Still the One (11 page)

His thumbs skimmed her nipples, hard and straining against the thin material of her bra. He flicked open the front catch, and her breasts spilled into his hands. She made a sound deep in her throat, her breath stalling at the sight of his hands, bronze against the pearl of her flesh.

He dipped his head, circled one nipple with his tongue. “I love your breasts. I’ve always loved your breasts.”

A flush heated her body. The shyness she thought she’d outgrown whistled back, but only for a second. His mouth moved over her, gently, hungrily. Heat shot straight to her core. Trembling, she arched into him, holding on tightly, loving the sensation of being swept into a tide of feeling.

His kiss claimed and demanded. He lifted his head, his gaze scorching as he caressed her breasts again.

“Why didn’t we fight harder for this?” she breathed, clutching at his shoulders to keep him close. “How did I ever walk away from you?”

It took her a moment to realize he’d stopped. His mouth branded her neck; his hands cradled her breasts.

She opened her eyes, her mind fuzzy with desire. The
disbelief in his eyes, the resentment hit her senses like a slap.

“Rafe?”

With unsteady hands, he pulled her shirt down and stepped away. Barely six inches, but it felt like miles.

“Rafe?” A sob backed up in her throat. Hunger clawed through her, twisting a knot of need.

His breathing was ragged, his pulse jumping wildly in his neck. “We’re not going to do this, Kit.”

“But—”

“No.” He held up both hands as if to ward her off. “I’m not going down that road again.”

“But things are different now.” Still shaky, she fastened her bra, straightened her shirt and tucked it in. She tried to think around the feel of his hands on her body.

“I was always there for you. You were never there for me. And I’m not talking about sex. I commit, you don’t,” he said harshly, turning away from her. “Things are
not
different.”

“They could be.” She snagged his elbow, drawing a savage look. She released him. “What you said about Liz is true. It’s time to make her grow up. I’m ready to do that.”

“Just like that?” he said doubtfully, the heat in his eyes cooling.

“Yes. I realized that before now, but I couldn’t admit it. You made me face it. I’ve got to stop bailing her out, let her start making her own mistakes.”

“Darlin’, this is me you’re talking to.”

“I’m not saying it will be easy, but I’m ready.” She sounded desperate and didn’t care.

“I know how responsible you feel over your mom, Kit.” He reached out, almost reluctantly she thought, and stroked a finger down her cheek. “I don’t think you can walk away. Not from Liz, not from any of the responsibility you feel.”

“I know Mom’s death wasn’t my fault.” She gripped his arms, granite-hard beneath her palms. “Logically I know it, but if I hadn’t thrown a fit for those shoes, she wouldn’t have taken me to the mall. And Liz wouldn’t have been deprived of a mother.”

“You were fourteen, Kit. You were not driving the car. Not her car, not the car that hit her. You tried to help her, and there was nothing anyone could do.”

“I know all that.” The emotions of the last few minutes, the seesaw between worry and gut-twisting desire dissolved the few defenses she had left. Tears burned, and she swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I know you’re right.”

“Hell.” Rafe shifted uneasily, then lifted the tail of his polo shirt. “Here.”

“I’m not going to cry,” she sniffed, waving away his offer.

“I know.” He reached out, thumbed a tear from her cheek. For a second, just an instant, his palm cupped her cheek, then he pulled away.

“Once we find Liz and I know she’s all right, I’m going to tell her.”

He shook his head. “Kit—”

“I mean it. I’m going to do it.”

“Can you, Kit?” He went completely still, his gaze probing hers. “Can you really?”

“You don’t expect me to walk away now?” She wiped another tear off her cheek. “She’s in danger.”

“This certainly doesn’t seem to be one of her typical stunts. And no, I don’t expect or want you to turn your back on her. But I don’t believe you’ll be able to let go once she gets back, even if she’s safe and sound. Besides, I’m not what you really want anyway. You’re confused by the uncertainty of this situation. When we find your sister—”

“No, I’m not confused. I do want you. I want
us.
I know it now. I know what I need to do, what it’s time to do.”

“Do you know?” He advanced on her, backing her against the same tree where he’d kissed the breath out of her. A raw hunger, primal and disturbing, blazed in his black eyes and reached out to her. “Because I’d want all of you, Kit.”

He was lethal and glorious and undeniably male. The low, harsh edge in his voice sent a shiver rippling through her. A delicious heat started between her legs.

