Whispers at Midnight (56 page)

42

T
WENTY-FOUR HOURS LATER,
Carly was sitting up in bed in Matt’s bedroom waiting a little less than patiently for him to get home from work. It was just after midnight, and she was more or less back to normal, although she’d spent most of the previous night—after she’d gotten out of the freezer—in the hospital emergency room being treated for what was basically shock. While she was still at the hospital, Hiram Lindsey had told his brother where to find Marsha and Soraya and Genny. Genny was buried out behind his cabin. Marsha and Soraya were in an old freezer in the basement of Carly’s house.

Knowing that she and Sandra had lived there with those bodies in the basement was almost the worst thing of all.

But she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to concentrate on the positive. And the positive was that the monster who had haunted her dreams for almost all of her life was now behind bars. It was the most liberating thing in the world, she discovered, to finally be free of fear.

At the moment, she was warm and comfortable, dressed in a sexy little shorty nightgown that she had decided was more appropriate for her planned evening’s activities than the pajamas she usually wore, sitting up in bed with a book open on her lap, Hugo purring like a motor beside her and Annie asleep on the rug at the foot of the
bed. All would be right with her world if Matt would ever get his hot bod home from work.

The killer was caught, the case was closed, and the heat wave had finally broken. One would think that, under that combination of positive circumstances, the sheriff could get home at a decent hour. But no. He had things to catch up on, he’d said.

Carly was just beginning to seriously entertain the idea of turning off the light and going to sleep without him when the bedroom door opened without warning and Matt walked into the room.

He was in full sheriff mode, with raindrops gleaming on his black hair and a slight, and slightly wry, smile curving his lips.

In his hand was a huge bouquet of red roses. In his other hand was—something. Carly was too fixated on the roses to take the time to ascertain what.

The scent of the flowers reached her all the way across the room.

“I can’t believe you brought me roses,” Carly said, charmed by the gesture. She had a thought and narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you do?”

He laughed and crossed the room to put the roses on the bedside table. She was leaning over them to inhale when she noticed the tiny votive candle he put down next to them. Her eyes widening, she watched as he extracted a lighter from his pocket and proceeded to flick his Bic. Touching the flame to the wick, he lit the candle.

Carly’s heart started to pound.

He was watching her watch him with a crooked little smile on his face.

“Matt …” she began.

He reached for her book and tossed it aside, picked Hugo up and moved him too, receiving a nasty cat look for his pains, and then caught her hands.

“Get up,” he said.

Perfectly willing under these conditions to have the chance to show off her hot little nightie, and more than anxious to see just exactly what he had in mind, she let him pull her to her feet.

Holding her hands, he dropped down on one knee in front of her.

The romantic effect was slightly skewed by the rueful twinkle in
his eyes, but she didn’t care, she would take it, she had waited all her life for this. Carly took a deep breath, knowing for sure now what was coming. Her heart raced and her breathing got all out of whack and her knees went weak.

“Candlelight, flowers, and bended knee,” he said, and the twinkle vanished to be replaced by a dark hot gleam that started her insides to melting. “I love you. Marry me?”

Carly was temporarily bereft of speech as most of her major muscle groups turned to jelly. Her eyes stayed locked to his. With the air of one patiently waiting, Matt carried her left hand to his mouth, kissed her knuckles, then turned her hand over to press his lips to her still healing palm. Carly felt the touch of those warm, firm lips all the way down to her toes.

This time, he meant it. She could see it in his eyes. He was offering her forever, and he meant it.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice shook. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Then he stood up and she threw herself into his arms and they didn’t say anything else for a very long time.

Finally, when they were both up for conversation again, Matt turned on the bedside lamp and slid out of bed.

“What are you doing?” she asked curiously as he picked up his pants, which had been discarded in the near vicinity of the bed.

“I forgot,” he said, feeling in his pocket and extracting a small black box. “I got you something.”

Carly stared agog at the box as he brought it to her in bed.

She knew what it was: a jeweler’s box.

When she opened it, she was more agog than ever.

