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She looked above her head at his hand, the large square palm, the long, blunt-edged fingers, and swallowed down a jolt. It was just a hand. A man’s hand.
A cop’s hand.
“I have, a, uh, a reading group I meet with on Monday evenings.” It was more or less the truth and was certainly all she intended to divulge to this particular man.
“Are there a lot of reading groups?”
“A few.” She tugged at the door and relaxed some when he moved his hand, allowing her to open it. “I think it was kind of a new concept here in Rumor, but they’re getting more popular.” She waited for him to move out of the way before locking it up.
“Did Harriet meet with any groups?” He easily kept up with her as she hurried to her car.
“Not really. And none of the groups include any men yet, so if that’s where your thoughts are heading, don’t bother.” She tossed her purse across the seat and sat down, wincing a little at the hot, vinyl interior. She cranked down her window, trying not to look at the deputy.
He was standing beside the car, his expression as serious as it always was. She really didn’t want to notice the way his finely woven trousers tightened across his hips because of the hand he’d shoved in one pocket, or the way his silly tie lay against a chest that looked hard even through the severely white shirt he wore. So, of course, that was exactly what she noticed. That, and the way his eyes didn’t look quite so densely brown because the sunlight—still bright and hot even at that hour—was shining almost directly in his face.
His thick, spiky lashes were narrowed around that gleam of coffee-brown that seemed focused directly on her.
“Are you always so intense?” Her face flamed and she cursed her wayward tongue.
He closed his hands over the door, seeming oblivious to the hot metal, and leaned down a little so he could look into the car. “When I’m after something I want.”
His hair truly was black, she thought faintly. There wasn’t the least bit of gold, nor red, nor brown in the thick shock of it that looked in danger of tumbling over his forehead if not for the way it was brushed severely back from his hard face.
She needed therapy. That’s all there was to it. She absolutely, positively could not be physically attracted to this man. She could not be wondering if he brought that single-minded focus into matters of the personal kind.
The intimate kind.
She hadn’t felt a flicker of desire for anyone in so long that she wasn’t even sure that’s what she was feeling now. Only the curling in her stomach as she dragged her gaze from the very masculine hands not ten inches from her shoulder made a mockery of that particular notion.
“And you want Harriet’s killer,” she finished. It took two tries before she managed to fit her key in the ignition.
He was silent so long that she turned to look at him. Only to find that intense gaze focused on her face once more.
Her mouth ran dry and she swallowed. Reminded herself harshly that this man, Deputy Holt Tanner, represented everything that she’d left. No, that she’d been forced to flee.
“Yeah. I want her killer.” His lips twisted. “I want…a lot of things. But that’ll do for now.” He straightened and thumped the door with his palm before finally removing his hands. “Have fun with your reading group. I’ll be by the library first thing tomorrow.”
Then he was stepping away from the car, sliding off his jacket and hitching it over his shoulder with his thumb as he walked away.
She closed her eyes for a moment, willing her heart to stop racing, her stomach to stop jumping. When she opened them again, the deputy was no longer in sight.
She told herself she was glad.
Chapter Four
H olt saw Molly’s car on the side of the highway and immediately slowed, pulling up behind her.
It was nearly midnight. He’d followed her when she’d left the library. He hadn’t expected to make a second trip into Whitehorn that day, but that’s where she headed, so that’s where he’d followed. As far as he was concerned, the second trip was a lot more worthwhile than the wild-goose chase that Dave Reingard had sent him on for the first one.
Once Molly reached her destination that evening, for three hours he’d sat in his dust-covered truck far enough away to avoid suspicion outside a large house that he happened to know was a domestic-abuse shelter. He grimly speculated over what Molly was doing inside.
Reading group?
He’d doubted it.
Once he’d seen her leave—she’d stood in the front and chatted for a solid twenty minutes with two other women before driving away—he’d left his truck and walked over to the shelter where he’d had a brief chat with the director of the facility.
Angel Ramirez had been annoyingly closemouthed. The only useful thing she had imparted was her comment that there were some volunteers—women who’d escaped their lives of abuse—who met with the current residents in group sessions to help reinforce their belief in a life other than what they’d been enduring.
Afterward he’d pulled into a coffee shop and stared into a cup of coffee, his twisted mind easily conjuring images of the kinds of horrors that those “volunteers” had probably endured.
That Molly had endured.
There was a time when Holt would have gone into a bar and tossed back a shot or two of whiskey to dull the images. But not anymore. He’d given up drinking around the same time he’d given up a lot of other things.
When he finally hit the road, he sure as hell hadn’t expected to come across Molly’s car on the highway, long after she’d already departed Whitehorn.
She should have been home, safe and sound in bed.
The relief he felt when his headlights illuminated the shape of her sitting behind the wheel was all out of proportion. Yeah, it was late. And yeah, she was a good fifteen miles outside of Rumor. He would be concerned about the safety of any woman stopped alone like this on the side of a highway.
The rationalizations were sound, the relief inside him way beyond rationalizing.
He left the engine and the lights going, and walked up the side of the road, giving her plenty of time to see him.
Her window was rolled down, and he could see her fingers flexing around the steering wheel. Her face was a wash of ivory, her hair a gleam of moonlight as she turned to look at him when he stopped beside the car.
“Having problems?”
At least she wasn’t startled by him. Nor did she look exactly thrilled to see him.
“The engine quit.”
“Have you called a tow?”
The glance she cast him was brief. “Yes, Deputy, I called a tow. I stuck my head out the window and yelled at the very top of my voice. I’m sure someone heard and will be along shortly.”
