by Lisa Childs
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t jump or tense. He must have noticed when she’d opened the door, but he hadn’t looked over at her. He didn’t even look up at her now. Instead he was totally focused on those old photographs.
“Why are you looking at those?” she asked with a shudder of her own. She didn’t like looking at them, at the past. The only photographs she wanted to see were the ones hanging on her walls or sitting in frames on the shelves. Maybe she should have tossed out the old photo albums, but she’d figured that one day her children might want to see pictures of her past, to learn more about it.
Why did Forrest?
“Do you know where he is?” he asked, and he pointed toward a picture of her father.
She sucked in a breath and shook her head. But because he still wasn’t looking at her, she replied shortly and succinctly, “No.”
“No idea?”
“I don’t think about it,” she said. “I don’t think about him.”
He looked up at her then, his deep hazel eyes filled with skepticism of her claim.
With good reason, she had lied. She thought about him, about how he’d taken off on her and her mom, every time she considered risking her heart on someone. Like Forrest.
She remembered how Beau Lemmon had hurt her mother and her, and she realized that falling in love wasn’t worth the inevitable pain that followed the fall.
“Let’s just say I don’t know, and I don’t care,” she said.
He tilted his head, and his eyes narrowed. “Have you heard from him?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing?” he asked. “Not even when your mother died? Didn’t he try to inherit the house or—”
“Mom was sick for a long time. She divorced him during that time and made sure I was her sole beneficiary,” she explained. Her mother hadn’t been bitter about Beau, but she’d been realistic.
“Why?” he asked. “Did she think he would just gamble it all away if he inherited?” And he pointed to something in the picture, a slip of paper.
“Lottery ticket?” she asked.
He shook his head. “More like a betting slip—serious gambling.”
She snorted. “Serious? I don’t think that’s something my father ever was.”
Not even when he’d made those promises that he would come back to them a better man. If he’d been serious, he would have come back. If he’d been able...
“I think he might have been serious about gambling,” Forrest said. “Maybe he went to Vegas or Reno when he left Whisperwood.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“And he’s never sent a letter or postcard?” Forrest persisted.
She snorted. “My father isn’t like yours. He wasn’t a good man or a...” She trailed off as she realized the reason for his questions. “You think he buried that body in the backyard?”
“I do consider him a suspect,” Forrest admitted.
She appreciated his honesty even as she felt a flash of shame. “When I said my father isn’t a good man, I wasn’t implying that he’s a bad man. That he’s evil. He’s just flawed.”
Most people were.
As if thinking of his flaw, Forrest rubbed his palm over his wounded leg.
She’d run her lips over it, over the scars from the bullets and from the surgeries that had pieced his leg back together. But that wound wasn’t a flaw. There was nothing flawed about Forrest Colton.
He was so damn good-looking with that chiseled jaw and cheekbones and those deep-set hazel eyes. He stared up at her again, and his eyes darkened even more as the pupils dilated and swallowed up all of the gold and green.
As if he’d read her mind, he murmured, “You’re not flawed.” Then, despite the obvious discomfort of his leg, he surged to his feet. “You’re absolutely flawless.”
When he looked at her the way he was looking, the way he’d looked at her last night, she believed that he found her as irresistible as she found him. And he was irresistible. So irresistible that she heaved a heavy sigh before she stepped closer to him and wrapped her arms around him. Then she rose on tiptoe and brushed her mouth across his.
He sucked in a breath. “I thought you were mad at me for leaving.”
Her lips tugged up into a smile as she pointed out the obvious, “You’re still here.”
He heaved a heavy sigh now that feathered through her tangled hair. “I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t bring myself to leave.”
He would. Eventually. She knew that. Everybody had left Rae—whether they’d intended to, like her father and some ex-boyfriends, or they hadn’t intended to, like her mother, who’d fought so hard to beat the cancer. But it had kept coming back for her.
She closed her eyes as a wave of pain washed over her. Forrest must have seen it, because he closed his arms around her and softly asked, “Are you okay?”
She gestured at the couch. “That—those pictures—just bring up painful memories.”
He moved one hand from her back to her face and ran his fingers along her jaw. “Then let’s make better memories—like last night. That’s all I’ve been able to think about. You. Being with you. Being inside you.”
She shivered even as her flesh heated and her pulse pounded. “Yes,” she murmured.
“I haven’t asked a question,” he said, and he was smiling now.
“You will,” she said. He’d made certain last night, several times, that she really wanted him. To save them time, she told him, “I want you. I want you with me, inside me.”
He groaned and bent forward slightly, as if she’d kicked him. But then he straightened up and lifted her into his arms as he did.
“Forrest,” she protested. “Your leg—”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care about anything but getting you to that damn bed.”
She giggled despite her concern. She giggled at his eagerness. He clearly wanted her as badly as she did him. Despite his injury and his limp, he carried her easily and quickly to the bedroom and to the bed.
