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Undercover in Copper Lake

Page 19

by Marilyn Pappano - Undercover in Copper Lake


  Sophy spoke quietly, putting a lot of effort into making her voice even, nonjudgmental. “He put off finding someone to replace you, and before long it was back to business as usual for both of you.”

  Sean nodded, a strand of hair falling across his forehead. He swiped it back with his left hand, those injured fingers, and she thought briefly of all the ways fingers could get injured in a garage.

  “For the most part, I put it out of my mind. Like I said, I worked in my own world. And it was easy to ignore. I mean, life had been good before finding out, and by forgetting about it, it pretty much went back to good. But it changed things between him and me. We stopped hanging out, having dinner, playing poker together. Then...”

  The whick of tires on wet pavement outside sounded loud in the quiet. Someone headed home from a late job, or a police officer on routine patrol.

  “About a month later, a Friday night, I went out with some buddies and had a little too much to drink. I realized I’d left my cell phone at the garage, so I had them drop me off there. It was only a mile or so to my apartment, and I figured the walk would clear my head. I went inside and had just picked up the phone from my workbench when I heard voices at the other end of the garage. No one was supposed to be there, and I thought maybe Craig had gone back on his word and it was another shipment, so I went to see.”

  He fell silent, his gaze distant, his brow wrinkled. It took him a long time to pick up the narration again, his voice so low that she instinctively leaned closer to hear.

  “It was Craig and a couple of these thugs he calls his associates and another guy, some stranger. I could tell Craig was pissed. He doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t swear. He just gets real quiet and intense. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but when he stopped talking, he pulled a gun and shot the guy in the back of the head.”

  Sophy gasped. “Oh, my God. Sean... Who did you tell?”

  His gaze shifted to her, his head tilting to one side. “What makes you think I told anyone?”

  “Because that’s the man you are.” Pretend he didn’t know about the stolen car parts? That was one thing. How many people preferred to look the other way when they knew a crime had been committed, especially by someone they cared about and respected? But pretending he didn’t see a man murdered before his eyes? He wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.

  He leaned back, and the chair creaked comfortingly. “I had a customer who’s a cop there in Norfolk. I called him, and he hooked me up with a DEA agent. Seems car parts werenn’t the only thing Craig was shipping from the South to New York. The bulk of his business, in fact, is in drugs. I’ve been keeping them informed on his activities ever since—what he’s doing, when he travels, who he sees.” His shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. “And that’s how I wound up coming here.”

  * * *

  Sean rubbed his eyes, then dragged his fingers through his hair. At least Sophy had enough faith in him to know he wouldn’t let a murder slide. More faith in him than anyone else ever had, except maybe Mr. Obadiah.

  “So.” She drew her feet onto the bed, sitting cross-legged the way the girls generally did. He’d been awake in the dark long enough to see plenty of details. The somber expression she wore. The hair that was mussed from sleep. The delicate white gown with ribbons and lace that was nothing like he’d expected. The curve of her breasts and that little hollow between. The pale shadow of color on her toenails.

  Even when she was just the quiet, studious little sister of the girl he was dating, he’d thought she was beautiful. Tonight, looking so solemn and serious, beautiful just didn’t say enough.

  “Your friend is a drug dealer being investigated by the DEA,” she said slowly. “And your sister was just recently arrested on drug charges. Are you saying Maggie works for him?”

  “No. But her idiot boyfriend does—did. And Davey had a tendency to talk too much.”

  “And he told her things about his boss—your boss—and now Craig’s worried that she’ll sell him out to save herself.”

  Sean nodded. “He sent me here to make sure that doesn’t happen. If Maggie keeps her mouth shut, goes to prison and never mentions his name, he’ll leave her and the girls alone. If she doesn’t...” The chill that had settled in his gut slowly leached farther, drawing a shudder from him. He knew what Craig was capable of. He’d taken his threat seriously from the moment he’d heard it, but Davey’s death this morning made it even more real.

  Davey had talked. Now he was dead.

