Gala, she couldn’t resist a sideways glance at her reflection when she went to the armoire to fetch a warm pashmina shawl. The glance caused her steps to falter.
The bouquet was back again.
Tucked into the mirror’s frame as if she’d never plucked it free.
Maddy needed more than a shawl against the arctic blast of disbelief that chilled her to the bone.
She didn’t step over to the table. She didn’t open the drawer to peer inside. She was both afraid she’d find it empty and afraid she wouldn’t. Most of all, she was afraid to pull the dried forget-me-nots free and place them in the drawer for a third time.
She didn’t want to go near them. She didn’t want to approach the wavy antique glass.
Maddy backed out of the room instead. She would check all the doors and windows. She’d be sure they were locked tight. It was the only practical course of action. The only logical explanation for the flowers was an intruder. She wouldn’t allow any other possibility for the reappearance of the bouquet against the glass again and again and again.
When the doorbell sounded after she’d made her rounds to check all the windows and doors, Maddy picked up her bag and went to answer it. Instead of the man she’d almost expected, the sad-eyed deputy was there. Even though she was disappointed that Constantine hadn’t come himself, she was glad it was Tom and not the other, emptier deputy who had made her so uncomfortable.
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