Whispers at Midnight (30 page)

Her fingers threaded into his hair; the strands just above the nape were short and silky. He was bending over her, bending her back so
that she was almost reclining with her head pillowed on his shoulder, running his mouth across her cheek and the line of her jaw, trailing tiny kisses down her neck, nibbling her earlobe, then kissing her senseless again. His arms were taut around her, flattening her breasts against his chest. She could feel the need in him, the urgency, the tension in his shoulders and back. She could feel the telltale hardness of him pressing against her thigh. Her heart threatened to pound out of her chest.

Then his hand was on her breast, covering it, squeezing, and it felt so good, so wonderful, that Carly made a tiny sound deep in her throat and quivered with pleasure.

He lifted his head, breaking the kiss. Carly opened her eyes a slit, looking dazedly up at him. Dark color suffused his face. His eyes were blazing. He was breathing hard.

He wanted her. Badly. There was no mistaking that.

His hand was still on her breast. She looked down at it, at that long-fingered, tan, utterly masculine and utterly beautiful hand splayed across the front of her faded green shirt, and caught her breath. It was Matt’s hand, she’d had a million dreams about that hand, she would know it anywhere, and it was warm and strong and cupping her breast. Her nipple hardened into his palm. Pure heat shot through her and her loins pulsed with need and she had to work to suck in air.

“Matt …” she whispered in abject surrender as her insides quaked and quivered with passion, absolutely his for the taking now. Closing her eyes, suffused with the sweetness of surrender, she lifted her mouth to his.

“Carly.” There was a husky undertone to his voice—and a note of semi-amused ruefulness as well. The semi-amused ruefulness part was just beginning to fully register when he continued with unmistakable regret. “Baby, I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

He didn’t think this was such a good idea?

Her eyes popped open.

“What?”
she growled, glaring at him, struggling to sit up. He was still leaning over her, still holding her, but she shoved against his
shoulder and sat bolt upright even as he grabbed her around the waist to prevent her from leaping to her feet and met her gaze with a twinkle.

She was going to kill him, she was really going to kill him; this time she was going to do it for sure… .

“We’re on the roof,” he said, and despite the twinkle she saw that his eyes were dark with passion and hot color stained his cheekbones and his breathing was not quite steady. “One wrong move and it’s like forty feet down. Not a good place for where this is going.”

She eyed him narrowly. He grinned.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, tracing a finger down the bridge of her nose. For a moment she simply looked at him suspiciously, because no one had ever called her that, not John, not Matt ever before, not anyone, and anyway she knew it wasn’t true.

“That would be you,” she said.

He shook his head at her. “No, that would be you.” She thought she saw a sudden wealth of tenderness for her in his eyes. “Trust me on this, Curls: that would be you.”

Sliding his hand beneath her jaw, he tilted her face up to his and kissed her. It was a soft kiss, a gentle kiss, but thorough nevertheless. Its effect on Carly was devastating. She melted against him, turned absolutely boneless, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back with a neediness that shook her when she realized it for what it was.

“Okay, off the roof.” He broke the kiss and lifted her off his lap before she had quite recovered her wits. “Think you can make it back to terra firma without killing yourself?”

He got to his feet and stood looking down at her. For a moment longer she sat in a near daze with her shoulder pressed up against the chimney, dreamily aware of the heat in the bricks against which she leaned and in the tin panel on which she sat and in the air. She realized that it was still full daylight, with the late afternoon sun slanting through the branches of the walnut tree to make intricate patterns in light and shadow on the roof. The sky was a soft cerulean blue and the clouds were like cotton candy and a pair of noisy blue jays flitted
around in the tree and a bushy-tailed squirrel scampered along a branch not far above their heads—and the tarry smell of roof goop wafted beneath her nose.

Okay, so it wasn’t quite perfect. It was still a beautiful day, a glorious day, and she had a date with Matt.

Was her life looking up or what?

“Did you hear what I said?” Matt asked dryly, holding his hand out for her to grab.

Carly’s gaze snapped to his face. Not for anything was she going to let Matt know just how very dazzled she was. Not that he probably didn’t already have a pretty good idea.