  Maggie intended to talk.

  “Does Ty know this? Have you told anyone besides me?”

  “The DEA knows. My contact—” God, he felt foolish saying that word “—is in town, too. They knew Craig was going to send me here before I did.”

  “Does Maggie really think she can rat—inform on a murderer and walk away unscathed?”

  Rat out. That was what she’d started to say. It was just slang, common enough, but when he was the rat, it didn’t feel like just slang. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? I tell her what a fool she is for thinking that, but it’s exactly what I’m doing. So who’s the fool?”

  “Big difference, Sean—you’re not guilty of anything. You’re a witness. She’s a criminal who’s trying to serve up someone more important so she can avoid punishment for her crimes.”

  You’re not a criminal. Not anymore. Not for a long time. That was good enough for her and Ty. When would it be enough for him?

  “The fire at Maggie’s house? That was Craig?”

  He nodded.

  “And the man who approached Dahlia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is the DEA any closer to catching this guy?”

  His smile was crooked. “Special Agent Baker doesn’t share that kind of information with me. She’s not the confiding type.”

  “She, huh? Young or old?”

  He called up an image of the woman and tried to put years to the face. It was impossible. “Somewhere past twenty-five and not yet close to fifty.”

  “Pretty?”

  Yeah, in the way a marble statue was pretty. Cold, hard, unyielding. “I never noticed.”

  A smile flashed across Sophy’s face. “Good answer.” Then she sobered again. “Will you have to testify against him? Will he try to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. Special Agent Baker seems to think their case will be strong enough without putting me on the stand, but there’s no guarantees.” Another thing he’d put out of his mind. As long as he didn’t dwell on it, he didn’t have to consider the worst-case scenario.

  And he accused Maggie of living in a fantasy world.

  “So to make Craig happy, Maggie needs to commit to spending a huge chunk of her life in prison, and you have to possibly make yourself a target. I haven’t met him, and already I don’t like him.” After a moment, Sophy gracefully unfolded her legs and stood up, walked across the room and closed the door. The lock clicked in the sudden silence before she came back.

  She took his hand and tugged forward as she tumbled back onto the bed. Caught off guard, he followed her down, getting one arm out to brace himself a second before landing on top of her. “When you say, ‘We need to talk,’ you don’t skimp on the seriousness, do you?”

  Her hair tumbled around her, and her small breasts strained against the fabric of her gown as she gave him the sweetest, naughtiest of smiles. “How about we quit talking at all for a while?”

  He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. He’d told her everything, and she still wanted him. Still wanted this. He was... Hell, he didn’t even know the word to describe how he felt. Lucky. Grateful. Humbled. Aroused. Oh, yeah, nothing to give a guy a hard-on like a woman who deserved so much better but wanted him anyway, with her eyes wide-open.

  Her hands were resting on his shoulders, small, delicate, sending heat into his skin, and her body was radiating heat, as well. When he lifted his head to look at her, he found her staring at him with such...tenderness. Had any woman ever felt tenderness for him?


  He couldn’t recall.

  “They say every cloud has a silver lining,” she whispered, “and you, Sean Holigan, are mine.”

  Of course he kissed her. After words like that, how could he not? He took her mouth, searching for some tenderness of his own but finding only need and demand and hunger of a fierceness he’d never known. He explored her mouth and stroked her tongue, swallowing a groan as she slid her hands down his spine, rousing shivers everywhere she touched.

  When she reached his jeans, she fitted her hands into the breath of space between them, and he shifted his weight to accommodate them, to give her room to undo the metal button, to slide the zipper tab down, to push at the denim. A middle-of-the-night conversation alone in her bedroom had seemed to require something besides the boxers he’d been wearing, and now the jeans were the best and worst idea he’d had in a long time. Best because her fingers were agile and talented and fumbling and touched everywhere, worst because her fingers were agile and talented and fumbling and touched everywhere. If she brushed his erection one more time, he’d be lucky to make it—

  With a grunt that was both pleasure and torment, he pulled her hands away, rolled onto his back and shucked his clothes, then drew her on top of him. Her long blond hair fell around her face, the ends tickling his chest and shoulders and the stubble of his beard, and the soft white gown settled in puffs over his body, brushing, teasing, heating his blood.