“All of you. No sharing this time. I won’t settle for less ever again. And you can’t do it, Kit. You can’t commit, at least not to me.”

“I want to try.” She’d never been so excited or frightened in her life. Her heart pounded in her throat; her body trembled. “I really want to try.”

His gaze locked with hers, searching, measuring. In one split second, she saw it—the decision, the rejection.

“That’s good,” he said, gently removing her hand. “I hope you can someday.”

She felt more lonely than she had in years. Since the day she’d told him no. Emotion welled in her throat, and she struggled to get the words out. “That’s not enough for another chance?”

He stared at her for a long moment, uncertainty then regret chasing across his carved features. Tension lashed his shoulders.

“No,” he said simply.

J
ust after six that evening, his mood as hot and unrelenting as the sun burning its way down the sky, Rafe drove north on May Avenue toward Eddie Sanchez’s apartment complex. Why the hell had Kit decided she wanted to change
now?
Why did she think she
could
change?

She sat beside him, arms folded protectively across her middle, staring silently out the window. She hadn’t said a total of ten words since they’d returned from his parents’ place. Not even after Nita’s phone call a few minutes ago with a message she’d picked up from Mrs. Hawkins on the company voice mail. The elderly neighbor of Tony’s excell mate had called to say that she’d spoken to Sanchez in the apartment complex’s parking lot.

Kit’s scent slid seductively around him. The velvety feel of her soft, delicious flesh still branded his hands, his mouth. And the harder he tried to forget, the more clearly he recalled the creamy taste of her. Sheer sexual frustration had every nerve in his body wired tight enough to relay electricity.

Kit wanted him.

Rafe locked his jaw. While that knowledge could still make his pulse spike, it also made his resolve harden. He hated the distance between them, but it was for the best. She’d said she wanted another chance, but what she really wanted was for things to be the way they used to be.

He rubbed at the knot of tension that had settled in his neck. She could still prime him from zero to ready in under five seconds. He didn’t like it, didn’t want it, but he had to deal with it. For the present, he wasn’t getting the space he needed from her. If he could just get a break in this case, work would go a long way toward keeping his mind from replaying the shadowy pictures of what had happened between him and Kit today.

He’d spent the afternoon outside on the phone, in the garage on the phone, anywhere she wasn’t. Kit had stayed in the living room. Lunch and dinner had been bleak, sober affairs. Kit had called Tony’s parents again, only to learn they’d had no word from their son. Rafe had lost count of the number of times she’d checked her home answering machine for a message from Liz, without luck.

The calls he’d made—to Nita, Craig, Kent Porter, Uncle Wayne—hadn’t yielded much better results. Only Rafe’s conversation with Craig had potential. The computer expert was piecing together some deleted files from Tony’s computer and might have something later. Rafe had also called a guy who did regular work for him and ordered a background check on Eddie Sanchez.

All afternoon, Rafe had managed to stay busy, but thoughts of Kit tickled the back of his mind. His body, still aching and hard, cursed him for pushing her away, but he knew he’d done the right thing.

She’d made her choice ten years ago, and he’d learned to live with it. He might want her physically, but he wasn’t
laying his heart on the chopping block again. They could work together, but they couldn’t be together.

As he swung the ’Vette into the parking lot of Sanchez’s apartment complex, dusk settled in shades of silver over the city, gray sifting over the thin line of red at the horizon. Finding a space in front of Eddie’s mud-brown building, Rafe killed the engine and got out. Kit did the same. Dark shadows ringed her eyes; fatigue pinched at her delicate features.

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. This enforced closeness made his nerves as raw as those mind-melting kisses at the creek had.

They needed a break in this case and fast. Surely Liz would call soon for money, as she’d told Kit.

Each two-story building had four apartments on the top and bottom floors, two on each side of a set of concrete steps that led to the second floor. Sanchez’s apartment was on the lower floor, the back one on the right. As soon as Rafe stepped past the staircase, he froze. Yellow crime scene tape stretched across Sanchez’s door.

Automatically, he slammed out a protective arm.

“Hey!” Kit said as he bumped her chest. Then she saw the door, too. “Oh, no.”

The chirp of crickets punctuated the stillness. Rafe looked in both directions of the walk-through breezeway. Golden light thrown by a setting sun shone through the opposite open end of the building. He saw the same telltale yellow crime scene tape on the end of a bush. Dread formed a cold knot in his gut.