“Yes, of course I heard what you said. You’re not
that
great a kisser, Matt Converse.”

She put her hand in his and he pulled her upright.

“Later I’m going to make you eat those words,” he said, and lifted her hand to his mouth.

Carly watched him press his lips to her knuckles and her pulse went crazy. His lips were warm on her skin and his eyes were hot as he met her gaze over her bent fingers. The gesture was totally disarming, totally romantic, totally unlike any aspect of Matt she knew, and she’d thought she knew every aspect of Matt there was. This one was … Matt the lover. Like Matt the grown-up sheriff, it was part of the man he was now, not the boy he had been. As she realized the seismic shift in their relationship his kissing of her fingers signified, her stomach lurched and her knees went weak.

Boy or man, he was still Matt, and she still wanted him so much she burned with it.

“Come on,” he said, lowering their joined hands and starting to head toward the ladder, moving carefully, pulling her after him.

“Wait, I’ve got to get my things.” Her scattered senses suddenly came together in a concentrated whole and she tugged her hand free. She couldn’t just leave her work materials behind. Her hammer, a single loose nail and the can of roof goop lay forgotten about a yard away. Her paintbrush, still loaded with goop, was near Matt’s feet. Bending, she reached for the paintbrush.

He took it from her, stuck it into the goop can, and hung the can over his arm. Then, stowing the hammer and nail in his front pocket, he caught her hand again and pulled her after him toward the ladder.

Holding the ends of the ladder to steady it as she stepped onto it, he made her go first. Climbing down, Carly couldn’t help but glance up to admire his long, powerful leg muscles and the cute roundness of his butt in the washed-thin jeans as he followed her. He was Matt, he was gorgeous, and he was soon to be hers. At the thought she almost missed a rung.

Tumbling thirty feet to her probable death would not be a good way to start what promised to be the most amazing evening of her life, Carly thought, focusing on her own hands and feet as she climbed down.

They were nearly on the ground when Carly realized that they were being watched. By multiple pairs of eyes, as it happened. Hugo lay almost even with them on one of the big walnut tree’s lower branches, at ease, looking comfortable, his tail barely moving as he tracked their descent. It said much for Matt’s effect on her that she had forgotten all about her coddled cat until that moment. Clearly Hugo had gone native to a far greater degree than she had realized if he could get himself on and off the roof via the walnut.

Benton had wrought great changes in both her and her cat, Carly thought, glancing up at Matt again. In fact, Carly realized with a flicker of surprise, she had hardly thought of John or anything concerning her divorce since she’d first slid out of that U-Haul. Her life as Mrs. John Grunwald—not that she’d ever used that name, preferring to keep her own—seemed far away, distant, as if it had belonged to someone else.
This
was her real life. She glanced up again, and her heart skipped a beat. Matt was her real life.

At the thought Carly almost missed another rung.

Recovering, her gaze fell on Annie, who waited at the base of the ladder, her tail wagging as she looked up at them. Behind Annie, Antonio, Mike and Sandra were gathered, watching too, their turned-up faces reflecting various degrees of surprise, interest and
speculation. Glancing sideways, her attention drawn by a movement caught from the corner of her eye, Carly saw Erin getting out of the passenger seat of a red Honda that had just parked in front of the house. Even at such a distance Carly was able to tell when Erin spotted her brother coming down the ladder. Erin froze, staring up the hill toward them.

Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,
Carly thought wryly.

That their audience was speculating wildly on just exactly what was going on between the two of them was impossible to miss. She didn’t think she could have felt more self-conscious if she’d been climbing down the ladder naked.

“So, did you get the roof fixed?” Sandra asked in a slightly too hearty tone as Carly stepped onto the grass.

“Most of it.” Carly wiped her sweaty palms on the back of her jeans, proud of how composed she sounded, and bent to give Annie a pat. She was also proud that she managed
not
to look at Matt, who was just now reaching the ground beside her. Still, she was so conscious of him as she straightened again that she could practically feel him breathe. She was also so conscious of having just made out with him on the roof that she was positive her face was a bright telltale red.

