Heartwishes (27 page)

Gemma loved the feel of his skin on hers. His body was hard, with great, huge muscles. His stomach was divided into ridges, without any fat over his firm muscles. She ran her fingers over his abdomen, feeling her way down lower and lower.

When her hand reached the center of him, it was his turn to groan. She pushed him back on the bed and ran her hands all over him, looking at his nude form. He was a study of what a body should look like, a centerfold of all those professional football players on TV.

Gemma slipped off her underpants and straddled him. He helped her to sit down on him, and she thought she might faint when he entered her. She had desired him for so very long.

His strong hands around her waist helped to guide her. He caressed her behind, her thighs, down to her calves. “Beautiful,” he whispered. “You are truly beautiful.”

He flipped her over onto her back, and for long, luxurious moments, he made velvet strokes inside her.

Based on her previous experience, Gemma expected him to finish soon, for the pleasure to end quickly. But Colin didn’t quit. Instead he withdrew and kissed her more. His hand went down between her legs where he pleasured her in a way that was new to her. He seemed to know spots in her body that she had no idea she possessed. His fingers knew what to press, what to rub, what to caress.

When she was to a peak that she’d never felt before, he entered her again. His gentle strokes had her clutching at his back; her strong legs were wrapped around his waist, holding him to her.

Again, when she was close to exploding, he withdrew.

“Okay?” he asked as he moved beside her.

“I may die,” she managed to say.

“Good!” he said as he flipped her onto her stomach, put his big arm around her waist, and lifted her up. He entered her from behind, and Gemma put her hands on the wall to brace herself.

When his strokes became harder, she gasped out, “Yes! Yes!”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his voice gentle.

“Think I’m not strong enough to take it?” she said over her shoulder.

“Yeah?” he said. “Let me know when to stop.”

He pounded into her with such force that she almost couldn’t hold herself against the wall. She loved it!

When she felt herself ready to explode, she turned onto her back and she opened her arms to him.

“Ready?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes,” she said and he entered her again, and this time he let himself—and her with him—reach the climax.

Shudders went through her, so strong they made her body convulse.

Minutes later, Colin rolled off of her, to lie beside her, his body sweaty. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“The best I’ve ever been in my life,” she managed to say.

He picked up her hand and kissed the palm. “I’m not sure yet, but I think I am too.”

She turned on her side to look at him. His dark hair was messed up, and there was a glow of sweat on him. She thought he’d never looked better. “It was exhausting, but I had a good time today.”

“In spite of arguing about couches?”

“Maybe because of that.” She was running her hand over his stomach. “You’ll see that I’m right about the leather. It would have been bad for this house.”

“Except for my chair.”

“I can’t believe you found a chair that has arms that flip back to hold a beer can.”

“Or a mug of tea,” he said. “And you think I don’t know that the coffee table you picked out can be used as a desk?”

“You bought a desk,” she said in defense.

“That’s because
I
sit in a chair. You prop your delightful little derriere on a rug.”

“Old habit,” she said as he put his arm out and she lay her head on it. “Actually, I like everything you bought.”

“
We
bought,” he said. “I never would have thought of sticking the old stuff in with the new.”

“I guess Sara’s house was still in my head.”

“Sara doesn’t believe anything should be new. I think all of it will look good, and thanks to your expert measuring, it’ll all fit.”

“Mrs. Ellis helped with the placement.”

“She was good at jamming in a lot everywhere, wasn’t she?” Colin looked at Gemma. “So what are we going to do about filling the kitchen cabinets?”

“Don’t look at me,” Gemma said. “I don’t know how to cook.”

“I’ve seen that you make a great omelet, and you’ve bragged incessantly about your meat loaf.”

“I mentioned it once! And then only in answer to your question. So who was it who made the pot roast you were lusting after? Jean?”

“Jealous all ready? Jean would never make anything as mundane as a pot roast. If it didn’t require some special pan sold only in Paris, Jean wanted nothing to do with it. Are we going to talk about her a lot?”

“Not unless you want to,” Gemma said seriously.

He kissed her palm again. “Thanks, but I may have reached my limit. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

“For me or for food?”

“Food!” he said as he got off the bed and pulled on his trousers.

As she watched him walk out, his back muscles playing under his skin, she said loudly, “Looks like the honeymoon is over.”

He looked around the doorjamb. “Feed me, then I’ll show you that it’s only just begun.”

Gemma grabbed Colin’s T-shirt off the floor and put it on as she ran past him to the living room.

Colin had taken only two bites when his cell buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. “It’s Roy,” he said as he looked at the text message. “I have to go. There’s been a robbery in Edilean.”

Gemma was up in an instant. “Need this?” she asked, indicating his T-shirt, which she was wearing.

“Yeah,” he said as he put on his shoes and socks. When he looked up, Gemma had removed his shirt and was standing before him naked. When he’d seen her wearing her skimpy street clothes, she’d had a beautiful body, and he’d loved touching it in bed. But now, seeing her naked, she looked like a Vargas pinup.

Colin stood there looking at her, his eyes wide, then he staggered back a step until he hit the wall. “Ooooooh,” was all he could say.

Gemma, a bit embarrassed but extremely pleased by his reaction, said, “You have to go.”

“I can’t,” Colin said. “My legs are numb. My brain has died.”

“I’ll—” Gemma took a step.

“Freeze!” he said. “You move and make a single thing bounce and I’ll fall down dead right here.”

Gemma was trying not to grin, but she couldn’t help it. “All right, I’ll stay still, but you have to go and save Edilean. Think it was someone stealing a pie off a windowsill?”

