Dangerous Deception

by Beverly Barton

  “You look like me, you know. Shame. Your mother wasn’t a bad looking girl. And Audrey’s mother was—”

  Cara jerked away from him. He stared up at her through bloodshot eyes.

  “Poor Cara, the ugly duckling,” Edward said. “You’ve always been jealous of her, haven’t you?”

  “Why are we discussing this now?”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because my being jealous of Audrey is old news. Because my sister is missing and possibly dead. Because you’re drunk and—”

  “I don’t want her to be dead. I can’t bear the thought of…” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “You don’t hate her enough to wish her dead, do you?”

  Cara gasped silently. Her eyes widened in shock and disgust. “You old son of a bitch! You think I had something to do with her disappearance, don’t you? Do you honestly think I could kill my own sister?”

  “You hated Audrey.”

  “I hate you, too, but I haven’t killed you, have I?”

  Cara turned and hurried toward the door.

  “Cara, wait!”

  She paused, her heart racing, tears threatening to choke her.

  “I’m sorry. I know I haven’t been a very good father to you. I wish I could go back and change things. If I could, I would.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. Did he truly mean what he’d said or was it the liquor talking? Maybe the liquor and a great deal of self-pity. Had he suddenly realized that if Audrey was dead, Cara was the only child he had left?

  “I wish things had been different,” she told him, her back to him.

  “Is it too late for us?”

  “Probably. I—I don’t know.”

  She rushed out of his study and back down the hall, forgetting about the herbal tea she’d wanted. With tears partially clouding her vision, she raced up the stairs.

  As she walked by Audrey’s old room, she didn’t notice the door stood wide open or realize that Gray had seen her. Not until he called her name.

  “Cara, are you all right?”

  She stopped immediately, swallowed several times and swatted the trickle of tears from beneath her eyes. Forcing a half-smile to her lips, she turned and faced him.

  “Hello, Gray. What are you doing still awake at this hour? It’s after two o’clock.”

  “You’re awake.” He surveyed her sleeping attire, purple knit pajamas covered with a lavender robe made from a fuzzy chenille fabric. “What are you doing roaming around in you PJ’s?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted. “I have so many things on my mind. I thought some herbal tea might help me rest.”

  He visually scanned her hands for a mug or a cup and noted she held neither. “Did you change your mind about the tea?”

  “I got sidetracked.”

  When he lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, she said, “Daddy’s in his den and he’s quite drunk. He was seeking solace from the daughter he’s never loved or wanted.”

  “Oh, Cara, my dear girl.” Grayson walked out into the hall. “Edward loves you, in his own way.” Grayson took Cara’s hand.

  “Daddy loves Audrey and no one else, just as you do.” Cara gazed into Grayson’s eyes, hoping beyond hope that she would see something more than pity.

  “Unlike Edward, I hate Audrey as much as I love her.” Grayson hung his head, as if he was ashamed of having spoken such a terrible truth.

  She squeezed his hand. “It’s all right. Really. I feel the same way. You can’t help loving Audrey. She’s incredible in so many ways. But she’s selfish and self-centered and can say the most hurtful things and do such god awful things to the people who love her.”

  “Come with me.” Grayson tugged on Cara’s hand.

  She followed him into her sister’s rooms, the bedroom and sitting room of a young woman who had not lived in this house in years, not since she and Gray moved out when they purchased a penthouse loft in downtown Chattanooga. That had been six years ago.

  Cara glanced around the sitting room, all white and gold, with delicate peach and cream accents. Even after she married, Audrey had kept her room totally feminine, as if Gray didn’t matter in the least.

  “It’s a lovely room, isn’t it?” Gray gazed tenderly at the watercolor portrait of Audrey at age sixteen that hung over the white marble mantle.

  “She’s not coming back.” When Cara saw the stricken look on Gray’s face, she wished she could retract what she’d just said.