“Who’s this?” Matt asked, setting the bucket of roof goop on the ground and sweeping the assembled company with a comprehensive glance before his gaze fixed on Annie, who was sniffing rather suspiciously at his feet. Unlike herself, Matt looked and sounded perfectly relaxed, perfectly himself.

Their eyes met. Carly couldn’t help herself. She smiled at him, and her heart missed a beat as he smiled slowly back. A slight shuffling sound reminded her of their audience, and, self-conscious again, she focused on his question and glanced down at the little dog.

“This is Annie. You remember the dog that chased Hugo that first night? We decided to adopt her.”

Sandra snorted. “Speak for yourself,” she said.

Carly ignored her comment, but noticed Sandra glancing with interest from her face to Matt’s.

“Annie’s a sweetheart,” Carly told Matt.

“I bet.” If his tone was dry, still he held out his hand so that Annie could sniff his fingers and then scratched behind her ears before straightening to look at Antonio and Mike.

“So what’s up?” Matt asked them.

The deputies were in uniform, and, Carly presumed from the question and the tone in which it was asked, on duty.

Up until that moment they, like Sandra, had been casting covert glances from Matt to Carly and looking slyly amused as they did it. Their expressions quickly altered as they met their boss’s level gaze. Mike shuffled his feet and glanced away. Antonio crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat.

“There was a radio call for you about ten minutes ago,” Antonio said. “Dispatch said a caller was trying to get through to your cell phone, but it was turned off. Seems Mrs. Hayden’s out walking her dog again.”

There seemed to be some special significance to that, because Matt looked faintly vexed while Antonio and Mike both appeared to be trying hard to suppress grins.

“My phone’s off for a reason.” Matt started to put his hands into his pockets, encountered the hammer, pulled it out, fished for the nail and handed both to Carly. “And the reason is, I’m off duty. Somebody else is going to have to take care of Mrs. Hayden.”

“I’ll tell ’em to send Knight. He could use a little seasoning,” Antonio said.

“Good call.” Matt grinned then, apparently finding considerable humor in whatever picture this conjured up. “Anything else?”

Listening to Matt being large and in charge had a surprising effect on Carly. She thought back to the boy he had been, to the youth he had been, to the young man he had been, and felt a surge of pride. The boy the town would have voted Most Likely to Become an Ax Murderer had turned out pretty well after all.
You’ve come a long way, baby,
were the words that popped into her mind, and at the sheer ridiculousness of them as applied to Matt, she smiled.

“Thompson broke his leg falling down his back steps and Brooks called in with a stomach virus,” Antonio said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Matt looked harassed. “We’re understaffed
as it is. That brings us down to six. When’s their next shift?”

“Both on at eleven tonight.”

“Christ,” Matt said. “Who’s covering?”

“Everybody’s already pulled a double shift within the last twenty-four hours. We don’t get some more people hired, we’re all gonna turn into zombies.”

“The funding’s not there.” Matt grimaced. “All right, fine. To hell with it. I’ll cover for Thompson, you cover for Brooks.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Antonio said gloomily.

“Hey, you put in for Chief Deputy.”

“Yeah, I know.” Antonio sounded depressed as he glanced at Sandra. “I just kind of thought rank would have a little more privilege.”

Matt snorted, and reached for Carly’s hand. Immediately Sandra, Antonio, and Mike homed in on their entwined fingers like missiles seeking heat. Under the weight of their stares Carly couldn’t have felt more conspicuous if someone had suddenly pasted a scarlet A on her forehead.

“Ready?” he said. Carly nodded, and he tightened his hold on her hand as he glanced back at their audience.

“Is that it?” he asked his deputies. “Because we’re out of here.”

“We’re going to hang around for supper.” Antonio met Matt’s gaze and shrugged defensively. “Hey, we get an hour, and we gotta eat.”

“Hi, everybody.”

With that cheerful greeting Erin joined them. She was wearing a denim miniskirt and white tank, and with her tan and tousled black hair looked fresh and glowing—and faintly worried. Mike’s eyes lit up when he saw her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She glanced from Matt to Carly, then down at their linked hands. She then focused on her brother, her expression guarded. “Uh, Matt, could I talk to you for a minute?”