by Lisa Childs
She swayed but propped a hiking boot on the bumper of his car. “I’m okay.” She lifted her chin. “What’d you learn, Dylan?”
He had to smile. Nothing ever dimmed Lindsey’s indomitable spirit. “Last night’s security guard left his shift early, hasn’t shown today.”
“Yup. Bought an expensive car last week. something strange going on,” she said, her brow furrowed.
Dylan shook his head. “He probably got an in heritance from an aunt or grandparent. He probably doesn’t need to work anymore, so he’s not concerned about his job. Got lax. Your mother slipped out.” She snorted.
“Not everything’s a conspiracy, Lindsey,” he calmly pointed out. He was aware of how much his calmness irritated her.
“Dang but aren’t you the eternal optimist? Doesn’t play, Dylan. You’re a tough, cynical Detroit Narcotics officer. Stop trying to protect me. It’s not cute anymore.” She dragged her boot from the bumper and stomped it on the leaf-strewn pavement.
“I’m a Winter Falls deputy,” Dylan corrected her. If he made her mad, she’d get fired up enough that she wouldn’t fall on her face from exhaustion.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “A deputy, not a body guard.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I’ve brought you into two dangerous situations now. You’re lucky to be alive.”
His stomach dipped with the gruesome thoughts he’d not allowed himself during the fire or the shooting. He could have let her down, as he’d let down his family. He could have lost her as he had them. Then he reminded himself he’d never had her.
She slammed her hand into his shoulder. “You idiot!”
Although she was small, her blow left his shoulder stinging. He rubbed his hand over the sore spot. “What was that for?”
“You are not responsible for any of what has happened.”
“Really. How do you know that? Half this town thinks I killed Steve Mars because he killed Jimmy. I’ve been gone ten years. I come back and Steve’s lawyer, Oliver, who has something for me, gets murdered. And there have been two attempts on my life!”
He exhaled a ragged breath into the silence following his outburst. Even the birds had stopped chirping in the trees in the near vicinity. He ran shaking hands through his hair.
“Now who’s seeing the conspiracies, Dylan?” Lindsey asked after a few tense moments. “And really, why does everything have to be about you?”
He had to shake his head in disbelief. “I just gave you the scoop for your father’s paper. I told you what everyone else is probably thinking.”
“I never cared what everyone else was thinking.” Lindsey’s impudent smile lifted her mouth.
He ran his hands over his face, knocking his dark glasses off and hooking them around his thumb. Before he could put them back on, Lindsey snagged them from his hand.
“But I like knowing what you’re thinking, Dylan.” Lindsey slipped his glasses into the unruly curls on top of her head.
“And knowing that, you probably think I belong in this place more than your mother does.” He gestured behind her to the old brick sanatorium.
He caught her nervous glance over her shoulder. “We’ll find her, Lindsey.”
“You don’t think she’s behind the murder anymore?” Fear dimmed the light in her dark eyes.
He shrugged. He wanted someone to blame, so he could stop feeling like his return had caused the murder. But not Lindsey’s mother. He didn’t want Lindsey to be hurt. “I don’t know. We need to find her and find out how she’s been getting out. I’m heading now to this guy’s apartment.”
Lindsey shook her head. “He had a morning flight according to the aide. He’s gone.”
“Flights were delayed this morning due to the fog. I’ll check.” He reached into the patrol car for the radio.
Lindsey curled her fingers around his forearm. “Dylan.”
He turned to her.
“I don’t think you’re responsible for any of what’s happened.”
“That makes one of us.” He breathed in her close ness. The seductive scent of freshly blooming roses clung to her.
Lindsey’s teasing grin flashed again. “So maybe that’s not a given. But I do have some facts, Deputy. I know you’re not responsible for me.”
“I’m not?” He couldn’t keep a heavy heart around her.
She twisted her full lips. “No.”
“So you’re an in de pen dent woman, responsible for yourself?” He had to goad her.
She laughed. “Hell, no. I’m not responsible for me, either.”