  “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  Cara nodded, then rushed to Gray and grasped his upper arms. “Whether she’s dead or not, she won’t come back to you. Not this time. You have to face the fact that your marriage is over.”

  “I’ve known my marriage was over for a long time.” Gray laughed morosely. “I simply have a difficult time letting go.”

  “You deserve to be loved and cherished,” she told him. “I—I want that for you.”

  “Do you, sweet Cara?”

  She released him, but didn’t move, simply stood there looking at him. Can’t you see that I love you, that I worship the ground you walk on, that I’d do anything for you?

  “Yes,” she told him. “I can’t bear to think of you being so miserable.”

  He smiled. “Audrey once told me, several years ago, that you were in love with me. I told her she was wrong, that you were just a dear, sweet girl who was quite fond of her brother-in-law.”

  Cara felt as if she’d been sucker punched. Swaying slightly, she reached out into thin air, searching for something to grab hold of to steady herself.

  Gray slipped his arm around her. She gasped when he touched her.

  “Was I wrong?” Gray asked. “Was Audrey right?”

  Cara looked him square in the eyes. “I love you. I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember. Long before you married Audrey.”

  She wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to say or do, but laugh in her face was not the reaction she’d wanted. Feeling as if he’d slapped her, she glowered at him.

  “Oh, sweet Cara, don’t be angry with me. You have no idea how wonderful it feels to laugh.”

  “It’s not wonderful for me. I hurts to have you laugh in my face when I just confessed that I love you.”

  He caressed her cheek. She shuddered.

  “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because it’s so obvious that I’m the biggest fool on earth. I never looked past Audrey to see someone far more worthy of my love, someone who actually could have loved me in return.”

  “Gray?”

  He brushed his lips over hers. Cara lost her breath.

  “You should go to bed now,” he told her. “If you stay, we might do something we would both regret in the morning.”

  No, her heart cried. I wouldn’t regret anything we did. Let me stay. Let me show you how much I love you.

  “Don’t send me away,” she pleaded.

  “It’s too soon. I’m not going to take advantage of the way you feel about me. I’m a wreck of a man. I’m emotionally spent after years with Audrey. You’re the one who deserves far better.”

  “I want you, Gray. Only you.”

  “Please, dearest Cara, go now. We both need time to think about this, to see if there is any way we can be together in the future.”

  Cara’s heart swelled with hope. He hadn’t said he loved her, but she could wait. She could wait forever if it meant Gray would finally be hers.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” she told him.

  He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it and told her, “Until then.”

  Quivering inside, Cara left Audrey’s sitting room and walked down the hall to her own bedroom, not once looking back, but she knew that Gray stood in the doorway and watched her.

  He’s mine now. You’re gone, Audrey, and you can’t come back and hurt him.

  BAIN DESMOND HATED being awakened from a sound sleep, but it happened all too often due to the fact he was a police detective. As he pulled his ’59 red and white Corvett
e up behind the two Black and Whites parked behind the county coroner’s vehicle, he glanced at the time showing on the dash clock. Two-thirty. This was a hell of a way to start a new day.

  When he emerged from his car, he saw Mike Swain’s truck parked on the other side of the road. His partner had been the one who’d called him.

  “The river just spit out another body,” Mike had told him. “Seems this one’s a woman. Her body washed ashore near the Walnut Street Bridge. Jeff Webster gave me a call. Said he figured we might be interested…just in case.”

  If this woman turned out to be Audrey Perkins, Bain would be very interested; and he could cross one theory off his list—that Audrey had killed Bobby Jack Cash. If she was dead, her husband would become the number one suspect, especially considering the fact his wife had left him for her lover. Second on Bain’s list would be Lausanne Raney. It was possible she had killed both Audrey and Bobby Jack. But in all honesty, he didn’t think she’d murdered anybody. Of course he was going on gut instincts, that and the fact he didn’t want Lausanne to be guilty. Huffing, Bain wondered if his instincts might be off center the way Domingo Shea’s were. And for the same reason. They both found Ms. Raney very attractive.