“Oh, my God,” she said, looking from it to him and back. “It’s huge. It’s beautiful. Matt…”

“Hmm?” He picked up the box, extracted the ring from it, and put it on her finger.

Her voice started to shake. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and climbed back into bed.

*   *   *

It must have been around two
A.M.
when Matt heard it: something out in the hall. Footsteps. Footsteps that definitely did not belong to
any of his three sisters, whose step he had learned to recognize long since.

“What is it?” Carly asked sleepily as he slid out of bed.

“Shh,” he said, and reached for his pants. “There’s somebody in the house.”

Decent now, moving quietly, he padded to the door and eased it open. Looking down the hall, he saw that he was right. There was a man moving almost silently away from him.

“Hold it right there,” he said, and flipped on the light.

The man whirled. And he found himself looking at Mike. His deputy, Mike.

Dressed in a pair of boxers and nothing else.

Looking so guilty and alarmed that Matt didn’t even have to wonder if he was up to no good. He knew.

“What the hell,” he said in a soft and dangerous tone, “are you doing in my house dressed like that at this time of night?”

“I … I …” Mike stuttered.

Matt felt Carly behind him, leaning against him, peering around him. At the same time Erin’s door opened. She looked out, saw what was happening and came out into the hall in her short little slip of a nightgown.

“He’s visiting,” Erin said, taking Mike’s hand. If possible, Mike looked even more alarmed than before.

“Like hell.” Matt must have said it louder than he intended, because within just about a minute Dani’s door popped open and she stuck her head out. Lissa did the same thing approximately three seconds later. Their wide eyes as they looked from him to Mike told Matt that they had a tolerable understanding of the situation.

“Don’t be mad, Matt,” Erin said coaxingly, twining her fingers in Mike’s. Matt knew what she meant. She didn’t care if he got mad at her. She meant, don’t be mad at Mike.

“You’re getting married tomorrow.” He couldn’t help it. His voice was set on that same muted roar. “And not to him.”

He pilloried Mike with a you-are-going-to-die look.

“Well,” Erin said guiltily, “as to that—”

“Oh, my God, Carly’s got a ring!” That was Lissa, who happened
to be nearest to Carly and must have seen the light catch on the ring Matt had given her approximately two hours before. “Matt, did you
propose?”

“Yes, I did, but—”

His sisters weren’t paying the least bit of attention to him. They skittered right on past him like he wasn’t even there, surrounding Carly and exclaiming over her ring and holding her hand up and twisting it this way and that.

Matt gave Mike another of those prepare-to-die looks and turned to focus on the chaos behind him.

“What do you mean,
as to that?”
he asked Erin in a suitably awful tone.

Erin looked guilty. “I don’t think I want to marry Collin after all.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Mike looked triumphant. Matt saw his face out of the corner of his eye and glanced back over his shoulder threateningly.

Erin smiled her most beguiling smile at him. “I’m really sorry, Matt. I know it’s cost you a fortune and we’re going to lose most of the deposits and it’s going to be a huge hassle for you to tell everybody the wedding’s off—”

“Me?” Matt asked.

“But you wouldn’t want me to marry somebody just because of that, would you?”

She had him there.

“No,” he said sourly after a moment. “I wouldn’t.”

Lissa looked at him, her eyes suddenly wide. “Matt,” she said in a hushed tone, “I’ve got the best idea. Instead of canceling the wedding, why don’t we just switch couples? You and Carly can get married tomorrow—er, today.”

“What?”
He didn’t believe this. They were all chattering among themselves now and making plans, and only glancing occasionally at him. He just did not believe any of it. This was his life in a nutshell. One long series of problems with crazy-making women.

“What do you think?” Carly asked him almost hesitantly. His eyes softened. For her, he did forever. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere. He said so, and the group—except for Mike, who was still in major doodoo
with him over this—erupted into shrill little feminine cries of excitement.

Watching the four of them with their heads together hatching plans, it occurred to Matt that his life was as infested with women as a junkyard dog was with fleas.

Good thing he was starting to kind of like the itch.

In fact, he liked it so well that he married one of the pesky little things later that day.

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