The Stranger's Sin (14 page)

“I didn’t even see that car we just passed until we were almost upon it,” Chase said. “In a few miles we have to leave the highway and take the back roads. Visibility will be even worse.”

“I’m willing to risk it,” Kelly said.

Headlights suddenly appeared in the rearview mirror,
followed by the blare of a horn. The headlights, attached to a blue sedan going much too fast, veered into the passing lane. A pain radiated down Chase’s spine, no doubt because he was holding his body so rigidly. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his short fingernails dug into his palms.

“I’m not willing to risk your safety,” he said. “I can’t see the signs, but I’m pretty sure there’s a hotel off the next exit. I’m going to stop.”

“But Mandy—”

“Will probably be working tomorrow, too,” Chase interrupted firmly. “We can’t keep going, Kelly. It’s not safe.”

“Then shouldn’t we turn around and head back?”

“That would be almost as dangerous,” Chase said. “The fog probably won’t lift until morning. We have to spend the night in a hotel.”

The exit was only about another mile, but it felt like an eternity before they reached it. Visibility was so poor that Chase almost missed the exit ramp, even though he was looking for it. He took the S-curve slowly and carefully, but one of the front wheels still ran onto the shoulder before he righted the Jeep.

He’d never been happier to see a hotel. The establishment was exactly where he thought it would be, the upper two stories rising out of the fog. A bored-looking clerk was on duty, the paperback mystery novel he’d been reading open on its spine. He straightened when they approached the desk. “Fog chase you in?”

“It’s as bad as I’ve seen it,” Chase said. “There aren’t many people on the highway.”

The clerk nodded and punched in a few keys on the computer. “All our rooms are nonsmoking. You’d like a single, right?”

Kelly glanced at him, a question in her eyes. He’d been so concerned with the fog and his disappointment in not being able to settle things with Mandy tonight that he hadn’t thought ahead to their sleeping arrangements. His heartbeat sped up. He nodded.

“Right. A single,” Kelly told the clerk.

“Is a king-size bed okay?” the clerk asked.

Chase squashed his inclination to tell that clerk that hell, yeah, they wanted the king-size bed. The decision was up to Kelly.

“Two double beds would be better,” she said.

His heartbeat slowed back down and disappointment cut through him. He should have known the meaningful glance she’d slanted him had to do with whether they should share a room, not a bed.

“It seemed wasteful to pay for two rooms,” she said as they walked down the hall in the direction the clerk had pointed.

He unlocked the door with the key card and pushed it open, revealing a standard hotel room with two beds, a desk and chair, a television and a small bathroom. The color scheme consisted mainly of creams and light oranges, the decorations bland enough to offend no one.

The door closed behind them with an audible thunk and all Chase could think about was tumbling onto one of the beds with her. That wouldn’t do.

He raised his eyebrows, the way he’d seen his father
do a hundred times, his intention to cut the tension. “You can trust me not to take advantage of you, but can I trust
you?
”

She stared at him mutely, her lips slightly parted, her breathing not as steady as it had been a moment ago. The tip of her tongue appeared, moistening her lips. His silly throwaway line, it seemed, had had the opposite effect of what he’d intended.

He felt his groin tighten, but he didn’t move. Not his hands. Not his feet. Not even his lips.

It struck him that they were alone, with neither his father nor Toby acting as unsuspecting chaperones. Alone in a hotel room with two beds, only one of which they needed to use.

Mere moments ago he’d told her she could trust him. He couldn’t touch her, not without an invitation.

“I think…” she said slowly, the huskiness of her voice fueling his hope “…we should go get a drink.”

“A drink?” he repeated dumbly, hoping he’d heard her wrong.

“A drink.” She was already moving toward the door, talking as she went, sending disappointment cascading through him. “There’s a bar off the lobby.”

Even though she hadn’t touched him, he was in no condition to be seen in public. Not yet.

“You go ahead,” he said, then came up with a legitimate excuse for him to hang back. “I need to call my dad and let him know about the fog.”

She was sitting at a table for two when he arrived, the bar nearly deserted except for the bartender and one other couple.

“I ordered you a draft beer,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “I hope that’s all right.”

“It’s perfect.” He picked up the mug and took a healthy swig.

“Is everything all right at home?” She was sipping from a glass of white wine, which caused Chase to focus on her lips. He almost groaned.

“Toby’s still not quite himself,” he said. “My dad thought he felt a little warm and gave him some Tylenol. I’ll call tomorrow morning and check on him again.”

