The Survivor Read online

  “True. But I’ve got his cell, and if he’s working with someone, then you can bet they’ll try to contact him.” He looked over at her. “We’ll just wait and see if it rings.”

  “You kicked ass in there,” she said, shooting him an admiring look. And, belatedly, it occurred to him that he had, that he’d done what he needed to do. A little of the tension he’d been carrying around in his chest lessened.

  She reached up on tiptoes and pressed a lingering kiss against his lips. “It was hot,” she murmured.

  Suddenly so was he. And they had one more night to burn the sheets up.

  Once they dropped Yeager off at the jail, the rest of the evening was theirs.

  WITH YEAGER STOWED SAFELY in the back, Bess went over and gave Vernon a hug. “Vernon, thanks so much. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

  Smelling like coffee and Old Spice, Vernon returned her embrace. “You’re welcome, Bess. You don’t be a stranger, you hear? You get on down to see me more often.”

  “I will,” she assured him. “I haven’t had a chance to pick lately. We’ve been too busy chasing after that asshole.”

  Vernon nodded toward Lex, who was giving Honey a quick turn around the yard before getting back onto the road. “I like your young man. He’s a good one.”

  “He’s not my—”

  Vernon’s shrewd gaze stopped her short. “I haven’t lived as long as I’ve lived without picking up on a few things,” he said. “And I can spot a young couple making moony faces at one another from a hundred yards.”

  She chuckled. “Moony faces?”

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “That boy has been through hell. He deserves a little heaven like you. You’re good for one another.”

  “Vernon—”

  “Everybody dies, Bess,” he said softly. “Hell, I’m at the jumpin’-off place myself.”

  She gasped and felt her heart squeeze. “Oh, Vernon, you know you’ve got years ahead of you.”

  He merely shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I’m ready when my time comes, and whether people are ready or not, it still does. Death is a part of life, Bess, and you can’t spend your life avoiding the good things for fear of the bad.”

  “I’m not—”

  He looked at her again. “I’m old, but I’m not blind. Your grandfather used to worry about you, you know. Was worried what would happen to you when he passed. He said that he was afraid that he’d taught you too much about looking in the past for you to want to see any value in the future.”

  She swallowed and felt tears burn the backs of her lids. He’d said the same thing to her, only a few days before he’d died. A guy had come into the store—a thirty-something professional with a nice smile—and had asked her out. She’d said no without really even considering it. Her grandfather had gotten onto her then, had told her that she’d better get her head into her future because she was going to get damned lonely with only her things.

  “Just think about it,” Vernon said. He nodded toward Lex. “That boy is half in love with you already. You give it a little more time and I think they’ll be some wedding bells in your future. The pitter-patter of little feet, even.”

  Her chest swelled with some unnamed emotion, then twisted with bitter regret. That was just it—they didn’t have the time and weren’t going to make it.

  “We barely know each other,” Bess argued.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Vernon told her. “I saw my Mattie from across the room at a USO dance, then leaned over and told my buddy I’d just seen the woman I was going to marry.”

  She grinned, surprised. “I didn’t know that’s how you met Mattie.” His sweet wife had lost her battle with cancer last year.

  “She was a nurse,” he said. “And she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I proposed to her during our first dance and she blushed and pshawed.” He grinned at her. “A month later she was mine.”

  “A month?”

  “Time was something we didn’t want to waste back then,” he said. “That’s the mistake you young’uns make now. You take it all for granted.”

  No doubt he was right, Bess thought, looking at Lex. He had bent down and was rubbing Honey’s face, a smile on his own. He wore a dark brown sweater and jeans and the color looked good on him. It made his blue eyes bluer, his hair darker. The jeans were worn and slightly loose, but clung to his ass in a way that made her pulse move more swiftly and her mouth parch.

  They had one night left together, one evening in which she could try to slake her lust, to get him out of her system, to let him go.