He dropped the radio and straightened. “You know, you are something else. You look like hell.”
“You sweet talker, you,” she purred.
He laughed. “You’re upset about your mother. You’ve been in a fire and a shooting, but you never lose your sense of humor.”
“This from the stiffest deputy Winter Falls ever had,” she scoffed.
“Only around you, Lindsey Warner.”
“Ooh,” she squealed. “You’re loosening up.”
“You’re good for me,” he admitted. But he wasn’t for her. He knew it. He’d never been good for anybody.
But he didn’t expect her to hang around Winter Falls after her mother was found and the murder solved. She would move on again, as she had all those years ago. As he had. But he’d come home. Now there were only ashes.
SHE’D PROMISED HER FATHER she’d return quickly with his car. She didn’t break promises. She’d resisted the temptation of Dylan Matthews and come home.
Although she wrapped her arms around her father’s shoulders when she found him alone at the kitchen table, disappointment swamped her. She’d hoped her mother would have found her way home again, as she had the first time.
“I have to go down to the paper, Lindsey. You need some sleep. Why don’t you curl up on the living room couch? That way you’d hear the door open….”
“It’s okay, Dad. You go ahead.”
“Maybe that’s not a good idea.” He dropped his gaze from hers, and his already pale face drained of what remaining color he’d had. “Why not?”
He patted her head with a shaking hand. “I’ll just stay. You go to bed, get some sleep.”
“You need to be at the paper, Dad.” Then, as concern clouded his eyes, she added, “What? Why don’t you want me to stay here alone?” Her stomach dipped with a sad realization. “You think she’s dangerous? You think she might hurt me?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to take the chance with you, honey. Come on, now. You’re exhausted. Go lie down.”
“She wouldn’t hurt me, Dad.”
He slipped out of her arms as he jumped to his feet. “She almost did. When she set fire to this house nine years ago, she almost killed you then.”
“I was at school, Dad.” She hated the way her voice broke with the emotion strangling her.
“You came home. You came into a burning house and rescued her. You could have been killed.”
A night mare of wavering flames and overwhelming smoke flashed behind the eyes she squeezed shut. The room spun a bit, and she dropped into the chair he’d vacated.
“I wasn’t. She didn’t want to hurt me.” She twisted her fingers into her tangled curls.
“The other day, the fire at Dylan’s—”
“That wasn’t her. She never left the sanatorium. She was heavily sedated.”
“The shooting last night.”
“How’d you know?” Then she answered her own question. “Dylan told you.”
He jerked his gray-haired head in a sharp nod. “Yes, someone had to. You wouldn’t have told me. You’re in danger, Lindsey.”
“Both incidents could have been accidents.”
“Mr. Smithers burning his leaves, and a jealous husband shooting the wrong motel room,” her father agreed. “He said that.”
It wasn’t what he believed. But it wouldn’t stop her from using those theories to protect her father as Dylan had tried to pr
otect her.
“Those are the reasonable explanations. We’re in the news game, Dad. We know there are a lot of reasonable explanations…”
He shook his head. “And we know there are un reasonable ones, too.”
“Not my mother.”
“How do you defend her, Lindsey? I know you’re mad at her, mad at me, at Marge. Why did you come home?”
She folded her arms on the table and dropped her head onto them. “I don’t know, Dad. I hoped you’d want me. Nobody else has.”
She didn’t hear his reply because sleep finally won the battle she’d fought against it. The last she knew was the gentle touch of his hand on her hair.
Chapter Eight
LINDSEY DREAMED of flying, of the weight less ness of being effortlessly lifted and carried along without struggling for every inch of progress.
Then she gently dropped down to the cushion of soft earth, her bag sliding off her shoulder and dropping beside her with a thud. Silk brushed her cheek. New grass? She snuggled into it and recognized her bed from the silk of her pillow case.
She shivered, but before she could fully ac knowledge being cold, her comforter enveloped her shoulders. Sleepily she whispered, “Thanks, Dad.”