He took another swig of beer. He’d never done any acting, but thought he deserved an Oscar for not showing his frustration. “How about you? Are you feeling any better?”

“Better?” She looked puzzled. “I’m not sick.”

“You
are
nervous.”

She winced, looking charmingly embarrassed. “Is it that obvious?”

“Oh, no.” He shook his head in an exaggerated motion. “You seemed perfectly poised when you sprinted out of the hotel room.”

She laughed. “I was not sprinting.”

“Okay. Jogging, then.”

“It was your fault! You’re the one who made the suggestive remark.”

He leaned closer to her and said in a quiet voice, “I suggested you might have trouble keeping
your
hands off
me.
”

“Yeah,” she said. “Like the trouble I had the night your father was out of town and I couldn’t sleep. And
again when we went to that lookout during the Fourth of July festival.”

“I remember not being able to keep my hands off
you
those nights.”

“Okay, then,” she said. “Since we’ve established we both have trouble keeping our hands off each other, that’s even more reason to be nervous.”

“But why?” he asked. “Is it that jerk who cheated on you? Is that why?”

“Partly.” She picked up her wineglass. “I didn’t tell you the whole story about him.”

“Then tell me now.”

She took a long sip of wine, then another before she spoke. “After I’ve been out with a guy a few times, but before it gets serious, I make it a point to tell him it’s unlikely I’ll ever have children.”

She took a deep breath as though filling herself with courage instead of air. “I have something called premature ovarian failure, which basically means my ovaries don’t produce enough hormones for me to ovulate regularly. I’ve known about it since I was seventeen. It’s ironic really, considering I became a teacher because of how much I love kids.”

“You can love kids that aren’t your own.”

“I know that,” she said. “But when I told Vince I’d need fertility treatments if I ever wanted to get pregnant and chances were even that wouldn’t work, I could tell it bothered him.”

“After you told him, is that when you saw him at the movie theater with the other woman?”

“That’s when,” she said. “I broke up with him, but it was pretty obvious he was relieved. I’m sure he wants to have biological children one day.”

“Not all men think like that,” he said. “I couldn’t love Toby more if he was my own.”

“But you also would have married a woman you didn’t love because she was having your baby.”

“Apples and oranges,” he said. “Toby’s as much my responsibility as a biological baby would have been.”

“Admirable,” Kelly said.

“Or stupid, considering Mandy was never pregnant.” Chase blurted out the secret he’d never told anyone. “That miscarriage? She faked it, the same way she faked the pregnancy.”

“She didn’t!” Kelly seemed appalled.

“She did,” Chase said. “I confronted her a couple of days before she left town. She’d been drinking or she probably wouldn’t have admitted it.”

“Wow,” Kelly said. “I had no idea.”

“Neither does anyone else. I felt like such a sap I didn’t tell anyone. Not even my father.”

“A sap?” She shook her head vigorously. “I might not always agree with you, but you can’t be a sap for sticking to your principles and doing what you think is right.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, “but all I have to do is look at Toby and I’m not sorry things happened exactly the way they did.”

She reached across the table, covering his hand with hers and looking deeply into his eyes. The mood between them shifted, the air becoming more charged.

“Chase?” she said softly. The candlelight on the table cast her face in a soft, beautiful glow.

“Yeah?” His response was equally soft.

“I’m not nervous anymore.”

T
HE HOTEL-ROOM DOOR
wouldn’t budge.

Kelly stood alongside Chase, their bodies touching, watching the red light flash. They hadn’t lost physical contact since they’d left their unfinished drinks on the table in the bar and hurried down the hall, desperate for privacy.

“Damn.” Frustration laced Chase’s soft curse. Kelly’s body trembled with the same emotion.

He shoved the key card in the slot again. The small dot turned red. Again.

“Let me try.” Kelly rasped.

She took the card from him, flipped it around and attempted to gain entry. That darned little red beacon flickered again.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Kelly said.

“The door must be stuck.” Chase gave the unyielding rectangle a hip bump. The resulting thud echoed down the hallway.

The door swung open, the space in front of them filling with a heavyset man in a T-shirt and Bugs Bunny boxer shorts. The man’s face reddened and his scowl deepened.

“Who the hell are you?” he bellowed. “And why are you trying to get inside my room?”

His room?

Kelly checked the numbers painted on the door. One twelve, not one twenty-one.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Sorry. Wrong room.”

The man glowered, then slammed the door in their faces with so much force air whooshed over them. She and Chase exchanged a guilty look, then moved down the hall with alacrity to room one twenty-one. This time the key card worked perfectly.