  She reached over and touched her old friend’s arm. “Thanks for sharing all of that with me, Vernon. I think I needed to hear it.”

  “Any time, Bess,” he said.

  She waved a goodbye, then went and climbed into the passenger seat. The minute she got into the car, Yeager started grunting beneath the duct tape. She thought she recognized the word bathroom and merely rolled her eyes, having no sympathy for him whatsoever.

  “It’s only four hours back to Marietta,” she said. “You can hold it.”

  A pause, then another frantic noise that made her smile.

  Lex opened the back door and Honey jumped in. She peered over the backseat at their trussed-up prisoner, then looked at Lex as if to say, “Really? This is what we’re doing?”

  Lex just grinned, then slid into the driver’s seat. He jerked his head toward the back. “What’s his problem?”

  “I think he needs to go to the bathroom.”

  “Too bad,” Lex announced in carrying tones, then started the car and, with a wave at Vernon, motored out of the drive.

  “What are we going to do about his car?” Bess asked.

  “I’ve left the keys with Vernon, and after he takes it for a joyride, he’s going to drop it off at the local police station where they’ll impound it.”

  The whining from the back increased at this news.

  Bess grinned. “That’s going to get old quick,” she said.

  “I’ll hurry,” Lex told her. He picked up his cell and placed a call to Brian. “We’ve got him,” he said by way of greeting. “On our way back now. Right. Yes, she’s pleased.” He shot Bess a look. “You never mentioned she had such a mean right hook,” Lex told him. “Yes, she nailed him, sucker punched him, and he folded like a deck of cards. Seriously.” He held the phone away from his mouth. “Payne wants to know if you want a job?”

  She chuckled. “Tell him I’m happy with the one I have, thanks.”

  He relayed her message and brought his boss completely up to speed. “I’ve got his cell phone and his maps. I’m not altogether certain that he was working alone. I’m going to do a little poking around once we’ve turned him over to the Marietta PD.”

  Poking? She sniggered and sent him a look.

  Evidently realizing his Freudian slip, he passed a hand over his face to wipe away his smile. Good grief, how was she going to let him go when this was over? Bess thought, melting inside. Why had she ever thought she could? Was Vernon right? Had her grandfather been right? Was she so wrapped up in picking through the past that she was avoiding her future?

  All because she was afraid of losing someone?

  Vernon had said dying was merely a by-product of living. She supposed so, but she didn’t have to like it. Death hadn’t been kind to her. It had taken everyone she’d ever cared about and had almost claimed Lex, as well, a man that she’d known had the potential to be special from the first instant she’d seen him. And it hadn’t just been the phenomenal sexual attraction.

  She’d felt her world move when she’d looked at him, felt the shift in her own heart right from the very beginning.

  But could she do it? Could she ask him for more when she’d already told him that she didn’t expect it? Was it fair to change the rules now? To change her mind?

  “You’ve gotten awfully quiet,” Lex remarked, shooting her a glance.

  She grinned. “You don’t have to look so scar
ed.”

  “Who said I was scared?”

  “No one,” she said, her lips twisting with humor. “It was the whites of your eyes that gave you away.”

  He laughed. “You have the strangest sense of humor. But I like it.”

  She felt the compliment take root and grow. “Thanks. Yours isn’t half-bad, either.”

  “Careful,” he warned her. “I might get a big head if you keep showering me with praise like that. Half-bad? Man, that’s something right there. Talk about damning with faint praise.”

  “I didn’t realize your ego needed that much stroking,” she said. “But now that I do, I’ll make more of an effort.”

  “Who said anything about stroking my ego? If you’re going to stroke something, then I’d like to make a suggestion.”

  She chuckled. “I’ll get to that later.”

  He lowered his voice. “In that tub?”

  “You are really interested in my tub, aren’t you?”

  “Not so much interested in the tub, but the possibilities it presents for…entertainment.”