“Young man!” A paper-thin voice whispered from the next apartment.

Rafe ducked to look under the staircase. One half of Mrs. Hawkins’s wrinkled face peered at him. “Are you all right, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“Yes, yes.” She motioned them over and cracked the
door barely enough to let them in. Once they stepped inside, she quickly shut the door, locked the dead bolt and slid in the chain lock. “My sister’s coming to get me. The police don’t think I should stay here. I certainly don’t, either.”

“What happened?”

The older lady dabbed at red-rimmed eyes. “It was awful, just horrible. I found him, right back there behind the apartment building.”

“Maybe you should sit down,” Rafe suggested, worried at how frail the old woman looked.

“Thank you.” She let him lead her into the small living room and help her onto a nubby, olive-green couch. “I went outside to get my mail. I always return by the back way because I check the bushes. Sometimes the maintenance man here doesn’t water them. And there he was. Hidden underneath. Blood everywhere. It was horrible. I called the police right off.”

“That was good.”

Kit rubbed her arms as if she were cold.

Apprehension snaked across Rafe’s neck. “Was it Eddie Sanchez, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“They marked everything off. No one can go in that apartment until they’re finished looking around.”

He nodded, familiar with the procedure. “Ma’am?”

“The police said he was murdered,” she whispered, pressing the handkerchief to her eyes again. Her thin, wrinkled skin was mottled. “That’s why I’m going to my sister’s.”

Rafe struggled to keep his voice level. “I need to know, Mrs. Hawkins. Was it Eddie?”

“Yes. Yes.” She dabbed at her eyes again.

Rafe’s gaze sliced to Kit. Horror widened her eyes and she covered her mouth with her hand.

The news dropped on Rafe like a hammer. Eddie San
chez had been their best hope for new information. The one person Tony may have confided in, Sanchez was dead. Had crucial information died with him? This was not the break Rafe had hoped for.

A few hours later, Rafe hung up the phone in his study and leaned back in his soft leather chair. Damn. Kent Porter at the OCPD had just confirmed Rafe’s fear, and he did
not
want to tell Kit. Porter’s information had forced Rafe to admit that Liz was in definite danger, more than he and Kit had probably suspected.

His desk lamp burned bright over the notes he’d scribbled concerning Liz’s case. As they’d left Sanchez’s, Rafe had worried at the chalkiness of Kit’s face, but she’d insisted she was fine. Once home, she had disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes, then moved into the living room, cool and calm. He knew she wasn’t.

The television hummed at the same low volume he’d worked to all evening. Since he and Kit had returned from Eddie Sanchez’s apartment complex, Rafe had sequestered himself in here to work. Kit had watched television. Or rather, she’d had the thing turned on.

His study door was open, and every minute or so, like clockwork, he would see movement from the corner of his eye. Kit pacing.

She didn’t cry, didn’t ask questions, didn’t say a thing. She was wearing a hole in his nerves not to mention his carpet. He knew she was worried about Liz, and he knew, too, she wouldn’t say anything to him about it. She’d gone deep into herself after that incident at the creek. Finding out about Sanchez had caused her to withdraw even further.

Rafe knew he’d hurt her. The urge to reach out, try to reassure her about Liz was strong and insistent, but he couldn’t risk getting close to her again. If he let her in, it
would kill him when she walked away. And she
would
walk away.

It registered then that, aside from the low murmur of the television, no sound came from the living room. Too long had passed since he’d heard the soft give of sofa leather or the crackle of magazine pages. He pushed back his chair, rose and walked out of the study, then crossed the ceramic tile of the entryway. The television droned on, but Kit wasn’t on the sofa. Or in the matching oversize chair. Or anywhere in the room.

Panic squeezed his chest. The kitchen was dark. He glanced toward the patio doors. And saw a flash of moonlight and shadow in the pool. Movement.

Striding to the glass doors, he watched for a moment. Kit sliced through the water with the sleek precision of a machine. Long, purposeful strokes. Swift. Single-minded. The water shimmered around her.

Pale light hit the soft curve of her cheek and jaw as she came up for air. Skimming through the water, reaching one end of the pool, flipping a turn, swimming to the other end. She did it again. And again. A relentless, punishing pace.

Rafe’s heart clenched.