As soon as they were inside the room, they burst out laughing.

“Did you see that Bugs Bunny underwear?” Chase asked, swinging her into his arms.

Kelly looped her arms around his neck and nodded. “They sure cut down on his intimidation factor.”

“That’s why it’s better to wear nothing at all to sleep,” Chase said, his lips at her neck.

Delicious shivers traveled the length of her body. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

He found her mouth, kissing her with unrestrained enthusiasm, his hand traveling from her waist to her breast. She gasped at the sheer pleasure of being in his arms, stunned at how quickly they’d moved from laughter to passion.

She barely had the strength to draw back from his mouth so she could build upon his suggestion. “Chase,” she whispered against his lips, “let’s get naked.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. He tugged at his T-shirt, lifting it over his head. Her shirt and bra came next. They were standing at the foot of the bed nearest the door. They toppled onto the mattress, his lips on her bare breasts, her hands at the waistband of his pants.

The bed was so narrow, they nearly rolled off the edge.

“We should have gotten the king,” he said.

“I don’t know about that.” She disentangled herself from him and sat up, wriggling out of her skirt and underwear. “The closer I can get to you, the better.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and started taking his own clothes off so quickly it felt as if they were racing to see who finished first. It was a draw. As soon as they were naked, they turned to each other, their bodies and their mouths coming together with no hesitation. His bare skin felt warm and thrilling against hers.

She hadn’t known it could be this way, she thought as he kissed her. He knew just where to touch her to get her to sigh, how to kiss her to beg him to go faster, when the moment was exactly right to join with her.

Their lovemaking was so effortless. So…right. When he entered her and they started to move together, what she felt was unmistakable.

It was joy.

W
ARMTH ENVELOPED
K
ELLY
, a growing awareness of the source pulling her out of a languorous sleep. A man’s hand was splayed over her stomach, moving higher until it covered her bare breast.

She sighed with contentment, thinking it had been silly for her to worry last night that neither of them had clothes to sleep in.

They’d been much happier wearing nothing at all.

She turned her head and found his mouth, letting him kiss her awake, his tongue doing delicious things to hers. Sensation shimmered the length of her body, the hot spot at her very core.

She opened her eyes to find him looking at her. His lips clung to hers for a moment before he drew back.

“Good morning,” she said.

“I’ll say.” He widened his eyes slightly, making her smile. “It was a good night, too.”

For the rest of her life, Kelly would remember the details. The laughter after the man with the Bugs Bunny underwear had slammed the door in their faces. The passion when they were finally skin to skin. The elation when they made love.

She turned more fully into him, pushed the fingers of one hand into his hair and let her other hand roam from his shoulder on down, discovering he was already hard.

“We can make it an even better morning,” she said.

“I’m up for that,” he said.

She was still smiling when he kissed her. Last night blended with this morning so that they were nearly indistinguishable.

Every time is as good as the first time, she thought, when you’re in love.

“Are you okay?”

He was poised above her, his eyes looking deeply into hers. She realized she’d gasped at the realization that she loved him. She should have figured out last night that she felt such joy because she was in love.

She loved him!

The thought was both wonderful and terrifying.

“Couldn’t be better.” She pulled him down to her and before long she could barely think at all.

A little while later, she lay next to him with his arms wrapped around her midsection, his lips against her hair. Now that her powers of reasoning had returned, she didn’t want to think about the repercussions of being in love with him. Not when this moment—this man—was perfect.

She smiled.
Perfect.
That was the word Charlie had used about her and Chase.

“I need to call my dad,” Chase said as though he sensed Kelly had been thinking of his father, too. “I want to see how Toby is.”

Chase took his arm from around her and sat up in bed. He had the lean musculature of an outdoorsman. His
chest was lightly sprinkled with hair, his abdomen flat. Kelly didn’t think she’d ever seen a more appealing man.

“Try not to worry,” Kelly said. “Toby’s probably fussy because he’s teething, but it wouldn’t hurt to have Charlie take him to a pediatrician to check it out.”

“The pediatrician is what I’m worried about.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t have one. Not in Indigo Springs anyway.”

“Then register him as a new patient.”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “If he needs to go to the doctor, he’ll go, but there will be questions. Mandy didn’t leave any of his papers behind. Not his shot records. Not the name of the pediatrician she used in Harrisburg. Nothing. Hell, I don’t even have his birth certificate.”