  Making his way toward Bain, Mike threw up his hand. “Over here. If you want to take a look at her before they haul her off, you’d better hurry.”

  Bain spoke to the uniformed officers, JeffWebster and Riley Davidson, the first ones to arrive after being called to the scene. It seemed a homeless man who had been looking for a place to huddle for the night, had stumbled over the bloated body. When Bain approached the county medical examiner, Dr. Jimmy Stevens, zipped up the body bag and motioned for his assistants to take the bag to the van.

  “Mind if I take a look?” Bain asked.

  “Suit yourself, but there’s no need. Your partner told me what y’all wanted to know.”

  “So?”

  “So, until we get a positive ID and I perform an autopsy, I can’t tell you for certain who she is or how she died. But I’d say there’s a good possibility that our lady of the river is the Perkins woman. She’s Caucasian, about five-four, redheaded and there’s a diamond the size of Rhode Island on her ring finger.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. I’ll want a preliminary report as soon as possible.”

  “You’ll get it.”

  When Jimmy followed his assistants toward the van, Bain followed him.

  “I’ll get in touch with Grayson Perkins and ask him to come by first thing in the morning and see if he can ID the body.”

  “He’s the husband, right?”

  Bain nodded. “Any educated guesses on how she died?”

  “The lady has a bullet hole almost directly over her heart, so I’d say the odds are that was the cause of death,” Jimmy told him. “I’ll know more after the autopsy.”

  “There was only one bullet hole?”

  “One was all it would take, if it was a direct hit to the heart.”

  “If our victim is Audrey Perkins, then whoever killed her shot her once as opposed to shooting Bobby Jack Cash repeatedly. Of course that’s assuming the same person murdered both of them. If so, it tells me the killer probably had a reason to hate Cash a great deal more than Audrey.”

  “The husband would have hated Cash more, right?”

  “Possibly. But we’re counting chicks before they hatch,” Bain said. “No use wasting time on theories until we’ve got more facts and a positive ID.”

  But Bain knew, the way a seasoned detective knew a lot of things, that the redheaded lady of the river was Audrey Perkins. Shot once. In the heart.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DOM TOUCHED LAUSANNE with gentle reverence, as if she were made of spun glass. His tenderness was her undoing. He was such a big, vitally alive man, so masculine in every way. She had expected him to be ruthless and demanding, but he was the exact opposite. He undid the tie-belt loosely holding her silk robe together, then slowly spread the robe apart to reveal what lay beneath, Lausanne’s hot, damp body.

  Gazing at her, he drew in a deep breath, then smiled. “You’re perfect.”

  Perfect? He thought she was perfect? No other man had ever looked at her body without finding fault. Her breasts weren’t big enough, her hips were too wide, her legs too short, the smattering of freckles on her shoulders and chest were ugly.

  He eased the robe from her shoulders, over her arms and off. It dropped to her feet and formed a shimmering circle. Her nipples peaked. Pulsing need throbbed between her thighs. Standing before Dom, naked and aroused, Lausanne suddenly felt uncertain. She lifted her gaze to meet his and gasped when she saw the raw need in his eyes.

  As if sensing her nervousness, Dom yanked his briefs down and off, then kicked them aside. “Better?” he asked.

  She simply stared at him.

  “We’re on equal footing now. Both of us naked and totally exposed.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Chuckling softly under his breath, Dom stood there and allowed her to survey him from head to toe. She began her inspection with his handsome face, but quickly traveled south, over his broad shoulders and wide, bronze chest. Every inch of him was muscular and fit, his skin like subtle leather, but scars marred the perfection. One gashed across his left side, a long, thick scar she assumed had been created by a knife. Another one on his chest was more round in shape, probably caused by a bullet. Was his line of work that dangerous or were those marks military battle scars?

  Her gaze continued its downward path, then paused at the tip of his impressive erection, just shy of reaching his navel.