It wasn’t her father’s voice that replied in a deep, sexy tone. “You’re welcome.”
She blinked and stared into the handsome face of Dylan Matthews. “We just keep running into each other.” She sighed and ran her finger over the sharp planes of his face.
He turned his mouth to brush a kiss against her finger tips. The softness of his lips and the heat of his breath traveled from the nerves in her fingertips to those in the pit of her quivering stomach.
“How are we running into each other in my bedroom?” She traced the line of his dark blond brows. “Am I dreaming?” But the skin beneath her caressing hand was warm and real. The breath he exhaled into her bangs was hot.
“We met in the kitchen. Your father let me in and asked me to stay. I carried you in here.”
“Ooh,” she moaned. “And I was asleep. You’ll have to do that again, when I’m awake enough to enjoy it.”
“I carried you before,” he said. “At my house. During the fire.” His deep blue eyes clouded with the memory, and he started to pull away.
Lindsey caught him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “That doesn’t count. I was too terrified to appreciate your strong muscles, your—” She leaned closer and buried her face in his throat. “Your delicious smell.”
“You were terrified?” He wrinkled his brow.
She nodded and slid her lips along the straining cords in his neck. “Umm-hmm.”
“I’d have never known. You were wise cracking when other people—men and women—would have been crying with fear.” He trembled in her arms as her lips slid lower and her tongue flicked the jumping pulse in his throat.
“I don’t cry as a rule. I always wise crack when I’m scared.”
“You must be scared all the time,” he said.
Lindsey feared he was right. “You haven’t found my mother. I know you would have said.”
He shook his head. “No. And the guard did catch a flight late this morning, after the fog lifted. We’ll catch up with him, Lindsey.”
She didn’t want to think it could be too late by then. She didn’t want to think at all. She nipped his earlobe and was rewarded with his grunt of pleasurable pain.
“Lindsey…” His tone threatened.
Threats didn’t frighten Lindsey. “I’m not all talk, Dylan. Let me show you.” She jerked the tails of his uniform shirt from his perfectly fitting pants. Then she slid her fingers under the crisp cotton and over the ribbed under shirt he wore beneath. “You’re wearing too many clothes, Deputy.”
“Lindsey, your father—”
“Left for the paper, right?”
He nodded and clenched his jaw.
“And he wanted you to stay, to keep an eye on me?”
He nodded again, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.
“I want more than your eye on me, Dylan. I want your hands, your mouth—”
His mouth obliged, taking hers in a deep, penetrating kiss. But he pulled back to ask, “Are you sure? Is this right? With everything that’s going on?”
She ran a fingertip across his furrowed brow. Always so serious, so earnest, her deputy Dylan. “I’m not sixteen anymore, Dylan. And when we’re in Winter Falls, there will always be stuff going on.”
Her heart flipped with the realization and momentarily dread filled her. But she shoved it away. It had no place in her dream.
Dylan brushed his thumb across her lower lip, and she popped her tongue out to lap at it. He groaned. “Lindsey, you’re not sixteen anymore. I can’t ignore you. I don’t want to ignore you.”
She laughed as she pulled his buttons free and pushed the khaki uniform shirt from his wide shoulders. Her fingers caressed the bulging muscles of his upper arms. “That’s the idea, Dylan.”
“If you’re just teasing me, tell me now. A cold shower may help at this point but not much beyond.” Even as he warned her, his mouth took hers again in sipping kisses.
Lindsey moaned over the passion of his kiss, of her own response. His lips slid from hers to nip at the edge of her jaw.
“You won’t need a cold shower,” she promised.
Her promise snapped his control. He jerked down the comforter he’d so gently pulled over her moments before.
But the close ness of their clothed bodies as he pressed her into the mattress wasn’t enough. Lindsey needed the glide of skin on skin, lubricated by their perspiration.
She pushed against his chest. Dylan released her only long enough to pull her sweater over her head, his knuckles brushing along her bare midriff. His gaze dropped to her chest and her lacy bra.