Kelly sat up, too, struck by something he said. “You don’t have Toby’s birth certificate?”

“I don’t have squat.”

Kelly’s stomach churned as a sick feeling came over her, but Chase wasn’t looking at her. He was already swinging his long legs over the side of the bed and getting up.

“What time did you say the Dancing Turtle opens?” he asked, picking up his cell phone from the top of the desk.

It took her long moments to retrieve the information from her reeling brain. “Eleven o’clock.”

“We need to get going. I’ll tell my dad we won’t be back until later this afternoon. We can have breakfast on the way to Fox Tail. Then, with any luck, we’ll find Mandy.”

Everything came back to Mandy, Kelly thought numbly.

“You can use the bathroom first,” he said.

She got out of bed like an automaton, sensation returning, but only barely, when he waylaid her on the way to the bathroom to kiss her lingeringly on the lips. “Just so you know, I’d rather stay in bed with you.”

When she was inside the bathroom, Kelly leaned back against the closed door.

Charlie had told her early on that Toby wasn’t Chase’s biological son, but it hadn’t occurred to her until now that the little boy might not be Mandy’s son, either.

Maybe the reason Mandy hadn’t left behind Toby’s birth certificate or medical records was because she didn’t have them.

Mandy had kidnapped and abandoned one child. Who’s to say she hadn’t done it twice?

She closed her eyes as the dire realization that she and Chase were operating at cross purposes struck her.

If they found Mandy in Fox Tail, Kelly would have the ammunition she needed to get the police to look deeper into her case.

But if Toby was a kidnapped child, Chase could very well lose the boy he loved so dearly.

C
HASE FINISHED OFF THE
last of his three-egg omelet, washed it down with black coffee and sat back to regard Kelly.

She’d hardly said a word since they’d made love this morning. She’d eaten her food, but did so mainly in silence, listening as he outlined a strategy for when they reached the restaurant where Mandy worked.

“When we get there, I’ll go in without you,” he said.
“If she’s there, she has no reason to avoid me. You’d have to think she plans to get in touch with me eventually about Toby.”

“You’d think that,” Kelly mumbled, which was about as verbal as she’d gotten this morning. He hadn’t noticed how quiet she’d been until after they’d set out for Fox Tail and stopped along the way at this chain restaurant for breakfast.

“If she’s not there, I’ll ask to speak to the owner and tell him why I’m looking for her,” Chase said. “With any luck, that should get me Mandy’s home address.”

This time Kelly’s only response was a nod. Not for the first time that morning, Chase had the impression she wanted to tell him something. “Is everything okay?”

He’d thought she looked pale under her tan before he asked. Now her complexion bordered on white.

He swallowed, then said with difficulty, “If you’re having second thoughts about making love to me—”

“I’m not having second thoughts,” she interrupted.

“Thank the Lord.”

She smiled, but only barely.

“Then are you feeling okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said, unconvincingly. “But I do need to use the restroom.”

She got up, grabbed her purse from the vacant chair beside her and hurried away from the table. He heard something clatter to the floor. A hairbrush. He leaned down to pick it up and noticed a lipstick and wallet had also fallen out of Kelly’s purse.

He reached for the items, intending to place them on the table so she’d easily spot them when she returned.
Her wallet gaped open when he picked it up, revealing a plastic window containing a New York driver’s license.

Kelly looked beautiful in the official photo, her hair thick and shiny, her lips curved into a smile. Chase smiled, too. He had it bad, he thought, if a driver’s license photo could get that kind of reaction from him.

He was about to snap the wallet closed when he noticed the name beside the photo: Kelly Carmichael.

Carmichael,
not Delaney.

He stared in shock, hardly able to process the information. But there was no mistaking what was in front of him.

The license belonged to a green-eyed, five-foot-seven-inch brunette from Wenona, New York.

Wenona,
not Schenectady.

He made his reeling mind focus. Could the discrepancy be due to a simple change of address? No. He remembered Kelly saying she’d taught at the same school for several years, and Wenona and Schenectady were too far apart to commute. Besides, there was the matter of the different last names.

She’d lied to him.

He shouldn’t be surprised.

It seemed forever ago since she’d arrived in town spouting the unbelievable tale of the broken necklace, but in reality it had only been a week.

A week in which he’d ignored all the warning signs.

A week in which he’d let his heart override his common sense.

He jotted down her driver’s-license number on a napkin he then stuffed into his pocket, and numbly closed
the wallet and placed it on the table along with the brush and the lipstick.

