Telling Tales
Shiloh Walker
Telling Tales Shiloh Walker Sheriff Kellan Grant has been dreaming of Darci Law for a very long time. Wild, sexy dreams. But he was badly burned once, and is interested in only one thing when it comes to women. Kellan knows that Darci will make him want more than one night in her arms, so he keeps his distance. Darci's dreams about Kellan are so intense that they leave her shaking and feeling obsessed. She can't stop thinking about the sexy sheriff-the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he. But he never so much as looks in her direction. So when Kellan shows up at her front door, she is understandably a little confused, but ready to take advantage of any opportunity to finally get close to the man who haunts her dreams. Hot, liquid excitement swamps her system as midnight images rush through her head. He is finally within reach. Then Kellan tells her why he has come. There has been a murder. And she is his number one suspect.
Shiloh Walker
Telling Tales
Prologue
Made her fucking sick.
Absolutely sick…look at her.
She thought she was so damned special. Skinny, pale-faced, evil bitch.
Watching Darci Law walk down the street made her belly feel all tight and hot with disgust. Little slut. That was what she was, an attention-getting little slut.
Men looked at her, like the Sheriff was doing, thinking nobody noticed how he watched Darci’s ass. And Darci…acting like she didn’t know.
Everybody knew. She was a whore. They all knew it.
And she thought she was so damned special, with her surreal photographs. Everybody called them that…surreal. Extraordinary.
Bitch.
She should get what was coming to her.
A slow, mean smile curved over her lips as she watched Darci. Yes, she should definitely get what was coming…
Chapter One
Darci stood staring at the school board members in a state of shock.
“Ummm…excuse me, what?” she asked. She hadn’t heard what she thought she had heard…had she?
Daniel Sommers leaned forward, crossing his hands in front of him. “So are you denying it?”
“Hell, yes, I’m denying it. Joe is married,” she snapped, rising from her chair, walking over to the Superintendent’s desk and slamming her hands on it.
“Yes. That is part of the problem. This is a small town, Darci. We can’t have our schoolteachers carrying on with married men, or even carrying on indiscriminately with unmarried men. People talk and parents don’t want an immoral woman teaching their first graders.”
Darci fought the urge to grit her teeth. Instead, she just took a deep breath and said softly, “I am not immoral.”
“So…you’re telling me you haven’t been promiscuous?” Cathy Travers asked, flushing and shifting her eyes aside as though she couldn’t look at Darci while she asked.
Darci barely managed to stifle a hysterical laugh. This was so unreal. Damn it, she hadn’t had sex in nearly two years, and she was getting dragged on the carpet…for what? Her voice shook as she said, “My sex life is none of your business. None. But I do not sleep with married men, and that’s the bottom line.”
The board members looked at each other and sighed. Daniel studied her thoughtfully, maybe she was just desperate but she thought she saw a shred of belief in his eyes. “Darci, I try not to put a lot of stock in rumors.”
She watched as he slid his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose. When he looked back up at her, it was with a slight smile and Darci felt her knees wobble with relief. “Let’s just forget about this, okay?” he said softly.
***
Darci sat on the stool behind the counter at Becka’s gallery, Dreams in the Mist, staring morosely at Becka. The woman, just a few years older than she, listened sympathetically as Darci repeated the incident with the school board.
“I just don’t get it. Where did they get that story about me and Joe?” she said as she finally finished explaining what had happened.
Becka glanced away.
If she had just looked away, Darci might have thought she just didn’t have an answer, but she bit her lip. Becka bit her lip when she was nervous.
Narrowing her eyes, Darci said, “What?”
Becka swung innocent eyes to Darci. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You bit your lip,” Darci accused, coming off the stool. “You do that when you’re nervous. What do you know?”
Becka forced a smile, shaking her head. “Nothing, baby. I promise. I’m just as shocked by this mess as you are.” Her face crumpled as Darci just stood there, crossing her arms over her chest, tapping one sandaled foot impatiently.