Maybe he dropped her a little abruptly onto the mattress, so abruptly that she bounced once, but she only giggled again. He hadn’t dropped her because he was hurting—at least not over his leg or his head. He’d dropped her because he was tearing off his clothes to join her. To join them.
As he laid his holstered gun on the table beside her bed, he murmured, “There’s a police officer outside. You and Connor are safe.”
She couldn’t help but wonder if he was trying to convince her or himself. She didn’t care, though. She cared only about being with him, as naked as he was now. So she shrugged off her robe and pulled her T-shirt over her head.
He sucked in a breath as his pupils dilated and his nostrils flared. “You are so damn beautiful.”
Her hair was a mess, and her makeup all washed off, but he didn’t seem to care—not with the way he stared at her, as if awed.
He made her feel beautiful. She smiled as pride swelled within her. But then she looked at him, standing so gloriously naked beside the bed, and she was suddenly humbled. He was all sculpted muscles—but for the scarred leg. But that only made him more attractive, since it was a badge of his courage and his determination. He was a hero.
Her hero.
She reached out for him, tugging him down onto the bed with her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to hers. She kissed him with all of the desire raging inside her.
He kissed her back just as hungrily, his mouth moving sensually across her. His lips nipped at and nibbled hers. Pulling her bottom lip between his, he nipped at it lightly with his teeth before sliding his tongue across it and then into her mouth.
He made love to her mouth like she wanted him to
make love to her body.
She arched up, rubbing her hips and breasts against him. His erection throbbed against her belly, pulsating with his passion.
“Forrest,” she murmured against his mouth.
Then he moved his mouth, sliding his lips down her throat to the point where her pulse pounded madly with desire. Her heart racing, she nearly sobbed at the tension building inside her.
His soft hair tickled her skin as he moved his head lower, to her breasts. He kissed the full mounds before closing his lips over a taut nipple.
She cried out with pleasure as he tugged on it. Then he slid his tongue across it, and that pleasure flowed from the tip of her breast to her core, which pulsated with need. “Forrest...”
But he was moving again, his mouth sliding across her belly and over her mound. Then he touched her core, his tongue stroking over the most sensitive part of her.
She cried out softly as she came. But it wasn’t enough.
She wanted more.
She wanted him.
All of him.
Filling her, like he had last night. Filling the emptiness she hadn’t even realized she’d had, the hollow ache that she hadn’t been aware of until he’d filled her, until he’d completed her.
He pulled back and fumbled around beside the bed. She spied the packet in his hand and took it from him. After tearing it open, she rolled the condom onto his throbbing erection.
He groaned as cords stood out in his neck and along his temple. “Rae, you’re killing me.”
She didn’t want to do that, but someone did. Someone had tried...
She could have lost him. The thought filled her with horror and dread. And she reached out for him, clasping him closely, pressing kisses to his mouth and then his neck and his shoulder and his chest.
A growl emanated from his throat, and he lifted her as he crouched on the bed. Then he guided himself inside her.
As he filled her, she came again, her inner muscles clutching at him. He groaned and thrust again and again until he joined her in pleasure.
So much damn pleasure...
She’d never felt anything so intense, never known such pleasure existed. But he wasn’t done—even though they’d both climaxed.
He kept touching her, kissing her, making her fall deeper and deeper in love with him. And now he was killing her—with pleasure.
* * *
Forrest Colton wasn’t dead.
He should have been furious that his order hadn’t been carried out. But just that attempt on Colton’s life and the threats against the woman seemed to have distracted him from his cases.
So those threats and those attempts would have to keep happening to keep Detective Colton distracted. And if one of those attempts happened to succeed...
A grin curved his lips. He wouldn’t give a damn about another life lost, since he hadn’t given a damn about the first.
The only life he wanted to protect was his own.
Chapter 16
A week had passed of Forrest keeping his distance from Rae and Connor. It was for the best—for them and for him. And probably for Whisperwood, as well. He could focus on his cases again.
He could focus on finding a killer who was probably the same person who’d run him and Connor off the road. The person who’d left those threats for Rae.
Her father?
Why would he have been gone for all of these years only to return and threaten her? It made no sense. But still...
He’d put out an APB for Beau Lemmon to be picked up for questioning. Forrest had a hell of a lot of questions for him. Like how he’d walked out on his sick wife and daughter, and how much he knew about that body buried in his backyard.
Rae’s backyard now. The house was hers, along with whatever other estate her mother had left her. Would her father resent her over that enough to threaten her?
Realizing he was grasping at straws, Forrest sighed and focused on the other files on his desk. Patrice Eccleston’s file. He wished it was thicker than it was, but the leads and clues were slim.
He still hadn’t gotten back the lab results on those buttons, coins or whatever the hell it was he’d found at both crime scenes. The presence at both of them should have proved that the same killer had murdered the victims. But why had one body been mummified and the other not?