“I don’t know,” he said as he went to her, bent, and kissed her sweetly on the mouth. As he stepped away, he ran his hands down her sides. “Roy better have a damned good reason for calling me away,” he said, looking as though he were about to cry. He left.

17

T
HE ROBBERY HAD
taken place in one of the newer houses in Edilean. In Colin’s opinion, too many houses had been jammed together on twenty acres that had once been farmland. The long-term residents had tried to stop the building when it began five years before, but they hadn’t been successful. City people, charmed by the idea of living in “the quaint little town of Edilean, Virginia, a place untouched by time,” as the ads said, had snatched up the houses before they were finished. Since then, a lot of people had moved out. Edilean, for all its proximity to larger cities, was too rural for them.

Colin knew more about the “newcomers” as they were called—and would be no matter how many years they stayed there—than the other original residents did, and he was somewhat familiar with this family. The wife was a stay-at-home mom with a young daughter and a three-year-old son. The husband worked in Portsmouth, something to do with the military. Colin’s impression had always been that they seemed like a nice family.

“What happened to you?” Roy asked as soon as he got inside the house and she saw his messed hair and sleepy-eyed look. She’d already put yellow tape across the bedroom door and taken many photos throughout the house.

Colin gave her a look to be quiet.

“Oh, right,” Roy said, “Jean.” She was smirking at his general air of having just tumbled out of bed.

“We broke up,” Colin said under his breath, and the way he said it told her he wasn’t saying any more. “Tell me what happened here.”

Roy filled him in on the details of a diamond ring that had been stolen. The owner had kept it inside a hidden compartment of her bedpost. Unfortunately, there were no photos of the ring. “From the way the bedroom was tossed about, it looks like the thief had a difficult time finding it. My guess is it was some local kids,” Roy added. “Maybe on a dare. I think it was just dumb luck that they found the ring.”

Colin stepped under the tape across the doorway and began to look around. While it was true that the room was in disarray, with pillows knocked off the beds, a corner of the rug rolled back, and a chair overturned, there was something about it all that didn’t seem right. For one thing, putting the room back together would take only minutes. In a way, it looked as though the thief had moved things about as an afterthought.

He looked at the bedpost. The end had been screwed off, exposing a small hollowed-out area inside. Not much could have been hidden there, but a ring would fit easily. His first thought was of Mrs. Ellis at the furniture store. Only someone who knew furniture would know there was a hiding place there—or a customer who owned the same set.

He told Roy to find out who in the area had bought an identical bed and she made a note of it.

After Roy left the room, Colin walked about, looking at all of it.
On top of the dresser were the usual perfume bottles and cosmetics, a few framed photos of the family. He didn’t see anything in the closet that looked as though it hadn’t been touched, nor did the bathroom seem to have been disturbed.

When Roy returned, she told him the bed had belonged to the woman’s parents and that her father had made it. “It’s one of a kind.”

That news startled Colin. Only someone who knew the owner would know that there was a hiding place inside the post. It looked as though someone close to the family had done it.

Colin found the woman sitting in her kitchen, her hands shaking as she drank a cup of coffee. She told Colin that she was upset because the robbery had taken place in broad daylight.

“I was outside deadheading the roses, and the kids were on their big play set. I came back in to make dinner, and it wasn’t until after we’d eaten that I saw my bedroom had been ransacked,” she said. “I don’t want to think what could have happened if I or one of the kids had gone in and interrupted the thief.” She took a drink of her coffee; her hand was shaking. “If only I’d kept my mouth shut!”

He listened while she told him that her aunt had died a few months before and left her a diamond ring. At the last playgroup at Armstrong’s grocery that she’d taken her little boy to, she’d shown it off. “Anyone could have seen it. Half of the county goes to that grocery.”

“Are we talking multiple diamonds, something that would need to be insured separately?”

“No, not really,” she said. “The ring had a center diamond, then some smaller ones around it. I think the middle one was about half a carat, maybe a bit more.”

“Do you know what it was worth?”

“I have no idea,” she said, but looked down at her cup for a moment then back up. “Two or three thousand at the most, but I think I may have hinted that it was worth more.”

She looked so guilty that Colin smiled warmly at her. “Bragging isn’t a crime, and we all do it. I want to know about your bed. Who knew the ring was inside the post?”

“No one!” she said emphatically. “My father showed me that hiding place when I was a little girl. My mother was very stingy and one time when I wanted something and she said no, he showed me where he hid a stash of money. It was our secret. When I got married, my parents were going to buy us new furniture, but I asked for the bed Dad had made. He knew why I wanted it.”

“Did you tell your husband about the bedpost?”

“No, I did not. And I didn’t tell my kids or my best friend. I never told anyone at all about that place. It was my own personal little safe.”

“Do you have any siblings who your father might have told?”

“I have a brother who lives in Wisconsin. He and my father never got along, so I doubt if Dad told him. Do you think he flew back here to steal the ring?”

Colin wasn’t sure if she was serious or being sarcastic. Whatever, he closed his notebook and looked at her. “Has anything else in the house been touched?”

“Not that I’ve seen. Roy went through every room. She said I’m a good housekeeper.”

Colin gave her a small smile of reassurance and asked her to please not use the bedroom tonight. He didn’t think it would turn up anything, but he wanted it dusted for fingerprints.

He and Roy left the house.

“What do you think?” she asked as soon as they were outside. “Kids daring each other?”

“No, I don’t think so.” He was looking up at the windows and frowning. He didn’t want to say what he thought, but his instinct told him that this wasn’t an ordinary robbery.