“Oh, hell.” Becka turned around and said, “It’s Carrie. I had to go to Wal-Mart to get my daughter’s prescription-she didn’t know I was standing an aisle over. You know how her voice carries. I don’t know who she was talking to, but she said she’d seen you and Joe go into the Golden Inn together Wednesday.”
Darci’s jaw dropped.
Now that was low. Carrie had pulled a lot of stunts, made a lot of innuendoes, but this…this was outright lying. “Damn it, I was at a birthday party Wednesday,” she gritted out.
Her hands opened and closed into fists, her nails biting into her flesh.
“I know,” Becka said, making soothing noises. “I knew it was bullshit, that’s why I didn’t say anything. It’s just like all the other…”
“Other?” Darci asked as Becka’s voice trailed off.
Becka’s round face flushed and her dark brown eyes looked absolutely miserable. “Darci…”
“What others?”
Becka sighed, moving around Darci to take the stool she’d vacated. “Honey, she likes to tell tales. You know that. She can be very malicious to people she considers her enemy. And you…well, you didn’t hate me the way she wanted you to.”
Darci heard the regret in Becka’s voice, even through her own anger. Sighing, she shoved a hand through her spiked, black cap of hair as she turned around, staring at Becka.
“There was no reason to hate you, Becka.”
Becka scowled sourly. “Can’t tell by me. Half of my old friends don’t even talk to me anymore,” she muttered, folding her hands together and tucking them between her knees.
“That’s because they are stupid.” Darci forced a smile. “We always knew that.”
Becka didn’t even try to smile back at her. Soberly, she studied Darci, sighing tiredly. She brushed the corkscrew curls back from her face and said quietly, “There are other stories. I guess I should have told you, but I…hell, I didn’t want to see you hurt. Didn’t want to see you angry.”
Darci caught her lower lip between her teeth, shaking her head. “Oh, I’m not. I’m beyond angry. But it’s not your fault, Becka. I know whose fault it is, and you can bet she’s going to hear from me about it.”
Darci turned to go, but Becka’s voice stopped her. “Honey, there was something I was going to tell you. I just heard about it this morning…planned on telling you when you came in today. I hate making this worse for you.”
A sick knot formed in her belly. Slowly, she turned back to Becka and asked, “What?”
“It’s about Della. And…Max.”
“Max?”
Becka licked her lips, reaching up to pat her pocket, then her hand fell away. “Keep forgetting that I quit smoking,” she said with a slight twist of her lips. “Times like this, I wonder why.”
Sighing, Becka met Darci’s eyes squarely and said, “Della called earlier, looking for you. She’s pissed. I couldn’t make out most of it, but I think she thinks you’ve been fucking Max.”
Just then, the phone on the counter jingled. Slowly, Darci reached out and picked it up, lifting
it to her ear as she said by rote, “Dreams in the Mist, this is Darci.”
Della’s voice blasted in her ear and Darci just closed her eyes, slumping against the counter.
That was just perfect…
***
If ever a more pathetic, sad creature existed, Darci hadn’t met her. Studying Carrie Forrest as she sat at her desk, Darci wondered why in the hell some people were just so damned unhappy with life. Carrie was one of those people who liked to play martyr. Somebody who liked to play a mother figure, liked to pretend that she was everything to everybody, and she was damned good at it.
She had even pulled Darci in for a little while.
Just for a while, though. Darci had started watching things, listening to people talk…to the stories Carrie told, comparing her stories to the people she was supposedly so worried about.
Just lies. Almost everything that came out of her mouth was lies.
The problem was that this last one could damage somebody’s career, either Darci’s or Joe’s. Worse…it could wreck a marriage.
Generally, Darci didn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. It wouldn’t matter…if it weren’t for Joe, and for her job.
She taught art at an elementary school…in the Bible Belt of America. The parents wouldn’t tolerate the teacher of their kids being a tramp.