His head began to pound, and it had nothing to do with the yellowing bruise on his forehead. The bump had gone down, like the one on his knee. Frustration, not physical wounds, caused his aches. And not just frustration with the murder cases.
He was frustrated over not seeing Rae, over not being with Rae. He missed Connor, too, missed the innocence of the infant and the warmth and even the scent of him.
Powder and soap and...sometimes things that weren’t all that sweet. His lips curved into a slight grin as he remembered the baby’s spitting up all over his shirt.
And what that had led to.
He and Rae making love.
God, he missed her. So damn much.
“What the hell are you doing?” a voice demanded to know. “Daydreaming? You should be out tracking down my sister’s killer, not snoozing behind your desk.”
Ian Eccleston loomed over the partition wall of Forrest’s cubicle in the Whisperwood Police Department. He didn’t have a private office. Since he was only temporary, he was probably lucky he’d even been given a desk.
He snapped the folder shut and flipped it over so Ian wouldn’t see the label that had the victim’s name beneath the case number. He didn’t want Patrice’s brother to see how little information they had.
He also had a strange feeling about Ian Eccleston. Maybe his anger was just one of the stages of grief. Or maybe it was something else.
“Do you have anything to share with me?” Forrest asked him. “Something you’ve remembered about your sister?”
The guy’s face flushed as his temper grew hotter yet. “That’s your job. I’m not doing your job for you.”
“You want your sister’s killer caught, don’t you?” Forrest asked.
The guy jerked his head in a quick nod. “Yeah, but I ain’t the detective. You are—though I checked you out, Colton, and all you do is cold cases.”
“That was my last assignment with the Austin Police Department,” he reminded the guy. “Not my only one.”
“But you’re probably focusing on those cold cases—those old bodies—not my sister’s fresh one.” He flinched as he said it, so maybe the guy really cared that his sister was dead. Or maybe this was all an act to throw suspicion off him.
Forrest flinched now at his own cynicism. When had he begun to suspect everyone? Why couldn’t he look at people the way Rae did? Just because someone wasn’t necessarily good didn’t mean they were bad. They were just flawed. Maybe Ian Eccleston was just flawed, or maybe he was justifiably furious that his sister’s killer was still running around free.
And she was dead.
Forrest tapped his fingers against that turned-over folder with the photos inside of her crime scene, of her corpse. No. Her brother didn’t need to see the contents of her file, whether he was grieving or the killer.
He wasn’t old enough to have committed the other murders, though. But he could have heard enough about them recently to try to copycat one.
Was that what Patrice’s murder was? A copycat or the killer’s comeback murder?
Had Beau Lemmon come back to Whisperwood?
“What are you doing to find Patrice’s killer?” her brother asked.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss ongoing investigations,” Forrest said.
Ian snorted. “That’s the answer you and the chief keep giving in interviews,” he said. “I’m not some nosy reporter. I have a right to know what you’re doing to find my sister’s killer.”
Bracing his hand against the folder on his d
esk, Forrest used it to push himself up from his chair. Maybe he would need to walk Ian to the door. But before he could move away from his desk, a young female officer rushed up to them.
“Everything all right?” she asked as she glanced toward his unannounced visitor.
How had Ian gotten back to his cubicle?
Forrest nodded. “Mr. Eccleston was leaving.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you give me some answers,” Ian stubbornly insisted.
Forrest regretfully admitted, “I don’t have any answers to give you.”
Ian snorted. “And you’re supposed to be some hotshot Austin detective.”
“I do have that information you requested on Beau Lemmon,” the officer said, as if in Forrest’s defense. “I emailed it to you.”
“Do you know where he is?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Beau Lemmon?” Ian asked, his forehead furrowed with confusion.
“Do you know him?” Forrest asked. “Did your sister know him?”
“No.” Ian cursed. “This has nothing to do with her, does it?”
“We have several open cases,” the officer answered for Forrest.
She might have thought she was helping him, but she only made Ian more furious. His face flushed an even brighter shade of red.
“And every one of those cases is more important to you than my sister is,” Ian angrily exclaimed. He cursed both of them then before rushing out of the department.
“I’m sorry,” the officer said.
He shook his head. “Not your fault.” It was his for not finding Patrice’s killer. “You weren’t able to find Beau Lemmon yet?”
She sighed. “No, I’m sorry. But I did find some arrests on his record, which will give you an idea of where he’s been and what he’s been doing.”
Forrest tapped his keyboard and pulled up his email. He found hers and opened the attachments, the arrest reports from Las Vegas PD and Reno PD and Atlantic City.
He sure as hell had pegged Beau Lemmon right. The guy was a gambler. But his arrests weren’t for gambling—at least not directly. The money he’d stolen as a pickpocket and through breaking and entering had probably been to finance his gambling or to pay off debts.