Because she didn’t have much in the way of breasts, she should have felt inadequate. She usually felt in adequate. But the intensity of Dylan’s stare and the catch of his breath made her feel beautiful.
She wanted to see him again as she had that day in his basement. She wanted his chest naked and slick from the perspiration of his passion. She wanted him a little wild and definitely out of control.
Her nails raked up his back underneath the ribbed shirt. “Take it off, Dylan. Now.”
Muscles rippling in his arms, he dragged his undershirt over his head. The golden blond waves fell into disarray.
Lindsey flicked her tongue over a flat male nipple.
His fingers tangled in her hair and jerked her mouth to his. Against her lips he groaned and threatened, “You’re going to get it for that.” But his eyes lit with humor and hunger.
Her pulse tripped madly as his tongue slid in and out of her mouth. His fingers un clasped the lacy excuse for a bra and pushed it from her shoulders. Then his hands cupped her breasts, his fingers tracing the sensitive flesh.
Lindsey captured his tongue, then sucked it deeper. She swallowed his groan and trailed her nails over his sinewy shoulders.
He tore his mouth from hers, panting. “Lindsey,” he warned in that too-serious tone that drove her wild.
“Dylan.” The husky depths of desire drowned the mockery she’d intended.
He was so beautiful, like a male angel dropped to earth. The afternoon sun slanted through her blinds and glinted in his golden hair and shimmered in his blue eyes. With his sculpted muscles under satin-smooth flesh, he was every woman’s secret fantasy.
He pressed a fingertip over her lips as if to stop her from speaking. He needn’t have bothered. The power of his masculine beauty had silenced her. Then his slightly rough fingertip trailed from her lips, over her chin, down her throat to her breasts.
Lindsey inhaled a quick breath, which pushed one of her erect nipples closer to his tantalizing finger. He circled the aureole, making her bite her lip to hold back her cry. Then he slowly stroked the hardened nipple.
His mouth took hers again as his fingers stroked her breasts and teased
her nipples. Then his tongue followed the trail his finger had taken, down her throat to her breasts. This time, Lindsey couldn’t hold back her cry of pleasure.
His tongue flicked and lapped. To hold back another cry, Lindsey nipped his shoulder. “Dylan, I—”
“What, Lindsey?”
“I want more.”
She had hardly finished her sentence when he pulled her jeans open and slid his hand inside. But his mouth didn’t leave her breasts. As he pushed his fingers inside the lace of her panties, he suckled her.
Lindsey could feel a pull from her nipples to the sensitive spot where the tip of his finger slid inside her. “Dylan!” she screamed as her world exploded.
He groaned. “You’re so hot, so wet.”
She dug her nails into his shoulders as he drove her up again. “Please, Dylan, please,” she panted.
He stared at her face, his eyes a wild blue. His control had snapped. Lindsey’s heart raced with the thrill. He jerked her jeans down and stood up to kick off his uniform pants.
Lindsey spread her legs, wanting him inside her. But instead of covering her, he knelt between her legs and dragged her up to his mouth. Through the lace of her panties, his hot breath penetrated.
With his teeth he dragged the lace down her legs. Then he drove his tongue into her. Lindsey thrashed around on the pillows.
“I can’t…I can’t…” But she lied. She kept taking everything he gave and still she wanted more.
Contorting her boneless body, she was able to reach him. She stroked the length of his hard, pulsing flesh. “Now!” she ranted.
“Lindsey, I have to protect you,” he rasped out. He reached for his pants, knocking her leather bag onto the floor. Then he pulled a packet from his wallet and dropped the wallet onto her bag.
Dylan clenched his teeth as he drove into her. A muscle jumped in his strong jaw. She caught him tight.
He pulled out and then drove back in. “Lindsey, I’ve never—”
“Oh, you’re a virgin?” She writhed beneath him.
He sputtered out a laugh even as he drove her over another edge. She managed to lock her weak legs around his slick back as he pushed her higher and higher.