  A warm shiver moved through her at the innuendo in his voice. Warmth swirled deep in her womb and settled hotly in her sex and she shifted in her seat. “You need to cut that out,” she admonished with a jerk of her head toward the back. “We’re not alone.”

  “But we will be soon enough,” he said. He released a shuddering breath. “And I am so looking forward to it. Do you know why?” he asked, his voice low and smoky.

  She swallowed. “Tell me.”

  “Because I want to do bad things with you.”

  12

  AT TWO-THIRTY THEY officially handed Harold Yeager and all of his incriminating materials over to the police.

  The way Lex had trussed him up like a turkey and hauled him from Dothan in the back of his car provided an endless laugh at Yeager’s expense, and when the police had not-very-carefully removed the duct tape from his mouth, he’d cursed until the air turned blue and accused them of inhumane treatment. Evidently he’d guzzled a huge amount of cola before arriving at Vernon’s and his bladder had been near explosion for the past four hours.

  To which Bess has replied, “Too damned bad.”

  She’d had absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever and no one else, Lex included, could blame her.

  He loaded Honey into the car, then slid back behind the driver’s seat. He’d taken a big breath and just finished releasing it when Bess suddenly launched herself at him, sweet lips impatient, insistent and warm. He’d been fighting visions of their naked bodies in her tub all the way back from Dothan and he’d had to struggle to keep everything in focus.

  Now the only thing he wanted to focus on was Bess, and she, thank God, seemed to be of the same mind. She tore her mouth from his and rained kisses along his jaw, over his cheeks, and pushed her hands into his hair. He felt her breasts press against his chest, all womanly and soft, and her hair slid over the backs of his hands as he framed her face, desperate to simply taste her, to simply feel her against him.

  She kissed him deeply again, made a deep moaning low in her throat that literally lit him up, and then drew back and settled into her seat once more.

  “There,” she said, as though she’d just completed something important. “Do you feel better?” she asked, throwing his words right back at him.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Not as good as I know I’m going to feel in a few minutes.” A thought struck. “What are we going to do about Elsie?”

  She frowned. “I’ll check in with her and tell her that I’m tired.”

  “Will that keep her from coming into the backyard?”

  Her lips twitched. “It will keep her from coming over, yes.” She guided him through the back way so that he could park his car where it wouldn’t be visible from the store and he listened as Bess once again was subjected to more of Elsie’s “feelings.”

  Since he’d had the same impression regarding this case as Elsie, it hardly seemed fair to scoff at her, so he didn’t. They’d scrolled through the numbers on Yeager’s phone and, other than discovering he was a mama’s boy, hadn’t found anything especially suspicious. That hadn’t kept Lex from feeling like there was still more going on here, but until any possible accomplice tipped his hand, they had nothing to go on.

  Bess had double-checked the northern addresses and had asked Elsie once again if she’d had any strange phone calls. She hadn’t. For the time being, they’d done everything they could do…and he just wanted to do her.

  Her house was everything he would have expected. Though it didn’t appear cluttered in the least, there was still a lot of stuff inside. Knickknacks on the antique mantel, an old brass bucket filled with wood. The walls were painted in soft muted tones, drawing color from her belongings rather than the actual architecture of the house. He noted dark hardwoods and lots of bead board, and the scent of cinnamon and cherry tobacco smoke hung in the air.

  Severus, her cat, strolled haughtily into the room, took one look at Honey and arched his back. With a hiss, he shot out again like a streak of black lightning.

  Bess chuckled. “Well, that went well.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He’ll hide for a while, then he’ll get curious and come out.” She looked up at him. “You don’t think Honey would hurt him, do you?”

  “No,” he said. “She probably couldn’t even get close enough to try. Severus is fast.”

  Bess wrapped her arms around his waist, then lifted her mouth up for a kiss. Desire bolted through him, hot and furious, and suddenly he couldn’t wait for the tub, couldn’t wait to have her, couldn’t stand not feeling her naked flesh beneath his hands, beneath his mouth, around his dick.