And Joe…he was a married man, a new daddy. They didn’t need this.
All Darci wanted to do was to take her pictures and be left alone.
All some other people wanted to do was cause trouble.
And damn it, some people believed what they said.
Della believed it. Della actually believed Darci was going around fucking every man she could get her hands on, including Della’s current man-one she was moon-eyed in love with. Max was the first man to come along in a long time who made Della want more than just a quick fuck.
Never mind the fact that Darci and Max didn’t generally even like each other.
Hell, she believed the bullshit that Darci was at a hotel in the middle of the afternoon fucking somebody else’s husband, believed she had fucked everybody she could…from the head of the city council to the boy who was delivering pizzas.
Darci knew, because Della had just finished shouting that garbage in her ear.
So far, Carrie hadn’t even noticed that Darci was in the room.
Darci, smiling an evil smile, lifted her heavy purse high over her head and let it fall to the glass table. The purse clattered loudly, keys jangling, digital camera falling out, coins rolling and jingling merrily. Darci smiled angelically as Carrie jumped and shrieked, whirling around in her chair, her chubby face white and pasty with shock, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
“A little jumpy?” Darci asked in dulcet tones.
Carrie had one hand pressed to her chest, and she swallowed, glaring at Darci. For one second, malevolence flashed in her muddy brown eyes before she pasted a smile of false sympathy on her face and said, “My, you gave me such a start. You need to be more careful, tossing your things down. You know how easily startled I am. How are you doing, love?”
“Don’t call me ‘love,’ Carrie. And you know damned good and well how I’m doing with the bullshit you started,” Darci said coldly, flicking her short, spiked hair away from her face. “I’m surprised Kim didn’t buzz you and tell you I was on my way up. Give you warning and all.”
“I asked not to be disturbed,” Carrie said, smiling her patented mother-earth smile. “I’ve been trying to…well. I’m trying to understand what is going on, why you would do what you’ve done.”
“Cut the bullshit, Carrie. You and I know who started this, and why I was called into my boss’s office today, and why I received a very nasty, angry phone call from Della Bennett,” Darci said quietly, sitting down on the suede couch, crossing one leg over the other. “Why Joe is having to defend himself against a bunch of slanderous rumors that he was seen at a hotel…with me. Why Della thinks I spent the weekend fucking her man.”
Darci saw the flicker in Carrie’s eyes, watched the tiny smile on her face. But Carrie only arched her brows and shook her head, heaving that patented martyred sigh. “What are you doing, Darci? Why are you lying to yourself, to everybody, like this?” she asked mournfully. “Don’t you understand how destructive this behavior is?”
But Darci could sense the crafty glee in her voice. Hear it there. And she knew. Any doubt she might have had that somebody else was behind this was gone. Gently, Darci said, “Maybe you don’t understand how destructive this behavior is, Carrie. I don’t take shit lying down. Never have, never will.”
Darci stood up, running a hand through her short, spiked cap of black hair before focusing her green eyes on Carrie’s face once more. A small, cold smile danced on her lips as she moved closer to the older woman.
“It’s one thing when you try to make my life miserable, Carrie,” she said, circling to lean her hip on Carrie’s table, studying the work in progress there.
Carrie just sat there, glaring at Darci, her small mouth puckering in an ugly scowl.
“But it’s another when you start messing with my job, when you start dragging my friends into it.”
Carrie opened her mouth, sputtering, but Darci just slashed at the air with her hand and snapped, “Shut the fuck up. Got it? You totally fucked up this time. You fucked with my job. Bad enough you have to try to smear my name, but you had to go and smear the name of a good man and try to ruin his marriage. You’ve probably ruined friendships, but they can go to hell, because if they believe a word that comes out of your mouth, then they’ve got rocks for brains. But you hurt people this time. And not just me. That totally, totally pisses me off, and me pissed off is a very, very bad thing.”