  He kissed her lips, her jaw, her throat, over skin and bone and muscle, until her gown blocked his access. “How do I get this thing off?” His voice was rough, his breathing barely sufficient, as he tugged at a strap, pushed at a fold of material.

  “There are thirty-two itty-bitty buttons down the front,” she said in an air-starved tone, then she braced herself against his chest and sat up—oh, sweet damnation, sat up, her bottom cradling his penis, and shifted sensuously. “Or we can just do this.”

  Grasping the hem of the gown, she rose onto her knees, pulled it over her head and dangled it to one side of the bed. He didn’t see where it fell, didn’t care, because now she was naked, and beautiful still didn’t come close to being adequate, and she was settling her hips over his again.

  He stroked her breasts, spanned her waist with his hands, explored the curve of her hips. The catch of her breath told him when she liked something, and a pleading whimper told him when she really liked it. Blood pounded through his body, rushing and throbbing, draining him of thought and worry and concern, filling him with nothing but pure, sweet sensation that had an edge like a razor. It took every bit of his control to not grab her, roll her over and slide inside her, fill her, feel her, but he managed—barely.

  Until he didn’t. She was leaving hot, wet kisses along his jaw, down his throat, across his chest, and his restraint snapped. He lifted her to the side, grabbed a condom from his jeans pocket, sheathed himself in it, then sank slowly, deeply inside her. Sweat broke out along his forehead, and the razor inside him began to slice, demanding release of the emotions he’d never felt, the intimacy he’d never known, the satisfaction he’d never thought he would have.

  It was an easy matter, matching his rhythm to hers, lifting her hips so he could fill her more deeply, touches and kisses that made them both struggle for air, that made their skin quiver and their muscles tighten like a spring. Faster, hotter, harder, sweeter, building the emotional bond that he’d always avoided, the affection need desire longing wanting yearning entreaty hunger breath-stealing soul-stealing vital-as-air hunger.

  Sophy came first, small explosions of delight, guttural groans, trembling body, a flash of golden heat that held to him as if he might keep her safe, hold her together, bring her back to her senses when it was time.

  His orgasm was a few heartbeats later, throbbing through his body, making his arms and legs weak, leaving him shaking like a small child experiencing the ten best things in life all at once. Slowly he lowered himself to the mattress, arms too tired to hold him, muscles too knotted to relax, and he rested his head on her shoulder.

  As his breathing slowed and evened and blood began to flow to his brain again, he recalled when he’d thought that Sophy would teach him that he’d been sleeping and having sex all wrong because he’d been doing it without her. He hadn’t been all wrong about the sex part. He’d understood the basics of it.

  But sex for its own sake with the girl of the moment had nothing on making love to the woman he had somehow gone and fallen in love with. That sex was the most incredible best anything ever.

  * * *

  Sophy had known odds were good that she would fall in love with Sean—not at first sight, like her parents, or even third or tenth. Love at first orgasm—that made her sound like a loose woman, but all that kissing and touching and sweating and sharing had clarified the maybes in her brain. Any man who could make love to her like that was well worth keeping.

  If he agreed to be kept.

  All the warm, fuzzy feelings were still enveloping her hours later, after waking up with Sean, breakfasting with the kids, taking Dahlia to school, spending the morning together with Daisy-of-the-million-questions between them. There was a bit of a hypervigilant air about them, but frankly, it was hard for Sophy, when everything was so perfectly right in her world, to keep reminding herself that, outside their little cocoon, there were still problems.