“Can I get anything else for you today, sir?” Their waitress approached the table, not realizing his world had just been turned upside down.

“Just the check,” he said.

She tore a sheet off the pad and handed it to him. On the check, beside the amount, she’d drawn an incongruous happy face. He withdrew a few bills, adding a healthy tip.

“I think I love you,” the waitress said, the word resonating inside him.

Kelly walked toward him from the direction of the restroom. Their lovemaking was so recent that he could still easily call to mind the way it felt to be inside her.

He desperately wanted to believe there was a sensible explanation for why she’d given him a false name and hometown.

She sat down at the table. Her face was still pale but looked damp as though she’d splashed water on it.

It took a supreme effort to sound casual. “Feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

A stiff formal answer, one she might give to a stranger.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said slowly, not sure what he was going to say until it was out of his mouth. “Once this business with Mandy is over, maybe I could come up to Schenectady some time to visit.”

Her eyes dipped to the table and she swallowed, her throat constricting. Maybe those weren’t beads of water on her forehead, he thought. Maybe they were drops of sweat.

He waited, hardly knowing what for.

“I’d like that,” she said softly.

He felt as though he’d been sucker-punched. He realized he’d been waiting for the truth, that he might have forgiven her anything if she’d only stop lying to him.

Her gaze returned to his face. Her smile looked tremulous. Fake. It didn’t comfort him that she wasn’t quite bold enough to meet his eyes because the harsh reality was that he’d been duped again.

Kelly’s lies should probably seem minor in comparison to Mandy’s whopper about being pregnant, but Kelly’s deception was worse because he hadn’t been in love with Mandy.

He rejected the word as soon as it came into his mind. He could never love a liar. He wouldn’t let himself.

“Is something wrong, Chase?” Kelly asked.

Her words were similar to the ones he’d spoken to her before she headed off to the restroom.

They could have it out. Right here. Right now. But Chase had given her a chance to come clean when he’d made the remark about visiting her in Schenectady.

“I have a phone call I need to make,” he told her. “I already paid the check, but you can wait for me in here where it’s cool.”

He didn’t give her a chance to refuse, getting up and striding outside into the dawning heat. He walked around to the side of the restaurant where he’d have privacy and dialed his friend at the police department.

“Are you in the office?” he asked when Dave McPhearson picked up the phone. “Because I need you to do something for me.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Dave said.

Chase took a deep breath. “Sorry, buddy. This is important. I have another name I need you to check out, but this time I have the driver’s-license number.”

“That makes it a whole lot easier,” Dave said. “Just let me get to a computer.”

Chase heard the sound of footsteps, then some shuffling and clicking of computer keys.

“Let’s have it,” Dave said.

Chase recited the driver’s-license number, then told him it belonged to Kelly Carmichael of Wenona, New York. He felt as though he was saying the name of a stranger.

He stayed on the line for what seemed like an hour but couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

“Got it,” Dave said, then whistled. “This Kelly Carmichael is in hot water. She’s out on bail but her preliminary hearing is tomorrow, then it looks like she’ll be headed to prison.”

When he got his voice to work, Chase asked, “What’s the charge?”

“Kidnapping.”

His heart felt as if it stopped before it resumed a slow, painful beating. He listened while Dave outlined the specifics of the case.

His mind rebelled that Kelly could be guilty of such a crime, but he reminded himself that his experience with Mandy had proven he wasn’t the best judge of character.

Even if he took what Dave was telling him at face value, Chase couldn’t come up with a connection between Kelly and Mandy.

From the first, that had been what bothered him. Why was Kelly so desperate to find Mandy?

Before he went inside the Dancing Turtle to confront Mandy, he intended to find out.

A
HUGE STATUE OF A TURTLE
, its legs protruding at absurd angles from an upright shell, marked the entrance to the Dancing Turtle.

The restaurant was on a stretch of road with a gas station and a country store but little else, but Kelly supposed isolation drew tourists to this part of the Poconos. Once the sun went down on the lakes and streams and hiking trails, the Dancing Turtle would present a viable option for whiling away the evening hours.

She and Chase had yet to get out of the Jeep, which was parked in the gravel lot facing the restaurant. Silence reigned between them. Since they’d stopped for breakfast, he’d acted like a stranger instead of the passionate man to whom she’d made love.

She attributed his mood to worry over Toby and the custody situation. His father had called that morning to say he thought Toby might have an ear infection, necessitating he make an appointment with the pediatrician.

If Toby was another kidnapped child, Chase had good cause for alarm.