  Lausanne swallowed hard. He was big and hard and ready.

  “Touch me, if you want to,” he told her.

  Her body clenched and unclenched, sending a sensual message to her brain.

  Without replying to his comment, she reached out and ran her fingertips over his chest, pausing to circle each tiny nipple. He sucked in a deep breath. She moved on, across his belly, and then she slid her hands over his slim hips before reaching behind him to cup his firm buttocks.

  His sex twitched against her belly.

  She shivered, her hunger intensifying with each passing moment.

  “May I touch you?” His voice was a husky groan.

  “Yes…please.”

  The moment he placed both of his hands on either side of her lower back and pressed her intimately against him, she knew she was lost. She’d never wanted a man the way she wanted Dom, had never experienced such raw passion.

  He lowered his head until his lips touched hers. “I’ll protect you.”

  Her mind already fuzzy with desire, she didn’t immediately comprehend what he’d meant; and when he kissed her, all coherent thought left her mind. She arched her arms up and slipped them around his neck, pushing her tingling breasts against his hard chest. Their kiss deepened, transforming from sweetness to utter abandon when he probed inside her mouth, his movements mimicking the ultimate joining.

  When she didn’t think she’d be able to stand another minute, when her legs went limp and her knees buckled, Dom ended the kiss. With her eyes closed and her pulse racing, she swayed unsteadily. He wrapped his arm around her and led her to her bed.

  After easing her down on the edge of the bed, he ran his hands over her arms from shoulders to wrists. “I’ll be right back, honey. I need to get a condom out of my duffle bag.”

  “Oh.” She nodded.

  Even that brief separation was too long. She needed him so badly, wanted him inside her now, loving her and allowing her to love him in return.

  Lovemaking isn’t love, Lausanne reminded herself. No matter what Dom says, this will be sex.

  He returned to the bedroom quickly, but she noted that he hadn’t put on the condom. When he came to her, he paused, dropped a couple of foil wrappers on the bedside table and then went down on his knees in front of her.

  What was he doing?

  He bowed his head, lifted her left foot and kissed each toe, then wen
t to the other foot. “You have such cute little feet, honey.”

  Lausanne sighed.

  He circled her ankles, then eased his hands up her calves. Before parting her knees, he kissed the top of each thigh. “Your skin is like silk. I love touching you.”

  Lausanne breathed deeply.

  He skimmed his open palms up her outer thighs, all the while kissing a path from her knees, up her inner thighs to the apex of her body. When his warm breath fanned the curls covering her feminine mound, she gripped the edge of the bed with both hands.

  “Dom?”

  “Just relax and enjoy.”

  He parted her thighs enough to insert himself between them, then kissed her mound. Lausanne quivered. He nuzzled her, then slipped his tongue between her damp feminine folds.

  Lausanne whimpered.

  He pressed his tongue against her core and then flicked repeatedly.

  Lausanne moaned with pleasure.

  Dom moved his hands upward, over her hips and waist, then around to cover both breasts; and all the while his talented tongue stroked harder and harder, faster and faster.

  Lausanne gripped Dom’s head, her fingers playing with his short hair, her body tightening, tensing, preparing for release.

  When he rubbed her nipples with his thumbs, she cried out with a pleasure/pain that shot through her entire body. While his mouth worked relentlessly to bring her to fulfillment, his fingers tormented her tight, aching nipples.

  The world inside and out of her exploded like skyrockets. She shook and shivered, her release so intense that she felt as if she were shattering into pieces.

  “Oh, Dom…Dom…” She huffed his name repeatedly.

  While her climax radiated through her, Dom lifted his head and reached up, entangling his fingers in her hair. He pulled her head down to his and kissed her, her musky scent strong on his lips. Then he pushed her backward onto the bed before reaching for one of the foil packs.

  While the orgasmic aftershocks rippled through her body, she watched, fascinated by everything about him, while he slipped the condom over his penis.