  After the regular Friday shipment to the shop, Sophy had claimed a little quiet for herself by sending Sean and Daisy into the storeroom to unpack and inventory the order. There were fabrics for Halloween, autumn, Thanksgiving and Christmas, with all the accompanying stuff—matching threads, patterns, accessories to turn little girls into princesses or rock stars, little boys into superheroes and sports stars. It should take them a while, long enough for Sophy to relive last night from every romantic angle possible.

  She was working at one of the cutting tables, templates and quilt pieces spread around her. Next week’s advanced class was learning a new pattern, one with lots of points, odd angles and circles, one to test their skills and their patience. There were six students in the class, including one lady whose skills weren’t nearly as advanced as her ego, but no number of polite suggestions could convince her to move to the intermediate class.

  Sophy smiled fondly. That was okay. She had a lot of patience herself. In fact, today she felt as if she could do anything. She’d had the best sex, the best romantic night of her life, and she’d officially Fallen In Love. She was superwoman; hear her roar.

  As she noted measurements and yardages and tips on keeping the pieces of fabric in the proper order, she let her mind wander to the Double Wedding Ring quilt hanging above the stairs. It was an old one that Grandma Marchand had received as a wedding gift, well worn and long used, and had inspired the similar quilts Sophy had made for each of her siblings. Only Reba and Miri had received theirs. Chloe’s and Oliver’s were stored in boxes in back, waiting for their marriages, and Sophy’s...well, she hadn’t started her own yet. It sounded silly, when she’d made her birth family’s quilts not having seen them in twenty years, not knowing if she would ever see them again, but she’d wanted to meet her groom before starting her wedding quilt.

  Once she finished Dahlia’s coverlet—and Daisy’s and Sean’s—could she start planning her own? Or would he leave Copper Lake, as he’d warned her from the beginning, and break her heart?

  If he left and asked her to go with him, would she?

  It was too perfect a day to worry about that. She was still basking in the sensations of last night. No thoughts of heartache allowed.

  She was pinning together the pieces that made up one square, studying the lines, determining the quickest, most efficient way of seaming the section, when the storeroom door opened and Daisy raced out. Sean followed at a slower pace, hands behind his back.

  “We’re finished with the invatory, and guess what?” Daisy climbed onto the tall stool at the end of the table and shoved her hair from her face. “I found some ’terial for a dress
, and Uncle Sean said maybe you’d make it for me.”

  That was scary, coming from a five-year-old who’d just helped unpack Halloween-themed fabric. Sophy gave Sean a raised-brow look, but he merely grinned and kept his hands hidden. “A dress, huh? What kind?”

  “A church dress. If I gotta go, I may as well show some—” Daisy’s gaze shifted to Sean. “Some what?”

  “Style.”

  “Yeah, that. Will you do it? Make me a dress?”

  Her little face was just so appealing, her dark eyes dancing with anticipation, that Sophy couldn’t resist giving in. No matter how awful the fabric was for a dress. “Yes, I’ll make you a dress. Can I see the material now?”

  Sean leaned over Daisy, laying the bolt on the clear space at the end of the table, and Sophy silently groaned. It was black, with giant spooky orange spiders sitting on deep purple webs. She couldn’t imagine walking into church with Daisy in that—all the looks they would both get. The snickers, the smiles, the laughter, all of it encouraging Daisy to be as outrageous as she wanted to be. What were you thinking? Rae would ask, but Reba wouldn’t be so kind. Have you lost your freaking mind?

  Daisy and Sean were waiting for a response, so she gave one. “Eek! Spiders! Get ’em away!”

  “They’re not real spiders, Sophy,” Daisy said with exaggerated patience.

  That was the first time she’d called her by name, and it brought a lump to Sophy’s throat and dampness to her eyes. She swallowed, sniffled, then pulled a few yards from the bolt and wrapped them around Daisy before stepping back to look. “I think it looks spook-tacular, don’t you, Sean?”

  “It’s boo-tiful.”

  Daisy collapsed in a fit of giggles. Sophy unwrapped the material and rolled it up again, then watched her slide to the floor and skip down the aisle, chanting, “I’m gonna have a spider dress.”

 

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