To Die For

again, and before I knew it he was licking and biting my neck and my willpower crumbled. Again. Right there in the kitchen, I lost my pants and my control. I hate it when that happens. Even worse, he had to help me back into my pants afterward.

“I’m starting another list,” I said furiously to his back as he made his smug way up the stairs afterward, carrying my bag. “And I’m showing this one to your mother!”

He stopped and looked at me over his shoulder, a wary look entering his eyes. “Are you talking to my mother about our sex life?”

“I’m talking to her about you being an absolute manipulative snot!”

He grinned and shook his head, then said, “Fluff,” and continued upstairs.

“Not only that,” I yelled after him, “you don’t have a single plant in this house and it depresses me to be here!”

“I’ll buy you a bush tomorrow,” he called back over his shoulder.

“If you’re any kind of cop at all, I won’t need to be here tomorrow!” There. Let him top that, if he could.

When he came back downstairs, he had changed out of his suit and was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. By that time I’d found a pad of paper and had settled in the big leather recliner in the great room, and I had the television remote tucked into my sling. The television was on the Lifetime channel.

He looked at the television and winced. Then he looked at me. “You’re in my chair.”

“The lamp is here. I need light.”

“We’ve been through this before. That’s my chair.” He purposefully advanced on me.

“If you hurt my arm, I’ll-” I broke off and shrieked as he lifted me high in his arms, then sat down in his chair with me on his lap.

“There,” he said, nuzzling the back of my neck. “Now we both have the chair. Where’s the remote?”

Still in my sling, by the grace of God, and that was where it was staying. I was clinging to the pad and pen with my right hand while I tried to ignore what he was doing to my neck. At least I was fairly safe right now, because I doubted he could get it up again so soon after the kitchen episode. “It was right here,” I said truthfully, looking around. “Did it fall behind the cushion?”

He had to check, of course, so I got removed from his lap and he stood to check behind the cushion. He looked all around the recliner; then he turned it upside down to see if the remote had worked its way into the recliner’s innards. He turned a gimlet eye on me. “Blair. Where’s my remote?”

“It was right there!” I said indignantly. “Honest!” Again, I wasn’t lying. It had been right there until he moved me.

Unfortunately, he was a cop, and he knew all about hiding places. His gaze fell on my sling. “Hand it over, you little sneak.”

“Sneak?” I began to back away. “I thought I was just a harmless little piece of fluff.”

“I never said you were harmless.” He took a step toward me, and I broke and ran.

I’m a good runner, but his legs are longer and my sandals didn’t get good traction, so that didn’t last long. I was giggling as he caught me in one arm and rooted the remote out of its hiding place.

He wanted to watch a baseball game, of course. I’m not into baseball. So far as I know, baseball doesn’t have cheerleaders, so I never learned anything about the game. I know football and basketball, but baseball is probably a snooty sport, so I don’t want anything to do with it. But we both sat in the big recliner with me draped across his lap working on my list while he watched the game, and except for occasionally grunting when he saw an item that he considered questionable on my list, he did his thing and I did mine.

After I finished my list I was bored-how long do those stupid games last, anyway?!-and I got sleepy. His shoulder was right there, his arm was supporting my back, so I cuddled up and went to sleep.

I woke as he was carrying me upstairs. The lights were off downstairs, and I assumed it was bedtime. “I get a shower tonight,” I said, yawning. “And a new bandage.”

“I know. I’ll get everything ready before we get in the shower.”

He got the gauze and sterile pads ready, then carefully cut and unwound the thick layers of gauze until he got to the pad that was stuck directly over the stitches-and I do mean stuck. After a careful tug, I decided to get in the shower and let the water loosen the gauze from the stitches.

He turned on the shower so the water would get warm, then stripped me and then himself. Considering my stance about not having sex with him-yeah, like that was even slowing him down-I probably shouldn’t have been naked with him, but the truth was I liked it. A lot. I liked seeing him naked and I liked the way he looked at me when I was naked. I liked the way he touched me, as if he couldn’t help himself, cupping my breasts and rubbing his thumbs over the nipples. He hadn’t paid much attention to my breasts since he’d found out about my neck, but I could tell he did my neck for my benefit, and my breasts were for his. He liked them, and he showed it.

When we got in the shower and our bodies were all wet and slippery, and we had to stand close together so he could peel the pad off my arm, we wound up belly to belly and slowly moving against each other in a sensual water dance. I found out that enough time had lapsed for him to get it up again, and I quickly said, “No sex!” He laughed, as if it didn’t matter, and began washing me. And I found out why he thought it didn’t matter. Look, I tried. I really did. I just hadn’t been prepared for all the places he washed me, or how long he took.

“Don’t pout,” he said afterward, as I sat on the vanity chair and he rebandaged my arm in a much more sensible manner. “I like that you can’t resist me.”

“I’m working on it, though,” I muttered. “I’ll manage it yet.”

He took my hair down out of the ponytail and brushed it, though I could have done the brushing. I handled brushing my teeth, didn’t I? But he wanted to, so I let him. I did the skin-care routine, then asked for the drawstring pants and tank top I wanted to wear to bed. He snorted. “Like you’ll need them,” he said, picking me up and taking me to bed just the way I was, which was bare.

Poor Detective MacInnes, I’d forgotten about him, putting in long hours while Wyatt was at home with me. The phone rang just as Wyatt was getting into bed beside me; he had the receiver in his hand before the first ring had finished. “Bloodsworth. You got it?” He looked at me and said, “Dwayne Bailey. Ring a bell with you?”

An image shot to mind, that of a burly man about six feet tall, with a lot of body hair. “I remember him,” I said. “He needed electrolysis.”

“Could he have been the man you saw?”

I have very good visual spatial skills, and I could mentally place Dwayne Bailey standing beside Nicole’s car, comparing him to the man I had seen. “There’s no way I could recognize his face, but he’s about the right size. About six feet, a little on the heavy side. He was kind of surly, too, like he had a bad temper.” I remembered that because he’d been in an argument with another of our members, a regular, over using one of the weight machines. Evidently he’d been in a hurry and hadn’t liked waiting while the other man finished his sets.

“Good enough. We’ll go see him tomorrow,” Wyatt said. “MacInnes, grab what sleep you can.”

“Why don’t you roust Bailey out tonight?” I asked, a little indignant. They might have found the man who killed Nicole and shot me, and they weren’t going to pick him up right away?

“We can’t just arrest him,” Wyatt explained as he turned out the light and slid under the covers. “We don’t have probable cause, and no judge in town would sign a warrant. We’ll interview him, see what shakes loose. That’s how you investigate, honey, by talking to people.”

“And in the meantime, he’s running around shooting at innocent pieces of fluff. Something’s wrong with this picture.”

He chuckled and ruffled my hair, then settled me against him. “I never said you were innocent, either.”

I pinched his side. “Just think,” I said with fake anticipation. “This time tomorrow night, I could be in my own bed.”