“You don’t have a cell phone.”
“No.”
“Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days.”
“I don’t. Nobody needs to call me.”
“And there is nobody you need to call.”
“Assistant librarians don’t earn enough money to spend it on unnecessary luxuries.”
“You’re head librarian now. And what about emergencies like this?”
“I could have walked.”
“In the middle of the night? Fifteen miles?”
“If I had to.”
She might, at that, he thought, and refrained from giving her the lecture about safety that automatically sprang to mind. “Pop the hood.”
“Why?”
He shoved his fingers through his hair. The woman could give lessons in being suspicious. Not that he was one to talk. “To see if we can’t get this bucket of bolts going again.”
“My car is not a bucket of bolts.” Her voice was defensive. Nevertheless, he heard the distinctive pop of the hood release when she pulled it.
He bent over a little, looking past her into the car at the dash.
She stiffened like a shot. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure your gas gauge isn’t reading empty.”
“I’m not that foolish.”
But she might have been that distracted. Along with Angel Ramirez’s other miserly details, she had told him the group session that night had been particularly grueling.
He headed back to his truck. The opening of her car door was easily audible over the engine he’d left running.
“You’re not l-leaving?”
“No.” He pulled open his door and retrieved his flashlight. He flicked it on. “Remember this?”
The light from his headlights easily illuminated her face, along with the tangle of emotions that crossed it. Relief. Despair.
God. Of all the women for him to jones over, she had to be the most unsuitable.
He walked back to her car and lifted the hood.
She followed, and even though she kept a good distance between them, he was still damnably aware of her. The way she sucked in the corner of her lower lip as she’d look at him when she thought he was unaware. The way a few strands of hair had worked loose of the knot at the back of her head to cling to the delicate line of her jaw, the paleness of her neck.
He glared at the engine, wanting to ask her about the shelter, knowing she’d have a fit if she knew he’d followed her. As if her car had heard his thoughts, the narrow brace slipped and the hood crashed down on his shoulder.
He swore under his breath while Molly jumped back with a gasp. She hurriedly reached out, her hands knocking into his as they both reached for the brace to lift the hood off him.
He heard the way she sucked in her breath, and wanted to swear at the way she yanked her hand back. He was no prize, he’d be the first to admit it. But he wasn’t used to women being afraid of him. Not unless they were walking on the wrong side of the law.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. But hold this,” he muttered, and pushed the flashlight into her hands. “So I can see what I’m doing,” he added pointedly.
She made a soft huff and redirected the beam from his eyes to the engine.
He stared hard, waiting until the spots in front of his eyes disappeared, then began checking hoses and belts. He found the problem quickly enough. “You need a new fan belt. For that matter, you ought to have the whole thing tuned up.”
“Do-re-mi,” she murmured.
He caught himself from smiling as he lowered the hood. “Lock it up. I’ll drive you back to town.”
“You can’t fix it?”
He didn’t know whether to be flattered that she’d thought he might be able to or amused that she seemed peeved that he couldn’t. “Yeah, I could. With the right parts.” He took the flashlight from her and turned it off. “I’m not carrying even the wrong parts.”
“Only flashlights and first-aid kits.”
And evidence-collection kits, he thought. One that contained the print he’d lifted from her drinking glass. There was a part of him that wanted to run that print no matter what so-called agreement he’d struck with the woman.
There was a part of him that wanted to forget he’d ever taken the damned thing in the first place.
“Do you need help with anything?” He glanced at the lumps sitting on the passenger seat.
“No.” Her voice was sharp. Defensive. If he’d been back in L.A., he’d have wondered just what was in that briefcase and enormous purse that would cause a driver to be so antsy with a cop. But he wasn’t in Los Angeles anymore. And thank God for it.
He was standing on the side of a deserted highway in the middle of the night with a woman he wanted but couldn’t trust, even if he could get past her thick defenses.
“Suit yourself.” Leaving her to deal with her car, he went back to his truck and radioed in for a tow. Then he sat there, wrist propped over his steering wheel, as he watched her through the windshield.
The soft-sided briefcase she hefted over one shoulder looked heavy enough to knock her over, and he muttered an oath and shoved open the door and strode over to her.
“Don’t argue. There are some things you’re just going to have to put up with when it comes to me,” he said flatly as he slid the strap from her shoulder and took it. “What’s in here? Bricks?”
She pulled the second bag out of the car and slammed the door shut. “Books. For the reading group, remember? I told you I could manage it.”
The reading group story again. Right. Angel Ramirez hadn’t said squat about a reading group. “So you did. Am I complaining about it?”
“I—” She looked up at him, her expression guarded. “I’m sorry. I thought you were.”
“I wasn’t.” He headed toward his truck. When she stayed right where she was, he looked back at her. Standing beside her twenty-year-old car, clutching her enormous carpetbag of a purse to her with both hands, the faint night breeze barely enough to stir the hem of her floaty pink dress about her shapely knees.
She’d spent her entire Monday evening with a group of women living at a shelter. She still had a small plastic strip on her shin that he figured he recognized.
He let out a long breath. “Come on, Molly,” he said quietly. “Stop expecting the worst. Everything is going to be fine.”
Her fine eyebrows drew together. “With my car, you mean.”
“Yeah. Right.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then walked to his truck. She stowed her purse on the floor by her feet and carefully nudged aside the jacket of his suit as if she might catch something from it.
She didn’t speak until the lights of Rumor were visible through the windshield. “Thank you for stopping.”