Carrie’s face was florid now and her mouth opened and closed. Something not quite lucid passed through her dark, muddy eyes as her hand closed around a cutting tool and Darci narrowed her eyes. “Try it, babe. Just try it. I dare you.”
Carrie’s hand fell away, fisting in her lap as she stared at Darci, hatred lurking in her eyes.
“Why did you have to drag Joe into it?” Darci asked quietly. “Why him?”
Bitingly, Carrie said, “I didn’t drag him into it. He did it himself. Maybe he should have thought of the consequences before he broke his wedding vows.” She folded her hands primly in her lap and forced her mouth into that proper, mothering smile.
Darci rolled her eyes and muttered, “You’ll be like that at St. Peter’s gates, won’t you? But Peter will know the truth. And so do I. So don’t waste my time.” Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “Is it a hobby? Do you enjoy ruining people’s lives? Is yours so pathetic that this is what you have to do for kicks?”
“She’s been doing it a long time, I’d say the answer is yes,” a deep voice, full of anger, said.
Darci looked up just as Joe walked in, his eyes on her and Carrie, his face cold with disgust. “Tell me something, Carrie, do you really think you can keep this up and get away with it?” he asked.
“Joe, I really don’t know what you are talking about. But maybe you should be at home, trying to repair your marriage, instead of here, trying to blame me,” Carrie said, her voice waspish. But her eyes darted away from him, her hands quivering just slightly.
“Now Darci here, Darci is, naturally, very upset. Bad enough she can’t seem to keep her indiscretions quiet, and with single men. But she’s tried to interfere with a man and his marriage. Of course, if she had learned to think before acting…well, she wouldn’t be in the hot water she is in,” Carrie said, her eyes taking on a kindly glow as she moved to pat Darci’s hand. “I understand that she could lose her job-”
Darci caught the older woman’s hand before Carrie could touch her and, pressing her thumb on the nerves in Carrie’s wrist, watched as Carrie’s face paled and her eyes darkened with pain. “Haven’t I told you about touching me?” she warned. “Haven’t I warned you before to stay away from me? Very, very far away from me?”
&
nbsp; Carrie gasped and Darci threw her hand down and stepped back. She cut her gaze to Joe, arching a black brow at him. “I imagine you’ve been hearing the same tripe that I have?” Darci drawled.
“Oh, yes. Missy is the one who called me this morning, told me how her phone line had been burning all night, people wanting to know if it’s true, am I getting a divorce? Are you and me getting hitched…” Joe’s voice trailed off as he paused by a shelf, reaching up to pick up a blown glass ball, shot through with threads of red and gold. Tossing it from one hand to another, he turned and met Darci’s eyes. “Sorry, sugar. It’s not that I don’t respect you…but well…”
Darci smiled slightly. “A divorce, huh? That was quick.”
Carrie said sweetly, “Now, Joe, I’m sure you and your wife can work it out.”
Joe’s eyes narrowed. “Cut the crap, Carrie. We all know the truth here.”
Joe propped his hips against one of the numerous work counters, staring at Carrie with glacial eyes. “I grew up in this town. I may be twenty years younger than you-but I’ve been watching your machinations since I was a kid. Reporters are very good observers. After forty plus years of living, well, let’s just say, I know you. No acts, please. Otherwise, I’ll go front page tomorrow with the phone call I got the other day. How you know information that Becka hasn’t shared with anybody, other than Darci and her assistant. One has to wonder how you know that. And I just may write that article anyway.”
Carrie blinked and the mask fell away. Slyly, she said, “You can’t prove anything.”
A slow smile curled his mouth and he said simply, “Miz Forrest, I don’t have to. Words are everything, as a gossipmonger should know. And people are going to have to wonder what you were up to, what kind of trouble you were trying to cause…when they have proof you were lying. Just how many people did you tell that story to?”
Carrie just smiled cattily. “Nobody knows I lied. And people just love a scandal.”
Telling Tales Page 1