She just swam. He didn’t know how long she’d been out there, how long he stood there. Her strokes became shorter, choppy. Desperate.

Finally, she reached the shallow end and weakly pulled herself up to sit on the edge of the pool. Even from here, he could see how she labored for breath after breath. Except for the frantic rise and fall of her chest, she didn’t move. Just sat there, legs half in the pool, limply huddled into herself as she stared at the moon’s reflection on the water.

Should he leave her alone?

The trees in his yard swayed with a breeze. Silvery light skipped across the pool. He went and snatched a towel from his bathroom, then took it outside.

The air was cool for June. She had to be freezing. He stopped behind her, his fingers closing tightly over the terry cloth as he saw the points of her shoulder blades thrown into sharp relief with each breath.

“Kit?”

She gave no sign of having heard him. She just sat there, a lonely silhouette with the night curling around her like smoke.

“I brought you a towel.” His voice sounded loud and alien against the quietness of the night.

“Thanks.” Her voice was as flat as cardboard.

Concern surged through him, and he knelt beside her. “You should probably come on in.”

Her chin trembled, as did the rest of her body.

“Here.” He held the towel out to her, and when she didn’t take it, he unfolded it, laid it across her shoulders.

At his touch, she scrambled up, splashing water onto the patio, onto his boots. Her fingers grabbed at the edges of the towel as she stepped onto the solid concrete surrounding the pool.

Her reaction spurred as much regret as resentment in him. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. They were both on edge, and he knew she had to be frightened over what had happened to Eddie Sanchez.

She slid the towel from her shoulders, patted her face and neck. He recognized her one-piece blue tank suit as one from the closet next to the hot tub. The too-large top gaped slightly at the neck, exposing the shadow between her breasts.

She ran the towel down her legs. “Have you talked to your friend at the police department?”

Rafe nodded. There was no need to tell her everything.

Arranging the towel sarong-style around her slender curves, she tucked in one end to secure it. “You might as well tell me. I have a right to know.”

“I don’t have any news on Liz.” He brought one hand up, rubbed the back of his neck.

“But you found out something about Sanchez, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me then.”

“There’s no point—”

“Stop trying to protect me.” Her chin angled stubbornly at him.

“It has nothing to do with Liz.”

“That man was linked to Liz. He knew Tony, didn’t he?”

“It has nothing
directly
to do with her.” Rafe shoved a hand through his hair, hating how cool and prickly she sounded.

“You tell me, Rafe Blackstock.” She stepped closer, moonlight revealing the wanness of her face. Her eyes glittered between wet, spiky lashes. Despite the command in her voice, she looked fragile.

He could still see remaining hurt in her eyes from what had happened between them earlier. Thank goodness she wouldn’t know the significance of what he was about to tell her. “The guy was shot execution-style. Two bullets to the head.”

She wobbled, and he reflexively reached out to steady her. Before he could, she straightened, visibly gathered herself. “That means something, doesn’t it? What does that mean?”

“Kit—”

“Tell me.” She bit the words out. “You can at least give me
that,
can’t you?”

Her bitter reference to his earlier rejection knifed through him.

“I’m paying you, and that means for anything that might concern my sister.”

His jaw tightened at her blatant reminder that he was technically her employee. “It means the job was done by professionals.”

Her head came up. “More than one person was involved?”

Hell. He shoved his hand through his hair. “Mrs. Hawkins told the detectives that two men knocked on Sanchez’s door earlier this afternoon. She told the men Eddie had stepped out for a few minutes. The next time she saw him, he was facedown in the shrubbery.”

Kit went as pale as chalk and walked around him, clutching the towel to her as if it were a shield of armor. She stopped a few feet away, next to his round, white-trimmed patio table. Moonlight skated across the glass top, slanted over the green-and-white striped chair cushions. “So, Mrs. Hawkins saw these men? She described them to the police?”

“Yes.”

“What did they look like?”

He chewed on the inside of his cheek.

“I know you got their descriptions, Rafe. You’re too thorough.” Her voice was taut, as if she’d already guessed.

He shifted so he faced her and met her gaze, which was dark and stormy with worry. “She described one of the men as very slender, six feet tall. And the other as short and balding. With a thick neck.”

She stilled. “Like a bulldog on steroids?”

He didn’t think she even heard him confirm it. She sank into the curved patio chair behind her. Undiluted fear widened her eyes. “Oh, no.”