  She drew back, threaded her fingers through his, then tugged him toward the back porch. “You tend the fire and I’ll run the bath,” she said.

  Evidently he would have to wait, he thought as they stepped outside. She hadn’t been lying about her backyard. The privacy fence was taller than the average fence, with lots of evergreens around the perimeter, and she’d also hung long shades at either end of the porch. Could someone see in her backyard? Yes. If they were very determined. But why would anyone go to the trouble unless they knew she was back here?

  He tended the fire, as she asked, and listened to the water run into the big tub. When he turned around, the breath literally whooshed out of him. She’d already removed her clothes, tied her hair up and was lying back, letting the warm water sluice over her skin. Steam rose off the water, curling in little swirls around her.

  Wet naked skin, pink-capped breasts, a womanly belly, a thatch of dark red curls between her thighs.

  It was the exact picture his imagination had shared with him and he went instantly hard. She looked up then and smiled at him, her green eyes darkened with desire, and he felt the world tilt on its axis. His heart gave a squeeze so painful it pushed even more air out of his lungs.

  “You coming in?” she asked, her voice low and sultry.

  Oh, hell, yeah. With deliberate precision Lex put a condom on the little wrought-iron table next to the tub, then quickly whipped his sweater over his head and shucked his jeans. Her hungry gaze drifted over him and her lashes dropped to half-mast when she saw his erection jutting proudly forward.

  “Come here,” she said, swallowing.

  She wanted him, Lex thought, and didn’t disguise it, didn’t play coy. She wanted him and wanted to let him know that she did.

  He sidled forward and slipped into the tub with her, sloshing water over the side. Warmth immediately enveloped him, both from her and the bath, and he settled against the back of the tub and drew her to him. She crawled up his body and kissed him, feeding at his mouth, sliding her hands over him with a greedy, desperate touch that almost set him off.

  “I’ve been thinking about doing this out here with you from the moment I saw you,” she confided. “I wanted you…instantly. That’s shameless of me, isn’t it?”


  “No,” he said, sliding his tongue down her throat, then lifting her up so that he could suckle her breasts, taste her pouting nipples. “Not at all. I didn’t know about your little garden of Eden out here. But I wanted you, too. And I thought you knew. I thought you could tell.”

  She grinned and gasped as he worshipped her with his mouth. Reaching between them, she took him in hand, working the slippery skin against her small palm.

  “I could,” she said. “And it made me feel all warm and wicked.”

  He was going to come if she didn’t stop talking to him this way, Lex thought. He was going to lose it completely…and that would be a tragedy because he wasn’t anywhere near done with her yet.

  He slid a finger into her curls and was gratified when she gave a little gasp of pleasure. He loved those sounds she made, those mewling noises of satisfaction. Each one was like a reward, an atta boy for his penis, making it harder. She was warm and slick beneath his fingers and she worked herself against him, her neck going a little boneless as she did so, her eyes drifting shut. And then it wasn’t enough. He needed to be inside her, wanted to feel her greedy little body clamping around him when she came.

  He grabbed the condom, made quick work of putting it on and then pulled her back on top of him. She bent forward and kissed him again, angling their bodies so his dick nudged her entrance. And then with a blissful sigh of ultimate satisfaction, she slowly lowered herself onto him.

  She closed around him completely, took every bit of him she could, from root to tip, and squeezed her pleasure.

  “Ahhh,” she moaned. “That’s better. Now I can breathe.”

  And he knew exactly what she meant, because he felt the same way. He felt like everything that had been wrong with his world had suddenly been put right. There was something profoundly significant in that thought, and whereas he would have avoided it yesterday, today, on the eve of never seeing her again, he couldn’t.

  Something about this girl simply spoke to him on a level he didn’t understand and probably never would. Why did some people like chocolate and others vanilla? If you asked those people, they wouldn’t know the reason, only the preference.